The desperate hours, a novel (4 page)

Then, repeating his daughter's words—as Eleanor, knowing them both so well, might have expected—Dan demanded: "What do you want?"

This time Glenn Griffin was not taken by surprise. "I don't want anybody to get hurt. What do you want, Pop?"

Dan crossed then, despite the gun, toward his wife; he placed a hand—large and freckled and tender—on her shoulder and simply let it rest there, relaxed. "That's what I want, too."

Glenn let go with a laugh at that; he dropped the arm holding the gun. "Now you talk sense. So I'm going to talk sense, too,"

The room was deep in shadow now, and Dan listened in silence, feeling the shudders subsiding in Eleanor's shoulder. He didn't increase the pressure of his hand.

Glenn, striding in that slender cathke manner of his up and down the room, spoke in the unemotional manner of one who has known for months, perhaps years, exactly what he wants to say. Dan listened while the helplessness of his position seeped into him like some mysterious benumbing drug.

All they wanted—the three of them—was a safe place to stay till about midnight, at the latest two or three in the morning. They had some money coming, a lot of money, and when it arrived, they would go. It was as simple as that. In the meantime, life in the Milliard house was to go on normally. In every way.

"Just like normal, see. You got it straight, folks?"

He spoke like an actor who had rehearsed his words many times. He moved around the room and his brows lifted and his face worked as though some invisible camera were on him, as though he were carefully but arrogantly trying in his behavior to live up to some picture of himself that he carried in his mind. Dan recorded all this, for whatever good it might do, his own mind noting everything in that indirect but almost infallible way he had of judging people. Dan reached one inevitable, stone-hard conclusion: these were not idle threats. This boy would kill one or all of them if anything went wrong. Once Dan had accepted this, fully, he acted upon it, but he could feel his legs shaking now, his body frozen and numb with helplessness.

"We'll do whatever you say, Griffin," Dan said in a fiat voice. "Only "

"Yeah?"

"Griffin, what if I could get you the money you want? Right away, I mean. Tonight. Before midnight? Would you leave then?"

"You couldn't do it, Pop. I had a look at your bankbooks. You just don't have it."

"That sounds like a deal to me," Robish said from the darkness of the den. "We could get the hell out of here."

Dan noted also the urgency behind the invisible man's tone. "Maybe I could raise it. Somehow. What then. Griffin?"

"We're sticking," Glenn said.

"Yeah," the voice from the other room muttered sourly. "Sticking to wait for that babe. You'd risk our necks just to see that dame again."

Having unexpectedly created the breach, Dan stepped into it. "If this woman, whoever she is, knows where to come, how do you know the poUce won't be following her? It's as much to my advantage as yours now to avoid the poHce."

"What about that?" This time Robish emerged, planting himself at the far end of the room, his hulk of body bleak and hard in threatened mutiny. "The guy talks sense, Griffin. Hell, you can pick up a woman anywheres."

A flicker of bewilderment passed over the hard, young features of Glenn Griffin's face. He glanced from Dan to Robish. Then he whirled to Robish, the movement a dancer-shadow in the room. "I'm running the show, Robish. I thought we had that straight. We're staying, see, till Helen gets here. She's too smart to let the cops get on her tail. And she's got the kind of dough I got to have. And I got to have it here, see. Right in this town."

"You got no right to take these chances just so you can get a copper knocked off. What do I care somebody broke your goddamned jaw? That was a long time ago, anyway, and if this guy here can raise the dough "

"No!" The word crackled. "You heard me, both of you." Slowly Glenn stepped toward Dan. "You, Hilliard, you lay off. I don't need no ideas from you. I got my own, and I got them all worked out and they been working fine."

"Ain't worth it," Robish snorted.

"I say it is, Robish. Where'd you be if it wasn't for me?" He spoke with his back to Robish, his eyes on Dan. "You'd be sitting down to that stew again, that's what, with a gun on you, and a guard breathing down your neck again. This way, we got the guns, and that's the way it's going to be." He was rubbing his cheek, feeling the hard ridge of tissue that now protected the mended bone. "And you, HiUiard, you're going to 29

talk when I ask you something or when I tell you to talk. Otherwise, you're going to keep your trap closed. You love this woman of yours, you're going to play ball. Like you say, pal, it's as much your advantage as mine to keep any coppers away from here. Any red lights show in front of this joint, it's not going to be pretty."

Mrs. Kathleen Webb was smiling happily at her husband across a red-checkered tablecloth and what was left of a very thick steak. He was talking as he ate, and the ripple of excitement reached across the restaurant table.

"She left Pittsburgh at approximately four o'clock this afternoon. That much is for certain. Driving south on U.S. 19. Less than an hour later, she was spotted on U.S. 40, heading west. West, hear? That's us. That's here. I told you they were homing pigeons. She's sailing along now in her nice maroon two-door job, and they're holed up somewhere here thinking how smart they were to get her out of town so she could backtrack to them without being watched. Smart? Not so damned." He shoved the platter back and worked a napkin over his chin. "Every town she goes through, I reckon there's going to be a pair of eyes on her, clocking that maroon job like it was in a race. But nobody's going to bother her. Oh no, oh no. Along about Greenfield, they'll put a real tag on her and she'll breeze in here tonight some time and lead us right to the hole. State troopers, FBI, all of us." He clutched the napkin into a knot. "Just like that."

"Jess," his wife said gently, with a faint wonder in her face, "you want to kill that man, dont you?"

Jesse didn't answer that at once. He knew the truth, the blank and absolute fact: yes. But suddenly it seemed important

to explain and justify this feeling, although everything he said toward this purpose was also the truth: "Look, I don't know what makes people go bad. I grew up in a neighborhood that was worse than the GrifRn boys' if it comes to that. So did the Mayor. And I don't know about all these here psychological things you're always reading about nowadays. I reckon they've got something, too. All I know is that as long's a guy like Glenn Griffin is running around free and safe, and with a gun in his hand to boot—well, it's not free or safe for the rest of us, any of us. It's like that, hear? That's the way it is." He leaned across the table. "That's why you're going to sleep on a cot in my office tonight. Or at a hotel. Which do you reckon?"

"I'll take the jail. I hate hotels and we can't afford them, and I'd like to be near you."

Jesse smiled again, taking her hand on the table; she cast an embarrassed glance around the restaurant. But Jesse held onto her hand, and she watched a scowl replace the smile on his narrow face.

She had no way of knowing that his mind had, by an accidental association of images and fears, pounced upon a picture that was true in its general outline if not in detail. Jesse Webb was imagining Glenn Griffin with that gun pointed at frightened and innocent people, and no one knew better than Jesse Webb that Glenn Griffin was capable of using it.

But where? If he only knew where ... If only he didn't have to sit now and wait, with that picture coming back at him in different forms . . .

As Dan Milliard stared at the gun held so casually in the hand of the young man and as his mind shied from the pictures of destruction inherent in the very fact of that gun's presence in his house, he was caught in a sickening helplessness. If the police came, it would be tragic; if they did not come, it might be worse.

"The kid's coming up the drive on his bike," Robish reported from the den.

"If you'll let me talk to him," Dan said quickly, "I could explain it and . . ."

"Shut up," Glenn Griffin said softly.

Dan could hear the sound of the single tire skidding on the gravel of the driveway. "But with the lights off like this, the boy will be scared to death. You can't . . ."

Glenn Griffin took two swift silent strides and jabbed the gun point with bruising force into Dan's ribs. Dan gasped for breath, and his hand closed down on Eleanor's shoulder.

Regardless of this, he heard quite distinctly the few short carefree steps on the back porch, the back door opening, the small cry of astonishment and sudden fear. He stiffened. As though his own insane and suicidal impulse had communicated itself through the gun against him, that point once again rammed itself with force into his ribs.

There was a brief and one-sided scuffle in the kitchen; it continued through the dining room, with Ralphie's voice mingled incoherently in it.

Then Ralphie was standing in the hall, held in the grip of a young man whom Dan had not seen before but whom he recognized immediately as Glenn Griffin's brother.

"Let go!" Ralphie said, twisting himself out of the short man's grasp.

"Hank." Glenn switched the gun idly so that it was directed at the hall. "Turn on the hall light, pull the Winds in the dining room and get back to the kitchen." As he spoke he stepped into the hall, out of view of the front windows.

Anyone going home from work on the street outside could see the Hilliards in their living room, facing the hall. They could not see the small straight figure of the boy in the hall,

outrage and not fear written on his play-streaked face. Nor could they see Glenn Griffin beside the boy.

"What's that guy doing in our kitchen?" Ralphie demanded.

"It's all right, Ralphie," Dan said quickly, but not moving despite the impulse that quivered along his legs. He saw then the alert flash of comprehension and terror leap to the boy's face as the eyes fell on the black metallic gleam in Glenn's hand. "I'll explain it to you, Ralphie."

With startling suddenness, the boy whirled, leaped to the front door, turned the knob and tugged.

"Take it easy now, kid," Glenn said in a single breath.

Still tugging, Ralphie began to cry. Then, almost as quickly as he had moved the first time, he gave up on the locked door. It appeared that he was going to turn to face them, but what he did was so abrupt and ridiculous that even Glenn seemed startled into inaction. Ralphie darted into the living room, passed Dan even as his father's hand went out, and reached the unlocked sun-porch door.

"Ralphie!" Eleanor screamed, but not loudly because her throat closed with terror.

Dan was after the boy, but before he could reach him, there was another movement, from the direction of the den, and the man Robish, cursing, grabbed Ralphie.

Glenn flipped off the lights almost as soon as Robish appeared in the living room.

What followed was pantomime and dumb show, in semi-darkness, with the big man twisting Ralphie about, the enormous hands spinning him, then slipping down to his shoulders and shaking the small body. Dan heard behind him the metal-and-cloth swish of the front window curtains as Glenn drew them shut. All he saw was his son's head snapping up and down against his chest and the heavy shoulders of the man half-turned away from him.

It was enough. Dan forgot the gun behind him. He forgot Glenn Griffin completely. In that blank moment of wildness 33

he took two more steps, felt the lights come up on the room, saw the tear-filled incredulous eyes of the boy and the enormous hate-twisted, frustrated face of the man looming over the boy. Even as he reached for the man's shoulder, Dan knew it was madness that drove him, but he was helpless in the grip of jungle instinct.

Eleanor watched the pantomime in horror, torn between the impulse to leap at the man herself, clawing the flesh from the bone of that ugly, brutal face, and the knowledge that she must somehow dam up and control the same rage that she saw naked and terrible in her husband's whole body.

It was too late by then to do an\thing at all. Dan had whirled the hulk of body about as though it were an inanimate toy one-third its size. The eyes in the bulbous pouches gUttered once, as much with satisfaction as surprise. Then they closed completely as Dan's fist crashed upwards, at a slight angle, and exploded in the square face.

Before, all had been' silence; now the flesh-against-flesh, bone-against-bone sound of that single blow filled the whole house. The body straightened slightly, then tottered a split second uncertainly, finally collapsed into a soft heap.

What broke the silence again, and completely, was Eleanor's cry as, with Ralphie clinging against her, she saw Glenn Griffin move in behind Dan, lift the gun and bring it down full force against the top of his shoulder.

Dan didn't feel this at first, suspended as he was in the abrupt and awful knowledge of what he had done to all of them. Then the pain struck, but at first it was not pain at all but a blackness falling across his mind. Then it focused momentarily, as though a knife had severed a nerve; then it exploded. The whole right side of his body went numb and cold and he felt himself staggering sidewise.

He felt, too, the rough hand righting him, twisting his body, shoving him backwards into the enveloping softness of the sofa. The blackness closed in again.

When he could see again, and hear, he saw Glenn Griffin facing the man Robish, the gun directed at Robish's stomach.

". . . not going to be like this, see! Not like this, Robish!" Glenn Griffin was almost, but not quite, shouting.

Robish was muttering incomprehensible words, and his hand was across his face; above it the greenish yellow eyes were fixed on Dan. His whole body strained forward despite the man in front of him.

"Get to the kitchen, Robish, fast. Get there!"

Robish's words came through. "You think I'm gonna let him get away with that? You think ..."

"Nothing's going to foul this up!" Glenn cried. "Got that, Robish? You got time for him. But not now. Nothings going to foul this up, see!"