“I used to think about Mexico. But I don’t know anymore. I can’t even think straight, Ted.”
I did some thinking, gulped some coffee and smoked some of my cigarette. “Look,” I said, “any place that’s large, any place where people generally go, he’s likely to turn up. Even if we leave the country there’s a chance. Someplace like Mexico City, for example. People go there all the time. He might run into us.”
“Europe?”
“Possibly. But even then we wouldn’t be set up right. The money wouldn’t last forever. It’s a lot of money but after a while it would be gone and we’d be stranded. We have to be somewhere where the money can work for us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Somewhere in the States,” I said. “Somewhere where we can use the dough to get set up in a business that will take care of us. See what I mean? With a stake of fifty grand we can get up fairly high, high enough so that the money will make more money for us.”
“You sound like a stockbroker.”
“I’m serious,” I said, trying to sound serious, working hard at it because now it was my turn to sell her on something and I had no idea how hard or easy it might turn out to be.
“Go on.”
“A small town,” I said, making it sound as though all of this was just occurring to me for the first time. “Out west, maybe. Arizona or New Mexico. We could just move in, settle down, buy a house. Get hold of a business of some sort, pay a lot down and arrange terms for the rest. Then we’d be safe, don’t you see? We wouldn’t be a couple of crooks on the lam. We’d be a nice solid respectable middle-class couple with a lot of dough and no worries.”
She thought about it. Her face was a mask and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “What kind of a business?” she wondered. “A store or something like that? Would you know anything about running it?”
“Not a store. Maybe a newspaper. I could probably buy a small weekly dirt cheap, make a go of it. We’d be the solidest citizens in creation. Lots of power, tight with the law, everything. It couldn’t miss.”
“Would it be that easy to find one for sale?”
“A cinch. Little papers turn over all the time. The price is high but the terms are easy if you’ve got enough cash to cover the down payment.” I paused, counted three beats, and asked: “How does it sound to you?”
“I don’t know.”
I waited.
“I’m not the stay-at-home type, Ted. I’ve been on the go all my life. I might get bored with it, might want to hit the road. Then what do we do?”
“You mean if you want to split up?”
She nodded. “This is good,” she said. “What you and I have now. But it might not last forever. Things like this never do, you know.”
I had my own ideas about that. But I let it pass for the time being.
“You can leave anytime you want to,” I told her, forcing the words out and trying not to remember how good it had been with her back in my room. “I wouldn’t try to hold you. As soon as it’s safe you can go whenever and wherever you please. That part’s strictly up to you.”
“And the money?”
“We split. Strictly down the middle. Whatever I have when it’s time to split, you get half.”
“Half the paper?”
“Half the paper — either a cash deal or a stock deal. That’s simple enough. Or we could get married and then get a divorce with the alimony agreement set up so that you’d wind up with half.”
“That sounds fair enough.”
“I’d give it to you in writing, but—”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You could hardly put that sort of thing in writing, not now. Anyway, we have to trust each other all the way. If we don’t we might as well throw it up right at the start.”
I agreed with her.
“What now?”
“Back to bed,” I said. “We’ll get out of town in the morning, catch the first plane out of here to Arizona. Then I’ll find out what papers are for sale and start lining up a deal. The first thing to do is to get out of town. We don’t want Reed on our necks. It’s hard enough without him.”
She nodded and we got out of the restaurant. I paid the check and tipped the waitress on general principles and we tripped out of the restaurant and back toward her apartment. We’d decided on staying at her place instead of mine. She had a double bed, and the way we’d been behaving lately we could use extra room.
It was still a nice night on the way back. The lampposts cast long shadows and the moon was a tiny crescent on the corner of a patch of black sky.
Then her hand was on my arm and her fingers were digging into me and she was dragging me into the doorway of a brick building maybe fifty yards from where we lived.
“Don’t say a word,” she whispered. “Don’t even move. For God’s sake.”
I obeyed. I was too mixed up to breathe.
“Down the block,” she said. “By the lamppost. You see him?”
I looked and saw him. He was a big man in a hound’s-tooth jacket. He looked tough.
“Baron,” she said, “Dick Baron. One of the phony cops. I almost missed him, dammit.” I couldn’t breathe at all now.
“And Reed’s across the street. There’s the little bastard right now. We would have walked right into them. Oh, my God. Oh God in heaven.”
“Easy, Cindy.”
“They’ve got the place staked out. They know right where I am and they’re waiting for me. God. Ted. Oh, God. What in God’s name do we do now?”
“Easy,” I said. “Take it easy. They had a trap for us but we spotted it. So the trap’s a bust. We turn around and we walk away and we’re safe. They can take their traps and shove them.”
She looked at me, wide-eyed.
“We’re clear,” I said again. “What’s the matter? Don’t you see?”
She laughed, hysterically and soundlessly. I thought she was out of her mind. I almost slapped her to bring her back to her senses but I didn’t have to. The noiseless laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“The money,” she said simply.
I looked at her.
“In the room,” she said. “The money’s in the room. If we just turn and leave what in the name of God do we do about the money?”
It was a good question. A hell of a good question. It almost knocked me on my ear.
I’d completely forgotten the money, but now that she reminded me I couldn’t think of anything else. Fifty grand in nice green twenty dollar bills reposed in a black satchel in her room and they were staked out around it like expectant vultures.
It was too much.
Then I answered the question. “You get a cab, Cindy. Go to a hotel, stay there. They don’t know me. As far as they’re concerned you’re all by yourself. I’ll slip into the apartment and get the money and meet you.”
She shook her head. “They have the place surrounded,” she said. “Back and front. I’m sure of it.”
“So?”
“They’ll see you coming out. They’re probably in the room right now. Maybe they already have the money. Great God above.”
I thought, then shook my head. “No,” I said. “Then they wouldn’t be sticking around. My guess is that they know where you are but don’t know the apartment, maybe not even the building. Is there a back entrance to your place?”
She shook her head.
“A window,” I said. “A window in the back that I can get through.”
“Locked.”
“I’ll break it. Where’s the satchel? Is it there in the room?”
“Under the bed.”
“I’ll get it and go out the way I came in. Look, you walk back to Broadway and hail the first cab you see. Get him to drive you to Grand Central, then switch cabs and go to the Sheraton-McAlpin on Broadway and 34th. It’s a convention hotel and Reed’s type of people won’t be likely to be there. Get a double, pay in advance because you don’t have luggage. Register as Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Stone and tell ’em I’ll be along later.”