One Endless Hour (22 page)

    The early-morning rain had renewed itself in a steady drizzle as I ran down the driveway to the rental car Harris had parked at the curb. "Dahl won't be coming," I said as I slid into the front seat. "It just became a two-way split."

    Harris paled. "The police!" he guessed.

    "No, but they'll be right along. Drive to my VW in front of the tourist home." Harris started up the car like a sleepwalker. I looked into the back seat. There were no sacks. "Where's the money?"

    "In the trunk," Harris said. He appeared to be having difficulty in swallowing. He turned two corners and pulled in behind my car. "What do we do now?"

    "Get onto the highway leading into Philadelphia. You know the route. I'll follow you. If we become separated, take a room in the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel and wait for me. Leave the car in the hotel garage." I punched him on the arm. "We'll lick this thing yet."

    "Yeah," he said, but his attempted smile was wan.

    I opened the door of the rental car. "Stay within the speed limit," I warned him, and ran for the VW. Harris moved away as I started it up. I followed him, but not too closely. At the first traffic light I inched into the curb and dropped my package addressed to Dr. Afzul into the gaping maw of the curbside mailbox. When the light changed, I slid in behind Harris again.

    One loose end bothered me. Harris was now driving Dahl's rental. His own was parked downtown near the bank. If things had gone properly, we'd have gone back for it. Now the police would find it eventually, with the risk that the rental clerk might be able to identify Harris. We couldn't venture downtown again, though.

    The homes in the residential area thinned out. As we approached open country, I pulled off my red wig. I reached into the glove compartment, took out the black one, put it on one-handed, and fastened the tabs. I threw the red wig into the glove compartment. I'd take care of a makeup change during my first gas stop.

    When the trees began flying by too rapidly, I looked down at the speedometer. Harris was driving too fast. I backed off my accelerator, and he drew away from me at once. It was panic scraping at his nerves. I could see the rental swaying from side to side on the rain-slick road as he forced it. In minutes he was out of sight, a curve or two ahead of me.

    I felt no sense of shock when I saw fresh heavy black skidmarks in the middle of a sharp curve. I came out of the turn myself to find the rental across the road with its driver's side wedged solidly against a big tree. A puff of smoke or a cloud of dust still was poised above the crumpled hood. The car had hit so hard parts of it had exploded from the frame. Pieces of metal were still rolling in the street. As I braked the VW, a tongue of flame licked up over the back of the rental, and burning gasoline trickled down the rain-washed gutter.

    I pulled off onto the shoulder and ran across the street. I could hear the ominous sound of crackling flames. The whole car was catching fire, the back end the worst. One look into the driver's side was enough to show that it made no difference to Preacher Harris whether anyone got him out or not. His neck was broken, wrenched completely around on his left shoulder. Blood was running from a corner of his mouth.

    I reached in through the smoke, wincing, and snatched the car keys. The money was locked up in the trunk. I dashed to the rear of the car and tried to force the key into the burning trunk. The heat drove me away. I tried it again, but as I did I heard the words of Dr. Afzul in the hospital as though on a tape recorder: "Do not get burned again, at least not in the same areas. What I do this time, no one can do a second time."

    But the money was in the trunk.

    I tried it again.

    The flames were roaring viciously, and they drove me away.

    I gave up.

    I stood there for what seemed minutes, just a few yards away, watching the bank loot burn up. Then another car pulled around the same curve and brakes screeched as the driver saw the burning wreck. I threw the rental's car keys back into the front seat and ran across the wet street to the newcomer. "Call an ambulance!" I yelled at him to get him away from the scene. He nodded and gunned his car ahead down the road.

    I got into the VW, made a U-turn to reverse direction, took the first left to angle back onto the Philadelphia highway, and was at the Bellevue-Stratford in half an hour.

    It hadn't really sunk in that no one was going to meet me there.

    

    

    It was six months before I found out what actually happened at the Mace house that night.

    I stayed in a motel for three days after checking out of the hotel the next morning. When I felt sure the initial heat was off, I drove to Texas. I worked for three months as boss in a sawmill in Sweetwater. Then for a change of pace I went up to Hugo, Oklahoma, and worked a couple more months as assistant on a survey crew. One reason I stayed with it so long was that I needed the money. Another was that I needed a breather to assess what the bungled job had done to my nerve.

    Then I moved on to the west coast. In Los Angeles I found a back-street film processor who agreed to develop the cartridge of color film I'd scavenged from Dick Dahl's movie camera. The processor almost backed out when I insisted upon going into the darkroom with him. He finally went through with it. I was taking no chances on him making a duplicate negative on spec since he knew I would hardly come to him with anything legitimate.

    So almost six months to the day after the fiasco I rented a projector and sat down in my motel room one night. There were no surprises at the opening of the film. It started with views of the wide-hipped woman in the airport parking lot. Then it shifted abruptly to a vacantly staring Rachel Mace, who somehow managed to appear more naked than any female without clothing I had ever seen.

    Then suddenly a pinpoint-eyed Ellen Barton was doing a dance of the seven veils in front of the lens, without any veils. Dahl hadn't been able to resist the chance to film the two nude girls. The camera, which had been handheld previously, suddenly shifted to a new, higher perspective. It was now on the tripod I had seen, I decided.

    And I found that I had seriously underestimated Dick Dahl. He walked into focus in front of his own camera without a stitch on. He coupled with the willing Ellen for some time, then turned his attention to Rachel. I could see the idiot's pleased reaction at the attention turn to doubt and then to anger. I saw the unbelieving look on Dahl's face when those terrible hands clamped down on him. And I watched Rachel Mace strangle Dick Dahl to death while Ellen Barton stood by, laughing.

    When the film ran out, I didn't rewind it. I stripped it from the reel, took it into the bathroom, and burned it. It stunk like hell. I flushed the residue down the toilet.

    Dahl would probably never forgive me for not burying the reel of film in a pot of flowers and taking it east and putting it on his grave.

    Too bad I'm not the sentimental type.

    

    

    So I'm at a loose end right now.

    I'm trying to make up my mind what comes next.

    There's the Schemer, for one thing. I owe him money. Not 12 1/2 percent of $225,000, since I wound up with nothing, but on the other hand he can't sell the Thornton, Pa., job again. I owe him something, and I don't have it.

    I could go to Colorado and dig up the jar at timberline and set myself up so that I could pick and choose on the next job. But I still consider that jar mistake money.

    Right this minute I can't seem to make up my mind.

    Once in a while I even think I might run up to Ely, Nevada, for a few days and look up Hazel Andrews.

    I'll shake myself out of it one of these days, though, and then everything will be back to normal.