Probably not.
She lit a cigarette from the butt of another and the smoke scratched her throat and clouded her lungs.
She coughed out a cloud of smoke and her head swam. Nothing mattered any more. Nothing would ever matter. She and Joe were together, they would run together, they would be caught together, they would die together. Nothing mattered. Nothing would ever matter. Buffalo.
The train jolted to a stop and they stood up together and walked out of it.
Buffalo was gray in the morning. Anita, Joe and Shank left the railroad station and took a taxi to a dilapidated hotel on Clinton Street where the desk clerk asked no questions. They paid ten dollars in advance and the clerk gave them a room on the third floor whose window opened out on an air shaft. The room was dirty, the two beds unmade.
“It’s quiet,” Shank said. “And we won’t be here long. A day, two days. Then we clear out and head west. We leave this town behind us. A bad town to begin with. And in the wrong state—for us. There are forty-nine other states. We’ll do better in any one of them. Not New York.”
He took the heroin from Joe, put it in the dresser drawer. “You stay here,” he said. “The two of you, stay in the room, keep it quiet. I’ll be back in an hour, two hours. Wait for me.”
He went out and left them alone.
For several minutes they sat by themselves and said nothing. Then Joe broke the silence.
“You didn’t have to come,” he said.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess I had to be with you. I don’t know why.”
“You were nuts to come. I don’t know how we’re going to get away.”
She said nothing.
“But I’m glad you came,” he went on. “I’m selfish, but I’m glad you came. I would go nuts without you. I need you, Anita.”
She looked at him.
“Anita,” he said. “I love you, Anita.”
She went to him and sat on the bed with him. He put his arms around her, slowly, tentatively, and their mouths came together and they kissed. A long kiss. A good kiss, a kiss saying many things.
“We have to stay together. We need each other, Anita. And some day we’ll get out of this. Out all the way. It’ll be the two of us forever.”
“I hope so, Joe.”
“It will. It will, honey. I love you, honey, I love you and I need you and—”
It happened like a dream. There was no need to talk any more. They were lost in their overwhelming need, a need that could only be satisfied through the merging of flesh with flesh, body with body, soul with soul. They undressed automatically and they came together with no preceding love-play, no kisses, no caresses. His flesh claimed her and they joined in a dreamlike version of reality, bodies seeking, hearts pounding, minds clouded with love.
When it was finished they lay in each other’s arms, holding themselves together, trying to right their lives with the sudden enormity of their love for each other. In the peak of passion they had managed to lose the horror of reality, the true nature of their situation. Now, as they basked in the glow of after-love, that horror filtered through to them once again. But they had each other, and somehow this lessened the horror. As long as they were together they could survive it.
Finally, they slept…
Shank let them sleep. He let himself into the hotel room, walked to the dresser and removed the capsules of heroin from the drawer. He seated himself at the table and took out the things he had purchased. Carefully he opened each capsule and diluted it with the milk sugar he had bought. He converted the thirty capsules into ninety capsules, each one-third as strong as the original ones had been. His investment was quickly tripled. He had three times the capital he had started with.
Of course, each capsule was now worth one-third of what it had originally been worth. It was, in the junkie’s jargon, beat stuff. But the buyers did not have to know this. They would discover this only when they would use the capsules and derive a lesser kick from them than what they had been accustomed to. By that time Shank and Joe and Anita would be on their way, and goodbye Buffalo.
It was a bad town, anyway. A dull gray town. Shank would connect now, and sell the ninety capsules as quickly as possible, and then the three would blow town. So long, Buffalo. Later for you, suckers. He slipped out of the room without waking Joe and Anita and took the heroin to the customers.
They were awake when he returned. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s move. We’ve got to get out of town.”
“What’s the matter?” Joe said.
“Nothing,” he said. “No more horse. All sold.”
“How?”
“Sold it for three bucks a cap,” he said. “A good price. Junk comes high in Buffalo. I was selling for half price. The buyers were very hungry. I holed up in a little bar in the middle of Spadesville and the trade was fast and thick. Half a dozen customers and we were all out and the store was closed. So we have to scram in a hurry.”
“Why the rush?”
Shank explained the customers would be ready to kill him in a very short time. He explained that he had sold one-third strength heroin for a heavy price, all things considered, and a lot of people would be mad at him when they would discover they had been taken.
“So we run,” he explained. “I got better than two and a half bills. Ninety caps, bargain rate of three bucks a cap. We can buy a car. Not the best short in the world but one that will move for us. Let’s go.”
On the way to the used car lot Joe bought an evening paper. The Buffalo paper had the story on a back page. Detective First Grade Peter J. Samuelson was dead as a lox. The police were searching for his killers.
Shank bought a seven-year-old Chevy for two hundred dollars. It was worth less than half of that but the dealer knew something was wrong. Shank had to pay his price, and did.
The car was a lemon. It rattled at fifty-five miles an hour. The brakes were in bad shape. The clutch could not work smoothly. The gears ground half the time. But it would do.
Joe drove. He had no license but neither did Shank nor Anita. Joe knew how to drive so he drove. He took Route 20 out of town and headed for Cleveland. Cleveland would be safe for a day or two. They could scrape together a little more money. Head for Chicago. Anita sat next to him in the front seat. Shank slept in the back. Joe drove slowly and steadily. He could not have exceeded the speed limit if he had wanted to, and he did not want to. Not when he had no license. Not when the three were wanted for murder. Murder.
They stopped twice on the way. They had hotdogs in Lodi and hamburgers in Ashtabula. Joe drove all the way until they were in Cleveland. He found a place to leave the car and they looked for a hotel. They found one at 13th and Paine. It bore a startling resemblance to the one they had occupied in Buffalo. Again they paid in advance. Again the room was a mess. Joe was tired from the drive and went to sleep at once. Anita stayed with Joe while Shank went out to find a beanery for a meal. On the way he stopped at a newsstand selling out-of-town papers, where he bought a copy of the New York Times.
It carried the story.
The cops knew too much. They had determined that two men and a girl had been involved in the murder. They had descriptions of Shank and Joe. They had lifted fingerprints from the apartment. They had one name—Shank Marsten. They did not have Joe’s name, or at least it had not been released by the newspapers so far.
The police further figured the trio had left town; consequently, a state-wide alarm was out. There was a report the three had showed in Buffalo. Shank read that part and cursed quietly and methodically. He wondered how the cops had ascertained that. He wondered how much else they knew.