Whom Gods Destroy (13 page)

“I've got to talk to Sid,” I said.

“This is crazy! Roy, if anyone sees you—”

She left the words hanging as I pushed the door wide and stepped inside. “Is he asleep?”

“He's passed out,” she said.

“Then you'd better go to—another part of the house. He's going to get a rude awakening, I'm afraid.”

I left her standing there and went through the room, down the hall and into the back bedroom where Sid lay sprawled and snoring. I took hold of the front of Sid's pajama jacket and jerked him upright. I slapped him three times across the face,
crack, crack, crack,
like pistol shots in the quiet of the room.

“Wake up!”

He lay across the bed, stunned and drunk.

I went into the bathroom and soaked a heavy bath-towel in cold water. I hit him in the face with it, wielding the towel like a club. The pain finally got through to his whisky-soaked brain, and he threw his arms over his face, cringing back against the headboard. He still didn't have any idea who I was.

“What the hell is this?” he said hoarsely.

I hit him once more, just to make sure. “You'd better be awake,” I said, “because this is going to be a big day. This is the day you turn on Seaward and kick him right in the gut.”

His arms still over his face, he shook his head as if he couldn't believe it. Finally he lowered his arms. He looked at me for a full thirty seconds before he realized that it was no dream. I could see a kind of sluggish anger burr behind his eyes.

“You cheap bastard,” he snarled, “get out of my house!”

I hit him right between the eyes with my fist. His eyes went glassy as he fell back on one elbow. I got him by the throat again and said, “I'm not fooling, Sid.”

“You sonofabitch!” Then he lunged at me, but it only got him tangled up in the covers. I hit him with my left fist, then I swung with my right and got him under the eye. I planted my feet and kept swinging, monotonously, like a boxer working out on a heavy bag. Pretty soon I had his face cut up, and one eye turned an ugly blue and began to swell. I landed a punch just to the side of his Adam's apple and he fell back gasping.

I said, “Is that enough to convince you?”

“They'll kill you for this!” he said, his voice almost a whine.

I hit him again, dropped him in the center of the bed and he lay there gasping. “Listen to me,” I said. “I've got a lot of hate to work out on somebody, and it's going to be you unless you're willing to listen to a proposition.”

“I don't make deals with punk bastards!”

I hit him from behind, just below the ribs, in the kidneys.

“What do you want?” It was almost a sob.

“I want to sell you a load of liquor. The load I'm going to take away from Barney Seaward.”

He looked at me, his eyes swimming with hate. “You're crazy!”

“Maybe, but I'm going to do it.”

He closed his eyes, trying to pull himself together. “How much?” he said finally, and I grinned because I could see exactly what he was thinking. Agree to buy it, agree to anything, and then call Barney Seaward the minute I left the room.

“Fifteen thousand,” I said, “That's five thousand cheaper than you could buy it direct from Barney.”

His nose was bleeding. He wiped it. “All right. Now get out of here and leave me alone.”

“Don't you want to hear the details?”

He sat woodenly, praying that I would go so he could call Barney. “I want it in cash,” I said, “so you'll have to get it out of the bank and have it ready by tonight. And I want a guarantee that you won't have Seaward putting his hoodlums on my tail the minute I walk out of here.”

“I give you my word.”

“The hell with your word. I want to know how you got to be a bootlegger in the first place.”

He looked up then. His face was cut and puffy with bruises on the left side. “What are you talking about?” he said angrily.

“I'm talking about that 'favor' you did for Seaward four years ago. Who did you kill, Sid?”

It was a wild stab in the dark, but the minute I said it I knew that I had hit something. His eyes flew wide, then narrowed quickly to nothing. “Go hang yourself,” he grated. “You're a goddamn punk and that's all you'll ever be.”

My right fist caught him in the middle of the mouth and knocked him off the bed. Then I went around the bed and kicked him in the kidneys before he could get up.

“Have you got any more words you want to get out of your system?”

He lay doubled on the floor, his mouth working.

“Do you want to tell me who it was that Barney paid you to kill?”

“Go—to—hell.”

I kicked again and he groaned and doubled up. He tried to crawl under the bed but I grabbed his feet and jerked him out.

“You're crazy!” It was a very small voice now. “You're crazy! You can't get—away with this. You won't live an hour—after Barney finds out.” He tried to get up; then his face went suddenly white and he dropped as if he had been shot.

I got him up to a sitting position and rolled him onto the bed. Another drink, I decided, was the thing to bring him out of it.

I went back to the kitchen and got a bottle. Vida was sitting like a stone statue at the breakfast table, staring unblinkingly at her folded hands.

When I got back to the bedroom I poured Sid a drink and helped him get it down.

I said, “Sid, I'll sell the load to you for twelve thousand, like you said. You'll be making eight thousand clear on the deal and there's no reason for Barney to ever find out about it. You can get rid of it a little at a time and Barney will never guess a thing.”

No sound. Not a word.

“Look,” I said, “you can see why I have to have a guarantee, can't you? I want to know what kind of thing you're holding over Barney so I can hold it over you. But just for one day. Until the job is over. Then I'll get out of Oklahoma and you'll never see me again. After you get that liquor in your warehouse, I'm not afraid of you going to Barney then.”

It was no good. I could kill him, or I could beat him some more, but neither would get me what I wanted. I was tired and sick now and I wanted to get away and forget all about it.

Then I had an idea. I said, “Sid, listen to me.” And he lay there, his eyes glassed with pain. “Sid, I'm going to tell you something that you would have known a long time ago if you'd bothered to stay sober long enough to see what was going on around you. It's about Vida, Sid. Remember a long time ago, Sid, when you were just a runner? Things were good then, weren't they? No worries, no problems, no conscience to bother you. That was the way you liked it, but Vida wanted something else, didn't she? She wanted you to be a retailer and make big money like Kingkade, so finally you went to Barney and made a deal with him and got to be a retailer. But was it worth it, Sid? Have you had a good night's sleep since then?”

He said nothing.

“Was it worth it?” I said again. “You did it for Vida, but do you know what she's going to do to you? She's going to leave you, Sid. She's sick and disgusted with you. And do you know who she's leaving with? It's me, Sid. Roy Foley.”

Something terrible happened in those little eyes of his. “Get out of here, you sonofabitch.”

I got up and opened the door and called, “Vida, come here a minute.” She came in from the kitchen looking as pale and cold as marble. I said, “Ask her, Sid.”

He didn't have to ask her. He didn't have to say a word and neither did Vida and neither did I.

He lay there looking at her and it seemed to me that he died a little. I took Vida's arm and led her out into the hallway and it was like leading a department-store dummy. I didn't know what to say to her, so I left her there and went back into the bedroom. “So that was what you did it for,” I said. “It wasn't worth it, was it, Sid?”

There was no fight left in him. “Get out of here...” That whisper again.

“As soon as I get the story.”

He said, “Marty Paycheck.”

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“Paycheck was a wildcatter trying to move in on Kingkade. He had his own wholesale outlet. Seaward couldn't stand for that.”

“So you made a deal with Seaward. Did they ever find the body?”

“No.”

“Where is it?”

“Copper Lake, about four miles north of town.” The words came slowly, indistinctly. He must have understood that he was the same as signing his own death warrant, if Seaward ever found out that he had talked. It didn't seem to bother him.

“Then what?” I said.

“Nothing. It was just a deal. Big Prairie was growing. It was big enough to hold two retailers, but Barney wanted to be sure that they bought from him. That's all there was to it.”

Now I could understand why Seaward didn't like this heavy drinking of Sid's. He was afraid that someday Sid would get too drunk and do exactly what he was doing now. Talk. Of course there was no positive proof that Seaward was mixed up in the killing, but if the word ever got out the State Crime Bureau might be interested, and that was the last thing Seaward would want. I could understand why Barney put up with Sid, even when it turned out to be a bad deal. Killing to cover up a killing could be an endless thing, and not even Barney Seaward could hope to get away with it long.

“Now get out,” Sid said. He sounded like a very old man.

I went out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where Vida was. “It's all settled,” I said, “you start packing. By this time tomorrow we'll be out of Big Prairie for good.” I put my arms around her and held her tight.

“Why did you have to do it like that?”

“There wasn't any other way. Christ, I didn't enjoy it.” I held her for a minute, letting her cry it out.

“Hold me tighter, Roy,” she said. “Hold me as tight as you can.”

9

THE NEXT FEW HOURS, I knew, were going to be dangerous ones. I had to stay out of sight, and still there were a lot of things to be done before attempting to hijack an armed whisky truck. To start with I had to have a car no one would recognize.

So I had Vida rent one at a U-Drive-It place. Next I had to find somebody to help me. Somebody I could depend on. My best bet, I guessed, was a man who needed money and who hated Barney Seaward's guts. A wildcat bootlegger.

As soon as Vida came back with the rented car I got in it and headed south for River Street, a part of town even crummier than Burk. I sweated getting across town and down to River Street. If some of Barney's men spot you, I thought, you'll sure as hell get more than a bruised groin.

But I made it all right. I parked the car behind a second-hand store and went into a beer joint where I knew I'd find a wildcatter if I just waited long enough.

The minute I saw Link Mefford I knew he was the man I wanted. He was a rawboned, sunburned farmer with bitter eyes and a mouth like a steel trap. When we got back to the alley, he said, “I hear you're lookin' for somethin' to drink.”

“Not exactly. I've got a deal you might be interested in.”

He spat a stream of tobacco juice on a pile of beer cans.

“I know where I can get some merchandise,” I said. “Cheap.”

“How cheap?”

“It's free, you might say.”

“Go on.”

“All right, here's the way it is. I happen to know Barney Seaward plans to bring his next load into Big Prairie. I know the truck, the driver, the guard, and the route they're taking. I've even got the place spotted where we can hit them. Do you want me to go on?”

He nodded, his face bland.

“All right, we'll rent two light trucks at the U-Drive-It place where I got my car. If anything should go wrong and it turns into a race, it's better to have two light trucks than one big one. You'll have to do the renting, though. I can't afford to be seen.”

“Why?” he asked flatly, not missing the bruises and cuts on my face. “Seaward?”

I nodded and that seemed to satisfy him.

He thought about it some more, chewing slowly. “It'll take more than two men,” he said.

“Have you got a friend?”

“Maybe. If it comes off, what's the split?”

“Three ways,” I said, “after I take out for expenses. And we'll need some guns. Two shotguns and a pistol. Can you get them?”

He thought some more and nodded. It was a deal. We didn't shake hands on it; he just nodded. “You better wait inside,” he said. “I'll see what I can do about findin' somebody to help us.”

Mefford turned and walked off down the alley. I went back inside the beer joint, took a back booth and waited. I thought of Mefford. Like hell I was going to split that load of liquor with him or anybody else, but he wouldn't know about it until it was too late. The stuff would go into Sid's warehouse and Vida and I would be on our way out of Oklahoma.

About thirty minutes passed and Mefford came back with a man he introduced as Burl Cox. Cox was a soft-spoken, squatty little man with tremendous shoulders and arms, and like Mefford he wore faded bib overalls and chewed tobacco. After we'd shaken hands Mefford said, “We can
go
get the trucks any time you say. While we're doin' that you can wait over at my house.”