Every once in awhile I could feel her rub herself up against him, and once I heard her whisper; “Oh honey, honey, honey...” as though she just had to say something like that to him.
He said, “Shhhhh...” and she leaned away from me a little more, like she was pressing her cheek against his mouth.
Neither of them said a word to me.
We went all the way out Route 6 past the Jersey City reservoir, then down a long weedy road, then up another one and around and in back of a big stand of scrub birch, and that was where we stopped. We got out of the car, and the minute she hung that big straw handbag over her shoulder, I could see from the way it sagged on the strap that she had something heavy in it — something just about the weight of a gun.
There was a narrow path up the mountain, and she went first, and I hung back and Kenny went second. I wasn’t letting either of them get behind me. We walked in for about a half hour, nobody saying a word, but every once in awhile, Kenny would look back over his shoulder to see if I was still there. His face was all strained. The path got rocky and steeper, and finally it was just a narrow little place between two deep ravines.
She stopped just where the path turned around a big overhanging rock. “I’ll have to go the rest of the way alone,” she whispered. “He can see us from here on. I’ll... bring him down here.”
Kenny took her arm. “You can’t go alone!”
“I’ll be all right.”
“For God sake, don’t take chances. Give her your gun, Gene.”
My heart started to go faster and there was a dry, hot taste in the back of my mouth. Was this what Kenny had meant by this being it? Was I the one that was going to be it?
“I ain’t giving nobody my gun,” I said.
“No, no, I don’t want a gun,” she said. “I’ll be all right. Just wait here. I’ll bring him down.”
She went up the path and I watched her handbag bump heavily against the side of her leg. No, she didn’t need a gun!
Kenny said to me, “You take that side of the road and I’ll take this.”
He disappeared down into the ravine on his side of the road. I went down in on my side — but I didn’t stay there! I wasn’t going to be any sitting duck when the bullets started flying. I kept moving up the mountain at the side of the road, but down out of sight. There was an old brook-bed and I could move fast without making any noise. I went about two hundred yards and then climbed the side of the ravine and squnched down behind a big rhododendron bush.
In about five minutes I saw Lura come walking up the path. She stopped about fifty feet below me and looked up at the rocky side of the mountain.
“Lew,” she called. “Lew, are you there?”
My jaw dropped when this tall, skinny guy came out of the rocks.
“Lura!” he said, and ran down to her.
He grabbed her and hugged her and kissed her, and she kissed him back. He pushed her out to arms length and looked at her, then hugged and kissed her as though he couldn’t get enough of it. He was so crazy about her that it hurt.
Then he said anxiously, “Everything’s all right, isn’t it, honey? I mean, they still think I did it, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t suspect you at all?”
“No. But, Lew...”
He put his hand over her mouth. “I’d do it a million times for you, honey. A million times. You had good reason to shoot him, but I couldn’t let you go through a court trial. Oh God, honey, I Jove you so much!”
All of a sudden, she jumped away from him and let out a terrible scream. “No, no, Lew!” she shrieked. “No no no, don’t hit me, Lew, no no, please no...”
And her hand came out of her pocketbook and the gun was in it and her arm kept jerking as she pulled the trigger. The gun must have jammed because nothing happened.
I jumped up with a yell and ran at her. She screamed and ran across the path and Kenny came jumping out of the bushes. She tried to turn, but her feet went out from under her on the loose shale, and suddenly she wasn’t there anymore.
When I got to where Kenny was standing, white as a sheet, I saw the sheer drop down the face of the mountain into the old quarry, and she was down at the bottom and she looked a mile away.
And after all she’d done to him and had tried to do, we actually had to knock Sloan cold to keep him from jumping after her.
On the way back, Kenny said dully to me, “Sorry I had to be such a louse to you, Gene, but it was the only way. She... well, fell for me; and I played up to it. I couldn’t let you in on it because you’re just too damn honest to be a good actor. I had to get her to the point where she had to get rid of Sloan because she wanted me to marry her,”
I didn’t believe him. “Why’d she knock Andresson off?” I asked.
“She was tired of him and he wouldn’t go away. She got drunk one night and as much as told me, but I couldn’t use it for evidence. I had a feeling about her right from the beginning. I mean, there was Sloan a champion pistol shot, yet she tried to tell us he used a shotgun on Andresson. That didn’t add up.”
“Hell no,” I said. “Was she the one that took a shot at me that night?”
“Yes. I’d been watching the house, and Sloan wasn’t near her, so she was the only one. She was afraid of you. I knew that, but I didn’t know she was that afraid.” He looked at me. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Oh sure sure. You suspected her right along and that’s why you let her walk up the hill with a gun so she could knock Lew Sloan off too.”
He held out his hand. There were six bullets in it.
“I took these out of her gun on the way up. If you remember, her handbag was in the door pocket right next to me. I knew you wouldn’t give her your gun, and I wouldn’t give her mine...” His voice trailed off.
I remembered then that he hadn’t offered her his gun, and after a long time he said the one word that described the whole thing and the way we both felt.
“Hell,” he said bitterly.
Double Talk
by Mil Bigsby
The stickup required some real cool thinking. But not the “Hey, Rube!” kind, exactly.
John Shaw took off his shoes and lay down on the bed in his house-trailer. It was two o’clock on the morning of July fifth and he had just finished twenty hours of hard work on the lot. The sun had shone brightly and the carnival midway had been crowded. Now his tired assistants were pulling down the front flaps of the tents over the joints, and the ferris wheel men were covering up the seats. The last music box had been turned off and the lights on the carnival ground went out one by one.
It had been a good day. John had hidden the bags of money in the bottom of the refrigerator, shoving an unwrapped loaf of bread in front to hide them.
Tomorrow Martha, his wife, would be discharged from the hospital. The money in the refrigerator would pay all of the outstanding bills, with a substantial sum left over.
He rose to answer the knock on the door, his mind still on his wife, and her long illness. It was probably Carl with the rest of the money collected from the concessions.
He stood in his stocking feet, his graying hair rumpled, his tall form bent. He spoke through the door. “Carl?” he asked.
“Yah,” came a low voice.
John unlocked the door, then quickly tried to close it when he saw the two strange men standing there. The dark little man thrust a gun into John’s stomach and jerked the door open with his free hand. “Back up,” he said, in a cold level tone. “And keep your hands up!”