Whom Gods Destroy (11 page)

“Sid? This is Paul Keating. I believe my wife talked to you today about one of your runners—” Sid said something—I could guess what it was. “It was nothing,” Keating said. “Lola was upset, that's all; it's been a hectic day, we're planning for a few people tonight.” He listened for a minute. “Yes, I'm sure, Sid. Will you get in touch with Barney and tell him everything's all right? No, it's perfectly all right. There's no use saying anything to Foley about it.”

“That was very good,” I said when he hung up.

“Is that all?” he asked coldly.

“Just keep on being smart,” I said. “If you ever get an idea about turning Sid and Seaward against me, just remember this picture and what it would do to your political career.”

He got out.

I could breathe now. Then I looked at the picture and laughed. I fell across the bed and howled. I would give plenty to see Lola's face when she first laid eyes on it.

7

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE was find a photographer that I could trust and have the copies made up right away. But I figured Keating was too stunned and scared to do anything about it right now.

The more I thought about the setup the better I liked it. By holding that picture over Keating, I thought, there was even a chance that I could put pressure on Seaward. Barney had spent a lot of money getting Keating where he was in the political setup, and he wasn't likely to let all that fall out from under him if he could help it. I had a bargaining point now, and before it was all over I was going to bargain myself right into a Big Prairie retailing position. But the thing that excited me most was the knowledge that I could smash Lola anytime I felt like it. I could make her crawl; I could make her beg!

It was almost dark when I got back to the rooming house. The hall phone was ringing again and when I answered it was Vida.

“Roy!” The word came out as a gasp. “Roy, I've been trying to get you all day. Roy, listen to me. Something's wrong, horribly wrong!”

“How do you know?”

“Sid was mad. He just left here, Roy, and he was half drunk and crazy mad. He said he was going to get you. He said Barney was after you too.”

I grinned. “Maybe they
were
after me,” I said, “but not any more. There was a little trouble but it's all straightened out now.”

I could almost feel her gripping the phone. “Roy, are you sure?”

“Of course, I'm sure. I saw that it was all straightened out. Can I see you tonight?”

We didn't even mention Sid any more. By ten o'clock he would be too drunk to notice or care if Vida was even in the house. “All right, Roy.”

I hung up, went to my room, and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking. Maybe it wouldn't be necessary to try the hijacking after all—but I didn't believe it. Even if I could bluff Seaward into installing me as a retailer, I didn't have the money to make the start. Twenty thousand dollars, Sid had said.

I sat there for a long while, letting the thing filter through my mind. Finally I decided that there was only one thing to do, and that was to hijack the liquor, get rid of it, and then get out of Big Prairie fast and take Vida with me. The hell with holding a club over Keating's head and praying that he and Seaward would play along with me.

All right, I thought, the idea running fast now, finish it up good and get out. The only reason you wanted to stay in the first place was because of Lola, and now you can bring her to her knees and get the money too, all in one giant sweep! I'd do it just the way I had threatened Keating I would. I'd have a hundred thousand copies of that picture made. I'd flood the county with them. There was no reason why I couldn't. The only bad thing about it was that I wouldn't be able to stay and watch Lola as her world started falling down around her shoulders. But I would know how she felt—and I could laugh.

The thought was fully grown. I stood there holding it, fondling it, proud of it. And then it exploded in my face.

“Sid just left here!”
Vida had said on the phone!

Just left here.

That bomb had lain there for fifteen or twenty minutes and I hadn't even noticed it until it went off. I'd been too self-satisfied when I had talked to Vida. Frantically, I back-tracked through my mind to pick up the exact words Vida had used. “He just left here, Roy, and he was half drunk and crazy mad”—I thought that was what she had said, but I was too shaken now to be sure of anything.

If she had, it meant that Sid had left his office, where he had been when Keating had talked to him from the hotel room. It meant that somebody had talked to him after that, but I couldn't believe that it could have been Keating. It was possible that Lola could have got the truth out of her husband, though. His mouth had been split and his face bruised, and Lola would have to have an explanation for that....

I almost ripped the door off getting out of the room and downstairs to the phone, but another roomer was using it. I tore out of the front door and up the sidewalk toward a drugstore two blocks away. The important thing was to get in touch with Vida again and find out for sure.

I was within half a block of the drugstore when the car pulled up to the curb ahead of me. Two men got out, one in his shirt sleeves and one wearing a leather jacket. They cut me off, and the one in the leather jacket said, “What's the hurry, Foley?”

I knew then that all my fine schemes had gone to pot.

“Into the car with him,” the one in the shirt sleeves said. They had my arms behind me, jostling me toward the curb, and I knew they must be a couple of Seaward's truck drivers.

“What the hell is this!” I snapped. I tried to break away; then the man in the leather jacket jerked up my arm, jamming my fist against the base of my skull and almost ripping my shoulder out of the socket. The one in the shirt sleeves stepped back, took all the time in the world to get set, and then hit me as hard as he could in the face.

The shock snapped my head back as if I had been hit with a hammer. I could feel my cheek split on the inside and warm, salt-tasting blood began oozing into my mouth. I sagged, half numb, as they went through my pockets rapidly.

“Have a look in his room,” the man in the jacket said, and the other went away.

“Get in the car.”

He had a leather-covered blackjack in his hand. I got in, trying to choke the sickness down. He got in beside me and closed the door, staring straight ahead at nothing.

After a while the other one came back and got under the steering wheel.

“Did you find it?” the man in the leather jacket said.

“Everything,” the one in the shirt sleeves said. “The camera, the pictures, the works.” He shook his head. “Geez! How dumb can they get!” He started the car and we headed south, the three of us jammed into the front seat. I was too sick, too hurt, too full of overwhelming disgust at myself to care about anything.

Not until we were well out of town and across the river did I realize that we were headed for Seaward's place. We went through the open gate, around a graveled drive-to the back of the house, and I saw four men coming toward us, walking into the bright beam of our headlights. Seaward, Sid, Paul Keating, and Joe Kingkade.

“Get out,” Barney Seaward said coldly.

The man in the jacket opened the door and pulled me out after him. Sid stood spread-legged in front of me, red-faced, his little eyes glinting savagely in the headlights. “You lousy punk!” he said thickly. “You goddamn lousy punk!” He took a step toward me, unsteadily, and then lunged drunkenly into the grillework of the car.

“I think we found what you wanted, Barney,” the man in the shirt sleeves said, and he handed Barney the pictures. Barney didn't look at them. He handed them to Keating and said. “Is this everything?”

Keating looked quickly. “Yes.”

Barney took out a lighter, snapped it and set fire to the photographs, the positive and negative prints. They flared up quickly and then died out. Barney ground the ashed paper under his heel, watching me with those cool, business-like eyes, as though he hadn't quite made up his mind what to do with me. Keating stood stone-faced, with a patch of adhesive at the corner of his mouth. How could I have misjudged him? I thought. Kingkade lit a cigarette and studied me dispassionately. If it had been up to him, he would have me killed because it was the neatest way of disposing of the situation.

“Foley,” Seaward said finally, “I've thought about killing you, but I've decided you're not worth the trouble and the risk. By tomorrow morning you'll be out of Big Prairie. Out of Oklahoma. I don't care where you go, or how, but you're not ever to come back. Is that clear?”

I looked at them and said, “Go to hell.”

Seaward's eyebrows raised slightly. “Max,” he said, and the man in the jacket stepped forward. “Joel,” he said, and the shirt-sleeved one stepped up. Max hit me solidly in the stomach. As I doubled over, gagging, Joel got my arms and held them behind me.

“All right,” Seaward said, “Go ahead.”

Max worked as earnestly as a circus roustabout driving a stake. He snapped my head around with a right, drove a left to the gut, low, and then a right to the face again, completely without emotion. He slammed a deliberate low blow and I could feel my insides screaming.

“Wait a minute,” Seaward said.

Through waves of nausea I saw a car's headlights cut a long swath in the darkness as it came through the gate and around to where we were'. I heard Keating saying, “Lola, you shouldn't have come here!”

“I have a right to be here. God knows what would have happened if it hadn't been for me.”

“Your husband's right, Mrs. Keating. This is a necessary job, but not very pretty, I'm afraid.” That was Seaward.

“I didn't imagine it would be pretty,” Lola said. “Nevertheless, I'm here and I'm staying. You can't deny I have the right.” She didn't look at anyone but me.

And all the rage that I thought was dead exploded inside me. “You bitch!” I twisted hard, breaking Joel's hold for a moment, but Max was in fast slamming a paralyzing fist into my middle. I felt my arms twisted behind me again and a fist smashed at my mouth.

I don't know how long it lasted. My legs gave way but Joel held me up as long as consciousness lasted. It seemed like a long time. My rage kept me fighting long after I should have slipped into darkness. I hadn't really misjudged Keating, but I hadn't accounted for Lola; that had been my fatal mistake.

And now she stood there, laughing without a sound.

I came out of it with the smell of damp earth close to my nostrils, with the feel of dew and grass on my face. I lay for a long time, not even opening my eyes. Finally I tried to move my legs and a warm fluid sickness flowed in and out between the cringing coils in my belly, and I thought: There's no use trying to get up. I'm busted up inside and my legs wouldn't hold me. From somewhere, a great roaring swept in, almost passing over me, and then just as suddenly it was gone. I lay there thinking about it, and after a while it occurred to me that it must have been a car.

I was near a highway. Before long another car passed, and then another, and finally I opened my eyes and I saw that I was lying face-down in a bar ditch, three or four feet away from the edge of the concrete.

Slowly, then, it all came back, the beating, the faces, the glares all mixed up with the queasiness of sickness and hurt. And somewhere in the midst of the sickness I saw that smile of Lola's.

I must have gone out of my head for a while. I heard someone screaming obscenities at the night with the monotonous hopelessness of a dog baying at the moon. A long time passed before I realized that the sounds were coming from my own mouth. The grass became spikes to my face, and the dew ice, as I began pushing myself up.

I made it somehow, standing upright in the ditch, holding myself together with my clutched hands. Sweat poured off my face and ran down my back. I lifted my face and stared up at the darkness, and then I made a savage vow to the great black god. Finally I began walking, walking....

The lights came at me suddenly, a cluster of lights set off from the highway, and when I got closer I saw that it was a shack of some kind, with three big semi-trucks and trailers parked in front. Somebody was laughing and a jukebox blared. When I opened the door and went in the laughing stopped. But the jukebox blared on and on. Five men were sitting at the counter and there was a man behind the counter with half a pie in one hand and a knife in the other. The five men sat there with their mouths open, not making a sound. The jukebox stopped, changed records, and started again. The man behind the counter set the pie down very carefully and stared.

I had to work my mouth several times to get the words out. “Have you got a phone?”

“God, yes!” the counterman said. “There on the wall. Help yourself.”

They all watched as I went over to it. I got a coin out and managed to dial. I heard ringing at the other end, and when I heard the click of the receiver coming off the cradle I said, “Vida, I'm at a place called Mac's Truck Stop. It's west of town on highway seventy-two, I think. Vida—come get me.”

I leaned against the wall, feeling my legs going out from under me. The counterman said, “Catch him, Johnny. He's goin' on his face!”

I pushed myself away from the wall and said, “No. I'm all right.”

And I went out.