A Touch of Death (13 page)

“You drive,” I said. I got out and went around to the other side while she slid under the wheel.

“What are you going to do?” she asked
.
“Look at the map. If I can find one.”
She started up. I took the flashlight out of my pocket

and pawed through the usual collection of junk in the glove compartment. Down at the bottom I found a state highway map. I unfolded it.

Here was Mount Temple. Two hundred miles south, on the Gulf, was Sanport. I ran my finger along the main north-south highway and found the faint line that was the unnumbered secondary road we were on. It went on and came out on another north-south highway about forty miles west. But I could see, just ahead of where we should be now, the intersecting road she had mentioned. It ran south for about thirty miles before it ended on another east-west secondary road. We could shift west on that one for about fifteen miles and we’d hit another going south. I traced on through the maze of faint lines. It could be done. We could get down through that back country for nearly 150 miles before coming back on a main highway again, and when we did, we’d have a choice of at least three roads converging on the city. They couldn’t cover all of them.

Gasoline?

I shot a glance at the gauge. It was a little over half full. It might be enough. But this would be poor country to try to cut it fine. I looked back at the map. About seventy-five miles south we’d go through a small town. We could fill up there.

I lit a cigarette and glanced around at her. The soft glow of the dash lights was on her face. I studied it for a moment while she rammed the car ahead between the dark walls of pine. What kind of woman was this, anyway? It hadn’t been thirty minutes since she had killed another woman, she had probably murdered her husband, she had burned down that enormous house she had lived in all her life, she was running from the police, and yet she could have been merely driving over to a neighbor’s to play bridge for all the emotion she showed.

But still it wasn’t in any way an expressionless doll’s face. It was just intensely proud and self-contained. Maybe she felt things and maybe she didn’t; but win, lose, or draw, it was her business. She didn’t advertise. There was a cool and disdainful sort of arrogance about it

that didn’t give a damn for what anybody thought—or for anybody, for that matter.

At least that made us even on that. I didn’t care much for her either.

“Not so worried now?” she asked. I could hear the faint undertone of contempt.

“Look, Hard Stuff,” I said. “I’ll make out all right. Don’t fret about it. It’s just that if you’re trying to hide from the police, I don’t see any sense in telling them where you are by killing people just for laughs. Or starting a bonfire to attract attention. So let’s don’t try it again. You might get hurt yourself.”

“Careful,” she said mockingly. “Remember how much I’m worth to you alive.”

“What do you think I’ve been remembering? The touch of your hand?”

“Quite proud of your tough attitude, aren’t you?”

“It’s a tough world.”

She said nothing. In a few minutes we hit the crossroad. She turned left. The road began to drop a little toward the river country. It was wild and sparsely settled, and we met no cars.

“See if you can find a place to get off the road,” I said. “You’ve got to change those clothes.”

“All right.”

She slowed. In a few minutes we saw a pair of ruts leading off into the timber. She pulled off far enough to be out of sight of the road, and stopped in a small open space where there was room to turn around.

I got out, but before I did I lifted the keys out of the ignition. She saw it. She smiled. “Trust me, don’t you?”

“You think I’m stupid?” I gestured toward the traveling bag. “Change in the car. And let me know when you’re ready to go.”

I walked back a short distance toward the road and lit a cigarette. The sky was still overcast, and night pressed down over the river bottom with an impenetrable blackness and a silence that seemed to ring in my ears. Nothing moved here. We were alone.

Alone?

They were drawing circles around us on the map. The radio was snapping orders, efficient and coded and deadly. Police cars raced down highways in the darkness all around us. Like hell we were alone. We had lots of company; it was just spread out around us, waiting.

I turned my head and I could see the red glow of the car’s taillights behind me. We could beat them. They had everything in their favor except the two things they had to have to win: a description of the car and a description of me. They didn’t know who I was or what I looked like, or even that I existed. If I could keep them from seeing her, we could make it.

I finished the cigarette and flipped it outward in the darkness. She called softly. I turned. She had opened one of the car doors so the ceiling light would come on. When I walked up, she was holding a mirror and putting lipstick on her mouth.

She had changed into a skirt and a dark blouse about the color of her eyes. The sleeves of the blouse were full and then tight-fitting about the wrists, and below them her hands were slender and pale and very beautiful. She finished with the lipstick, put the mirror back in her purse, and looked up at me.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said. “For a woman who’s just murdered another one, you look great.”

“You have a deplorable command of English,” she said. “Don’t you find murdered a bit pretentious as applied to vermin? Why not exterminated? Or simply removed?”

“Yes, Your Highness. Excuse me for breathing. Now, take those three keys out of your purse and hand them

here.”

“Why?”

“Because I like your company. I adore you, and

wouldn’t have you leave me for anything.”

“They’re no good to you alone.”

“I know. But they are to you. And if we get clear of here tonight you might suddenly decide you didn’t need any more help—not at today’s prices. I can’t watch you all the time. I have to sleep occasionally, and I don’t intend to follow you to the John. So just to remove the temptation, I’ll take charge of them.”

Her eyes met mine coolly, not quite defying me, but just testing me and watching. “There’s an easy way,” I said, “and a hard way. How do you want it?” She took the three keys out of her purse and put them in my hand. “That’s better,” I said. I put them in my wallet.

I looked at my watch. It was nine-twenty. I could feel that awful urge to run and run faster and keep on running take hold of me again. I got behind the wheel and we rolled back on the road. We shot ahead in the darkness.

We crossed the river on a long wooden bridge. The road began to rise again. We couldn’t make much speed. There were too many chuckholes in the road. I managed to keep it around forty.

“Just where, precisely, are we going?” she asked.

“Sanport. Thirty-eight-twenty-seven Davy Avenue. Memorize it, in case we get separated. My apartment’s on the third floor. Number Three-o-three.”

“Number Three-o-three. Thirty-eight-twenty-seven

Davy,” she repeated. “That’s easy to remember.”

“And my name’s Scarborough. Lee Scarborough.”

“Is that authentic? Or another alias?”

“It’s my right name.”

“To what do I owe this unprecented confidence? You

wouldn’t tell me before.”

“With those two people listening? You think I’m crazy?”

“Oh,” she said. “And, in case we do get to Sanport

alive, what do we do with the car?”

“I’m going to take it to the airport and ditch it. After I get you into the apartment. I’ll take a taxi or limousine back to town.”

“That’s a little obvious,” she pointed out. “I mean, if we were really taking a plane, we’d leave the car anywhere but at the airport.”

“I know. But they’ll never be sure. As a matter of fact, they may never get a lead on this car, anyway. But even if they do, and find it out there, all they can do is suspect you’re in Sanport. You’ll be on ice. You’ll never go out on the street.”

“We can’t get the money out of the vaults unless I go out.”

“I know. But we can wait until some of the heat’s off. How long is the rent paid on them?”

“For a year. A year from July, that is.”

“All right. It’s easy, if we just get there. You stay right in the apartment for at least a month. Maybe longer. We do what we can to change your appearance. I’m working on that now. Maybe we’ll make you a redhead. Change you from the skin out, cheap, flashy clothes, that sort of thing. There’s only one thing, though. How many times have you been in that bank where you rented the boxes?”

“Banks,” she said. “They’re in three different ones. I was in each of them only once.”

“Well, it’s all right, then. They won’t remember what you looked like. If you’ve changed from a brunette to a redhead, they’ll” never notice. I understand it’s been done before, anyway.”

“So if I don’t go mad in a month of being shut up in that apartment, and I manage to get the money out without being recognized, what then? You murder me, I suppose, and leave the country? Is that it?”

“I’ve already told you,” I said. “I take you to the Coast. San Francisco, for instance. In my car. I could buy a trailer and let you ride in that, out of sight, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary if your appearance can be changed enough. You can take out a Social Security card under the name of Susie Mumble or something and go to work. They’ll never get you—if you lay off the juice and keep your mouth shut.”

“Go to work as a waitress, I suppose?”

“Waitress. Carhop. B-girl. Who cares? As a matter of fact, with your looks you’d never have to work anywhere very long.”

“Well, thank you. Do you mean my looks as they are now, or after I’ve suffered a month of your remodeling?”

I shrugged. “Either way. You’d come out a beautiful wench no matter what we did. There’d be plenty of wolves drooling to support you.”

“I like your objective appraisal. I take it you don’t include yourself among them?”

“You’re a business proposition to me, a hundred and twenty thousand dollars’ worth of meat to deliver on the hoof. I like my women warm to the touch. And not quite so deadly with a gun.”

“I am already aware of the vulgar depths of your taste. Diana James, for instance.”

I saw Diana James turn a little, as if someone had twitched at her clothing, and collapse, sprawling on the concrete floor.

“Why did you call her Cynthia?” I asked, remembering.

“Because that was her real name. Cynthia Cannon.”

“Why did she change it?”

“Why does any criminal?”

“I thought she was a nurse.”

“I believe she was.”

I shrugged. “All right. It’s nothing to me. I don’t give a damn. I don’t care how you killed Butler, why you killed him, or where, or who helped you. I don’t care who those two blonds were, or how they got in it, or why they wanted to kill you. I don’t care why you shot Diana James, or whatever her name was, or why she changed her name.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said.

“Shut up till I finish. There’s just one thing I care about, and you’d better be telling the truth about that. If there’s not any hundred and twenty thousand in those three boxes, or you try to run out with it, hell will never

hold you.”

“Don’t worry. It’s there.”

“Baby,” I said, “it had better be.”

We tried the radio
.

It crooned, and gave away thousands of dollars, and told jokes cleaned up with kissing, and groaned as private eyes were hit on the head, and poured sirup on us, and after a long time there was some news. Big Three, it said, and investigation, and tax cut, and budget, and Senator Frammis in a statement this morning, but nothing about Butler.

It was too soon.

We were pounding over a rough road in a vacuum of dead silence and blackness while all around us the sirens were screaming and teletypes were chattering and police cars were taking stations on highways intersecting a circle they had drawn on the map like a proposition in plane geometry, but it was too soon for anybody to know

about it except the hunters and the hunted.

I cursed and turned the radio off.

She lit a cigarette and leaned back in the seat. “Don’t be so intense, Mr. Scarborough,” she said with amusement. “We’ll get through. Cyclops is feeling only the backs of the sheep.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I guess they haven’t made a comic book

of it yet.”

“Go choke yourself,” I said.

“A month. One whole, enchanting month.”

“Don’t worry. If I can stand it for a hundred and twenty

grand, you should be able to put up with it to stay out of the electric chair.”

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?”

I shrugged her off and concentrated on driving. We came out at last on the intersecting east-west road and

turned right, watching for the one that crossed going south. I looked at the time. It was nearly eleven. The few farmhouses we passed were dark. I began to watch the gasoline gauge. It was dropping faster than I had expected. It must be nearly thirty miles to that small town on the map. And if we got there too late, everything might be closed.

It was a race between the gas gauge and the clock. When we saw the lights of the little town ahead it was ten minutes till midnight and the gauge had been on empty for two miles.

“Get down out of sight while we go through,” I said.

“Aren’t we going to get gasoline?” she asked.

“Not with you in the car.”

She got down, squatting on the floor with her head and shoulders on the seat. I drove through without stopping, looking for an open gas station and knowing that if we didn’t find one we were sunk. It was a one-street town two blocks long, with half a dozen cars parked in the puddle of light in front of the lone cafe. There was a garage at the end of the street, on a corner.

It was open.

The attendant in white coveralls stood in the empty drive between the pumps and watched us go past. I’d been afraid of that. But it couldn’t be helped. Anything moving at all in a town like this would be seen.