Тэлмидж Пауэлл: Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 1, January, 1957

“Now, little man, how do you fit in?”

“I–I got the wrong cabin. I’ve got the same make car, same model.” He heard his own voice with displeasure. It sounded painfully thin, scared and breathless.

“Turn slow and put your hands against the wall. Okay, now move your feet back toward me. That’s it.”

Frank found himself braced in such a way he could not possibly move quickly. He felt Al pat his pockets, take his wallet. He heard Al say, “Whitey, you go check for that car. Wait a minute. You got a wife or a girl friend with you, little man?”

“I’m alone.”

Whitey came back in about three minutes. “Like he said, same car. Next door. The next one down the hill.”

“Now lock the door and make sure it’s locked. Let me take a look here. It says Frank Lowell. Okay, Frankie. Let go the wall and you can sit down. No, not the chair. Right there on the floor.”

“What you going to do about him?” Whitey asked.

Al put the gun in the hip pocket of the khakis. He looked into Frank’s wallet, took out the money. “Thirty-four bucks,” he said. “And a lot more in travelers checks.”

“Aren’t they any good?” the girl asked.

“We don’t mess with those. I told you before. Here, Frankie. Catch.”

He missed the wallet. It slapped the wall beside his head, fell into his lap. He put it back in his pocket.

“What you going to do about this guy now?” Whitey asked.

“You’re getting yourself in a rut, boy. Come on. Let’s finish this up and I’ll be thinking about him. He isn’t any trouble the way he is. He won’t be any trouble. Take a good look if you get nervous. He’s up to here in rabbit blood.”

The three turned to the items on the bed. Frank sat and listened to them as they counted and divided. “It’s a low score,” Al complained. “Eight hundred and twenty-two bucks. And most of this stuff is junk.”

“This here lighter is real gold. Lift it,” Whitey said.

“Real gold, and with initials, you stupid punk. It gets buried with the wallets. You want to stay clean, you don’t mess with stuff like this. These rings and this pin are okay to fence. I’ll handle it like before and you get the cut later. Okay, four hundred eleven for me. You kids make your split any way you want. Whitey, you look like you don’t like me taking the full half.”

“Me? No, it’s fine with me, Al. It’s okay.”

“That’s good. Now wrap this stuff in a towel and take it out back. Take it off into those piney woods and bury it good.”

After Whitey had gone, Al got the bottle out of the small bathroom. He poured some in a glass and handed it to Stel. He took a long drink from the bottle. He looked broodingly down at Frank.

“So what in blazes are we going to do about you, Frankie boy?”

“He’s kinda cute,” Stel joined in.

“And so scared his eyes pop out. Now you’re seeing how the other half lives, Frankie. How do you like it?”

“What are you going to do?” Frank asked. He was obscurely pleased that he was able to ask the question so calmly, with no tremble in his voice.

“You got first names. You got descriptions. People like you love to yell cop. You get big attention. They take notes. They let you look at pictures. ‘Sure, that’s him. That’s the one they call Al.’ You just never should have walked in. You had bad luck, Frankie.”

Whitey came back and Stel let him in. Whitey said, “This Frankie makes me nervous. You got any ideas.”

They stood looking down at him.

“Now I got one,” Al said. “It’s getting cold enough so maybe somebody would use one of these gas heaters. Can’t leave marks. Can you do it so there’s no mark, Whitey?”

“Sure. Wrap the sap in a towel. But I don’t—”

“Because you’re stupid. We take him back to his place. Then he forgot to light the gas. And who’s going to care too much what happens to this little jerk? Look at him.”

The girl looked sick. “But we haven’t ever—”

“You want to be soft-hearted or you want to do some time?”

“We better do it just like he says, honey,” Whitey said to Stel.

And after a time of utter blankness in his mind, Frank Lowell realized that these three had every intention of killing him. He saw it in their eyes, on their faces. It was a grotesque realization. He had thought them people — rather twisted people, but still remotely human. He saw that he had been misled by their age. They were animal, not human. Their casualness had also misled him. And the indolent way his death had been discussed turned his mouth dry.

“I–I won’t tell,” he said.

Al smiled. “And on that we get a guarantee. Leave him sit for awhile. Later, there’s less chance of anybody roaming around when we carry him over.”

“Put him to sleep now?” Whitey said with too much eagerness.

“What’s the point? He’ll keep. He’ll be nice. He’ll wait right there for the F.B.I. to bust in. Only they won’t. Get the cards, Whitey. Maybe you feel lucky.”

They played cards. The girl kept looking over at Frank. She had a scared apprehensive look. It was only her frequent glances that kept him from coming to believe that this was some sort of cruel joke. She did not seem intelligent enough to put on an act. Al got up at one point and put on a plaid wool shirt. Frank sat in numbness, an apathy born of fear. At last he admitted to himself that it was true, that no miracle would stop it, that he would very likely die — and that investigation would probably indicate a verdict of suicide rather than accident. It would be a small and unimportant death, the end of a life that to others would also seem small and unimportant.

If anything was to be done, he would have to do it. He felt a tingling of excitement, yet he was careful to maintain a look of docility, of the cowed little man. With so much at stake, any gamble was valid. No odds could be too great. He stopped thinking of fear, of death, of himself. He became acutely observant. Al was winning consistently, and jeered at Whitey. The bottle was nearly empty. They had stopped playing gin and they were playing poker for higher stakes. Stel had stopped playing.

Frank was in a poor position. He could not scramble to his feet quickly enough. There was nothing close to him that could serve as a weapon. He had half decided that his best chance was to scramble to his left, try to hit the light switch on his way toward the window. There would be no time to try to unlock the door. He was rehearsing the movements this would require when he saw Al shuffle. It was a clumsy shuffle. The liquor was taking hold. A card slipped unnoticed, by everyone but Frank, into Al’s lap. Al was in profile to Frank. He could see the card. It rested on Al’s thigh. Frank’s angle of vision was low enough, so that he could see that the card was an ace.

“You got more damn luck,” Whitey said.

“Whitey!” Frank said sharply.

They all stared at him.

“Whitey, you’re losing every hand. He’s got an ace in his lap right now.”

Al looked down. Whitey grunted and shoved the rickety card table aside. Al picked up the card and turned it over. It was the ace of hearts. Whitey made a low sound and plunged from the bed toward Al. Al moved backwards and the chair upset. Frank saw the gun come out of the hip pocket as he scrambled to his feet. Whitey had hold of the front of the plaid wool shirt and he was cursing loudly. The girl screamed and in the middle of the scream the gun went off. It made less noise than Frank had expected. It was like the cracking of a very brittle stick. As Whitey took two unsteady steps backwards, his face slack, and as the girl screamed again, Frank snatched up the fallen chair with quick coordination. Al started to spin around. He was nearly all the way around when Frank hit him with the chair. The chair did not shatter as do chairs in the movies. One leg struck Al solidly across the side of the head. He went down heavily. The gun spun around and around on the linoleum floor. Whitey fell at least three long seconds after Al had gone down.