We descended. I went first. Macy reached up and pulled the box back over the entrance. It bumped snugly against the back wall of the garage. I stooped to go through a doorway at the base of the steps, found myself in a good-sized room with a low ceiling. It was air conditioned. The walls were lined with some kind of acoustical material, tinted pastel yellow. There were fluorescent lights screwed to the ceiling. Charley Rinke worked at a long table, his shirt sleeves rolled up. He was surrounded by stacks of account books, papers held together with rubber bands, boxes, a filing cabinet drawer. He looked haggard, glanced up quickly when we came in, then went back to work with an adding machine. Paper littered the floor. There was a full ashtray beside Rinke’s elbow, and a pitcher of water.
“This is what you might call the nerve center, Pete,” Macy said quietly. “I hate all this bookwork, but it’s necessary.” He walked quickly to a large safe with a formidable gray steel door. The safe was embedded in concrete at the back wall of the room. He swung the door open, gestured toward the safe.
“Better to have all this here than in town,” Macy explained. “Any trouble at the gates and I can seal this room up with a couple tons of broken concrete. Take a steam shovel to find anything, even if somebody wanted to go to the trouble of ferrying one out here.”
Rinke made a final calculation on the adding machine, yawned, threw down his pencil and got up to join us.
There was a lot of cash in the safe. Enough to make me wonder what it would be like to own that much, at one time, to be able to pick it up in neat packages, stack it, look at it.
“How much?” I said.
“I’m not sure,” Macy said. “It would take two large suitcases to hold all of it, and most of the bills are hundreds. A few fifties, some twenties. Altogether, about three quarters of a million dollars. I’ve got more, of course. Stashed in three banks. The money I pay tax on.” He shut the safe, pushing with both hands against the door.
“He’s giving it all up,” Rinke said, in a nervously high voice. He cleared his throat. “He’s giving all of it to Maxine. All of it.”
“That’s right,” Macy said, not looking at Rinke.
Rinke gave me a guarded look, wondering what I thought about it. His lips were thin with anger.
“Maxine’s coming here tomorrow night,” Barr said lightly. “I’m telling him then.” He looked around the room. “I don’t want it no more. None of it. I’m taking what money I can and I’m leaving the country.”
“Macy — ” Rinke said tenaciously, as if he were preparing to reopen an argument that had flourished for days.
“I don’t want to hear no more,” Macy said. “You got your work to do. Just do it and don’t bother me. Don’t give me any pep talks. Don’t try to talk me into something I don’t want to do. I just want out. That’s all.”
Rinke took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit one, steadying his hand. “Okay, Macy,” he said. “Okay, I won’t try to say anything to you.” He walked to the table, then turned suddenly, pointing with the cigarette, words tumbling.
“But he’s coming here. He’s coming here tomorrow night, and he’s walking right into our hands. Maybe two or three men, that’s all he’ll bring with him. Can’t you see it? It’d be so easy then to get rid of him—”
“Shut up!” Macy rasped. Then, more quietly, “Shut up, Charley. Don’t try to put ideas in my head I don’t want to hear.” He snorted. “Charley, sometimes I think you want to run this outfit.”
Rinke turned away, tapped a couple of keys on the adding machine. “Okay,” he said, resignedly. “Forget it.” I sensed again a silent appeal from him, from the staring magnified eyes. When I didn’t respond he sat down and went back to work, doggedly, flipping the stiff pages of a ledger with competent fingers, making notations with his pencil. I wondered if he still nourished the rebellious thoughts far back in his mind, where they wouldn’t get in the way of the precise click of integers.
Chapter Eighteen
Later that night I awakened sitting straight up in bed, muscles tense. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was. I felt a sense of dread, as if I were being watched from the sable darkness around me. I breathed deeply, ridding my throat of deep panic. I stood up and walked to the windows, looked out. It was after one o’clock.
I dressed, putting on the shoulder holster over my shirt, and went into the hall. The door to Owen’s room was open, but he wasn’t inside. I went upstairs. There were no lights on, but moonlight thinned the darkness. At Macy’s room I tapped softly on the door. There was no answer. I listened closely, heard him breathing in sleep.
At the end of the hall a door was open and I saw Mrs. Rinke inside, standing in front of a window, looking toward the sea. She had been in bed. The other bed hadn’t been touched. Apparently Rinke was still working.
As I turned to walk away my shoe bumped the doorframe. It was a small noise, but Evelyn Rinke turned, a hand at her throat, a flat cry on her lips.
I stepped inside the bedroom so she could identify me. She was wearing the same nightgown she had had on the night before.
“Pete?”
“Yes.”
“You — startled me.” I saw the movement of her throat muscles.
“I was just looking around,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t go,” she said quickly. “Please don’t go, Pete.”
“Maybe it would be better if I did.”
“No — I wanted somebody to talk to. I can’t sleep. It’s useless, trying to sleep. Please, Pete — a cigarette?”
I took a pack from my shirt pocket, shook one free for her. I lit it for her.
“Thanks, Pete.” She turned toward the windows again, her cheeks flattening as she drew on the cigarette. There were tired lines under her eyes. “I’ve lived through another day,” she said with a tone of wonder. “Now I have to face another. Tell me, Pete, was it that way with you? Did you hate to see another day coming?”
“Usually.” My voice was rough with a sympathy I couldn’t conceal.
“I slept this morning,” she said. “Two whole hours. That’s really... a triumph, you know. The rest of the day, I sat and let my nerves fight it out. I wondered what it would be like to kill myself. I wondered if I would feel any regret, in that last tenth part of a second.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“About four years. It didn’t come all at once. It was like a slow tightening. Days when I didn’t feel quite right. Then one day it seemed as if I was hit by a big fist. Some of the nerves came loose. There’s one now, twisting down my side until I think I’ll go crazy.”
She put a hand to her side, her face lined as if she were going to cry. She stretched out her arms, fingers against the metal slats of the Venetian blinds. Her breasts heaved fretfully beneath their frail covering.
“I’ve thought about it, Pete,” she said. “I’ve had little to do but think about why, why, why I should be like this.” The cigarette wasn’t doing anything for her any more. She turned from the windows to put it in an ashtray, then came back.
“Charley loved me,” she said softly. “Once. Charley had a brilliant mind. He still does. But there’s something inside him. Something obscene. He takes pleasure in knowing the wrong kind of men, sharing their secrets. We drifted into this kind of life. He stuck fast to it, gave up a good-paying job. It’s too late for him to go back now. All the good is gone now. I smell the evil that seeps through his skin from associating with people like... Macy Barr. There isn’t any way for me to get away. I think he’d kill me if I tried now. Devotion turned to possession; tenderness to lust. It was when I began to realize this that the fist began to pound me.”