Cape Fear (16 page)

“How about Bessie McGowan? She been in?”

“She’s always in. I wish to hell she’d pick another spot for a change. If you know her, you know how she gets. She ought to be coming in any time now.”

One of the men at the other end of the bar called him and the bartender walked away. Ten minutes later, when Sam was thinking of signaling for another beer, a woman walked in. She could not have selected anything to wear which could have made her look more grotesque. She had on white pumps with four-inch heels, skintight black bullfighter pants, a wide white leather belt with a gilt buckle, a tight sweater-blouse in a red-and-white horizontal candy stripe. A woman with a perfect figure might have been able to carry it off with a certain amount of theatrical success. But this was a woman in her middle years, with a mop of hair so abused by dyes that it was the color and texture of sun-bleached hemp. She had a puffy chipmunk face, square red lips painted boldly on. Her waist was surprisingly narrow in contrast to the wobbling massiveness of hip, the vast and doughy contours of the barely credible breasts. It was alarmingly obvious that she wore nothing under pants and blouse except an uplift bra that staunchly focused and aimed
the great breasts dead ahead like fire-control direction on a battleship. She walked in an almost visible cloud of musky perfume, and she dangled a white shoulder bag from a single finger, so that it nearly dragged on the floor. She was grotesque, ludicrous and incredible. Yet there was nothing pathetic about her. She was carrying on her own gallant war against time in her own way. She was in the great bawdy tradition of the mining camps and the frontiers.

She plopped the white bag on the center of the bar and, in a voice worn by tobacco, whisky and long use into a texture that was like a stage whisper by a baritone, said, “Jolt and water, Nick.”

“The check come?” the bartender asked warily.

“Yes, yes, the check came. The check came. Here you go, you suspicious louse. Hit me with the grandpa today.” She slapped a five-dollar bill on the bar.

As he reached for the bottle the bartender said, motioning toward Sam, “Friend of yours asking after you, Bessie.”

She turned and stared at him and then walked over to him. Up close she gave that curious larger-than-life impression that accomplished actresses know how to project. He saw that her eyes were large and gray and exceptionally lovely.

“My Gawd, a man who stands up. Sit down, old friend, before I die of shock.” She sat on the stool next to him, and studied him, puzzled. “Honest, I got to watch these blackouts. Usually I can come up with a clue. But I draw a big blank. Clue me, Louie.”

The bartender put the shot glass of whisky, a glass of water and her change in front of her.

“Well over a month ago, Bessie. You were out at one of
the joints on the shore east of town. With a bald man named Max. You told me this was your favorite spot.”

“It’s going to stop being anybody’s favorite spot if Nick and Whitey keep on being so damn chintzy about money all the time. I remember that Max. So I was with him. It figures. But what the hell were we doing talking to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got a haircut and clean fingernails and a press in your suit, mister. You talk like your folks sent you to college. You could be a doctor or a dentist. Max would talk to bums. Nobody but bums. You gentlemen types made him ugly.”

“So since you recommended the place, I thought I’d stop and get a drink.”

“So you thought you’d stop and get a drink.” She looked at him with a compelling and horrible coquetry.

He gingerly moved his arm to get it away from the pressure of a giant breast and said quickly, “Seen Max around lately?”

“No, thanks. He was in jail. I guess he’s out now. I like my fun. Christ, everybody knows me knows that. I got a little income and I get along. I’m what you call friendly. I’ve seen a lot of people, and I’ve been a lot of places. And I can put up with a lot. Who’s perfect? But let me tell you about that Max Cady. He’s all man. I got to give him that. But he’s mean as a snake. He doesn’t give a damn for anybody in the world but Max Cady. You know what he did to me?” She lowered her voice and her face hardened. “We were in my place. I’m curious about him. You know. You want to know about people. So I’d been asking him and all I get is the brush. So there we are and I fix him a drink and
I say, ‘Let’s stop the runaround, Maxie. Fill me in. Brief me. What’s with you? Tell Mama.’ ”

She knocked off the shot, took a sip of water, and yelled at Nick for a refill. “What does he do? He beats up on me. On me! Bessie McGowan. Right in my own place, drinking my liquor, he gets up out of one of my chairs and he thumps me all over the place. And grinning at me all the time. Let me tell you, the way he was going at it, I thought he was going to kill me, honest. And then all the lights went out.

“At dawn I wake up. I was on the floor, and I was a mess. He was gone. I crawled to bed on my hands and knees. When I got up again, I got to a mirror. I had a face on me like a blue basketball. I was so sore all over I couldn’t move without yelping. I got the doc over and told him I fell downstairs. I’ve never yelled cop in my life, but I was close. Three cracked ribs. Forty-three bucks dental. I looked so awful it was a week before I stirred out of the place, and even then I was walking like an old lady. It’s a good thing I’m strong as a horse, mister. That go-round would have killed most women. And you know, I don’t feel exactly right yet. When I read about his trouble, I sent out for a bottle and I drank it all myself. He isn’t a human being. That Max is an animal. All I did was ask questions. All he had to do was say that he wanted me to shut up.”

She drank her second shot, and when she called Nick back he ordered another beer.

“So he’s no friend of yours, Bessie.”

“If I saw him dead in the street, I’d buy drinks for the house.”

“He’s no friend of mine.”

She shrugged. “How do you mean, just seeing us that once?”

“I didn’t. I made that up.”

The gray eyes turned very cold. “I don’t like gags.”

“My name is Sam Bowden.”

“So what’s that got to do with … Did you say Bowden?”

“Maybe he called me the lieutenant.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Bessie, I want you to help me. I don’t know what to expect. He’s going to try to hurt me. Somehow. I want to know if he gave you any clue.”

She kept her voice very low. “He was a funny bugger, Sam. He didn’t have too much to say. He didn’t show you much of his insides. But twice he talked about Lieutenant Bowden. And both times it gave me the cold creepers, right up and down my back. Part the way he looked. He didn’t say anything that made sense, though. One time he said you were an old Army buddy and to show you how much he liked you he was going to kill you six times. He said he was going to make you last. He was drinking and I tried to, you know, kinda laugh it off like telling him he wouldn’t kill anybody for real.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He just gave me a look and he didn’t say any more that time. Do you know what he meant? How can you kill anybody six times?”

He looked down into his beer glass. “If a man had a wife, three kids and a dog.”

She tried to laugh. “Nobody’d do that.”

“He started with the dog. He poisoned it.”

Her face turned chalky. “Dear sweet Jesus!”

“What else did he say?”

“There was just the one other time he talked about you. He said something like by the time I get around to the lieutenant, I’ll be doing him a favor. He’ll be begging for it. That kind of fits in with the other, doesn’t it?”

“Would you come with me to police headquarters and sign a statement about what you heard him say?”

She looked at him for ten seconds. It seemed a very long time. “You happen to be snuggling up to a girl graduate of Dannemora, dearie.”

“Would you?”

“I’ll tell you what, snooks. Take a letter to J. Edgar. Dear Ed. Me and the boys were just …”

“There’s a girl fifteen, a boy eleven, a boy six.”

“You’re breaking my heart, dearie. In the first place I’ve seen the inside of that place too many times already. In the second place they wouldn’t listen to anything Bessie McGowan says. In the third place it’s a cruel world and I’m sorry if you got problems, but that’s the way the ball bounces.”

“I’ll beg you to—”

“Hey Nick! It turns out I didn’t know this bum after all. How come you let ladies get insulted in this joint?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Sam said.

She got off the stool. “That’s where I am, snooks. Right where I was heading all my life. Right to the place where I don’t have to do anything about anything.”

“Not so loud, Bessie,” Nick said.

She picked up all her change except a dime. She pushed it toward Nick. “Have a ball, lover. I’m finding a better joint.”

She yanked the street door shut behind her. Nick picked up the dime and studied it thoughtfully. “That there is a pistol, friend. How’d you drive her out? Maybe I can use it sometime.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Nick sighed. “Once upon a time she was Miss Indiana. She showed me the clipping. I said I didn’t know it was a state that long ago. She busted me right in the eye with a left hook. Well, come back and see us.”

He walked down to Jaekel Street. Number 211 was a square, three-story frame house painted brown with yellow trim. A window sign announced Room for Rent. An old man sat in a rocking chair on the narrow porch, his eyes closed. There were two holes in the screen door, one of them mended. Sam pushed the doorbell and heard it ring in the back of the house. There was a smell of mold and acid and cabbage and soiled bedding. There was a screaming quarrel going on upstairs. He could hear the deep sound of a man’s voice, slow and oddly patient, and then a shrill tirade that would go on for a long time. He could pick out a word here and there. He could look into the hallway and see a narrow dark table with several letters on it and a lamp with a fringed shade.

A gaunt old woman came down the hallway toward him. Her stride was astonishingly heavy. She stood inside the screening and said, “Yay-yuss?”

“Does Mr. Cady live here?”

“Nope.”

“Mr. Max Cady?”

“Nope.”

“But he did live here?”

“Yay-yuss. But he don’t no more. I wouldn’t take him back if he wanted. We want no truck with fighting and polices, Marvin and me. No part of it. No, sir. And jail folks. That’s where he was. Jailed. Shut up tight. Come back Friday and got his stuff. I’d had Marvin put it in the cellar. He didn’t want to pay me rent for parking space ahind the house, but I said as how I’d have the law right back on him in a minute and then he paid me and he drove his car off and that’s the last of him.”

“Did he leave a forwarding address?”

“Now that would be downright stupid for a man never got any mail at all, wouldn’t it?”

“Has anybody else come around asking for him?”

“You’re the very first and I surely pray you’re the last on account of Marvin and me, we don’t cotton to folks like that.”

He phoned Dutton the next morning. Dutton said he would see if anybody could get a line on Cady.

Nothing happened on Friday. On Saturday he drove down to Suffern, and on Sunday they visited Nancy and Jamie. He was back at his desk on Monday morning. He had not told Carol about the story he got from Bessie McGowan. He did not want her to know he had gone down into Cady’s area, nor did he wish to alarm her.

Nothing happened on Monday. Or Tuesday.

The phone call from Mr. Menard came through on Wednesday, at ten in the morning on the last day of July, the day when Carol was to have gone down and picked
Jamie up in the afternoon and taken him back to Suffern with her. It was his final day of camp.

When he realized who was calling, he felt as though his heart had stopped.

“Mr. Bowden? Jamie’s been hurt, but it’s not serious.”

“How was he hurt?”

“I think you’d better come down here if you can. He’s on his way over to the Aldermont Hospital now, and it will probably be best if you go directly there. I repeat, it’s not serious. He’s not in danger. Sheriff Kantz will want to talk to you sooner or later. I had to … give him what information I had, of course.”

“I’ll leave right away. Have you informed my wife?”

“She left before the call got through. I understand she’s on her way here. I’ll send her over to Aldermont and we could keep the little fellow here with us, if she agrees to that.”

“Tell her I think that would be a good idea. Where’s Nancy?”

“On the way over with her brother and Tommy Kent.”

“Can you please tell me what happened to the boy?”

“He was shot, Mr. Bowden.”

“Shot!”

“It could have been more serious. Much more serious. It’s on the inside of his upper left arm, about three inches above the elbow. It made an ugly gash. He lost blood, and, naturally, it scared him.”

“I would think so. I’ll make it as quickly as I can.”

“Young Kent can give you the rest of the story at the hospital. Don’t drive too fast, Mr. Bowden.”

CAROL HAD BEEN AT THE HOSPITAL
for nearly an hour when Sam arrived at one-thirty. She and Nancy were in the semi-private room with Jamie when Sam walked in. Sam kissed her. She looked completely under control, but he felt the trembling of her mouth as he kissed her. Nancy had a subdued, troubled look. Jamie’s face against the pillow was just pale enough under the tan to give him a greenish look. His left arm was bandaged, and he looked proud and excited.

“Hey, I didn’t make a sound when they sewed it up, and I got six stitches.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Sort of, but not bad. Gosh, I can’t wait to tell the kids at home. A real bullet. It hit my arm and went through the shed next to the mess hall, right in one side and out the
other—zowie—and when they find it I can have it after the sheriff is through with it. I’d like it on one of those little wooden things under glass in my room.”

“Who did it?”

“Heck, who knows? That man, I guess. That Cady. A lot of the kids didn’t even hear any shot. I didn’t. I wish I’d heard it. He was a long way away, up on Shadow Hill someplace, the sheriff thinks.”