clay, brick clay, standing gaunt and almost black in the moonlight. When we came onto the end of the road Calvart braked the Buick and eased onto a deep-rutted, sparsely graveled road, and Max said:
“Anywhere along here will do.”
“We'll go on over the next rise,” Calvart said.
Max shrugged slightly. A job was a job and he didn't bother himself with the details.
I tried desperately to stop the sickish quivering in my stomach. I tried to pull myself together enough to jump into the muzzle of that .45... but I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't force myself to move.
The road was rough and Calvart was taking it easy, crawling along in second gear. Finally we topped a small rise and I could see the squat black forms of the brickyards in the distance.
“Right here,” Max said.
“Just a little farther,” Calvart said. “There's no use taking chances.”
Just a little farther! I knew just how it would happen... Calvart wouldn't want his car bloodied up if he could help it; they would stop and shove me out, and they would let me run a step or two and Max would apply the careful, gentle trigger squeeze and the door would slam. That would be the end.
The end. I had the horrible feeling that I was going to cry.
That was when Calvart hit the rock.
It was just over the rise and the headlight beams must have shot over it, and I guess that's the reason Calvart didn't see it until it was too late. It was a good sized rock, maybe a foot thick, and maybe it had fallen off a truck or maybe it had just washed loose from the clay embankment and had rolled down onto the road; but where it came from isn't important. It was there and that is the important thing.
Calvart hit it with his right front wheel and the Buick lurched suddenly. Max had to make a grab for the back of the front seat to keep from falling to the floorboards, and Calvart himself was cursing and trying to get the car straightened out on the road. Just what I did at that instant is not clear in my mind, but I acted on instinct, I'm sure of that, pure animal instinct, there was nothing planned about it.
The instant the Buick lurched to the left, the instant Max made his grab for the front seat I forgot about my sickness and my fear. I was on Max like a tiger. Grabbing at his gunhand, I drove my knee in his crotch and heard the wind go out of him. I slashed the edge of my hand across Max's wrist and the bone snapped, but a small thing like a broken wrist meant nothing to Max at that moment because he didn't live long enough to suffer from the pain.
I caught the automatic before it hit the floorboards. I jammed the muzzle into Max's throat, into the soft part between the breast bone and the adams apple and pulled the trigger.
He never knew what hit him. The slug tore right through his spinal column, almost taking his head off his shoulders.
In the meantime Calvart had to let go of the wheel and had let the Buick go into a ditch and we were stalled, Calvart himself was trying to get over the back of the driver's seat, trying to grab the gun away from me. He never had a chance. I shoved him back against the steering wheel, then got on my knees and shot him three times right in the middle of his fat stomach. He jerked and quivered like some enormous jellyfish, and his mouth flew open, working soundlessly. That was the way
I heard a voice saying, “You sonofabitch! You lousy sonofabitch!” I knew it was my voice, but it didn't seem to be coming from my throat, it seemed to be coming from everywhere, and it was high-pitched and taut and almost screaming. At last I jerked the front door open and gave Calvart a shove, and he hit the ground with the mushy sound of an overripe melon.
I was breathing very hard and couldn't seem to get enough air into my lungs. I concentrated for several minutes on pulling myself together and watching the blood soak into the thick floor mat around Max's severed head. Then I got out of the car and began to feel better. Calvart was dead. Max was dead. But I was alive!
I said it aloud. “Alive!” I said it several times, and then I walked around the Buick and looked at Calvart. Only then did I fully realize what had happened, and I felt fine! I felt exactly the way I had the day I killed Gorgan, only better. Much better!
Then I remembered the papers that I'd sold him. I got down in the ditch with him and took them out of his pocket. Then I looked through the briefcase in the front seat and there was nothing in it but bundles of newspaper cut to the size of banknotes, but not even that could smother my elation. Money was the easiest thing in the world to come by, but a man had to stay alive to enjoy it.
The back seat of the Buick was a mess, and I didn't make it any better by dragging Max out of it. But I had to use the Buick to get back to Lake City and it wouldn't be especially smart to have it loaded down with corpses.
I dumped Max in the ditch on top of Calvart. Tomorrow they would find them, maybe, and there would be a hell of a noise, but there was very little they could do about it. Who would ever tie a thing like this to Roy Surratt?
It occurred to me that I might as well give the police a motive for the murders, any kind of motive except blackmail, so I went back to the ditch and began looking for wallets. This last was a profitable decision, as it turned out. Calvart, was carrying almost six hundred, and Max a little over four hundred, probably an advance on the job he was supposed to do. I laughed aloud as I counted it, almost a thousand dollars. Not bad, not bad at all fox a night's work, even though it was a little out of my line.
I pocketed the money, took Max's watch and Calvart's watch and diamond ring. No sir, not a bad night's work at all, everything considered!
I switched on the Buick, got it turned around, and headed back toward Lake City.
I parked the Buick on the outskirts of the city and caught a bus downtown. From there I drove the Lincoln to the apartment.
I was over the shakes now. I couldn't imagine how I could have been scared at all. One thing I was sure of— I'd never be scared again. Audacity, Surratt, that's the tiling to remember. Audacity and brains—they make a combination that can't be beat!
I felt fight headed, almost drunk. I was a giant among men and the twenty thousand dollars I'd lost didn't bother me at all. Money, I reminded myself again, is nothing.
While downtown I had picked up a morning paper, but I hadn't looked at it yet. The Burton killing had slipped out of the headlines, and it was too early for the Calvart murder, so I dropped the folded paper on a table, went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk.
It was still early, no more than ten o'clock. I'd get myself cleaned up. This had been quite a night... it called for a celebration. So I'd just go over to Pat's apartment....
That was when I saw it. I walked back in the front room and glanced at the paper and there it was—in black headlines just below the fold.
WIFE OF JOHN VENCI FOUND DEAD. CORONER SAYS SUICIDE
So Dorris had done it.
The first thing I felt was a sense of relief. Well, by God, I thought, I'm glad she had the guts to go through with it. I'm glad to have her off my neck!
She had shot herself, using a little .22 automatic, and it had been a neat, workmanlike job, according to the paper. One bullet in the temple. Well, I thought, that's the end of that. It's just as well that she had ended it this way, for she would have ended up in a nut ward sooner or later if she hadn't.
Then I thought of something that shook me. I thought: Wait a minute, Surratt. Dorris was pretty sore at you this morning when you brushed her off. Could that have had anything to do with her suicide? Could she have been sore enough to have left some incriminating evidence behind?
Jesus! I thought, that's something to think about, all right!
It was possible, I decided, just possible that Dorris had taken this big step
