The Mourner p-4 Page 9

  Nightmares did come to him from time to time, particularly when he had been working too hard, or an assignment was unusually difficult, like the purging of an old friend. He knew nightmares, and he knew what to do about them, how to pull their teeth and lay them to rest. The trick was to go over the nightmare detail by detail, remembering it as fully and completely as possible, discovering what part of his past experience had produced each distortion.

  Still shaky, he lit a cigarette, and discovered that even American cigarettes taste foul immediately after one wakes up. Still, it should help calm the nerves. He made a face, and dragged deep.

  The nightmare then. First, the beach. That was easy. It was one of the tourist beaches on the Caspian Sea; he had never been there, but he had seen such beaches in motion pictures. And in this instance it was meant to symbolize Miami Beach, which he had never seen, even in films.

  The nude woman. Bett Harrow, of course. Odd he couldn’t remember her name in the dream. Perhaps that meant she was not an individual to him. She, and the airline stewardess, and all the women in the American magazines were simply an erotic goal, with interchangeable bodies and faces and names. One would do as well as another. He was somewhat surprised and pleased to find his subconscious so smug about his interlude with Bett Harrow.

  Next, Parker’s face. It had cropped up twice, each time attached to another’s body. He had met the Harrow woman through Parker, of course, but with Parker’s face on Spannick’s body as well, there had to be a different answer.

  It could be that Parker had no body any more, Menlo having murdered it. Was some essence of Parker after him, seeking vengeance? Friends of Parker? It was hard to imagine the man havingany friends. Besides, even if he did, what did they know of Menlo? Nothing. Only the Harrow woman, and she was already aware that he intended to kill Parker, and approved. So the double appearance of Parker’s face was simply an oversensitive reaction of having eliminated such a formidable opponent.

  Next, the ship with the white sails. He had to think about that for a few minutes, pacing back and forth in front of the bed, and at last it came to him. Jenny’s song, from Dreigo-schenoper.The pirate ship. He had been in mortal danger from the pirates first the Outfit, and later Parker and McKay and this was simply a recording of that fact. And the same was true of Spannick’s appearance, saying exactly what he had said in the cellar that night.

  He understood the dream now, and its terror was washed away. He went over to the nightstand, picked up his watch, and saw that it was ten minutes to four. He had slept six hours, having fallen deeply asleep immediately after returning here from Kapor’s house, feeling after the high-pitched excitement of the robbery and killings a lethargy unlike any drowsiness or exhaustion he had ever known before. So he had slept, purging his mind of all residual terrors through this nightmare, and now he was rested and calm.

  It was time to be going. According to the getaway theory explained to him by McKay, now was the time to get started.

  He showered, calm and relaxed, taking his time. He dressed in fresh clothing from the skin out, packed his suitcase, gathered up the other suitcase, with all the money in it, and tiptoed out of the motel room.

  The Pontiac was there, waiting. He stowed both suitcases on the back seat, got behind the wheel, and took the road map from the glove compartment.

  He wanted to travel south from here, but he was north of the city. Northeast. Was there any way to skirt the city to the east? He studied the unfamiliar map, following thin lines on roads with the tip of one stubby finger, and finally found a way to get over to the Capital Beltway. That would take him south into Virginia, where he could pick up a route numbered 350 which would take him to a route numbered 1, which ran all the way down the coast to Miami.

  He laid the map on the seat beside him, and started the engine. He was not used to so large and soft an automobile, and he drove cautiously at first, barely touching the accelerator as he brought the car up the slope to the street. He underestimated and made far too wide a right turn, but Wisconsin Avenue at this point was four lanes wide, and at this hour in the morning there was no other car in sight anyway.

  His progress at first was agonizingly slow. The automobile was unfamiliar to him, as were the street signs. The standard pictographic signs common throughout Europe were not used here. Instead of the usual white background and red frame and black pictorial silhouette, there were dull yellow diamonds, some bearing words and some deformed arrows. Stop signs were red hexagons with the word STOP in white, unless they were yellow hexagons with the word STOP in black. It was confusing, and a little frightening. He couldn’t afford to have an accident now, not with one hundred thousand dollars in a suitcase on the back seat.

  By the time he finally got to the Capital Beltway he was perspiring freely, despite the November chill, and there was pain in his head from creasing his brow and squinting through the windshield.

  But the Capital Beltway was a superhighway, like the German Autobahn. Menlo relaxed at once, sat back more comfortably, held the steering wheel less tightly. He also pressed more firmly on the accelerator. The car, bulky and soft as a heavyweight boxer out of condition, was nevertheless an eager sprinter. The car roared down the empty highway, as dawn slowly spread over the sky to his left. He was on his way.

  3

  HE DIDN’T hear the siren at first. He was trying to decide whether or not to stop in this little town for something to eat, and though the wailing filled his ears, at first he didn’t connect it with himself at all.

  He was just across the border between North and South Carolina, and it was one o’clock in the afternoon. He had been driving steadily for eight hours. This automobile was the most comfortable he’d ever driven, but eight hours’ driving in any car has to be tiring. All the way across North Carolina he’d been telling himself to stop, but the desire to increase the distance between himself and Washington had up till now been stronger than his need for food and rest. He had stopped only once, to fill the automobile’s gas tank and empty his bladder. That had been over three hours ago.

  It seemed like a pleasant little town, this one, small and somnolent. Except for the sunshine and the warmth, it could be a sleepy valley town in Klastrava. Sunshine and warmth. He had never in his life till now had enough sunshine and warmth. Klastrava was a mountainous country, in the heart of the Carpathians, and in mountainous lands the human settlements are always in the valleys. In mountainous lands the rain falls always in the valleys and mists and fogs lay there always. The summers are hazy, humid, muggy, the winters heavy with bronchial dampness.

  Sunshine and warmth. And beautiful women. And one hundred thousand dollars.

  He was far enough away from Washington. It was safe to stop in this little town. Ahead on the right, a sign hung out from a building that looked like a railroad car. It read DINER. He had decided to stop here, and that was when he heard the siren.

  He looked in his rear-view mirror. The road was straight all the way through the little town, and almost empty. Behind him, two blocks away and coming on fast, was an automobile with a revolving red light on top.

  Police.

  He thought they’d caught up with him. He thought, for one panic-stricken instant, that somehow they had traced him. The police authorities had learned about the robbery and the killings, and they had traced him in some inexplicable fashion. They had caught up with him.

  The problem was, he didn’t have the background to understand what was happening. In all of Klastrava there isn’t one single solitary speed trap. There isn’t enough tourism to support one.

  He thought: Run? Outrace him?

  No good. The police car would be even faster than the one Menlo was driving. Besides, his reading of crime fiction had told him what to expect ahead. Roadblocks. Parker and McKay had talked about roadblocks too, so they were not entirely fictional. In his own work, at home, he had occasionally found the need to order roadblocks set up and trains searched, even the borders closed.

 
; Could they, in this country, close the borders between states?

  The police car had caught up with him, was now beside him. An angry-looking, wrinkle-faced old man in a cowboy hat waved to him to pull over to the kerb and stop.

  One man? One wrinkle-faced old man? This couldn’t be connected with what had happened in Washington. They would consider him, as the wording went, armed and dangerous. They would send more than one wrinkle-faced old man to apprehend him, if they were after him for what had happened in Washington.

  He obeyed the old man’s hand, and pulled to a stop at the kerb, wondering what it could be all about. There might be some sort of border checkpoint where he was supposed to stop and hadn’t, or some such thing. He would have to wait and see, find out what the old man wanted. If worst came to worst, the derringer was reloaded and in his coat pocket.

  The police car nosed in at an angle in front of him, its rear jutting out into the traffic lane in the approved method, to keep him from driving suddenly off as soon as the old man got out of his car. Menlo rolled down the window on his side, and waited.

  The old man came back towards him, walking with an odd bowlegged rolling gait, as though it was a horse he’d just climbed down from instead of an automobile. He was wearing black boots and dark-blue breeches several sizes too large, which sported a yellow stripe up each seam. His dark-blue uniform coat looked like the jackets worn by Army officers in the First World War. A light-blue shirt, with a dark-blue tie, and a tan cowboy hat completed him. A broad black belt, studded with shiny cartridges, encircled his pudgy waist. A heavy black holster sat on his right hip.

  He came over and stood glaring in at Menlo. “You in a hurry, bud?”

  Menlo blinked. Police at home were always polite and courteous on the surface, whatever happened afterwards. He didn’t know what to say. He just stared at the angry old man.

  The old man said, “The posted speed limit in this village, in case you was in too much of a hurry to read the sign back there at the city line, happens to be twenty miles an hour. I just clocked you at thirty-two miles per hour, on our main street. I don’t see no fire nowhere.”

  Menlo understood only half of it, and then half he didn’t believe. “Twentymiles an hour?” He’d been going through cities and towns with thirty-mile-an-hour speed limits and occasionally twenty-five all day long.

  “That’s what the sign said, bud,” the old man said.

  “I saw no sign,” Menlo protested.

  “It’s there. Let’s have your licence and registration.”

  Impossible. He had neither.

  The whole situation was ludicrous; all his high spirits and pleasant anticipations drained out of him. The United States was no different from Klastrava; no different from any other nation in the world. Mighty undertakings were blocked by petty bureaucratic insignificancies.

  “Snap it up, bud. I ain’t got all day.”

  There was no driver’s licence in his pocket, no automobile registration. He had only two things there: a wad of money, and the derringer. He thought quickly, trying to decide which to use.

  The money. The money first. If that failed, then the derringer.

  Menlo reached into his pocket, peeled one bill free, and handed it to the old man. The old man looked at it, frowned suddenly like a thundercloud. “What’s this?”

  It was a fifty-dollar bill.

  “My licence and registration,” Menlo replied. He smiled tentatively.

  The old man squinted, studying the bill, and then Menlo’s face. He peered into the back seat, then looked the car over, front to back. “Now, what in hell have we got hold of here?” Then, with a surprisingly fast motion, his right hand snapped back, flipped open the holster flap, and dragged out an old .38-calibre Colt Police Positive Special. He took a quick step back away from the Pontiac. “Now you get on outa there, bud. You move slow and easy.”

  Menlo’s hand started to inch towards the derringer, but the old man’s trigger finger was white-knuckled with strain. The barrel of the pistol aimed at Menlo’s head seemed as big as the entrance to a railroad tunnel. Meekly, cursing himself for a fool, Menlo clambered out of the Pontiac.

  The old man said, “Fat one, ain’t you? Turn around. Lean up against your car with your hands over your head.”

  Menlo did as he was told, knowing the posture the old man wanted. It was standard procedure the world around. Leaning forward off balance, the hands higher than the head, supporting the weight of the body. The position of the suspect when the police officer wants to search him for weapons. Which meant that now the derringer was to be taken from him.

  How long would it be before this wretched old man took it into his head to open the two suitcases on the back seat?

  And all this for driving thirty-two miles an hour on an empty street.

  The old man was muttering, “I thought you was one for the judge, but now I ain’t so sure. Might just be there’s a poster out on you.”

  The old man began to pat him, searching him. The first thing he came to was the wallet in Menlo’s hip pocket. He removed it, and stepped back. Menlo heard him whistle softly when he opened it; it contained money, nearly a thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties.

  “Well, well, well,” the old man said. “What do you know about that?” There was a pause and then a different tone. “Now, what the hell is this?”

  Menlo wondered too. It hadn’t, whatever it was, sounded like something the old man was pleased over. Menlo wondered where the people were. The sun was shining brightly, and this was the main street. Two cars had already gone by since he’d been stopped, both angling wide around them without stopping. But no crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. He couldn’t understand it. He didn’t know that in a speed-trap town, motorists often get angry at policemen and policewomen usually retaliate with a little extra humiliation such as a frisking, that in any such town, no matter how dreary, the sight of a policeman frisking a tourist is old stuff.

  The old man kept mumbling to himself, and then all at once he shouted. “A Commie! A goddamn Commie!”

  Then Menlo realized what the old man had found. He hadn’t bothered to remove his official identification cards, and these were what the old man had been mumbling over, trying to decipher the foreign printing, until finally some sign or symbol had given the game away.

  “Well, well, well!” cried the old man, growing excitement in his voice. “I guess maybe it’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation that’d like you, bud. A big-shot Commie, no licence or registration, carrying around bribe money. I guess the Federal Bureau of Investigation won’t mind seeing you one bit. So you just march, bud. Get on away from that car you stole, and march. To your right. The jail’s just a block away. I’ll come get your car and baggage after I got you locked up good.”

  Menlo marched ahead of him down the street to the jail, a one-storey frame structure with a blank faŢ, save for one small barred window and a door that had Police Headquarterslettered in gold on the glass.

  Within, it looked like a set of a Western movie. There was a central corridor, with an office on the right containing, among other things, a roll-top desk. The door on the left was shut, and the old man had Menlo continue straight on down past it to the end, to a barred door.

  It was while the old man was unlocking the door that he took his eyes off Menlo for just a second. It was then that Menlo sneaked the derringer from his pocket and fired both bullets into the old man’s head.

  First, he took back his wallet. Then he removed the Police Positive from the holster and tucked it inside his belt, on the left side, butt forward, where it was well concealed but he could get at it quickly. Finally, he dragged the old man’s body through the barred doorway around to the other side of a desk to delay its discovery. The cells were back here, but they faced the other way. In one of them someone, probably a Negro, was singing softly and mournfully to himself about nothing in particular.

  Menlo was feeling very strange. Until this moment all of his activities had
been directed against the criminal elements of society, the outlaws. Kapor. The Outfit. Parker and McKay. He had been betraying his Ministry, true, but that hadn’t bothered him particularly. His activity against the state had been, in a way, indirect, a sin of omission with the money. But now he had shot down a police officer in the performance of his duty. Suddenly the break with his past was total, complete, irrevocable, much broader and deeper than he had ever imagined. Tendrils of fear began tugging at his mind and making his knees unreliable.

  He had to be strong. He had made his choice, and so far he had triumphed. Whatever the obstacles, he must continue to prevail. The rules were changed now, and so was he.

  He was puffing from exertion by the time he’d finished. He closed the barred door again, paused to catch his breath, and forced himself to walk casually and unconcernedly out of the building. He would not be eating lunch at the diner just ahead. He would not be eating lunch at all today.

  The next major city, according to the map, was Columbia, South Carolina. He could risk driving the car that far, but there he would abandon it. He would travel the rest of the way to Miami by train. It was unlikely there would be a plane.

  He got into the Pontiac, feeling the bulge of the pistol against his left side as he sat down. He started the engine, backed the car, shifted, avoided the angle-parked police car, and drove sedately out of town at twenty miles an hour.

  4

  IT LOOKED like a wedding cake. Menlo peered out at it from the cab’s rear seat, his eyes squinting somewhat from the brightness. It was Sunday, and the sun shone bright on the Sunways Hotel, pink and white, with a great white fountain out front that looked like marzipan. The splashing water made a cool sound.

  “I hate this lousy town,” said the cab driver, waiting to take his turn at the canopied entrance.

  Menlo, who did not answer, was glad of the delay. It gave him an opportunity to study the place, get used to it a little.

  Everything was new, everything was different, Menlo’s confidence had been shaken by the incident in the little South Carolina town, and in the back of his mind there was the growing suspicion that he wasn’t going to make it. This was a whole new world in which he had no experience. He had no papers, no satisfactory explanation of who he was or where he came from. He had no real idea even where he was going.