The desperate hours, a novel (16 page)

The inevitability of this—for Dan had knovm somehow that this also was coming—left in Dan no place for surprise. Robish had forgotten Ralphie now—and whatever Ralphie had done to rouse that murderous instinct—and Dan could see the slow grinding of that dull and unpredictable mind behind the massive forehead. Glenn Griffin saw it, too. He, also, must have watched Robish's thoughts flash to the waiting car outside, to the possibility of what he might do. Uncertain rebellion turned to flat decision across the bleak face. Robish could kill them, one or all of them, and be in that car and on his way in a matter of seconds. No more nerve-eating wait, no more following Griffin's orders.

The stupidity of the man's thinking also failed to surprise Dan in the least. In that instant he knew that, any second now —and he must not wait too long—he would have to act.

With the gun inching toward his stomach, clutched in the dark hairy hand of the big man, Glenn Griffin began to laugh. At first it was a defiant crackle of sound, but staring at the intensity on Robish's face. Griffin seemed abruptly to lose control and the laugh died in a series of odd gurgles. His hands came up to his face, fluttered there, and then his jaw was working without sound.

Dan felt himself take a step toward Eleanor; then his muscles locked as Robish growled, "Don't move, Milliard."

Glenn Griffin uttered a long but broken breath that sounded like, "For Chrissake, Robish "

At this Robish bellowed—a wild animal cry, vast and awesome and hollow, the cave of mouth open.

Glenn Griffin's terror-stricken words caught and reflected Dan's immediate thought: "You're nuts, Robish." But as he heard the words, Dan knew at once that Griffin could not have said anything more dangerous.

Robish brought the point of the revolver against the young man's stomach in a vicious jab that doubled Griffin over with a cry of pain. Then, his back against the door frame, he began to slither toward the floor, his hands still fluttering in that odd terrified way at his chin. He was beginning to utter a low sighing sound, all breath and high-pitched plea.

Should he move now? This was it. He was in the midst of it now, everything gone, all his efforts ruined. Should Dan Hil-liard act now?

"I'm nuts!" Robish bawled. "Yeh, I'm nuts, Griffin. Doing your dirty work. You, you bastard, you're the general, ain't you?"

Dan judged the distance. Immediately after the explosion, if he could leap fast enough in the confusion, if he could hit Robish hard enough the first time

"I konk the guard, I plug the old guy, I "

Then, from above, from the darkness of the upper hall, another voice cut across Robish's low snarl: "Throw it on the floor, Robish."

Robish turned his head, peered unseeing into those shadows above Eleanor's body, blinked. Without volition, Dan moved then, but not in the swift way he had been calculating. He stepped carefully and cautiously toward his wife, reached his right arm around her waist, and he was drawing her away from the stairs when Hank Griffin, still invisible above, spoke again.

"Throw it on the floor, Robish. Now."

Under his arm, Dan could feel small shivers passing up and down Eleanor's body.

But he was watching Robish, wondering. He saw the temptation to whirl firing; he saw that slow, prison-broken mind tearing its attention from Glenn Griffin who half-lay, half-sat slouched against the door frame. Griffin's eyes were wide and glassy, as though he still had not comprehended what was happening, until he saw Robish toss the gun to the rug.

It lay there, black and deadly, between Glenn Griffin and Dan, as Robish stepped back, glowering with yellow eyes up the stairwell.

Eleanor must have read the thought in Dan's mind before he was aware of it himself. "No," she whispered, clinging to his arm. "No, Dan."

At the head of the stairs there was no movement. The whole house seemed locked in unnatural stillness after the snarls and cries. Finally, Glenn Griffin reached out and picked up the revolver. He stood up, verv' slowly. The soundless pantomime seemed to go on and on. Glenn Griffin reached for his swagger, lifted his shoulders, took a deep breath—but in the breath was a shudder and he closed his mouth. Then his eyes met Dan's.

With a start that made him wonder again whether he had made a mistake by not acting, Dan caught the furious glare of shame: the memory of those few moments of clawing terror and the knowledge that Dan and the others had stood witness

to the cowardice. What would this mean? In what direction would it push Griffin?

Behind him Dan heard his daughter take a deep draught of breath. His own lungs burned. Then, breaking the silence, Hank Griffin came down the stairs, stepping quickly, his right arm hanging at his side. He paused on the bottom step, glanced at Robish who stood bearlike and still now, his arms dangling; then at his brother. What Dan heard then was not so much the content of the younger Griffin boy's words as the flattened note of finality in his tone: "Let's go, Glenn."

Glenn Griffin frowned, said nothing.

"This is our chance, Glenn," Hank said, gently, reasonably. "We can't hold them and Robish, too. And maybe the coppers traced Helen, maybe they've got her, maybe they've traced her call here. This is going on too long, Glenn. They're bound to get here sooner or later. They're not dumb."

"All cops are dumb," Glenn Griffin said, and his voice was soft, too.

"Everybody's dumb, ain't they?" Hank Griffin asked. "That teacher. The one the kid shpped the note to. Just because she called back and said she knew it was all a joke, just kid stuff, a game—you think she believes that herself? How do you know there wasn't some smart cop right at her elbow?"

"Don't get scared, kid. Don't be like Robish here. Jumpy."

"I'm not jumpy!" Hank Griffin cried suddenly, and Dan saw his mouth trembling oddly. "But I'm not going to the chair just cause Robish got trigger-happy and you let him. You think the cops ain't working on that right now? You can't knock off everybody comes to the door. Why don't you send him after that teacher now, Glenn? Sure. Shoot up the whole damn city—play safe!"

"Shut up," Glenn Griffin said softly. "Get back to the kitchen and stay shut."

Hank Griffin was shaking his head, and very slowly, very deliberately. "Come with me, Glenn." 

Glenn lifted his shoulders in that angular and arrogant way. "Tomorrow. After we get the dough."'

"What good's the dough gonna do you in the death house?" He was shouting then, his mouth twisting and out of control.

Robish watched this with no expression, only a scornful alertness in his quiet.

"You heard me," Glenn Griffin said then, and he was still quiet, but the anger was there, hard and bitter. "We're gonna stay, see. I'm going to pay off Webb. I got to have that dough for Flick so he'll take care of Webb."

The younger brother stepped down. "Then I'm going, Glenn. By myself."

After that, the silence came back, intensified, deeper.

Finally, Glenn Griffin grinned. "Go ahead, kid. On your own they'll have you back in stir in less'n a hour."

Hank Griffin glanced toward Dan, but his gaze went beyond—to Cindy. "I'm going, that's all." He moved into the hghted H\'ing room.

"Goddammit!" Glenn Griffin yelled. "You'll do what I say, you little jerk! I got you this far, both you dumb cons, and I'll get you the rest of the way!"

Hank did not pause until he reached the door of the sun room; then he turned. "Yeh," he said bitterly, low, "you got me this far. And where the hell is that? I'm asking you. We're all headed for the chair, that's where. Only count me out." Then his voice dropped even lower: "Come along, Glenn."

"I oughta "

Both guns came up at the same instant. Hank Griffin was shaking his head.

"It'd break my heart, Glenn, but I'd do it. You can't stop me. So long, Glenn."

Hank Griffin backed through the sun-room door, turned and ran, his steps sharp on the tiled porch. Dan had seen the sharp glisten of fear in the young eyes, and he wished he had not wit-

nessed the scene, but he could only stand by and watch what was to follow, wondering.

"He's gonna take the car," Robish said.

"Like hell!" Glenn Griffin touched the light switch, plunged them all into total, shocking darkness; Dan felt him brush past, heard him crouching at the window overlooking the driveway, heard that window grind open. "Stay away from that car, you dumb punk!"

Outside, a door slammed. It was strange, Dan thought, that with your senses battered and deadened by too much happening too fast, you could still recognize minute details: the door that closed was on Cindy's coupe. The motor turned over, caught, purred.

Above this sound, though, and closer, Dan heard another. It was Glenn Griffin shouting wildly, a long series of blasphemy and lewdness erupting from the frustration in him as the motor faded down the boulevard.

Hank traveled west four full blocks before he saw the first patrol car. Even in the darkness, he spotted it from a distance because the years had sharpened his awareness and caution in matters of that sort until now his reactions were almost instinctual. He made a sharp right turn, so that he wouldn't have to pass it. A half-block farther on, in the shadow of a dark service station, he saw another. This time there was no way for him to avoid passing it.

He touched the automatic in the pocket of that sweater he'd found in the upstairs closet of the Hilliard house. He'd use it if he had to. If he was going to be charged with murder, why not make it one that he, not that ape Robish, committed? His palms were cold and moist.

As he drove at a normal rate of speed, luckily between two other cars, directly in front of the nose of the patrol car which was at right angles to the street, he knew that he was forgetting something about Cindy's coupe. Something important that made it dangerous. He should have taken the blue sedan despite Glenn's shout. But why? Glenn always claimed his mind was too slow, too blurred with what Glenn called daydreams.

Whatever it was about this car, though, the coppers didn't notice. He watched his rear-view mirror. They didn't follow.

He turned west again, at the first street he saw, and he had gone perhaps two miles, all the while alert, wondering, scanning the shadows along the way, when he realized the significance of those two police cars parked that close to the Hilliard house. He'd been right: the cops were wise. But the triumph wouldn't come. He'd been right, but what about Glenn back there. What was going to happen now to that girl?

Funny, though—now that he was away from her, what happened to her didn't seem so important. There was never anything he could do about what Glenn planned tomorrow after he had the money, anyway. The girl was going along in the car then to make the escape look natural and if necessary, to act as a shield.

Is that why you walked out. Hank?

He knew better. He walked out because he wasn't the dumb jerk Glenn thought he was. He was away from there now, and Glenn, the smart one, the wise one who always had the answers, was sitting in a trap and not knowing it.

Only a few cars approached or passed now, in the late night. He rolled down the window at his elbow. The sharp cold air felt fine.

But underneath the sensation of freedom—he was, he realized, even free of Glenn now—there was this other feeling: the idea that he should turn around, go back, warn Glenn. His brother had been the only human being in the world who'd

ever given half a damn what happened to Hank GrifFm. His father had been, before he killed himself by it, a cruel and steady drinker, given to wild rages and brutality; and his mother, running from that, had left them all when Hank was so young that he couldn't even remember her face clearly. Glenn had fixed things for him, fought his battles in the alley, then rung him in on the stick-up jobs because he was the best driver and could lose a car faster than anyone else. These memories moved in him now, and he knew that he dare not get lost in them. He had to think of himself. Now. Tonight. Now. A deep frail joy was in him: he was on his own at last. But he had to concentrate now on this moment—not the past, not the future.

Back there, listening to Robish's voice bawUng before he came down the stairs. Hank had had a definite plan. Now he couldn't remember exactly what it was. Something about heading west out of town, then doubling back to the Chicago road that he knew would be blocked close in to the city but comparatively free farther north. He could be in Chicago by morning.

He glanced at the dashboard, automatically checking the gauges. There was less than half a tank of gas. And no money. Only the few coins he'd fished out of that desk drawer in the den. That meant he'd have to pull a job—on his own.

This thought, together with the idea of a strange big city like Chicago where he knew no one and the anticipation of the long ride ahead, absolutely alone—all combined, mingled, and made him go weak clear through.

He knew what was coming then; he knew what that quiver in his stomach meant. He wondered if he could drive when that thing hit him.

But he couldn't go back. Those coppers were waiting there, all part of a plan. What was he going to do?

The slow panic settled through him, and he gripped the wheel, taking large draughts of the cold night air. But nothing did any good. The wracking shudders were beginning. The radio had said all roads were blocked. But he couldn't stay back there. He had to get out of that house. Staying there had been sheer torture, from the beginning. The soft rugs, the gleaming furniture, the way those people stuck together, that girl

They'll have you back in stir in less'n a hour.

He could almost hear Glenn's mocking laugh. But he didn't hate it now. He longed to hear it close, to feel that arm over his shoulder. Why was he here? What was he doing?

You don't even know that girl. Cindy Hilhard. She never said a word to you, hardly. She hates you.

All the while the violence was mounting in him, becoming insistent. He hated this in himself, this sickness or fear or whatever it was. Even worse than the helplessness and the shaking was the black pall of disgust and self-loathing that fell across him. Sickness, the prison doc had called it. Epilepsy. Weakness, Glenn always said.