“She needs me,” I insisted. “Do you know what that means, to have someone really need you for the first time in your life?”
“I know. But, Collie, it still isn’t right.”
“It must be because when I woke up this morning, I was glad. I was glad to be alive, Doc, because I knew someone else would be glad. And people just aren’t glad unless they need you. They may be nice and friendly, like you were, but if they don’t need you, they can’t really be glad. They can’t really care whether you’re alive or not. And when no one else cares, when it goes on that way year after year, Doc, and nobody cares…”
I stopped. I guess I’d said about everything there was to say. Doc cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“All right, Collie.” He sighed. “I’ll agree to your staying on here, but she’ll have to be told about your condition.” I gave him a scathing look and he added, “I can do it in a way so that she won’t be alarmed.”
“Not alarm her! You’ll tell her that I’m on the loose from an insane asylum, that if I get crowded very hard I may haul off and start swinging. You’d tell her that—what the hell else could you tell her?—and you say she wouldn’t be alarmed!”
“Now, Collie. I think I could pose the situation much better than that. Besides, it’s for your own good, Collie. Yours and hers. I’d be violating my duty if I didn’t do it.”
The cords in my throat began to swell. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to brush away the red haze, and I said—I heard a voice saying, “Don’t do it, Doc. If you do this to me, if you make me l-lose her, I’ll—”
He turned full around in the seat. He put his hands up on the wheel where I could see them, watch them, and he simply sat there calmly. Looking into my face, and waiting.
The reddish haze went away. My throat relaxed. I leaned back in the seat, feeling limp and empty and kind of dull. But knowing what to do. I opened the door of the car, and started to get out. He drew me back. Looked at me worriedly.
“Collie…” He hesitated. “If you’d just understand…”
“I understand. I’ll get my coat and leave with you.”
“No, wait a minute.” He stared at me thoughtfully. “You are looking good, Collie. You look a hundred percent better than you did when you left my place.”
“I feel better. At least I did, until you showed up.”
He winced and went on studying me. It seemed like an hour before he spoke again. “Are you covering up anything, Collie? I was thinking that if Mrs. Anderson was the type who picked up men in bars, she’d quite likely have some pretty shady acquaintances.”
“She’s not that type. She did it with me, but that doesn’t make her the type.”
He nodded slowly. “Well, all right, my friend. For the time being, until you’re a little better settled at least, I won’t see her.”
“Gosh, Doc. I—gosh, I just don’t know how to thank you!”
“Don’t,” he said, sort of embarrassed. “I’m not entitled to any thanks.”
We talked for a few minutes more. Finally, we shook hands and he left, backing down the lane to the highway instead of coming up into the yard.
I went back to the grass-cutting, but I didn’t work at it long. I was too weak. That strain I’d been under when I’d thought he was going to see Fay had taken too much out of me.
I stretched out in the grass, letting the sun beat down into my face, hoping I’d never have to go through a thing like that again. Doc Goldman, I thought—my friend, Doc, one of the squarest guys that ever lived. And for the moment I’d been on the point of killing him. I shivered, feeling cold despite the sunlight. Doc—I’d almost killed Doc. And I probably would kill him if…
But that “if” was never going to be. Because he’d promised not to see her.
It didn’t hit me till later that he hadn’t promised not to call her on the telephone…
7
It was three nights later. We were all sitting around the living room table, Fay and Uncle Bud and I, studying the city map and going over Uncle Bud’s notes. There were a lot of them, the notes, I mean. As Fay had said, he’d been planning this thing, working on it for months. And there wasn’t much about Charles Vanderventer III that he didn’t know. As a matter of fact, I guess he knew quite a bit more than the boy’s own folks did. Because if they’d known what we knew, and if they’d done anything about it, there couldn’t have been any kidnapping.
I got to thinking about that part afterwards, when all the hullabaloo broke loose. When there was a four-state alarm out and thousands of police were called up for extra duty, and hundreds of suspects were rounded up and questioned. Just guessing, I’d say that it must have cost someone several million dollars. And of course there’s no way of counting what it must have cost the parents—what they went through.
And it was all so senseless, you know. It would all have been so easy to avoid.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that Bill Collins and Charles Vanderventer III were pretty much in the same boat. I know that sounds funny, but we were. Aside from Doc Goldman, who really wasn’t able to do anything, no one was interested in either of us until the kidnapping. No one did anything to stop it. They must have known that he was practically a cinch for something like this, and they must have known that I—or someone like me—was a cinch for it. But no one did anything about us. They just let us rock along with a pat or a pinch now and then, but not really giving a damn about us, it seemed like, as long as we kept out of the way and were quiet.
But we were all in it then and plotting hard. I remember Uncle Bud pouring himself a drink and raising his eyebrows at me.
“Well, Kid. I guess those are our two best bets, either the playground or the picture show. You name it.”
“Let’s see,” I said. “If it’s the picture show, it would have to be tomorrow?”
“Well, we could wait another week. It would have to be on a Saturday. That’s when they have the horse operas at this place, so that’s when he always goes.”
“And the nurse leaves him alone there sometimes while she and this chauffeur, Rogers, gad around?”
“She’s done it, but not very much. We can’t count on it. All we can count on is that she’ll leave him alone while she goes to the women’s rest room. A matter of fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe.”
I hesitated. “She always stays that long?”
“I’ve timed her a dozen times, and it’s never been less than that. Once it was a half an hour. She doesn’t care for cowboy pictures, I guess, so she doesn’t hurry.”
“There’s just one trouble with it. I couldn’t already be in the show in the uniform. Fay would have to be inside. Then when the nurse left, she’d have to come out and tell me.”
“I could do it.” Fay shrugged. “And I’d just as soon do that as wait in the car.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but it kind of leaves a time gap in there. Something might happen between the time you came out and signaled me and I got into the show.”
Fay gave Uncle Bud one of her mean grins. She’d been tapering down on the booze, doing a good job of it, and it was making her pretty sharp.
“Smart boy, isn’t he?” she said. “Just when you think he couldn’t see holes in Swiss cheese, he spots one like that.”
“I said he was smart.” Uncle Bud frowned at her. “I said so right from the beginning.”
“So you did. Yes you did say that.”
“Well…” Uncle Bud twisted in his chair, sort of turning his back on her. “I still think it might be the best of the two bets. The chauffeur’s come into the show before and picked him up. After all, the kid’s used to doing what he’s told.”
“He’ll do what he’s told just as well at the playground,” I said, “and we won’t have the nurse to worry about.”
“But you’ll have to ask for him at the playground. He’ll be mixed in with a lot of other kids, you know, and you’ll probably have to go to the playground matron. All that takes time.”
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“I guess I’ll take it,” I said. “That show’s right down in the middle of town. If there was any trouble, we’d never be able to get away.”
Fay laughed. She poured a little whiskey into her glass, and shoved the bottle toward me. “To Collie boy. May his sense of smell ever sharpen. Will you drink to that, Uncle Bud?”
Uncle Bud gave her a hard look; then, he laughed too, and said he’d drink to anything.
“But watch this stuff, huh?” he added. “I know you’ve been cutting down, but you can’t be boozed up or have a hangover on this job.”
Fay gave him another mean smile. Then, she smiled at me in a different way. And I knew she meant to be sober before we pulled the job.
“Okay, then, Kid.” Uncle Bud turned back to me. “We’ll make it at the playground on Monday. Tomorrow’s out, because of the show, and Sunday he stays at home. So make it Monday.”
“Around three o’clock,” I said.
“Around three—a few minutes before to play it safe. The chauffeur, this Rogers, takes the boy to the playground at one; and he never picks him up before three-thirty or four.”
We went on talking, running through the details again. After a while, I buttoned up the uniform jacket and put on the big outsize sunglasses, and let Uncle Bud look me over.
He’d bought the stuff in another city. It was all exactly like the real chauffeur’s.
“Uh-huh.” He nodded for me to sit down. “Once we do that touch-up job on your hair, you’ll pass fine. You’re maybe a little taller than the other guy, but no one’ll be measuring you.”
“These glasses kind of bother me,” I said. “They make my face sweat, so that I can’t see good.”
“Well, you won’t have to do much seeing with ’em. You won’t put them on until the last minute.”
I picked up my drink, and took a swallow. I couldn’t think of anything more to say, but I kept feeling that I should.
“Yeah, Kid?” He was studying me. “Feeling a little nervous? Something on your mind?”
I said I wasn’t particularly nervous. I wasn’t worried about anything I had to do. “I’m just—uh—”
“He’s wondering about the money.” Fay winked at me. “He feels lost without his pockets full of money.”
“Well, he won’t feel lost much longer,” Uncle Bud said. “We’ll have it inside of a week, Kid. A hundred grand for me. A hundred and fifty for you and Fay to split. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
“It’s fair. I guess that’s what bothers me—thinking about all that money. I mean, I just can’t believe that we’re really going to get it.”
“We’ll get it,” said Fay. “We’ll get our share, or someone else will get something else.”
Uncle Bud lighted a cigarette and jabbed the match down into an ashtray. He took a couple of short, quick puffs, his hand jerky when he raised the cigarette to his mouth. “This ain’t something to horse around with. The Kid’s got something on his mind, he’d better unload it.”
I said it wasn’t anything really, just an idea that had come to me. “I was just wondering if maybe there wasn’t some way we could make a haul without actually going through with the kidnapping. Just start to, you know—kind of fake it—and then you step in and rescue the boy, something like that.”
“Yeah?” He stared at me, sort of startled. “Yeah?” He poured himself a drink, keeping his eyes on the glass. “Go on, Kid.”
“Well, the family would probably give you a pretty good reward, and you could probably get your job back in the department. There wouldn’t be nearly as much money to divide, of course, but Fay and I could get by on a lot less.”
“But how could you work it out, Kid? Where’s your convincer? How do I play the big hero when no one gets caught?”
I scratched my head.
Fay laughed. “Down, boy. That’s a good Collie.”
“It can’t be done, Kid.” Uncle Bud shrugged. “There’s just no way.”
“No,” I said. “I guess it can’t be.”
“Nope. Not a chance. So we’ll just go right ahead Monday, and by this time next week we’ll be sitting pretty…”
8
I had a funny dream that night, a damned bothersome one, I should say. One of those dreams in which everything turns out to be just the opposite of what you thought it was. It began back with that first day when I went into Bert’s roadhouse, and this guy Bert—according to the dream—was really a pretty good guy. He hadn’t wanted to act like he had; he’d done it because he was told to. He was just following orders—and I guess you know who was giving them—and it was the same way with Uncle Bud.
Uncle Bud hadn’t planned the kidnapping. Fay had. She was calling the shots all the way down the line. The drinking was an act; she didn’t drink nearly as much as she appeared to. That business about being half-helpless and needing someone to lean on was an act. She was tough, scheming, rotten all the way through—according to the dream. To get what she wanted, she’d slept with Uncle Bud and Bert; that was the way she held them in line. But they didn’t mean anything to her, and I didn’t. And when she was through with us we’d wind up with a lot less than nothing.
It was all jumbled and mixed up, of course, as dreams always are. But that’s the way it ran generally. It seemed to go on for hours, but when I waked up sweating, groaning out loud, I saw that it couldn’t have. The alarm clock said a little after midnight, and I hadn’t gone to bed until almost eleven.
I sat up in bed and lighted a cigarette. The dream went away, the realness of it, and I stopped sweating and my pulse calmed down. I’d had these nightmares before. The psychiatrists had explained some of them to me, showed me that while they appeared to be different, they were all basically the same dream. Back in the beginning, I’d usually dreamed about getting beat up. I’d be in the ring with two or three guys, and they’d all have me out-classed. Or maybe there’d only be one, but the referee would be crooked. Or maybe the other fighter would be a woman or an old man with a beard—someone, you know, that I couldn’t hit back at. Anyway, however it was, I’d get the hell knocked out of me.
That was about the worst thing that could happen to a guy, you see. I mean, it had seemed like the worst thing back in the beginning, when I wasn’t much more than a kid. As I got older, of course, I began to see that there could be a lot worse things—like being sane—and not being able to prove it. Or being crowded into a corner where you might hurt someone. Or being around degenerates and perverts so much that you got that way yourself. So I dreamed about those things.
I’d always felt guilty about the Bearcat. Subconsciously, although the feeling wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been, I’d felt that I ought to be punished. That was why I had the dreams, and that was why I’d dreamed what I had about Fay. Losing her, having things shape up so that I might lose her, was the thing I dreaded most. It was the worst punishment I could get, so in the dream I got it.
I lay awake a while, thinking the thing through, making myself see how foolish it was. I was just drifting off to sleep again, when a light flickered through my window. And I jumped up and looked out.
It was a moonlit night. Far down the lane, I got a glimpse of a car. I couldn’t see anything else, any people in or around it. Just a black car, parked with its lights off. I put on my pants and shoes, slipped quietly out of the apartment and down through the trees.
The car pulled away, started backing off toward the highway just about the time I came even with it. But from the little I managed to hear and see, I knew I’d gotten myself out of bed for nothing. It was just a man and a woman, a guy and his girl friend. They’d driven in here to do a little petting, and now they were on their way again.
It was as innocent as that, but coming right on top of the dream it bothered me a little bit. I couldn’t help thinking that it could have been someone else; someone could park there and slip up to the house, and ten to one I wouldn’t know about it.
I went back to bed. After a long time, I
went to sleep. But even sleeping, I was still kind of bothered. I knew I shouldn’t be, that there was nothing to be bothered about. But when a guy’s whole life is wrapped up in just one thing or just one person, well, he doesn’t really need anything to throw him.
Saturday, the next day, was kind of a bad day for me. Fay only took four or five drinks, but with the alcoholic fog pretty well gone from her mind she began to ask questions. She didn’t appear suspicious, as though she thought I had something to hide. She simply wanted to know about me—as people do when they’re deeply interested in a person. And I wanted her to feel that way. But you can see the spot I was in.
I couldn’t tell her the truth. Even the half-way truth, glossing everything over, sounded like hell.
I’d been charged with murder after the fight with the Burlington Bearcat. Then, the charge had been reduced to second-degree manslaughter. I’d taken a plea to it, and the judge had made the sentence equal to the time I’d already spent in jail. I’d joined the army, and they’d bounced me out fast with a medical discharge. Since then, I’d gone from one institution to another, with a few cheap jobs in between. I didn’t have the training for a good job. I couldn’t give any references, and sooner or later my record always caught up with me.
That was the truth without going into a lot of details. What I told her was that I’d stopped fighting after I hurt a guy so bad that he never recovered from it. I said I’d been permanently banned from the ring after that, and anyway I didn’t have the heart for it. But since I wasn’t much good for anything else, I’d just sort of drifted.
That didn’t satisfy her; I mean, she wanted to know more. But she saw I was getting upset, so finally she laid off. I went to bed early, completely worn out from the strain of all this. I slept well, and I waked up feeling pretty good.