Fast Buck

was able to get on his feet ten days after the shooting. She wouldn’t explain why she had given him sanctuary, and when he pressed her she had turned on him angrily, saying, ‘Oh, do stop talking about it! I’m doing this to please myself. I don’t want your gratitude or your thanks. I’m not going to discuss it any more!’

It had worried Baird. He couldn’t understand anyone doing what she had done for a stranger. By letting him stay in the room, she was also risking a prison sentence. It baffled him. When he was well enough to think of leaving he had put three hundred dollars on the table, saying, ‘I guess I owe you something. Take this: I’ve got enough for myself. I’m not going to forget what you did for me. Go on, take it. You’ve earned it.’

He wasn’t used to expressing himself, and this speech had embarrassed him. At the back of his mind he thought he must be crazy to give her so much, and yet there was something in him that drove him to be generous: something he had never known before.

And when she had refused the money it was like a slap in the face to him. She had refused it curtly, as if money meant nothing to her, and his savage temper got the better of his intentions.

‘Then don’t have it!’ he snarled, put ing the money back in his pocket. ‘To hel with you! I’m not going to beg you to take it. If you’re going to be such a goddamn sucker you deserve what you get. I must be going soft in the head even to offer you anything!’

She had gone on preparing supper while he talked, and he had an uncomfortable feeling that she wasn’t even listening. This had so enraged him he had caught hold of her and jerked her around, pulling her close to him.

‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’ he demanded, glaring down at her. ‘Three hundred bucks!’ He gave her a little shake. ‘Why, you stupid bitch, it’s a fortune to you! What do you think you’re playing at –turning it down?’

‘Take your hands off me!’ she had said, with a fury that matched his own. ‘I don’t want your money!

Do you imagine kindness can be bought like something out of a grocery store? I helped you because I was sorry for you, as I would help anyone who was one against many. Let go of me!’

For a moment they had stood staring at each other, then he had released her and had moved away to sit on the bed. No other girl he had known had ever dared look at him the way she had looked at him. He hadn’t frightened her as he had meant to frighten her. He might have been just any other man, instead of a killer who was mauling her, and the discovery that she wasn’t afraid of him had given him a strange and intense pleasure.

Ever since he could remember people had been afraid of him. Even his mother had been afraid of him when he was in one of his savage tempers. His brother and sister seemed to know instinctively that he was dangerous, for they didn’t kid him as they kidded each other, and they were never at ease when they played with him. The children at school had been wary of him, and as he grew older, he came to recognise the quick fear that jumped into people’s eyes when they met him. Even Rico was afraid of him, although he fawned over him. Kile had been afraid of him, and that doll-faced blonde. They all seemed to sense the savage killer instinct that was in him.

This knowledge forced him into a dark, savage loneliness, making him callously self-reliant, bred in him suspicion and distrust, and to find someone who wasn’t afraid of him was like a light shining in the darkness.

The following morning, after Anita had gone to work as usual, he decided to quit. Every day he stayed in this room made it more dangerous for her. If she wouldn’t take his money, the least he could do was to get out. He left as it was growing dark, an hour or so before she was due back. He went through the skylight and across the roofs, following the same route as he had come.

He had left without telling her he was going, or without leaving a note for her to find on her return.

During the week in New York, while he had been fixing an alibi, he had thought continually of her.

Although they had spent so much time together, he knew nothing about her. He knew only that she had a job as a waitress in a steak joint, but he didn’t know where the joint was. He had tried to find out her background. It was beyond his powers to ask anything but direct questions, and she quickly blocked off the questions by curtly saying she didn’t wish to talk about herself.

In New York he found he missed her. He stayed at a cheap hotel, and each night as he undressed for bed he brooded on those past thirteen days when she was bustling about her room, not saying anything, but keeping him company by her presence, and pushing back the wall of loneliness that surrounded him.

He kept thinking of what she had said: Do you imagine kindness can be bought like something out of a grocery store? Kindness! To him it was a word in a foreign language, and yet his mind kept coming back to it. Well, he still owed her something. He was determined now to get out of her debt. He had to see her again. He knew she was desperately poor, and for some reason appeared to have no friends. In her way, she was as lonely as he was. She didn’t go to the movies or a dance or do anything girls with her looks were doing every night of their lives. Men seemed to have no place in her life. When he had asked her why she didn’t go out and enjoy herself, she had said defiantly, ‘I do enjoy myself. I don’t have to go out to do that. Anyway, I don’t want men hanging around me. They’re only after one thing, and they’re not going to get it from me!’

He had given up. She was too complicated for him to understand. Besides, it wasn’t his line to ask questions or to show interest in anyone. He felt hopelessly at sea with her, and irritated with himself for bothering about her.

But he had to see her again. Although it was after eleven o’clock when he left Eve Gil is’s apartment, it didn’t cross his mind that it was too late to cal on Anita. She got in from work at ten-thirty, and immediately went to bed. He knew she would probably be asleep by now, but he didn’t care. He made up his mind to see her that night, and that was the end of it.

On his way down town, he thought about Kile and his proposition. Ten grand to get a man out of jail!

With ten grand in his pocket, he would be on easy street for months. But what was behind all this? If he was worth ten grand to him, this man must be worth considerably more to Kile.

The job appealed to Baird: it was dangerous, difficult and well paid. It would mean a change of scenery. He felt in the mood to tackle some impossible task: it would be an outlet for his pent-up mood of savage, aimless anger that had been slowly welling up inside him for the past two weeks.

He had heard about the Bellmore State Prison Farm. It was one of the toughest prisons in the country.

Abe Golheim had been there, and Abe had told him about the place. It was surrounded by a belt of swamp land, thirty miles long and ten miles broad. Up to now no prisoner had ever got through the swamp, although a number had tried. They had either been caught by the dogs or had drowned. There had been lurid rumours that several had been eaten alive by alligators.

To get a man out of that swamp would be a hell of a job, Baird thought, as he walked quickly along the sidewalk towards the garage where he kept his car and, if