Hot Spot (14 page)

Gulick and I were busy at the lot, with the cars moving pretty well, and I was starting to work up another ad. I thought about the buried money a hundred times a day, but stayed away from the place. The uproar over the robbery was dying down a little, but I knew now I was being watched. The whole thing telegraphed itself. They’d given up too easily when they got that phone call from Harshaw. The alibi she’d handed me was second-hand and hearsay, coming to them through Harshaw, and yet they’d just folded up and quit as if she’d already testified to it under oath. I wasn’t free; I was just being allowed to run around on the end of a line until I hanged myself. Well, it was all right; two could play at that game. As long as I left the money where it was, I was safe. They had nothing else to go on, and they’d never find it.

Gulick and I were sitting in the office around four o’clock Thursday afternoon when the phone rang. He answered. “Hello,” he said. “Harshaw’s Car Lot. Hello! Hello!” Then he put the receiver back in the cradle.

“Wrong number?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They just hung up.”

About twenty minutes later the same thing happened again. I began to have a feeling about it then. The third time it rang he was outside and I answered myself. My hunch was right.

“It’s about time you answered,” she said. Her voice was pitched very low and I had a little trouble hearing it.

“We didn’t expect you back so soon,” I said, giving it the employee-to-boss’s-wife treatment. “I hope you had a nice trip.”

“Aren’t you cute?” she said. “Cut it out.”

“I didn’t think you’d be back till Monday.”

“I’ll tell you about that. When I see you. Tonight, that is.”

I looked up just then and saw Gulick coming back in from the lot. “Well, I don’t know.” I said. “It depends on how much you want for it. That model’s three years old.”

She was fast enough on the uptake. “Oh,” she said, “So old prissy-pants is there?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”

“Well, he can’t hear me. So listen. Go to the same place you went before—”

Gulick sat down and started reading the paper at the next desk. “I don’t think we can made any deal on that basis,” I said.

“Don’t you really?” she asked softly. Something in her voice told me she was enjoying it.

“No.”

“Well, that
is
too bad, isn’t it?” she purred. Then she went on, “Oh, by the way, wasn’t it lucky I saw you over there the other day at the fire? Just suppose I’d missed you.”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. I could feel the snare begin to tighten around my neck. It was nylon and very smooth, and all she was doing was adjusting my tie for me, the dirty little …

“I did so want to see you,” she said regretfully. “But of course, if you’ve got another date—”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll think it over.”

“You’re so nice. The same time as before, then?”

“Yes.”

“All right. ’Bye now.”

I was furious as I drove out the highway after dark, but I was scared too. If it had been dangerous before, it was suicidal now. There wasn’t only Harshaw and the gossips to think about; there was that Sheriff. She had furnished me with an alibi, so how long would it take him to get suspicious if he even heard of our being seen together? And what were they doing back here on Thursday, four days ahead of time? It was funny, too, that he hadn’t come to the office. The whole thing was crazy.

Just before I turned off at the old gravel pit I checked the road behind me. There some other headlights, two or three sets of them, about a half mile back. I made my turn anyway, and drove on into the timber. All the cars went on past without slowing down. I still wasn’t sure, though, and I felt uneasy.

I drove along the road until I found what I was looking for, a place where I could pull off into the trees and get the car out of sight. After I got it turned around facing the road again I cut the lights and waited. I’d have a pretty good look at anyone going past, but there’d be no chance he’d see me back of that screen of leaves and underbrush.

I lighted a cigarette and smoked it out nervously, listening to the night sounds and thinking of the dangerous mess I was drifting further into all the time. I had twelve thousand dollars I couldn’t touch, I was crazy about a girl who was in some kind of trouble she couldn’t tell me about, and I was getting more hopelessly fouled up every day with this crazy Dolores Harshaw. I had to ditch her while I was still able to.

M
INUTES DRAGGED BY; I FINISHED
the cigarette and crushed it out in the tray. Then I heard a car coming and could see splashes of light breaking against the trees. It came up past me and went on. I had a fairly good look at it and was sure it was the Oldsmobile. But maybe I’d better wait a few minutes and be sure she wasn’t being followed. Then I had a better idea; it couldn’t be over a quarter mile to the old sawmill, so why not walk? If I heard another car coming I could jump out of the road and take to the timber.

There wasn’t any other car. My eyes became accustomed to the sooty blackness under the trees, and when I came out into the clearing around the old mill I could see fairly well in the starlight. The Olds was parked off the road at the edge of the clearing. She wasn’t in it. Then I spotted her, a gleam of white over by the old sawdust pile. She was standing near the back of it, where it slid off into the shadowy depths of the ravine.

When I came up I saw why she’d been so easy to see. She was wearing only a pair of brief, pale-coloured shorts and a halter, and all that stacked and uncovered blondeness was almost luminous in the darkness.

She turned when she heard me, and put her arms up. They tightened around my neck as she came up against me. You could no more halfway kiss her than you could fall part way down an elevator shaft and then change your mind, but even so she knew something was wrong.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t tell me I’m slipping?”

I drew back a little. “What’d you have to see me about?”

“Now I’ve heard everything.”

The anger came boiling up in me again. Maybe she thought she owned me. “Well, if that’s all,” I said, “let’s get on with it. If we hurry, maybe we can make the next train home.”

Her palm exploded against my face and made my eyes sting. I grabbed her arm and tightened up on it. “Keep your hand to yourself, you little witch,” I said, “or I’ll break it off.”

“Well, so we’ve got another girl now, have we?”

“And whose business would that be if I had?”

“It might be mine. You ever think of that?”

“It’s not. And I didn’t.”

“You might be surprised.” She looked up at me with a tantalizing smile. “Now, let’s see. It wouldn’t be that leggy blonde in the loan office, would it? What’s her name? Harper? I saw you at the movies with her. But no, I guess she’s not quite your type. Pretty, all right, but a little young and watered-down for you.”

“Knock it off,” I said. “If you wanted to see me about something, start talking.”

“So it
is
the little dear?” She laughed. “Well, how do you like that? She must be the sly one, all right, with that innocent look. But I guess you can never tell about that long-underwear type.”

I caught myself just in time. I couldn’t let her needle me into losing my head. There was something a little too cocky about her which got home to me, even through the blaze of anger, and I had to find out what she was up to.

“Let’s get down to cases,” I said. “I came out here to tell you something. Don’t call me up any more. I don’t like it. And this is the last time I’m going to meet you out here. You may be crazy, but I’m not. If you’ve got to play in the sawdust to keep yourself from jumping at night, go find yourself another boy friend. I’m through.”

“My goodness,” she said. “You
are
in a state tonight, aren’t you? What’s she been doing to you, taking you to church? Or maybe you’re still a little nervous?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It must have been just
awful.
Imagine them thinking you did it.”

I could feel it coming, but went on playing it deadpan. “Well, I guess they had to pick up somebody. But what’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, nothing, I suppose,” she said innocently. “Except that— Well, I suppose I thought you’d be glad to see me. After all, I did see you there, and I was the only one, wasn’t I?”

“Probably others did, and just didn’t remember,” I said, beginning to sweat. “The fact that you saw me proves I was there, so there must have been more.”

“But it was so stupid of them not to remember, wasn’t it?”

“Well, maybe they just didn’t know me.”

“At least, not as well as I do.”

“I can’t see that it matters now, anyway,” I said. “After all, somebody saw me there, and that settles it. But don’t think I’m not glad you did. It was a break for me.”

“Oh, it was for me too,” she said earnestly. “Just for the sweet things you said. Remember?”

“Oh, sure,” I said.

“I knew you would. It was right at the beginning. I was watching the fire-engine hook on to the water line, and you came over to where I was standing and said you’d never seen me looking prettier and that you wished we were alone. You remember that, don’t you?”

The dirty, rotten little … “Yes,” I said. “And what else did I say?”

“Why, let me see now. You said it was funny it was that building, because we’d just been in it the other day, and who’d have thought all those old papers and trash and junk would catch fire like that? Of course, nobody else knew that—”

“I see,” I said. “It was quite a conversation, wasn’t it. Was that all?”

“Well, not quite. You said nobody could ever take my place, and you’d never be able to leave me. I thought that was awful sweet. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very sweet. So now let’s cut it out. What’s the angle?”

“Why, nothing at all, sweet. Except that I’d hate to think you didn’t mean all those nice things you said to me.”

“And if I told you to go to hell?”

“Then I’d know I just dreamed the whole thing. Wouldn’t that be awful?”

She knew she didn’t have to say the rest of it. Without her alibi I’d be headed right back to the quiz show and maybe this time they’d break me. She had me right where she wanted me.

“I love talking to you,” she said, smiling. “We understand each other so well. You know, in a lot of ways we’re just alike.”

“Isn’t that nice?” I said.

“Yes, I think so. Now kiss me like a good boy, and tell me you like me better than that skinny little owl.”

There was no way to kiss her like a good boy. You could start out that way, but you always ended up on the other side of the tracks. If you hated her, it didn’t make any difference; it worked just the same.

“M-m-m!” she said. “See? You do like me, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Isn’t that funny? I could have sworn you did. But, honey, before you get carried away with not liking me, I just remembered there was something I wanted to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“This will kill you. I think I got caught one of those other times.”

She had me in such a cross-fire by now I couldn’t even think. I just looked at her stupidly. “You got what?”

“Caught. You know. As in caught. I think I’m pregnant.”

“Well, why tell me? After all, you’re married.”

“I just thought you might be interested.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Look,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

At first I thought she had gone crazy, and then I was sure of it. She was just staring down into the ravine. The place we were standing was a little to one side of the sawdust pile, on the brink of the ravine itself. The sawdust was stacked up maybe as high as a two-storey house, and as the pile had grown and spread while the mill was operating, it had edged further out all the time until the back edge of it spilled over the bank. It was very steep and probably fifty or seventy-five feet to the bottom. You couldn’t be sure, however. It was very dark down there in the trees and you couldn’t see the bottom.

But it was what she did next that got me. She just jumped, without any warning at all, right out on to the steep slope of the sawdust. An avalanche of the stuff carried away and went down with her as she rolled and slid out of sight into the dense shadow below me. I stared down, completely speechless with amazement.

She’s a psycho, I thought. She’s completely off her trolley. One minute she’s a blackmailer as cagey as Kruschev, and the next she wants to gambol half-naked on a pile of sawdust like a babe on an absinthe jag. It made me cold to think about it. This was the oversexed and rudderless maniac who could throw me back to the cops any time.

I looked down and I could see the white gleam of her in the edge of the shadows. She was trying to come back up, and she was doing it the hard way. Instead of going down the ravine to a place she could walk out, she was trying to climb right up that steep incline of loose sawdust. She was sinking in it halfway up her thighs, like a man walking in deep snow, and every few feet she’d start a new avalanche and lose the little she’d gained. It was man-killing work. She fought it with a fury I didn’t know she had in her. Every time she’d slide back she’d tear into it again, lifting her legs high and battling it. It would have killed anyone with a bad heart. I watched her fight her way up the last few feet and then collapse exhausted on the edge of the slope. The laboured sound of her breathing seemed to fill the night.

“Well!” She stopped and took a long, shaky breath. “How was that?”

“All right, I guess, if you enjoyed it.”

“Enjoyed it? Are
you
silly!”

“Well, what’d you do it for?”

“Don’t be stupid, darling. I just told you.”

Suddenly the light burst on me. She hadn’t blown her top at all. The whole thing had been quite sane and deadly. “You mean, just throwing yourself down the hill like that—?”

She laughed then. “No, dear. Not falling down the hill. Climbing back up.”

“Are you sure?”

“It always works for me. I’m lucky that way.”

It began to come home to me then that maybe I didn’t know all there was to know about her. I began to sense a steel-trap deadliness of purpose operating somewhere behind that baby stare and sensuous face. She was as tough as a shark, and she got what she wanted. She’d be hard to whip, because she got fat on her enemies. She got in trouble on a sawdust pile, so she used the sawdust pile to cure it.