“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean nothin’.”
“And you don’t. A big fat zero, that’s you,” Rudy said. And that was the end of his pity.
They had shaved late the night before, and they managed a wash by tipping the water jug over one another’s hands. They combed their hair, brushed their clothes thoroughly with a whisk broom, and then, completely dressed, checked each other’s appearance.
They wore dark suits, white shirts, and hats of a semi-Homburg type. Except for their shoulder-holstered guns and their briefcases, they took nothing with them when they went out the back door to their car. The briefcases were large—much larger than they looked—and bore a bold-letter OFFICE OF STATE above an equally bold-stamped BANK EXAMINER. The car, with its immensely souped-up motor, appeared to be just another black, low-priced sedan.
Jackson climbed in with the briefcases, swung open the door on the driver’s side and started the motor. Rudy peered around the corner of the abandoned house. A truck had just passed on the way into Beacon City. There was nothing else in sight. Rudy leaped into the car, gunned the motor and sent it rocketing down the weed-bordered lane to the highway.
He whipped it onto the highway, wheels skidding. He relaxed, slowing its speed, taking a long, deep breath. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if someone had seen them coming out of the lane. They could have turned into it accidentally, or maybe to fix a tire on the buggy. Still, that was maybe, and maybes were bad stuff. A very small one, one that hadn’t seemed big enough to kick out of the way, had tumbled Rudy the Piehead into Alcatraz for a ten-year fall.
He kept one eye on his wristwatch as he drove. They entered town on schedule to the minute, and Rudy spoke to the kid in a tight, quiet voice. “Now, this is going to be all right,” he said. “Doc knows his job, I know mine. You’re green, but it don’t make any difference. All you got to do is just what you’re told—just follow my lead—and we’ll roll through it like smoke through a chimney.”
“I—I’m not afraid, Rudy.”
“Be afraid. What the hell? Just keep a cork on it.”
At the corner two blocks above the bank, Rudy slowed the car to a crawl, swinging a little wide so that he could see down the main street. They were on schedule, but Mack Wingate, the bank guard wasn’t. Automatically, Rudy killed the motor, then began to fumble futilely with the starter. The kid turned to him, white-faced.
“R-Rudy—w-what’s the…”
“Easy. Easy, Jackie boy,” Rudy said, the words quiet, his nerves screaming murder. “Guard’s a little late, see, but it don’t mean a thing. If he doesn’t show fast, we’ll circle again and…”
The guard came out of the hotel then, started briskly across the street. Rudy stalled a few seconds longer, and then smoothly started the motor and rounded the corner. In little more than a minute after the guard had entered the bank, Rudy was parking in front of it.
He and Jackson got out of the car on opposite sides, the boy lingering a step or so behind him. Crossing the walk, their briefcases turned to display the official stamp on them, Rudy gave a curtly pleasant nod to the storekeeper and received a vacant stare in return. Leaning on his broom, the man continued to stare as Rudy rapped on the bank door.
The kid was panting heavily, crowding on Rudy’s heels. The gangster called, “Hey, Wingate! Hurry it up,” and then turned a flat, steady gaze on the storekeeper. “Yes?” he said. “Something wrong, mister?”
“Just about to ask you the same,” the man said pertly. “Bank ain’t in no trouble, is she?”
Very slowly, his eyes hardening, Rudy looked him over from head to foot. “The bank’s not in any trouble,” he said. “You trying to make some for it?”
“Me?” The man’s head waggled in anxious protest. “I was just makin’ talk, you know. Just joking.”
“There’s a law against that kind of joke,” Rudy told him. “Maybe you’d better get a new one, huh?”
The storekeeper nodded feebly. He turned and tottered into his establishment, and Rudy and the kid entered the bank.
Rudy snatched the key from the floor, and relocked the door. The kid let out a croak of amazement, one finger pointing shakily to the guard’s sprawled body. “Lookit! It l-looks like he’d had a p-pencil pushed through his head.”
“What are you, the coroner?” Rudy blazed. “Get his cap on! Peel out of your jacket, and put on his!”
“That fellow outside, Rudy. D-do you suppose he’ll…”
Torrento gave him a stinging backhanded slap. Then, as the kid reeled, he caught his lapels and yanked him up to within an inch of his face. “There’s just two people you got to worry about, know what I mean? Just you and me. And you keep on playin’ the jerk, there’ll only be one of us.” Rudy gave him a hard bearing-down shake. “You got that? Think you can remember it?”
The glaze drained out of Jackson’s eyes. He nodded; spoke quite calmly. “I’m all right now, Rudy. You’ll see.”
He put on the guard’s jacket and cap, pulling the bill low over his forehead. Then, since Rudy was afraid that the dead man might panic the other employees into hysteria, they pitched his body into the railed-off desk area and pulled a rug over it.
Back in the lobby proper again, Rudy put the kid through the final rehearsal. He wasn’t supposed to peek out the door, of course. Make like he was, by rattling the shade a little, but not really do it. And when he opened the door, he wasn’t to show nothing of himself but his jacket sleeve and maybe the bill of his cap.
“You don’t need to sell ’em, see? They don’t know anything’s wrong, or if they do there’s nothing we can do about it. Now—” Rudy tapped on the glass top of one of the high, marble-pedestaled customer’s desks. “Now, here’s the code again. Here’s how you’ll know it’s one of the wage slaves and not some Johnny-ahead-of-time wanting change for a quarter. There’ll be a knock-knock-knock, like that, see? Then a knock and another knock. Three and two.”
“I get it,” Jackson nodded. “I remember, Rudy.”
“Some code, huh? Must have took Doc two or three minutes to figure out with a pair of binoculars. But just the three employees will use the code; they’ll show between now and eight-thirty. The big cheese gets here about a quarter of, and he don’t knock. Just rattles the door latch and says, ‘Wingate, Wingate!’”
Rudy glanced at the clock, gestured. They took up positions on opposite sides of the door, Rudy drew his gun, and there was a knock-knock-knock, and a knock—knock.
The kid hesitated, freezing for a split second. Then as Rudy nodded to him, gravely encouraging, his nerve returned and he opened the door.
3
Four months before, when it was certain that Doc was getting a pardon on his second and last jolt, his wife, Carol, had quarreled violently with him while visiting the prison. She announced that she was suing him for divorce, and had actually started proceedings against him; leaving them in abeyance, ostensibly, until she could acquire the money to carry them through. Soon afterward, with the announced intention of changing her name and making a new start in life, she boarded a train for New York—coach-class, unreserved seat—and that seemed to be that.
Except that she did not go to New York, did not and had never meant to get a divorce, and had in fact never for a moment entertained the slightest desire for any life other than the one she had.
Back in the beginning, perhaps, she had had some conscience-impelled notion of reforming Doc. But she could not think of that now without a downward quirk of her small mouth, a wince born more of bewilderment than embarrassment at the preposterousness of her one-time viewpoint.
Reform? Change? Why, and to what? The terms were meaningless. Doc had opened a door for her, and she had entered into, adopted and been adopted by, a new world. And it was difficult to believe now that any other had ever existed. Doc’s amoral outlook had become hers. In a sense, she had become more like Doc than Doc himself. More engagingly persuasive when she chose to be. Harder when hardness seemed necessary.
/> Doc had teased her about this a time or two until he saw that it annoyed her. “A little more of that,” he would say, “and we’ll send you back to the bookstacks.” And Carol wasn’t angered by his funning—it was almost impossible to be angry with Doc—neither did she appreciate it. It gave her a vague feeling of indecency, of being unfairly exposed. She had felt much the same way when her parents persisted in exhibiting one of her baby pictures; a trite display of infant nudity sprawled on a woolly white rug.
It was her picture, all right, and yet it really wasn’t her. So why not forget it? Forget also that more than two decades after the picture was taken, she was just about as dishwater-dull, dumb and generally undesirable as a young woman could be.
She had been working as a librarian then; living with her stodgy, middle-aged parents and daily settling deeper into the pattern of spinsterhood. She had no life but the lifeless one of her job and home. She was fine-featured, her small body beautifully full. But people saw only the dowdy “sensible” clothes and the primness of manner, and thought of her as plain and even homely.
Then Doc had come along—still on parole, he was already doing research on another job—and he had instantly seen the woman that she really was; and with his easy smile, his amiable persuasiveness, his inoffensive persistence, he had pulled that woman right out of her shell. Oh, it hadn’t been a matter of minutes, of course. Or even days. She had been pretty skittish, as a matter of fact. Snubbing and glaring at him; putting him in what she thought of as “his place.” But somehow you just couldn’t do things like that with Doc. Somehow they seemed to hurt you worse than they did him. So she had relented—just a little—and the next minute, seemingly, she was through that marvelous door. And kicking it firmly shut behind her.
Her parents had washed their hands of her. Some parents! she thought contemptuously. She had lost her friends, her position in the community. Some friends, some position! She had acquired a police record.
Carol (Ainslee) McCoy. No alias. Photo and f-prints reclaimed by court order. Three arrests; no trial or convictions. Susp. of complicity in murder, armed robbery, bank robbery, in consort with husb. “Doc” (Carter) McCoy. May work as steno; general office. May appear attractive or unattractive, very friendly or unfriendly. Five feet, two in.; 110 lbs.; gray to green eyes; brown, black, red or light blonde hair. Age 30-35. Approach with caution.
Carol smiled to herself, winked at her reflection in the car’s rearview mirror. Some record! It had more holes in it than their little fat heads.
Since her ostensible departure for New York, she had been working as a restaurant night cashier in a city some five hundred miles away. Under a different name, of course, and looking not at all like she looked now. Yesterday morning she had quit her job (to join her Army-sergeant husband in Georgia), slept all day, taken delivery on a new car and started driving toward Beacon City.
At eight o’clock in the morning she was within sixty miles of the town. After breakfasting on the rolls and coffee she had brought with her, and a quick wash in a filling station, she felt quite rested and high-spirited despite the long hours at the wheel.
Her rollneck cashmere sweater snugly emphasized her narrowness of waist, the flaring fullness below it and the rich contours above. A long-billed airman’s cap was cocked pertly on her head, and her hair—tawny brown now—flounced out from beneath it in a jaunty ponytail. Her bobby-socked ankles tapered up into a pair of slacks which were really much less than skintight, although they did seem pretty well filled to capacity in at least one area.
She looked heartbreakingly young and gay. She looked—well, what was wrong with the word—sexy? Tingling pleasantly, Carol decided there was nothing at all wrong with it.
She had not seen Doc since their phony quarrel at the prison. Their only contact had been through brief, cautious and emotionally unsatisfying long-distance phone calls. That was the way it had to be, and Carol, like Doc—being so much a part of Doc—did not quarrel with what had to be. Still, that did not keep her from being almost deliriously happy that the long months of their separation were over.
Doc would be very pleased with her, she knew. With the way she looked; with everything she had done.
The car was a flashy yellow convertible. Stacked along with the baggage on the rear seat and floor were golf clubs, fishing rods, tennis rackets and other vacation impedimenta. The bags were bright with the stickers of assorted hotels and tourist courts. One of them contained a cap similar to her own, sunglasses and a gaudy sports jacket. That was all it held since it was meant to accommodate the loot from the bank.
They would be very conspicuous as they traveled, and the conspicuousness would give them safety. The more obvious and out in the open a thing was, Doc had taught her, the less likely it was to attract attention.
She began to drive slower, to glance more and more frequently at the dashboard clock and the speedometer’s mileage indicator. At nine she saw a puff of black smoke spout up in the distance; then a billowing oily cloud of it. Carol nodded approvingly.
Doc was right on schedule, as always. The smoke signaled the successful accomplishment of the second half of his part in the robbery. Which meant, since one part was dependent upon the other, that he had also pulled off the first one.
She took another look at the clock, drove still more slowly. At the crest of a hill she stopped the car and began raising the canvas top. A truck and two cars went past, the driver of one slowing as though to offer help. Carol waved him on in a way that let him know that she meant it, then slid back behind the wheel.
She lighted a cigarette, flipped it away after a puff or two, and stared narrowly through the windshield. Nine-fifteen—no, it was almost nine-twenty. And she hadn’t got the signal yet, the winking left headlight. True, one of those distant oncoming cars had suddenly disappeared from the highway—there went another one right now—but that didn’t mean anything. There were many turnoffs; up through tree-lined farm lanes, or cutting between one farm and another.
In any event, Doc never made any last-minute changes in plans. If changes seemed indicated, he simply dropped the job, either permanently or until a later date. So, since he had said there would be a signal…
Carol started the car. She took a gun out of the glove compartment, shoved it into the waistband of her slacks and pulled her sweater over it. Then she drove on—fast!
Doc McCoy’s breakfast had cooled before he could get rid of Charlie, the night clerk. But he ate it with an enjoyment which may or may not have been as real as was apparent. It was hard to tell with Doc; to know whether he actually did like something or someone as well as he seemed to. Nor is it likely that Doc himself knew. Agreeability was his stock in trade. He had soaked up so much of it that everything he touched seemed roseately transformed.
Doc’s beaming good nature and the compelling personality that was its outgrowth were largely owing to his father, the widowed sheriff of a small down-south county. To compensate for the loss of his wife, the elder McCoy kept his house filled with company. Liking his job—and knowing that he would never get another half as good—he made sure of keeping it. He had never been known to say no, even to a mob’s request for a prisoner. He was ready at all times to fiddle for a wedding or weep at a wake. No poker session, cockfight or stag party was considered complete without his presence; yet he was a steadfast church communicant and the ever-present guest at the most genteel social gatherings. Inevitably, he came to be the best-liked man in the county, the one man whom everyone honestly regarded as a friend. He also was the grossest incompetent and the most costly ornament in the county’s body politic. But the only person who had ever faulted him—an opposition candidate—had barely escaped a wrathful lynching party.
Doc, then, was born popular; into a world where he was instantly liked and constantly reassured of his welcome. Everyone smiled, everyone was friendly, everyone was anxious to please him. Without being spoiled—his father’s strictly male household took care of that—he acquire
d an unshakable belief in his own merit; a conviction that he not only would be but should be liked wherever he went. And holding such a conviction, he inevitably acquired the pleasant traits and personality to justify it.
Rudy Torrento planned to kill Doc, but he was resentfully drawn to him.
Doc intended to kill Rudy, but he by no means disliked Torrento. He only liked him less than he did certain other people.
His breakfast finished, Doc stacked the dishes neatly on the tray and set it outside his door. The maid was vacuuming the hall, and Doc told her of his impending departure (“for a few days”) and that she need not bother with his room until he had left. He inquired into the health of her rheumatic husband, complimented her on her new shoes, gave her a five-dollar tip, and smilingly closed the door.
He bathed, shaved and began to dress.
He was five feet, ten and one-half inches tall, and he weighed roughly one hundred and seventy pounds. His face was a little long, his mouth wide and a trifle thin-lipped, his eyes gray and wideset. His graying, sand-colored hair was very thin on top. In one of his sloping, unostentatiously powerful shoulders were two bullet scars. Aside from that, there was nothing to distinguish him from any number of forty-year-old men.
The stock and barrel of a rifle were slung on loops inside his topcoat. Doc took them out, hung the coat back in the closet, and began to assemble them. The stock was from an ordinary twenty-two rifle. The barrel, as well as the rest of the gun proper, had either been made or made over by Doc. Its most distinctive feature was a welded-on cylinder, fitted at one end with a plunger. It looked like, and was, a small air pump.
Doc slid a twenty-two slug into the breech, closed and locked it and rocked the slug into place. He began to pump, pumping harder as the resistance inside the air chamber grew. When he could no longer depress the plunger, he gave it several quick turns, sealing the end of the cylinder.