He stepped back, took out a handkerchief, and wiped the
sweat from his face. He’d been under a strain too, in spite
of the calm way he looked outside. Suddenly he caught her
in his arms. “Julia—!”
She broke it up after the first wild clinch. “Please, Dan.
Not in front of this vermin.”
He turned his face and looked at me for an instant, his
eyes savage. They went out and closed the door. It was an
act out there at the cabin, I thought, but it wasn’t quite all
an act.
They didn’t come back; there was dead silence in the
house. They were probably in her bedroom. I thought about
it, trying to keep from getting panicky. It couldn’t happen,
not here in the quiet upper-middle-class residential district
The Big Bite — 147
of a small town where a dented fender in the Cadillac was a
big deal. Next door they’d be playing bridge; up the street
they were watching television or waiting for a daughter to
get home from a date. Murder? Here? That was a pipe
dream. Murder never happened in a place like this.
I was simply being erased. I’d tried to move in on them
without having a good look at them first, and now I was
lying here watching myself disappear like a ripple dying out
on a pond. Nobody would ever know it. Who’d miss me?
Who’d raise an alarm? The police would impound my car in
New Orleans, and after a long time they’d sell it for storage
charges. George Gray would mutter into his soft-boiled eggs
some morning that he couldn’t see why that sad bastard of a
Harlan couldn’t at least have mailed back the key to the
cabin. You wouldn’t expect the big moose to tell anybody
he’d changed his mind about the job, but, by God, he could
have sent back the key. The bank would keep sending
statements to my apartment in Oklahoma City until the
landlord closed it and sold my stuff for the rent. Three years
from now some sports writer covering the pro football
circuit would say to somebody in a bar that that guy out
there this afternoon reminded him a little of Harlan.
Wonder what ever happened to him; make mine a Martini
on-the rocks—
That was it. That was the thing that scared you till you felt
cold right down in the guts. They could get away with it so
easily. They’d done it before, and they’d do it again. One
traffic fatality, one unsolved and forgotten murder two
hundred miles away, and one disappearance nobody ever
even noticed, and not once did they slip up. Six months from
now there’d be a blurb in the local paper: Mrs. Julia Cannon
and Mr. Daniel R. Tallant were married today in a simple
ceremony at the bride’s lovely home on Cherrywood Drive.
Mrs. Cannon, widow of the late Howard L. Cannon, Wayles
automobile dealer, is prominent in social and civic
activities, being vice president of the Women’s Club and
one of the founders of the local Little Theatre group.
I lay there looking up at the ceiling and watching myself
disappear. Sweat collected on my forehead. The only way I
could get it off was by turning my head and rubbing my face
against the pillow.
The Big Bite — 148
Sometime just before dawn he came in again, unshackled
me, and let me go to the john. The gun was covering me
every second. They fastened me down again and left. It
grew light in the room. I knew he was gone for the day.
She’d probably turned in again. I could hear cars out in the
street once in a while, very faintly because with the airconditioning
turned on all the doors and windows were
closed. I lay staring at nothing trying not to think. After a
while I must have gone to sleep. It didn’t seem possible, but
the next thing I knew she was standing beside the bed
yanking the adhesive tape off my mouth.
She was wearing a cotton house dress and had a
handkerchief tied around her hair. A vacuum sweeper was
whirring behind her and she had the hose and one of the
brush attachments in her hand. She smiled, looking like any
very attractive housewife in the world. Maybe it’s
deliberate, I thought, trying to keep my stomach from
turning over. The whole thing was calculated, in an attempt
to break me down.
The tape gave way, bringing the handkerchief out of my
mouth. A power lawn mower was making a racket in the
patio and I realized that was the reason she felt it was safe
enough to remove the gag. There was hardly any chance I’d
be heard if I yelled my head off anyway, even without the
mower. There was nothing on the east side of the house but
a deserted street and some woods.
“Housework!” she said. She shrugged good-naturedly,
and reached out with the toe of one shoe to press down the
switch of the vacuum sweeper. It stopped whining. She sat
down in the armchair near the bed and took a cigarette
from a pocket of the dress.
I said nothing.
She lit the cigarette. “Do you want one?”
“Keep it,” I said.
“Very well, if you’re going to be surly. Oh, incidentally,
just in case you should manage to grab me with one of those
brutal looking hands, the keys to these handcuffs are in
another room.”
“Your luck’s going to run out on you some day,” I said.
The Big Bite — 149
She blew out some smoke and looked at it thoughtfully.
“It already has,” she replied quietly. “But I wouldn’t expect
you to see that.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“About one p.m.”
I thought about it. This was Thursday; if I hadn’t let them
booby-trap me I’d have been on my way out of Houston
right this minute with a fortune in my luggage and nothing
to worry about. And now I was lying here waiting for the
two of them to get around to murdering me.
It must have shown on my face. Her eyebrows raised.
“Really, where’s the treasured toughness?”
“Shut up,” I said.
She leaned back in the chair and studied me reflectively.
“You’re not really hard, you know. You’re merely insulated.
And you’re a fool, in spite of that bit of sleight of hand the
other day. You walked into this thing without even taking
the trouble to learn something about the people you were
going to try to blackmail. I wonder how long that veneer of
toughness would have lasted if you’d ever had the
intelligence to see, just once, how many ways there are in
this world you can be utterly destroyed by random little
sequences of events that look as harmless as marshmallows.
If I hadn’t stepped out of the shadows in front of your car on
a road down there in the swamp that evening five months
ago, neither of us would be here in this position., That’s
obvious, isn’t it? Dan Tallant’s car was down there too, and I
thought you were Dan. But that’s also obvious. Even you
saw it, so it must be, because you never see anything but
the obvious.”
“Why don’t you write it down?” I said. “Maybe somebody’ll
publish, it.”
She went on as if she hadn’t even heard me. “I don’t think
you even know what I’m talking about. I don’t mean you
alone. I mean all of us. We’re all destroyed, destroyed for
wanting too many things and not caring how we get them. If
you really want to preen yourself as a tough guy, Mr.
Harlan, you should wait and be tough after there’s no
longer any hope of winning. It’s easy till then. It’s also very
bad to have any intelligence along with it but, fortunately, I
think you have been spared that.”
The Big Bite — 150
“Turn it off,” I said. “You’re not even making sense. I
don’t read you at all.”
“Oh, I’m aware of that. Perhaps I just felt like talking. And
there is some satisfaction in the spectacle of the lordly Mr.
Harlan in the role of captive audience. Imagine your having
to listen to the inane babblings of a woman, and not only
that but to the babblings of a woman you don’t even have
any hope of bedding with—which is obviously the only thing
women are any good for.
“But to get back to the harmless little chains of events—
where should we begin? With a boy going fishing, and liking
it? Or a girl encountering cruelty for the first time, being
laughed at at a children’s party because her shoes were
half-soled? Ridiculous? Certainly. Thousands of children
have been skewered by their contemporaries at parties,
millions of men like to go on fishing trips. You have to fit in
a horde of other harmless little things and match them up to
get the right combination. But there are so many of them
and so many combinations that will pay off in annihilation,
sooner or later you can almost count on blowing yourself
up. Add the fact that nowadays Chevrolet and Buicks look
considerably alike, at least in the dusk and seen only in one
quick glance. Add a man deciding to take a bag of laundry
into town. Not any time, you understand, but this particular
time.”
She paused and smiled faintly, as if she were thinking of
something a long way off. “Try this on your toughness, Mr.
Harlan. None of this could have happened if those three
cars had come out of that bottom in any other sequence at
all. Mathematically, there are six possibilities, of course, if
you merely shook them up in a dice cup. Consider that. On
top of all the other interlocking little events that fell into
their pattern to set up disaster, the odds were still six to one
that they’d remain harmless and pass unnoticed. And yet
the right number came up, and here we are.”
“We are?”
She nodded. “I realize the futility of trying to make you
understand, Mr. Harlan. I’m merely talking. I don’t usually
rattle on this way, but this afternoon for some reason I just
felt in the mood. Here we are, as I say. Destroyed. And yet
never once have you even stopped to wonder why those
The Big Bite — 151
cars came out of the bottom in that particular sequence.
Even aside from the laws of chance, there was every reason
in the world my husband’s should have been the last. But it
wasn’t. It was next to last, and that set up the disaster.”
I couldn’t see what difference it made, now that it had
happened and I was as good as dead, but I asked anyway. I
could see she was going to go on talking, and there was no
way I could shut her up.
“Why should he have been last?”
She shook her head. “You surprise me at times. You show
flashes of intelligence, and then you go dead again. Purvis
knew, and he didn’t even see me out there. He did it by
sheer deduction. I was unfaithful to my husband. I realize
you have already grasped this, at least as far as its surface
aspects are concerned, and there would be no point in
attempting to explore it to any depth because eventually
we’d run into language connected with emotion, which
obviously would have no meaning to you. How would you
describe a sunset to a blind mole living on the dark side of
the moon?
“But I’m digressing. To get back to why the three cars
came out of the bottom in that particular sequence—my
husband, as you probably guessed, came out there to the
Cannon summer cottage looking for us. He had been in
Houston, but had returned ahead of schedule, probably for
that very reason. And he found us. Or rather, I should say,
he found Dan. I had wanted to be alone for a little while to
think, and I’d taken a walk a short distance around the lake.
Mr. Cannon, while he was not drunk, had had enough to be
ugly. He became very abusive—he could be quite violent on
occasion. Dan denied that I was with him. Of course, it was
more or less obvious somebody must have been with him for
he would hardly have come out there alone, and there was a
good chance I was the one because Dan had no key to the
place. Dan did the best he could, however, and insisted he
had borrowed a key—several hunting and fishing cronies of
Mr. Cannon’s had duplicates. This was a flimsy thing at
best, because it could be easily checked, but Dan was
desperate and was hoping I would hear the row and stay out
of sight. I did. I circled the clearing the cabin was in and
started out the road, knowing Dan would come along and
pick me up. It is a little over a quarter mile out to where the
The Big Bite — 152
two roads join—that one and the one going on around to
George Gray’s cabin, where you were staying. I passed this
juncture—you will recall the place where you saw me was
about two hundred yards this side of it. I was waiting there
for Dan to drive by. When I saw your car coming, of course,
I thought it was he. When I realized my mistake, I stepped
back off the road again. Then it occurred to me Dan might
have some difficulty picking me up. Obviously, Mr. Cannon,
being suspicious, would not leave first. Dan would have to.
And Mr. Cannon would be following him very closely to see
if he did meet someone along the road. This is precisely
what happened. When Dan came by, only a few minutes
after you did, he caught sight of me but did not stop. He
motioned for me to stay out of sight. My husband’s Cadillac
was right behind him. Surely it must have occurred to you
there was something strange in the fact my husband’s car
wasn’t the last one in the procession?”
I hadn’t even thought about it. And I didn’t care. What
difference did it make now?
“Turn it off,” I said. “I knew the two of you’d killed him,
and that was all I was interested in.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“I told you I felt like talking, so even at the risk of boring
you I’ll proceed. What happened, naturally, was that Dan
speeded up going around some turns in the road, and got
far enough ahead to pull off and out of sight. My husband
went on past, and when he caught up with you just after you
got out on the highway, it was perfectly natural that he
thought you were Dan. Dan came back and got me. So there
you have the marching order for disaster. What you didn’t
know, and what I don’t think Purvis even guessed, was that
we actually saw the crash.”
“You did? I didn’t think you were that close behind.”
“We were about a mile back, but if you’ll recall the road
drops off a long hill into that river bottom where you
crashed. It isn’t straightaway, but from the brow of the hill
you can see the road going across that straight section of fill
and the bridge itself. We happened to be right there when it
happened. Of course you both had your headlights on then
and we didn’t know for sure it was your car my husband had
The Big Bite — 153
driven off the road—not until we got there, that is—but it
was perfectly obvious the whole thing was deliberate. He
had at least another mile of straight road ahead of him, and
there were no other cars in sight at all. The inference was
inescapable.”
“So you’re going to get away with it?” I said.
Her eyes were moody as she studied the end of her
cigarette and it was a moment before she answered. “Do
you ever?” she asked.
The Big Bite — 154
16
“What do you mean?”
“Getting away with it, as you put it, is perhaps only an
illusion. You go on delaying the ultimate disaster, but you
never eliminate it.”
I jumped at this. “Well, get wise to yourself. Turn me
loose—”
She smiled coldly. “Really you are a child. I assure you we
have every intention of going on. We began it, and now we
can’t ever go back. Neither, I might add, can you.”
“Then why do it? Why get yourself in any deeper?”
Her eyebrows raised. “Deeper?”
“Certainly.”
“Really. Don’t be absurd. There’s only one depth, and
that’s absolute. You wouldn’t say something was more dead,
would you, or more pregnant?”
“So you’d do it just because you’ve got nothing more to
lose?”
“Not at all. We’ll do it because we have to. Removing you
and your threat is another bulkhead shored up, another
ringer in the dike, another postponing of the inevitable.
Futile? Perhaps. But what do you do when you see the
bulkhead crumpling? You shore it up, even while you’re
watching the next one start to buckle. But perhaps I’m
tiring you.”
The Big Bite — 155
I stared at her. “Well, what in the name of God did you do
it for if you didn’t think you could win?”
“Well, obviously, because we thought we could—then.
Five months have changed that—for me, at least. You have
too much time to think. Too much time to—as you put it—
look at the odds. Incidentally, that is a very good parallel.
Imagine a roulette wheel that ran for five months, or a year,
or ten years, before it stopped. With all your money bet on
just one number and with that much time to examine the
laws of probability, you must inevitably come to doubt the
wisdom of it. Add to that the fact that you never really know
for sure when the roulette wheel has stopped. It may be an
illusion, a very deliberate illusion fostered by the people
who are operating it, if you follow me.
“There are too many possibilities inherent in any situation
like this, too many factors completely out of your control
and utterly unpredictable. Purvis shouldn’t have become
suspicious, but he did. The possibility of your paths ever
crossing again was mathematically negligible, but it
happened. The odds were astronomical against your being
in Purvis’s apartment at the precise moment he was killed,
and even laughably impossible that you could have been
there without being seen, and yet—” She shrugged and
crushed out the cigarette.
“You think the police will catch up with you some day,
then?”
“I think it quite likely,” she said.
“Then I don’t see why you keep on.” Her eyebrows raised.
“You don’t? I thought I had just told you.” She stood up and
looked down at me. “But there is another facet to it which
you may be able to understand. I should hate very much to
be defeated by you. I underestimated you once and let you
make a fool of me. It won’t happen again.”
I started to say something. She shoved the handkerchief
back in my mouth and plastered the tape over it. She
started out, but turned in the doorway. “Oh, I forgot to ask
if you wanted anything to eat.”
I stared at her, not even bothering to shake my head.
She went out. I lay there thinking about her and trying to
think of something. I was as good as dead unless I could get
to one of them, and you didn’t have to be very bright to see
The Big Bite — 156
she wasn’t the one. I didn’t read her too well, but she was
undoubtedly the smoothest, hardest specimen” I’d ever run
into. She didn’t think they had a chance of winning any
more, but she was going right on as calmly as a woman
picking up a bridge hand. There was no use looking for the
soft spot in her, because she was armor all the way through.
What about him? He wasn’t what you would call one of
the softer types of citizens, but at least he looked a little
more promising than she did. For one thing, he was badly
gone on her, and intensely jealous. Maybe I could make him
lose his head by giving him the needle, but what good would
that do as long as he had the gun? He’d just kill me that
much quicker. It was hopeless.
As soon as it was dark he came in. He had another gun
with him this time, a hand gun that looked like a Luger. He
held it and watched with deadly efficiency while she
unlocked the handcuffs and untied my feet I went to the
bathroom with him right behind me. There wasn’t a flaw in
his procedure anywhere. One false move, and I’d have my
spine shattered. They fastened me down again.
He stood looking at me. “Nobody’s shown up yet,” he said.
I stared at him. I still had the gag in my mouth and
couldn’t have spoken if there’d been anything to say.
“I’m going out to see if anybody’s been to the cabin,” he
said. “Better hope so, pal.” They went out and closed the
door.
After a while I began to hear voices very faintly, coming
from the direction of the living-room. I tried to see what
time it was, but my watch had stopped because I hadn’t
been able to wind it. The sound of voices increased and I
could hear laughter now and then, and music. She was
giving a party. Mrs. Julia Cannon entertained a small group
of her friends last night at an informal gathering at her
lovely home on Cherrywood Drive— The cold-blooded
deadliness of it got to me for a moment and I felt sick. The
only thing she’d forgotten was to use me for a cloak room.
She should have brought the mink stoles and evening wraps
in and thrown them on my face.
It went on for hours, or so it seemed. It must have been
after midnight when it began to quiet down. I wondered if
he had been at the party. Apparently he had, for when he
The Big Bite — 157
came back his face was slightly flushed as if he had been
drinking. The house had been silent for about an hour then,
so I supposed he had left with the other guests and then
sneaked back. They played a smooth game, and they never
made a mistake or left themselves open anywhere.
She was still dressed in an evening gown and he had I on
a dark suit. She stood in the doorway behind him as he
came in.
“Your friend must have forgotten you,” he said. “Nobody’s
been out there.”
I looked at him. He was feeling his drinks, all right, and
he was looking for trouble.
He stepped forward and ripped the adhesive off my
mouth. It was stuck to the beard stubble on my face and
made a tearing sound as it came away. He looked over his
shoulder at her. “Maybe this would be a good time to find
out where he hid that tape.”
“Somebody might hear him if he shouts,” she warned.
He took the gun out of his pocket again. “If he makes any
noise he’ll get this across his face.”
I hadn’t had any water for twenty-four hours. My mouth
was so dry I couldn’t speak even after the handkerchief was
gone from it. I tried to moisten it with saliva. It wasn’t too
successful.
“How about it?” he asked roughly.
My jaw felt as if it had been broken when I tried to move
it. My voice cracked. “I told you, you simple bastard. I
mailed it.”
“Funny he hasn’t shown up around here, isn’t it?”
I didn’t care any more what he did. If I had to go through
another twenty-four hours of lying here I’d go crazy. It was
better to provoke something now and take my chances than
to go out of my mind.
“Well, why worry about him?” I asked. “When he does
show up she can always lay him for you. She doesn’t mind.”
It got to him so fast he didn’t even think to swing at me
with the gun. He dropped it into his left hand and smashed
me on the jaw with the right. It made my head ring, but I
thought I heard a finger break.
The Big Bite — 158
“Don’t be a fool, Dan,” she said with exasperation. “Can’t
you see he’s deliberately trying to make you lose your
head?”
“Maybe he’s in a hurry. Why keep him waiting?”
She shook her head. “It’s been only one day.”
“Seven altogether.”
“I liked the first six,” I said. “Fun, wasn’t it, honey?”
He looked down at me with the veins beginning to stand
out on his temples. He was half drunk, half crazy from
thinking about just that, and wide open for the needle.
“Dan! Don’t be juvenile. Are you going to let this stupid
thug make a fool of you?”
He didn’t even hear her. He was just staring at me, his
eyes going wilder and more savage every second. He shifted
the gun back to his right hand and started to chop at my
face with it. She sprang forward and caught his arm.
“Not in here, you fool!” she said in a furious whisper. “Do
you want to have to carry him two blocks to your car?” She
didn’t say anything about making a sloppy mess in her
beautiful home, but the thought was there.
“Maybe you’d just like me to turn him loose?” he asked
savagely.
“Oh, don’t be an idiot! But if you’re going to do it tonight,
at least—for the love of heaven—do it right. Don’t start
behaving like a madman. You’ve got to get him out of here,
the way we planned it.”
“You want to be sure you don’t have anything to do with
it? Is that it?”
“Of course not! Listen, Dan!” she said urgently. “Please
don’t lose your head now. This is dangerous.”
He appeared to be getting a grip on himself and becoming
rational enough again to realize she was right. He
straightened and backed away a step.
“You just don’t know how to handle her,” I said. “When
she starts throwing her weight around, get rough with her.
She loves it.”
He wheeled and lunged at me, his hands reaching for my
throat as he fell across the bed. She sprang forward and
began tugging at his arm. “Stop it! Dan, stop it!”
The Big Bite — 159
He sat up. His face was white and glistening with sweat.
“All right, all right,” he said, fighting for breath. He swung
around and began tearing at the rope holding my legs. “I’ll
take the precious son of a bitch out there where you won’t
have to see it, if that’s what’s worrying you. I’ll take care of
it. Just keep out of my way—”
The rope came free. He hurried around to the left side of
the bed, groping in the pocket of his trousers. His hand
came out, holding a pair of small keys tied together with
twine. I watched him, hardly daring to breathe now. If I
didn’t get a chance within, the next few seconds I’d never
have one again. He unlocked the handcuff on the left side
and slid the loop of the chain out of the other half of it. I
saw what he was going to do. He’d shackle my hands
together with that pair before he broke the other one loose.
She was standing below the foot of the bed, silently
watching. Suddenly she gestured impatiently. “Put the gag
back in his mouth. You can’t take him out of here that way.”
“All right!” he said furiously. He grabbed the
handkerchief and began wadding it back in my mouth. He
stuck the tape back over it. Most of the adhesive was gone
from it now and it didn’t hold very well. I lay perfectly still,
as if I had forgotten as well as he had that my left wrist was
free now and that the handcuff was lying beside my hand.
He pushed down hard against my mouth with his hand to
fasten the tape. ‘”There, you son of a bitch.”
I drew the left arm back a little. My fingers closed over
one loop of the handcuffs.
“Dan!” she shrieked. “Look out!”
I swung it as hard as I could. The cuff hit him over the
right temple, but even as it landed I knew I hadn’t had
enough swing on it to knock him out. He jerked and grunted
and fell over on top of me. I tried to pull the arm free to
swing again, but I could get only the forearm out. He was
across my upper arm and shoulder. I put the hand against
his throat and strained, trying to pull him to the right so I
could reach him with that one too. His body rolled a little. I
could get my right hand on his shirt collar. I locked my
fingers on it and pulled, but he was coming around now and
beginning to struggle. I let go with the left and shoved it
The Big Bite — 160
downward, toward his right-hand coat pocket where the
gun was.
Then she was on us both. He rolled back a little when she
landed, and all his weight was on my left arm. I was still
short of the pocket a good six inches when her hand flashed
into it and came out with the gun. She tried to back off us. I
grabbed for her and caught the upper edge of the strapless
gown. A seam ripped. She slashed downward at my arm
with the gun, and it went numb up to the shoulder.
She slid back and stood up, still holding the gun. Her hair
was disheveled and her eyes wild, and the torn gown was
threatening to slide down onto her hips. She looked deadly
enough to give you nightmares for the rest of your life. He
put a hand on my chest and pushed upward, swinging the
other one at my face. I turned, heaving my shoulders, and
he lost his balance and fell on me again. I got both hands on
his throat once more. There was no strength at all in the left
one, but I managed to hold on. He was still weak from the
blow on the head and I was cutting off his wind now. In all
the wildness I looked at her again and saw her trying to find
the safety on the gun. It was pointed right at my face.
He gave one last effort and jerked free and then the gun
went off. It was like a hand-grenade exploding in a cistern.
The wave of sound rolled over me, reverberated around the
walls, and then rolled back like thunder. He jerked and
went limp in my arms and his face dropped onto my chest.
The sound chopped off, and there was dead silence except
for the ringing in my ears.
I looked at her, still too numb to move. She was standing
very still, staring with horror at the back of his head. The
gun slipped from her fingers and thudded gently on the
carpet. Her mouth opened and she put the flat side of three
closed fingers up over it, like some genteel type patting
back a yawn, while her eyes went wider and wider with
shock. There was a greenish tinge to the pallor of her face
just as she collapsed slowly to her knees and then fell
forward, out of sight below the foot of the bed. She had
killed him. He was lying across me, I was still handcuffed to
the bed, and everybody in this end of town would have
heard, the shot. And then she had capped everything by
fainting.
The Big Bite — 161
What had he done with the keys? He’d had them. Were
they in the bed, or had he put them back in one of his
pockets? I couldn’t get my mind to work at all. It was as if it
had been shocked into numbness by all the violence and
sound and now that they were gone I was lying here in utter
silence trying to kick it awake. Somebody would call the
police. If they didn’t get any answer when they came they’d
break in. I had to get her awake so she could go to the door
if they did come, and I couldn’t even reach her.
I rolled him off me and sat up. The keys were nowhere in
sight on the bed. Where were they? Where? Hurry, I
thought. For the love of God, find them before they start
pounding on the door. I slid off the bed. I couldn’t stand
erect because of the shortness of the chain between the
handcuff and the bed frame. I couldn’t reach the foot of the
bed, where she was. Wildness began to take possession of
me. Stop it, for Christ’s sake, I said aloud, like a man in
delirium. Get hold of yourself. He had the keys here; he
hasn’t been anywhere else, so they’re still here.
I caught him by a shoulder and pushed. He moved over a
little. The keys weren’t under him. He was lying on his back
now. I plunged my left hand into his right-hand trousers
pocket, and yanked it wrong side out. There was nothing in
it but some change and a pocket-knife. I reached across and
turned the left one out. There was a folded handkerchief in
it. I threw it aside, and then stared. The keys dropped out,
falling onto the sheet right at the far edge of the bed. I
lunged for them and my fingertips brushed them off onto
the floor on the other side.
It was a nightmare now. I reached across as far as I could,
and then downward. My extended fingertips just brushed
the carpet. There was no telling where they had landed. I
pushed backward and slid off the bed again on the near
side, sprawling on the floor. There they were. They were
lying on the carpet just under the far side of the bed, near
the foot. Rolling onto my back, I slid under as far as my
shackled right arm would let me. In this position I couldn’t
see them any more because my body was cutting off too
much of the light, but I remembered about where they had
been. My left hand frenziedly patted the carpet. Nothing.
They had to be I there. I was pawing like a madman and
lunging against the restraining chain. How long had it been
The Big Bite — 162
now? Stop it, I thought wildly. If you go to pieces now
you’re dead. Suppose it was just a parlor game; you’d figure
out the answer to it in five seconds.
They had to be further down toward the foot, but I was
reaching as far as I could now. Move the bed, you fool.
Move the bed. I caught the under side of it with my left
hand, and heaved. Nothing happened except that I slid
myself along the carpet. He was on it and he was too heavy.
Moving it without something to brace myself against was
impossible. I swung my legs around wildly, reversing my
position so my feet were against the wall under the
headboard. Grabbing the underside of the board with the
fingers of my left hand, I heaved backward. The bed slid a
couple of inches and then stopped. I heaved again. Nothing
gave. The foot of it had come up against her. That was
where she had fallen. In this awkward position I couldn’t
move it against the weight of both of them.
Well, maybe it was far enough. I swung back the way I
had been at first and began wildly sweeping my left hand
around. There they were! My outstretched fingertips
touched metal. They slid off. I strained, pulling against the
chain. The end of the middle finger brushed against them
again. I tried to press down and pull them toward me. The
finger slid off. They were a fraction of an inch out of reach.
Maybe I was already going crazy. I could hear myself
cursing endlessly and idiotically in a kind of chant like a
phonograph somebody had turned on and then forgotten. I
clamped my mouth shut, wondering if I would explode from
the pressure inside me.
There was absolute silence for a second or two, and then
the telephone began ringing.
The Big Bite — 163
17
They had left the bedroom door open when they came, in
and I could hear it quite plainly out in the living-room. It
went on and on with that insistent and angry sound an
unanswered telephone has. It was probably one of the
neighborhood busybodies, who had , heard the shot. “Oh,
Mrs., Cannon, I’m sorry I disturbed you, but I thought I
heard something that sounded like a gun and it seemed to
come from over there and I wondered if you were all right
—” Stop it, I thought. For Christ’s sake, turn it off! You’re
beginning to gibber. Do something. When the old biddy
doesn’t raise somebody she’s going to call the cops. They’ll
get an answer. They’ll push the door in. I lunged against the
chain like an animal in a steel trap. I couldn’t even touch
the keys now. I stopped and lay perfectly still in the calm
that is beyond frenzy.
Then suddenly the perfectly obvious answer to the whole
thing occurred to me. I could reach them with my foot.
Cursing myself for a fool, I slid my body around until I was
lying crosswise under the bed. I could see them, now that I
wasn’t cutting off the light. They were lying almost under
the foot of the bed. I shoved my left foot forward and got
the toe of the shoe behind them. I dragged them slowly
toward me. They pressed down into the nap of the carpet
once and I had to go back and pick them up again. In a
moment I could reach them with my hand.
The Big Bite — 164
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