“How much is there?” I heard the catch in my voice.
“In cash, there’s three hundred, forty-six thousand dollars, and seventeen cents. Exactly. There’s more in...”
“Never mind. We can’t.” I swallowed hard. “It’s too much of a risk. They’d still have to give it to you, but they might pull something screwy.” I paused a minute. “Christ,” I said. “Three hundred thousand.”
“It’s just money,” she said.
“Yeah. Well, I don’t like the idea of taking it all. It makes me wary. It’s bad enough the way it is.”
“I can’t see why,” she said.
I ignored her again. “Then we’ll take off,” I said. “I’ll work the rest of it out. We’ll have to get rid of my car and get another. You take a taxi downtown.”
“Then what?”
“Wait a minute.” I tried to think, I was confused. All I could think of was that money. I could see it in my mind’s eye, as clear as anything. I could actually see the bills themselves, in neat, crisp bundles. Stacked together. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It was crazy.
“Jack? What should I do then?”
“All right,” I said. “You do this. You leave the bank, and take the alley beside the bank. Walk through to First Avenue North. Turn East, and walk to the corner of Seventh Street. Got that?”
“Yes, sure. Alley—down First to Seventh. All right.”
“I’ll be there. Don’t look for my car. I’ll have a different car, by then. I’ll be parked in front of the drugstore on the corner. If I’m not there, you wait in front of the drugstore.”
“Where will we go?”
“We aren’t going anywhere, Shirley. Not for a long time. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. I’m working something out.”
“But, Jack.”
“It’s all right, I tell you. All we’ve got to do is have enough luck to get through to maybe ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Jack, I’ve been watching out the window. I’ve got the house lights off. A car keeps going up and down the street. I know it’s the same car, because it’s yellow—a yellow hardtop. It keeps going up and down.”
Grace. As sure as hell. I would have to tell Shirley about Grace, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it now.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“I want to see you,” she said.
“In the morning.”
“I want to see you so bad, I can’t think. I’m in love with you, remember?”
“Yeah, honey—buck up, now.”
“I’d better hang up, you mean. Harry Lamphier just turned in his drive. He’s parking. Doctor Miraglia isn’t with him, now.”
“Then, with luck, we’ve got tonight.”
“What?”
“They aren’t going to do anything yet tonight. They haven’t found what they’re after. It’s going to take them a little time. Maybe they haven’t gone to the cops yet. Everything’s circumstantial. It can burn us, but they don’t have any real proof yet. So they won’t move in. I’ve been trying to figure anything solid they could base suspicions on. It’s close, because if it’s turned over to the law, they can make an arrest on suspicion alone. But we’re still all right, I think.”
“I’d better hang up. Let’s not take chances.”
“You got everything straight?”
“Yes. Jack—he’s coming over here.”
“Okay. I’m with you. Chin up.”
“Here comes that yellow car again.”
Thirteen
Doom. You recognize Doom easily. It’s a feeling and a taste, and it’s black, and it’s very heavy. It comes down over your head, and wraps tentacles around you, and sinks long dirty fingernails into your heart. It has a stink like burning garbage. Doom.
I sat up all night with the lights on. Waiting.
At seven-thirty in the morning, I was in Tampa again, making a trade for another car. I had to write a check, and I had to use my name. But it would slow them down a fraction, if they moved today, and that fraction was all I needed. It was an oxidized gray Ford sedan, hundreds of which were on the highways.
I was blocks away before I remembered the gun I’d left in the glove compartment of the other car. I had to have the gun; the same old obsession. I drove back, told the guy on the used car lot I’d forgotten some things in the car.
“Okay,” he said.
The glove compartment was empty. I went over to him. He was a beer-eyed, seedy-looking bird, wearing a suit that had been pressed with the dirt in it.
“Bet I know what you’re after,” he said.
“Then hand it over.”
“Uh-uh.”
“How come?”
“I bought your car. It was a deal, right?”
“But for cripes’ sake. I left some personal stuff in the car. That certainly doesn’t go with the deal.”
“Make me see it your way.”
“It’s a shame this is a busy street.”
“Isn’t it?”
“How much?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“You’re a real son of a bitch.”
“All how you look at it. Twenty bucks is twenty bucks.”
By now there was nothing to do but pay him and take the gun. I should never have come back. I should never have gone to him when I found the gun missing. I should have let it go. On the other hand, if I let it go now, he would crow all the more. I paid him and took the gun and left the place. I put the gun and the box of ammunition in the glove compartment of the Ford.
I drove back home, trying to keep from thinking. I was so scared I could hardly drive.
It was nine-thirty when I turned into the alley behind the apartment building. Cutting it almost too close. But I had to pick up some clothes I’d packed in a bag, and phone Mrs. Noxton at the store. That would be ticklish, and I wished I hadn’t put it off until now. I kept looking at my watch, checking the time, thinking: What’s she doing? Did she make it all right downtown, alone, without being seen? Is anybody there with her? Will she be able to get away? Will she lose her nerve?
And I kept trying not to think something else that had occurred to me during the night. It kept coming back to me, hitting harder every time. What was Miraglia’s real interest? I couldn’t believe he was playing beagle just out of fondness for Victor Spondell. There had to be something else. Had he figured to latch onto some of the money, too? Then something struck me.
Suppose Shirley and Miraglia were together on something, trying to screw me? Set me up for a patsy. Sure. It was crazy thinking. But you think that way just the same, because you don’t really know. You never know till you’ve got that money in your hands.
I parked the car by the garage in the alley, and walked on around to the rear entrance. Inside, a hall led straight on through to the front entrance, and Miraglia was holding the door open for a cop.
“Since his car’s not in the garage,” Miraglia said, “He’s not here.” His glasses glinted and gleamed as he talked mildly. The uniformed cop said nothing. Miraglia said, “Let’s go on up, all right?”
Two men in plain clothes came in the front door behind the harness cop. I was in shadow behind the stair alcove. Miraglia said something I didn’t quite catch.
One of the men in plain clothes said, “Well, we’ve got a warrant, anyway.”
The other man chuckled.
I didn’t wait for anything else.
Coming out of the other end of the alley, I drove past on the street bisecting my street, and looked down toward the apartment house. Two police cruisers were parked out front. It had been that close. I could hardly breathe. Another harness bull stood outside by the cruisers.
I kept going.
I drove downtown somehow, without smashing into anybody, and parked across the street from the bank. On the way down, I thought I’d glimpsed Grace’s car, and I remembered what Shirley’d said last night, seeing a yellow car running up and down her street.