Charles Williams - Girl Out Back

People were still up in several nearby houses. I drove on into the garage and closed the overhead door. There was a smaller side door that faced the kitchen porch. I went around to the front of the house and let myself in. I turned on a light in the kitchen, drew the curtains, and brought the suitcase and bundle of clothes in through the back.

Turning on the oven in the kitchen range, I spread the wet trousers and the the on the back of a chair before it. The shirt was hopelessly stained with the mushy cigarettes. It would never do to put it in the laundry; according to the best traditions of the mystery story, employees of laundries spent ninety per cent of their time searching for evidence of crimes. Well, I knew several ways to circumvent these sterling but over zealous citizens. I dumped the cigarettes into the sink, rinsed out as much of the stain as possible, and tore off the buttons, which I threw in the refuse can, the one in the house. Then I tore the shirt into handy-sized polishing cloths, saturated them with some of Reba’s floor wax, and threw them in the garbage can behind the house.

I went upstairs to the bathroom. With a pair of kitchen shears I cut the black identification folder into scraps and flushed it down the john. The soggy warrant followed it, and then the drowned cigarettes. I took off my shoes and put them on shoe trees to dry naturally in the closet. I put the hat away. Donning a pair of slippers and combing my hair, I went back downstairs and turned the trousers and tie before the oven. When they began to feel merely damp, I broke out Reba’s ironing board and electric iron and pressed them carefully. I slid the trousers neatly on to a hanger, added the jacket, and went back to the bedroom. I put the suit away where it had been and hung the tie back on the rack. I was the only living person who knew Special Agent Ward had ever existed, and now the last trace of him was gone.

I’d saved the best part until last. Taking the suitcase, I went downstairs to the den, drew the curtains over the small windows, and switched on the reading lamp beside the big chair. I dragged over my trunk and emptied it of the accumulation of books and papers and old clothes I’d never quite got around to throwing away. Then I hunted up a pad and pencil and opened the suitcase.

I piled it on the floor first, separated into individual stacks of hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, and fives, writing down the amounts printed on the bands and hoping Cliffords had been correct in his count. He hadn’t, but it was even better. The total when I added it came to $103,500. I added the $2,800 still in the paper bag.

That made a grand total of $107,300. I stared at it and whistled softly. It was all mine, and nobody on earth knew I had it. I wondered if anybody else in all history had ever pulled off a coup this size entirely alone and without even the suspicion of one other human being. When you stopped to examine it, the thing must be without parallel. It wasn’t solely that there was no reason anyone should suspect I had it; there wasn’t even anybody to miss it. That was what made it fantastic. There was absolutely no link between Haig and Cliffords, and none between Cliffords and me, and both Haig and Cliffords were dead. . . .

If only he had run. I wanted him to! That’s the way I meant it.

I fought down the sick spasm. It passed in a moment. There would be others, plenty of them, but they would pass too. Time didn’t wound all heels; it was still the other way around. The only saving grace of cliches was that they were true. It would never go away, of course, but you could live with it if you were being paid enough according to your individual sense of values. Mine, perhaps, would raise more than one eyebrow among the Good Housekeeping crowd, but then I wasn’t asking them to live by them; I was merely doing so myself.

I got up to find cigarettes and came back to stare at the pile of money again, excitedly making plans. I’d hold on here for another six months. By that time they would have given up in this area and stopped watching it. Let’s see, that would be in February. I’d take it to Florida and put it in several safe deposit boxes. Cash—that is, currency—was always unusual in any kind of business transaction and likely to attract attention, so I would open several scattered checking accounts, add to them gradually, and eventually consolidate them. I’d lie low until mid-summer, at the very bottom of the season, studying the west coast and the Keys for a good location to buy into a marina in a small way or start one of my own. And once I had a business established it would be easy to convert increasing amounts of currency into investments or use it to enlarge the operation. It was just a matter of going slowly.

I put it into the bottom of the trunk and covered it with the old clothing I’d taken out—ski things I hadn’t used for years, a dinner jacket, a uniform, and a couple of double-breasted suits. It would be safe here. They never went into my things, and I had the only key, anyway. I replaced the books and papers, locked the trunk and moved it back against the wall. The key I put into my wallet.

I went back up to the kitchen, made a sandwich, and opened a can of beer. Carrying them into the living-room, I loaded the gramophone with arias from Eugene Onegin and Boris Godunov. The house was too quiet. After a while I switched it off and went upstairs. I took a shower and lay down naked on the bed. Her note was still pinned to the pillow. I crumpled it and threw it on the dresser, wishing she would come back. A fight would be better than this intense silence. I switched off the light. The moon had come up now and its soft light was slanting in under the honeysuckle about the window.

It hit me without warning. I rolled my face down into the pillow and locked my arms around it, shaking and sick and trying not to make any sound. The picture was a long time going away. There was something stark and forever lost and terrible about it, the boat lying motionless there in the moonlight between the dark walls of the trees as if it were waiting for him to come back and get it.

I sat up and lit a cigarette. It was all right. Conscience was no avenging lion; it was a jackal. It circled you like any other carrion-eating vermin, knowing it had no chance when you were on guard and waiting for the precise moment you were waking up or going to sleep. A couple of bad moments a day were no exorbitant price to pay tor a hundred thousand dollars. Fade, brother. We’ve done this routine before, and I always outlasted you. Remember?

I awoke once during the night, drenched with sweat and tangled in the sheet as if I had been threshing wildly about. In the morning, when my eyes first opened to the gray coolness of dawn, it was a minute or two before it came back, and when it did it was with a rush of freezing and overwhelming terror. They would catch me; I’d go to the electric chair. Then reason took hold again and it disappeared.

Catch me? There wasn’t a chance in the world. How could they? It was absolutely impregnable from every angle. In the first place, Cliffords had merely drowned. An autopsy would prove that, and an examination of his boat would tell them how it happened. And, secondly, I didn’t even know him, and had never been to his place.

I shaved and dressed and drove downtown for some breakfast. While I was sitting at the counter in Joey’s eating half a melon, Ramsey came in and sat down two stools away.

He nodded and smiled. “How are you tins morning, Mr. Godwin?”

”Fine, thanks,” I said. “are you having any luck?” It was a waste of rime, I knew, even if I weren’t already aware he wasn’t having any luck. None of them would tell you what day it was.

Hmmmm, not much,” he replied. He gave his order to the waitress. Then he looked around at me again. “How is the fishing in this area? I understand you’re quite an authority.”