Paula, I thought, you're going to look like hell in one of those prison dresses, but there's not a thing I can do about it. I quit the lube job I'd been working on, went into the station, and picked up the phone. After a minute a voice said, “Sheriff's office, King speaking.”
“Ray, this is Joe Hooper. Let me speak to the Sheriff, will you?”
“The Sheriff just left for lunch. Anything I can help you with, Joe?”
“No. Thanks, anyway. It's nothing important.” Suddenly I was glad the Sheriff wasn't in, because the thing was too involved to tell over the phone. When Ike came on duty, I'd go down to the office and talk to him. That was what I told myself.
“By the way,” the deputy said, “how's the tourist business, Joe? They keepin' you pretty busy out there?”
“Yes, pretty busy. Well, see you around, Ray.”
I hung up and looked at my hands. They were shaking. I felt like the man who walked away from a head-on collision.
What's the matter with you, Hooper, have you lost your mind completely?
I knew what was the matter with me. I was beginning to get an idea. It came with a rush, and suddenly it stood there full grown, grinning at me. This is the way, it said.
This is how it's going to be!
Chapter Three
About two o'clock that afternoon the Sheriff called.
“Joe, this is Otis Miller. Ray King said you called while I was out to lunch. Anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I talked to Ray, and maybe I should have told him about it, but I decided to wait until I could see you. I'm afraid I got suckered, Sheriff. I was going through my cash drawer this morning and found a five-dollar bill that looks like it was printed on newsprint.”
“Counterfeit?”
“Queer as a thirty-cent piece. I don't know why I didn't notice it before. Too busy to pay attention, I guess.”
“Well, that's too bad, Joe, and I don't know of a thing we can do about it. Bring the bill down to the office, though, and it may help catch the man who's passing them. By the way, how's the tourist business out there?”
“Fine, Sheriff. Just fine!”
“Glad to hear it, Joe. Well, you bring that bill around and we'll see what we can do.”
I hung up, amazed at how easy a lie could roll once you got it started. I did have a counterfeit five-dollar bill, of course. I'd been carrying it in my billfold almost a year, wondering what I was going to do with it.
Well, now I knew. That bogus bill, the way I figured it, was going to be worth about ten thousand dollars! It had got me off the hook with the sheriff. Because of that bill, and some pretty fast thinking, I'd soon be able to kick this town in the face. I'd soon be on my way to the top!
I felt like a million dollars, just thinking about it.
It seemed fantastic that the idea hadn't come to me right away, as soon as I'd heard Sheldon and Manley scheming the robbery. But it hadn't it had come at the very last minute, and it had been a damn near thing, too. This was the break I'd been waiting for, that beautiful once-in-a-lifetime break, and I had almost muffed it!
The trouble was I hadn't expected a break to come in the form of a payroll robbery. What I had been expecting was the Herb Carter story all over again, but I knew now that breaks don't come spelled out for you—sometimes you've got to fill out the instructions yourself. Another thing; I hadn't expected my big break to land me on the wrong side of the law. But what the hell! Hadn't Herb Carter broken just about every law in the book? And had anything happened to him? Like hell it had. They're not so anxious to wave that law in your face if they know you've got a bankroll to fight with.
Anyway, I'd finally got it straight in my mind, and I felt fine about it. I walked around grinning. Oh, Sheldon and Manley were going to squeal like pigs under a fence when I broke the news to them that I was cutting myself in for one third of that box-factory payroll. But there was very little they could do about it. They'd either have to accept my terms or give up the jot)—and I just couldn't see a professional giving up a soft touch like that box factory.
I walked around in a rosy daze the rest of the afternoon. Good-by, filling station, good-by, tourist shacks, good-by, Creston! In another week I'd shake the whole business out of my hair.
But, in the meantime, I had to sit tight. I had to wait for the Sheldons to come back, and I had to act completely normal. That's the important thing, just act as though nothing at all had happened.
So I spent the rest of the day trying to act normal, trying to keep my feet on the ground. I stood in the station doorway, drank Cokes, watched the traffic go by. I thought about that robbery, and the ten thousand dollars, and getting away from Creston. And I also did a good deal of thinking about Paula Sheldon.
But I concentrated on acting normal. Every few minutes somebody from Creston would go by on the highway, and I'd wave, and then I'd think: Christ, what would they do if they knew what I'm thinking right now! They wouldn't believe it. What if I walked up to them and said, “Look here, on the fourteenth of this month I'm going to take part in a robbery. I'm going to help rob old Provo's payroll. What do you think of that?”
I wanted to laugh. They wouldn't believe it! Doc Hooper's boy robbing a payroll? Never!
If they only knew! I thought.
I made a kind of game out of it and amused myself for a while, but after a few hours it began to grow a little thin. Anyway, my thoughts always turned back to Paula Sheldon.
I kept remembering what she had said about her husband. “I don't love him at all,” she had said. And she had meant it. And she had meant it when she had pressed that red mouth of hers to mine—there was no faking an excitement like that!
I knew what she was, and it made no difference at all. She was hard, as ruthless as she was beautiful, as brittle as fine china. Well, I could be hard too, and ruthless, and brittle. I had taken it on the chin plenty trying to play according to the rules. Now, for the first time in my life, I felt strong; I felt that I could do something really big, and to hell with the rulebooks.
But it all came back to Paula, eventually. Oh, I had been drunk on heady wine, all right, and only a man with a hangover can know the terrible thirst for more that comes the day after. Paula had known. Knowing that I never intended to keep my promise to her, she had smiled.
She had known better.
It's possible to hate and love at the same time, they say, but I did not hate Paula. Where there had been stale existence, Paula had brought excitement. She had given me something to fight for—herself. Let's face it, Hooper, it's not only the ten thousand dollars that fascinates you— it's that blonde as well, and you know it.
Her husband? I hardly thought of him. What was necessary I would do. But after the robbery Paula would belong to me.
Ike Abrams rattled off the highway in his '46 Ford, drove around to the back of the station, and parked beside the grease rack. I went around to meet him. “Can you take over now, Ike? I've got some things to do. We can check the cash register after a while.”
“Sure,” he said. “You sick or somethin', Joe? You look a little green around the rills.”
“I feel fine.”
I went to my cabin and didn't even notice the heat. I lay across the bed for several minutes without moving, without batting an eye, just staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I could do with one third of thirty thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars, right in my pocket! It was more money than I'd ever had, more money than I'd ever seen, even, all at one time.
I must have dozed for a while. It was almost sundown when a knock at the door brought me out of it. I sat up, groggy with sleep and half dazed by the heat, and then I saw my father standing on the steps on the other side of the screen door.