James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

So Bugs was grinning at me, standing there in the door, but then all of a sudden he wasn’t grinning any more and he was looking at me hard. Then overhead I hear the planes. You understand how this was? The kitchen door is out back, and there’s a guard on that part of the wall. But he’s a spotter, see? He’s a spotter for the army, and just to make sure, he spots everything, and there he is now, with his rifle over one arm and his head thrown back, to see what’s coming. Three fast ones break out of a cloud, the split-tail jobs with two motors, but Bugs, he don’t wait. He motions to me and we take two steps. Then he checks front and I check rear. Then he vaults in the truck and I follow him. Then we lay down, in between quarters of beef.

We were hardly flat when the driver came out, still yelling gags at the guys in the kitchen. He climbs in, starts, rolls a little way, and stops, and we hear him say something to the guards at the gate. Then he gets going again, and starts down the hill on the motor, so it begins to backfire. He goes so fast I have to lock my throat to keep the wind from being shook out of me, ha-ha-ha-ha like that. Bugs, he seems to be having the same kind of trouble, but we both hang on and choke it back, whatever the driver might hear. He’s a little fat guy, and he sings the “Prisoner’s Song” pretty lousy, but he slows down for the boulevard stop at the bottom of the hill. That was when Bugs grabs my neck for a handhold and stands up. He stands right over me, so I can see his face, where it’s all twisted with this maniac look, and his hands, where they were hooked to come in on the driver’s neck.

Then I woke up for the first time to the spot I was in. Here, with one month to go only, I had got myself in the same truck with this killer, and made myself just as guilty of whatever was done as he was. I yelled at the driver then, as loud as I could scream. He hit the brake and turned around, but he was too late. That jerk threw Bugs right on top of him, and them hooks came together so his tongue popped out of his mouth. I grabbed at Bugs and begged him to quit, but then I woke up to what was going on outside. The truck was still rolling, and if something wasn’t done in about two seconds it was going over in the ditch. I reached over and grabbed the wheel, then I slid over the seat on my belly till I was on the right-hand side beside the driver, so with my left foot I could shove down the brake.

All during that time the driver was being pulled over backwards, so he arched up till his knees touched the wheel. Then something cracked, and I felt sick to my stomach. Then it wasn’t the driver back of the wheel, it was Bugs. He was panting like some kind of an animal, but he threw it in gear and we started off. Pretty soon he says: “Get back there, go through his pockets, and find his cigarettes.”

“Get back there yourself.”

“Oh, just a passenger, hey?”

“Just a fall guy, maybe.”

“O.K., fall guy, suppose you keep an eye out behind, see if they’re following us. Because if they’re not, maybe we still got a little time, before it’s a general alarm.”

“Haven’t you got a mirror?”

“Oh, just a passenger after all, hey?”

“What you kill that guy for?”

“What you think I killed him for? So he cooperates, and he’s doing it. Like he is now, he don’t give no trouble.”

“We could have tied him up, or dropped him off, or knocked him out. We could have handled him somehow, so they wouldn’t have this on us.”

“You done all you could.”

“You bet I did.”

“I hope he appreciates it.”

“Shut up and drive.”

“Says who?”

I hauled off and let him have it, right in the mouth. His foot came off the gas, and we slowed, and I stamped on the brake, and we stopped. I let him have it again, so the blood spurted out of his lip. Then I grabbed him, jerked him out from behind the wheel, and drove my fist in till my arm was numb and his face looked like something the butcher would pitch in the bucket. Then I kicked him into my seat, took the wheel myself, and went on. It didn’t do any good. We were in the same old truck, with the rain pouring down in front, a dead man in behind, and headed nowhere. But it made me feel better.

On the dashboard was a button at the top of what looked like a grill, and I give it a twist. Plenty of drivers have shortwave, so they can pick up the police calls, and I figured I could find out what was being done about us. But ’stead of a grill it was a panel, and it opened up on a compartment full of cigarettes, chewing gum, maps, apples, and what looked to me like a flashlight. I took the cigarettes and lit up, and had me a deep inhale, and all the time he was looking at me, and I was wondering whether to give him one, just because he couldn’t help being like he was, and anyway I’d done all I wanted to do to him, and maybe more than I really wanted to do. I began sliding one out of the pack, when he moved. When I looked up I knew that flashlight wasn’t a flashlight at all, it was a automatic. Because I was looking straight into it.

“Rat, you listening what I say?”

“I hear every word, Bugs.”

“Drive.”

“I’m driving.”

“Drive like I tell you to drive.”

“Just say it, Bugs.”

He told me, and we began a zigzag course, part on the main highways, part on the crossroads, but as near as I could tell we were zigzagging for Los Angeles, and getting there. Then we had to stop for a freight that was crossing. Ahead of us was a green sedan, and for a while Bugs sat there looking at it and bearing down on some chocolate bars he found in with the apple. Then he sits up and says: “Bump him! Bump him!”

“What do you mean, bump him?”

“Bump him so he has to get out!”

I came up slow, then stepped on it so I smacked right into the rear bumper of the sedan. I no sooner untangled than Bugs jumped out and ran around front, shoving the gun in his pants as he went. Sure enough, the guy gets out, and Bugs began yelling and pointing at the truck. But the guy can’t make any sense out of it because he’s looking at Bugs’s face, where it’s still running blood, and he can’t connect all that grief with the little bump he felt. Bugs just keeps on talking. All that time the freight is going by, and he can’t take a chance the train crew might hop off to help some guy out. But soon as the bell stops he whips out the gun and tells the guy to peel off his clothes and hand over his dough. I hop out then, and run around the right-hand side and jump in the sedan and slide over behind the wheel. But Bugs thought of that. By the time I was set he had the guy out front, blocking me off. The guy’s taking orders now, and each piece of his clothes he peels, Bugs lays it on the hood and covers it with the guy’s raincoat. When the guy’s stripped naked, so his teeth are chattering and he’s begging Bugs not to keep him out there in the rain any more, Bugs plugs him. It was like something in a movie. First I could see them in front, on the other side of this pile of clothes on the hood, then comes the shot, and I can see Bugs and I can’t see him. Then Bugs has scooped up the clothes under his arm and is jumping in the back door of the sedan, telling me to drive. I start up, and I cut the wheel hard left. But the right side of the car goes up, then bumps down, as we go over something soft.

When Bugs climbed up in the front seat, maybe a half hour later, he was all dressed up in the guy’s clothes and his face was wiped off a little. He didn’t really look good, but he wasn’t in prison denims, like I was, and he could take out some money and count it. There was quite a little money, and he took quite a while. Then he says: “I guess you wonder why you killed him too?”