Handsome Harry (13 page)

Charley opened the back door and said, Madam, we are desperate men and I implore you to be reasonable. Remove yourself or I will drag you out by the heels. He was wild-eyed and heaving for breath. The old girl quickly slid across the seat and got out by the other door.

And then we were barreling down the highway, the six of us packed in the Phaeton and stinking it up with sweat and mud, laughing like hell. I wiped at the fogged windshield, peering past the slapping wipers at the rainy road ahead as the M City sirens faded behind us.

T
he rain was coming down even harder now. I couldn’t see thirty feet in front of us but I kept a heavy foot on the accelerator. The Phaeton was one of the new V-8s and it flew through the gloom. Then the road made a sudden curve and the wheels lost their grip and we skidded off onto the soggy shoulder and went fishtailing through shrubs and past trees close enough to spit on and
wham
we clipped one and the left front fender started flapping and banging like crazy. Without ever taking my foot off the gas I managed to get us back up on the road and the fender fell off with a clang and we roared full speed ahead.

Russell hollered
Wa-hoooo!

Red said, Listen Pete, if you ever wanna borrow my car the answer’s no.

I thought I was doing well for a guy who hadn’t been behind the wheel in nine years.

Shouse was sitting up front between me and Russell, and he
scanned the dial on the crackling radio for news of the break. We’d been on the road for maybe half an hour and there still wasn’t anything on the air about us. We didn’t see a cop until we whizzed through some burg none of us caught the name of. Maybe it was our speed or maybe the missing fender that caught their attention, but a police car going in the opposite direction made a U-turn behind us and turned on its flasher. Our luck was running good, though, and when I sped past a stop sign at the city limit, the cop did too—and a truck smashed into him broadside. In the rearview mirror I saw a silver explosion of glass spray off the cop car and it went whirling into a ditch with its doors flapping. The truck veered off the road with steam billowing from under the hood panels.

We cheered like the home team scored a touchdown. Russell said Man, I’d pay good money to see that again.

In another twenty minutes the radio was full of excited blabbing about us, much of it close to hysterical. They were calling it the biggest prison escape in Indiana history. Some reports claimed that fifteen convicts had escaped, some said as many as twenty-five. One said three getaway cars had been waiting for us. We were said to be armed and extremely dangerous, and citizens were warned to stay in their homes and keep their doors and windows locked. A state policeman told a reporter that a posse of five hundred men, both cops and vigilantes, was being organized. He said roadblocks were going up on all the highways in this part of the state and he promised they’d have us in custody, dead or alive, within forty-eight hours.

We knew they would set up blocks on the main routes but it was impossible for them to bar the back roads. I turned off the highway and went zigzagging from one farm lane to another. We kept bearing southward, the windshield wipers steadily slapping and Shouse working the radio as we moved through the broadcast ranges.

The rain kept falling and the roads got muddier. Most of the farms we passed were well removed from each other, and around midafternoon I turned in at the entrance gate of one of them and
headed for the house. We pulled up in front of the porch and some old guy in overalls came out and stood there looking at us with a barking yellow Lab at his side. If he’d been holding a weapon it might’ve gone bad for him, but it so happened he hadn’t heard the news. He recognized the convict issue as soon as Russell got out of the car, though, you could see it in his face. Russ told him to hold the dog off if he didn’t want it shot, and the old guy grabbed the Lab by the scruff and spoke to it and calmed it down. They all went inside while I parked the car out of sight around back.

The farmer’s name was Warren. He was short and wiry but had big rough hands and his face looked hard as oak wood. He put the dog in another room and said there was nobody on the place but him and his wife and the hired man out at the barn. Russell went out and brought the hand into the house and I told them who we were and promised them no harm if they cooperated. I said all we wanted was something to eat and a place to rest until dark when it would be easier to avoid the roadblocks between us and Fort Wayne—which of course wasn’t where we were going, but it never hurts to plant a phony lead for the cops. I apologized to the woman for muddying her carpet and the bad smell we’d brought into her home. They were cool, those farm folk. They held their fear well and they didn’t ask a lot of questions.

We took turns keeping a lookout from the front window. The woman made coffee and cooked pancakes and scrambled eggs. Shouse asked Warren if he had any beer or booze or cigarette makings. The old man said alcohol and tobacco were terrible evils and he wouldn’t allow them on his property. Shouse said he didn’t give a shit what the farmer didn’t allow. I told him to watch his language in front of Mrs. Warren. I sent Russell and the hand out to siphon gasoline from the farmer’s truck and put it in the Phaeton, and while he was at it Russ punctured two of the farmer’s tires, just to play it safe.

There was no telephone but they had a radio and we tuned in the news. The speaker hissed and popped with bad-weather static but we
were able to make out that the cops had received sightings of us in South Bend, Rensselaer, Lafayette, as far away as Columbia City. Which meant they had no idea where we were. They still weren’t exactly sure how many of us were on the loose, but because of the sheriff’s prisoner we left behind and the couple whose car we jacked, they knew we’d split into at least two groups and that one group had taken the sheriff as hostage. But that was about all they knew.

We washed up at the kitchen sink and made short work of the food, and the woman brewed more coffee. I had Warren and his hired man fetch us some of their clothes. Russ and I were too tall for either man’s shirt or pants and Charley was way too round, but the others guys were able to make do and were glad to be shed of their prison grays.

The rain brought an early darkness. As we got ready to go I told the farmer I was sorry we didn’t have any money to pay him for the food and clothes, and he said never mind. I said that was generous of him and then told him to give me all the money he had in the house. He’d been doing his best not to antagonize us, but now his eyes went narrow and his jaw set tight and I thought he was going to draw the line at being robbed under his own roof.

William, his wife said softly. Her eyes pled with him. He let out a long breath and emptied his pockets on the table. I told the hired man to pull his pockets out too. It came to about six dollars, much of it in silver. Russell went through the wife’s handbag and found another two bucks. Shouse put a finger in the farmer’s face and said he knew damn well there was more money in the house and he better get it from his hidey-hole or else. I pushed him away and said we had all we needed. I apologized to Warren and his missus once again, and then we left.

The rain hadn’t slackened at all and the roads were really deep with mud now, and I was forced to hold our speed down. We got mired once and some of the guys had to get out and push the car free, but we didn’t come across a single roadblock on any of those backcountry routes.

It was getting late when we cut back over onto a main road a few miles north of Kokomo. Our original plan had been to go straight to one of the hideouts John was supposed to have set up—but then came the lockdown and cancellation of the visiting day when Pearl was going to tell me where the hideouts were.

We spotted a telephone booth alongside a filling station and I pulled up beside it. I tried calling Pearl at home but her phone rang and rang with no answer. So I called the cathouse. The woman I talked to said Pearl wasn’t in, she’d been gone all day, no telling where or how long before she got back. I said to tell her that Handsome called and she could get in touch with me through Shorty—the code name Pearl and I used for Mary.

Then we headed for Indianapolis.

S
ometime around midnight we rolled slowly into Mary’s neighborhood. I parked the car in the shadows of the dripping trees across the street from her place. It was actually her mother and stepdaddy’s apartment, where she’d been living with them and her sister Margo ever since Kinder had gone in the slam.

The rain had eased up, but it was still drizzling and the night had turned chillier. The sky was densely black and the streetlamps at either end of the block had hazy halos. I adjusted the pistol in my waistband under my untucked shirt and told the guys to sit tight, then went across the street and up the stoop of the apartment house. It was a two-story building with three upper and three lower apartments and a common front porch downstairs. None of the front windows was showing light.

Her place was a lower corner unit. The screen door was unlatched and I opened it and rapped on the inner door and waited a minute and then knocked again and a light came on inside. A moment later the deadbolt turned and the door opened a few inches and a guy in skivvies peeked out and said Who’re you and what you want?

I recognized him from Mary’s description—Jocko, the latest stepdaddy. I said I was a pal of Earl’s and had an important message from him for Mary.

Christ, he said, you one of them that busted out? That chicken-shit Earl send you? Well I got enough cop troubles of my own, you tell him, so he better—

Mary’s voice cut in: Who is it, Jocko? Is it Earl?

Jocko tried to close the door on me but I had my foot between it and the jamb. I heard Mary say to get out of the way. He said he didn’t need this kind of trouble.
Move,
she said.

The door swung open and there she was, holding her robe closed at her neck and gaping at me, her hair disheveled. Behind her stood a woman and girl, both of them as short as Mary. It was my first look at her mother and little sister, who was no kid anymore but a good-looking young woman. Jocko cursed and left the room.

Mary peered around me into the darkness and said Earl?

He was too sick, I said.

The mother put a hand to her mouth and Margo held her close. Mary stared at me a moment like she was angry, and then her face softened and she sighed and said Oh God, I knew it.

She came out and closed the door and tugged me aside a little ways—then she threw herself against me and went up high on her toes so she could lock her arms around my neck. She said something I didn’t catch because her words were muffled against my chest. I stroked her hair and her hip and felt my dick stir, which struck me as a little perverse under the circumstances.

She stepped back and wiped at her eyes and asked what happened, what I was doing there. Pearl had told her the break wouldn’t be until Sunday. When she heard the news on the radio she didn’t know what to think.

We could talk about everything soon enough, I said, but the most important thing right now was a place for me and the guys to lay low. Where was Pearl? Had she said where the hideouts were?

All Pearl had told her was that a friend of John’s named Copeland was arranging for hideouts, but she hadn’t said where.

I said I had to come up with someplace quick, the guys were waiting on me.

I couldn’t see her face very well in the shadows but I felt her staring hard at me. I know a place, she said. Let me get dressed.

She went inside and closed the door and I waited in the dark. I heard the others all talking at once. I couldn’t make out most of what they were saying but I heard her mother screech that she forbid her to go with me. A few minutes later she was back, wearing a long coat over a short dress. The only one still in the living room was Margo, and she wiggled her fingers goodbye at us.

We hustled out to the Phaeton and Shouse crammed himself in the backseat with the others so Mary could sit between me and Russell. I made hasty introductions as I got us rolling. Russell said Hell girl, you’re little-bitty enough to carry in my shirt pocket. She said he better not try it if he knew what was good for him.

Woo,
Red said, she’s a feisty one, Pete.

The car was warmly humid and reeked of our rancid state. The stink must’ve disgusted Mary but she showed no sign of it. She took several packs of cigarettes from her purse and passed them out, saying she’d swiped them from Jocko’s stash, figuring we might be in need.

You sweet angel, Fat Charley said. In a minute the car was so thick with smoke that we had to lower the windows a little and never mind the rain.

I followed her directions toward the west side of town. She was taking us to a friend’s house. She said the place was small but well away from neighbors. It also had a telephone, and a garage around back and out of sight of the street. I asked if her friend could be trusted, and she said she thought so. It really didn’t matter. Her friend wasn’t going to have any chance to fink us while we were there, and once we were gone it wouldn’t make any difference.

The first thing I wanted to do when we got there was try calling Pearl again. I figured she’d know how to get in touch with John. I laughed and said I wondered if that Hoosier even knew we’d busted out, or if he’d been so busy making whoopee he hadn’t heard the news yet.

Oh God, Mary said, don’t you
know?
John’s in jail.

H
e’d been collared in Ohio four days earlier. Mary got the news from Pearl over the phone. Somebody tipped the cops that one of the guys who’d hit the Blufton bank last month was paying regular visits to a certain woman at a boardinghouse in Dayton. So the cops staked out the house. Sure enough, John showed up and they nabbed him.

I looked at Jenkins in the rearview. He said Yeah, hell…that’s where my sister lives.