He stopped talking and turned to look at me out of eyes sunk back in that scrambled and puffed-up face. “A real neat package,” he said. “Isn’t it, pal?”
* * *
The long, hot Saturday afternoon was an endless hell of sitting at the desk looking at papers I didn’t even see while everything tumbled around me. The finishing touch had come at noon, when I picked Gloria up to take her to lunch. One glance at her face was all it took. He’d been to see her too. We sat in a booth in the crowded restaurant, unable to talk about it for fear of being overheard, while we looked at the ruin of everything we had planned. She couldn’t know what he’d told me, and I didn’t say anything about it, but she didn’t have to to understand the spot we were in. All that mattered was that he was back again for more and all our bright ideas for getting the books straightened out by November or any other time were shot to hell. I tried to cheer her up, but it was useless.
I’d see her that night, but what was the use? What could I say? That he’d promised to leave, and go to California? That was too stupid to repeat. There was a fat chance he’d go off and leave a gravy-train like this. This was just the opening wedge. He’d stick around until he got it all, and then he’d stay right on, milking both of us for what we made or what we had to steal to keep his big mouth shut.
Why had he waited all this time? I couldn’t even figure that out. I shuffled unseen papers in the heat, thinking, going around and around in the same smooth rut from which there was no escape. I hadn’t even got to the worst part of it yet. Suppose he got the money. Suppose he got all of it. That still wasn’t it. It was what was going to happen the minute he got his hands on it. He’d start throwing it around, making a big show around the beer joints and pool halls, and that was exactly what that cold-eyed Sheriff was waiting for, some citizen with too much sudden prosperity. They’d pick him up, and to get out from under he’d tell ‘em where he got it. So in paying him off to keep out of jail, I’d just be buying a one-way ticket right into the place.
I picked her up a little after seven and we drove out into the country and parked the car on a side road. I held her in my arms for a long time, not talking, and at last she stirred a little and looked up at me so hopelessly it was like a knife turning inside me.
“He wanted five hundred dollars,” she said.
“Did you give it to him ? “
“Not yet,” she said dully. “I told him we didn’t have it in the safe, and the bank was closed.”
“Good,” I said. “We’ll think of something.”
“We have to, Harry,” she said. “He said he’d go away. He said he was going out west. If we give it to him, maybe he’ll stay away.”
I wasn’t thinking, or I’d have kept my big mouth shut. “Like hell he will. Blackmailers are all the same. Every bite is always the last—until the next one.”
“I know. But what can we do? He might go.”
“He won’t. And we won’t get anywhere by paying him. The thing to do is stop him.”
“But how?” she asked frantically. Then she thought of something. “Harry, did you do that to his face? I never saw anything so—so horrible.”
“Yes,” I said. “I won’t lie to you. I did it. And a fat lot of good it did.”
“I hate that sort of thing, Harry. You won’t do it again, will you?”
“All right. It didn’t do any good, anyway.”
“We’ll just have to give him what he wants, and hope he’ll leave.”
“He’ll never leave if you give him what he wants,” I said.
“Then you don’t want me to give him the money?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Don’t give him anything till I tell you to.”
“What are you going to do, Harry?”
“I don’t know yet, baby. I just don’t know.”
“Darling, please tell me why you don’t want to give it to him. Isn’t that the best thing to do?”
“It’s the very worst thing we could do. The way to get a blackmailer off your back is to stop him, not pay him.”
“What do you mean? How can we stop him?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But you just leave it to me.”
I took her home around midnight and went back to the rooming house. I lay in bed thinking about it, and after a while I was conscious that I was no longer wondering what to do. I was thinking of how to do it. Sometime during the afternoon or evening I had already arrived at the only answer there could ever be to Sutton. I was going to kill him.
How?
The match flared as I lighted another cigarette. I could see the face of the wrist watch. It was nearly two-thirty.
There was no use trying to kid myself. It was dangerous, It was dangerous as hell. I thought of that Sheriff. Anybody who committed a crime in his county was taking a long, long chance. And I already had one strike on me. He had his eye on me. I was a marked man, and he was probably having me watched. I had to get down there and do it and get back without Tate’s knowing I had left town.
How?
I rolled over on my back and lay staring up at the ceiling. I not only had to get past the Sheriff; I had to fool Gloria. There was no telling what a thing like that would do to her. She’d probably crack up if she ever found it out.
How? How? How?
And what about Sutton himself? I knew by this time I was dealing with no fool. He was plenty smart, and he was armed. I thought about the guns. He had that Junior League automatic, a .11 rifle, and a shotgun. And then I began to get it.
I sat up in bed.
It didn’t come to me all at once. It took a long time to work it all out, step by step, thinking of all the possibilities and when I was through it was dawn. It was a hot, breathless dawn, the way it is before a storm, and as the sun came up I looked out across the back yard at the high board fence splashed with crimson. Red in the morning, I thought, sailor take warning.
It meant nothing except that it would probably rain by tonight. I turned on my side and went to sleep.
* * *
I awoke around noon with a bad taste in my mouth and my body drenched with perspiration. Outside the sun was a brassy glare, and there was no whisper of a breeze. I walked uptown and bought the Houston paper and took it into the restaurant, propping it up before me while I drank some orange juice. I remembered none of the news, even while I was reading it, but this had to look like any other Sunday. I was tight and nervous, for I could feel that cold-eyed Sheriff looking over my shoulder at every move I made. It had to be natural from start to finish, for he had a merciless eye for anything that didn’t fit.
It was a day that would never end. Around five o’clock I drove over to the Robinsons’, but Gloria had gone out about an hour ago, they said. I talked to them for a few minutes, and then left, unable to sit still. Time crawled. Tension was building up already, and I still had hours to go I went back about seven and she was home. She’d gone for a ride to try to cool off, she said. We went over to the county seat to an air-conditioned movie, trying to escape our thoughts and the heat. On the way home she was depressed and silent and nothing I could do would bring her out of it. There was a feeling she was more than usually upset by Sutton and that she wanted to tell me something, but she never did. When we got back to town she said she had a headache and wanted to go to bed early. I left her at the gate.
I parked the car in front of the rooming house and went on through to my room. I was going to stay there all night, just in case Tate had orders to check on me from time to time. Looking at my watch, I saw it was almost eleven. I changed clothes, putting on dark slacks, a blue sports shirt, and black shoes. I left the light burning for a while, as if I were reading, and after about a half hour I turned it out and lay down on the bed. The landlady’s room was directly above mine, and I could see the light from her window shining out into the back yard. In another twenty minutes it went out.