The red neon sign of the Right Spot blinked like a warning light ahead of him. He moved toward it, hesitating, looking all around him, ready to run. Forbes might still be in the neighborhood. He might be watching from some doorway right now. He might be calling the cops this minute.
The tall young Negro patrolman walked by on the other side of the street, swinging his night stick. He did not give Al a second look.
Al felt better. After all, he thought, what the hell, it doesn’t have to be Forbes. The world is full of tall guys with brown hair. And maybe the guy’s wife did run off. It happens every day. How would Forbes follow me here, anyhow? I didn’t set up no signposts. And nobody knows me.
Hell, it couldn’t have been Forbes.
He went into the Right Spot.
Sam Borchert, forty minutes drunker and now bored by the whole subject, was quarreling with his girl friend in the booth. The other couple had gone home. Al had no trouble in picking Borchert out. It gave him the cold shakes again to see how much he and Borchert did look alike. Not in the face, but generally. He got as close as he could to the booth and ordered a beer and listened.
That was no trick either. The dame had a voice like a hack saw and she didn’t care who heard it. She was one of these pint-sized brunettes with a big hard nose and a big hard mouth and not enough brains to know when to quit. Brochert kept saying, “Look, will you drop the subject? Will you just kindly drop it?” But she wouldn’t drop it. She kept leaning across the table and fixing him with a glassy eye and she kept pushing it at him.
“Why’d he pick
you
out, that’s what I’d like to know. All the other guys there are in this bar, but he came right to you.”
“Look. You heard him, didn’t you? He said he made a mistake. Well, all right, what’re you bitching about? He made a mistake. He said so. So let it drop.”
“You’re awful anxious to let it drop.”
“I’m sick of hearing about it, that’s all.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll bet you are. Who’s this Carolyn? Huh? You tell me that.”
“I told you, I don’t know no Carolyn. I never saw the guy and I never saw his wife. Now will you shut up?”
“If you never saw his wife, why are you so anxious not to talk about her?”
They went on and on, but Al Guthrie didn’t hear any more after he heard the name Carolyn. His gut knotted up on him so suddenly he thought he was going to heave. Carolyn. There wasn’t any doubt about it, then Ben Forbes had tracked him to this part of town.
He looked wildly at the front door and then at the back.
Borchert got up and went away, with the dame leaning out of the booth and screaming, “Son of a bitch!” after him. The bartender went over to cool her down. Everybody was watching them. Al did not see any cops at either door. He seized the moment and followed Borchert out.
The street was empty, except for Borchert, who was lurching determinedly away. But Al felt trapped and panicky. God damn Forbes, he thought. How did he find me? It made him furious. It was like an insult, as though Ben Forbes was deliberately trying to show him who was smarter. He crossed the street, half running.
All his work, all his good set up shot. Forbes wouldn’t give up. He’d keep nosing and poking around until he heard something. Maybe he’d already heard something tonight. Maybe he’d get a brainstorm and go to the cops and set them after him.
Christ.
I gave him too much time, Al thought. If I’d of made it two days he wouldn’t have found me. Hasn’t he been working on Lorene at all?
The side street with the rows of houses had become menacing. Every dark porch was a place where Forbes, or cops, might lurk. They could get him this way. He’d been crazy to leave the house. As long as he had Carolyn Forbes right in his hand he could call the tune. But he was so damned sick of her and her puky white face and the way she looked at him that he had to get out once in a while. He looked over his shoulder, but no one was following him. When he reached the first corner he turned it and ducked into the long alley that ran parallel to the street behind the houses. He began to run, his feet thumping on the rutted dirt.
When he reached his own house he had to go round to the front because the garage was locked from the inside, and he went sweating and crouching, looking under every bush and into every shadow. There was nobody there. He unlocked the door and went into the dark room and shut the door behind him, bolting it. He snapped the light on, his eyes darting there and there, his ears stretched, listening. Then he ran upstairs and burst into the back bedroom.
She was just the way he had left her, her wrists and ankles tied to the four posts of the bed, the gag in her mouth. Her eyes flew wide open and her whole body cringed. He reached out and pulled the blanket off her and started to untie her left ankle.
“We’re gonna go,” he said. “We got to get out.”
She stared at him and whimpered, but he left the gag in. The quieter he kept her now the better. Then he remembered his own stuff in the front room. There wasn’t much, but he’d need it. Especially the gun. Food, too. And what whiskey and canned beer there was in the house. He left Carolyn and gathered up stuff, shoving it into grocery cartons and a couple of pillow slips. He got blankets, too. The old Italian would scream, but let him.
Al made three trips to the car, loaded, and every minute he was listening for someone to bang on the door and tell him to come out with his hands up.
Let them. He’d come out. He’d have Carolyn right in front of him and let them shoot if they wanted to.
He drank in deep gulps from a bottle on the kitchen table every time he passed it. When he was ready he put the bottle in his pocket and went upstairs again.
She was still staring with her big scared eyes. Let her be scared. She’d be worse scared before she was through. She looked like hell. Because of the way he had her tied out on the bed she looked as though she was all ready for him, but he wouldn’t have touched her if you paid him. She was dirty and lank and all she had left was those big eyes, watching him like he was something poisonous that crawled out of the woodwork.
He yanked the cords loose on her wrists and made her sit up. He tied her wrists again behind her and then loosed her feet. “Get up,” he said, and she got up. “Walk down the stairs,” he said, and she walked, and he went behind her turning off the lights.
In the dark downstairs he went and looked out the front windows, but there was nobody in sight. He took Carolyn by the arm and steered her through the kitchen to the back door. He opened it and stood peering and listening. The house next door was dark. The old man was gone to the mill and the old woman slept. He shoved Carolyn out onto the porch and down the steps.
She lunged ahead suddenly, wrenching out of his grasp, and went running away beside the house toward the street.
He caught her before she reached the front corner of the house. He knocked her down into a bed of dry rustling stalks that might have been flowers once, close up against the foundation. “You and your goddamned husband,” he said. “You and your goddamned husband.” He hit her and her body jerked back and forth under the blows. She rolled over on the narrow walk in front of him. He hauled her up to her feet, hitting her, shaking her. “I ought to beat your brains out,” he said, “and leave you here. He’s so goddamned anxious to find something.”
But he didn’t. He wasn’t quite ready yet. He forced her ahead of him to the garage and into the back of the car and she did not try again to get away. He thought she was about half conscious, the way she went limp when he tied her up like he had before. That was good. She wouldn’t make any trouble that way. He threw a blanket over her and then opened the garage doors. There was nobody in the alley when he drove away.
He didn’t know yet where he was going. But after he got out of South Flat he felt better. He headed for the edge of town and pretty soon he was out in the country on the unlighted roads that wound between little villages and past farms. He wandered for quite a while, driving slowly and thinking, now and then pausing to tilt the bottle to his mouth. There was something knocking at the back of his mind, something he wanted to remember.
When he finally did remember it he straightened up, finished the last drink in the bottle, and threw it out. The old sedan jumped like a rabbit. Al watched the dark November fields fly past him. He thought of the woman in the back seat and he thought of Ben Forbes and he smiled.
Hell, he thought, they can’t beat me. I’m unbeatable. I’m on top, all the way through.
Early in the morning Ernie MacGrath and Bill Drumm went into South Flat from the west side. Detectives Connor and Postapak went in from the east. They asked questions in some of the places Ben had gone into before them, and in others that had not been open at night, particularly the corner groceries on the side streets. Shortly after ten Ernie went into a little Italian market three blocks south of Trumbull Avenue and one block over from Chance’s Run. When he came out again he was pretty sure he had it.
He sent Bill Drumm to talk to a Mr. Frescatti who lived around the corner and who had recently rented a house to a big blond man who bought bread and canned goods at the corner store and got very nasty if he was asked friendly questions about his personal affairs.
Ernie himself took the car and drove slowly up the street.
From here he had an unobstructed view of the rear of the four-room house at the end of the next street over. The window blinds were all drawn down. The garage doors were wide open and the garage was empty. When he moved to a little different angle he could see that the back door of the house itself was wide open too, swinging idly in the wind.
Ernie’s mouth tightened. He turned the car around and went back to the corner.
In fifteen minutes Packer and Captain Stepanak joined Ernie and Bill Drumm. They had Ben Forbes with them. Ernie had been watching the back of the house. Connor and Postapak had been watching the front. There was no sign of life. The back door swung to and fro in the cold gentle wind.
Packer was looking tired and annoyed. “I don’t think we have to worry about Guthrie being inside,” he said. “We questioned the beat patrolmen, and the one who was on duty last night remembered seeing a man answering Guthrie’s description several times in the last couple of weeks. He saw him last night coming out of a bar on Trumbull Avenue at about the same time Forbes was there, or a little after. He remembered Forbes very well. Then about twelve-thirty he saw a green sedan like Guthrie’s come tearing out of this street and head east on Trumbull.”
Stepanak squinted at the house and the empty garage. “I guess we might as well go in.”
Ernie looked at Ben Forbes. He was in the back seat of the car and he did not make any move to get out. He shook his head and put his face between his hands.
They signaled to Connor and Postapak and went in. And all the way Ernie’s heart was beating high up in his throat and his stomach was one sick apprehensive knot. He was expecting a body.
He almost cried with relief when they did not find one. He stood in the doorway of the little room with the rumpled bed and the quilt nailed over the window and he cursed Ben Forbes out loud.
Packer sighed. “Forbes scared him off, all right. From the looks of things, he took Mrs. Forbes and left in a hell of a hurry.”
“Christ,” said Ernie, “Ben might as well have toured the neighborhood in a loudspeaker truck.”
“Yeah,” said Packer. “Well, it’s done. And at least Guthrie didn’t kill her.”
“Not here, anyway,” said Ernie, feeling furious and depressed.
Packer nodded toward the outside. “You’d better go tell him.”
Ernie went out and walked back to the car. He said to Ben, “It’s all right. He took her with him.”
Ben’s head fell forward and his shoulders sagged. Ernie thought he had fainted. But in a minute he said: “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
Ernie’s anger subsided. “Apparently he came into the bar right after you had the row with the fellow. He couldn’t have helped hearing about it.”
“Now what?” said Ben in a low voice to himself. “Oh, God, now what?”
Ernie did not know, and so he did not say anything.
In a little while Packer came back with Bill Drumm. Two uniformed officers had arrived to mount guard on the house for Captain Stepanak until the crime-lab technicians got through. Connor and Postapak would continue with routine questioning in the neighborhood. Bill Drumm took the car back downtown. Ernie rode with Packer and Ben Forbes.
On the way Packer said, “The FBI and the Sheriff’s Office should be notified.”
Ben, who had sat like a huddled statue in the back seat, straightened up. “Why?”
“Because Guthrie has probably taken your wife outside our jurisdiction.”
“No,” said Ben in a sharp toneless voice. “I don’t want anybody more called in. I’m not going to do anything more. Nothing at all. I’ve endangered her enough. I’m going to wait.”
“For what?”
“He’ll get in touch with me.”
Packer nodded. “That’s true. And probably pretty fast. He was supposed to contact you again tomorrow night, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think he’ll wait that long now.”
Ben said, “No. Everything’s upset now.”
“Well, I doubt if he’ll harm your wife until he’s talked to you again. If he’d been going to do that he’d have done it last night, when he was angry and scared, getting ready to run.”
Ben laughed. “How much would you like to bet on that?”
“I think it’s a reasonable assumption.”
“With a man like Guthrie how can you assume anything reasonable? He may be killing her now, this minute. He may have killed her last night along the road and thrown her body in a ditch. He may do anything.”
Ernie thought Ben was right but he didn’t say so. With a professional committing a crime in cold blood for the pure gain of money you could hazard a pretty good guess. With an amateur on an emotional kick you were lost. They did what they did and that was that.
Ben said, “And it’s my fault. I decided what to do and then I couldn’t do it.”