Night My Friend (19 page)

“Oh, just a hard day at the store, I guess. All the weekend shopping starts on Thursday.”

“Has that guy been in again? The one I saw you talking to?”

“I told you he comes in a lot. What of it?”

“Sandy, Sandy—what’s happening to us?” He went to her, but she turned away.

“It’s not what’s happening to us, Johnny. It’s what’s already happened to you. You’re different, changed. Ever since you killed that man you’ve been like a stranger. I thought you were really sorry about it, but now you’ve taken this job so you can carry a gun again.”

“I haven’t had it out of the holster.”

“Not yet.”

“All right,” he said finally. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’ll see you in the morning.” He went out, conscious of the revolver’s weight against his hip, conscious that the day might come when he’d have to choose between that gun and Sandy.

The night was cold, with a hint of snow again in the air. He drove faster than usual, making one circuit of the lake in fifteen minutes, and barely glanced at the crowded parking lots along the route. The words with Sandy had bothered him, more than he cared to admit. On the second trip around the lake, he tried to pick out Woodman’s car, but it was nowhere to be seen. Or was his car hidden off the road down at one of those cottages?

He thought about Sandy some more.

Near midnight, with the moon playing through the clouds and reflecting off the frozen lake, Johnny drove into town between his inspection trips. There wasn’t much time, so he went directly to the motel. Sandy’s room was empty, the bed smooth and undisturbed.

He drove back to the lake, this time seeking lights in the cottages he knew Woodman used. But all seemed dark and deserted. There were no familiar faces at the
Blue Zebra,
either. He accepted a drink from the manager and stood by the bar sipping it. His mood grew gradually worse, and when a college boy tried to buy a drink for his girl Kendell chased them out for being under age. It was something he had never done before.

Later, around two, while he was checking another couple parked down a side road, he saw Woodman’s familiar car shoot past. There was a girl in the front seat with him, a concealing scarf wrapped around her hair. Kendell let out his breath slowly. If it was Sandy, he thought that he would kill her.

“Where were you last night?” he asked her in the morning, trying to keep the question casual. “I stopped by around midnight.”

“I went to a late movie.”

“How come?”

She lit a cigarette, turning half away from him before she answered. “I just get tired of sitting around here alone every night. Can’t you understand that?”

“I understand it all right,” he said.

Late that afternoon, when the winter darkness had already descended over the town and the lake, he left his room early and drove out to the big old cottages beyond the
Blue Zebra.
He parked off the road, in the hidden spot he knew Woodman used, and made his way to the nearer of the houses. There seemed nothing unusual about it, no signs of illegal entry, and he turned his attention to the cottage on the other side of the driveway. There, facing the lake, he found an unlatched window and climbed in.

The place was furnished like a country estate house, and great white sheets had been draped over the furniture to protect it from a winter’s dust. He’d never seen so elaborate a summer home, but he hadn’t come to look at furniture. In the bedroom upstairs he found what he sought. There had been some attempt to collect the beer bottles into a neat pile, but they hadn’t bothered to smooth out the sheets.

He looked in the ash tray at the lipsticked butts and saw they were Sandy’s brand. All right, he tried to tell himself, that didn’t prove it. Not for sure. Then he saw a crumpled ball of paper on the floor, which she’d used to blot her lipstick. He smoothed it out, fearing but already knowing. It was the mimeographed list Sheriff Dade had given him just two days before, the one Sandy had stuffed into her purse.

All right. Now he knew.

He left it all as he’d found it and went back out the window. Even Woodman would not have dared leave such a mess for any length of time. He was planning to come back, and soon—perhaps that night. And he wouldn’t dare bring another girl, when he hadn’t yet cleaned up the evidence of the last one. No, it would be Sandy again.

Kendell drove to the
Blue Zebra
and had two quick drinks before starting his tour of duty. Then, as he drove around the lake, he tried to keep a special eye out for Woodman’s car. At midnight, back at the bar, he asked the manager, “Seen Milt around tonight?”

“Woodman? Yeah, he stopped for a pack of cigarettes and some beer. Had a girl out in the car, I think.”

“Thanks.”

Kendell stepped into the phone booth and called the motel. Sandy was not in her room. He left the bar and drove down the road, past the cottage. There were no lights, but he caught a glimpse of Woodman’s car in the usual spot. They were there, all right.

He parked further down the road, and for a long time just sat in the car, smoking. Presently he took the .38 revolver from his holster and checked to see that it was loaded. Then he drove back to the
Blue Zebra
for two more drinks.

When he returned to the cottage, Woodman’s car was still there. Kendell made his way around to the front and silently worked the window open. He heard their muffled, whispering voices as he started up the stairs, and he drew the gun once more. It was easy after the first time. No one could deny that.

The bedroom door was open and he stood for a moment in the hallway, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. They hadn’t yet heard his approach.

“Woodman,” he said, not too loudly, just enough to be audible.

The man started at the sound of his name, rising from the bed with a curse. “What the hell!”

Kendell fired once at the voice, heard the girl’s scream of terror and fired again. He squeezed the trigger and kept squeezing it, because this time there was no Sergeant Racin to knock the pistol from his hand. This time there was nothing to stop him until all six shots had been blasted into the figures on the bed.

Then, letting the pistol fall to the floor, he walked over and struck a match. Milt Woodman was sprawled on the floor, his head in a gathering pool of blood. The girl’s body was still under the sheet, and he lifted it carefully to look at her.

It wasn’t Sandy.

It was Mrs. Dade, the sheriff’s wife.

This time he knew they wouldn’t be far behind him. This time he knew there’d be no next town, no new life.

But he had to keep going. Running.

M
ANY MEN HAVE DISAPPEARED
under unusual circumstances, but perhaps none more unusual than those which befell Billy Calm.

The day began in a routine way for McLove. He left his apartment in midtown Manhattan and walked through the foggy March morning, just as he did on every working day of the year. When he was still several blocks away he could make out the bottom floors of the great glass slab which was the home office of the Jupiter Steel & Brass Corporation. But above the tenth floor the fog had taken over, shrouding everything in a dense coat of moisture that could have been the roof of the world.

Underfoot, the going was slushy. The same warm air mass which had caused the fog was making short work of the previous day’s two-inch snowfall. McLove, who didn’t really mind Manhattan winters, was thankful that spring was only days away. Finally he turned into the massive marble lobby of the Jupiter Steel Building, thinking for the hundredth time that only the garish little newsstand in one corner kept it from being an exact replica of the interior of an Egyptian tomb. Anyway, it was dry inside, without slush underfoot.

McLove’s office on the twenty-first floor had been a point of creeping controversy from the very beginning. It was the executive floor, bulging with the vice-presidents and others who formed the inner core of Billy Calm’s little family. The very idea of sharing this exclusive office space with the firm’s security chief had repelled many of them, but when Billy Calm spoke there were few who openly dared challenge his mandates.

McLove had moved to the executive floor soon after the forty-year-old boy genius of Wall Street had seized control of Jupiter Steel in a proxy battle that had split stockholders into armed camps. On the day Billy Calm first walked through the marble lobby to take command of his newest acquisition, a disgruntled shareholder named Raimey had shot his hat off, and actually managed to get off a second shot before being overpowered. From that day on, Billy Calm used the private elevator at the rear of the building, and McLove supervised security from the twenty-first floor.

It was a thankless task that amounted to little more than being a sometime bodyguard for Calm. His duties, in the main, consisted of keeping Calm’s private elevator in working order, attending directors’ meetings with the air of a reluctant outsider, supervising the security forces at the far-flung Jupiter mills, and helping with arrangements for Calm’s numerous public appearances. For this he was paid fifteen thousand dollars a year, which was the principal reason he did it.

On the twenty-first floor, this morning, Margaret Mason was already at her desk outside the directors’ room. She looked up as McLove stepped into the office and flashed him their private smile. “How are you, McLove?”

“Morning, Margaret. Billy in yet?”

“Mr. Calm? Not yet. He’s flying in from Pittsburgh. Should be here anytime now.”

McLove glanced at his watch. He knew the directors’ meeting was scheduled for ten, and that was only twenty minutes away. “Heard anything?” he asked, knowing that Margaret Mason was the best source of information on the entire floor. She knew everything and would tell you most of it, provided it didn’t concern herself.

Now she nodded, and bent forward a bit across the desk. “Mr. Calm phoned from his plane and talked with Jason Greene. The merger is going through. He’ll announce it officially at the meeting this morning.”

“That’ll make some people around here mighty sad.” McLove was thinking of W. T. Knox and Sam Hamilton, two directors who had opposed the merger talk from the very beginning. Only twenty-four hours earlier, before Billy Calm’s rush flight to Pittsburgh in his private plane, it had appeared that their efforts would be successful.

“They should know better than to buck Mr. Calm,” Margaret said.

“I suppose so.” McLove glanced at his watch again. For some reason he was getting nervous. “Say, how about lunch, if we get out of the meeting in time?”

“Fine.” She gave him the small smile again. “You’re the only one I feel safe drinking with at noon.”

“Be back in a few minutes.”

“I’ll buzz you if Mr. Calm gets in.”

He glanced at the closed doors of the private elevator and nodded. Then he walked down the hall to his own office once more. He got a pack of cigarettes from his desk and went across the hall to W. T. Knox’s office.

“Morning, W. T. What’s new?”

The tall man looked up from a file folder he’d been studying. Thirty-seven, a man who had retained most of his youthful good looks and all of his charm, Knox was popular with the girls on 21. He’d probably have been more popular if he hadn’t had a pregnant wife and five children of varying ages.

“McLove, look at this weather!” He gestured toward the window, where a curtain of fog still hung. “Every winter I say I’ll move to Florida, and every winter the wife talks me into staying.”

Jason Greene, balding and ultraefficient, joined them with a sheaf of reports. “Billy should be in at any moment. He phoned me to say the merger had gone through.”

Knox dropped his eyes. “I heard.”

“When the word gets out, Jupiter stock will jump another ten points.”

McLove could almost feel the tension between the two men; one gloating, and the other bitter. He walked to the window and stared out at the fog, trying to see the invisible building across the street. Below, he could not even make out the setback of their own building, though it was only two floors lower. Fog… well, at least it meant that spring was on the way.

Then there was a third voice behind him, and he knew without turning that it belonged to Shirley Taggert, the president’s personal secretary. “It’s almost time for the board meeting,” she said, with that hint of a southern drawl that either attracted or repelled but left no middle ground. “You people ready?”

Shirley was grim-faced but far from ugly. She was a bit younger than Margaret Mason’s mid-thirties, a bit sharper of dress and mind. But she paid the penalty for being Billy Calm’s secretary every time she walked down the halls. Conversations ceased, suspicious glances followed her, and there was always a half-hidden air of tension at her arrival. She ate lunch alone, and one or two fellows who had been brave enough to ask her for a date hadn’t bothered to ask a second time.

“We’re ready,” Jason Greene told her. “Is he here yet?”

She shook her head and glanced at the clock. “He should be in any minute.”

McLove left them grouped around Knox’s desk and walked back down the hall. Sam Hamilton, the joker, passed him on the way and stopped to tell him a quick gag. He, at least, didn’t seem awfully upset about the impending merger, even though he had opposed it. McLove liked Sam better than any of the other directors, probably because at the age of fifty he was still a big kid at heart. You could meet him on even ground, and, at times, feel he was letting you outdo him.

“Anything yet?” McLove asked Margaret, returning to her desk outside the directors’ room.

“No sign of Mr. Calm, but he shouldn’t be long now. It’s just about ten.”

McLove glanced at the closed door of Billy Calm’s office, next to the directors’ room, and then entered the latter. The room was quite plain, with only the one door through which he had entered, and unbroken walls of dull oak paneling on either wall. The far end of the room, with two wide windows looking out at the fog, was only twenty feet away, and the conference table that was the room’s only piece of furniture had just the eight necessary chairs grouped around it. Some had been heard to complain that the room lacked the stature of Jupiter Steel, but Billy Calm contended he liked the forced intimacy of it.