Whom Gods Destroy (15 page)

I stood there, swaying, sick inside and hoping that I looked even sicker than I felt. After a moment, I said, “God, I can't do it! Sid's my friend!”

Barney raised his voice slightly and said, “All right, Max, you and Joel can come in.” The door opened and they came in and Barney said, “Take the bastard out of here. I gave him a chance and he wouldn't take it.”

I almost yelled, and it wasn't all acting. “Barney, I can't do it! Anything else, but not that!”

“Take it or leave it,” he said calmly. “I'll give you a stake to leave town on—we'll say five hundred.”

Five hundred lousy dollars! But I kept telling myself to stay calm. He could multiply that by a thousand by the time it was over. I thought of Sid with uneasiness. It wouldn't happen this time the way it had with the truck driver and guard. This time I would have plenty of time to think about it and it wouldn't be easy. I thought of Vida, too. She would hate me if she ever found out—but she would never know. With Seaward's help, a thing like this could be done. But, in the back of my mind, I was thinking of Lola. Every time my bruised guts ached I thought of her. I could hear her laughing.

“What will it be, Foley?” Barney asked impatiently.

“I'll do it,” I said.

I looked at Barney and could almost see him thinking the same thing I was thinking. This is too easy—much too easy. He had expected a fight out of me and I hadn't given him any fight, and now he was beginning to wonder what I was thinking about. And on my side, it just didn't make sense to agree to a job of murder for a lousy five hundred dollars. I had the feeling that Barney was
trying
to make it easy for me, that he was leaving the door open, inviting me to fight and make it convincing.

The sweat on my forehead was cold. I had almost underrated Seaward again.

“All right,” I said finally. “I'll do it, but not for five hundred. Five thousand. That's cheap and you know it.”

There was no change at all in those eyes of his. No anger. Just that vague smile of self-satisfaction, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was reading my mind and thinking ahead of me again.

Finally he nodded. “Five thousand. But you do it exactly the way I say.” He looked at Max. “Get him out of here. Take him back to his rooming house and be sure he stays there.” Then to me, “Don't think you can run out on this, Foley.”

“Run out on five thousand dollars?”

He still smiled that vague half smile. The sonofabitch knows you're planning something for him, I thought, and he doesn't even care! It was still too easy, my willingness to kill for him, his willingness to pay my price. If you fail this time, Foley, I thought, it will be the last mistake you'll ever make.

I said, “I'll have to know how you want it done.”

“I haven't decided yet,” he said evenly. “I'll get in touch with you after I've done some thinking.”

“And another thing,” I said, “I want my car your hoodlums smashed up for me.”

Barney looked at Max and shrugged. “All right, get it for him. But keep the keys yourself.”

We rode back the same way we had come out, with me sandwiched in between Max and Joel. The police hadn't picked up the car yet, probably because nobody had reported the accident. It was still sitting there, jammed up against the curb with the left rear fender crushed in. Joel and I got out of the pickup and into the rented car and drove on to my rooming house with Max following.

“Just don't forget,” Joel said. “Don't try anything. Me and Max will be right out here lookin' for you.”

“As long as you're going to keep the keys,” I said, “drive my car around to the back and park it.”

They stood on the sidewalk, watching me go up the steps into the house. When I reached my room my nerves started screaming again. I lay across the bed, not thinking about anything, too wound-up to sleep, too tired to rest. That back seat in the car, something had to be done about that. The car was rented in Vida's name, and sooner or later somebody would see that blood and would want to have some answers. I went downstairs and out the back door of the rooming house. The car was there where Joel had parked it. I got the back seat out and siphoned some gas out of the tank and soaked it and set it on fire. When it was going good I heard Max and Joel coming around the corner of the house.

“What the hell is this?”

Two roomers came out the back door to see what the excitement was about. The fire shot up higher and higher, and then it began to die down. When it was over there was nothing left but some ashes and blackened springs. Now, I thought, maybe I can rest.

“What do you think you're doin'?” Max demanded angrily.

“Go to hell,” I said, and they didn't know just what to do about it with the roomers coming out of the house and wanting to know what had started the fire. “Somebody must have left a cigarette back there,” I said. I left Max and Joel and went back into the house.

I went upstairs and lay down again, trying to think calmly, trying to get the most important things first. I looked out the window again and saw Max in the pickup watching the front of the house. Joel would be around at the back. Then I went downstairs and used the rooming house phone.

“Vida,” I said, “I want you to listen closely and not ask any questions. Things have gone all to hell, it just blew up in my face, but it still may turn out to be a good thing if we can work it right. The first thing I want is a good recording machine, the finest you can get. Probably a tape recorder would be the best. And I want two microphones, the most sensitive microphones money can buy. And I've got to have some lead wires—get the flat kind that you can lay under carpets so they don't show— and a screwdriver and hammer. Have this stuff delivered to the front door of my rooming house, but not to me. I'm being watched by two of Barney's boys. I don't know how you're going to get this stuff, but you've got to do it and do it fast, or everything's ruined. Everything!”

“Roy—” Her voice jumped at me, as though she had been holding her breath for a long time. “Roy, what went wrong?”

“Everything! But it can still be straightened out if you do exactly as I say.”

Then the fatigue and worn nerves caught up with me. I made it back up the stairs, thinking, There's nothing to do now but wait and see. I lay across the bed and felt the tiredness wash over me like a warm ocean, and I closed my eyes. I was going to rest. Everything was going to be all right. I had a sudden, dark vision then and I could see the truck driver and guard, their eyes wide, their mouths open, the way they had looked at me.

Forget it! I thought. You have to forget it!

Finally I went to sleep. About five minutes later I woke up screaming.

11

“MR. FOLEY! MR. FOLEY!” Somebody was hammering on the door. I had fallen asleep finally and now the sound came to me as I lay there in a sluggish fog. “Mr. Foley!” It was the landlady—I realized that after a while. My mind jumped headlong into full consciousness.

I opened the door and she was standing there, vaguely puzzled, a tight-mouthed little woman holding an envelope in her hand. “Mr. Foley, some men are downstairs with a parcel,” she said. “It's addressed to me, but there's a message with it that says it is to be delivered to you. Do you know anything about it?”

Vida, Vida! I thought. How I love you! “Yes,” I said. “Will you please have the men bring it up to my room?”

I looked out the window and saw Max talking to one of the two delivery men. Then he went back to the pickup and looked without interest as the men hefted the crated recorder and started toward the house.

“Is this where it goes?”

I turned and a big blond kid was standing in the doorway holding a package about the size of a small suitcase. The other deliverymen came in carrying two smaller packages.

“This is the place,” I said. “Would you mind setting it up for me? I want to be sure it works.”

“That's our job,” the kid said.

When they got it all set up it seemed like a hell of a lot of machinery, but it wasn't really as complicated as it looked. The kid turned it on and counted up to ten into the microphone, then he played it back and it sounded fine.

“Will that microphone work from four or five feet away?” I said.

The kid was connecting the two mikes. “Sure.” He turned it on again and adjusted the input control and stood back and counted. When he played it back it was almost as good as it had been before.

That was all there was to it. They went out and I stood there looking at it, thinking. This is your last chance. And it sure as hell better work! Time was everything now. My watch said twelve o'clock and I knew that Seaward would know about the hijacking by now. And Mefford and Cox were still sitting with that liquor—if I was lucky—wondering what had happened to me, probably.

I disconnected the recorder and began making splices with the flat lead wire. Then, in front of the couch, I cut a small slit in the carpet and slipped the lead wire into it. I pulled the lead wire under the carpet to the far side of the room, and then I fixed the microphone the same way. The recorder itself had to go in the closet. A squat mahogany table that served as a coffee table went over the hole in the carpet. I ran the microphone wires up the legs of the table, on the inside, and then made a bracket of nails on the under side of the table to hold the microphones. There was only one place where the wires showed when I got through and that was on the bare space of floor between the carpet and the closet door. I fixed that by getting a dirty shirt out of the closet and throwing it on the floor. Then I messed the room up even more than usual so the shirt wouldn't look out of place. I piled odds and ends of clothing on the bed and on the other chair in the room, which left only one place to sit—on the couch. Right in front of the microphones.

I heard the telephone ring downstairs and I stood there listening to-the hammering in my chest. “Mr. Foley!” It was the landlady.

When I picked up the phone, Barney said, “It's settled, Foley. It happens tomorrow.”

He sounded so grim I guessed that he had found out about the hijacking. But not all about it.

Now came the tough part. I had to get him in the room or the plan was no good at all. I said, “I've been doing some thinking. I've decided that five thousand isn't a big enough stake to leave town on.”

He didn't like that. “We'll talk about it later,” he said coldly. “Max and Joel will bring you out to my place and we'll go over it.”

“I've had enough of your place,” I said. “I'm not taking another going-over if I can help it.”

“You can't help it, Foley,” he said dryly. “Max and Joel can drag you out of that room any time I give the word.”

“Not without a hell of a racket.”

He thought about that. He could get me out, all right, but that might not be the best way.

“All right,” he said evenly. “There's a roadhouse across the river; we can settle it there.”

“Like hell. There's a place on the corner of First and Main. If you want to do business, I'll talk to you there.”

“Someday,” he said softly, “you're going to learn who gives the orders, Foley. But it's going to be too late then.”

“I'm ready to do business. I'm just not going to take any more beatings from your hoodlums.”

“All right,” he said finally, and my arm ached from squeezing the receiver. “I'll come to your place.”

He hung up and I stood there with my breath whistling between my teeth. I hadn't suggested that he come here, so there was no reason for him to suspect anything. There were some things that I
could
expect, though. A gun, probably, and Max and Joel. But that didn't bother me. All I wanted was to get him in the room. Then the sonofabitch would soon find out who could give orders.

Less than an hour had passed when I heard the steps on the stairs. I went to the closet and turned on the recorder. Then I opened the door before he had a chance to knock and Barney stood there smiling an iron-hard, humorless smile. I was struck completely dumb for a moment, too stunned to move or make a sound. Barney wasn't alone. And he didn't have Max and Joel with him, as I expected. The man beside him looked grim and uncomfortable—it was Paul Keating.

I must have stood there for a full ten seconds without making a move. Then the impact of the thing hit me like _a bullet. Not even in my wildest imaginings had I expected to get Barney Seaward and Paul Keating together. It was perfect.

I stepped to one side and Barney came into the room, watching me closely. Keating hesitated, then followed him in and closed the door. Only then did I remember the tape recorder that was grinding away in the closet, recording nothing.

“I thought we were going to talk alone,” I said. “I didn't expect Big Prairie's county attorney to be with you.” I had to get names on the tape and establish identities.

“Keating thinks I'm making a mistake,” Barney said dryly. “He doesn't think you're to be trusted, Foley.”

“Maybe he's right,” I said. Then I realized that the recorder wasn't doing a damn bit of good because we were too far away from the microphone. I went over to the bed and motioned to the couch, the only other place in the room to sit down.

They wouldn't sit down. They stood there in the center of the room, each of them nursing his own special kind of hatred. Keating would like to see me dead. Seaward-there was no way of knowing what he was thinking.