Murder in the Wind (8 page)

Of the eighteen on the road gang, one was dead, the one Big Satch had shot. Eleven had been recaptured, including the one who had killed the guard. Two of those recaptured had testified against the one who had killed the guard. It was expected that the remaining six would soon be picked up. They were working the swamp lands with dogs. Over a hundred law officers were engaged in the search. Two of the escaped men had stolen a car near East Tohopekaliga Lake. The description of the car was given, and the license number. It had not yet been recovered. The men who had taken the car were believed to be, from their descriptions, Frank Stratter and William Torris. Both men were to be considered dangerous, and Stratter was believed to be armed with the shotgun taken from the dead guard.

The next morning they took a Trailways bus from Tampa to Miami. They found a cheap hotel in Miami.

“Now what?” Billy demanded.

“Let me handle it, kid. We got to have new names and papers to back them up. We got to have a clean car. We can maybe pick up a cheap apartment. For that we got to have some money. So the first thing we do is get some money.”

“We stay right here?”

“Why not? You nervous? I know the town. They’ll figure we’re headed north, out of the state. You got to try to think like they do. We’ll do a few operations around here. I’ll break you in. One thing, we got to have a cover. We got to have jobs. It doesn’t matter what kind. We operate at night. First we got to have papers so the new names will hold up. It isn’t hard to get driver’s licenses. Those are always good. You got to have a car for that. Tonight we start to operate.”

And on that first night in Miami they had operated. Frank took a liquor store. He held a rock the size of a potato in his fist. They went in and he leaned over the counter and frowned at a lower shelf and said, “What’s that stuff?”

When the man turned, he hit him solidly with the rock and the man fell behind the counter. Frank got behind the counter and said, “Customer coming. Be looking around.”

Billy, his stomach trembling, walked over and stared, without seeing anything, at a wine display.

“I want a fifth of Jim Beam.”

“Here you are, sir.”

“Where’s Joe tonight?”

“He had to go up to Hollywood on business. I’m helping out. Anything else?”

“No. That’ll do it.”

Billy heard the rustle of the paper bag, heard the door swing shut as the man went out. He turned around and saw Frank empty the cash register, moving with deliberation. He saw Frank open a drawer, take out a heavy revolver, examine it, drop it into a paper bag. He bent over, came up with the unconscious man’s wallet, took some bills out of it and dropped it.

“Let’s get out of here!” Billy said.

“Relax, kid.” They headed for the door. Frank turned out all the lights but one in the back of the store. “He’s closed for the night.”

“Is he dead?”

“Damn it, what makes you so nervous? No, he isn’t dead. Wait a second. Might as well take a couple of bottles along. I got all the prints wiped off. Scotch ought to do.”

Frank latched the door behind him, tested the lock, then wiped the prints off the outside handle. They walked three blocks and took a bus. When they were back in the hotel, they counted the money. Two hundred and twelve.

Two weeks later Billy felt a lot less nervous. His new name was Danny King. He worked in a supermarket, packing orders and carrying them out to cars. Frank Stratter was Bob King, his brother. They lived in a garage apartment, owned clothes that fitted, owned a Buick in good condition, had papers in their pockets to prove their new identity. The road camp seemed a long way off. The head rolling into the ditch was something he had dreamed. Every other escapee had been captured. Frank worked in a big Ford agency, washing cars. Billy wished they could just go on the way they were, and forget the operations. Give them up.

He tried to tell that to Frank, but Frank couldn’t understand what he meant. That was the funny thing about Frank. You could get just so friendly with him, but you couldn’t go beyond a certain point. There was a wall there.

Frank liked to talk about the operations. “You can’t keep pulling the same stuff in the same way. Then they get to know where to look for you. You got to keep loose. But we’re messing around with little stuff. When the stake is big enough, we’ll try something bigger.”

“Like what, Frank?”

“Like maybe a bank. Something where you’ve got to do a lot of planning, but when you make out, it’s worth it.”

“I don’t want to do anything like that”

“Sure you do. Your nerve is getting better all the time. You’re shaping up good. And you handle the car nice. We can’t stay on this two bit level forever, kid.”

“Let’s not rush it.”

“No. We won’t rush it. I got some things I want to do first. One of them is pick up a friend.”

“A friend?”

“From up near Ocala where I come from. You’ll like her. She’s a good kid.”

He had felt all along that Frank was closing him out, keeping him out of the center of things. The girl would be another door closed against him. Frank went after her in late August, taking the car. He was gone three days. It was bad while he was gone. The streets were different. He felt as though people were watching him. He felt as though at any moment somebody would look at him and recognize him and begin to yell. But Frank said people didn’t do that sort of thing. Take that man in the grocery store, while Frank had held the gun and he had cleaned out the cash drawer. Frank said if that man saw him on the street he would be a little puzzled. He would think he had seen him before, but he wouldn’t remember where or how. Billy hoped Frank was right.

He had been thinking about girls a lot lately. There had only been that one time in the loft of the barn at Fowler’s place. He and Fowler and Dukie and that girl Christabelle, the one that wasn’t quite right in the head. It hadn’t been anything like he had thought it would be, and it had cured him of girls for quite a while, but now he was thinking of them again, and he felt a little unclean the way he was thinking about them. Funny, he thought, how you can be an escaped convict and have been in on fifteen… no, sixteen robberies with Frank and still feel guilty about thinking dirty.

While Frank was gone he wondered what the girl would be like. Frank liked things with style. He guessed she would look like something out of the movies, and then the two of them would look down on him, instead of just only Frank. A real smooth dish, with silky legs and one of those wet red mouths and wise eyes. That’s what Frank would have. It made him feel small, thinking of how it would be after there were three of them, and he thought he would do an operation while Frank was gone, just to show him he could. He found a place that looked all right and he even went in and bought cigarettes there, but he couldn’t get his nerve all the way up to do it and he was afraid the man would see the bulge of the gun in his pants.

So he worked each day and he went to the movies each night Frank was away, and on the fourth day when he got home from the supermarket, the Buick was parked by the garage apartment and he knew Frank was back with the girl.

He went in and Frank introduced them. It shocked Billy when he saw the girl. She was just a plain country girl in a cotton dress and evidently not a damn thing else, standing there barefoot in the apartment, and she didn’t look over fifteen or sixteen. She had a kind of wide face and sleepy-looking eyes and she was built a little heavy, but she was really stacked. She pushed out on all parts of that cotton dress. “This is Hope Morrissey,” Frank said, “Billy Torris.”

“Hi,” Billy said.

“Hi, Billy,” Hope said.

She had a thin country-sounding voice and she wasn’t at all like Billy had thought she would be. It made him look at Frank in a sort of different way, as though maybe Frank wasn’t what he had figured he was. Frank didn’t think she was too young or dumpy or anything. He seemed glad he’d brought her back, and glad to have her there. They seemed pretty used to each other. She couldn’t walk within five feet of Frank without him grabbing her, but she didn’t seem to mind or even hardly pay any attention. She’d brush on by like he wasn’t there. Anyway it was good to have somebody do the cooking, even if she couldn’t cook very good. She wasn’t very clean or very good about picking up around the place. Her ankles always looked sort of grubby and she never combed her hair much. Frank got clothes for her, but she liked to pad around in that old cotton dress, barefoot, humming to herself in a funny tuneless way.

She slept in with Frank and just about as soon as they got in the room together, that noise would start and Billy would go on out a lot of the times and walk around until they were pretty certain to be asleep. Frank was at her all the time, it seemed like. Morning and night and then, on weekends, it was just better to be out of there and go to the movies or go over to the Beach. She certainly didn’t have anything to say. But after she came Frank would talk a lot more than before. He did a lot of walking alone in September and having her there made him think a lot more about girls than before. He got so he’d follow them on the street, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. Frank had started his big plans. He wouldn’t talk about them. But he spent hours drawing floor plans and going over maps. They did some small operations and one turned out a lot better than they had any right to hope. Over eight hundred, it was.

Then on Monday, the day before yesterday, it all ended in a hurry. It was a hot night. He and Frank had been out looking around and then they went back and got Hope and they left the car right there by the apartment and the three of them walked down about three blocks to a place for some beer. Frank was wearing khakis and a purple sports shirt. Billy had on old jeans and a torn T-shirt. Hope wore one of her baggy cotton dresses and a pair of sandals. The bank roll was behind the loose board in the closet, along with the two revolvers. They had some beer and about midnight they walked back. They were a block from the place when Frank stopped and said, “Trouble!”

Billy looked and saw the prowl car parked out by the curb. They walked slowly across the street. Frank wouldn’t let them hurry. They headed on back the way they had come. They went over a block and Frank made them wait while he went back to take a look. Billy was nervous. Hope just stood there waiting, chewing gum, patient as a cow in a field. Frank came back in about ten minutes.

“They’re up in the place, looking around. I saw them. We got to get out of here.”

“How?” Billy asked.

“We got to get a car and we got to get some clothes. I’ve got about twenty bucks on me. You got anything?”

“Two dollars.”

They took the car out of a used car lot. It was a battered old panel delivery. On the side of it it said
Hollywood Seafood Company.
Frank crossed the wires, and it started all right. Billy got the plate off a pickup parked on a dark street.

Frank said they should leave town. Hope sat warmly, heavily between them. Frank cursed as they drove out of town, through Coral Gables. After an hour or so he seemed to cheer up. He told Billy that they’d had some fun for a while anyway, and it wouldn’t be too rough to start over again. But it had to be in a new town. He’d heard New Orleans was a good town. They could operate on the way over, just to get money enough for the trip.

After buying gas and eating, they had just a few dollars left when they got to Bradenton Tuesday night. Frank said he had been thinking about how to pull something quick and simple. He cruised around and they found a bar and he parked a half block away and sent Hope back to the bar. “No bum, you understand,” he said. “Somebody that looks like they got a couple of bucks.”

“I never did nothing like this.”

“You won’t have any trouble. It doesn’t look like a place they’ll throw you out of. Just wiggle it around and let somebody buy you a drink then tell him you know a better place you want to go to. Then walk him up this way and slow down when you get in those shadows there by the edge of that warehouse.”

She was gone fifteen minutes. They stood leaning against the warehouse, waiting for her. When she came along with the man, they grabbed him fast. Billy didn’t even get a look at him. Hope went and got in the truck while they went over him. He had eleven dollars. Frank was so disgusted with the take that he kicked the man solidly in the head, twice. The next place worked better. The man had nearly forty dollars and he was smaller and easier to handle. Frank said there was no reason why it wouldn’t work all the way to New Orleans.

“I don’t like doing it,” Hope said.

“But you’ll do it, won’t you? Won’t you?”

She gave a little gasp of pain and said, “Sure, Frank. Yes, I’ll do it. Gee, you wanta give me a cancer or something?”

She slept in the back on the burlap sacks the rest of the way up to the tourist cabins in Tampa. When they got the cabin, Frank said he should sleep in the truck and Frank and Hope would take the cabin.

Now, in the rainy morning, it seemed like a big mess that would just get worse. It didn’t ever seem to occur to Frank that they could get caught. It was as though something was left out of Frank, some degree of fear and judgment that other people had.

Billy wished they’d get up and then they could get out on the road in the rain and start making miles. He wondered how Frank was going to arrange to trade cars. They ought to anyway get some green paint and paint out that seafood sign. He wished Frank hadn’t kicked that man so hard. There in the dark shadows by the warehouse it had sounded too hard. Frank had grunted with the effort as he had kicked the man.

It was, he guessed, about an hour since he had awakened. He was wondering if he should go and knock on the door. Then all of a sudden Frank and Hope ran to the truck and they each got in out of the rain, one on each side of him. The girl pressed warm and steamy against him and it made him feel strange.

Frank handed him the keys and said, “You drive. I’m going to get in the back and get some sleep.”

“How about breakfast?” Hope asked.

“Save it until lunch, honey.” Frank climbed over into the back. “Okay. Let’s roll. Stay under the speed limit, Billy. Go up 41 to 98 and cut over 98 to 19.”