over the kid. Across the street I could see the shirtsleeved man pumping frantically at his jammed shotgun. I raised the Smith & Wesson, then lowered it. I might need every bullet, so I couldn't afford any luxuries. I got the car doors closed within half a block.
'Handkerchiefs!' I yelled at Bunny as we flew up Central and on the red spun east on Roosevelt. 'Ditch those glasses,' I continued. 'Slow down. Stay in traffic.' Bunny tossed two handkerchiefs over his shoulder without looking back. He grabbed a blue beret from the seat beside him and crammed it down on his yellow hair. With the glasses off and his hair hidden, he looked like a different person.
I wadded up Bunny's handkerchiefs with my own and tried to staunch the double-ended leak in my left arm just below the short sleeve of my shirt. I didn't accomplish much. All the stuff about a bullet's initial impact being shock with no pain is a crock of crocodiles. I felt it going in, and I felt it coming out, like a red-hot sawtooth file.
I reloaded (he Smith & Wesson. I tried to ignore the warm molasses running down my arm, except to keep it from dripping on my pants. I watched the traffic lights. The kid had had the lights timed all the way to Yavapai
Terrace, but we didn't have the kid. I wanted to get south of Van Buren again so bad I could taste it.
The cops had to figure us for a main highway. East to Tucson and Nogales if anyone had seen the right turn on Roosevelt. North to Prescott or Wickenburg if they hadn't. Even west to Yuma and the coast. There'd be roadblocks up now on every main artery out of town. We weren't going out of town. Not yet.
We'd passed Seventh Street while I was fooling with the useless handkerchiefs, Twelfth while I was reloading. The first red light caught us at Sixteenth. We sat in tense silence, cars hemming us in completely. My guts shriveled down to pebble size, but so far we hadn't even heard a siren.
The light changed, and we sailed up to Twentieth and turned south. We were back across Van Buren before I had time to begin holding my breath. Past Adams and Washington, over the tracks to East Hcnshaw, then back toward town at the light. Up to Twelfth again in the double-back, a quick left, then a right. The black Ford sat ahead of us on Yavapai Terrace, shimmering in the sun, I'd parked where kids wouldn't bother it, under a eucalyptus tree close to a Chinese grocery. Bunny pulled in behind the Ford. We weren't more than two miles from the bank.
'Get something out of your bag for this arm,' I told Bunny. He was out of the Olds before I'd finished talking. He came back from the Ford with my lightweight suit jacket and a shirt. 'Shred it and fold it and tie it around this thing,' I said, holding out my arm. 'Tight.'
Heat and dust and nausea filled my throat as he complied. I choked it down, whacked the larger pieces of crusted blood from my lower arm, and slung the jacket loosely over my shoulder to hide the crude bandage.
Bunny went back to the Ford. I followed after glancing up and down the dusty street. I watched the two- handed carry Bunny made with the sack as he transferred it, and for the first time I wondered about the size of the score. A fifty-pound sack holding twenty-five-percent hundreds and the rest twenties can let a man walk away with a quarter-million.
If he walks away.
The Olds we'd leave here. Bunny started the Ford, pulled ahead to get clear, then backed out onto Twelfth. He headed south slowly. The street names were Indian— Papago, Pima, Cocopa, Mohave, Apache—but the area was Mexican. The bushy shade trees were stunted and gnarled. The houses were close together, small, sun- blistered, and shacky. The front yards were overgrown tangles of brush. Bunny nosed the Ford into Durango Street, then parked across the street from a dark blue Dodge in the middle of the block.
I drew a deep breath as he set the brake. 'Okay,' I said. 'New script, Bunny. Listen close. I'm grounded. We're not going to the cabin in the canyon.' With the kid gone and me with a torn-up arm, we had to throw away the book. I rummaged in the sack at my feet. The first three money packets I picked up were hundreds. Fifteen thousand casually in my hand. I dropped two of them, found two strapped packets of twenties, and shoved the three of them into a jacket pocket.
'We split up here, big man,' I went on. 'You take the Dodge Get into a cheap motel, and don't forget to wash that yellow dye out of your hair. Day after tomorrow after dark pull out and head east. Stay off Highways 80 and 66. Go back on 70. Roswell, Plain view ... that way.'
1 tried to think of everything. 'Take the sack. Head south at Memphis for Florida. The gulf coast. Pick a small town. When you make it, mail me a thousand a week in hundreds, not new bills. To—' I groped for an alias clean with the law '—Earl Drake, General Delivery, Main Post Office, Phoenix, Arizona. Got it? Okay, take off. I'll join you the minute I can travel.'
Bunny got out of the Ford. He walked around it and opened the door on my side. His big, hard-looking face was solemn. We shook hands, and he picked up the sack. He crossed the drowsy dirt street to the Dodge, his shoes making little puffs in the inch-thick dust. There was a layer of it on the Dodge from passing cars.
Bunny opened the back deck, rolled in the sack, and slammed down the lid. He looked over at me and waved before he got in and drove off. Just before he reached the corner I remembered that all my clothes were in the Dodge. I reached for the horn, then pulled my hand back. I had more immediate problems than clothes.
I sat there for a moment with a kind of all-gone feeling. All the adrenalin-charged-up excitement had drained away. My arm hurt like an aching tooth, and my stomach felt queasy. My mind still chugged along busily, but the rest of me felt almost numb.
Letting Bunny take the sack hadn't been in the blueprint, but it was the best place for it now. I had some scrambling to do, and the first rule of the game is don't get caught with it on you. If the cops have to sweet-talk you to try to find out where it is, twenty-to-life has a way of coming out seven-to-ten, with an early parole. Although plank-walking the guards on this frolic could have made everything else academic if they'd done the big somersault. The one on the sidewalk—
Clean away, except for the hole in my arm. And except lot the silly-bastard kid. I wouldn't be sitting here improvising on an ironclad plan if he'd just stayed with the car. Yeah, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
I roused myself, with an effort. I had a lot to do. First I Inn I a doctor to find. A doctor would be trouble, but I'd cross that bridge when I came to it. I slid over under the wheel and started the Ford.
Night then I had a real bad moment. Bunny's strength in setting the hand brake was almost too much for my weakened left arm. I cursed fiercely at the salt perspiration linking my eyes before I succeeded in freeing the brake. The shirt bandage on my arm was sopping.
When I turned the first corner, the sun through the windshield nearly scared my eyeballs. The first two fronted signs I slowed down for were a realtor's and a plumber's. The third one drew down the money. The sign said
No time for anything fancy. I drove up the driveway and into the garage. I draped the jacket over my shoulder again and walked along the enclosed passageway that led to the house. I could see an office inside through a glass panel in the door. I had to knock twice before a man in white ducks and a white jacket opened the door. He had a stethoscope sticking out of one pocket.
Dr. Sanfilippo was a tall, thin, young-looking job. He was coffee-colored, black-eyed, and good-looking, with a misplaced-eyebrow type of mustache. From the look he gave me I wasn't what he'd been expecting to see. 'Yes?' he demanded impatiently when I outwaited him. I couldn't see or hear anyone in the office behind him. 'This is a private entrance,' he went on. He looked over my shoulder at the Ford. 'Is that your car? What do you mean by driving it into my garage?'
'I'm a patient, Doc,' I told him.
' Then go around to the patients' entrance,' he snapped. 'And get that automobile out of here before you do.'
'Let's arbitrate it,' I suggested. I showed him the Smith
Wesson about ten inches from his belly. His eyes popped, and he backed away from the door until he ran into a desk behind him. I moved inside and closed the door. 'You alone, Doc?'
'I'm alone,' he admitted. He looked unhappy about it 'I keep no drills on the premises,' he added.
'Inside, Doe.' I motioned with the gun and steered him from the cluttered office into a small examining room. It had whitewashed walls and a basin in one corner. Both room and washbasin looked fairly clean. There was a phone in the office but none in the examining room.
I In n was only one door, and I was between it and the doctor. A framed diploma hung on the near wall, and
