The Crossroads (19 page)

“A guy answers the phone for another guy, he doesn’t shut himself in the booth before he takes off the receiver. So you got your call, old buddy. Hope it improves your manners.”

“See you, Nick,” he said automatically and walked swiftly out to his car, unlocked it and reached in and took out the suit coat, put it on. He got in, pulled the tie out of his pocket and put it on. It took him seven minutes to drive to the bank parking lot. He moved the pads of cotton into his cheeks, worked them into shape. He put on the hat and glasses, picked up the dispatch case and walked into the bank. He signed the vault card, went with the woman and got his box, took it to the place where the booths were. The first booth on the right was empty. The door was hinged on the side nearest the vault, and opened outward. He opened the safety deposit box, took out the cotton work gloves he had put in there ten days ago, and the length of padded pipe.

It was the perfect booth. When he heard anyone coming, he could open the door a crack as they passed his booth. And he could step out soundlessly behind them.

He could hear voices coming from one of the other booths. A woman with a querulous voice, a deep-voiced man saying calm things to her. Talking of debentures, a defensive position in the market, earning ratios. All I need, he thought, is for them to come out just as I’m moving in on the old man. All I need.

The slow minutes went by. He became conscious of a painful cramp in the back of his right hand, the result of holding the piece of pipe too tightly.

Right up until this minute, he told himself, I haven’t done anything out of line. Not a thing. And I don’t have to do what we planned. Nobody can make me do it.

The two voices were louder. The man and woman left. As they passed the booth Glenn heard him say, “… under no obligation to take my advice, Myra. But you know that …”

He heard a soft scuff of feet on the rug. As they passed his booth he pushed the door open. Papa Drovek was five feet from him, stepping solidly, carrying his hat and his safety deposit box. Glenn moved silently out behind the old man. He looked back toward the vault. The corridor was empty. He drifted behind the old man, taking long steps, narrowing the distance between them, the
piece of pipe half raised. The old man was humming contentedly to himself.

He turned into a booth on the other side of the corridor. Glenn, directly behind him, felt completely naked. He moved into the doorway, raising the pipe higher. As he had anticipated, the old man put the box and his hat on the small counter under the lamp light, and then started to turn to pull the door shut. As he started to turn, Glenn made a small whimpering sound in his throat and brought the length of pipe solidly down onto the bald head. It made a solid, thudding sound and rebounded slightly. He reached at once to catch the old man, to cut the risk of a noisy fall. The old man started to sag, then braced himself, continuing his turn, and staggered back, mouth open, blue eyes wide, shocked, but unglazed. Completely aware. His back struck the side of the booth. Glenn moved a half step farther into the booth and struck again. This blow split the skin of the forehead and blood ran down into the shaggy white eyebrow. The old man grunted, lifted slow strong hands and lunged toward Glenn. The wide eyes had gone narrow, and he seemed to be grinning. Glenn struck again, but a hand grasped his coat and he heard the rip of fabric. The bald bloody head was too close for good leverage. He had the horror that this indomitable old man could not be hurt, that his essential toughness was impervious to any blow. As a hard hand fumbled toward Glenn’s throat, he went into panic, striking as fast and as hard as he could, stopping only when the old man sagged down and away from him. Glenn’s breath made a wheezing sound. He had no idea how much noise he had made. He yanked the booth door shut and held his breath and listened. There was no sound of query or alarm. He shut his eyes and breathed deeply for a few moments. He looked out into the corridor, then picked up the old man’s box and carried it back to his own booth. He opened it. The look of that much money made him feel sick and dizzy. His hands shaking with his eagerness to be gone, he repacked it into the dispatch case. A sheaf of loose fifties spilled. He dropped to his knees and
picked them up. It was difficult to pick them up while wearing the gloves.

Just as he latched the dispatch case he heard someone coming from the direction of the vault. They went into a booth. A moment later he went swiftly back to the old man’s booth, put the empty box on the small counter. Just as he did so, a tough old hand closed on his ankle. He looked down in wild fright and saw the blue eyes staring grimly up at him through a mask of blood. He yanked the pipe out of his side pocket and took a final, full-arm swing. Something seemed to give under the blow, a nauseous softness. The hand slipped off his ankle. He stepped out of the booth and closed the door. He felt as if it had taken him hours to do it.

Back in his own booth again, he shoved the pipe and gloves in on top of the money. There was a dappling of red on the right glove. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked out to the vault. The woman came and locked the box away, gave him his key. He walked out of the bank. He got into his car. He drove away.

 … After a quick errand a block from the bank, Chip went back to the bank. Papa was not through yet. He got into a conversation with one of the officers of the bank. Then he weighed himself and felt fatuously pleased to see that the diet, a result of Jeana’s gentle hints, was taking effect. He sat and looked at a newspaper and then flung it aside restlessly. He watched the people.

The old son of a gun, he thought. I made him wait last month, so he makes me wait this month. In there counting his money. Is pooty good piece of money, Charlie. Won’t spend a dime more than he has to on himself.

By twenty minutes of twelve Chip had gone from mild annoyance to definite anger to a constantly increasing concern.

After all, he was an old man. Heart. Stroke.

Once his mind was made up, Chip walked briskly to the vault desk.

“Good morning, Mr. Drovek,” Mrs. Packer said.

“Good morning. My father seems to be really taking his time today.”

She looked up at the bank clock. “Goodness, yes! I hadn’t realized he was still in there.”

“Would you mind going and … finding out if he’s all right?”

Mrs. Packer looked slightly frightened. She moistened her lips. “Of course, Mr. Drovek.”

He stood by the desk. He heard her calling, her voice faint and muffled. “Mr. Drovek! Mr. Drovek!”

There was silence. And then he heard the thin sound of her scream. He was in motion before it began to fade, moving swiftly toward the chilling sound of it.

 … Glenn drove southeast on 118. He did not seem to be able to cling to a full awareness of his surroundings. He would look at the speedometer and it would say seventy. He would slow down. A few minutes later the speedometer would read twenty. Every once in a while he would say something loudly. “God damn!” or “Christ!” The very loudness of his voice would startle him. As if somebody else was in the car with him. It was like being drunk and trying to act entirely sober. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled. He hit the horn ring so hard with his fist he bent it. The thing is, he thought, right up until I did it, I didn’t
have
to do it.

They’re going to get me.

That was the horrible, inevitable, inescapable thing. You didn’t know that until after it happened. Before it happened you knew they wouldn’t. But as soon as it was over and you couldn’t take it back, you knew a thousand ways they could get you. There were so many of them. They had all those labs. Probably right now they were all in one of those big rooms, like in television, with a big map on a table, and a toy car, and a guy pushing the car right down this road with a stick, all of them watching, smiling in that wise way they have.

Like a big eye looking right down at you.

“God damn!”

Suddenly he was so close to the road to the gravel
pit that he had to slam the brakes hard to make it. He drove down the winding road at a crazy speed, the car bounding. Suddenly he burst into the open. Her car was there. She was standing beside it. He banged the brakes again and skidded and came to a stop fifteen feet from her car. The skid stalled the engine. The back end had slewed around.

He stared at her. He felt too tired to get out of the car. All of a sudden the world seemed very still.

“Didja get it?” she asked.

“Christ! Oh, Christ!”

“What’s the matter? Didja get it?”

“Yes. But that old man. My God, that old man was …” He stopped, realizing that he would never have the words to explain it to her. He realized tears were running down his cheeks.

“You better put the stuff in my car,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “Sure.” It took a few moments before he felt able to open the car door and get out. He had been sick once when he was a kid, in bed for three weeks. When they let him up, he felt like this.

He got his suitcase and the dispatch case and walked across the small strip of sunlit gravel toward her.

“Put it in the trunk,” she said.

“You got no idea what …”

“Hurry, honey.”

“Don’t you want to look at the money? Jesus, it’s an awful lot of …”

“Later.”

He walked to the rear of the car. Before he had a chance to set the suitcase and dispatch case down, while he was still holding them, one in each hand, a man rose up out of nowhere, just a few feet from him.

A great many things happened to Glenn Lawrenz in that single second in eternity. He recognized the bartender from the Starlight Club. He understood how the two of them had rigged it on him, how the planning could not have been done by a girl like Sylvia. And he wondered how he could have ever believed her capable of it. He saw the revolver in Brodey’s narrow, white fist, saw
it with such a terrible distinctness that he could even see the little flecks of rust around the muzzle where the bluing was gone. He had time to open his hands and drop what he carried. He felt twelve years old again. This was a Man with a Gun. A grown-up man. He had time to snap his head to one side like a man avoiding a blow, time to raise one arm to fend off the blow, palm turned toward Brodey. He even had time to form his mouth into that small circle which is the first lip movement in articulating the word “Wait!” But that was all he had time for before the slug slammed through the center of his palm, and through the middle of the long right sideburn just in front of his ear and exploded all of the little neural impulses, all of the distinctive encephalographic currents that made him a man and an individual organism, into one white bursting flash, and dropped him dead on the gravel.

Brodey came around the end of the car. He avoided the suitcase and stepped over Glenn’s legs. He held the gun rigidly in front of him.

Sylvia backed slowly away, her face like melting, dirty snow. “You said …” she whispered. “You said …”

She whirled with more speed than he had expected and began to run up the gentle slope in the direction of the highway, yelling hoarsely as she ran. She ran clumsily in her golden sandals. He raised the gun hand and aimed. The slug knocked her forward, off her feet. She tumbled headlong, still yelling, and scrambled up. She left one sandal behind. It was a hobbling, limping run, and there was a red stain on the back of the white-and-gold blouse, on the left shoulder, blooming wider as she ran.

When he fired again, she fell the same way, but this time the yelling stopped. She got up very slowly and painfully and, bent slightly from the waist, she turned around and faced him blindly, her face utterly vacant, her underlip hanging away from the small even teeth. He fired the third time. She fell back into a sitting position, fell over onto her side, made one half roll toward him, coming to rest on her face. There was a prolonged and
visible tremor of her left leg, and then it was completely still.

He stood, listening. He wished it had lasted longer. He had not known how it would be. He had tried to guess how it would be. He had been prepared for fright, for nausea, for a fit of trembling. But he had been in no way prepared for a feeling of sexual pleasure so strong that it was like a shifting of scalding oil within his loins. He felt like laughing and dancing. It should have lasted longer. Why did they keep it such a secret—about killing?

He began to move quickly, trimly, neatly. He turned and hurled the thirty-eight-caliber revolver far out into the water. He opened the trunk of the Ford. It was big enough for both of them. He backed it to where Glenn lay, got out and levered him up into the trunk, used his feet to shove him as far back as possible. No good to have them bursting up through the rotten canvas top of the convertible, and floating. He drove up to Sylvia. He slung her in. He threw the sandal in, pushed her dangling arm in, slammed the lid down. He had the Ford at the top of the gentle slope. He trotted down and got their two suitcases, put them in the front seat, rolled the windows up. He paused, sweating with exertion, and listened to the quiet country sounds of noon. He looked around until he found a flat heavy rock that suited him. After he started the Ford, in neutral, he put the rock on the gas pedal. Standing beside the car, with the door open, he released the brake and jammed it into gear. As the car leapt away from him, he slammed the door. It had a hundred feet in which to pick up speed. It roared down the slope and hit the water, sending gouts of spray out to either side. Momentum carried it thirty feet from shore. It stopped then, door-handle deep, seemed to hesitate, then sank suddenly on an even keel. Bubbles burst. In a little while the pond was still again.

He put the dispatch case on the seat of the Chevrolet, opened it and looked at the money. He took the pipe and gloves out. He put a stone in each glove, threw them and the pipe into the pond. He looked around. There was a
small place where Lawrenz had bled, a larger place where the girl had bled. He scuffed the stains into the dirt.

At this moment he could not be traced, he knew. The revolver had been dropped during a robbery attempt long ago at a bar in a distant city. He had hidden it and never reported it. There would be no prints on the car or gun. He took a last look around, got into the gray car and drove toward the highway. He stopped just out of sight of the highway, turned the motor off and listened. Two cars were coming. He waited until they went by and all sound faded. He drove out and turned left toward Walterburg. This could well be the most dangerous part. But it was essential. He drove to the airport at the western edge of the city, and turned into the big parking lot. The attendant stamped a ticket and handed it to him. He drove to the back end of the lot, got out with the dispatch case and locked the Chevrolet. Traffic in and out of the lot was fairly heavy. He walked past two rows of cars to his Dodge that he had left there on Saturday. He drove back to the exit, presented his claim check for the Dodge and paid the two-day fee. The bored elderly man in the booth didn’t look directly at him either time. Mark permitted himself a certain amount of relaxation as he drove away from the airport. He drove south on 71, scrupulously obeying all traffic ordinances. He drove right through the heart of the Drovek empire. He noted that all food operations were doing a good midday business.