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The Criminal

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Q
uietly he tested the door of Lila’s bedroom and saw that it was locked; and then he went into his own room, leaving the door open to hear any movement of hers, and opened his briefcase.

He took the insurance policies from the briefcase, scanned them perfunctorily and slipped them into his inside coat pocket. They would go into the safety deposit box tomorrow.

He dipped into the briefcase again and drew out other papers. He studied them, frowning, with much of the disturbing feeling that he had for the insurance policies. With a grunt of irritation, he shuffled them into a kind of chronological order and began to read:

Sandstone…

Luther thought he’d become accustomed to rottenness. Yet Sandstone never failed to outrage him. It wasn’t a prison. It was a madhouse in which the keeper, and not the inmates, was mad. There was only one way to survive there: to become tougher and more tortuous-minded than that keeper. If you did that—if you amused the man with the preternaturally brilliant eyes and the unpredictable laughter—you not only survived, but did so in comparative comfort.

But there could be no letting down. You might tire of the game, but the man never did. And when you tired or became careless…

Well, Fish hadn’t hanged them, but he had threatened them with everything else; and, while each had faced the harangue in his own way, the results had been identical.

The Chief, a full-blooded Indian serving three life sentences, had merely grinned insolently and made non-committal replies. The red-haired, blue-eyed Cosgrove had talked at length: polite, mildly humorous, insistently grammatical—and without saying anything. He would not turn on the man, the Chief, who had obviously helped him. No threat or bribe could make him.

He, Luther, had been a little troubled by Cosgrove’s patent intelligence. But still, he fitted specifications in every other detail, and he would be given nothing for that intelligence to work on.

Well, there it was; the beginning and the end of everything. And now that he had examined it item by item, he could not dispel the thought that it was both foolish and dangerous. If Hardesty had not been positive that it would work—but Hardesty had been positive. He was certain that under the circumstances they were creating, the insurance companies would have to pay, and pay promptly. That was Hardesty’s best legal advice, and Hardesty had never yet been wrong about a legal matter.

Well—Luther sighed and began to undress—it was done now. He wished that Cosgrove wasn’t such a likeable person, but that, unfortunately or otherwise, was necessary. There had to be some reason for getting him out of Sandstone.

He heard Lila’s door open, and he paused in the act of removing a shoe. She stopped in the hall, her fur coat over her arm.

“Couldn’t sleep, eh?” he said. “Well, I trust you’ve got something arranged. It’s a little late at night for a pick-up.”

She smiled weakly, apologetically. “After all, Doc, I
am
human.”

“Interesting,” he said, letting the shoe drop to the floor. “An interesting if debatable statement.”

“You—you don’t mind my going out?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

“I need some money, Doc.”

“I’ll get it for you in the morning.”

“I could take a check…”

“You,” he said, “can do exactly what you’re told. Exactly. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” she said, slowly. “Perfectly.”

I
t is five o’clock in the morning of my second day here, and I have been lying awake since one.

Excited and happy? I suppose. I suppose that, beneath this bleached mask which does duty as a face, I am still shouting with wonder and delight. But a man can only enjoy so much and then comes sleep.

I wish I had taken nothing to drink on the way here yesterday. I am positive—almost—that I said and did nothing out of the way. And, yet, of course, I cannot be absolutely positive.

I had nodded agreeably when he explained he never drank while driving; and I expressed my gratitude for his understanding of my need to “forget.” I drank without urging, and when about a third of the pint was gone, the questions began.

Why had I chosen him to write to? That was simple. The only periodicals we received in the prison were brag-books—“controlled circulation” publications issued for the purpose of squeezing money from individuals and firms who were doing, or hoped to do, business with the politicians in power. I had got his address from a complimentary advertisement in one of these. I had obtained the address of everyone else I appealed to in the same way.

Did I understand why he had put me through that rigamarole with Warden Fish? I was not prepared to question his actions, I said (and quite sincerely), but I believed I understood. He demanded absolute loyalty from his associates. He would have no use for a man who would abandon loyalty for expediency.

Did I have any close relatives or friends? No. I had a married sister who wrote me a brief note each Christmas. At her request, I did not reply. Our only tie was the accident of birth.

What had I read? Everything in the prison library, contributions to which seemed to have stopped about 1920. All of Shakespeare, Dickens, Swift, Twain, Addison and Steele, Rabelais, Schopenhauer, Marx, Scott, Jules Verne, Wilde, Cervantes, Machiavelli, the Rover Boy series, Lewis Carroll, the Bible, the…

As I talked, I adjusted the wind-wing on the window next to me until I picked up Dr. Luther’s reflection in its nickeled frame. He seemed well pleased with my replies, although, due to three slightly protruding upper teeth, the mere relaxation of his features sometimes gives him the appearance of smiling.

He is about fifty, I should judge, but here, again, it is hard to be certain. His hair is thin and sandy. He is considerably overweight for his height, which is something less than mine. His eyes bulge behind thick-lensed glasses. Add to that a soft voice which switches abruptly from the grammatical and precise to the slangy and vulgar—and you have a man whose age, like himself, is no matter for hasty estimation.

I went on talking and watching him as the miles sped by, knowing that my words were becoming blurred. Knowing, then not knowing…

When I awakened hours later, we were only about ten miles from the city, and the car was turning into a roadhouse near the edge of a large lake.

The establishment had apparently been pretty swank at one time, but that had been a long while ago. It was gone to seed now. We were the only patrons. Looking through the window, I could see why. What I thought was a lake was actually a river—a broad, sluggishly moving expanse of greasy sludge and mud and water; the waste from the city’s oil field.

Despite the tightly closed windows and the air-conditioning system, there was a faint and unpleasant smell of sulphur.

“A little present from the oil companies,” he said, with a sudden sour laugh. “They’ve taken a billion dollars out of this field, and they’re taking more every day. But they can’t afford to dispose of their sludge!”

I didn’t say anything, and he laughed again, the same way, staring down at his almost untouched food.

“I should talk,” he said, harshly. “Pat, I’m going to lay my cards on the table. Play straight. Tell you something you’d find out in the next twenty-four hours, anyway…”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Doc. Everyone does.”

“All right, Doc.”

“I’m a qualified psychologist, but I haven’t practiced in years. I can’t give you a job at the clinic because I haven’t any. It’s just a front for my lobbying. Grafting, in plain English.”

I gave him a straight, steady look. “You got me out of Sandstone, Doc,” I said. “That’s all I need to know about you.”

“Well—I’m not apologizing, of course. Hell, they didn’t call this state the heart of Balkan America for nothing. When it’s a choice of eat or be eaten, what’s a sensible man to do?”

“Eat,” I said.

He chuckled and made a feinting motion at my chin with his fist. “You’ll do, Pat. Now what I had in mind for you was a job with the state—something that won’t require any training. How would that suit you?”

“Anything you do will suit me fine,” I said. “But—”

“Yes?”

“How can I be of any use to you if I don’t work for you?”

“Why should you have to be of any use to me?” His voice was an angry snarl. “Isn’t it conceivable that I might want to help you unselfishly? Give you a break when no one else would?”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I said. “I merely hoped to do something in return for what you’ve done for me.”

“Well, skip it,” he said. “Maybe we ought to be getting out of here. Later than I thought it was.”

He drove slowly, glancing out at the curving river of mud, which, except for its smell, was gradually being lost in the darkness.