The drowning pool

“What gives?” It was Reavis’s voice, coming from inside the cabin.

I crouched behind a scrub-oak, feeling as if I should be wearing a coonskin cap.

Reavis unhooked the door and stepped outside. His hounds-tooth suit was dusty, and creased in all the wrong places. His hair curled down in his eyes. He pushed it back with an irritable hand. “What’s the trouble, sis?”

“You tell me, you lying little crumb.” He overshadowed her by half a head, but her passionate energy made him look helpless. “You told me you were having woman trouble, so I said I’d hide you out. You didn’t tell me that the woman was dead.”

He stalled for time to think: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Elaine. Who’s dead? This dame I was talking about isn’t dead. She’s perfectly okay only she says she’s missed two months in a row and I don’t want any part of it. She was cherry.”

“Yeah, a grandmother and cherry.” Her voice rasped with ugly irony. “This is one thing you can’t lie out of, sprout. You’re in too deep for me to try and help you. I wouldn’t help you even if I could. You can go to the gas chamber and I wouldn’t lift a finger to save your neck. Your neck ain’t worth the trouble to me or to anybody else.”

Reavis whined and whimpered: “What the hell are you talking about, Elaine. I didn’t do nothing wrong. Are the police after me?”

“You know damn well they are. This time you’re going to get it, so

“Come on now, Elaine, settle down. That’s no kind of talk to use on your little brother.” He forced his voice into an ingratiating rhythm and put one hand on her shoulder. She took it off and held her purse in both hands.

“You can save it. You’ve talked me into too much trouble in my life. Ever since you stole that dollar bill from maw’s purse and tried to shift it onto me, I knew you were heading for a bad end.”

“You’ve done real good for yourself, Elaine. Selling it for two-bits in town on Saturday night before you was out of pigtails. You still charging for it, or do you pay them?”

The concussion of her palm against his cheek cracked like a twenty-two among the trees. His fist answered the blow, thudding into her neck. She staggered, and her sharp heels gouged holes in the sandy earth. When she recovered her balance, the gun was in her hand.

Reavis looked at it uncomprehendingly, and took a step toward her. “You don’t have to go off your rocker. I’m sorry I hit you, Elaine. Hell, you hit me first.”

Her whole body was leaning and focused on the gun: the handle of a door that had always resisted her efforts, and still resisted. “Stay away from me.” Her low whisper buzzed like a rattler’s tail. “I’ll put you on the Salt Lake highway and I never want to see you again in my life. You’re a big boy now, Pat, big enough to kill people. Well, I’m a big enough girl.”

“You got me all wrong, sis.” But he stayed where he was, his hands loose and futile at his sides. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

“You lie. You’d kill me for the gold in my teeth. I seen you going through my purse this afternoon.”

He laughed shortly. “You’re crazy. I’m loaded, sis, I could put you on easy street.” He reached for his left hip pocket.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said.

“Don’t be crazy, I want to show you—”

The safety clicked. The door that had resisted her was about to open. Her whole body bent tensely over the gun. Reavis’s hands rose from his side of their own accord, like huge brown butterflies. He looked sullen and stupid in the face of death.

“Are you coming?” she said. “Or do you want to die? You’re wanted by the cops, they wouldn’t even touch me if I killed you. What loss would it be to anybody? You never gave nothing but misery to a single soul since you got out of the cradle.”

“I’ll go along, Elaine.” His nerve had broken, suddenly and easily. “But you’ll be sorry, I warn you. You don’t know what you’re doing. Anyway, you can put away that gun.”

I wasn’t likely to get a better cue. I stepped from behind my tree with my gun ready. “A good idea. Drop the gun, Mrs. Schneider. You, Reavis, keep up your hands.”

Her whole body jerked. “Augh!” she said viciously. The small bright automatic fell from her hand, rustled and gleamed in the leaves in front of her feet.

Reavis glanced at me, the color mounting floridly in his face. “Archer?”

I said: “The name is Leatherstocking.”

He turned on his sister: “So you had to bring a cop along, you had to wreck everything?”

“What if I did?” she growled.

“Hold it, Reavis.” I picked up the woman’s gun. “And you, Mrs. Schneider, go away.”

“Are you a cop?”

“This isn’t question period. I could haul you in for accessory. Now go away, before I change my mind.”

I kept my gun on Reavis, dropped hers into the pocket of my jacket. She turned awkwardly on her heels and went to the Chevrolet, her hard face kneaded by the first indications of regret at what she had done.

Chapter 16

When she was gone, I told Reavis to turn his back. Terror yanked at his mouth and pulled it open. “You ain’t going to shoot me?”

“Not if you stand still.”

He turned slowly, reluctantly, trying to watch me over his shoulder. He carried no gun. A rectangular package bulged in his right hip pocket. He started when I unbuttoned the pocket, then held himself tense and still as I drew out the package. It was wrapped in brown paper. A melancholy sigh of pain and loss came out of him, as if I had removed a vital organ. I tore one end of the paper with my teeth, and saw the corner of a thousand-dollar bill.

“You don’t have to bother to count it,” Reavis said thickly. “It’s ten grand. Can I turn around now?”

I stepped back, slipping the torn package into the inside breast pocket of my jacket. “Turn around slowly, hands on the head. And tell me who’d pay you ten thousand dollars for bumping off an old lady with a weak heart.”

He turned, his blank face twisting, trying to get the feel of a story to tell. His fingers scratched unconsciously in his hair. “You got me wrong, I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“If it was big enough to bite back, you wouldn’t.”

“I never had nothing to do with that death. It must of been an accident.”

“And it was pure coincidence you were on the spot when it happened.”

“Yeah, pure coincidence.” He seemed grateful for the phrase. “I just went out to say goodbye to Cathy, I thought she might come along with me, even.”

“Be glad she didn’t. You’d be facing a Ma

“Murder rap, hell. They can’t pin murder on an i

“Where were you with her?”

“Out in front of the house, in one of the cars.” It sounded to me as if he was telling the truth: Cathy had been sitting in my car when I went out. “We used to sit out there and talk,” he added.

“About your adventures on Guadalcanal?”

“Go to hell.”

“All right, so that’s your story. She wouldn’t go along with you, but she gave you ten grand as a souvenir of your friendship.”

“I didn’t say she gave it to me. It’s my own money.”

“Chauffeurs make big money nowadays. Or is Gretchen just one of a string that pays you a percentage?”

He studied me with narrowed eyes, obviously shaken by my knowledge of him. “It’s my own money,” he repeated stubbornly. “It’s clean money, nothing illegal about it.”

“Maybe it was clean before you touched it. It’s dirty money now.”

“Money is money, isn’t it? I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you two grand. Twenty per cent, that’s a good percentage.”

“You’re very generous. But I happen to have it all, a hundred per cent.”

“All right, five grand then. It’s my money, don’t forget, I promoted it myself.”