sounds right,” I said. “How long do you think it will take?”
“... An hour, perhaps. More important is the expense-it will take a good deal of money, most of my savings....”
I grinned and thought: By God, you were right all along, Surratt! Money's the thing that brings them around! I tried to think of a figure that would sound impressive but not ridiculous. “Don't you worry about the expense,” I said. “I told you I was ready to pay. Ten thousand dollars, that's what it will be worth to you.”
“... Where shall I meet you?”
“Harrison at Fourth Street, down by the tracks.”
“In about an hour?”
“An hour will be perfect.”
Only then did she hang up.
How do you like that! I thought. You'll never completely understand women, Surratt. You might as well admit it. One minute they're cold as stone, the next minute they're laying their necks on the block for you!
But Pat Kelso was quite a woman just the same. She was my kind of woman; she had just proved it. She was beautiful, she had class; and she didn't let a few personal scruples stand in her Way when she saw a chance to pick up ten grand. But she was going to go right through the ceiling when she found out there was no ten grand!
Well, no matter how fast you try you can take just one step at a time, so I'd worry about that problem when I got to it. Very gently, I hung the receiver back on the hook, smiling.
At the counter I paid the waitress for the sandwich and coffee, had her put the sandwich in a bag and took it with me.
It was beginning to get dark outside—I was glad of that. Not that it made much difference. These people had lost the knack of seeing beyond their own noses, and not one out of ten thousand would have recognized me anyway. Cops —they were the only people to worry about.
So I was careful as I came out of the hash house and was glad to see that my blue suited friend down the block had plodded on his way. I noticed a springiness to my step that hadn't been there before. It was almost as though a heavy weight had been removed from my shoulders, and the world was once more a tolerable place to live in.
I ate my sandwich in a fifteen cent movie house on Harrison Street. I kept my eyes on a neon lighted clock to one side of the screen and thought: Now Pat has the gun in her bag; now she has the cartridges; now she is putting on her coat—not the Balmain coat, just a plain one—to go to the drugstore; now she's at the drugstore buying the map; now she's on her way to the car lot....
It was almost as though I could actually see her. Forty-five minutes to go. Thirty minutes to go. Christ, don't get into an argument with that car dealer! I thought. This is no time to haggle over prices. Pay the sonofabitch what he wants, but get the car!
Fifteen minutes to go.
I made myself sit there a few minutes longer. I was completely safe as long as I sat here in the darkness, but once I stepped out there on the street there was no way of knowing what would happen. No sense begging for trouble. Sit here and wait it out, that's the thing.
Ten minutes to go.
Surely, I thought, she has the car by now. The car dealer knows her and there should be a minimum of red tape. An hour she had said. Well, I had waited fifty minutes and couldn't take it any longer—I got up and walked out.
Outside the movie house there were the usual drifters, down-at-the-heel refugees from limbo, but no cops. Where are the cops, anyway? I thought. With a killer on the loose you'd think they'd have two cops on every corner. There wasn't a cop anywhere, as far as I could see. Maybe this was the night of the Policemen's Ball, or maybe they were too busy ogling prostitutes and shaking down bookies to bother with a mere killer. No matter what the reason, there were no cops in sight and that was the important thing. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and walked casually toward Fourth Street.
Fourth was a dark street, an ugly ditch that someone had plowed through a cement city and had forgotten to fill up. It wasn't much to look at but it suited me fine. I turned the corner at Harrison and strolled about a quarter of the way down Fourth. The sun had died. While I had been in the movie house darkness had come down on the city.
Darkness was a good thing. It was just what I'd ordered. I stood in the doorway of a darkened pawn shop and waited for Pat to come with a new option on my contract with destiny.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SHE HIT THE hour-mark right on the nose, as well as I could tell waiting there in the darkness. I saw a tan Ford pull up at the corner of Harrison and Fourth and I knew it was Pat; I could feel it. I could feel the elation bubbling up inside me. It's all over but the yelling, I thought. Soon I'll be out of this town for good.
I stepped out of the darkened doorway and waved and she saw me immediately. I felt like a million dollars. I could feel myself grinning. By God, I thought, not one man in ten thousand could bring off an escape-like this—but I will! I can feel it in my bones!
It wasn't a new Ford, far from it, but it seemed to be running all right and that was the thing that mattered. I didn't have it in mind to outrun the police—I was going to outsmart them! Pat turned onto Fourth and I was waiting at the curb. I was inside before she had braked to a complete stop.
“I certainly am glad to see you!” I said. “For the first time in my life I was close to admitting defeat.”
She glanced at me but said nothing, which didn't surprise me. She seemed nervous, but who wouldn't be nervous, considering the spot she had put herself on? But she was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I had a crazy impulse to grab her right there, and to hell with everything else.
That was one impulse that I squashed in a hurry. Another day, I thought. Another day when I've gone into business somewhere else; and then I'll really buy her that fleet of Lincolns; then we'll really begin to live, the two of us.
She put the Ford in gear and said, “Where do you want to go?”
“Someplace where you can get a taxi without too much trouble. You've done your share, and a fine job it was too. The rest is up to me.”
“I know a place near Lincoln Avenue... will that be all right?”
“Lincoln Avenue is fine. How about the gun; you brought it, didn't you?”
“It's in my pocket. I'll give it to you in a minute.”
Maybe I should have noticed that everything was not as it should have been. Maybe I should have noticed the flatness of her voice, the coldness of her beautiful face... but the fact is that I didn't notice; I was too busy congratulating myself. I was too busy devouring the beauty of her face to notice the coldness. And when I finally did notice, it was too late.
I was hardly aware that she had braked the Ford and was pulling up to the curb. Then she looked at me and there was something in her eyes that made me look around.
“Say, I thought Lincoln Avenue was more to the west.”
“... It is,” she said.
Then I saw the gun. But it was much, much too late to do me any good. It was a small gun; it looked almost like a toy, even in her small hand.
It was no toy. A .25 caliber slug can be an awfully big piece of lead if you catch it in the right place. I stared at the gun, and the muzzle was looking me right in the belly, pointed right at the soft midsection just below the center of the rib cage, just about where my liver would be.
“What is this?” I said. Trying not to sweat so much, trying not to see what was perfectly obvious. “If this isn't Lincoln Avenue, why did you stop?”
“Don't you know?”
“No, I don't know. And for Christ's sake, don't you know better than to point a gun at a person unless you mean to kill him?”
She almost smiled, but not quite.
Strangely, I was not scared. Certainly I was not so stupid that I did not recognize the situation for what it was. I had not convinced her of anything—that much was clear to me now. I had succeeded only in convincing
