Dead End - Ed Lacy

     Doc slapped her savagely across the face, sending her reeling toward the living room. “You stupid whore, what do you think you're pulling? This is the kidnapper, a murder rap!” Doc's voice was like a whip.

     “Murder?” Betty looked around wildly; then her eyes found mine. “Bucky, you mean he's... the... man?” Her voice died and she put a little hand to the flaming red streak across her pale face.

     “Honey, you're in big trouble—the worst. You have to come clean with us. Fast!” I started for her, wanting to hold her in my arms, as I slipped my gun back in its holster.

     Doc stopped me by snapping in a low voice, “Clean? They'll sweat and third-degree her to pieces. With him dead, they'll pin the whole kidnapping on her!”

     Betty started to shake. She looked away from me, whimpered. “I don't know what... what this is all about. How could I be mixed up in... in...?”

     “Take it slow, honey,” I began. “Well work out—”

     “We're in a hell of a jam ourselves, Bucky,” Doc cut in.

     The words hit me like a baseball bat across the head. Instead of being a hero, I'd end up a patsy. I stared at Betty, feeling terribly tired. I don't know what to do, couldn't think.

     She said, “Bucky, don't look like that. I don't know a thing about... that man. And no matter what they do, I won't tell them about you—us!”

     “They'll rubber-hose your skin off until...” Doc ran across the room toward her. “Damn you, Betty, tell us what your connection is with the kidnapping! We have to know where we stand!”

     “Connection?” she whispered.

     “Did you set us up from the go? Talk, you dumb...!”

     She glanced at me. “Bucky, you know me. You must believe I couldn't have...”

     Doc drew back his hand to slap her again, and Betty and I both moved. I started for Doc, not really sure what I was going to do. Betty moaned with terror, suddenly turned and ran for the front door. Doc's gun barked once—the sound short and lean and lost in the silence of the room. Betty frantically tried to reach behind her back, as if she had a bad itch there, staggered like a drunk, then crashed to the floor. It was a hammy fall. The whole thing was so unreal, like a bad dream. Except where she'd been trying to “scratch” was slowly turning into a bloody spot.

     For a long second I stood there, as if my feet were nailed to the floor, too amazed to move. Yeah, at that second I was amazed rather than sorry. Somehow I couldn't believe Betty was dead, expected her to get up. I mean, a dozen things were slowly going around in my head. The short sound Doc's gun had made—such a small sound to take a life, Betty's life. No Miami palm trees to show her now, no more arguing about perfumes, where we'd open our shop. And finally, as if I was backward, my brain got the message: no more Betty.

     Doc had raced across the room, felt of her wrist. Then he opened the door, looked up and down the hall, locked the door, using both its locks.

     I moved toward Betty, knelt beside her, sick to my stomach and heart at the bloody cold sight that had once been warm, simple Betty. I suppose if I knew how to pray I would have said something then. Instead I stared up at Doc: I seemed to be looking into his gun. “You getting trigger-happy? Why did you shoot her?” My voice sounded like a strange growl, very hard and tight, and miles away.

     “Easy, Bucky. She was trying to escape,” Doc said softly. And I was still looking smack into his gun: I could almost see the barrel grooves and markings.

     “Escape? Where could she have run to?” My voice was still a long way off.

     “To some other police officer, for instance,” Doc said, staring down at me. “That would have been embarrassing, to say the least.”

     “Yeah.” My voice was right beside me now.

     “Bucky, didn't she tell you she'd been married?”

     “Sort of.”

     “Could that tall, dead number in the bedroom be her husband? Perhaps they were in this together.”

     I didn't answer. I touched Betty's hair. It was still soft. A pool of bright-red blood was slowly seeping out from under her body. I touched her blood with my little finger—I don't know why. It felt icy. I whispered, “Damn it, Doc, you shouldn't have shot her!”

     “Look at it this way: She's better off dead. Understand?”

     The back of Betty's neck was already waxen-looking. I shut my eyes. Mixed with the anger and sorrow I felt, another thought was coming through. I understood: It was a lucky thing the brass couldn't question Betty. There was the barkeep at the Golden Elm. If he'd really sent the guy, I'd have to shut the bartender's trap. Be a snap. My story would be Betty was merely a gal friend, I had no idea what she was working at. I only dropped in to use her bathroom and... Yeah, I just might come out of this with full sails yet, a hero. I plugged the kidnapper, let Doc do his own explaining about gunning Betty. It would work out. Doc and his influence. Only it was too bad Betty was dead. A sweet kid who never said no to me or...

     Doc said, “Snap out of it, son. We've work to do.”

     I nodded. He poked my shoulder with his gun. “Bucky, get off the dime. Don't you realize what this collar means? We're the tops, the... Get up!”

     I got to my feet, shook myself. “I'll phone the squad room.”

     “In a minute. Watch the door. Anybody knocks, open the door on the chain, flash your potsy. Tell 'em to take a walk, that everything is under control. That goes for the beat cop, too. Since we're making the collar, I want time to get all the strings tied up here. Understand, Bucky boy?”

     I nodded as Doc walked into the bedroom. I understood perfectly. From the look on Doc's sharp face, he was set to operate. I leaned against the door, still in a daze. I knew what Doc was doing: searching for anything that might connect us with Betty. I looked up at the ceiling, didn't want to see her body. I had a vague idea of covering her with a rug, but I didn't want to touch anything. The truth is, I didn't know what to do. So I stared at the ceiling like that for a second, or maybe it was a brace of minutes. Suddenly Doc stuck his lean face out of the bedroom door, asked, “Anybody at the door?”

     I shook myself. “No.”

     “Come here.”

     He had the three suitcases open on the bed. For a moment I didn't see the stacks of green bills—only the bed, Betty's bed. Then the sight of all that salting money hit me. It was one fascinating sight.

     Doc asked gently, “Do you know what a million dollars can do, son?”

     “A lot,” I said, sounding like a moron.

     “Do you realize that not more than one out of a hundred thousand people even see this much money in their lifetime?”

     “Yeah?” The fog left my noggin. I kept wondering what Doc had in mind.

     “Feast your eyes on it, Bucky. Let your eyes caress every stack of big money. They're all good bills, no bait money, nothing that can be traced,” Doc said, walking around the bed, stepping on the dead man's outstretched hand, the lean fingers. (Did he play the piano?) “I heard that was one of the conditions set by this louse.” Doc pointed a shined shoe at the dead clown's head. “Look at the money, hard, kid.”

     “I see it. Want me to take a picture and hang it on my wall, Doc?”

     “The Chinese say a picture is worth a thousand words, but nobody ever said a picture was worth one million dollars,” Doc said slowly, his eyes watching me. I knew him well enough to know this was a sales pitch of some kind. “Bucky, you're staring at what can be our gravy train for the rest of our lives!”

     My belly turned into a cold knot of fear. “How could we get away with any of this?”

     There was a faint, hard smile on Doc's tight lips. But he didn't say a word.

     I swallowed twice, managed to ask, “You're thinking of... of... us holding out part of this? We'd never get away with it.”

     “We certainly wouldn't.”

     Doc gave me his superior smile again. The silence got on my nerves. I said, “Let me out of the isolation booth; what's on your mind, Doc?”

     “As you said, we'd never get away with keeping some of this bundle, but we might make it if we take it all! Not one person in fifty million ever gets a chance at a million bucks. Here we have it smack in our laps, cold turkey. Kid, this is our big chance!”

     “Some chance. Stop joking, Doc, and let's get on with...”

     Doc pointed at the bed full of money with his gun as he said softly, “Bucky, I was never more serious in my life.”

     And I realized he was! I said, “Doc, talk sense. Why... we couldn't possibly get away with it. They'd be on us like rust on iron.”

     Doc shook his head slowly. “Listen to me carefully, son. It will probably take a day or more before anybody finds the bodies. We could use those few days trying to skip the country with the money. Maybe we'd make it. But that's the obvious move. And if the bodies should be discovered in the next few hours, we'd be trapped on the run. Also, soon after we fail to report back to the squad room, Bill Smith will certainly get interested—he has a suspicious mind—and start an investigation, and sooner or later put a nation-wide alarm out for us on the wires. I think—”

     I cut in with, “That's what I'm trying to tell you, this money is red hot and we're—”

     “Shut up and listen, Bucky. Taking off would be, as I said, the obvious thing, and very risky. I have a better idea, something that will throw them completely off our tracks. Now, for sure, we have at least a few hours of safe time. Over on the Northside there's an ancient rum-runner and gangster hide-out, a real old-fashioned affair with false walls. It hasn't been used for years and years. Everybody has forgotten about it—except me. The house is run by a hag who will do anything for a quick buck. We merely—”

     “Jeez, Doc, we can't steal a million!”

     Doc laughed quietly in my face. “Why not? Probably turn out to be simpler than swiping a dime off a newsstand. Bucky, try to get the full picture of the opportunity in our hands. The important fact is that we have the million. All we have to do is hole up for a few weeks and then think of a way of getting the money, and ourselves, out of town. But time is on our side, and so is luck.”

     “But Doc, this is the... the... ransom money!”

     “So what? It's as green as any other bucks to me. Poppa is rich; he can afford it. And whether we take the money or not won't bring his Joanie back to life. Look at it this way: This is our reward; we bagged the kidnappers, killed them both, so—”

     “I still don't believe Betty was in on it.”

     “This punk certainly was!” Doc said, kicking the dead man's leg. “Kid, remember you risked your life. Suppose he had knifed you, then what? When the headlines had finished heaping praises on your grave, Elma would be working like those other widows we saw, cleaning and sweeping, because your little pension wouldn't be sufficient to support her. No, this is our reward, this is ours!”

     “I don't know,” I mumbled. “Stealing a million...” It seemed too big to even think about.

     “Bucky, cut the jerk talk. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and every second counts, so stop making with the cheap, inane platitudes about honesty! Get the picture, kid: I'm not claiming it's going to be a pushover, but we have a chance. A jackpot chance on a life of ease—say, down in Brazil, where they don't have any extradition treaty with the States. Or would you rather hand over the money, be a big tin hero for a headline—if they don't tie us in with Betty? You'll struggle along on a lousy salary for the rest of your life, worrying when you'll be caught palming a buck from the cracker barrel and kicked off the force. And should they learn, somehow, about our relationship with Betty, we can easily end up doing time ourselves. Think, son, but fast!”

     I licked my lips nervously, a half a dozen different thoughts pounding through my head at the same time:

     — Doc still had his gun out. What would I do if he tried to take the bundle alone?

     — What would Doc do? He had the draw on me.

     — Could they tie us up with Betty? The building janitor must have seen me come in many, many times.

     — There were also dim pictures racing through my noggin of me in a villa overlooking some palm-studded seashore, or at the helm of a yacht.

     — And there was the too-clear picture of Betty, just before Doc shot her, calling out, “Bucky, you know me...” And I did know her!

     — There was also a foggy thought about the corpse at my feet. What a fat coincidence that the most wanted man in the nation should pick my gal to shack up with!

     I nodded at the stiff, asked, “Doc, how come he landed here, of all places?”

     “Bucky, this isn't the time for theoretical arguments! We have to act—”

     “We'll act two seconds later. Isn't it odd he came here?'

     “Look, don't try to explain the ways of luck. Who knows why he came here? There's a hundred possible reasons: The rat was cornered; maybe he had to move from where he was. He could have had a run-in with his partners; crossed them. I'm sure there's one or more dead people around town this moment. All we know is the rat was on the move, had to escape the dragnet. I suppose he figured a whore's apartment would be a safe hide-out. If he's a stranger in town, where else could he go?”

     “But the last time I saw Betty, she had phoned the bartenders she was closing shop for—”

     “That was three or four days ago.”

     “But the kidnapper has been super-clever, up to now. Why should he pick this place? The traffic is a little heavy sometimes.”