The long ride, p.12
The Long Ride, page 12
“Maybe no place,” Harry Wells said in his flat voice. “The motels are filled. Maybe we ought to keep on going.”
Garwith switched around, looking at him. Then he turned to the front again. “If we’re in Salt Lake it’s time to take a break, isn’t it?” His voice was fuzzed with sleep, but mean-sounding.
“We can do just what anybody wants to do,” Mrs. Landry said. “I just want everybody to be happy.”
“I could use a break,” Garwith said sullenly.
“Well, Allan, maybe—” Cicely began.
“I mean, two days. We’re in Salt Lake? That’s not dragging our feet, is it?”
“It isn’t,” John said. “But I still don’t see any vacancies.”
“Maybe,” Cicely said, “we can just go on and then—”
“What are you talking about?” Garwith said. “You always said you wanted to see Salt Lake, didn’t you?”
“Well—” Cicely said. “It sounds interesting. I guess if—”
“There is so much to see!” Miss Kennicot said. “I, of course, read a good deal on it before we left Loma City. It’s the home of the Mormons, you know, right here at the foot of the Wasatch Range. It was founded in eighteen forty-seven by Brigham Young. The Temple and Tabernacle are right in the heart of the city. And it’s called the City of the Saints. Isn’t that poetic?”
“Well, I just don’t know what we should do,” Mrs. Landry said.
“But,” Miss Kennicot said, “I wouldn’t want to find some awful motel that was the last thing anybody wanted to rent, not even clean, I mean, and find out they’ve skyrocketed their rates just because they know they can take advantage of you at this time of morning. People can be so awful about that. Just take terrible advantage, because they know you’re stuck with it.”
“I have an idea,” Margaret Moore said. “It’s going to be daylight in a little while. When we leave Salt Lake we’ll cross the desert, and that’s going to be very hot when the sun comes up. If we want some rest before we go on, why don’t we wait until people start checking out of the motels—that ought to start in a couple of hours. Then we can check in, rest until this evening, and start driving when it’s cool again. If we left, say, at midnight, it’s going to be a lot more comfortable driving between here and Reno.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Allan Garwith said, “That’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard all year.”
“Yeah,” Harry Wells said quickly. “Let’s stop and get some coffee and wait it out.”
They had coffee and waited in an all-night restaurant, then returned to the car. Sunlight had finally begun washing over the city, revealing its broad, clean streets, the old but neat buildings; the sun crept over the mountains they’d left behind, clearing the last webs of darkness and soon the city was splashed in a bright, shimmering morning light.
John Benson started the search along the highway running through the city. At last they found a motel with neat stucco cabins. Three had just been vacated. These were taken by the Garwiths, Margaret Moore, and Miss Kennicot and Mrs. Landry together. The motel’s manager assured John that two more cabins would open up shortly, and he waited in the station wagon with Harry Wells.
Wells, John noticed, kept checking his watch, then staring at the door of the cabin taken by Allan and Cicely Garwith. He kept thinking: I would like to slam you right into death row, Wells, and watch you squirm while you wait for the same thing you gave that kid in that Loma City motel and that guard, but…
He said conversationally, “I hope they don’t take too long checking out. I can use some rest.”
“What?”
He met Wells’s eyes and tried to decide whether or not Wells had suspected him when Miss Kennicot had revealed his position near that post office in Cheyenne. Wells stared at him coldly, unemotionally, with no clue whatever. He didn’t know. But he was fairly certain that Wells was not suspicious about him. He was only concerned, John was certain, with that money.
“I said,” John repeated, “I hope we get into a cabin pretty quickly. I can use some sleep.”
“Yeah,” Wells nodded and resumed his silence, checking his watch, then staring at the Garwiths’ cabin.
At seven thirty-five two more cabins were vacated. Fifteen minutes later, when they had been cleaned, John and Harry Wells each stepped into a cabin.
Inside, John pulled the drapes of his front window almost shut, leaving a slight opening. Through this he looked at the other units. Margaret Moore’s was beside his own. The one shared by Mrs. Landry and Miss Kennicot was next to it. Across the small green-grassed court was Harry Wells’s and the one used by the Garwiths. He waited, watching.
A half hour later two people owning a car with Maine license plates checked out. He watched the manager roll a cart up to the door of the vacated cabin and disappear inside with fresh towels and sheets. Five minutes later he reappeared and rolled the cart into his own unit and disappeared again.
John lit a cigarette. His mouth was dry. He was beginning to feel a dull ache at the base of his skull. Finally, at ten minutes to nine, Harry Wells stepped out of his cabin.
He did so carefully, looking at the other cabins, staring at the Garwiths’ for several seconds. Then he moved away swiftly. He went around the corner of his cabin, away from the one used by the Garwiths. In a moment he was striding down the sidewalk, heading downtown.
Seconds later the Garwiths’ door opened. Allan Garwith came out quickly. He ran in a trot to the corner of Wells’s cabin, then stopped and looked after the retreating Wells. When Wells was far down the block, he moved off in the same direction, hurrying with brisk, nervous strides.
John opened the door of his own cabin and walked across the court to the public telephone booth beside the manager’s unit. He checked the number of the local FBI office in the telephone book and dialed it. A man named Sands came on: “Benson—yes. Glad to hear from you.”
“Wells and Garwith both just left on foot from where we’re staying, the Restwell Motel, and they’re going west on Norfolk Avenue. Have somebody pick them up and watch, only don’t, for God’s sake, let them know it.”
“Hold on.” There was a pause, then, “Okay. It’s done. We’ll have a man on them in seconds.”
“Good. Did that package show up here?”
“No. But we’ve got someone on both trains right now, checking. We may pick it up by Reno.”
“How about the post office here? Have you got it covered right now?”
“Can do, very quickly.”
“I would. And at least one man on this motel, all the time we’re here. I think Wells and Garwith will be back. I’ve got a hunch about what’s going on. I’ll check with you again in a few minutes.”
He returned to his cabin and waited. In ten minutes, neither Wells nor Garwith had returned. He walked back to the telephone booth and called Sands.
Sands said, “They showed up at the post office, just now.”
“That’s where I thought they were heading.”
“Wells walked up to the general delivery window at nine o’clock. He asked for a package addressed to Allan Garwith. When they told him there wasn’t one, Wells left. Three minutes later Garwith came in and asked if anyone had checked for a package in his name. They told him yes and described Wells. Then he took off.”
John nodded, brain turning, “I think that gives us the picture all right.”
“Garwith’s got the money. But he sent it somewhere else. Wells isn’t hooked up with him. He just wants to get the money. Now Garwith knows who Wells is and what he wants.”
“That ought to be about it.” John looked out of the booth and saw Wells coming down the street swiftly. “Thanks, Sands. Wells is coming back.”
He hung up and moved quickly back toward his cabin. As he did he thought he saw one of the drapes move behind the front window of Margaret Moore’s cabin. He went into his own unit, then looked out between the drapes. He wasn’t certain. But unless his senses had played tricks on him, that drape at Margaret Moore’s window most certainly had moved.
Wells then appeared and moved into his cabin. Minutes later, sneaking in from the back, Allan Garwith turned the corner of his cabin and hurried inside.
Then it was very silent.
CHAPTER
14
Allan Garwith sat in his cabin, smoking, staring with hard eyes at the gently sleeping Cicely. It was early evening. The air-conditioner, though it hummed steadily, seemed to do little good. The sweat kept streaming down Garwith’s forehead. He could see the beading on Cicely’s face. She was covered with a single white sheet to a point just above her breasts, nothing else. That morning he had tried to go back to sleep, after he’d returned from the post office when he’d absolutely proven who Harry Wells really was. That, of course, hadn’t worked. But Cicely had awakened neither when he’d left nor when he’d returned. He’d begun tossing in the bed angrily at noon and finally awakened her. She’d gotten up, put out the sandwiches for him, showered, and then asked, clad in her housecoat, if there was anything she could do for him.
“Yeah,” he’d said. “Take off the housecoat.”
When she got into bed again, he’d started thinking of Wells once more. He’d finally said, “To hell with it.” He hadn’t really started anything. She didn’t seem to mind very much. She’d said, “I’m just so tired, Allan. Maybe we’re just both tired.”
“Well, sleep,” he’d said bitterly.
Since then he’d stalked back and forth in the cabin, eaten a sandwich, and periodically gotten out the pills and looked at them. They had taken on an extreme significance since they’d come into this motel. He kept remembering the pleasant way he’d stopped caring when he’d taken them in Cheyenne, the beautiful way he’d slept all the way to Salt Lake. But now, having verified who Wells was, he knew that he could not afford going out on that stuff again. Yet, the temptation to return to that pleasant state of dreams, not caring about a damn thing, was heavy.
Now, as darkness began to settle over the city, he got out the two bottles and looked at them. His hand began to tremble as he did, and he suddenly got up, walked to the bathroom and flushed all the pills away. He stopped on the way out and yanked viciously at the handle of the hot-water tap of the sink. There was a faint drip there. He looked at the yellowish stain on the white porcelain where the drops had been striking. He wrenched the handle again. He waited. Another drop fell with a soft, barely detectable sound.
He went out of the bathroom, shut the door and sat down. He listened very intently. He could hear nothing for long moments. Then he was certain he could hear the faintest plop of water striking the porcelain. He sucked in his breath, trying to shut it out of his ears. He remembered how that dripping had gone on and on in that small dirty house outside New Orleans, after Charissa had attempted to see how much strength he’d gotten back. He turned that out of his mind and leaned his head back, closing his eyes.
But he still remembered the same sound, years ago…
He’d been twelve and they’d lived in that crummy Italian neighborhood, on Third Street, just off the river. Allan Garwith had been one of only a half dozen non-Italians in his grade school four blocks away. He’d tried to please, and worked hard to compete at the games. And he’d been accepted. Italians, he’d learned early, took their time accepting you; but when they had it was a lifelong acceptance. Still he had not liked that neighborhood. It was tough, dirty, and you never knew when something was going to go wrong.
But it was not really the neighborhood that was always going wrong. It was, he would later admit in moments of clear reasoning, his father, who had been a large blond man, half-Swede, half-English, with huge shoulders and large, muscular arms. The best thing he remembered about his father was a crooked front tooth that protruded slightly from an otherwise even line of large white teeth. Somehow, his father, with his short-clipped hair and athletic frame, had always seemed very handsomely young—except when he smiled. Then that crooked tooth gave him a mean look that had always frightened him, as though his father had lived an eternity and could even see right into his young-boy mind and discover any disloyalty and punish him for it.
His father was always punishing him for something. He drove a gravel truck for a city quarry. And when he came home, always with beer on his breath, he would, within an hour, find something for which to punish Allan. Allan could not even remember all the things that he’d found, but he did remember that one thing, that one particular evening when his father had come in, eyes glazed, wide mouth slack and mean-looking, that smile flickering on and off.
He’d come into the small, cramped apartment, knocking a chair over. And Allan Garwith’s mother, a large, dark, handsome Irishwoman, with a placid face and a plumply spacious figure, had appeared from the small kitchen, looking and saying nothing. Allan had been sitting on the maroon mohair sofa, playing with a gyroscope he’d gotten the day before. His father had said, “What do you think you’re doing?” Just that, and that was all, but it had been the way he’d said it.
His mother said, “Roy, don’t start on him. Now please don’t start on him.”
“I want to know,” his father said, teeth gleaming, “what he’s doing sitting there playing with toys like some damn infant when he ought to be learning how to fight.”
“What are you talking about, Roy?” his mother had said. “It’s good for him to play with that—it teaches him science. They told me that at the dime store when I bought it.”
Allan Garwith had looked at his father apprehensively, waiting for his mother to make it all right. When his father started this sort of thing, she had always made it right for him.
His father laughed nastily. “I talked to Frank Panzarri down at the Eagle Club about thirty minutes ago. Do you know what Frank Panzarri told me?”
“Why would it make any difference what Frank Panzarri told you at the Eagle Club? I’ve got dinner ready.”
“I’ll tell you what Frank Panzarri told me. He said they were teaching the kids boxing lessons down at the school today. And this little mother’s boy wouldn’t fight.”
Very quickly Allan Garwith again concentrated on his gyroscope. He looped a heavy string between his thumb and little finger, got the gyroscope spinning and then put it on the string. He had never concentrated on anything more carefully in his life.
“Why should they be teaching little boys to fight at school?” his mother asked. “Don’t they do enough of that in the streets anyway?”
“Not this mother’s boy,” his father said. His father smiled and stepped to him and knocked the gyroscope across the room. “Boy, you’re going to learn something now. Stand up.”
“Roy, you leave him alone, do you hear?”
“Get up, boy. Get up on your feet. You’re going to get your first real lesson. Right now.”
He stared at his father, blinking slowly. It was true that he’d refused to put on those oversized boxing gloves at gym class that afternoon, refused to box with Nick Panzarri. He’d been afraid to. But this was even worse. He could feel himself trembling very badly inside.
“Get up,” his father said.
“Roy, no!” his mother said.
His father reached out, grabbed his shirt and snapped him to his feet.
“Put up your hands, boy,” his father whispered. Allan Garwith watched the way that crooked tooth made his father’s smile look peculiar, so that he was even more frightened. “All right,” his father said, and slapped him hard across the cheek.
“Roy—!” his mother had called.
After that he remembered the slaps coming harder and harder, until, though he wasn’t seriously hurt, he’d fallen down. But he still had refused to bring his hands up. Then, because he knew his mother was struggling with his father, he ran. He ran like a mouse searching for an opening in a cat-prowled house. He finally found himself in the bathroom, listening to the struggling of his mother and father. He was shaking very badly. He squatted down, underneath the sink, trying to make himself very small.
He could hear the thump in the other room as his mother and father bumped into a wall. He heard the grunting, the sharp intake of breath, a crack of a hand against skin, a table tumbling over. He heard the footsteps, heavy and menacing, coming toward the bathroom. He squeezed himself even tighter beneath the sink. He saw his father’s work shoes appear, the heavy white socks, the khaki trousers. He was afraid to look any farther up, to see that look on his father’s face. Then he heard his mother coming, grabbing his father again. He held his breath and closed his eyes, listening to the struggling again as his mother pulled his father out of the bathroom.
Finally he heard a rapid swearing from his father, the slam of a door. For a few minutes it was absolutely silent. In those minutes he realized that a tap above him was leaking. Right above his head he could hear the faint plops of water striking the sink rhythmically as he huddled there shaking, waiting for his father to reappear.
At last his mother came in and pulled him to his feet. He put his arms tightly around her generous body. She had been forced to push him away, in order to examine him.
“You’re not hurt,” she said, her voice a flat, weary sound. She turned and left him. She went into the kitchen and sat down wearily at the small table. He followed her and looked at her for a while. Then he went back to the living room and picked up his gyroscope. It wouldn’t work any more. He went back and looked at his mother.
At last he opened the front door and peered out cautiously. He could not see his father on the two flights of steps that ran to the lower level of the. ancient apartment house. He ran down them swiftly. Outside he jumped to the sidewalk and ducked into a doorway and waited. He could not see his father anywhere.
He finally returned to the sidewalk, moving cautiously. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and swaggered a little, whistling, ready to run any second. He went down the street and around the block.
And that was when he found his father. He was down the alley, struggling with someone again. Allan Garwith was prepared to run again, but he was compelled to watch. When he realized that his father had not discovered him, he pressed himself close to the corner of an old building and stared down the alley in the yellow light of a street lamp.
