Two shots exploded. Harry’s gun never cleared the holster, the shots dropped him in a dance jig, he fell twisting and lay still. The gunman lunged past him straight at her window and before she could react he grabbed her hair, jerked her into the wrought-iron barrier. Pain exploded in her belly as her ribs cracked against the counter bending her double. He jerked her harder into the metal teller’s cage and rammed the gun in her face, the gun and the navy blue mask filled her vision, and his cold expressionless eyes.
Falon was pretty sure the guard was dead. As he rammed the muzzle of the .38 into the teller’s face, two women appeared from the back. They stopped, frozen, their faces going pale and dumb.
“Get the money,” he shouted. “In the drawers, in the vault. I want all of it. Do itnow, or she’s dead.” The two women remained still with shock. Falon gestured the cocked gun toward a pile of empty canvas bags that lay folded on the back counter. “Move! Put the money in the bags.Now, orI blow the broad’s head off.”
They moved, scuttled like frightened rats to do as they were told. His new voice amused him, he had practiced for a long time to perfect Morgan’s deeper voice, his lower tones. The two tellers were unlocking and jerking open drawers, grabbing out money and dropping it into the bags. The younger, dark-haired one moved quickly but the old, skinny broad was slow and shaking. He’d started to yell at her again when a man, a bank officer, appeared from an inner office down at the end of the lobby. Looking surprised, taking it all in, he lunged for a phone.
“Back off. You touch it, they’re all dead!” Stepping around the end of the counter, Falon stood over the blonde. She was still conscious, holding herself and moaning.
“Get over here,” Falon shouted at the bank officer. “Get over here now behind the counter with the rest of them!” But when he grabbed the limp girl and jerked her up she came to life under his hands, clawing at him trying to jerk the mask off his face, her own face white with rage.
He jerked her off him, pulled her long hair, bending her backward, her face cut by the bars. The other two women had backed away from the cash drawers, they stood dumb and shaking again but the blonde still fought him, kicking at his shins, her fear wild and so exciting he laughed, fear had always thrilled him, as far back as he could remember, other kids’ fear of him, a helpless animal’s fear. Remembering grammar school, the puppy’s white silky hair filling his fist, he twisted the girl’s hair, jerking her up against him, contorting her body so violently that he felt her urine drench his leg. Enraged that she’d do that, he slapped her with the butt of the .38. She swung around, jammed her knee in his crotch. He doubled over. She scratched his arm deep and then went for his face. Hunched with pain, he threw her to the floor and screamed at the two tellers, “Get the rest of the money in the bag or I’ll kill her, kill all of you.” When the girl at his feet tried to get up he kicked her in the face, then in the ribs. “Get the money,” he snarled, “all three of you, all of the money.All of it!” He felt high and he felt good, he was filled with power.
When he had the two loaded money bags, he locked the bank officer and the women in the vault and spun the dial. Before he left the bank carrying the two canvas bags he dropped the hairs from the envelope into the blood on the marble floor. When he hit the door he had already pulled off the stocking cap and shoved it into one of the bags. Quickly he slid into the Dodge, pushed the bags under the seat. He was ten blocks away when he heard sirens; he never had heard a bank alarm, maybe it only sounded at the station and that didn’t seem fair.
The sirens grew louder but he eased on at a leisurely pace, heading north to the outskirts of Rome. He parked Morgan’s car in a patch of woods next to the red pickup he had “borrowed” earlier from a man that he knew would be out of town all week. He crammed the money all into one bag and dropped it into the cab of the pickup, left the other bag with a few scattered bills under the passenger seat of Morgan’s car. He changed shirts and boots with Morgan, hard to do, manipulating a limp body. He emptied the bottle of bootleg whiskey over Morgan’s clothes, smeared some in his mouth, the rest on the driver’s seat. He wiped his prints off the bottle, forced Morgan’s prints onto it in several handholds. Holding the bottle with his handkerchief, he shoved it under the seat with the canvas bag.
Pulling the red pickup out onto the narrow macadam road, he got out and picked up the four wide boards on which he had parked to prevent tire tracks in the raw earth of the shoulder. He scuffed leaves over the indentations the boards had made, threw the boards in the bed of the pickup, and headed around the outskirts of Rome, up toward Turkey Mountain Ridge. The way he figured, taking his time to hide the money in the one place where no one would ever look, he’d have the truck back in his friend’s driveway well before midnight, would be back in Natalie’s apartment in perfect innocence, fondling her in her warm bed. He had no thought for the dead guard or the girl he had hurt, he had no idea of the extent of her suffering nor did he care, his thoughts were on the damage he had done to Morgan Blake, for taking Becky from him, and on Becky for turning her back on him. Soon now Morgan would be hurting bad, as would Becky, and that was only right, that was as it should be, those who crossed him were meant to pay, and he was making it happen.
In Blythe, the ghost cat, as he accompanied Lee in the careful laying of his plans, was aware as well of Falon’s brutal robbery even as the iron door to the vault was slammed and the manager and tellers locked inside. Misto hurt for those who had been beaten, for the guard who had been killed and for his poor wife newly widowed. He hurt for Morgan, who would suffer long and hard, too, for Falon’s cruelty, and he hurt for Becky and Sammie. But at this juncture there was little he could have done. A momentum was building that was beyond the ghost cat’s frantic powers; this shifting of fate was now far too strong for one small and angry feline.
But he knew this: the lust of Brad Falon against the Blakes was inexorably drawing Lee in. Lee would soon become a part of the scenario, as surely as pressures could build beneath the earth toward an explosive cataclysm. The paths of Morgan, and Brad Falon, of Sammie and Lee were tangling ever closer; and the ultimate outcome, the final choice, would be Lee’s to make. Uneasily the cat watched and waited, often giving Lee a gentle nudge, rubbing warm against him, his purring rumble meant to remind the old convict where survival lay: Lee’s ultimate afterlife lay with those who could give of their love, never with that which destroys love and joy. Never with that which would leave nothing of Lee but dust, scattered and gone, swept to nothing by the winds of time.
27
Pausing on the porch of the mess hall, Lee stamped dust from his boots, startling a flock of chickens that flapped up squawking, kicking sand in his face. Beside the tool house the trucks stood idle, and the packing-shed doors were shut tight. Looking in through the wide screens, he could see that the mess hall was empty; but the smell of cooking breakfasts lingered. On Sunday mornings, the men fixed their own meals. Moving on inside the screened room and back between the long tables, he stepped into the kitchen and set about making his breakfast.
The big wire basket on the counter was full of rinsed dishes left to drain and several burners of the oversized commercial stove were still warm. The stove was familiar to Lee, from working in a number of prison kitchens. He found bowls of eggs in the refrigerator alongside rolls of chorizo, and there were packages of tortillas on the counter and a couple of loaves of bread. The big commercial coffeepot was warm but nearly empty and was of a kind he didn’t know. He found a saucepan instead, and made boiled coffee. He fired up the stove’s big gas grill, started the chorizo, and when it was brown he broke three eggs beside it. He dropped two slices of bread in the big commercial toaster, buttered them from a gallon crock, and carried his steaming plate and coffee mug to a table beside the long, east-facing screen, where the edge of the rising sun was just appearing over the sand hills and above the scraggly willows.