Honey in His Mouth

Mr. Hassam got down beside him. “The body?” Mr. Hassam’s whisper was flat and without emotion.

“Yes.” Harsh decided he had hold of an arm. He pulled with all his strength. “Damn thing won’t budge.” He began to pant.

Mr. Hassam also seized the body’s arm, and they both tugged with all their might. The body would not move.

The patrolmen were working on the other side of the wreck. They were yanking and kicking at the twisted metal.

Mr. Hassam’s lips were against Harsh’s ear. “It’s wedged. A knife! Have you a knife?”

“No. Why?”

“I want to cut off the head and hands.”

“No, I ain’t got a knife.” Harsh’s stomach did not feel well.

Both the patrolmen abruptly stood erect. They were looking in the direction of the highway. One lifted his voice. “Hey, lady! Lady, you stay back. Don’t come down here.”

Miss Muirz was coming toward them from the station wagon. She had crossed the ditch and she walked jerkily as if propelled by clockwork. She was looking straight ahead as she came. Her trim legs wore their coating of mud nearly to the knees, like boots.

“Go back, lady! Stay away!” The patrolman waved both arms urgently. “This’ll just make you sick. Go back!”

Miss Muirz had both hands clasped together before her breasts, and Harsh suddenly realized she had a revolver in her hands. Mr. Hassam realized this also. The patrolman had not noticed the gun.

“Gotta stop her!” Harsh hurried forward, Mr. Hassam on his heels, and they put themselves between Miss Muirz and the officers before the latter could see the revolver.

Miss Muirz did not seem to have any awareness of Harsh and Mr. Hassam standing in her path. Her progress ended only when she collided with Mr. Hassam, and even then she continued to stare vacantly in the same direction she had been staring as she walked. Mr. Hassam gripped her shoulders and held them.

“Harsh, go back, use a piece of broken window glass, cut off the hands and head.” Mr. Hassam still seemed calm.

“Won’t work. The cops got their eyes on us.” Harsh’s teeth chattered together. “Listen, I got an idea. The whole wreck is soaked with gasoline. I’m gonna pretend to light a cigarette, drop the match. That’ll burn the bodies.”

Miss Muirz’s body was rigidly inclined against Mr. Hassam as if she were still trying to walk.

“All right, Harsh.”

Harsh ran back to the wreck. One of the patrolmen looked up from the wreck. “So you got the woman headed off? Good. This would be a bad thing for her to see.”

“Yeah. She’s okay.”

The beams from the flashlights the patrolmen held were glistening on gasoline wetness throughout the wreckage. Harsh thought the fuel tank must have split wide open when the limousine was somersaulting. “How are you guys making out?”

The patrolman shrugged. “Three of them. All dead, near as we can tell.”

“I’m gonna work on the other side, officer.” Harsh moved around the wreckage, feeling for a cigarette. Then he realized he had no cigarettes. However he had matches, and if the officers did not see him, he could claim he had dropped his cigarette in his excitement when the wreck caught fire. They might or might not believe that, but they’d have no way to prove it wasn’t so.

He found a match and struck it. The flame leaped with unexpected brightness in his face. The patrolmen were not looking. He dropped the burning match in the wreckage quickly.

A blast of flame enveloped him. His clothing was ablaze. He had, he realized with horror, underestimated the explosive violence of gasoline vapor. He stumbled back. He had also forgotten he had been squirming around in the gasoline-drenched wreckage trying to get the body out. Jesus, he thought, I’m burning like a torch.

Mr. Hassam turned his head when the wreckage mushroomed in flame, and he squinted into the enormous mass that was the wreck, then saw a smaller violently moving bundle of flames that he knew must be Harsh. The stupid fool, Mr. Hassam thought. He could see Harsh was clawing and slapping at the flames with his arms, both the arm in a cast and the one that was not. The cast itself was in flames, too, and so was the bandage on Harsh’s face, which fell off in cinders as he watched. Mr. Hassam suddenly felt tired. Everything had been working so perfectly; now it was in such a mess. Everything was black and white like that. With an impersonator to stand in for El Presidente they could have looted the hidden funds; without such an impersonator there would be no chance. A few hours ago Harsh had been in good condition and cooperating; now Harsh had stupidly thrown everything away. The stupid fool, the utterly stupid fool.

Also Mr. Hassam felt concern about Miss Muirz. He could tell she was in deep shock, her contact with reality badly disrupted. He was not really surprised; Miss Muirz’s emotional existence for some twenty years had been tied to the man she had suddenly learned was dead, his body now burning in the wrecked limousine. Mr. Hassam and Doctor Englaster had discussed Miss Muirz’s emotional ties with El Presidente previously; they had determined to insulate her as much as possible from the murder when it was done. But everything had gotten out of hand, thanks to the idiot Harsh. There was really nothing much he could do about it, was there?

It was then that Miss Muirz shot him exactly in the heart.

The two Highway Patrolmen had stumbled backward when the flame spurted and had turned and were running to get clear. They halted at the sound of the shot.

Harsh also heard the shot with which Miss Muirz killed Mr. Hassam. But he thought at first it was something exploding in the flaming wreck. Perhaps the bullets in the gun carried by Brother had started letting go in the heat. In a corner of his mind he wondered whether the heat would damage the gun barrel so the ballistics men could not verify that it had fired the bullet that had killed the body in the back seat.

He was rather proud of himself, being able to think out the matter of heat damage to Brother’s gun while flames were seething in his clothes. Didn’t they say a man always lost his head when he caught fire? Well, he wasn’t losing his.

The flames were not yet actually charring his clothing. They still fed on the gasoline vapor that came from the cloth, blue devils darting here and there. The heat, though, was almost unbearable. He kept beating at the flames, and he tried to brush off individual tongues of flame, but without much success.

He turned in the direction the sound of the gunshot had come from. He saw Miss Muirz, the revolver in her hand. She’d had a gun in that purse of hers, he remembered. She was coming toward him. She stumbled over something on the ground, but did not fall. She did not look down to see what had impeded her progress, although it was Mr. Hassam. In a moment flame and noise came Harsh’s direction from Miss Muirz’s gun. She had not aimed the gun, merely pulled the trigger. But the bullet barely missed him; he could feel it fan the side of his face. She held her gun out before her with both hands, still not aiming, but pointing more accurately. From the muzzle, flame, noise. Harsh stumbled back, not hit, dodging wildly. Half mad with pain he went for the automatic in his pocket. Miss Muirz came on. She measured her steps like a farmer pacing a field. He got the automatic out of his pocket. He shot her. Luck was with him. He got her almost exactly between the eyes, almost as precisely as a moment before she had placed her own bullet in Mr. Hassam’s heart.

Both of the patrolmen had by now circled the burning limousine and they rushed Harsh. One knocked Harsh down with a fist. The other kicked the little gun away. They tore off Harsh’s burning clothing in strips, cooling their scorched hands by slapping them against their thighs. They got the charred shirt off. Each officer seized a trouser leg. They pulled. Harsh was dragged a short distance, then the trousers came off. The moment the trousers were off, they blazed up furiously. The officer tossed them aside.

“Jesus Christ, save the pants!” Harsh struggled to reach the burning trousers. “My money’s in them pants, Jesus Christ!”

An officer kicked Harsh backwards and he fell to the ground. The officer put his foot on Harsh’s throat and leaned on it with most of his weight. He had his own gun drawn now and he aimed it down at Harsh. “You’re under arrest.”