April Evil (24 page)

For a long moment she let the police car gain on her. She saw the months and years ahead, the starch and the bars and the coarse denim, felt the bitter knuckles of the matrons, smelled the harsh antiseptics of the cell block, heard the way the inmates screamed at night.

She sobbed once and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The big car lunged forward. She was not a good driver. She took the corner too fast and the back end swung with a wrench and scream of rubber and she lost momentum. She held the wheel tightly and kept the pedal down to the floor. There was traffic on the boulevard. A pale pink panel delivery truck was heading east, a gray sedan two hundred feet behind it. She went through the stop sign onto the boulevard, and swung too wide around the pink truck, forcing an oncoming car off the highway to blast a frightened horn and bounce across a shallow ditch. She straightened out and began to pick up speed.

This, then, was the Dream. With the cameras picking up the speeding car, and the pursuit. This was the heroine, tears of fright filling her eyes, the road swimming toward her at thunderous speed. This could not be real. None of it could be real. The car was in a studio and it was being mechanically rocked while they dubbed in footage of a speeding road, dubbed in the tire sounds and the endless siren scream behind her. And these were glycerine tears. Soon somebody would yell
cut!
and the
bored men on the high catwalks would douse the floods and light cigarettes and look down at the sound stage. She would go back to her dressing room, the table stacked with fan mail, and maybe she would lie down for a little while and rest.

There was another stop sign ahead. This time she touched the brake before she swung out onto the Tamiami Trail into traffic. She had good fortune in hitting a clear stretch between lines of traffic. She sped north on the two lane road. She risked a glance back. The cruiser was closer, not more than two hundred yards behind her. A line of traffic loomed up ahead. She swung into the left lane, directly toward oncoming traffic, holding it there, pedal to the floor. The oncoming cars darted off to her left, off the road, horns blaring. One did not move quickly enough. There was a small jar and clash of metal which did not slow her down.

Then the road was clear. Far ahead she saw the alternate wink of the red lights of a railroad crossing. Far off to her right in the very last of the sunlight she saw a purple train coming. The cars ahead of her had stopped. Cars coming the other way had stopped. She kept the pedal on the floor, knowing that she could reach the crossing first and angle back between the waiting cars, angle back into her own lane and be gone while the train blocked pursuit.

When she was yet two hundred feet from the crossing, the monstrous purple engine crossed the road. She put the brake to the floor and closed her eyes. The wheels locked. The skid sound joined the siren sound. The noise of impact was like a single sharp cough in a great brass throat. To the woman it was soundless. It was a great flash of pure white light, and she stood under the marquee at the premiere, having just gotten out of her limousine, and one of the reporters had come close to her to flash the bulb in her face as she smiled at all of them because they were her fans and it was never good public relations to be rude to your fans.

The train stopped a half mile beyond the crossing. The Buick was a tin toy that had been wadded in a big fist and hurled off
into the palmetto scrub three hundred feet from the highway. Dickson was the first one to reach the car. He stooped and peered through an accordioned window. He saw what there was of her and he saw the money. He mopped his face and cursed. His knees were trembling. He looked back toward the highway. People had gotten out of their cars. They were darting back and forth oddly, stooping and pouncing like strange ungainly chickens. He could hear Moody shouting at them angrily. He started back toward them. On the way he picked up three twenty dollar bills and a ten. Moody could not control the people. They were picking money out of a field. Dickson drew his gun and fired three shots in the air. The people got out of the field, tucking the money away hurriedly. Dickson felt very tired. There was no way to get it back. One bill looked like another. There was nothing that could be done. Moody got the traffic moving while he went to the car radio. While they waited for the others, they picked up money. He turned and saw Moody shoving a thin sheaf of it down into his sock. He wondered if he should do anything about it.

“We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin. Harry Mullin has been found dead in the home of Doctor Paul Tomlin, retired local doctor. Mullin and his partner and a woman raided the Tomlin home over an hour ago. They knocked Doctor Tomlin’s servant unconscious, giving him a severe skull fracture. They forced Doctor Tomlin to give them the combination of his safe. Joseph Preston, who with his wife Laura have been house guests of Doctor Tomlin, attempted to overpower the trio and was shot dead by Mullin’s accomplice. During the robbery Mr. and Mrs. Dillon Parks, local residents and relatives of Doctor Tomlin arrived on the scene. The Parks couple, Laura Preston and Doctor Tomlin were tied up by the trio. After they were helpless, Mullin’s partner overpowered Mullin and tied him up in the same manner. He placed tape over Mullin’s face in such a way that Mullin died of suffocation. Doctor Tomlin suffered a heart attack during the robbery and is unable to give any estimate as to the extent of the loss, though
it is known that he kept large amounts of cash at his home.

“Mullin’s partner and the woman fled in two cars. The woman drove the car in which the trio arrived, and Mullin’s accomplice drove off in a car belonging to Dillon Parks. Another bulletin has just come in. The woman was killed instantly a few minutes ago when her speeding car struck a passenger train of the Atlantic Coastline Railroad seven miles north of Flamingo, with a police vehicle in pursuit. And the Parks car has been found on a downtown street. Mullin’s partner is at large in Flamingo. Make certain you do not leave your keys in your car. This man is armed and dangerous. Here is the description that has just come in. Blond, about thirty, slim, good-looking, wearing a dark blue sport shirt and pale gray trousers and a gray jacket.”

Ronald Crown had checked into a bay front motel at dusk. He had smeared his prints on the steering wheel of the blue car, taken the two suitcases and walked three blocks and selected a motel at random and taken a room. He signed as George Peterson and explained that he had arrived in Flamingo by bus. He locked the door and closed the blinds and sat on the bed and lighted a cigarette. Every few moments his heart would give an alarming flutter. He took two loose shells from his side pocket and reloaded the two empty chambers of the Magnum. He felt betrayed. Yet he knew he was at fault.

He knew that he should have kept to his own specialty. Once the Ace had been eliminated, he should have left, walked out. But it had looked easy. Then it had started to go wrong. He should have known it was going to go wrong when they grabbed that kid. He should have known that Mullin was too stale and too nervous to handle any kind of deal, even this one. Then Preston had shown unexpected fight. And he had made a bad decision. It was too soft and it had taken too long to tape them up. They were witnesses to Preston’s death. Once the safe was open, it would have taken seven shots. And he would have been out of there quickly, in the blue job. The timing went wrong. That much wholesale death would have created more
heat than the Brinks deal, or that St. Valentine’s day of long ago. But it would have been safer and better. And the money was worth it. That much money was worth anything. He felt a sharp pang of disappointment when he thought of the suitcase in the Buick. They’d get her quickly. They must have her by now.

He knew he would have to stop recalling how it had gone wrong, stop crying about it, and start thinking. This was only a temporary refuge. It came down to a very simple problem. Get out, with the money. His heart gave that unpleasant flutter again. The wall he was staring at seemed to lurch and dip and then rise slowly back into place. There was a new instability, insecurity, in all things. He thought of Harry, and he thought about death, and he thought about his own body stilled. He often thought of death in relation to himself. Many times he had grasped the warmth of his own arm or thigh, feeling the pump and thrust of life. Inflicting death had been a strong affirmation of his own living. A confirmation.

He shook his head sharply. Time to audit the vague plan, check totals and balances and risks. This was a refuge until full dark. Highways can be blocked. Trains and planes can be watched. But there is the wide darkness of the water, and a million paths across it.

At eight o’clock he left the room and walked away from the lights, down to the dark bay shore. Two hundred yards from the motel he found the boat. It was a wide-beamed sixteen foot boat tied to a dock with a stern line fastened to a piling. A large outboard motor was uptilted at the stern, with canvas motor cover and a lock that fastened it to the transom. The dock was behind a private home. He could see into the home, see a man reading a paper. There was a small shed on the end of the dock. It wasn’t locked. He found a paddle and a five-gallon can of gasoline. He put them in the boat, careful to make no sound. He returned to the motel and got the two suitcases. He put them in the boat. He untied the lines. He used the paddle to push the boat away from the dock.

The moon was new and the stars were high and the water
was black, with an oily look. He drifted on the tide past the lights of the houses and motels and the town. After he had passed under the causeway bridge, he used the bridge lights to take the cover off the motor. He used his lighter flame to read the unfamiliar starting instructions. There was gas in the tank. The husky motor caught on the third pull on the starter rope. Once he strayed from the channel and the gear housing bumped on an oyster bar, but the pin didn’t shear. He found the pass between Sand Key and Flamingo Key and headed out into the Gulf. It was choppy in the pass, but more calm out in the Gulf than he had dared hope.

He went out until the city lights were dim on the horizon. He angled north. The night wind blew against his face, against his right cheek. Far up the coast he saw the lights of another city and he headed farther out. He hummed to himself, his voice lost in the motor roar. He grinned into the wind. He ran his fingers through his hair. Somewhere up the line he would land near one of those glowing towns. He would register at another motel. He would buy clothing. He would get a train or a plane. Or buy a car.

It hadn’t been anywhere near as hard as he had expected.

Ben Piersall played golf alone on Wednesday, the twentieth of April. The windless heat had continued. The fairways were baked dry. It was the first chance he had had to play in well over a week. His timing was off, his distance perception uncertain. He was glad of the chance to be able to play alone. The course was nearly empty. He teed up on the fifteenth and hit a towering drive over the fringe of trees toward the dogleg green.

Violence had come to Flamingo. Violence and greed that were strange in this place. News stories all over the country had been datelined Flamingo.
Time
magazine had done a full page on it under the heading of Crime: “… last Friday in a tall stone house in the West Coast Florida resort city of Flamingo, death came to lean, nervous, mask-faced Harry Mullin, murderer and thief. Forty minutes later his doughy blonde consort, Sally Leon, was smashed to her death against …”

Ben Piersall wondered if the town would ever look exactly the same to him again, if he would ever feel as he once had about it. Violence and death left a stain across the city. Flamingo, on that day, had become more a part of a rougher world. He knew that his own home would not be the same. The boy had changed. He had done more growing up than should
be expected of an eleven-year-old. And they had all learned that they lived closer to the unseen edge of disaster than they had realized. Perhaps it would be good. It meant more appreciation of each day. But there was still an edge in their laughter, and the nights seemed darker than ever before.

His approach on the fifteenth was good and he canned a careful putt for the birdie.

It had looked for a time as though this thing which had struck with no warning had changed the lives of Dil and Lennie Parks. At least it had effected a reconciliation of sorts with Dr. Tomlin. Ben had talked with Lennie after the Joe Preston funeral. She had told him of her change in outlook. She had told him how she had changed, for good. But she took too long telling him, and she told him in too many ways, and even as she spoke he could see something in her eyes that had not changed and never would change.

Laurie would stay on with the doctor. Arnold Addams was recovering. The doctor would need more care than before.

As he walked down the fairway toward the eighteenth green he saw a group of his friends on the shady porch of the club house. He three-putted the green, much to his annoyance. He pulled his caddy cart into the locker room, mentally totaling his score.

Dave Halpern was sitting on a bench, a towel over his knees, a highball in his hand.

“How you doing, Ben?”

“I plumbered the round. Got in the trees on twelve and got a fat eight out of it.”

“I settle for eights. You know, I keep thinking about that bastard, Crown. Even for a type like that, it’s a bad way to go out.”

“Crown? Did they get him?”

“Didn’t you hear about it? They found the boat this afternoon. It was on the radio. Dan Dickson gave me the rest of the dope, the stuff they couldn’t put on the air. He was about sixty miles off Fort Myers. They spotted it from the air and got the Guard boat out there. They figure he died sometime during the
night. But he had been dying for days. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Nothing aboard but him and a paddle and the money. Good thing it was so flat calm. He hadn’t shipped a drop of water. Once they lifted that print off the back of the rear vision mirror of Dil’s car and identified it, it was only a question of time until they got him anyway. But it’s hard to say which would be worse. Dying of electricity furnished by the state, or dying of thirst and sunburn.”