Girl Out Back - Charles Williams(4)

Cliffords was going to notice those twenties had
disappeared, but it couldn’t be helped. I knew a little about
that F.B.I, outfit and how it worked; they didn’t do
anything half-way. Right now this whole countryside was
alerted and they were poised and watching. Let just one
more of those bills stick its head out and the game was
over. There really wasn’t much Cliffords could do, anyway,
except to move the tens to a new hiding place, which was
all right with me. I wasn’t after them. And if he got worried
enough to go back and reassure himself about the real
cache, so much the better. So far I hadn’t come up with
any plan at all for finding that, but having him beat a path
to it would make it a lot easier.
I drove back to the lake. The same old futile merry-goround
started again in my mind, but I shut it off with
irritation. It was utterly impossible to explain how Cliffords
had got that money, but I no longer had to. I knew he had
Girl Out Back— 71

it. What else mattered? You didn’t deny the existence of
something just because you couldn’t account for it, did
you? You accepted Time, and invented clocks to measure
it, without the faintest idea what it was, and you went right
on living in spite of the fact that nobody had ever come
with an explanation for Life.
The sheer magnitude and the excitement of it began to
catch up with me now, for the first time. Up until a few
hours ago it had been an intriguing puzzle, an abstract sort
of thing whose fascination was inherent in the problem
itself rather than any concrete expectation of gain. You
didn’t really believe it; you couldn’t. In your heart what you
actually believed was that the separate scraps of evidence
added up to an answer that was incompatible with the
whole, and you were interested in learning why. But now . .
.
It was money—tangible, real, concrete. A fortune. A
fantastic amount of money. There was no longer any doubt
he had it because I had seen the clinching argument—
those ten-dollar bills. The twenties could have been merely
thrown away by Haig because they were identifiable and
hot. But Cliffords had it all; he had it hidden somewhere in
something that was rusting. All I had to do was find it.
Nobody would ever know I’d got it. I had the intelligence
and the will-power to destroy any part of it that was even
conceivably identifiable and to refrain from making any
display of wealth too suddenly. I’d go to Florida and go into
the boat business in a small way, expanding gradually.
Boats I knew, liked, and understood; the business was
booming all over the country. I’d own a marina. . . . I
stopped.
That was what I owned now, wasn’t it?
Hah!
I swung off State 41, headed for the camp, my mind
furiously at work. The thing couldn’t take too long; at any
time Cliffords could go back and dig up some more of it,
and when he did there was a chance he’d wind up with
another bunch that could be identified. It was only a
miracle he’d got by with it this long. He was erratic, too
potty and unpredictable to be trusted with a thing like this.
One slip would blow it up. He might talk, start bragging, or
Girl Out Back— 72
begin playing the girlie circuit in the sawmill towns around
here. He was only forty-six, and with unlimited funds at his
disposal he might decide to ditch the comic books for
grown-up toys, just had to beat him to it, by finding it.
Sure, that was all. But how?
* * *
It was four in the afternoon. I stood in dense timber a half
mile behind his cabin and wearily fit a cigarette. Since
seven this morning I’d been back here, searching, walking,
crisscrossing, studying the terrain, and gradually having it
brought home to me just what I was up against. Sweat
drenched my clothes; the air was stifling, and all about me
was the silence of the big woods. I sat down on a log and
took the folded map from my pocket. It was roughly two
miles this way; call it ten to twelve north and south. And
that was only on this side of the first arm of the lake. Add
in the country on the other side and the trackless maze of
islands and swamp cut by the twisting channels of the
waterways, and what did you have? At least fifty square
miles of wilderness. It could be anywhere; he didn’t have to
hide it under his pillow. And just how sure could you be
that he hadn’t sunk it in a watertight container in the lake
itself, somewhere in those God-only-knew how many
thousands of acres of isolated inlets and sloughs and
weedbeds?
Well, one way to locate it was to keep watch on him until
he went to it himself; he would sooner or later. So? Just
move out here? It could be weeks, or months. I was
married; I was supposed to be running a business. If I
could get out here once a week without arousing suspicion
I’d be lucky.
There was always the third method, of course, but I
shrugged it off impatiently. You could either do that sort of
thing, or you couldn’t, and there was no point in
considering something you wouldn’t have the guts to carry
out. I wasn’t trying to take a bow; there was no moral issue
involved. It was merely an appraisal. You had to be sick in
the head so you enjoyed it, or you had to be completely
without imagination, or fanatic. I failed on all three counts.
Girl Out Back— 73
So there was nothing to do but go on looking. I did. A
little before sunset I gave it up for the present and went
back to where I’d hidden the boat. Nunn was on the float
when I got to camp.
“Well, where’s all the fish?” he asked.
“Still up there,” I said. I unclamped the motor.
“Didn’t you get nothing at all?”
“A few,” I said indifferently. ”Was I supposed to kill
them?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he replied. “I’m not a big-time sport.”
“Well, cheer up,” I said. “It takes all kinds.” I was getting
little sick of him.
I packed my gear in the station wagon and settled with
him for the cabin and boat. There was no pressing
invitation to hurry back and sample his overflowing
hospitality again, which was fine because when I did come
back it would be in through that road to the upper lake and
I wouldn’t be bringing a brass band. I didn’t see her until I
was turning the station wagon to leave. She was standing
behind the screen door looking out. I thought I saw her
hand move, as if she had waved good-bye. I waved, and
went on.
It was dark before I got out of the bottom. I went back
the same way I’d come, northward on State 41. When I
slowed for the S-bend I saw the white crosses again in my
headlights and tried once more to put a finger on the thing
that kept nagging me about the place. Wasn’t it something
about the last accident? I knew the people involved—or
rather Barbara Renfrew did. That was it. They were friends
of her grandfather’s, a couple around sixty years of age
who’d lived on a farm just north of Wardlow. Their car had
gone off the road one night in a heavy rain and they were
killed instantly when it crashed into the trees out there.
Barbara had taken time off to go to the funeral, but that
wasn’t all of it. It was something she’d said. I frowned,
trying to remember. Wait. . . . Something about the wreck
itself. She said she couldn’t understand what they were
doing on this road because it was out of their way. They
were returning from Sanport.
Girl Out Back— 74
So? But just when? I couldn’t remember, except that it
was winter before last. It could have been in February. I
whistled softly.
I arrived in Wardlow at eight thirty. When I pulled into
the drive I saw lights were on in the living-room and
upstairs, so she was home. Let’s see, where had we left
off? I’d counterattacked along the left and my flank was
holding, but there was no telling what she was moving up,
or where. A great fighting animal, the female, I thought—
tenacious and tricky as hell.
I carried the stuff in through the living-room. We
apparently didn’t have any company. That was nice; noncombatants
and refugees were always a hazard. It took two
trips. I was down in the den drying the fly-rod before
putting it away when I heard her footsteps on the
basement stairs. She appeared in the doorway. Over her
nightgown she was wearing a robe of peach-colored mist,
and she looked like the Sultan’s favorite on the way in. She
gave me a tentative smile.
“Did you catch any fish, Barney?”
“A few,” I said. “You look nice. I like that austere touch;
reminds me of John Calvin.”
She grinned. She had a hell of a grin when she
unsnapped the leash and turned it loose. “I was lying in
bed reading when I heard you come in.”
Likely story, I thought. The calculated swirl of that
platinum mop hadn’t been near a pillow. “Books,” I
sneered. “You egg-heads are all alike.”
Her face softened reflectively. “I’m sorry about the fight.
I missed you, Barney.”
I put down the rod. “I missed you, too.” Then it occurred
to me, strangely enough, that I wasn’t even lying. I had
missed her.
I moved, and she moved, and my arms had that ache in
them as I tightened them around her. The big, vital, blonde
face was under mine, tilted back, surrendering and
demanding at the same time, and I was kissing her too
roughly. A little more suave in the salve, Godwin, I
thought; you could make chairman of the board. Then I
wondered why I never seemed to make sense any more,
Girl Out Back— 75
even to myself; I’d married her because she had money and
I’d done nothing but bitch about it since. I was a melonhead.
I put my right arm down behind her knees and picked
her up. She was a lot of woman, but the way I felt at the
moment I could have carried her up six flights of stairs and
through the roof like a berserk elevator. The eyelids parted
just slightly and she regarded me roguishly from under the
lashes.
“Do you think you’d better? It’s a long way up there.”
To the kitchen?” I said. “I thought we’d scramble some
eggs.”
She murmured a naughty word from behind the Mona
Lisa smile and gently swung her feet. A slipper fell off. It
was among the more unnoticed events of the year.
I was going through the living-room when I felt her begin
to go rigid in my arms. “You don’t have to show off your
strength,” she said. “I know you’re younger.”
Jesus, not now, I thought. “Shucks, ma”am,” I said. “It
ain’t hardly nothin’ at all. Little ol’ triflin’ armful like you.”
“Don’t overdo it,” she said. “You’ll scare me. I’ll take
your word there were no girls out there.”
I gave it the old fourth-quarter try. “Stop fighting me,
you alabaster houri. I’ve got my arms full.” I kissed her,
but it was all nothing now. She’d retreated into the cave to
paw over her wrongs, whatever they were. Well, she’d
certainly picked a strategic time for it. I went on up the
stairs, feeling savage about it, and dropped her on the bed.
She could go to hell.
“Well?” she asked sweetly.
“Well, what?”
“This is the old professional? Where’s the technique?”
“I lost my way,” I said. “We should have gone out and
climbed on the back fence.”
“You would feel more at home there, wouldn’t you?”
”Is there anything else?” I asked.
“What?”
“It’s Thursday,” I said. “The help’s night out.”
Girl Out Back— 76
She clenched her hands down by her thighs and looked
up at the ceiling. “Go away,” she said in a thin, quiet voice.
“For the love of sweet Jesus Christ, go away. Go away, go
away.”
I went away. I drove over to the store, let myself in, and
savagely attacked the accumulated paper work. There was
usually some release and satisfaction in that, because I
liked the place. I’d built it up to what it was. The first time
I’d ever seen it, one afternoon a little over two years ago
when I’d dropped in for some item of tackle I needed on a
fishing trip, I had recognized its potentialities and it had
interested me. She’d come in about that time to say
something to the inept and lethargic old gaffer who was
running it for her, and she had interested me even more.
Well-to-do widows with sex appeal are rare enough to be
collector’s items in this vale of tears, and here was a real
jewel. I gave her a good sales talk about what I could do
with the place, quit the public relations outfit I was
working for in Sanport at the moment, and moved in. Both
phases of the project were wide open for an operator with
any talent at all; inside of sixty days the business was in
the black and I was in her bed. Four months later we were
married. Not that she was particularly a patsy; but we did
hit it off well in the hay, and she was in the market for a
romantic and suggestively tragic figure who never talked
much about his past. It’s stock, but easy.
It was ten p.m. when I ground out the last of the letters
and finished checking the receipts and making up the bank
deposit. I slammed the door of the safe and stood for a
moment looking around the dim interior of the showroom.
Mrs. Jessica Roberts McCarran Godwin, I give it to you.
Cherish it, and guard it well in that old classic repository of
the fervent resignation and the disenchanted farewell.
From now on I’m just going through the motions here
while I look after Godwin’s future. And no motions at all at
home. Put it away, dear Mrs. Godwin; you had your little
revenge and I’ll admit it was a nice piece of strategy, but it
works only once in this league.
The drug store was still open. The copy of that digest
magazine Cliffords had in his trunk was the current issue,
and I found it on the stand. I drank a coke while I read the
article about Haig. It could be, I reflected thoughtfully; it
Girl Out Back— 77
was a million-to-one shot, but it was probably the only
thing they’d never thought of. I got in the station wagon
and drove out to the cemetery just north of town. The night
was dark and there were no houses within a half-mile; I
had it all to myself. I took a flashlight from the car and
went through the gate.
Grayson? No-o. Greggson. . . . That was it. It took about
ten minutes to find the double headstone. I splashed the
light against it and felt a surge of excitement as I read the
date.
I could quit worrying about that part of it. I knew now
how Cliffords had got that money.
* * *
I left the house before she got up, and had some breakfast
in town. Otis was parking his car at the side of the store
when I arrived.
“How was the fishing, boss,” he asked.
“Poor,” I said. I opened the front door and we went in.
“Those jokers probably got their bass somewhere else.
Never believe a fisherman.”
“Who does?” he said. He leaned against the showcase
and lit a cigarette. “Say, where’d you stay up there?”
Dan Cahoon’s fishing camp was the obvious answer,
since it was the only good one, but that warning bell went
off in my mind just in time. “Oh,” I said. “Some little place
on the west side. Why?”
“Man came in yesterday and made us an offer on those
two reconditioned fifteen-horse jobs. Said he’d take both of
‘em if we’d cut the price fifty dollars. I tried to get hold of
you at Cahoon’s, but they said you wasn’t there.”
That was too close for comfort. “I started there, but
decided to try a new one. In this business, the more camp
operators you know, the better.”
Careful. Don’t explain too much. Never, never do that.
“Did he say he’d be back?” I went on.
Otis nodded. “Today or tomorrow. And, by the way, that
F.B.I, man—what’s his name? Ramsey. . .?”
Girl Out Back— 78
“I think it was Ramsey,” I said casually. I reached inside
the showcase and straightened a display card of brass
spinners. For Christ’s sake, what about him? “Something
like that. Why?”
“Oh, he was in again, looking for you.”
“He was?” I asked. That was all I could manage.
“Yeah. You know, boss, that must be something really hot
they’re working on.”
Don’t mind me, Otis; don’t let me hurry you. I love these
rambling dissertations. What do you think of T. S. Eliot?
“You say he wanted to see me?”
“Yeah. He just wondered if you ever remembered who
gave you that new bill.”
“No,” I said, breathing again. “It throws me.”
He leaned his elbows on the case and frowned at the
cigarette in his hand. “You know, I was just thinking. I
mean, about that twenty. You remember those two motors
we fixed for Nunn . . .?”
I was beginning to feel limp. Torquemada lost a good
man when Otis blundered into the wrong century. “What
about them?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Probably nothing. But he must have
picked ’em about Saturday, because I noticed Monday they
was gone. The bill would have been over twenty dollars,
and he’s got a pretty sad reputation for being mixed up in
anything crooked that’s going on. It’s just a shot in the
dark. . . .”
And Ramsey was here pumping him. I lit a cigarette for
myself.
“. . . I didn’t think of it till after the F.B.I, man had left,
but you might mention it when he comes back. I think
they’re still around here, a couple of ‘em. They’re making
every place in town.”
Is this the last trip, Otis? You’re sure you don’t want to
feed me through the rollers again? I frowned thoughtfully
at my own cigarette, since that seemed to be what they
were doing now, and said, “No. Wait. I think she came
after those motors. His wife, I mean. Early Monday
morning, before you got here. Seems to me she gave me a
check.”
Girl Out Back— 79
Was that too risky? It would be if it got as far as Ramsey,
but not if I stopped Otis here and now. “Yeah,” I went on.
“I’m pretty sure of it. Signed her own name to it. Her first
name, I mean. Janice? Jeanette? No. Jewel. That was it.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “Well, it was just a thought. Guess
it’s about time to check in at the salt mine. You got your
whip and the leg-irons?”
You’re not really going to get off my back and go to work,
you cadaverous ray of sunshine? “Strength, comrade,” I
said. “Soon comes the day.”
The morning passed in a blur. I waited on people
automatically, going through the motions like a machine
while my thoughts raced along an endless treadmill. The
F.B.I, must be swarming in on this place like an air attack;
it was just a miracle I’d got those twenties shut off in time.
But maybe I hadn’t; there was still one more floating
around somewhere. One could do it.
How was I going to find it, something no larger than a
two-suiter bag in over fifty square miles of wilderness? It
was impossible. No. For over a hundred and sixty thousand
dollars, nothing was impossible. But it wouldn’t be that
much, I cautioned myself. Some of it would be in securities
I’d have to destroy; more would be like those twenties—too
risky to pass. But there still could be over a hundred
thousand of it. But where? Think of it—fifty square miles.
Thirty-two thousand acres of timber and underbrush and
swamp.
Otis went out to lunch. When he returned, I started out.
The phone rang before I could get in the car. I went back.
Otis had answered it and was holding out the receiver as I
came in the door. “For you, boss.”
“Thanks,” I said. He went back toward the shop.
“Mr. Godwin?” It was a woman’s voice. It was Jewel
Nunn.
I wondered if she had told Otis who she was.
Girl Out Back— 80
Eight
“Oh, hello,”” I said. “How are you?”
“I hated to bother you,” she said hesitantly. “But
yesterday when you left you forgot to pack one of your
shirts.”
“Well, thanks a million for calling,” I said. “Just throw it
in a corner somewhere, and the next time I come out I’ll
pick it up.”
“Oh, I’ve got it with me.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Hampstead, at the drug store. I had to come in to
buy some things, and I thought that since I’d be this near
to Wardlow I’d just bring the shirt along. I could leave it
here—or if you’ve got a few minutes to spare you could
meet me here and I’d give it to you.” She sounded faintly
embarrassed, as if she’d got involved in that rigamarole of
explanation and couldn’t find any way to turn it off.
Hampstead was fifteen miles south of town, where you
left the highway to go to Javier Lake. It was silly to drive
down there and back just for an old khaki shirt, but there
didn’t seem to be any graceful way out of it. Then it
occurred to me I might learn a little more about Cliffords if
I talked to her. I was going to need all the information I
could get.
Girl Out Back— 81
“Sure, I’ll be right there,” I said. “It’s awfully nice of you
to go to all this trouble.”
I called to Otis to take over, and hit the highway out of
town. Less than twenty minutes later I was in Hampstead.
It was a village with a population of less than a thousand,
in a tomato-growing community. The highway by-passed it
at a distance of about half a mile. There was a big packing
shed near the railroad tracks and beyond that a cluster of
buildings about a block long that comprised the business
district. It was quiet and half asleep in the white sunlight
of noon. I saw her old station wagon parked on the left in
front of the grocery, directly across the street from the
drugstore. I pulled into a space beyond the drugstore and
was just getting out when I saw him.
There were a few people on the sidewalks, mostly
farmers in khaki and overalls and a teen-age girl or two in
jeans, but this one was no tomato-grower. He’d just come
out of the hardware place at the corner on the other side of
the street and was lighting a cigarette while he studied the
other store fronts along that side. He was wearing a snapbrim
Panama and a gray suit and had a thin briefcase
under his arm. He could be a salesman, of course, but even
at a distance of half a block you could see that young, alert,
well-pressed neatness of the F.B.I, agent written all over
him. They must be taking this end of the country apart. I
hoped that bundle I’d put on the bus would start hitting the
Kansas City or Chicago banks in a few days; they were
making me nervous.
I pushed open the screen door of the drugstore and went
in. A couple of old-fashioned overhead fans moved
sluggishly, faintly stirring the air. At the left two teen-age
boys with gooey concoctions before them slouched on
stools and sprawled against the soda fountain like melting
wax figures. There was a counter and a prescription
department at the rear, and three booths on the right,
behind the magazine stands. Most of the floor space in the
center was taken up with racks holding cosmetics and
candy and other assorted merchandise. She was in one of
the booths, watching the door. Her eyes lit up and she gave
me a faintly embarrassed smile.
I walked over. “You look very nice,” I said, smiling down
at her. She had on a crisp summery dress with very short
Girl Out Back— 82
sleeves and a lacy spray of white at the throat, and this
time she’d done a better job with the lipstick. A narrow
blue ribbon passed under the cascade of tawny hair and
was tied with a little bow at the top of her head. It made
her appear younger, not more than twenty at most. “The
shirt is in that paper bag,” she said awkwardly. It was on
the table before her, with a couple of other small parcels
and a half-finished lemonade.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked. “After all, I do want
to thank you.”
“Oh, of course,” she said. “I mean—please sit down. But
I’ll have to run in just a minute.”
She was as transparent as glass, a basically nice kid
sticking her toe in the water and then drawing back in
alarm. It wasn’t me, particularly. It was the bleakness of
her life in general. Probably anybody who bathed as often
as once a week and didn’t scratch himself in public could
score with any one of the standard approaches if he’d
merely take the trouble to restore her faith in her own
desirability. She’d called me, and now by God it was up to
me; she wasn’t sure, either, just how much she wanted to
happen, but it would be nice just to be able to use some of
the old defense patterns again, if nothing else.
It was interesting, but I had other things on my mind.
And at any rate if I were looking around for somebody
else’s patio to play in, it probably wouldn’t be Nunn’s. The
silly bastard might blow your head off.
We engaged in the usual inane small talk for a few
minutes, and when she started gathering up her packages
and said she had to go I merely thanked her again for
bringing the shirt.
“I’ll go out to the car with you,” I said, helping her with
the parcels.
“Thank you,” she said. “But there’s one more thing I
want to get, if you don’t mind.”
I followed her as she prowled among the stands of
merchandise. In a moment she found what she was looking
for, a bottle of scented bath oil. Just as we turned to take it
back toward the clerk at the cash register in the rear, I
saw the man in the gray suit come in the door.
Girl Out Back— 83
He came back too and stood waiting at the counter
beside us while the woman clerk was winding up a
transaction with another customer off to our left. I was
standing between him and Jewel Nunn and perhaps a halfstep
behind them. He put down his briefcase. She set the
bath oil on the counter and started opening her purse.
At that moment the pharmacist came out of his
cubbyhole and said inquiringly, “Yes, sir?”
The man pulled out the little black folder I’d been sure
he had, flipped it open, and said, “I’m from the Federal
Bureau of Investigation . . .”
It unfolded then like some horrible and unstoppable
nightmare. I saw it before she even put it down, and
recognized it for what it was, but I was frozen. The clerk
was coming from the left. It lay there on the open counter,
not fifteen inches from the corner of his briefcase.
“I’d like to speak to the owner . . .” he was saying.
He hadn’t seen it. He was looking at the pharmacist. The
clerk was almost here. I snapped out of it then, at last.
“Here, here,” I said chidingly, grabbing up the bill at the
same time. “Put your money away. It’s the least I can do. . .
.”
I grabbed her purse and stuffed it inside and closed it.
He was still talking; he hadn’t even looked around. I felt
limp.
“Why, Mr. Godwin, I couldn’t. . .” she began.
“Don’t be silly,” I said, smiling at her. “I was just
wondering how I could thank you.” I tossed a five on the
counter for the clerk.
But what now? My thoughts were racing as I went on
exuding the old Good-time Charley from every pore. I
hadn’t solved anything yet; she still had it.
“But you didn’t have to do that,” she said uncertainly.
“Hush,” I said, smiling. “I’m doing this. Suppose you wait
outside and stop giving me so much trouble.”
“But why?”
“You’ll see.” I gave it the old masterful touch, taking her
by the elbow and pointing her toward the door. She went
on out, still not too sure about it.
Girl Out Back— 84
The clerk had finished wrapping the bath oil and was
getting my change. The F.B.I, man and the pharmacist had
gone into the back. I glanced swiftly around, searching for
something. It had to be small. Then I saw it in the
showcase. That would do nicely.
“I’ll take one of those small bottles of Escapade,” I said
to the clerk. “And gift-wrap it, please.”
I dropped it in my pocket and went out carrying the bath
oil and the paper bag that held my shirt. She was putting
her packages in the station wagon, across the street. I
went over and set the bath oil in the seat and held the door
open for her. She got in, and started to say something.
I shook my head at her and then looked down at my
hands on the door. “Listen,” I said quietly. “On your way
home, about two miles out of town, there’s a little road that
turns off to the right in the trees. . . .”
“No,” she said. “I—I couldn’t.”
I raised my eyes to hers then. “Please,” I said earnestly.
“I only want to talk to you. Just this once, and I’ll never ask
it of you again.”
She hesitated. She wanted to, but any time they did this
sort of thing in a soap opera it bitched up the works in a
frightful fashion.
“Don’t say anything now,” I said. Just think about it. I
think you’ll see there’s no harm in it. I did want very badly
just to talk to you for a few minutes. If you’re there, it’ll be
wonderful; if you’re not—well. . . .” I spread my hands in a
gesture of resignation and went back to the car. She drove
off.
I lit a cigarette and waited about five minutes. Taking out
my wallet, I checked to be sure I had a twenty. I had three.
Selecting the crispest and newest, I slid it in my trousers
pocket with the small bottle of perfume.
I drove back out of town and turned right on the road
toward Javier. She’d better be there; if she weren’t, I was
in a hell of a jam and had to think of something else, but
fast. The next time she took that twenty out of her purse,
anywhere within a hundred miles, the F.B.I, was going to
fall on her like a brick wall. Where’d it come from, anyway?
It was the last one, of course, but I’d checked then cash-
Girl Out Back— 85
box three times. Probably in her purse all the while, I
thought. That hadn’t occurred to me.
I came to the side road and swung into it. It was a pair of
sandy ruts leading off through heavy pine. I couldn’t be
sure, but there didn’t appear to be any fresh tire tracks in
them. I came around a bend where there was a small open
space in the shade of two large trees by a stream and when
I didn’t see the station wagon I knew I’d lost. She wouldn’t
have gone past here. Just to make certain, however, I got
out and examined the ruts. Nobody had been through here
for days. I cursed the perversity of all women. What was
the matter with her? Did she think I was Jack-the-Ripper?
Well, what now? Come up with something, pal, and
hurry. I stopped then, and turned. A car was coming down
the road behind me. I sighed wearily. Well, they always
had to dramatize everything.
She stopped and I walked over to the car. “I came back,”
she said. “I shouldn’t have. But just this once . . .”
I opened the door and slid in under the wheel; she moved
over to let me in. It was very quiet out through the trees. I
put my elbow on the back of the seat and turned a little,
facing her. She was staring through the windshield. I
reached out and put the tip of one finger under her chin
and turned her face, very slowly and gently, until it was
just under mine. For a minute I didn’t say anything; I
merely continued to look into her eyes, and then at the rest
of her face, and finally at her eyes again. She started to say
something.
I beat her to it. “I know,” I said quietly.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “We’re both married, and
we’ve got no right to. But I just had to tell you—just this
once and probably never again—how lovely you are. And
that I think you’re very, very nice.”
“You do?”
I smiled faintly. “What do you think?”
Then I went on, “It’s a strange thing, but a while ago
when that phone rang, I was thinking of you. You don’t
know what it was like, picking it up and hearing your
voice.”
Girl Out Back— 86
“I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this, she said. “But I was
hoping I’d see you again. That’s pretty awful, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said.
“But it is. And we can’t do it again.”
“Not ever?”
“No. You know that, Barney.”
I didn’t even know she knew my first name, or how she’d
learned it.
“It’s not much fun, is it?” I asked.
“And this isn’t helping things any.”
“I know. You’re right, of course. It’s crazy, any way you
look at it.”
“I’d better go,” she said dully.
“Right now?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Please. . . .”
“All right,” I said reluctantly. “But first I want to give you
something.”
“I don’t think you should.”
“Hush,” I said. “It doesn’t amount to anything. I’ll put it
in your purse, and you can just pretend you found it there,
if you want to. But maybe you’ll remember me when you
use it.”
The purse was lying in the seat on the other side of her. I
reached over and picked it up. “Close your eyes,” I said.
She closed them. I opened the purse. The twenty was still
loose in it, outside the billfold. I slipped it out quickly and
replaced it with the one from my pocket. I dropped in the
little gift-wrapped box containing the bottle of perfume,
closed the purse, and set it in her lap.
“Now?” she asked.
“Almost,” I said. I put my hands up on each side of her
face and kissed her very gently on the lips. “Now.”
She put her hands up over mine, pressing against them.
Her eyes opened. “I’ve got to go,” she whispered. “I’ve
got to, Barney, please . . .”
. . . all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell,” I
said, softly. Oh, knock it off you lousy ham, I thought.
Girl Out Back— 87
You’ve got the twenty? what do you want to do, make a
production of it?
“What is?” she asked.
“Parting,” I said.
“Is it a poem?”
“Yes,” I said. “Maybe it’s not the parting she had in mind,
but it can be rough enough.”
“Good-bye,” she said.
“All right.” I kissed her again, and this time she cracked
a little. She put her arms up about my neck and clung
tightly for just an instant before she began pushing me
away.
“You’d better get out now,” she said, and there was a
slight edge of raggedness to her voice. I wasn’t getting off
so lightly myself, after that deal last night, and I wondered
what the percentage was in beating my brains out this way
after I’d already accomplished the mission. Well, you had
to follow through and lend it a certain amount of
verisimilitude. I got out, a little awkwardly under the
circumstances, and closed the door.
“I won’t see you again?”
“Don’t ask me to,” she said. “I don’t think I can trust
you.”
“Did you want to?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything. She turned the station wagon
around and drove off without looking back.
When the sound of her car had died away, I took the
twenty-dollar bill from my pocket. It was exactly like the
other two, brand new, with that line of stain along the
edge. And it had been right there on the counter, almost
under his hand. I shuddered.
Flicking the lighter, I touched flame to one corner and
watched it burn. I ground the ash to powder in the rut and
pushed sand over it.
There may be more of you, boys, I thought; but don’t
count Godwin out altogether. He has a number of assorted
talents, and you can see he doesn’t care how he uses them.
* * *
Girl Out Back— 88
When I got back to the store, Ramsey was in the office. He
was as quiet and as courteous as ever, and the call was
merely a routine follow-up, but in a little while I began to
be afraid of him.
It did no good to remind myself that I’d committed no
crime except that of withholding information, and that that
wasn’t remotely susceptible to proof because nobody else
knew I even had the information. He scared me, anyway. It
was the questions.
Why? I wondered. What exactly is there about a trained
investigator that frightens you when somebody else asking
the same questions would merely be a nuisance or a bore?
It took me several minutes to isolate it, and when I did it
was absurd—at first glance. It’s simply that he’s listening
to the answers.
It’s no more than that. In this antic bedlam of two billion
people yakking all at the same time sixteen hours a day, a
man who listens to the answers to his own questions can
scare you. The tip-off is the complete, utter, absolute lack
of any response at all to anything you say. He doesn’t have
time to respond; he’s too busy listening. You say
something. It doesn’t merely rattle on his eardrums and
cause him to say Har, har, that’s a good one, or Say, that’s
too bad, or Well, I’ll be damned. He absorbs it. There’s no
other word for it. He closes himself around it with the
terrible silence and the impersonality of quicksand
engulfing an unwary animal, and when he does, it’s
irrevocable. There’s no use trying to tell him something
else six months later, because he knows what you said the
first time. And in the end, of course, if you’re guilty of
something, he kills you with simple mathematics. It’s easy
to make two answers jibe. Try ten thousand.
Then, I reflected, a tape-recorder should have the same
effect. No. Not necessarily, but the reason for that was
obvious. It was a matter of conditioning. In the twentieth
century we accepted the miraculous as commonplace in
the Machine, but we still expected Man to talk more than
he listened. When he didn’t, it was unnerving.
Well, I thought, shaking off the apprehension, I can still
beat them. Simply because there is no longer any link at all
Girl Out Back— 89
between the inner track, where I’m operating, and the
outer track where they are.
But a few minutes later when he stood up, gravely shook
hands, and said, “We appreciate your co-operation very
much, Mr. Godwin,” I wondered.
One of us was a sucker. Which one?
Girl Out Back— 90
Nine
I sweated it out all day Saturday, fighting my impatience,
and didn’t go back to the lake until Sunday. I had to be
very careful now; any unusual behavior could be
dangerous. Jessica watched me load the tackle in the car
late Saturday night, and we spoke to each other for the
first time in forty-eight hours.
“Do you really want to go fishing again?” she asked
tentatively.
“Oh, I don’t really fish,” I said. “I wreathe garlands in my
hair and chase nymphs through the woodland aisles. Great
for the waistline.”
She turned away.
“And if you catch one,” I added, “it beats a cold shower
all to hell.” The next time she married she might have
better luck in finding somebody she could tease and get
away with it.
I spent another night on my monastic rack in the den and
left before dawn, picking up some breakfast, a thermos of
coffee, and a sandwich at an all-night café on the way out
of town. It was still short of sunrise when I turned off State
41 on to that access road into the upper lake and wound
my way through the dim and lofty hush of the timber. It
was slow going, because the road was almost non-existent,
and in those two short miles the utter futility of it came
home to me with a finality no longer to be denied. This was
Girl Out Back— 91
farcical. If I lived to be two hundred, I’d never succeed in
locating it like this. You simply couldn’t grasp the
immensity of the place until you were out here trying to
visualize finding something the approximate size of a
suitcase not merely lost in it but deliberately hidden. It was
hopeless this way. He had to show me where it was.
Sure, I thought. That would be the day. He might not go
back to it for six months, and there was less than one
chance in a million he’d do it when I happened to be
around.
What, then? Just give up? Before I’d even tried? No,
there had to be a way to do it; eventually I’d come up with
it. I drove out of the ruts and hid the station wagon before I
arrived at the end of the road. On Sunday some fishermen
might come in here, and there could always be one who
might recognize it.
However, there were no cars at the camping area yet. I
cut off through the timber, paralleling the lake shore, and
before I reached the point I heard an outboard motor
sputter and start. It should be his, I thought. When I came
out to the water’s edge where I could see the long reach in
front of his cabin, a skiff with a solitary figure in it was
going around the bend at the upper end. I went on up and
sneaked a glance at the cove. His boat was gone, all right. I
watched the clearing for a moment, just to be sure, but I
had it all to myself.
I went around to the shed first. The two packages of tens
were still there in the cereal carton; he apparently hadn’t
even discovered the twenties were gone. I replaced them
and went into the cabin, looking aimlessly around and
goaded by the futility of it. It wasn’t here; I knew that, so
what did I expect to find? An idea, I thought. I had to have
some kind of plan. Nothing occurred to me. The place was
just as it had been the other time, with the same general
untidiness and sloppy housekeeping. There were more
dirty dishes, most of the plates showing a residue of syrup
in them. I remembered the three one-gallon cans of it I’d
looked in before, and decided he must eat syrup on
everything.
I went out, and around in back, stooping to peer under
the cabin. It was more than two feet off the ground, and I
Girl Out Back— 92
could see all the way through. There was no indication the
ground had ever been dug up. I was wasting time; why did
I persist in looking around here when it could be anywhere
in fifty square miles? Maybe that was the reason; the rest
of it was so hopeless I didn’t want to start.
I caught sight of something about fifty yards to the rear
of the cabin in the edge of the timber, and walked back to
it. It was his garbage dump, a small pile of empty tins and
broken jars, old magazines, and ashes from the stove. I
located a stick and began moving the litter enough to see
the ground beneath; if you were going to bury something
in the earth this would be a good way to camouflage it
afterward. But there was no evidence the ground had ever
been disturbed. I probed all around with the stick and
found it solid everywhere. I sighed wearily and began
pushing the cans and bottles back the way I had found
them. Then I stopped suddenly, staring at something on
the ground.
I bent and picked it up. It was a piece of fire-blackened
metal, small and vaguely cup-shaped. I recognized it
instantly. It was the corner reinforcement off a cheap
leather or fiber suitcase. I poked around with the stick
some more. Within a few minutes I had scraped up parts of
both the clasps, the lock, and one of the rings through
which the end of the handle had fitted. Here was the final
bit of proof, I thought—if I had needed any more. This was
probably what was left of Haig’s famous suitcase.
Then I shrugged and tossed the blackened bits of metal
back on the rubbish. This wasn’t accomplishing anything.
Sure, he’d burned the suitcase; but what he done with the
money? I went on back into the timber and began making
long sweeps through it with my eyes on the ground.
Around ten o”clock I heard his motor again as he
returned from fishing. Hardly knowing why, I came back
toward the clearing. Perhaps it was curiosity. Here was the
man who was the key to the whole thing, and I knew next
to nothing about him; I’d seen him twice from a distance,
and had spent one long and terrible minute staring at the
seat of his overalls. I cautiously circled the open space
until I could see the door in front of the cabin. Well
screened by underbrush, I lay down to watch. Smoke
issued from the stove-pipe, and in a short while he came
Girl Out Back— 93
out and sat down in the doorway with a cup of coffee. I still
couldn’t see his face clearly because he was almost as far
away as he had been those two times he’d passed me in his
boat, but I had an impression of a pudgy and ineffectual
little man made ridiculous by that gun-belt strapped about
his waist. He put down the coffee cup after a while and
walked out into the yard, moving with what he apparently
considered the deadly crouch of the Western gunman. His
hand shot down to the holster and came up with the .38,
the cold-eyed and implacable frontier marshal facing his
man in the street at sundown and beating him to the draw.
Take that, you varmint! He repeated this several times,
practicing the blazing wizardry with the Colt that had
made him the scourge of the bad ones. The poor barmy
little bastard, I thought.
He went back in the cabin, and when he emerged again
he was carrying a magazine. He sat down in the doorway
with his feet on the step, and began to read. It was
probably cooler there than inside. He held the magazine
very close to his face, not more than twelve inches away at
most, and I noticed he had on a pair of the glasses I had
seen while ransacking the place. Apparently his eyesight
was considerably below the minimum standard for eagleeyed
lawmen; judging from where he was holding the
magazine he wouldn’t be able to read it at all without those
cheaters.
Oh? I frowned reflectively; an idea was beginning to
nudge me.
Wait. Don’t go off half-cocked, I warned myself. Try to
remember. He hadn’t had them on either of the times I’d
seen him in his boat, nor just now while practicing his
draw. I was certain of the latter, and reasonably sure of the
former. Then he could and did get around without them,
when he wanted to. Probably they were solely for reading.
Could he read without them? I went on studying him,
watching the way he labored at it with his face right up
against the page and remembering the thickness of those
lenses. There wasn’t a chance. I felt a tingle of excitement
as all the parts of it began to fall into place. He’d take me
right to it, and then never tell anybody else that he had.
When he finally tired of reading and went inside, I
slipped backward and faded into the trees. Returning to
Girl Out Back— 94