The Big Bite (17 page)

I rolled him off me and sat up. The keys were nowhere in sight on the bed. Where were they? Where? Hurry, I thought. For the love of God, find them before they start pounding on the door. I slid off the bed. I couldn’t stand erect because of the shortness of the chain between the handcuff and the bed frame. I couldn’t reach the foot of the bed, where she was. Wildness began to take possession of me.
Stop it, for Christ’s sake,
I said aloud, like a man in delirium.
Get hold of yourself. He had the keys here; he hasn’t been anywhere else, so they’re still here.

I caught him by a shoulder and pushed. He moved over a little. The keys weren’t under him. He was lying on his back now. I plunged my left hand into his right-hand trousers pocket, and yanked it wrong side out. There was nothing in it but some change and a pocket-knife. I reached across and turned the left one out. There was a folded handkerchief in it. I threw it aside, and then stared. The keys dropped out, falling onto the sheet right at the far edge of the bed. I lunged for them and my fingertips brushed them off onto the floor on the other side.

It was a nightmare now. I reached across as far as I could, and then downward. My extended fingertips just brushed the carpet. There was no telling where they had landed. I pushed backward and slid off the bed again on the near side, sprawling on the floor. There they were. They were lying on the carpet just under the far side of the bed, near the foot. Rolling onto my back, I slid under as far as my shackled right arm would let me. In this position I couldn’t see them any more because my body was cutting off too much of the light, but I remembered about where they had been. My left hand frenziedly patted the carpet. Nothing. They
had
to be I there. I was pawing like a madman and lunging against the restraining chain. How long had it been now?
Stop it,
I thought wildly. If you go to pieces now you’re dead. Suppose it was just a parlor game; you’d figure out the answer to it in five seconds.

They had to be further down toward the foot, but I was reaching as far as I could now. Move the bed, you fool.
Move the bed.
I caught the under side of it with my left hand, and heaved. Nothing happened except that I slid myself along the carpet. He was on it and he was too heavy. Moving it without something to brace myself against was impossible. I swung my legs around wildly, reversing my position so my feet were against the wall under the headboard. Grabbing the underside of the board with the fingers of my left hand, I heaved backward. The bed slid a couple of inches and then stopped. I heaved again. Nothing gave. The foot of it had come up against her. That was where she had fallen. In this awkward position I couldn’t move it against the weight of both of them.

Well, maybe it was far enough. I swung back the way I had been at first and began wildly sweeping my left hand around. There they were! My outstretched fingertips touched metal. They slid off. I strained, pulling against the chain. The end of the middle finger brushed against them again. I tried to press down and pull them toward me. The finger slid off. They were a fraction of an inch out of reach.

Maybe I was already going crazy. I could hear myself cursing endlessly and idiotically in a kind of chant like a phonograph somebody had turned on and then forgotten. I clamped my mouth shut, wondering if I would explode from the pressure inside me.

There was absolute silence for a second or two, and then the telephone began ringing.

They had left the bedroom door open when they came, in and I could hear it quite plainly out in the living-room. It went on and on with that insistent and angry sound an unanswered telephone has. It was probably one of the neighborhood busybodies, who had , heard the shot.
“Oh, Mrs., Cannon, I’m sorry I disturbed you, but I thought I heard something that sounded like a gun and it seemed to come from over there and I wondered if you were all right—”
Stop it, I thought. For Christ’s sake, turn it off! You’re beginning to gibber. Do something. When the old biddy doesn’t raise somebody she’s going to call the cops. They’ll get an answer. They’ll push the door in. I lunged against the chain like an animal in a steel trap. I couldn’t even touch the keys now. I stopped and lay perfectly still in the calm that is beyond frenzy.

Then suddenly the perfectly obvious answer to the whole thing occurred to me. I could reach them with my foot. Cursing myself for a fool, I slid my body around until I was lying crosswise under the bed. I could see them, now that I wasn’t cutting off the light. They were lying almost under the foot of the bed. I shoved my left foot forward and got the toe of the shoe behind them. I dragged them slowly toward me. They pressed down into the nap of the carpet once and I had to go back and pick them up again. In a moment I could reach them with my hand.

The telephone stopped ringing just as I picked them up.

Now whoever it was would call the cops. Maybe somebody already had. I was sweating, and my hands shook. She hadn’t stirred. I juggled the keys frantically in my hand and slid out from under the bed. The first one was right. The handcuffs clicked open and I came erect, lunging toward her. She lay on her back behind the footboard of the bed, her eyes closed and one arm stretched out beyond her head. Her face was dead white and the long lashes made shadows on her cheek. I fell to the floor beside her and grabbed her bare shoulder, shaking it furiously. There was no response.

I sprang up and ran through the hallway to the bath. Wetting the end of a towel in the wash basin, I hurried back. Kneeling beside her, I began rubbing her face roughly with the wet cloth. She made a little gasping sound but did not move. Her eyes remained closed. The house was utterly silent now that the telephone had stopped. I could feel time rushing past me like water over the spillway of a dam.

Why didn’t I run and leave her here? Get out, before the police came. No, I thought savagely; there was still a chance. God, if I could only get her awake. She moved her head a little and her eyes opened. She stared blankly up at me. Her mouth started to open. I put a hand over it.

I put my face down close to hers and whispered furiously, “Listen. Can you hear me?”

There was no response, nothing but that same blank stare.

I grabbed her shoulder with my other hand and , shook her. “Don’t scream! Don’t make any noise at all. Understand?”

Comprehension began to dawn in her eyes. She was Still in shock, but maybe I could get through to her. I took my hand away from her mouth. “Listen! You’ve got to snap but of it. Somebody may have called the cops.”

The telephone began ringing again.

Tires screamed out on the street somewhere as a car slid to a stop.

Her lips moved.
“Dan—”

The doorbell chimed.

Oh, Jesus!

I grabbed her by both shoulders. “They’re here. The cops. You’ve got to go to the door or they’ll break in. Somebody reported the shot.”

“Dan! I killed him—”

I hauled her up to a sitting position and put my mouth against her ear. “Shut up! You’ve got to go to that door. Can you stand up?”

She stared at me. “There’s nothing we can do now.”

I fought down a crazy impulse to scream at her. “Listen, you little fool—” I broke off, staring at the torn evening gown. She couldn’t go to the door in that. She was supposed to have been asleep. “Where is your robe?”

The doorbell chimed again. The telephone went on ringing.

I shook her. “Get out of that dress!”

There must be a robe of some kind in the clothes closet of her bedroom. I sprang up and ran in there. A blue dressing gown was thrown across the back of a chair and some slippers were on the floor beside it. When I got back in the other room she was still sitting in the same place with her hands up against her temples.

I knelt beside her and slapped her across the side of the face. “Get out of that dress! Look! They’re going to break in here in about one more minute, and when they do you’re going to the chair for murder.”

She seemed to understand me at last. She began fumbling with the top of the dress. It would take her an hour the way she was going at it. I grabbed it and tried to help. We weren’t getting anywhere. How did they get in the goddamned things—from the top or bottom? I caught it and tried to rip it. It was some kind of strong net material that was stiff to the touch and didn’t tear straight. It bunched up and was strong as screen wire. I cursed. Snatching my pocketknife from the pocket of my trousers, I put the blade inside the dress, petticoat, and everything, and sawed it all the way to the hem. I hauled her erect in nothing but her pants and bra and garter belt, and grabbed the robe. Somehow she manage to stand. We got the robe about her shoulders and belted it.

“Lean on me,” I snapped. I knelt and yanked off the high-heeled shoes one at a time and slid her feet into the mules.

I shoved her ahead of me toward the door into the hall. “All right,” I hissed at her. “You’re on your own. Answer the door, and the hell with the telephone. You’ve been asleep. Something waked you, but you don’t know what it was. Make it good, or they’ve got you.”

She swayed once and put out a hand to free herself. Then she was gone down the hall. I eased along after her until I reached the L, and flattened myself against the wall still out of sight of the living-room. Her mules made no sound against the carpet, so I couldn’t tell whether she was still going or not. At least, I hadn’t heard her fall. Then the front door opened. I breathed a ragged sigh of relief.

I could hear them. “Mrs. Cannon?” It was a man’s voice.

“Yes,” she said. “What is it?”

“Sorry to trouble you. I’m Charlie Lane, from the Sheriff’s office. Somebody reported a disturbance of some sort in the neighborhood. Thought it was a gunshot—”

She said just what I’d told her, and she said it correctly, with just the right amount of sleepiness in her voice. She was good.

“You didn’t hear a shot, then?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure what waked me.

“Probably the telephone,” he answered. “Mrs. Ives said she tried to call you before she phoned us. Said the sound seemed to come from over here.”

“Probably a car backfiring,” she said wearily. It sounded as if she had yawned.
What an actress,
I thought.

“Could have been,” he agreed. “But she insisted it was a gun. Said she was awake, reading, and she never did hear any car. Well, sorry I troubled you, Mrs. Cannon. We’ll look around the neighborhood. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thank you,” she said. The door closed. The telephone had already stopped ringing. My knees felt rubbery as I leaned against the wall and wiped sweat from my face.

She was returning. I hurried down the hall and into the room where he was. Scooping up the gun, I put it on safety and shoved it in my pocket. I looked at him and came back out into the hall.

“You’d better come on down to your own bedroom,” I said, taking her arm.

She stopped and looked at me. Her face was intensely still and her eyes were cold as ice. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you so very much for everything, Mr. Harlan.”

She brushed past me and walked as erect as a ramrod into her own room and collapsed slowly across the bed. Her face was in her arms, but there was no sound of crying.

I went back in and stood looking down at him, trying to think. We’d thrown them off the track for the moment, but what now? I could still save it if we could get him out of here. But how? They were still prowling the neighborhood; a car leaving here now would make them suspicious as hell.

Well, I could walk out and get away. Leave her here and keep going. The hell with her. It was her problem, wasn’t it?

No. The hell it was. I was tied to her. If they caught her she’d talk. I was implicated in murder now as well as blackmail. There was something else too. I wasn’t going to quit and just throw it away after I was in it this far. I wanted that money, and I was going to get it There had to be a way. All we had to do was get him out of here—

Sure. It started to come to me. He’d set the whole thing up himself. Nobody knew I was here, and nobody knew he was here. It was made to order. As far as any one was aware, she was the only one in the house; the police had just been here and had seen she was all right. She’d been asleep. If they were still suspicious about that shot, at least they had to assume it hadn’t come from here. And if her car were to leave here—not tonight, but tomorrow, in a perfectly routine manner with nobody in it except her, what could possibly be suspicious about that? Hell, it was perfect.

But how much time did we have? I had to be out of here before daybreak, and there was a lot to do. I glanced at my watch, and then remembered it was stopped. Stepping hurriedly over to the bed, I looked at his. 2:55. It was going to be close.

I heard a sound in the bathroom next door. She was beginning to snap out of it. That was fine, because she was going to have to come out of her spin and give me a hand if she wanted to save her neck. I started into the bath to give her the word.

The door was open. She was standing before the medicine cabinet shaking capsules out of a brown bottle. There were at least a dozen of them in the palm of her left hand and a tumbler of water was standing on the back rim of the basin, I jumped for her. She heard me and whirled. I caught her wrist, forced her hand open, and dropped the capsules into the John. Taking the bottle from her other hand, I shook the remaining ones out, threw them into the can, and flushed it.

“Look, you little fool!” I hissed at her. “Have you gone crazy? There’s nothing to it. All we have to do is get him out of here. I know a way to do it—”

She held herself erect with both hands on the wash basin. Her face was white as chalk, and she spoke as if all the breath had been squeezed out of her. “Aren’t you ever going to be through with me and leave me alone? Couldn’t you even let me die with a little dignity?”

“Die, hell. Who wants to die?”

“I’ve had those for months. I’ve been saving them, because I knew there was a good chance I’d have to use them some day—”

“Shut up!”

“—I won’t be taken alive. I have no intention of becoming the feature attraction at a Roman carnival—”

I caught her shoulders, “Listen,” I whispered furiously. “They won’t catch you. Use your head, you little idiot. Nobody knows he’s even been here. All we have to do is get him out, and you’ll never be suspected.”

She stared with hopeless bitterness. “Shore up another bulkhead. Plug another leak in the dike. Keep watching the roulette wheel to see if it’s really stopped or whether they’re just pretending it has, to fool you. Why? I’ve had enough. I’m through.”

I shook her. “I thought you were tough. Why, you little punk, are you going to fold up and quit now? Stand there like a nitwit and let ‘em burn you?”

“Are you suggesting” there is anything else to do?”

“Of course. Shut up for a minute and listen to me.” I told her the idea. “It’ll work fine.”

“Will it?” she asked.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Don’t you see?” she said wearily. “You never win in the end. You can’t. You merely postpone defeat.”

“You won’t even make an effort to save yourself?”

“What good would it do?”

I wanted to swing at her. I was beginning to feel crazy. Catching her by both shoulders again, I put my face right down in hers and snarled at her. “Tough? Why, you runny-nosed little crybaby, you haven’t got the guts of a louse. Go ahead. Quit. Stand here and let ‘em take you. Have your picture all over the front page of every paper in the country. Have sob-sisters pawing over you, photographers flashing bulbs in your face every time they take you from the jail to the courtroom, people staring at you. Look, by the second day they’ll have a name for you. The Black Widow.”

“What do you think I was saving those pills for?”

“They’re gone now. I doubt if you’d have had the guts to swallow ‘em, anyway. You’re a punk. Why don’t you face it?”

Anger was beginning to show in her eyes now. That was what I wanted to see.

“And just what do you want?” she asked coldly.

“The same thing I’ve been after all the time. I can save your neck, but you haven’t got brains enough to see it. Look. You can’t bring Tallant back, but at least you can keep from having your name smeared all over every paper in the country and winding up in the chair for killing him. How do you want it?”

“What makes you think you can do it?”

“I’ll show you if you’ll stop acting like a crippled chicken.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, right now. Just give me your car keys and go lie down.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you going to try to—to take him away?”

“Not tonight. Of course not. If they saw your car leaving here now they might stop it. Even if the police didn’t see it, one of the old busybodies around here’d notice. Just get out of my way, and I’ll tell you everything to do before I shove off.”

She went in her bedroom and gave me the car keys out of her purse and lay down on the bed. I went back and looked at him. The top of his head was a mess, but he hadn’t bled too much. The bullet had entered just at the base of his skull and come out on top. That was bad; I had to find it. It took me about five minutes. All that was necessary was to stand about where she had been and line it up. It had gone into the pillow my own head had been on, not more than about three inches from my face, and was still inside. I could feel it with my fingers. There’d be a lot of bloodstained-feathers inside; it wouldn’t do to leave it around here even if I got the bullet out. I took it out through the kitchen, opened the trunk of the car, and put it inside. That was the beauty of the whole thing. It wasn’t necessary to go outside at all. I went back.