Savage Lover [= Sinner Man]

19

I left the Stennett again around nine. I stopped at an army surplus store and bought a money belt. The clerk didn’t know what I was talking about at first. Then he found one somewhere in the back and sold it to me. I left it in the bag he put it in and carried it downtown to the bank.

I went downstairs to the safe-deposit vault. A thin gray man led me inside, then used first his key and then my key on the box I’d rented, took it from its niche in the wall and gave it to me. I carried it across to one of the private booths along the wall and locked myself up with it. I opened the box and took out my money.

There was a lot of it, all tax-free, all mine. I counted out seven thousand dollars. There was a lot more upstairs in the checking account, enough so that I could pay Annie with no trouble at all.

I filled the belt with money. I hung my coat and jacket over the back of the chair, opened my pants and fitted the belt around me, underneath my slacks. I got dressed again, carried the empty box outside and gave it to the thin gray man. He used his key and my key to lock the box back in place.

I went to the nearest five-and-dime store. I bought a cloth airlines bag, a package of absorbent cotton and a bottle of black hair dye. I walked farther downtown, turned east and went to three secondhand clothing stores. In one of them I bought a pair of work shoes in fairly good shape. In another I bought a pair of denim slacks and a plain flannel shirt. In the third I picked up a secondhand lumber jacket, a little frayed around the collar but in pretty good condition otherwise. I loaded the airlines bag with everything but the jacket and took a cab to the bus terminal. I found a locker and stowed the bag and the jacket in it.

Around noon I had lunch downtown. I ate a few hamburgers and drank a few cups of coffee. I still wasn’t at all tired. Then I walked around downtown Buffalo. The weather was clear, a little snow underfoot but none falling — the town looked better than usual. I passed my office building and then went back and rode up to my office on the eighteenth floor. My secretary wasn’t around. I opened a few letters and left them on the desk. I looked around to see if there were anything I wanted. There wasn’t.

From the window I could see most of the city. I stood by it for a few minutes and watched cars crawl through the streets like fat shiny beetles. I thought about the town. It had been good to me.

I used my office phone to call the air terminal. I reserved a seat on a plane to Philadelphia leaving Buffalo at a few minutes to four. I used the name Nathaniel Crowley. I hung up and left the office.

The air was cooler now. I walked around for a few minutes. I looked at my watch. It was after two.

I didn’t go right away. I walked around a little more, thinking it over, trying to decide. It wasn’t absolutely necessary, wasn’t necessary at all. In fact it meant taking another chance, an extra chance. But it was something I had to do.

Maybe it was an idea of justice that had seeped into Nat Crowley. A notion of balance, and right and wrong. Maybe it was a poetic hangover from the Donald Barshter period. There was poetry in it, certainly. And I was still both people, a hard-to-figure combination of Barshter and Crowley.

Whatever it was, it had to be that way.

So at two-thirty I walked into the Malmsly. I gave my name at the desk and they called her on the phone. She said to send me straight up. I went straight up.

Her room was on a high floor. I knocked at the door and she opened it for me. She was wearing a white cashmere sweater and a pair of black toreador pants. I looked at them.

“New York,” she said. “I bought them on my shopping trip. How do I look, Don?”

“You look fine. We’re back to Don again?”

“For the time being. Do you like the name?”

“I don’t mind it.”

“Good.” She turned her back on me and walked to the window. She looked out, leaning against the sill. She turned around slowly, her eyes amused.

“Did you bring the money, Don?”

“Sure.”

“That’s good. It costs a lot of money to phone a lawyer in New York every day. This ten thousand will ease the burden.”

“I’m sure it will.”

“It will. May I have it now, Don?”

There was a bottle of gin on the bureau. It was about half full. That was sort of an added touch, although it would have been even better if it had been a scotch bottle. You can’t have everything.

“The money, Don.”

I took out my wallet and tossed it past her, onto the bed. She looked at me, then at the wallet. And she turned around to pick it up.

“This isn’t ten thousand,” she said. “Are you out of your—”

I hit her before she finished the sentence. I picked up the gin bottle and in one motion brought it down on her head. The cork was in the bottle. Not a drop spilled.

One blow wasn’t enough. She went down, sprawling at the foot of the bed, and she was too dazed and groggy to scream. I hit her again and again and I went right on beating her over the head until her skull was soft and it was very definitely over. I took her pulse, which was only a matter of form. She was very dead.

I looked at her again. That was a mistake, because what I saw was that fine black hair and those fine blue eyes — blind eyes now. And I saw also, for just an instant or so, an image of what could have been. In another world, perhaps. Long ago, in another country. The wench was dead now. I had murdered her.

I put the gin bottle down. I took my wallet and returned it to my jacket pocket. I did not wipe fingerprints from anything. That would have been silly.

The hallway was quiet. I stepped out of it, closing the door and locking it. I rang for the elevator. It came along soon enough and I rode to the lobby and walked out into the street.

I took a taxi to the airport. On the way I made small talk with the driver. He let me off at the entrance to the terminal. I went inside, walked over to one of the flight desks and picked up the ticket I’d reserved earlier. I paid for it with a crisp, fresh hundred-dollar bill.

Then I wandered outside again and caught another cab. I had him drop me at the bus terminal. There I got my lumber jacket and airlines bag from the locker I’d stuffed it in. I carried them upstairs to the men’s room. There was a large booth at one end where for a quarter you could do anything from taking a bath to sleeping for a quick hour. It was one of several favorite places for junkies looking for a spot to shoot up. I dropped my quarter in the slot and went inside.

I took off my coat, my jacket, my pants, my shoes. I washed up, then uncapped the bottle of hair dye and rubbed it into my hair. I worked on it until my hair was black instead of mud-colored. Then I put the bottle of dye on the edge of the sink and played around with the absorbent cotton. I packed cotton in my cheeks, under my upper lip, I checked myself in the mirror. It made a difference. How much of a difference was something I couldn’t tell for sure.

I dressed again. I put on the plaid flannel shirt, the denim work pants. I unlaced the work shoes and got my feet into them. I tied them. They weren’t as comfortable as my thirty-dollar pair but I had no complaint. The work shoes had not cost thirty dollars.

I put my own clothes back in the airlines bag. I took all my cards from my wallet, shredded them and flushed them down the toilet. I folded the money and slipped it into a pocket of the work pants. I dropped the wallet into the airlines bag. It was a shame to part with it, but men in denim pants don’t carry alligator wallets.

I looked at my watch — To Nat From Lou Baron. I dropped it into the bag. I looked at my lighter — To Nat From Tony — and dropped it into the bag too.

I checked myself in the mirror again. Not perfect, not close to perfect, but as good as I was going to be able to do. I got into the lumber jacket, zipped the airlines bag, dropped my own coat over my arm, picked up the bag and left the men’s room. I walked down a flight of stairs and went back to the lockers. I found one, used a dime on it and left the bag and the coat there. They would open that locker in time, but not for a few days.

Fifteen minutes later a bus left Buffalo headed for Cincinnati with a half-dozen minor stops along the way. I was on it.

We hit Cleveland at nine, then headed south and west. I sat in my seat and smoked a cigarette. An old man with whiskey breath dozed next to me. I tried to relax. It didn’t work.

The lawyer would have mailed the letters by now. Tomorrow the FBI would get a letter, the Buffalo police would get a letter, the home town police would get a letter. By that time, or even by now, somebody would have found Annie’s body at the foot of her bed in her room at the Malmsly.

I put out my cigarette. A minute later I scratched a match and set another one on fire. The bus kept rolling along an empty highway. I had a ticket to Cinci but somewhere along the way I was getting off. I had no idea where.

The big towns were out now. Big towns were mob towns and mob people would be looking for me. I knew too much to go on outside the organization. The mob wouldn’t look too hard but people would be keeping eyes open.

That left small towns. And a stranger stuck out like an infected pinkie in a small town.

Last time it had been easier. Last time only a few people had been looking for me and last time I’d been able to run with my own face and my own hair. Now it wasn’t safe to do that any longer. Now I had black hair and cotton in my cheeks. Someday somebody would notice this. Somebody would wonder why, and then...

I finished my cigarette and lit another one. My throat was raw from a few thousand cigarettes. I was tired but sleep was impossible. I didn’t even try.

Big towns, small towns. I had seven thousand dollars around my waist and no place to run to. Barshter was dead and Crowley was dead and I didn’t even have a new name picked out. Or a new personality, or a new person, or anything. I wondered who I would be, how I could hope to bring it off.

I sat in darkness and smoked. The drunk next to me started snoring. I went on smoking.

The Connecticut authorities were looking for Donald Barshter. The New York authorities were looking for Nat Crowley. The FBI was looking for us both.

I wondered who they’d catch first.