April Evil (22 page)

He began to feel less abused and more angry. She was getting a lot of big ideas lately. Maybe she’d have to be knocked around a little. He’d never had to try that. But he’d thought about it. It was a weapon in reserve. It was a marital privilege.

He went on down into the kitchen. Arnold silently fixed him some breakfast. He sat at the table in the kitchen and ate
hungrily as he read the sports page of the morning paper. In the back of his mind he wondered if he should go out and hunt up that pair again. Maybe it was a little too soon. Tomorrow would be Saturday. Maybe he and the girl could give that Ronnie the brush. Today would be a good day to stay in. Work Laurie back into a friendly mood. Maybe do a little work around the yard. That would make a good impression on Laurie and on the old man too.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Dil Parks knew he had to call Lennie back. He had thought over her proposal until his head ached. She had some crazy idea about atonement. He knew how Uncle Paul would take it. It would be murderous. In a vague way he could see the sense of her idea. It made poor practical sense and good emotional sense.

She answered the phone on the third ring.

“I’ve thought it over. If you want to, it’s okay with me. Maybe the old bastard might even like your doing it, but I doubt it.”

“I have to do something positive, Dil. Like a seal on my good intentions. I want us to be absolutely without any resource but ourselves.”

“You’re going to get your wish,” he said gloomily.

“Humor me. I’m a silly woman. Be strong and humor me.”

“Sure. I’ll pick you up about five and we’ll go out there. But don’t plan on me doing any of the talking.”

“I’ll do it all.”

At five o’clock they were ready, Mullin, Crown and the woman. Contents of the suitcases had been bundled in sheets and piled in the trunk compartment. Empty suitcases were in the back seat. Mullin was satisfied that the house was clean of prints. The car was parked, heading out the drive.

Mullin looked at his watch. He looked at his hand. His hand and arm were steady. “All right. I’ll drive it. You in the back, Ronnie. Sal, you beside me. We’ll take it through the gate. Got the rock and rope, Ronnie?”

“Right here.”

“Once we’re through the gate, you slide under the wheel, Sal, when I get out. Turn it around and head it out and leave the motor running. We’ll come out fast. Slide over when you see us coming. Give one blast on the horn if we get company. Okay, get in the car. I’ll lock up.”

“Wait a minute,” the woman said. “I want to go back in for just a minute.”

“No.”

“Please, Harry.”

“Well, hurry it up then.”

She went into the house. He stood by the open door. She went into the bathroom off their bedroom. She flushed the toilet and ran immediately to the boy. She stripped the adhesive harshly from his arms and wrists. She did not look at his face and she said in a low quick voice, “Wait ten minutes before you leave, kid.”

She paused, as though to seek understanding or reassurance in the terrified eyes of the child. This was an act not carefully planned, but rather the result of slow resolve that had been growing within her since she understood that the child was to be left behind. Left in the empty house, perhaps not to be found.

Harry worried too much. Having the kid free would make no difference now. The kid looked too scared to tell a straight story, and even were he able to, they would be long gone before his folks could reason it out. It wouldn’t hurt anything to free him now.

“Understand?” she said. “Ten minutes. You got to wait.”

The boy nodded.

“Get on the stick, Sal,” Harry called.

She trotted awkwardly back out to the front door. Her reflexes were not good and she could not move her soft body quickly. She went by Mullin. He yanked the door shut and tried the latch and followed her out. He got into the car beside her and put the garish ape mask on the seat between them.

As he swung the big car out of the drive onto Huntington
he said, “You wearing a mask, Ronnie?”

“It’s too warm today,” Ronnie said in a lazy voice.

“Suit yourself.”

“I plan to.”

The dusty car moved through the late afternoon streets of Flamingo. People were coming back from the beaches, heavy women in shorts with red burned legs, brown young men with smooth arched muscular chests, old people carrying folded stools. Mullin drove carefully, precisely. They moved eastward out beyond the agencies and the used car lots, and turned into an area where the houses were farther apart, where some of them were the grotesque pastry structures of the boom of the twenties. The untended palms wore ruffs of dead fronds. They all looked ahead and saw the stone house on the left, the first story invisible behind the wall.

“There it is,” Mullin said. “Make it cream and silk. We’ve got the time. Do it right.”

Arnold Addams was walking slowly from the garage toward the rear of the big house when he heard the quick toot of a horn at the gate. He stopped and looked toward the gate. He saw the Buick and recognized it as belonging to the people who had come home with Mister Joe the day before. He wondered what they wanted with Mister Joe. Those people weren’t too popular with Miss Laurie. But it wasn’t his place to tell them to take off. Somebody else would have to do that.

As he approached the gate he saw that there were three people in the car. He didn’t get a very good look at them. He swung the double gate open and the car came in so fast he had to jump back out of the way. Didn’t seem as though those folks had much manners. He closed the gate and turned and saw the light-headed fellow trot over into the yard and throw a stone over the telephone wires. He couldn’t figure out what in the world was going on. It looked like some kind of a game. The fellow held onto the other end of the line. When the stone came down he got that part of the line and gave a big yank and the phone lines came loose from the house and came down.

“Hey there!” Arnold said weakly, but with indignation. You couldn’t have people going around messing up the phone. He turned as the other man came toward him. The other man had
a face like an ape-monster. Arnold felt his heart try to stop as he backed away. He heard himself make a funny bleating sound. The ape-monster had a black gun in his hand. The gun swung up and Arnold tried to dodge back as it came down. The side of his head blew off like a rocket and he was down on his hands and knees, knees in the gravel, hands on the soft grass.

Mullin looked down dispassionately at the man on his hands and knees. The eyeholes of the mask limited side vision. The rubber was hot and his face had begun to sweat. He pivoted for leverage and struck the colored man again with the side of the gun, struck the skull just behind the right ear. The man collapsed onto his face. Ronnie came over. They each took a wrist and dragged him away from the gate, over behind the shelter of the wall.

Mullin turned toward the car. The woman had turned it around. It moved toward the gate. He held up his hand to stop her there. She stopped the car. He nodded at Ronnie and they split, Ronnie taking the front door and Mullin taking the back of the house.

Mullin went in through the back door. There was a pantry where copper pots gleamed in the subdued light and the coolness. The kitchen was large and very quiet. He had to keep turning his head to compensate for the lack of side vision. He thought for a moment, then moved back to the door and bolted it. The odds were against their having to use the back door to leave. The bolt would delay anybody who made a break for the rear of the house.

His nervousness was completely gone. He felt very alive and very sure of himself. He felt strong and quick and completely impersonal.

He went through the kitchen again, stopped in a hallway. The front of the house was brighter. He turned the muzzle of the gun toward a figure which came down the hallway toward him, silhouetted against the light. He saw almost at once that it was Ronnie. Ronnie moved close to him, mouth close to his ear.

“The girl is in the study with the old man. No sign of Preston.”

“I’ll hold them in the study. Go look for Preston.”

He went to the study door. He heard Ronnie going quietly up the stairs. He looked in. The girl sat near the old man. The old man had his eyes shut. The girl had a big book open on her knees and she was reading to the old man in a quiet soothing voice.

Mullin watched them for a moment and then stepped into the room.

“All right!” he said loudly.

They both stared at him. The big book thudded to the floor.

“What do you want?” the old man asked. “Who are you?” There was a tremor in his voice. Mullin did not know whether it was age or fear.

“Just be quiet. Sit right where you are. Don’t talk.”

They continued to stare at him. The girl licked her lips. Her face was pale. Mullin stood and listened to other sounds in the house. Finally he heard a strange voice, querulous, complaining, and heard the silky sound of Ronnie’s voice, heard them coming down the stairs. Mullin moved aside from the doorway. A young man stumbled into the room, catching his balance after a violent push from Ronnie. Ronnie followed him in and stood in the doorway.

“What the hell is this?” Preston demanded.

“Shut up and get over into that corner. That’s right. Over there,” Mullin said. “Face the corner. Down on your knees. Now put your hands on top of your head. That’s right. Just stay there.”

“What do you want?” the old man asked.

“I think you know, pops. You keep money around and sooner or later somebody is going to come and take it away from you. This just happens to be the time. So relax and enjoy it. Where’s the box, pops?”

He watched them carefully. He saw the girl’s inadvertent sidelong glance toward the wall on his right. “Keep an eye on them,” he said to Ronnie. He went over to the paneled wall. There was no special effort at concealment. There was an exposed
finger-groove on the sliding panel. He slid it open and looked at the box. It looked sturdy, with a heavy dial.

“Now you come open it, pops.”

The old man sat straighter in his chair. His voice was stronger. “I don’t believe I will.”

“Now we’ve got a difference of opinion. That makes it interesting. I think you will.”

The old man smiled. It was a confident smile. Mullin felt a reluctant admiration for him. There was nothing chicken about the old man. He said, “It so happens that I am the only one in this house who knows the combination. It is a very good safe. I am a retired doctor. You may know that.”

“Stop quacking, old man.”

“Just a moment. As a doctor I know the state of my own health. I know that if you attempt to use violence on me, my heart will very probably stop. And that will leave you with a very pretty problem, young man.”

Sweat was running down his face under the mask, soaking his collar. It wasn’t a nervous sweat. He felt calm. “We’ll skip you for a minute while you make up your mind, old man. Come over here to me, girl. I want to talk to you.”

The girl looked uncertain. She looked at the old man.

“Come on before I come and get you.”

The girl got up slowly. She stepped over the book on the floor and walked over to him where he stood by the safe. Mullin looked at the old man’s face, and saw the doubt and fear replace the look of smiling confidence.

“Closer!”

The girl moved a step closer to him. He jabbed suddenly with the stiffened fingers of his free hand, stabbing her in the solar plexus. The girl doubled up violently and moved back and fell to her knees, fighting for breath with a gagging sound. It was the only sound in the room, and it gradually quieted.

“Pops?”

The old man put his hands on the arm of the chair and pushed himself to his feet. His face was slack and old. “I can’t fight that, young man.”

“You want she should stand up so I can try again?”

“No. No, please. I’ll …”

He was interrupted by Ronnie’s sharp yell of warning. Mullin turned in time to see the book flying at his head, to see Preston on his feet lunging toward the fireplace, but not in time to duck the book. It hit him across the face, twisting the rubber mask, moving the eye holes so that he was blinded. He pawed at the mask with his free hand and got it straightened so that he could see. Preston, moving fast, came from behind the old man, came from an unexpected direction and Mullin saw the quick glint of brass as the fireplace tongs came down on his gun wrist. The gun tumbled across the rug and Preston pounced on it as Mullin stood immobilized by the pain in his wrist. Just as Preston started to straighten up, trying to reverse the gun in his hand, Ronnie, at last presented with a clear shot, fired. He was using the Magnum. The slug hit enough solid bone so that the foot-pounds of impact energy was transmitted to Preston’s body. He went back as though hit by a full-arm swing of a heavy sledge. He hit the bookshelves solidly and rebounded onto his face. He tried to push himself up off the floor. Ronnie fired again. Preston’s head suffered an obscene and sickening distortion. The gun-sound was a vast hammer-blow in the room.

“No,” the girl said in a weak soft voice. “No, no, no.”

“That God damn mask,” Ronnie said.

“Shut up.” Mullin tried to close the fingers of his right hand. His wrist grated. He no longer felt safe and sure of himself. He moved over and bent and picked up the gun. It was close to the dead hand.

He turned toward Ronnie. “Just a punk, you said. No, he wouldn’t try a thing.”

“No,” the girl said again.

Mullin looked at the doctor. The old man wavered. His eyes were closed, his lips bluish. He staggered back. The girl caught his arm and helped him lower himself into the chair. The girl began to move toward her dead husband.

“Get back. Get away from him,” Mullin ordered.

The car horn blew. Mullin stood very still. He looked at Ronnie. Ronnie’s eyes were wide, his head cocked to one side.

“Go check it,” Mullin said. Ronnie left the room. Mullin motioned the girl away from the old man. He went over to the chair. The old man was breathing in a funny way. His eyes were still closed. His lips looked like crumpled blue paper.