customers at the counter having the house special, stew, but they were too busy eating to be curious.
I headed for the phone booth.
I was perfectly calm until I-dropped the coin in the slot and began to dial. That was when my insides began to crawl, that was when I fully realized how important these next few minutes or seconds could be to me. They could mean that I would either live or die—that's how important they were! All Pat had to say was “no” and I was dead. Just as sure as she could point a pistol at my head and pull the trigger. She could kill me. I absolutely had to have her help or I was cooked, really cooked this time, and nobody was more aware of that fact than I.
Of course that wasn't all I had to worry about. I had the cops to think of—all those cops with their elaborate organization. How much did they really know or could guess about me and Pat? Were they guessing enough to figure it would be a paying proposition to tap her telephone? If they were, I was still cooked. I might as well go back to the flatcar and wait for the end.
Those were a few of the things that went through my mind at that moment, but I kept dialing. There was nothing else to do.
I listened to the ringing at the other end. Once... twice... three times... I listened so hard that I began to imagine that I could hear someone breathing on the line. But that was not possible. If Pat were playing seriously with the cops, and they had her line tapped, I would know it. They would have an extension connected and would try to lift the receivers at the same exact instant, and a man on the other end could tell when two circuits were opened instead of one, if he only listened hard enough.
I kept telling myself that I could tell the difference, but every time that phone rang at the other end I became less and less sure of myself. Four times it rang... Five times....
Why didn't she answer? If she was is the apartment, certainly she would have had plenty of time to get to the phone by now! It hadn't occurred to me that she might not be in the apartment. It simply hadn't occurred to me that she wouldn't be there when I needed her!
Six times the phone rang.... Still no answer.
I wanted to hang up and get out of there. Every instinct told me that something was wrong—maybe the cops were holding things up for some reason. Maybe they were putting their tracer to work, or maybe they simply had got their equipment fouled somehow, but with every second that passed I felt it stronger and stronger. Something was wrong.
Then the receiver came off the hook. It was absolutely clean.
“... Hello?”
It was a strange thing, the way I felt at that moment. I forgot the cops, I forgot all fear for that instant, as Pat's voice sounded in the receiver—a quiet voice, somehow soothing the ragged edges of my nerves. For the first time, I guess, I was beginning to realize how much I missed her, how much I needed her. Not just for the present, as a means of escape, but really needed her.
“Pat,” I said quickly, “don't hang up! Please don't hang up until I've explained something! It's very important!”
I didn't know how much the cops had worked on her; I didn't know how many of the papers she had read or how much she had believed. I was taking no chances. I simply couldn't let her hang up until I had a chance to convince her that I hadn't killed Alex Burton.
“Pat, do you hear me!”
For one long moment she said nothing. I was afraid that she was going to hang up. I was afraid that she wasn't going to give me a chance to talk her around... and there was nothing I could do to stop it. All she had to do was replace the receiver, refuse to talk to me....
At last she said, “The police were just here, they left just a few moments ago.” There was nothing soothing in her voice now. It was tightly drawn and rough with hate. “They'll find you, and I hope it's soon. It can't be too soon to suit me!”
“Listen to me!” I said, the words coming as fast as I could talk. “Pat, you've simply got to listen to me! I know what the cops have been telling you, and I know what you've been reading in the papers, but those things simply aren't true, not all of them anyway. You'll listen to me, won't you, for old times' sake if for nothing else?”
She made no sound at all.
“Sure,” I rushed on, “my name is Roy Surratt, and once I killed a lousy sadist, a guard named Gorgan, but even that was in self-defense. I don't care what the cops told you or what you read in the newspapers. I didn't have anything to do with that Burton killing!”
This time she did make a small sound, a very small sound that meant absolutely nothing except possibly a kind of bitter interest had been aroused.
But I wasn't getting anywhere. I could feel it. Maybe I was crazy about, her, but that didn't mean that she had to feel the same toward me. Oh, no, I was thinking, this is no time to kid yourself about a thing like that, Surratt. The only real tie you ever had to her was money, money that could buy Lincolns and Paris coats. So don't get the idea that soft soap will bring her around. Money, that's the thing women understand!
“Now listen to me, please!” I said. “This is very important; my life depends on it. Maybe your future depends on it, too, Pat. I'm going to tell you the truth, the absolute truth, so will you listen?”
She didn't say yes, but she didn't say no, either. I had the feeling that she was holding her breath... waiting.
“All right,” I went on quickly, “do you remember what I said about giving this town a shaking? Well, that's just what I did. I had it by the throat, I had the sweetest, most lucrative setup a man can imagine, but... Well, something went wrong. What I'm trying to say is this: I need help, but I'm ready to pay for it. I'm not asking you to take chances for the sake of friendship or anything like that. I'm ready to pay.”
But I was getting the uneasy feeling that she wasn't even listening. Goddammit, I thought savagely, what have I got to do to make her listen to me! I could almost see her, standing there like a stone cold statue, as unfeeling and deaf as a statue. “Jesus!” I said, “won't you please listen to me, Pat! Are you still thinking about Burton”; is that what's bothering you?”
Still she said nothing.
“Look,” I said quickly, changing directions again, “you're not going to believe anything Dorris Venci said, are you? Let me tell you something about Dorris Venci; she was nuts! Absolutely and completely nuts! Somehow she got the crazy idea that she loved me, and that's the reason she wrote you the letter. I brushed her off and that burned her up. She wanted to hurt me, so she wrote you that letter full of lies.”
I tried to think of something to add, but I had said just about everything there was to say. I could feel the ground falling out from under me. I understood perfectly well that my story was full of holes, but I could have plugged the holes if only she had given me a chance.
I felt completely helpless. And then, at last, she spoke. Her voice sounded as though it were coming all the way from the moon.
“... What kind of help... do you want?”
I almost collapsed with relief. My heart began to pump again. “A gun,” I said, before she could change her mind. “A revolver if you can find one, but this is not my day to be particular, just so it's a gun. And some cartridges to fit the gun. And a good road map of the state—a really good one, the kind they sell in drugstores for a dollar or so—and a car. I don't care what kind of a car, just so it runs and isn't hot.”
“... Is that all?”
Christ! I thought, what a woman she is! I ask for the sun and the moon and the stars, and she wants to know is that all! “Yes,” I said, “that's quite all. With a car and a gun and a good map to tell me where they're likely to throw up their roadblocks, a division of Marines couldn't stop me!”
“... The map will be simple,” she said flatly. “I have a small automatic myself—.25 caliber, I believe it is—and some cartridges....”
I wasn't exactly an amateur with a gun; you don't have to have a cannon to stop a man, if you know how to shoot. “The automatic will do fine. What about the car?”
“I know a used car lot that will still be open. I've been shopping there for an inexpensive car for my own use—there shouldn't be any trouble.”
Yes, I thought, with surprising bitterness, I suppose you will need a car of your own now. “The used car lot
