Hot Spot

  “You didn’t expect me to think then, did you?”

  She laughed. “How’s about another kiss, and to hell with the sermon.” She was a witch, all right. She leaned back against me with her head in my arms and her feet on the window, bare legs a faint gleam in the darkness.

  “Why’d you marry him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was just getting scared. I’d been married twice before and it didn’t work out, and I was trying to make a living out of a crumby little beauty shop and not getting any younger. I’d known him a long time. He used to come and see me when he was in Houston. It was a kind of a—arrangement, I guess you’d call it. And then, after his wife died—” She paused for a moment, and then went on irritably. “Oh, hell, I don’t know. He just kept after me about it till I gave in. How’d I know it was such a dump?”

  “Well, why do you stay?” I asked.

  “What’re you kicking about? You seem to be doing all right.” She was rugged; there was no doubt of that.

  “You think you’re going to get by with this forever?”

  “Who the hell cares about forever? Forever’s when you’re dead.”

  Yeah, I thought; forever’s when you’re dead all right, but you don’t have to rush it. She was as crazy as frozen dynamite. I wanted to ditch her, and I knew that as long as I was around this town I never could, unless she got mad enough to ditch me. I’d always come back. In the only field of activity she cared anything about, she was terrific.

  I didn’t see her for a couple of days, and then on Thursday night I was too busy to think about her. It was the cloudy night I’d been waiting for.

  7

  I WENT TO THE MOVIE and sat through a double feature without seeing it, feeling the tension beginning. When I came out at 11:30 it was still overcast, with thunder growling far off in the west. I got in the car and drove a long way down the highway, beyond the river, killing time which died too slowly. It was a little after one when I came back to town, the streets deserted now and the only lights the all-night café and a filling station on the other end of Main. I circled through back streets and stopped under some trees by a vacant lot a block away from the Taylor building.

  I cut the ignition and lights and sat there in the car for ten minutes. Nothing moved. The one-man police force would be drinking coffee and kidding the waitress under the fluorescent lights three blocks away. There was no use waiting any longer. This was as nearly perfect as it would ever be. I got out and opened the trunk. Everything I’d need was in the cardboard box except the flashlight I’d bought, and I dropped that in my pocket.

  A lone drop of rain splashed wetly in my face. It was so dark I could see only the faintly blacker loom of the trees against the sky. Then I could just made out the square shape of the building across the vacant lot. I was at the rear of it now. Suppose someone had discovered the unlocked window and fastened it again? Well, suppose they had? I couldn’t help it now. I came around the corner and felt for the sash.

  It slid upwards. Nobody had ever noticed it. I reached the box through and set it on the floor of the washroom, and then climbed in myself and pulled the window down. After feeling my way out of the little room I closed the door and sighed with relief. So far, so good, I thought.

  I went up the stairs. It was hard to breathe in the hot, dead air up here under the roof. My footsteps echoed through the building as I picked my way through disordered piles of rubbish.

  I set the box down against a wall and swept the light around. Anywhere would do. This was as good as any. I set the light in an old chair and opened the box, lifting out the pitch pine shavings I had whittled out that Sunday in the woods. Taking four kitchen matches out of the box, I bound them to the wire cross-arm as I had done before. Then I wound and set the clock, checking it against my watch, and wound the alarm. I set it for 12:30, and released the catch. I was sweating profusely now. The heat was almost unbearable.

  I put the clock back in the box and eased the sandpaper up against the match heads, checking for just the proper tension. Then I took a folded newspaper off a pile nearby and sliced it to shreds with my knife, dropping the strips into the box over and around the clock until it was full and overflowing, dribbling dozens of matches through it as I went. I added the pine shavings and slivers, building it up. There would be no smell of oil or kerosene here when they started investigating. Of course there would be the clock, or what would be left of it, but there were already at least three or four of them in all this junk so it would probably never be noticed. The solder would melt in the intense heat and the wire cross-arm would drop off, leaving it looking just like any other discarded alarm clock except that the bell was gone. I pushed the pile of newspapers against it on one side and set some chairs on the other, then tore up more papers to pile on top of the box.

  I wiped the sweat off my face and stood back to look at it in the narrow beam of the flashlight. It would do. Once those matches caught the whole rat’s nest would take off like gunpowder. Well, I thought, they like to go to fires. This’ll give ’em one to talk about.

  When I awoke the next morning it was a minute or so before I remembered. I began to tighten up then. When I looked at my watch I thought of that clock ticking away the seconds and the hands creeping slowly around and the fact that nothing could stop it now. It was eight o’clock, and the next four hours and a half were going to be rough. Once it was started and I got moving I should be able to shake the nervousness and keyed-up tension, but the waiting was going to be bad. I had to act naturally. I couldn’t be looking at my watch every three minutes. It started off all right. As soon as I had a cup of coffee and got over to the lot, Harshaw and I got in another beef about something. God knows that was routine and natural enough. I can’t even remember what this one was about. It never took much to start us off because we always reacted to each other like a couple of strange bears. And the funny part of it was that I had begun to have a sort of reluctant liking for him. He was as tough as boot-leather and he barked at everybody, but you were never in doubt as to how you stood with him. He told you. But the fact remained the more I had to admit he wasn’t a bad sort of joe, the more I’d go out of my way to start a row.

  “You know, Madox,” he said, leaning back in his chair and sticking a match to the cold cigar. “I can’t figure you out. You sell cars, but I’ll be a dirty pimp if I know how you do it.”

  He was right. I’d hit a lucky streak the past few days and unloaded several of his jalopies. “Well,” I said, “it’s sure as hell not the advertising. Why don’t you go ahead and build a fence around the place to keep people from finding out you’ve got cars in here? They keep sneaking in.”

  “So you sell three cars, and now you’re going to tell me how to run the place?”

  “I don’t care what you do with it,” I said, and walked out of the office. I had to relax. At this rate I’d blow my top before noon. A Negro boy came in and stood around with his hands in his pockets looking at the cars the way they always do. You get the impression they’re waiting for something, but you don’t know what—maybe for prices to come down or cotton to go up.

  Suppose I lost my head? I thought.

  I went over and gave him sales talk you’d use on an oil man looking for Cadillacs for three of his girl friends. Or at least I think it was all right. He seemed to like it. I didn’t hear a word I was saying.

  You can take care of everything except chance. Chance can kill you.

  “How much the down payment?” he asked. That was all they ever wanted to know. You could sell Fords for eight thousand dollars if you’d let them go for five dollars down.

  Somehow ten o’clock came and went. I walked over to the restaurant and had a cup of coffee. It was hard to sit still now, or stand still, or think straight about anything. At 11:45 Gulick went to get his lunch. Suppose he didn’t get back in time? Harshaw would leave anyway. It would look funny if I ran off and left the place completely unattended. I prowled around the lot, trying not to
look at my watch. At 12:20 he came back and Harshaw left. Then it was 12:25. I stood behind a car, looking at the watch, waiting. It was 12:30.

  And nothing happened. There was no noise, no siren, nothing. The streets were as quiet as any weekday noon. It was 12:35, 12:40. It hadn’t gone off. Somebody had found it. The whole thing had failed. And I couldn’t try it again, if somebody had found that one. Was I glad, now that the pressure was off? I didn’t know.

  Then it came. The siren tore its way up through the noonday hush, growing louder and higher, screaming. The firehouse was only two blocks away, and in a minute or so the fire engine came lumbering past the lot, headed down Main, with the cars beginning to fall in behind it. Gulick and I ran to the sidewalk, both of us looking wildly around for the smoke.

  “It’s down there, in front of the bank somewhere!” he said, pointing. People afoot were running now, and cars were beginning to jam up down at the other end of the street.

  “Stick around, and I’ll go take a look,” I said. Before he could answer I jumped in the car and shot out into the street. Most of the traffic and the people afoot were at least a block ahead of me. People were pouring out of stores and the restaurant, yelling at each other and running. And in the midst of all the uproar I discovered I was cold as ice and clear-headed, without any panic at all. A block before I got to the bank I turned left and pulled the car to the kerb near the mouth of the alley in the side street. Two or three other cars were parked along here, so it didn’t look conspicuous. Two people went past, running, not even seeing me.

  The side street was empty now. A few people still ran by on Main, but they looked straight ahead, their eyes on the smoke. I reached into the back seat. The blanket and piece of line were carefully folded up inside the coat to the seersucker suit I had put on this morning. I picked it all up, put the coat over my arm, and went down the alley, running fast. When I got to the end of it I slowed a little. A man came running past, but didn’t see me, and went on up past the side door of the bank. There was nobody else in sight except the stragglers going by on Main. I went up alongside the bank building to the side door, stopped, and looked in. This was where it had to be right.

  It was just the way I’d figured it. The only person in the place was the old man, and he was standing in the front door with his back to me, watching the black column of smoke boiling into the sky two blocks away. I eased inside the door, turned, and started back to the washroom, watching him with quick glances over my shoulder. The rubber-soled shoes I had on made no sound at all, and he was intent on the uproar down the street.

  I made it, and slipped inside the little room, praying the door didn’t squeak. I pushed it carefully until it was nearly closed, and I was out of sight. I took a deep breath. There was a half partition, presumably with a toilet behind it, and on this side were the usual wash-basin and mirror. The mirror didn’t face the door. I’d already checked on that.

  I put the plug in the wash-basin and turned on the water, then stepped back against the wall where I would be behind the door as he pushed it open. I hung the coat on a hook, held the blanket in my hands, and waited, hardly breathing now. It was deathly quiet. The basin filled, then started spilling over on to the floor. Suppose he was hard of hearing and didn’t notice it? I cursed myself. I was doing too much supposing. A minute dragged by, and then another. Water was beginning to run out into the bank now. I turned my head and looked out the crack at the back of the door. I could see the front of the bank, only a narrow strip between here and there. He was nowhere in sight.

  Then suddenly I heard the faint scuff of a shoe, just outside. He had already passed the area I was watching, was almost to the door. I wheeled around just as he stepped inside the washroom, pushing the door back towards me. He was clear of it and starting to bend over the wash-basin to turn the water off.

  I hit the door with my elbow and slammed it shut at the same time I threw the blanket over him. He straightened, tried to turn, and screamed. There was no chance he had seen me. He fought the blanket wildly, trying to get his arms up. I pulled them down, took two turns around him with the line, and tied it off, then pulled his feet from under him and set him on the floor and threw two half-hitches around his ankles. He was still yelling, the sound muffled inside the blanket.

  I had the knife out. I pulled the blanket away from his lower face and quickly cut a hole in it around his mouth. Grabbing a paper towel out of the container on the wall, I rolled it into a right ball and the next time he opened his mouth to scream I shoved it inside, hard, and plastered a strip of adhesive tape across it. I straightened, and wiped the sweat off my face. It had taken a month.

  He could breathe all right, but he couldn’t yell. It was a lot of trouble, but if I’d tried slugging him I might have killed him. He was too old.

  I opened the door a crack and peered out. It was clear. No one was in sight anywhere. I grabbed the coat and stepped out and closed the door. I was in plain sight of the street now. It was like being naked in a dream. I made it to the gate in the railing, and then I was in the vault.

  Maybe I’d expected it to be full of currency stacked everywhere on the floor like cordwood. It threw me for a second. I didn’t see anything except ledgers, papers, filing cabinets, and drawers. I started yanking the drawers open. Some of them were locked. I got one open at last that was full of currency in bundles, fastened with paper bands. I didn’t look at the denominations. Time was running; I could feel it going past me like the tide. I jerked the undershirt out of my coat pocket; it had been tied off with a cord to form a bag, and I started cramming in the bundles.

  I came out of the vault and ran up in back of the tellers’ cages, bent over and hidden from the street by the ground glass screen and the counter. In another thirty seconds I’d be out of here. It was beginning to get me now. I cleaned out the first one, and moved to the other. It was just a few seconds now. Then I stopped dead still and listened, feeling the pulse jump in my throat. There was somebody on the sidewalk outside.

  I dropped, squatting below the counter, trying to listen above the roaring of blood in my ears. The footsteps were going on past. Would whoever it was look inside and wonder why no one was in sight? Then I froze. I could feel the icy wind blowing right up my spine. The shuffling footsteps hadn’t gone past. They had come in. Somebody was inside the bank, right on the other side of the counter.

  I tried to stop the sound of my breathing. And then, in an agonizing flashback of memory, I thought of the thing I had done that day when I hadn’t seen anybody here. I had looked down inside the cages.

  He hadn’t said anything. Why didn’t something happen? I fought desperately to hold myself still, not give way to the awful compulsion to break and run for it. Then he moved again. And now I began to get it. There was another sound beside the scrape of his shoes. It was the tap, tap, tap of a cane.

  “Mister Julian? You theah, Mr. Julian? Wheahbouts the fiah?”

  I could feel myself weaken all over and the sigh coming up out of my lungs like a balloon collapsing. I throttled it and tried to hold my breath as I came slowly to my feet.

  It was awful. It could break your nerve. We were facing each other across the counter and I was looking right into the dark glasses three feet in front of my eyes. I was robbing a bank with a witness standing there so near he could reach out and touch me, a witness who could send me to the penitentiary for practically the rest of my life except for the fact that he was blind.

  “That you, Mister Julian?” he asked.

  How did he know somebody was here? Did he know it? I didn’t dare move. And I couldn’t speak. That was the way he identified people, by their voices. And I couldn’t stand there forever. He was reaching out an arm, groping for me. I leaned back, not moving my feet, and the fingers passed an inch away from my tie.

  “Ain’t like you, Mister Julian, makin’ fun of ol’ Mort.”

  I had to get out. I couldn’t stand it. I moved one foot back, picking it up and lowering it carefully
and utterly without sound, crepe rubber against tile. Then I moved the other one. I repeated it. I was out of the cage. I held the bag out from my legs so I wouldn’t brush against it. I was past the other cage now, in the railed-off area where the desk was.

  I looked at him, and that was when I began to go to pieces. It wasn’t human. He had moved. He had walked along the front of the counter and now he had stopped beside the railing, and he was tracking me. He couldn’t see me, and no pair of ears on earth could have detected any sound, but he was following me as unerringly as radar. I moved, and the gaunt black face and sightless eyes moved with me.

  “You got no business in heah!” he said.

  I ran.

  8

  THE STREET WAS CLEAR, AND there was no one in the alley. I got the trunk of the car open, threw in the bag, tossed the coat on the back seat, and made a U turn, throwing gravel, and shot across Main Street. This way I’d come in behind the Taylor building. They’d have the other street blocked by now, and I had to get into the thick of it without anyone’s seeing me drive up. I slammed ahead two blocks and turned left.

  Smoke was pouring into the sky. I hit a jam of abandoned cars, pulled over to the kerb, and got out. The crowds were all ahead of me in the street and beginning to push on to the vacant lots around the rear of the building. The fire engine was around in front, in the middle of the worse jam. I circled, keeping to the rear of the crowd. Nobody paid any attention to me. The whole second floor of the building was roaring now, throwing flames into the air. I shoved my way into the knot of people pressed around the fire engine. They had a hose run out, playing a stream on the roof on the other side, and now they were trying to get one on this side. Everybody was yelling and getting in the way. I saw the chance I was looking for and latched on to the hose, up near the nozzle, as they fought to get it strung out through the crowd.

  They gave us the pressure before we got set. The hose stiffened, bucked, and threw the man who was carrying the nozzle. The man next in line went for it, got his hands on it, but he was too light and it slapped him off. Two more lunged for it. I piled into them.