“I may not be long,” he said rather awkwardly. “Could you hold things up for half an hour?”
“It doesn’t matter. I might as well go ahead.”
Every kid in town brought him his problems, he thought, somewhat bitterly; they trusted him, listened hopefully to his injunctions or suggestions. Grownups, too. Men with business worries or family mix-ups talked them out with him, knowing his judgments were usually tempered with humor and common sense. He was not an educated man but he had a knack of seeing straight to the core of a situation without being distracted by emotional irrelevancies.
Everybody in town leaned on him — everybody except this girl of his.
It was a failure that had rebuked him since his wife’s death a dozen years ago. When Nancy was just a child he had been ruefully amused by his inability to understand her completely; sometimes she would snuggle in his arms for hours at a stretch, but on other occasions he couldn’t even coax a smile to her lips. When his wife was alive it hadn’t seemed too serious. His wife used to say: “She’s a real live girl, not a little toy. Just let her be, let her grow. Open your arms and let her go — she’ll come back, don’t worry.”
But with his wife gone he had felt his inadequacies much more keenly. He had been eager for Nancy to marry, feeling that might solve most of it. He had dreamed of gunning trips with her imaginary husband, family dinners on Sunday, and grandchildren to teach all the things he knew about the woods and fields around Crossroads. It wasn’t a selfish dream; he wanted it for her, not himself. The right kind of man would fuse all of her contradictory moods into his own strength and needs, and children would challenge her quick intelligence and release the springs of compassion he knew were locked beneath the cool surface of her personality.
If they could only talk things over, he thought. Sit down with a cup of coffee and be free and easy with each other. He didn’t want to run her life, but he longed to be a useful part of it. When she wanted to take a job in New York a couple of years ago he had sent her off with a smile — even though he knew the house would be a tomb without her. But he had opened his arms and let her go, as he’d promised his wife he would. She seemed happy in New York. Her letters bubbled with excitement. New job, new friends, all kinds of fun. He had visited her several times, wearing a good suit and determined not to play the hayseed in front of her friends. She shared an apartment with a saucy, bright-eyed girl who did something with women’s clothes in a department store. The walls were covered with odd-looking pictures and bullfight posters. They sat on little stools about eight inches high and ate dishes made with sour cream and wine.
He had adopted an approving manner for her sake. Her friends chattered like birds, but he didn’t expect her to share his preference for men who could hunt together for a week without using more than a few dozen words the whole time. One young man had asked him how many bandits he’d killed, but he was too old to fall into traps like that. He had got along fine. Nancy hadn’t been ashamed of him; if she had been he couldn’t have stood it. Not for himself, but for her.
And then, without any warning, she had returned to Crossroads. He knew something was wrong, but there was no way to bridge the awkward gulf between them; they had both tried but the attempts had been frustrated, and finally lost in a waste of banalities.
It was such a damned loss, he thought now, feeling the stiffness and hurt in her silence. She was a lovely, moody child in his eyes, but she had the hips and breasts of a woman, and her limbs were slim and graceful and strong; she was more than ready for the pain and joy of a home and children, but here she was keeping house for a father who couldn’t even guess at the thoughts running through her head. In spite of her maturity, she was still the little girl who had baffled him with her reserve and her secrets; she had to carry her troubles by herself because she wasn’t able to ask him for help. And that was his fault, not hers.
It was a hell of a thing to fail in, he thought wearily. “I’ll shove along,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I’m sorry, hon. Dinner smells wonderful.”
“I’ll leave yours on the stove,” she said.
“Sure. Thanks.” He hesitated an instant, smiling at her smooth cheeks, then turned and walked into the front hallway. The rain had stopped, but he put on his slicker anyway; at this time of year you couldn’t tell. He adjusted the chin strap of his hat, checked his gun out of long habit, and stepped out into the night.
Chapter Ten
At eight o’clock the last customers were ushered from the bank. The stout, elderly guard called a smiling good night to each of them before he stepped back inside and pulled the big double doors shut against the windy darkness. The lights in the shops along Main Street went out one by one and the stream of shoppers evaporated quickly from the shining sidewalks. The rain had stopped but a wind lashed the sides of the buildings, reverberating against the metal trash cans and stirring currents and whirlpools in the dark waters rushing along the gutter.
It was one minute after eight.
Earl and Ingram stood at the windows of the hotel room staring down at the closed doors of the bank. Their faces were pressed close to the curtains, and their eyes shone softly in the dimly lighted room. Earl glanced down the block to the drugstore. “I’ll be right behind you,” he said, whispering the words into Ingram’s ear. “I’ll be watching you.”
“You keep watching me and that guard’s gonna blow your head off,” Ingram said dryly. Fear hadn’t left him, but some of it had been dissolved in an exasperated anger; he didn’t care about Earl’s contempt for him, but he couldn’t be indifferent to Earl’s stupidity — the man was ready to get them all killed through his dumb suspicions and hatred. Instead of concentrating on what was coming, he was indulging his prejudice like a spoiled child. “You watch yourself,” he muttered softly. “You’re acting like you never pulled anything but a toilet chain in your whole life.”
But Earl didn’t hear him; he was staring at the doors of the drugstore, his fingers tightening on Ingram’s arm. “Here it goes,” he said, his voice hard with tension.
The doors of the drugstore had been pushed open by a white-jacketed Negro balancing a tray of sandwiches and coffee in his right hand. As he stepped into the pool of light from the neon sign, a big man in a dark overcoat moved toward him from the shadows of the side street. The Negro started for the curb, but before he could take two steps the man in the overcoat stumbled heavily against him, jarring him with his bulk, and knocking the tray of coffee and sandwiches from his hand.
It appeared to have been a simple, unavoidable accident. No one who watched the sequence of events could have thought otherwise...
“Get set,” Earl said sharply.
Burke was adding to the confusion now, he saw, apologizing profusely to the delivery boy, and then stooping in an awkward attempt to retrieve the soggy sandwiches and the split-open cartons of coffee. The boy was staring in dismay at the mess of food on the sidewalk. Burke patted his shoulder consolingly, and took a wallet from his hip pocket. The boy shook his head quickly at that, then picked up his tray and hurried back into the drugstore. An elderly couple stopped and smiled sympathetically at Burke before going on their way. It was a small incident, forgotten as quickly as it happened... Burke shrugged and walked across the street, strolling toward the bank building, his black, bulky figure almost lost in the shifting shadows of the night. Earl checked his watch for the last time. They had about eight minutes to work in; it would take the counterman at the drugstore that long to make up a fresh order for the bank.