Off the Mangrove Coast (Ss) (2000) (26 page)

"Glad?" He stared at me.

"What I mean," I made my voice dry and a little tired, "should be obvious. I'll admit I was startled when I saw you here, but I was not worried because this could be an opportunity for both of us. You can save your life and I can regain my reputation with the company."

"What the hell are you talking about?" He stared at me.

He was skeptical, but he was not sure. That was my weapon ... he could not be sure.

For what mind is free of doubt? In what mind lies no fear? How great then must be the fear of a man who has murdered twice over? The world is his enemy, all eyes are watching him. All ears are listening, all whispers are about him.

When could he be sure that somebody else, some clerk, some filling station attendant, somebody who had known him ... when could he be sure he was not seen?

A criminal has two qualities in excess of other men, optimism and egotism. He believes things will turn out right for him and he believes he is smarter, shrewder ... or at least he believes that on the surface ... beneath lies a morass of doubt, a deep sink of insecurity and fear.

"Manner," I spoke carefully and in a not unfriendly tone, "you've been living in a fool's paradise. Not one instant since you committed your crime have you been free. Your wife got your insurance money so you believed your crime had been successful."

Behind the counter was a box of tea bags, it was partly behind a plastic tray of spoons but I could see constant com ... written on the box.

"You forgot," I continued, "about Constant."

"What?"

"Bob Constant was an FBI man, one of their crack operators. He quit the government and accepted a better paying job as head of the investigation setup in our insurance company.

"He'd been in the business a long time and such men develop a feeling for wrongness, for something out of place. So he had a hunch about your supposed death."

Oh, I had his attention now! He was staring at me, his eyes dilated. And then as I talked I actually remembered something that had bothered me. I seemed to see again a bunch of keys lying on a policeman's desk ... his keys. Something about those keys had worried me, but at the time I could find nothing wrong. How blind I had been! Now, at last, I could see them again and I knew what had been wrong!

"He checked all your things, and when he came to your keys, he checked each one. Your house key was not among them."

He drew a quick, shocked breath. Then he said, "So what?" But he did not look at me, and his fingers fidgeted at his napkin.

"Why should a man's house key not be in his pocket? He was puzzled about that. It was not logical, he said. I objected that your wife could let you in, but he would not accept that. You should still have a key.

"Suppose, he asked me, that the dead man is not the insured man? Suppose the dead man was murdered and substituted, and then at the last minute the murderer remembered the key ... perhaps his wife was away from home ... then he would take that key from the ring, never suspecting it would be noticed.

"So he began to investigate, the money had been paid, but that was not the end. Your wife had left town, several months, at least. But probably you didn't trust her with all that money. She had said she was going to live with her sister ... only she didn't. He knew that within a few hours. Then where had she gone?

"You see, Manner? Bob Constant (I was beginning to admire my invention) was suspicious, so he started the wheels moving. All over the United States a description went out, a description of you and of your wife. New people in a community were quietly looked over, your relatives were checked. Your sister-in-law had been getting letters from your wife, and then they stopped. Your sister-in-law was worried.

"More wheels started turning," I said quietly, "they are looking for you now in a thousand cities. For over a year, we have known you were alive. For over two years evidence has been accumulating. They don't tell me much about it. I'm only a small cog in a big wheel."

"You're lying!" His voice was louder, there was an underlying strain there.

"We dug up the body," I continued quietly, "... doctors keep records of fractures, you know, and we wanted to check this body for a broken bone that had healed.

"Did you ever watch a big police system work? It doesn't look like much, and no particular individual seems to do very much, yet when all their efforts mesh on one case the results are prodigious. And you ... you are on the wrong end of it.

"No information is safe. Baggage men, hotel people, telephone operators, all are anxious to help the police if only to be known as cooperative in case they want to fix a parking ticket."

I was talking for my life, talking because I knew this man was willing to kill me, and that he could do it now and there would be small chance that I could protect myself in any way. Suppose I grabbed him suddenly, and throttled him? Suppose I killed him? I couldn't do that. I couldn't do it because I didn't know if I could and because of the fear that he hadn't been lying, that he had, in fact, set me up.

Never had life been so beautiful as then! All the books I wanted to read, the food I wanted to taste, the hours I wanted to spend at many things, all of them seemed vastly greater and more beautiful than ever before.

Fear ... it was my only weapon ... if I was lucky he might let me go or, more realistically, if I got away he might choose to go into hiding rather than pursue me. I also realized I might have another weapon ... hope.

"They can't miss, Marmer, you're not safe and you never have been. Did you ever see a man die in a gas chamber? I have. You hear that it is very quick and very easy. You can believe that if you like. And what is quick? The word is relative.

"Did you ever think how that could be, Marmer? To live, even for an instant, without hope? But in those months on death row, waiting, there is no hope."

"Shut up."

He said it flatly, yet there was a ring of underlying terror in it, too. Who was to say what responsive chords I might have touched? "Have it your own way," I said, then I moved to close the deal. "You can beat the rap if you're smart."

"What?" He stared at me, his interest captured in spite of himself. "What do you mean?"

"Look," I was dry, patient. "Do you think that I want to see you dead? Come on, man, we've been friends! The insurance company could be your ally in this. Suppose you went to them now ... Suppose you went up there and confessed, and then offered to return what money you have left? You needn't even return it all." I was only thinking of winning my safety now. I was in there, trying. "But some is better than none. They would help you make a deal ... extenuating circumstances. Who knows what a good lawyer could do? We've only been collecting evidence on you, that you weren't dead. We've nothing on the dead man in the car; we've nothing on your wife. They would be glad to get some of their money back and would cut a deal to help you out. You could beat the death penalty."

He sat very still and said nothing. He was crumpling the paper napkin in his fingers. I dared not speak. The wrong move or the wrong word ... at least, he was worried, he was thinking.

"No!" He spoke so sharply that people looked up. He noticed it and lowered his voice. "Come on! We're getting out of here! Make one wrong move or say one word and I'll let you have it!"

He said no more about showing me the deposit from Reno. Had I thrown away my chance at life by pushing him too hard? Had I forced him to kill me? We got up.

Maybe I could have done something. Perhaps I could have reached for him, but there were a dozen innocent people in that cafe; within gun range. I wanted no one else injured or killed even though I wanted to save myself.

We paid our checks and stepped out into the cool night air ... a little mist was drifting in over the building. It would be damp and foggy along the coast roads.

We walked to his car, and he was a bare step behind me. "Get behind the wheel," he said, "and drive carefully. Don't get us stopped. If you do, I'll kill you."

When we were moving, I spoke to him quietly. "What are you going to do, Rich? I always liked you. Even when you pulled this job, I still couldn't feel you were all wrong. Somewhere along the line you didn't get a decent break, something went wrong somewhere.

"That's why I've tried to help you tonight, because I was thinking of you."

"And not because you were afraid to die?" he sneered.

"Give me a chance to help you ... I'd rather die than go through what you have ahead, always ducking, dodging, worrying, knowing they were always there, closing in around you, stifling you.

"And now, of course, there will be this. Those people in the cafe saw us leave together. They'll have a good description of you."

"They never saw me before!"

"I know ... but they have seen me many times. I've al ways eaten in there by myself, so naturally the first time I sat with somebody else they would be curious and would notice you."

Traffic was growing less. He was guiding me by motions, and he was taking me out toward Palos Verdes and the cliffs along the sea. The fog rolled in, blanketing the road in spots. It was gray and thick.

"The gas isn't like this fog, Manner," I said, "you don't see it."

"Shut up!" He slugged me backhanded with the gun. It wasn't hard, he didn't want to upset my driving.

"It isn't too late ... yet. You can always go with me to the company."

"You stupid fool, I'm not going to turn myself in."

"You should, because it's only a matter of days now, or hours."

The gun barrel jarred against my ribs and peeled hide. "Shut up!" His voice lifted. "Shut up or I'll kill you now!"

Bitterly, I stared at the thickening fog. All my talking had been useless. I was through. I might fight now, but with that gun in my ribs I'd small chance.

Suddenly I saw a filling station. Two cars were parked there and people were laughing and talking. I was not going to die! I was ... I casually put the car in neutral, aimed for an empty phone booth beside the road, and jerking up on the door handle, lunged from the car. The gun went off, its bullet burning my ribs, the muzzle blast tearing at my clothes. I went over and over on the pavement, the surface of the road tearing my shoulder, my knees, my hands. There was a crash of metal, the sound of breaking glass, and then silence. I rolled over, turning toward the wreck. The people at the gas station stared, frozen.

Then the car door popped open and after a moment a figure moved, trying to get out of the car, trying to escape. The hand clutching the gun banged on the roof as Marmer tried to lever himself up. The dark form took one step and cried out, his left leg collapsed under him, and he fell to the ground. He rolled on his side, the gun moved in the darkness. There was a shot.

My hands were shaking and my lips trembled. I picked myself up off the road and staggered toward the car.

Richard Marmer's head was back and there was blood on the gravel. He must have put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger a moment after he discovered that his leg was broken ... a moment after he had finally realized he was trapped.

Slowly, my legs shaking, I turned and started down the road toward the filling station.

I was alive ... alive ...

The fog drifted like a cool, caressing hand across my cheek. Somebody dropped a tire iron and people were moving toward me.