“A year and a day. That’s what they would have given you. Possession of pot.”
Shank grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Possession of pot,” he snapped. “You think that’s what it is, huh? You think that’s the whole ball game. You know all the answers, don’t you? You think you know just what your man sells, baby. You’re all mixed up. All wrong.”
Then he opened the dresser drawer, took out the little box. He opened it and showed her the capsules of heroin and smiled when she drew in her breath sharply.
“God!”
“A year and a day,” Shank said savagely. “Try ten years. Try fifteen or twenty. And not just for me. For me and for your man, Joe. For both of us with a little bit thrown in for you just for being here. How would you like to do a few years?”
“Murder,” she said, numb. “Heroin. God in heaven.”
Joe sat and stared. He, too, was numb, unable to think straight. It had happened so quickly while he simply sat and watched. The detective, the gun, the knife. Death, so quick. He felt left out now. But he stood up. He walked to Anita, put an arm around her. He looked at Shank.
“What do we do now?”
“We move,” Shank said. “We get out of town. What else can we do?”
“We have to run?”
Shank shook his head impatiently. “The cop let the world know where he was. If he doesn’t call in within an hour they’ll come looking for him. Even if we ditch the body it won’t do us any good. They’ll shake us down until they break us. They’ll nail us to fourteen different crosses. They’ll hang us, put us in the chair, whatever they do. We’ll die.”
“You’ll die,” Anita told him, “You killed him. We didn’t do it.”
“Read another law book. You’re guilty, too, sweetheart. Possession with intent to sell is a felony. We all possessed with intent. And if somebody kills in the commission of a felony, it’s murder one. The detective was killed and we were all here. We all get the chair.”
“But—” Joe began.
“So we run,” Shank said. “We got two hours to get out of town. Breeze to Grand Central and take the first train out. Get out far and fast. They won’t know where to look. We leave the state and keep going and they call it unsolved. We leave New York and we stay living. Otherwise we die. I don’t want to die.”
“You can go,” she said. “Joe and I don’t have to go. They’re not after us. They’re after you. We didn’t do anything and we don’t have to run with you.”
“They’ll catch you,” Shank said. “They’ll pick you up and they’ll squeeze you. They’ll ask you where I went.”
“Don’t tell us. Then we won’t be able to tell them anything because we won’t know.”
“They’ll call you accessories,” Shank said. “They’ll put you in jail.”
“No—”
“You got no choice. We hang together or we hang separately. You’ve got to come with me.”
Joe was nodding. “He’s right,” he said. “But not all the way. I’ve got to go with him, Anita.”
“No you don’t. No—”
“I’ve got to,” Joe said again. “But you don’t. They don’t know anything about you. You can disappear. Go back to Harlem. Forget about us. We’ll run and we’ll get away but you can go on living. The fuzz doesn’t know who you are. You can forget us and live your own life.”
Shank nodded. “I’ll buy it,” he said. “She could get away. But Joe and I have to run.”
Anita hesitated only for a moment. She knew she was making the wrong decision but she knew also it was the only decision she could possibly make. She was committed. She shared their guilt in her own small way. And she and Joe were thrust together. She could not walk away from him. Not now, not ever.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I have to. I have to, now, forever. I’ll come with you, I will.”
“No time to pack,” Shank was saying. “We take what we can carry. We head first for Buffalo. It’s a big junk town. I can sell there. We can get some money together.”
They were short on money. Shank had fifty dollars in cash and the cop’s wallet yielded another twenty-five. Joe had a few dollars, Anita a few more. Enough to get them to Buffalo and pay for a hotel room, maybe a meal. Nothing more.
“All that money in the bank,” Shank said. “All that goddamn money and the bank doesn’t open until Monday. Can’t risk it. Can’t stay around. They’ll tip to us by then. And they won’t let up. The police take care of their own. Kill a cop and they turn the town inside-out looking for you. Someday I’ll come back, clean out that bank account. Not now.”
Shank and Joe stuffed the cop’s hard body into the closet. They covered the bloodstains with newspapers.
“They’ll find him,” Shank said. “Maybe this will keep them an extra hour. Maybe two hours. Every minute helps.”
Curiously, Anita remembered to turn off the water running in the sink, thinking as she did so that the water would have washed nothing away, anyhow. The scum on the dirty dishes was very thick.
They took a cab to Grand Central. Their timing was fortunate. A train left for Buffalo at 8:02 and they were on it. Shank had his knife in one pocket and the cop’s gun in the other. Joe was carrying the heroin. There was a lot of it—Shank had connected recently with Basil.
“We’ll sell it in Buffalo,” he said. “Lay over a few days, sell what we can, then head west. Buy a car. It’s safer by car. Trains make me nervous.”
The train stopped at Albany. A porter rolled through a sandwich cart. Shank bought three sandwiches and he, Joe and Anita wolfed them down without tasting them. The train started up again and sped west.
“Chicago,” Shank said. “We can hole up in Chicago. I know a cat from the coast, he’s in Chicago. An old friend. We can connect with him, hide out there. Set ourselves up, get rolling again. Just so we get out of the state. New York’s going to be too hot.”
Utica. Syracuse.
Joe wondered what was going to happen. It was bad now, very bad. It could only get worse. A man was stuck in a closet with a hole in his chest and they had put him there.
You could defend a lot of things, rationalize a lot of actions. You could defend smoking, defend selling. Somebody had to sell it, Joe’s mind ticked off the thoughts.
Murder was different.
Run, he thought. Run all you want. But where can you hide? How far can you run before they catch you?
Joe looked at Anita and wondered why she had tagged along. He was somehow a little glad she was with them. He needed her. He took her hand now and held it. If only that cop had stayed away. He and Anita would have had their own place. And finally he would be money ahead and he could get a job and everything would be all right, good and clean and proper.
Not running.
Not looking for a place to hide.
Why had she come along? Of the three, she alone was safe. She alone could go home, back to Harlem, back to something approaching sanity. She could stay away from police, she could be safe. Nobody knew her. Nobody was looking for her.
And yet she had chosen to be with him. Now she was breaking the laws. Accessory to and after the fact. Guilty, now.
Why?
Rochester. Batavia.
Anita sat in her seat and tried to sleep but could not. She wondered when she would be able to sleep again. Sometime, maybe.
Joe was holding her hand, squeezing it. She wanted to squeeze back but she was still numb and she could not move. She felt as if she were not really alive. Everything was a dream. A big bad dream. A nightmare she was somehow living her way through. A bad nightmare that would have a dismal ending.
They were running. First to Buffalo. Then to Chicago, then to somewhere else. She wondered when they would be able to stop running. Never, she decided. They would run until they dropped, run until they were caught and tried and electrocuted. She wondered if she would be killed with the others. She wondered if it made any difference, if anything made any difference any more.