Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

“I’m at a gas station off Route 10, Mike,” she said, “and I think he’s gassing up for the Interstate. He’s getting a sandwich, and it’s the wrong time for food unless he plans to skip supper.”

Shayne checked his watch. It was five-fifteen. “Anybody with you?”

“No. But I’ve got the van, and I’m dressed as a tourist. The bike on the rack-everything. I won’t be noticed as long as he stays on the highway. I’ll need help if he goes all the way. Here he comes now.”

Shayne quickly told her he would check with the mobile operator and pick her up above Palm Beach.

“To wind up what I was saying,” he said to Mrs. Maye, after hanging up, “I didn’t take this job with Tim because of the money they’re paying me-”

“Which is lucky,” Rourke said, “because they’re not paying him a hell of a lot.”

“And I don’t think many problems will be solved by putting Larry Canada in jail. People are standing in line to take his place. But I’ve spent a lot of time out in the Glades, and I hate to think what that highway could do to it. With a little luck, we may be able to stop this one. Before you came in, I was trying to tell Tim how I felt about Eddie. I’ve known legitimate bankers I’ve liked less. I’m sorry he’s dead, and killing is the one crime I can still get worked up about. Tim tells me we have a forty-eight-hour deadline, and I hope he can think of things to keep me busy. I’ll call you at the end of the week and let you know how it’s going. Meanwhile I think you ought to take it to the cops.”

She shook her head again and said quietly, “That would be the wrong thing, Mr. Shayne. The night before it happened, we were having one of those rigid periods around two o’clock, and Eddie suddenly got up and went to the window and said he was being followed by somebody. Everywhere. He was really worried about it. A cop. He didn’t tell me the name.”

Werner French hesitated before getting out of the car and going in the house. Always a little too stiff and serious, he looked mad all the time now, with a sullen, rebellious set to his mouth. He would try to clean everything out of his mind and relax. Sometimes he was able to manage it for a minute or two, and then he would be up and walking, hammering his bunched fingertips against the side of his leg.

Pam came out of the bedroom to greet him. She had been extremely sweet since the catastrophe with Eddie Maye, he had to admit. She fucked like an angel, with none of her old brusqueness and asperity. And this had the odd effect of making Werner more aware of her faults. He had thought up this crazy kidnapping scheme to keep her from running off to New York. It had failed, it had failed fairly spectacularly, but even if the damn thing had worked, would it have been worth it? It would have knotted them together for the foreseeable future. And he could do without that excitement, the constant state of crisis, the mood swings, the ups and downs. He wanted some peace.

She came against him hard. “Baby, I can’t bear it when you’re gone that long. You used to be so predictable. Where have you been?”

As a matter of fact, Werner had been nowhere in particular, doing nothing furtive or dramatic. Feeling restless and impatient, he had wanted to drive around, just get in the car and drive the expressways, but he was terribly low on cash, and gas costs money these days, they no longer give it away free. So he had walked around the big downtown marina and looked at the big, brutal, expensive boats. Boats are less regimented than cars. They don’t need to stay on the highways. On a boat, you can go anywhere in the world that recognizes an American passport, and of course most places do.

“Killing time was all,” he said, moving away. “Thinking.”

“Don’t think!” she said sharply. “Drift. That’s the only way to get through this. And Werner,” she added as he opened the bottle, “maybe we ought to stick to coffee? A clear head would be a good idea if we have to do any fast driving. Jack may be calling any minute.”

“A lot of minutes have gone by lately, waiting for Jack.”

“Everything has to be just right. I want to get it over with, too, but if hurrying means taking chances-Baby, come to bed. I want to.”

Werner smiled, drinking. “We’ve been getting a lot of that, haven’t we?”

Actually, from the moment they loaded the dead body of Eddie Maye into the back seat of his VW and Downey drove off, their lovemaking had been practically continuous. They had gone back in the house and made love without even washing the traces of Eddie off their hands. It was astonishing to Werner that such a thing could happen, but it definitely did happen. And after returning to their own house, they continued to sleep and make love almost around the clock. If they ended up in separate cells, they would have much to remember. They crammed an ordinary month’s episodes into five days. And it cured Werner, cured him for good. He entered her body with increasing reluctance. She had been getting wilder and wilder at the end, throwing herself around, making strange tortured sounds, and sometimes, as happened now, bursting into tears.

“Werner, if I’d only remembered that damn padlock-”

He stroked her mechanically. “If-only is a dumb game. If Jack had only noticed. If we’d put a couple more cc’s of Demerol in that jolt. And incidentally, let’s make sure of that this time. Canada’s a big fat man. Give him a double.”

“But we can’t make it too strong or we’ll kill him.”

Werner reached for his drink. “I haven’t asked you this yet, but it’s been on my mind. How did Jack do it? Did he just walk over and shoot, or did he have to talk himself into it?”

“It seemed to be easy for him. You have to remember-a loan shark is like a coyote to Jack. You don’t kill it, you harvest it to keep down the population.”

“You didn’t try to argue him out of it?”

“Are you crazy? It happened so fast, I was badly in shock. The minute he did it, you could see that Neanderthal brain starting to tick. The coyote was dead. Was there any way we could use it?”

“If you want to know my opinion, I think he had that in mind all along. He was just waiting for an opening. Like this, he could shift some of the blame to you, make you feel guilty.”

She was silent for a moment. “I’ve thought of that. We can’t have more sex right this minute, and it wouldn’t be smart to get drunk, which ordinarily I wouldn’t mind doing, so I suppose we’ll have to talk about it. Here’s what I decided. I decided that whether he did or didn’t, it doesn’t matter. We did the kidnapping together. We’re all in the same boat now.”

“Not quite in the same boat,” Weiner said. They never looked directly at each other when they were talking about anything serious, as though afraid of what they would discover. “There’s one big difference. He’s a cop. We’re nobodies. If anything slips, he can bust us, or shoot us in the head the way he did Eddie, then arrange it any way he likes. And keep all the money.”

After another moment, she said in a low voice, “It might be better for our mental health if we didn’t wonder about things like that.”

“How much money have you got?”

“Scraping bottom. You?”

“Enough for groceries for another week. You can’t hide from a mad cop on unemployment insurance. So maybe we have to go through with this.”

“Except that”-she waited-“it might be a good idea to keep in mind what you’re saying about Downey after we collect the money-”

“I’m for that,” he said briefly.

She reached for cigarettes. She had lost weight. She was so close to the tipping point that unless she made a conscious effort to eat, it showed almost at once. She had too many knobs on her spine, and a starved ass. Incredibly, because it had been less than five minutes, he felt the beginnings of the sexual tingle. But the phone rang.