The Big Bite (15 page)

“Now, that’s a bright question. What do you think he does? He turns the tape and the letter over to the police.”

Tallant shook his head with a faint smile. “No.”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course he does.”

“I don’t think so, and right there is the point you overlooked. Your whole threat is just a threat on paper, an arbitrary rule set up in an imaginary game. He doesn’t turn it over to the police, for the simple reason that he would have everything to lose and nothing whatever to gain.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake—”

The smile became a little colder. “You don’t see it yet? What, specifically, does he stand to gain? Revenge? Don’t be stupid yourself. What the hell does he care about you, or what happened to you? He’s not a relative, because you have none. We checked.”

“He’s a friend of mine—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. In your business, friends are expendable.”

“So what does he stand to lose? Eight cents worth of stamps.”

They exchanged glances. “What does he stand to lose?” he asked. “Really, Harlan. He stands to lose a hundred thousand dollars.”

I saw what he was driving at, and I could feel the walls move a little closer around me.

He went on like a professor giving a lecture. “This tape you have is worth nothing in itself. It has only what we will call potential value, or value solely as a threat. The minute you carry out the threat, its value drops to zero. You understand that, I suppose? The police would give him nothing for it, obviously. All they’d do, if they found out who he was, would be to put him in jail for not giving it to them sooner. So there we come right to the heart of the matter.

“X has something that has a potential value of—to use your own figure—a hundred thousand dollars. That is, as long as he hangs onto it and threatens us with it. So why Would he turn it over to an ungrateful bunch of slobs like the police and have its value drop to zero when he can retain it himself and keep the value alive? Is he insane?”

I tried to say something. I couldn’t.

He continued. “So what happens? Nothing, in our opinion. Except that sometime in the future, after you have disappeared completely, friend X comes sidling up to us with the same old sad story.”

I got myself started at last. “So what have you accomplished? You have to pay him off.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. If you do have an accomplice, we’re probably ruined, because the thing becomes an endless chain and could go on forever. You’d bleed us white, or we’d have to try to escape. But we’re almost certain now you haven’t; got one.”

He stopped, and the room was silent except for the faint humming of the air-conditioner somewhere in the house. I tried to estimate my chances of getting to him without being cut in two by that shotgun, and came up with an even zero.

He apparently read my thoughts. He shook his head “Not now. We’re going to wait you out.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re going to see if X does show up. We don’t think he will, but if he does we haven’t got any more to lose by waiting for him than we have by being suckers and paying you now. We’re going to keep you here. Nobody saw you come in. Nobody knows where you are. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you’ve already disappeared, and could be dead.”

I felt cold all over. “You can’t get away with it.”

“I think so,” he replied calmly. “Do you know what a trial balloon is?”

I just stared at him.

“It’s a political dodge. A politician deliberately lets something leak to sample public reaction before he commits himself. If he gets the wrong reaction, he can deny the whole thing. That’s your status at the moment. You’re a trial balloon.”

The room was silent. Nobody moved. “You see?” he went on. “It’s an unusual sort of thing. We’re going to find out exactly what would happen if you turned up missing. Before you actually do, that is.”

I didn’t have a chance; they had me cut off from every direction. Now that it was too late I could see why Purvis had approached me. He’d had sense enough to know he couldn’t bluff it through alone; they were too hard and dangerous for that. They had to know positively there were two people in it—and one of them forever out of reach—before they could be handled. He’d studied Cannon’s death for a long time and he’d studied her; even without knowing for sure who the man was in the case he’d been aware of the kind of people he was up against. And still they’d managed to kill him.

They’d kill me the same way. It wasn’t a mere matter of getting that tape back; as long as anybody on earth knew they’d killed Cannon they were in danger. They were pretty sure right now I was the only one, and as soon as they were convinced of it they’d get rid of me. Every hour that passed without someone else’s showing up was making them more certain. And nobody else was going to show up.

The cold voice went on, “Your car has been abandoned in New Orleans. The cabin is closed; your gear and fishing tackle are gone—”

I leaned forward. “Listen. Somebody’s bound to I know she was out there. Or that you were out there. You’ve been seen driving my car. Maybe driving it out. You say there’s been nobody there looking for me, but you were gone long enough to drive the car to New Orleans. I was seen in Shreveport by God knows how many people. I was registered at a hotel there—” I stopped.

He smiled. “As Mr. John Abernathy, of Kansas City.”

“Listen! I called George Gray from there—”

“Gray didn’t know where you were calling from. He probably just assumed it was from here.” He paused for a moment, and then went on. “Nobody knew she was down there at that cabin. Nobody saw you leave there with her. That end of the lake is the most isolated place in the county. I drove your car out at night—after I’d searched, it and put it in running order again. As far as knowing nobody had come out there while I was gone to New Orleans with your heap—that was easy. I piled up a little mound of dirt in each rut near the edge of the clearing. When I came back they were still there; no car had been across them. They’re there yet, or were four hours ago. Harlan, you’ve disappeared. You didn’t even leave a ripple. And nobody gives a damn.”

“George Gray—”

“So you won’t call him Thursday. He’ll ask the Governor to order out the National Guard, won’t he? He offered you a job; you accepted it, and then changed your mind. He’s going to get excited about that?”

The room fell silent again as they glanced at each other. I tried to think. I couldn’t come up with anything. There had to be a way out. But where was it?

“You can’t get away with it,” I said. “Look. You were gone from town long enough to drive a car to New Orleans. They’re going to wonder why your shop’s closed. The whole thing’s screwy. You give yourself away in a dozen places—”

He shook his head. “I drove your car to New Orleans Saturday night and came back Sunday on a bus, while I was supposed to be on a fishing trip to Caddo Lake and when the shop was closed anyway. I’ve checked this cabin out there at night, coming in from a different road farther down the lake and walking up about two miles. I’m in the shop every day; I come in through the back way here at night. Everything’s perfectly normal on the surface; there’s nothing suspicious at all. Nobody saw you come in here, and nobody’ll ever see you go out. The maid has a week off to visit her family in Louisiana.”

A week. Sometime within a week.

I fought down an impulse to cry out at him. “Good God,” I said, “do you mean you’d go through all this just to keep from paying me off and getting the tape back?”

“It isn’t merely a question of the tape. We think you hid that somewhere. I’ve looked for it, and can’t find it. The chances are, nobody’ll ever find it. It’s you. We’re in this too deep to have anyone running around loose who knows about it. You must have realized the chances you were taking when you walked into it; I don’t see that you’ve got any kick coming now that it’s backfired on you. Get up.”

There was nothing else to do. I stood up. He got out of the chair, holding the gun, and began backing out the doorway into the hall. “Follow me, and don’t get any closer.”

In the hallway he clicked on a light switch. I passed the open door to the bath and came abreast another door on the left. He stopped and nodded curtly. “Open that.”

I opened it.

“Turn around and stand in the doorway. Don’t try to jump in and slam it, because I’ll cut you in two. That’s right. Go on in slowly.”

They both followed me in, Tallant first with the shotgun in my back. The light was already on in here. It was another bedroom, smaller than the other. It had one window opposite the door, facing the patio, but there were heavy drapes over it and they were drawn. There was a single bed with its head up against the wall under the window, and a night table stood beside it. The floor was covered with a gray carpet, and there was an armchair and a bridge lamp against the wall to the left.

“Lie down on the bed,” he commanded.

I turned and looked at him. He was near the door, at least eight feet away, with the gun pointing right at my chest.

“Go on,” he said flatly. “I won’t take any chances with you.”

I lay down. She came past him and around to my left side. Reaching down, she picked up something dangling from the side of the bed. I saw what it was. It was a pair of handcuffs made fast to the steel frame of the bed with a short length of chain.

“Don’t try to grab her,” he warned me.

She caught my left hand and snapped the cuff over the wrist. Then she came around to the other side of the bed and made my right hand fast with another on that side. I could move my hands, but there wasn’t enough slack in the chains to bring them together. He put down the gun, tied my feet together with a piece of rope that had been lying in the chair, and then secured them to the foot of the bed. Forcing my mouth open, he shoved a wadded handkerchief in it and plastered adhesive tape across my face to keep it in. She had gone back to the doorway and was silently watching. There was no expression on her face at all—no pity, no regret, not even any hate. It was just something that had to be done, and they did it. They’d kill me the same way.

No,
I thought.
She would, perhaps, but he’d make it a personal thing.
He wasn’t quite as tough, and he had the spurs in him. That business of her having to shack up with me for the past six days was riding him hard, and every time he thought about it it dug him a little more. They’d had to do it that way, and it had meant nothing to her, but he wasn’t liking it a bit. I’d seen it twice in the past half hour, and wondered about it. He was going to make it rough on me, as rough as he could, but there was another side to it, too. If you get emotional you can always lose your head, and if you do you’re never quite as dangerous as a cold type who’s just doing a job.

He stepped back, took out a handkerchief, and wiped the sweat from his face. He’d been under a strain too, in spite of the calm way he looked outside. Suddenly he caught her in his arms. “Julia—!”

She broke it up after the first wild clinch. “Please, Dan. Not in front of this vermin.”

He turned his face and looked at me for an instant, his eyes savage. They went out and closed the door.
It was an act out there at the cabin,
I thought,
but it wasn’t quite all an act.

They didn’t come back; there was dead silence in the house. They were probably in her bedroom. I thought about it, trying to keep from getting panicky. It couldn’t happen, not here in the quiet upper-middle-class residential district of a small town where a dented fender in the Cadillac was a big deal. Next door they’d be playing bridge; up the street they were watching television or waiting for a daughter to get home from a date. Murder?
Here?
That was a pipe dream. Murder never happened in a place like this.

I was simply being erased. I’d tried to move in on them without having a good look at them first, and now I was lying here watching myself disappear like a ripple dying out on a pond. Nobody would ever know it. Who’d miss me? Who’d raise an alarm? The police would impound my car in New Orleans, and after a long time they’d sell it for storage charges. George Gray would mutter into his soft-boiled eggs some morning that he couldn’t see why that sad bastard of a Harlan couldn’t at least have mailed back the key to the cabin. You wouldn’t expect the big moose to tell anybody he’d changed his mind about the job, but, by God, he could have sent back the key. The bank would keep sending statements to my apartment in Oklahoma City until the landlord closed it and sold my stuff for the rent. Three years from now some sports writer covering the pro football circuit would say to somebody in a bar that that guy out there this afternoon reminded him a little of Harlan. Wonder what ever happened to him; make mine a Martini on-the rocks—

That was it. That was the thing that scared you till you felt cold right down in the guts. They could get away with it so easily. They’d done it before, and they’d do it again. One traffic fatality, one unsolved and forgotten murder two hundred miles away, and one disappearance nobody ever even noticed, and not once did they slip up. Six months from now there’d be a blurb in the local paper:
Mrs. Julia Cannon and Mr. Daniel R. Tallant were married today in a simple ceremony at the bride’s lovely home on Cherrywood Drive. Mrs. Cannon, widow of the late Howard L. Cannon, Wayles automobile dealer, is prominent in social and civic activities, being vice president of the Women’s Club and one of the founders of the local Little Theatre group.

I lay there looking up at the ceiling and watching myself disappear. Sweat collected on my forehead. The only way I could get it off was by turning my head and rubbing my face against the pillow.

Sometime just before dawn he came in again, unshackled me, and let me go to the john. The gun was covering me every second. They fastened me down again and left. It grew light in the room. I knew he was gone for the day. She’d probably turned in again. I could hear cars out in the street once in a while, very faintly because with the air-conditioning turned on all the doors and windows were closed. I lay staring at nothing trying not to think. After a while I must have gone to sleep. It didn’t seem possible, but the next thing I knew she was standing beside the bed yanking the adhesive tape off my mouth.

She was wearing a cotton house dress and had a handkerchief tied around her hair. A vacuum sweeper was whirring behind her and she had the hose and one of the brush attachments in her hand. She smiled, looking like any very attractive housewife in the world.
Maybe it’s deliberate,
I thought, trying to keep my stomach from turning over. The whole thing was calculated, in an attempt to break me down.

The tape gave way, bringing the handkerchief out of my mouth. A power lawn mower was making a racket in the patio and I realized that was the reason she felt it was safe enough to remove the gag. There was hardly any chance I’d be heard if I yelled my head off anyway, even without the mower. There was nothing on the east side of the house but a deserted street and some woods.

“Housework!” she said. She shrugged good-naturedly, and reached out with the toe of one shoe to press down the switch of the vacuum sweeper. It stopped whining. She sat down in the armchair near the bed and took a cigarette from a pocket of the dress.

I said nothing.

She lit the cigarette. “Do you want one?”

“Keep it,” I said.

“Very well, if you’re going to be surly. Oh, incidentally, just in case you should manage to grab me with one of those brutal looking hands, the keys to these handcuffs are in another room.”

“Your luck’s going to run out on you some day,” I said.

She blew out some smoke and looked at it thoughtfully. “It already has,” she replied quietly. “But I wouldn’t expect you to see that.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“About one p.m.”

I thought about it. This was Thursday; if I hadn’t let them booby-trap me I’d have been on my way out of Houston right this minute with a fortune in my luggage and nothing to worry about. And now I was lying here waiting for the two of them to get around to murdering me.

It must have shown on my face. Her eyebrows raised. “Really, where’s the treasured toughness?”

“Shut up,” I said.

She leaned back in the chair and studied me reflectively. “You’re not really hard, you know. You’re merely insulated. And you’re a fool, in spite of that bit of sleight of hand the other day. You walked into this thing without even taking the trouble to learn something about the people you were going to try to blackmail. I wonder how long that veneer of toughness would have lasted if you’d ever had the intelligence to see, just once, how many ways there are in this world you can be utterly destroyed by random little sequences of events that look as harmless as marshmallows. If I hadn’t stepped out of the shadows in front of your car on a road down there in the swamp that evening five months ago, neither of us would be here in this position., That’s obvious, isn’t it? Dan Tallant’s car was down there too, and I thought you were Dan. But that’s also obvious. Even you saw it, so it must be, because you never see anything but the obvious.”

“Why don’t you write it down?” I said. “Maybe some-body’ll publish, it.”

She went on as if she hadn’t even heard me. “I don’t think you even know what I’m talking about. I don’t mean you alone. I mean all of us. We’re all destroyed, destroyed for wanting too many things and not caring how we get them. If you really want to preen yourself as a tough guy, Mr. Harlan, you should wait and be tough after there’s no longer any hope of winning. It’s easy till then. It’s also very bad to have any intelligence along with it but, fortunately, I think you have been spared that.”

“Turn it off,” I said. “You’re not even making sense. I don’t read you at all.”

“Oh, I’m aware of that. Perhaps I just felt like talking. And there is some satisfaction in the spectacle of the lordly Mr. Harlan in the role of captive audience. Imagine your having to listen to the inane babblings of a woman, and not only that but to the babblings of a woman you don’t even have any hope of bedding with—which is obviously the only thing women are any good for.