The Big Bite (12 page)

There was an overnight bag on the floor in back. She turned and saw me looking at it.

“I was—I mean, I’m going to Dallas to visit friends over the weekend,” she said.

“Hot there, this time of year,” I said.

“Yes. Isn’t it?”

The sun was far down now, below the wall of timber around the clearing, and there was something about the light that played up her flamboyant coloring—warm red, honey, deep brown, and the jet shadow of her hair. She had taken something from the glove compartment, but at the moment I wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been carrying a lighted neon sign in each hand.

“You promised me a beer,” she said.

“Sure,” I replied. We went up on the porch. “Make yourself at home. I’ll change out of these trunks and open a couple of cans.”

I went through into the back room, took off the swim trunks, and put on shorts and a pair of flannel slacks. Just as I was shoving my feet into sandals she came in. She leaned against the door frame, holding a cigarette in her fingers, and swept an amused glance around the room at the beds and the duck-hunting clothes hanging along the walls.

“Very cozy,” she said. “A little crude—but masculine.”

I tossed the trunks across a chair and stepped toward her. She didn’t move out of the doorway. I leaned an arm against the frame above her head and stood looking down at her.

“Long drive,” I said.

She tilted her head back. “Yes. Isn’t it?”

She put a hand up on my arm. “No shirt. Characteristic.”

I said nothing.

“Like oak.”

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

She stared musingly at the gold cuff link on her wrist as the hand slid downward, across my shoulder. The cigarette slipped from the fingers of her other hand and fell to the floor. She didn’t appear to notice it.

“You dropped your cigarette,” I said.

She glanced down. “Oh. So I did.”

It was lying near her feet. She placed the toe of one of the pumps on it and ground it slowly into the floor.

She looked back up at my face.

“I was finished with it,” she said.

It was dark in the room. She stirred languidly beside me on the narrow bed and sat up, groping on the table for a cigarette. The big match flared, revealing her nakedness. She couldn’t have cared less. She was a cool devil in most ways, but when she was after fun she took it fervently and unbuttoned.

“Oh,” she said. The hand carrying the match stopped its movement a little short of the end of the cigarette.

“What is it?” I asked. ?

“I almost forgot the thing I came out here for.”

“Like hell you did,” I said.

She turned her head slightly and smiled at me in the light of the match. It was a large assortment of smile wanton and go-to-hell at the same time, with just a trace of well-fed cat. “No,” she said. “I brought you something.”

“Not really?”

“Shut up.” She lit the cigarette and waved the match to put it out. “It’s on the table in the other room.”

“What is?” Then I remembered she had taken something from the glove compartment of the car.

“The envelope. With the money in it.”

“Money?”

“Really. I’m not that distracting, am I?”

“How much money?”

“That’s more like it. You should stay in character.”

“The hell with that. How much?”

“Eight thousand.”

“Why?”

“Partial payment. What else? I happened to have that much available, and since I had to give it to you. Sooner or later—”

“You’re a relaxed type.”

“Not relaxed. Realistic. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not soft. If you’d left yourself open anywhere, you’d never have extorted a nickel from me. But you didn’t—so what’s the use stalling or crying about it?”

“How about this? Not that I’m kicking, you understand, but you did surprise me a little—”

“Women can surprise you? At your age?”

“So I’m stupid.”

“Just say you intrigued me.”

“That’s good.”

“You’re quite interesting. You have daring, imagination, and no more moral restraint than a cobra. I don’t like dull men.”

“So you like me. Crap.”

“I didn’t say I liked you. I said you interested me.”

“That’s nice,” I said. I got up and went into the other room. Striking a match, I located the envelope on the table and opened it. It was a big nine by twelve Manila type, and inside were a lot of loose bills plus two blocks of fifties. The match burned down and scorched my fingers while I stared. I tried to imagine what a hundred thousand would look like. It would be a little over twelve times as much. I struck another match and carried it into the back room. When I put the envelope on the table beside the bed some of the money slid out. I looked from it to her in the flickering light.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Color scheme,” I said. “Make a great painting.
Nude brunette with eight thousand dollars.”

She smiled mockingly. “Ah, your esthetic side.”

“I’m a sensitive type,” I said. “I live for beauty.”

“But, really, you’re more complex than that. Shouldn’t your great painting also include a broiled T-bone steak and a bottle of cheap bourbon?”

“Leave out the bourbon,” I said. “I don’t drink.” The match went out and I dropped it on the floor. I sat on the side of the bed and struck another to light a cigarette.

“You see now why you interest me?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“You’re an odd mixture. All your tastes are elemental; you operate right at the instinctive level. And yet you demonstrate great imagination and some intelligence in your campaigns to satisfy these primitive urges.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “Why don’t you write a book?”

“You’re a magnificent brute.”

The match went out and I tried to remember in the dark what the money looked like.

“You just take what you want.”

“Sure, sure,” I said.

Her voice went on. “I think we’re a lot more alike in some ways than either of us would care to admit.”

Women,
I thought. They yakked all the time except when they were being laid or asleep. They could make a federal case out of as simple a thing as a jump in the hay, and then afterward they had to analyze it like a bridge hand. Well, what the hell, maybe she wasn’t as bad as a lot of them, at that. At least she didn’t require three days’ conversation to get into bed; all she had to do was see one handy and have room to throw her clothes. She had talent, too, once she got there. I began to think about that again, stretched out beside her, and shut her up with the old classic method of turning off the yak. It was all right with her.

We stooged around the cabin all the next day, and late in the afternoon we went for a swim. She didn’t have a suit in her overnight bag, but that didn’t bother her to any extent. Afterward she dressed in white shorts and a knit pullover thing with short sleeves and we sat on the front porch drinking beer. She was something to see, even after nearly twenty-four hours of her.

“You’re a good-looking dish,” I said.

She smiled lazily and stretched out a leg, looking at her red toenails. “Why, thank you, Cyrano. You overwhelm me.”

“What about Tallant?” I asked.

“Very well. What about Tallant?”

“Does he think you’re in Dallas?”

“I suppose so. But does it matter?”

“No. Except he might blow his stack if he found put where you really were.”

“Well,, he can’t do anything.”

I lit a cigarette. “No. Of course not—as long as he’s in his right mind. But I don’t think he’s as tough as you are, and he might flip. He’s close enough to the edge now; why push him over the line?”

She smiled mockingly. “Ah, there speaks the ardent lover—”

“Nuts. This thing is tricky enough now without getting it loused up with a lot of personal angles. If you want to put the harpoon in Tallant, do it after I get out of the country.”

“He doesn’t own me.”

“Well, he’s tried hard enough,” I said, thinking of Cannon and Purvis. “Aren’t you going to get married?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wasn’t that the idea?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You were running around with him but Cannon got wise to it. He’d have divorced you, but the property settlement wouldn’t have been very big, with the evidence he had. So when he came uncorked and tried to drive you off the road and left himself set up like a duck in a shooting gallery, you blew the whistle on him.”

“I see no point in discussing it. Emotion of any kind would be beyond your comprehension.”

“Hell, it’s nothing to me. But what’d you do—get tired of him? Tallant, I mean.”

She leaned back on her elbows and regarded me thoughtfully. “He does tend to get a little intense and possessive. And maybe I could like you better.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “Have all the fun you want, but let’s don’t get too careless, shall we? Not till I get mine and get out of here. This is a big deal, and I don’t want it screwed up by some jealous type going off his rocker. One false move and we’ll have cops around here like cats at a fish fry.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” she asked coldly.

“Of course not. I’m just trying to use common sense.”

“Use all you want. But I’m going to stay.”

“Sure, sure. Stick around. What the hell.”

She smiled. “After all, I’m supposed to have gone somewhere for the weekend. And I like it here.”

“That’s an old gag,” I said.

She laughed.

I gave up. Women never made any sense, anyway. And there really wasn’t any reason Tallant would come out here and find her; I was just jittery because there was so much at stake.
Relax,
I thought;
quit worrying and join the party.

That was Friday afternoon. Saturday morning at ten, while we were drinking coffee in the front room, he walked in on us. He was carrying a gun in his right hand, and he was wired and set to go off.

For some reason—probably just dumb luck—she was dressed, for a change. For the best part of two days she’d been lying around like an oyster on the half shell, but this morning when she climbed out of the sack she’d put the pleated skirt and the blouse back on. Maybe that helped; I didn’t know. On the face of it, it wouldn’t seem to make a great deal of difference; there couldn’t be much chance she’d been out here two days and nights just to give me her recipe for pineapple fritters, but you can never tell for sure about a joker who’s beginning to lose his marbles. If he’d happened to walk in on us in the sack or while she was lying around in nothing but her nail polish he might have killed us both before we could open our mouths. As it was, it was bad enough.

She was sitting at the table facing the open front door and I was at the stove pouring another cup of coffee when I heard her say,
“Well!”
I wheeled, and he was standing in the door. He was so big it looked as if it had been stretched around him. His mouth twitched, he hadn’t shaved for two or three days, and his eyes had the wild, staring look of a man who was going to swing at the next cockroach that laughed at him.

My gun was in the back room in a duffle bag and I was ten feet from him, at least, with nothing in my hand but a coffee pot. Gooseflesh prickled across my shoulders. She was all right, though. He didn’t scare her a nickel’s worth, and she was just the girl to show him. She smiled at him with exactly the right shade of contempt to push him over the line, and said, “My, aren’t we dramatic?” I couldn’t think of anything helpful except to pray he’d use the whole clip on her before he remembered me.

He took a slow step into the room and turned just enough to watch us both. He was wearing dark slacks and a white shirt with the cuffs rolled halfway up his rope-muscled forearms. The shirt was stained down the front with something he’d spilled on it, and he looked like a man on the wrong end of a two-day binge. If he’d been drunk, though, he wasn’t now. He was just unstable and dangerous as hell.

“So you went to Dallas,” he said harshly.

She rested her chin in one cupped palm and regarded him with faint amusement. “Are you asking me, dear?”

“Why did you even bother to lie about it, you lousy little chippy?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t. I started to Dallas, but you might say I changed my mind. It looked as if it might be more fun to stay here.” She smiled sweetly. “And do you know, it was. I’ve been having a wonderful time.”

I took a chance and breathed, hoping he wouldn’t notice I was still alive. Maybe he’d just kill her and go away. I wanted to kill her myself.

He walked slowly over to the table and stood looking down at her with the veins standing out on his temples. The gun lined up with her face. “Look up here,” he said. “Look up at me, you roundheeled bitch—”

She glanced up calmly. “Yes, dear? And what are you going to do?”

If she’d only shut up— He was still talking, so maybe there was a chance. But, oh, for the love of God, couldn’t she keep her stupid mouth shut for a minute?

I was careful not to move. “Tallant,” I said softly.

He didn’t even hear me. His face twitched. “I wish to God I’d never seen you. Or even heard of you. Why couldn’t you have died when you were born? Look at you! You’re what I went through it for—”

”Tallant,” I said again, a little louder this time.

He turned then. “Don’t get in a hurry,” he said. “I’m coming to you.”

“Listen,” I said. “Don’t be a fool, Tallant. You haven’t got a chance in the world. If you kill us the police will get that tape. You want to commit suicide?”

“Shut up!” he shouted. “I don’t care! It’ll be worth it—”

“Cut it out,” I went on, trying to keep my voice calm. “Use your head. Go on and get out of here, and you’re in the clear. Nobody’ll ever know, and she’s the one who has to pick up the tab. She’s paying off for you. Stop acting like, a kid.”

“I’ll kill both of you!”

Gently,
I thought.
Don’t move. Don’t set him off
. He was making threats, having to prime himself to keep going. He was beginning to waver, and the moment to use the gun was slipping away. We might make it—if she didn’t open her fat mouth again.

She did. And she put both feet in it this time. “You haven’t been following me, have you, dear? You know I don’t like that.”

He started to turn.
Throw the coffee pot,
I thought bitterly; that always works fine in the movies. Then, without any warning, he cracked. He looked around helplessly, like some big, tortured kid, and said,
“Why?
Why did you do it?”

“Get out,” she said contemptuously.

“Julia—” He dropped the gun to the floor and stood with his chin on his chest. “Julia—” Turning, he ran out the door.

I picked up the gun and went out on the porch. He was stumbling along the road and in a moment he entered the wall of timber at the edge of the clearing and was out of sight. His car would be back up there somewhere.

She came up beside me and put an arm across my shoulders. I turned, caught the front of her blouse, and slapped her across the face with the back of my hand. It made a sharp sound in the stillness. She cried out and stepped back.

I wiped the sweat off my face with a hand that was still shaking, and walked past her into the back room. Throwing the big suitcase on the bed, I began tossing clothes into it. She came back and stood in the doorway. Her face was white except for the angry red splotch on her cheek, and she stared at me with amazement.

“What did you do that for?” she asked.

“For being an idiot.”

“What do you mean?”

I straightened with a shirt in my hand. “Go ahead. Get yourself killed. But you can leave me out of it.”

She shrugged. “He’s harmless.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. He was harmless. He’d only killed two men so far.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, with just a shade of the same contempt she’d used on him. “Are you afraid of him?”

“Don’t try to ride me,” I said. “I’ll slap your face around under your ear.”

She sniffed. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? He can’t do anything to you, and you know it.”

I walked over and stood looking down at her. “Try to get this through your fat head. Maybe you can’t, but try it, anyway. He can’t do anything to me as long as he cares what happens to him. That’s what the whole thing was based on. The minute he quits caring, threatening him with that tape is about as bright as trying to put out hell with a water pistol. He’s half nuts, and you’re pushing him over the line. He’s already killed two men because of you—God knows why, when he could have laid you for a bar of soap—but he did, and now that he’s got himself into a jam that can put him in the electric chair, you start giving him the treatment. You don’t think he’ll be back. I do. And the next time he probably won’t do so much talking first; he’ll be smoking up the place when he comes through the door—”