She said nothing. I started toward the door. As I picked up the car keys off the table, I said, “And, besides, look
who’s talking.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You’re the one who’s killed two people. Not me.”
She stared at me. “Yes,” she said. “But even hate is an
emotion.”
“I guess so,” I said. “But there’s not much money in it.”
I went out and got in the car and drove downtown. I didn’t have anything in mind except that I didn’t want to get rock-happy sitting around the apartment listening to her yakking. Why didn’t she get wise to herself? We were going to be there for a month together; it wouldn’t cost anything extra to relax and have a little fun out of it on the side.
But maybe it was just as well, when you thought about it. No woman could ever do anything as simple as going to bed without trying to louse it up witb a lot of complicated ground rules and romantic double talk and then wanting a mortgage on your soul. As long as we were mixed up in a business deal and tied to each other for a whole month, we’d probably be better off to go on barking at each other.
I bought an afternoon paper and went into a restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. “DEPUTY IMPROVED,” the headline said. Doctors expected him to recover.
He still hadn’t regained consciousness.
The rest of the story was the usual rehash, another description of Madelon Butler and the car, and more speculation as to what had become of the money Butler
stole. They didn’t believe she could have got out of the area with all the roads covered; she must be holed up somewhere inside the ring. They would get her. She was too eye-arresting to escape detection anywhere. And there was the Cadillac. I thought of the Cadillac, and grinned coldly as I sipped the coffee.
There was still no mention of Diana James, but that was understandable. Her body was in the basement, and the whole house had burned down on top of her. It had been only last night. They wouldn’t be poking around in the ruins yet. I didn’t like to think about it.
I went out. The streets were hot and the air was heavy and breathless, as if a storm were coming up. I could hear the rumble of thunder now and then above the sound of traffic. I didn’t have any idea where I was going until I found myself standing on the corner outside the marble-columned entrance. It was the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company.
There was a terrible fascination about it. I stood on the corner while the traffic light changed and a river of people flowed past and around me. It was inside there; it was safe, just waiting to be picked up. In my mind I could see the massive and circular underground door of the vault and the narrow passageways between rows of shiny metal honeycomb made up of thousands of boxes stacked and numbered from floor to ceiling. One of them was bulging with fat bundles of banknotes fastened around the middle with paper bands. And the key to the box was in my pocket.
Two blocks up, on the other side of the street, was the Third National. I could see it from here. Left at the next corner and three blocks south was the Merchants Trust Company. It wouldn’t take twenty minutes to cover the three of them. All she had to do was go down the stairs to the vault, sign the card, give her key to the attendant.
People were jostling me. Everybody was hurrying. Two teenage girls tried to shove past me. They looked at each other. One gave me a dirty look and said, “Maybe it’s something they started to build here.” They went on. I awoke then. It was raining.
I ran across the street and stood under an awning.
Water splashed down in sheets. There was no chance of getting back to the car without being soaked. I looked
around. The awning I was under was the front of a movie. I bought a ticket and went in without even looking to see what the picture was.
When I came out I still didn’t know, but the rain had stopped and it was dusk. Lights glistened on shiny black pavement and tires hissed in the street.
Newsboys were calling the late editions. I bought one and opened it.
The headline exploded in my face:
“YOUTH CONFESSES IN BUTLER SLAYING.”
It was four blocks back to the car, four blocks of feeling naked and trying not to run.
Chapter Sixteen
Youth confesses. What about Madelon Butler? But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t the big news. If they had
caught that blonde and her brother, they had a description of me.
I took the steps three at a time and let myself into the apartment. A light was on in the living room, but I didn’t see her anywhere. Then I heard her splashing in the bathroom. I dropped on the sofa and spread the paper open.
I put a cigarette in my mouth but forgot to light it.
Mount Temple. Aug. 6—A startling break in the investigation of the death of J. N. Butler came shortly after 2 P.M. today with the police announcement that Jack D. Finley, 22, of Mount Temple, had broken under questioning and admitted implication in the two-month-old slaying of the missing bank official, whose body was discovered Tuesday afternoon.
Finley, ashen-faced and sobbing, named Mrs. Madelon Butler, the victim’s attractive widow, as the mastermind behind the sordid crime.
I stopped and lit the cigarette. It was about the way I’d had it figured. Finley was the fall guy. I went on, reading fast.
Finley, who was taken into custody early this morning on a country road some 50 miles southeast of here by officers investigating a tip that a car answering the description of Mrs. Butler’s had been seen in the vicinity, at first maintained his innocence, despite his inability to explain what he and his sister, Charisse, 27, were doing in the area. Both had tried to flee at sight of the officers’ car.
Later, however, when confronted with the fact that other members of the posse had found Mrs. Butler’s Cadillac abandoned at a fishing camp at the end of the road on which they were walking, Finley broke and admitted being an accessory to the slaying.
Mrs. Butler and an unidentified male companion had taken his car at gunpoint and fled early the night before, he said. Police have broadcast a complete description of the stranger.
Well, there it was. I dropped the paper in my lap and sat staring across the room. But it wasn’t hopeless. They still didn’t have anything but a description. The only person who knew who I was was Diana James, and she was dead.
I started to pick up the paper again. Madelon Butler came in. She was dressed in the skirt and blouse she’d had on last night, and was wearing nylons and bedroom slippers. She switched on the radio and sat down.
Glancing at the paper in my lap, she asked, “Is there anything interesting in the news?” “You might call it interesting,” I said. “Take a look.” I tossed it to her. She raised it and looked at the glaring headline. “Oh?” “Look,” I said, “they just captured your boyfriend. Is that all you’ve got to say? Just oh?”
She shrugged. “Don’t you think I might be pardoned for a slight lack of concern? After all, he tried to kill me. And he wasn’t my boyfriend, anyway.”
“He wasn’t? Then how in hell did he get mixed up in it?” “He was in love with Cynthia Cannon. Or Diana James, as you call her.” “In love with Diana James? But I don’t see—” She smiled. “It does seem incredible, doesn’t, it? But I suppose there’s no accounting for tastes.”
“Cut it out!” I said. I felt as if my head were about to fly off. “Will you answer my question? Or hand me back that paper? I’d like to know at least as much about this as several million other people do by now.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.” The radio came on then, blaring jazz. She shuddered and reached for the knob. “Excuse me.”
She turned the dial and some long-hair music came on. She adjusted the volume, kicked off her mules, and curled her legs up under her in the chair. Lighting a cigarette, she leaned back contentedly.