The Big Bite

  He gestured with the hand holding the cigarette. “So, scram.”

  “That’s your answer, is it?” I said, making it come up tough.

  “That’s our answer.”

  It was time for a little bluster. “All right, friend, I see you want to do it the hard way. Go ahead and stew about it for a while. Start wondering just where Purvis got his information. Purvis was a cop, and a good one, and he didn’t look in a crystal ball to find out she had a boy friend and that Cannon learned about it and that Cannon wasn’t that drunk when he drove me off the road. You want to know where he got this information? He got it the same way the police’ll get it when they start checking—by talking to people, a little bit here and a little bit there. Purvis did it alone; so go ahead and start wondering just how much a dozen men working on it can dig up.

  “Just simmer for a while. I’ll be around, and when you start making sense you can get in touch with me. I’m a bargain, but you’d better hurry and make up your minds before the price starts going up.”

  I picked up the letter and let myself out the front door. As I got in the car and pulled away from the curb I saw the drapes over the front window twitch just slightly. They were making sure I was gone. I went straight ahead for three blocks and then turned downhill. At the corner I turned right again and was on the parallel street behind the Cannon house. I pulled to the curb and stopped. It was 8:25.

  So far, so good, I thought. It had gone off about as I had expected. It had hit him hard at first, until he’d had time to recover and think a little. That friend-with-a-copy gag was so old it had whiskers, and he knew it, but there was just enough possibility I might be telling the truth to make him hold off and bluff while he stalled for time. When he finally convinced himself I was working alone he’d come out there to the cabin and blow my head off while I was asleep. I lit a cigarette and took a couple of puffs on it. Everything depended on the next few minutes.

  Suppose they had moved, gone into the bedroom or somewhere? Oh, hell, I thought; quit stewing about it. You set them up like Arruza putting a bull into position; there’s no reason they should move. I looked at my watch again. It was time.

  I pulled away from the curb and drove straight ahead until I hit the street going uphill past the side of the Cannon house. I turned and went up. When I swung around the next corner I saw Tallant’s convertible still parked at the curb. I cut the motor and eased to a stop. There was no movement at the front window drapes; they wouldn’t be expecting me now. I went silently up the walk, carefully turned the knob on the front door, pulled it open, and went in fast.

  I could hear Tallant’s voice sounding angry in the living-room. It chopped off abruptly, and I knew they had heard the front door open. As I came striding through the doorway from the entry hall they whirled and stared at me. He was lighting a cigarette by the coffee table and she was across by the rear window as if she had been staring out into the patio.

  Tallant recovered first. His face hardened and he took a step toward me. “We told you once, Harlan—”

  I took the .45 out of my pocket and pointed it at him, “Turn around,” I ordered. “Go to the other end of the room and sit down on that hearth.”

  He stopped, cautious but not too scared. You could almost read his thought. I couldn’t be very sure of my ground if I had to resort to throwing my weight around and trying to scare them with a gun. He turned and shot a glance at her. Get a load of this character, it seemed to say.

  “Move,” I snapped at him.

  “Knock it off, you silly bastard—”

  “Move!”

  He moved then. Maybe he thought I’d gone crazy and it would be a good thing to humor me. He backed across the room and sat down on the hearth, smiled wearily at her, and shrugged. I shot a quick glance at her myself. She had remained where she was, near the window. She was still outwardly cool and arrogant, but I thought I saw the beginnings of apprehension in her eyes. Maybe she was quicker than he was, and was already beginning to wonder if something hadn’t gone wrong with the script.

  I stepped forward, still holding the gun in my right hand. With the left I picked up the red-shaded lamp on the end table and dropped it On the sofa. Sliding the table out of the way, I pushed the end of the sofa away from the wall and reached behind it. They froze dead still now and stared as if hypnotized. I watched them as I lifted the recorder into view.

  She gasped, and I thought for a second she was going to fall. In the sudden, taut silence that followed, he began to get up slowly from the hearth with deadliness quite naked in his eyes. I had them. I had them, that is, if I got out of here alive with that tape.

  I pointed the gun at him. “Sit down,” I said.

  He stopped, just half erect; and hesitated. For a second it hung in the balance, ready to go either way. I hoped he didn’t have sense enough at the moment to realize I couldn’t shoot without ruining it all. A bullet through the leg would stop him without killing him, but anything that brought the police into it now would put me right up the creek with them.

  I had sense enough myself not to keep talking and making threats. I just held the gun and waited while the silence stretched out. He sat back down, very slowly, his face white and greasy with sweat. I sighed, but didn’t relax too much. The whole situation was still explosive, and it would take only one bad move to set it off.

  “Stand over there near him,” I told her.

  She moved like someone in a trance.

  “Just stay where you are, both of you, and nobody’ll get hurt,” I said. “What the hell, relax. It’s only money.”

  I set the recorder on the end table and flipped the controls to rewind. When I had most of the tape back on the spool I set it for playback and adjusted the gain. They stared while that tense silence fell over the room again.

  The first voice issuing from the loudspeaker was my own. “—wondering where Purvis got his information. Purvis was a cop—” I’d rolled it back a little too far, but it didn’t matter. I let it run.

  The voices came through fine. I did the threatening act, and then there was the sound of the front door opening and closing. A moment of silence followed. They would be watching out the front window to be sure I was gone.

  I waited, holding the gun ready. It was coming now.

  10

  There was tension in the room like an electric charge.

  The first voice to come out of the loudspeaker was Tallant’s:

  “He’s gone!”

  MRS. CANNON: “Dan! I’m scared! What are we going to do?”

  TALLANT: “Julia, for Christ’s sake, relax! There’s nothing to get excited about. He’s just bluffing—”

  MRS. CANNON: “I told you! I told you to go back and see if he was still unconscious under that other car. Why didn’t you listen—?”

  TALLANT: “Will you shut up for a minute? I tell you, he was out the whole time. He’s guessing, and making it up. He got the idea from Purvis. Purvis must have described you, and he realized it was you he saw out there on the road in the swamp—”

  MRS. CANNON: “And why in the name of God didn’t you make sure there was nobody else in the apartment before—?”

  TALLANT: “Listen! He has to be lying about that too. I tell you I looked. There wasn’t anybody in that kitchen.”

  MRS. CANNON: “What about those two bottles of beer?”

  TALLANT: “I didn’t see any bottles of beer.”

  MRS. CANNON: “Can’t you see, you fool, he has to be telling the truth? The police would know. And there hasn’t been anything about them in the paper. And where did he get that thing about the radio inspector, if he wasn’t there?”

  TALLANT: “All right! All right! Maybe he was there. But it’s just his word against mine—”

  MRS. CANNON: “Word! For the love of heaven, can’t you see that if the police even suspect for a minute you were there they’ll see the whole thing?”

  TALLANT: “Look, he won’t go to the police. How can he?”

 
MRS. CANNON: “Of course he’s not going to the police, because we’re going to pay him off. There’s no other way. If there’s even a hint that it wasn’t an accident, we haven’t a chance in the world.”

  TALLANT: “Are you crazy? Pay him off? Don’t you know any better than to give in to a blackmailer? Once you give him a nickel, he’ll bleed you for the rest of your life.”

  MRS. CANNON: “Maybe you have a better suggestion.”

  TALLANT: “You’re damn right I do.”

  MRS. CANNON: “No! We can’t!”

  TALLANT: “The hell we can’t. He’s asking for it, the same as Purvis.”

  MRS. CANNON: “But suppose he’s telling the truth about the other copy of that letter?”

  TALLANT: “He’s not. It’s an old dodge.””

  MRS. CANNON: “But Dan! We don’t know. We can’t take the chance.”

  TALLANT: “There’s no other way, I tell you! The thing to do is bluff him and stall for time until we’re sure. Then get rid of him. We’re in this too deep to be squeamish or turn chicken now. Jesus Christ, I wish we’d never been out there that day! If only— Oh, hell, there’s no use crying about it now. We’ve got to go ahead.”

  MRS. CANNON: “Purvis. And now this one. Will we ever be able to stop?”

  TALLANT: “We’ll never be safe as long as he’s alive. You know that.”

  MRS. CANNON: “Yes. You’re right. But we’ve got to be sure, first. I mean, that he’s the only one. And we’ve got to be careful. We can’t let anything go wrong this time.”

  TALLANT: “Don’t worry. If he’s stupid enough to think we’d fall for an old gag like that, he’s too stupid to worry us. Let him think we believe it.”

  MRS. CANNON: “But suppose he is telling the truth?”

  TALLANT: “He’s not! Good God, can’t you see that? Do you think a pig like Harlan would divide anything with anybody? He’s in it alone. He wouldn’t trust anybody else.”

  MRS. CANNON: “It’s so dangerous. If we guess wrong—”

  TALLANT: “Stop it! Stop it! Leave it to me. I can outguess a thug like that— Shhhhhh!”

  There was the sound of the front door opening and closing, and then Tallant’s voice saying, “We told you once, Harlan—”

  That was all of it.

  Brother, I thought, it’s enough. Once that was out of their reach I could write my own ticket.

  Tallant had started to get up. He stared at her, his eyes hard. “How did he get that in here? Don’t you even know what goes on in your own house?”

  “Sit down,” I said. “I planted it last night after she’d gone to bed. Now. Both of you stay right where you are. This is not going to cost you anything but money, and you’ve got plenty of that, so play it safe, and don’t take any chances.”

  “I’ll get you, Harlan,” he said.

  I nodded toward the machine. “I heard you the first time.”

  He remained crouched, estimating his chances.

  “Sit down,” I said again. He slowly settled back on the hearth.

  The room fell silent again. I flipped the machine onto rewind and put all the tape back on one spool. Lifting it off, I backed across to the opposite end of the room, near the doorway to the entrance hall. There was a big chair here, with a table beside it. I slid the table around a little so I could sit on the arm of the chair, facing them, with its surface in front of me. They were twenty-five feet away, at least. I put the gun down on the table, still watching them, and pulled the empty cardboard box from my pocket. Slipping the roll of tape inside it, I took out the wrapping paper and what was left of the ball of twine and made a shipping parcel of it. They continued to watch me like two big cats. I stuck on an address label, but left it blank. Finally I put on some stamps and shoved it into the breast pocket of my jacket alongside the other package containing the bass bugs. They were identical except for weight I stood up with the gun in my hand again. “Toss me your car keys,” I said to Tallant.

  He shook his head. “You’ll have to. Take ‘em away from me.”

  I wondered if he thought I was that stupid. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll just rip the ignition wiring out of your car.”

  He slowly drew the keys from his pocket and threw them across the room near my feet. I picked them up.

  I switched my gaze to her. “Where are yours?”

  She made no answer.

  “Come on,” I said. “A little co-operation.”

  “They’re in the dining-room. On the sideboard.”

  “Get ‘em,” I ordered.

  “Get them yourself, if you want them. They’re behind you.”

  I motioned with the gun like somebody in a western movie. “The keys, honey. You’re driving me to town.”

  Her face was white as chalk, but she defied me. “Do you think I’d go out of the house dressed this way?”

  Women, I thought. “Never mind the way you’re dressed. You won’t have to get out of the car. Is there a door from the kitchen into the garage?”

  She nodded.

  “All right. Lead the way.”

  She hesitated. I stared at her without saying anything. In a moment the defiance wilted and she came toward me. I stepped aside to let her go through the doorway. They ganged me then, but I had been expecting it and was ready.

  As she passed me she swayed slightly and then fell, as if she had fainted. She came over against me and tried to get her arms around my neck. I peeled her off with one arm and dropped her across the chair, turning at the same time to meet him. He had come too far and was moving too fast to stop or change direction by the time he saw I’d got rid of her. I sidestepped and gave him the stiff-arm with the flat side of the gun just above his ear. He plowed on into the table and chair and came to rest with the wreckage of the table settling down on top of him.

  She opened her eyes and began pushing herself out of the chair. “You ape—”

  “Sure, sure,” I said.

  “You’ve killed him!”

  “He’s all right,” I said. “Just take your feet out of his face and he’ll get up.”

  He climbed unsteadily to his knees with a trickle of blood running down the side of his neck, too groggy to stand yet. All the fight was gone out of both of them for the moment. I jerked my head for her to go ahead into the dining-room. She went through the doorway. “We’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said to Tallant. “Make yourself at home. Go ahead and call the police if you want me to be picked up with this roll of tape on me.”

  He put a hand up to the side of his head and stared at the blood on his fingers as he brought it away. “Someday,” he said softly.

  I said nothing. I went on into the dining-room and motioned for her to pick up the keys. She led the way. The kitchen door opened into a two-car garage. The stall next to the kitchen was vacant; a new Buick sedan stood in the other. I stepped out and stood where I could watch her and the doorway at the same time.

  “Open the garage door and get in the car,” I told her.

  She pressed a button on the wall and there was a whirring sound of an electric motor. The door behind the Buick came up. She got in behind the wheel. I crossed over and climbed into the rear seat.

  “Postoffice,” I said.

  There was no sign of Tallant. We backed out into the street. I put the gun on safety and shoved it into the right-hand pocket of my jacket, breathing softly in relief now that the pressure was off. We rolled down the hill, saying nothing. I looked at her face in the mirror. It was white and still, the brown eyes enormous but devoid of any expression at all, as if she were beyond caring.

  We were several blocks from the house now. “Pull to the curb for a minute,” I said.

  We stopped. I took out the box containing the bass bugs. It was much lighter than the other, so there was no chance of mixing them up. When I’d packed it I had put wadded paper inside so they wouldn’t rattle around. Taking out my pen, I printed George Gray’s address on the sticker. She could see what I was doing by glancing int
o the mirror, but she couldn’t see the address. I placed it upside down in my lap and recapped the pen.

  “All right,” I said.

  We went on. I leaned back in the seat and lit a cigarette. Traffic was fairly heavy this time of the morning. “There’s a drive-in box in front,” I said. “Just pull up at that and we won’t have to go inside.”

  We came into the square and across the west side, past the Cannon Motors showroom. I could see the new models shining beyond the glass. “Nice,” I said.

  She made no reply.

  We turned right at the next corner. When we got to the postoffice there was another car in front of the drive-in box and we had to wait a minute. I held the parcel so she couldn’t see the address. The other car pulled away and she moved up. She turned her head a little and watched without expression as I reached out and dropped it into the slot sticking out over the curb.

  “There it goes, honey,” I said. “You’ve had it.”

  She said nothing. We pulled away from the curb and went on. When we came up the hill and made the turn into the street before the house, I told her, “Pull back into the garage.” Tallant’s car was still standing at the curb. Apparently he hadn’t felt up to bridging the ignition switch and taking it on the lam. Or maybe he’d wanted to hear just what had become of the tape. It would be understandable, I thought.

  She closed the garage door and we went in through the kitchen. Tallant was on the sofa in the living-room holding a towel to the cut place over his ear. His face was savage as he looked up at us. I left the gun in my pocket and leaned against the doorway.

  “Tell him, honey,” I said.

  “He mailed it,” she said woodenly. She walked across to one of the big chairs by the coffee table, sat down, and reached wearily for a cigarette.

  “You see?” I asked.

  He stared and said nothing.

  I lit a cigarette and waved the match at them. “Anybody want me to draw him a picture? If not, let’s get on with the business.”

  He started to open his mouth, but was interrupted by the sound of the door chime. I motioned for them to remain where they were, and went to the front door. No one was there. When I came back she nodded coldly in the direction of the dining-room. I went through and opened the rear door, which opened on the patio. It was the colored girl. She was chewing gum.