The Big Bite (16 page)

“But to get back to the harmless little chains of events—where should we begin? With a boy going fishing, and liking it? Or a girl encountering cruelty for the first time, being laughed at at a children’s party because her shoes were half-soled? Ridiculous? Certainly. Thousands of children have been skewered by their contemporaries at parties, millions of men like to go on fishing trips. You have to fit in a horde of other harmless little things and match them up to get the right combination. But there are so many of them and so many combinations that will pay off in annihilation, sooner or later you can almost count on blowing yourself up. Add the fact that nowadays Chevrolet and Buicks look considerably alike, at least in the dusk and seen only in one quick glance. Add a man deciding to take a bag of laundry into town. Not any time, you understand, but this particular time.”

She paused and smiled faintly, as if she were thinking of something a long way off. “Try this on your toughness, Mr. Harlan. None of this could have happened if those three cars had come out of that bottom in any other sequence at all. Mathematically, there are six possibilities, of course, if you merely shook them up in a dice cup. Consider that. On top of all the other interlocking little events that fell into their pattern to set up disaster, the odds were still six to one that they’d remain harmless and pass unnoticed. And yet the right number came up, and here we are.”

“We
are?”

She nodded. “I realize the futility of trying to make you understand, Mr. Harlan. I’m merely talking. I don’t usually rattle on this way, but this afternoon for some reason I just felt in the mood. Here we are, as I say. Destroyed. And yet never once have you even stopped to wonder why those cars came out of the bottom in that particular sequence. Even aside from the laws of chance, there was every reason in the world my husband’s should have been the last. But it wasn’t. It was next to last, and that set up the disaster.”

I couldn’t see what difference it made, now that it had happened and I was as good as dead, but I asked anyway. I could see she was going to go on talking, and there was no way I could shut her up.

“Why should he have been last?”

She shook her head. “You surprise me at times. You show flashes of intelligence, and then you go dead again. Purvis knew, and he didn’t even see me out there. He did it by sheer deduction. I was unfaithful to my husband. I realize you have already grasped this, at least as far as its surface aspects are concerned, and there would be no point in attempting to explore it to any depth because eventually we’d run into language connected with emotion, which obviously would have no meaning to you. How would you describe a sunset to a blind mole living on the dark side of the moon?

“But I’m digressing. To get back to why the three cars came out of the bottom in that particular sequence—my husband, as you probably guessed, came out there to the Cannon summer cottage looking for us. He had been in Houston, but had returned ahead of schedule, probably for that very reason. And he found us. Or rather, I should say, he found Dan. I had wanted to be alone for a little while to think, and I’d taken a walk a short distance around the lake. Mr. Cannon, while he was not drunk, had had enough to be ugly. He became very abusive—he could be quite violent on occasion. Dan denied that I was with him. Of course, it was more or less obvious somebody must have been with him for he would hardly have come out there alone, and there was a good chance I was the one because Dan had no key to the place. Dan did the best he could, however, and insisted he had borrowed a key—several hunting and fishing cronies of Mr. Cannon’s had duplicates. This was a flimsy thing at best, because it could be easily checked, but Dan was desperate and was hoping I would hear the row and stay out of sight. I did. I circled the clearing the cabin was in and started out the road, knowing Dan would come along and pick me up. It is a little over a quarter mile out to where the two roads join—that one and the one going on around to George Gray’s cabin, where you were staying. I passed this juncture—you will recall the place where you saw me was about two hundred yards this side of it. I was waiting there for Dan to drive by. When I saw your car coming, of course, I thought it was he. When I realized my mistake, I stepped back off the road again. Then it occurred to me Dan might have some difficulty picking me up. Obviously, Mr. Cannon, being suspicious, would not leave first. Dan would have to. And Mr. Cannon would be following him very closely to see if he did meet someone along the road. This is precisely what happened. When Dan came by, only a few minutes after you did, he caught sight of me but did not stop. He motioned for me to stay out of sight. My husband’s Cadillac was right behind him. Surely it must have occurred to you there was something strange in the fact my husband’s car wasn’t the last one in the procession?”

I hadn’t even thought about it. And I didn’t care. What difference did it make now?

“Turn it off,” I said. “I knew the two of you’d killed him, and that was all I was interested in.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“I told you I felt like talking, so even at the risk of boring you I’ll proceed. What happened, naturally, was that Dan speeded up going around some turns in the road, and got far enough ahead to pull off and out of sight. My husband went on past, and when he caught up with you just after you got out on the highway, it was perfectly natural that he thought you were Dan. Dan came back and got me. So there you have the marching order for disaster. What you didn’t know, and what I don’t think Purvis even guessed, was that we actually saw the crash.”

“You did? I didn’t think you were that close behind.”

“We were about a mile back, but if you’ll recall the road drops off a long hill into that river bottom where you crashed. It isn’t straightaway, but from the brow of the hill you can see the road going across that straight section of fill and the bridge itself. We happened to be right there when it happened. Of course you both had your headlights on then and we didn’t know for sure it was your car my husband had driven off the road—not until we got there, that is—but it was perfectly obvious the whole thing was deliberate. He had at least another mile of straight road ahead of him, and there were no other cars in sight at all. The inference was inescapable.”

“So you’re going to get away with it?” I said.

Her eyes were moody as she studied the end of her cigarette and it was a moment before she answered. “Do you ever?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Getting away with it, as you put it, is perhaps only an illusion. You go on delaying the ultimate disaster, but you never eliminate it.”

I jumped at this. “Well, get wise to yourself. Turn me loose—”

She smiled coldly. “Really you are a child. I assure you we have every intention of going on. We began it, and now we can’t ever go back. Neither, I might add, can you.”

“Then why do it? Why get yourself in any deeper?”

Her eyebrows raised. “Deeper?”

“Certainly.”

“Really. Don’t be absurd. There’s only one depth, and that’s absolute. You wouldn’t say something was more dead, would you, or more pregnant?”

“So you’d do it just because you’ve got nothing more to lose?”

“Not at all. We’ll do it because we have to. Removing you and your threat is another bulkhead shored up, another ringer in the dike, another postponing of the inevitable. Futile? Perhaps. But what do you do when you see the bulkhead crumpling? You shore it up, even while you’re watching the next one start to buckle. But perhaps I’m tiring you.”

I stared at her. “Well, what in the name of God did you do it for if you didn’t think you could win?”

“Well, obviously, because we thought we could—then. Five months have changed that—for me, at least. You have too much time to think. Too much time to—as you put it—look at the odds. Incidentally, that is a very good parallel. Imagine a roulette wheel that ran for five months, or a year, or ten years, before it stopped. With all your money bet on just one number and with that much time to examine the laws of probability, you must inevitably come to doubt the wisdom of it. Add to that the fact that you never really know for sure when the roulette wheel
has
stopped. It may be an illusion, a very deliberate illusion fostered by the people who are operating it, if you follow me.

“There are too many possibilities inherent in any situation like this, too many factors completely out of your control and utterly unpredictable. Purvis shouldn’t have become suspicious, but he did. The possibility of your paths ever crossing again was mathematically negligible, but it happened. The odds were astronomical against your being in Purvis’s apartment at the precise moment he was killed, and even laughably impossible that you could have been there without being seen, and yet—” She shrugged and crushed out the cigarette.

“You think the police will catch up with you some day, then?”

“I think it quite likely,” she said.

“Then I don’t see why you keep on.” Her eyebrows raised. “You don’t? I thought I had just told you.” She stood up and looked down at me. “But there is another facet to it which you may be able to understand. I should hate very much to be defeated by you. I underestimated you once and let you make a fool of me. It won’t happen again.”

I started to say something. She shoved the handkerchief back in my mouth and plastered the tape over it. She started out, but turned in the doorway. “Oh, I forgot to ask if you wanted anything to eat.”

I stared at her, not even bothering to shake my head.

She went out. I lay there thinking about her and trying to think of something. I was as good as dead unless I could get to one of them, and you didn’t have to be very bright to see she wasn’t the one. I didn’t read her too well, but she was undoubtedly the smoothest, hardest specimen” I’d ever run into. She didn’t think they had a chance of winning any more, but she was going right on as calmly as a woman picking up a bridge hand. There was no use looking for the soft spot in her, because she was armor all the way through.

What about him? He wasn’t what you would call one of the softer types of citizens, but at least he looked a little more promising than she did. For one thing, he was badly gone on her, and intensely jealous. Maybe I could make him lose his head by giving him the needle, but what good would that do as long as he had the gun? He’d just kill me that much quicker. It was hopeless.

As soon as it was dark he came in. He had another gun with him this time, a hand gun that looked like a Luger. He held it and watched with deadly efficiency while she unlocked the handcuffs and untied my feet I went to the bathroom with him right behind me. There wasn’t a flaw in his procedure anywhere. One false move, and I’d have my spine shattered. They fastened me down again.

He stood looking at me. “Nobody’s shown up yet,” he said.

I stared at him. I still had the gag in my mouth and couldn’t have spoken if there’d been anything to say.

“I’m going out to see if anybody’s been to the cabin,” he said. “Better hope so, pal.” They went out and closed the door.

After a while I began to hear voices very faintly, coming from the direction of the living-room. I tried to see what time it was, but my watch had stopped because I hadn’t been able to wind it. The sound of voices increased and I could hear laughter now and then, and music. She was giving a party.
Mrs. Julia Cannon entertained a small group of her friends last night at an informal gathering at her lovely home on Cherrywood Drive—
The cold-blooded deadliness of it got to me for a moment and I felt sick. The only thing she’d forgotten was to use me for a cloak room. She should have brought the mink stoles and evening wraps in and thrown them on my face.

It went on for hours, or so it seemed. It must have been after midnight when it began to quiet down. I wondered if he had been at the party. Apparently he had, for when he came back his face was slightly flushed as if he had been drinking. The house had been silent for about an hour then, so I supposed he had left with the other guests and then sneaked back. They played a smooth game, and they never made a mistake or left themselves open anywhere.

She was still dressed in an evening gown and he had I on a dark suit. She stood in the doorway behind him as he came in.

“Your friend must have forgotten you,” he said. “Nobody’s been out there.”

I looked at him. He was feeling his drinks, all right, and he was looking for trouble.

He stepped forward and ripped the adhesive off my mouth. It was stuck to the beard stubble on my face and made a tearing sound as it came away. He looked over his shoulder at her. “Maybe this would be a good time to find out where he hid that tape.”

“Somebody might hear him if he shouts,” she warned.

He took the gun out of his pocket again. “If he makes any noise he’ll get this across his face.”

I hadn’t had any water for twenty-four hours. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t speak even after the handkerchief was gone from it. I tried to moisten it with saliva. It wasn’t too successful.

“How about it?” he asked roughly.

My jaw felt as if it had been broken when I tried to move it. My voice cracked. “I told you, you simple bastard. I mailed it.”

“Funny he hasn’t shown up around here, isn’t it?”

I didn’t care any more what he did. If I had to go through another twenty-four hours of lying here I’d go crazy. It was better to provoke something now and take my chances than to go out of my mind.

“Well, why worry about him?” I asked. “When he does show up she can always lay him for you. She doesn’t mind.”

It got to him so fast he didn’t even think to swing at me with the gun. He dropped it into his left hand and smashed me on the jaw with the right. It made my head ring, but I thought I heard a finger break.

“Don’t be a fool, Dan,” she said with exasperation. “Can’t you see he’s deliberately trying to make you lose your head?”

“Maybe he’s in a hurry. Why keep him waiting?”

She shook her head. “It’s been only one day.”

“Seven altogether.”

“I liked the first six,” I said. “Fun, wasn’t it, honey?”

He looked down at me with the veins beginning to stand out on his temples. He was half drunk, half crazy from thinking about just that, and wide open for the needle.

“Dan! Don’t be juvenile. Are you going to let this stupid thug make a fool of you?”

He didn’t even hear her. He was just staring at me, his eyes going wilder and more savage every second. He shifted the gun back to his right hand and started to chop at my face with it. She sprang forward and caught his arm.

“Not in here, you fool!” she said in a furious whisper. “Do you want to have to carry him two blocks to your car?” She didn’t say anything about making a sloppy mess in her beautiful home, but the thought was there.

“Maybe you’d just like me to turn him loose?” he asked savagely.

“Oh, don’t be an idiot! But if you’re going to do it tonight, at least—for the love of heaven—do it right. Don’t start behaving like a madman. You’ve got to get him out of here, the way we planned it.”

“You want to be sure you don’t have anything to do with it? Is that it?”

“Of course not! Listen, Dan!” she said urgently. “Please don’t lose your head now. This is dangerous.”

He appeared to be getting a grip on himself and becoming rational enough again to realize she was right. He straightened and backed away a step.

“You just don’t know how to handle her,” I said. “When she starts throwing her weight around, get rough with her. She loves it.”

He wheeled and lunged at me, his hands reaching for my throat as he fell across the bed. She sprang forward and began tugging at his arm. “Stop it! Dan, stop it!”

He sat up. His face was white and glistening with sweat. “All right, all right,” he said, fighting for breath. He swung around and began tearing at the rope holding my legs. “I’ll take the precious son of a bitch out there where you won’t have to see it, if that’s what’s worrying you. I’ll take care of it. Just keep out of my way—”

The rope came free. He hurried around to the left side of the bed, groping in the pocket of his trousers. His hand came out, holding a pair of small keys tied together with twine. I watched him, hardly daring to breathe now. If I didn’t get a chance within, the next few seconds I’d never have one again. He unlocked the handcuff on the left side and slid the loop of the chain out of the other half of it. I saw what he was going to do. He’d shackle my hands together with that pair before he broke the other one loose.

She was standing below the foot of the bed, silently watching. Suddenly she gestured impatiently. “Put the gag back in his mouth. You can’t take him out of here that way.”

“All right!” he said furiously. He grabbed the handkerchief and began wadding it back in my mouth. He stuck the tape back over it. Most of the adhesive was gone from it now and it didn’t hold very well. I lay perfectly still, as if I had forgotten as well as he had that my left wrist was free now and that the handcuff was lying beside my hand.

He pushed down hard against my mouth with his hand to fasten the tape. ‘”There, you son of a bitch.”

I drew the left arm back a little. My fingers closed over one loop of the handcuffs.

“Dan!” she shrieked. “Look out!”

I swung it as hard as I could. The cuff hit him over the right temple, but even as it landed I knew I hadn’t had enough swing on it to knock him out. He jerked and grunted and fell over on top of me. I tried to pull the arm free to swing again, but I could get only the forearm out. He was across my upper arm and shoulder. I put the hand against his throat and strained, trying to pull him to the right so I could reach him with that one too. His body rolled a little. I could get my right hand on his shirt collar. I locked my fingers on it and pulled, but he was coming around now and beginning to struggle. I let go with the left and shoved it downward, toward his right-hand coat pocket where the gun was.

Then she was on us both. He rolled back a little when she landed, and all his weight was on my left arm. I was still short of the pocket a good six inches when her hand flashed into it and came out with the gun. She tried to back off us. I grabbed for her and caught the upper edge of the strapless gown. A seam ripped. She slashed downward at my arm with the gun, and it went numb up to the shoulder.

She slid back and stood up, still holding the gun. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes wild, and the torn gown was threatening to slide down onto her hips. She looked deadly enough to give you nightmares for the rest of your life. He put a hand on my chest and pushed upward, swinging the other one at my face. I turned, heaving my shoulders, and he lost his balance and fell on me again. I got both hands on his throat once more. There was no strength at all in the left one, but I managed to hold on. He was still weak from the blow on the head and I was cutting off his wind now. In all the wildness I looked at her again and saw her trying to find the safety on the gun. It was pointed right at my face.

He gave one last effort and jerked free and then the gun went off. It was like a hand-grenade exploding in a cistern. The wave of sound rolled over me, reverberated around the walls, and then rolled back like thunder. He jerked and went limp in my arms and his face dropped onto my chest. The sound chopped off, and there was dead silence except for the ringing in my ears.

I looked at her, still too numb to move. She was standing very still, staring with horror at the back of his head. The gun slipped from her fingers and thudded gently on the carpet. Her mouth opened and she put the flat side of three closed fingers up over it, like some genteel type patting back a yawn, while her eyes went wider and wider with shock. There was a greenish tinge to the pallor of her face just as she collapsed slowly to her knees and then fell forward, out of sight below the foot of the bed. She had killed him. He was lying across me, I was still handcuffed to the bed, and everybody in this end of town would have heard, the shot. And then she had capped everything by fainting.

What had he done with the keys? He’d had them. Were they in the bed, or had he put them back in one of his pockets? I couldn’t get my mind to work at all. It was as if it had been shocked into numbness by all the violence and sound and now that they were gone I was lying here in utter silence trying to kick it awake. Somebody would call the police. If they didn’t get any answer when they came they’d break in. I had to get her awake so she could go to the door if they did come, and I couldn’t even reach her.