“Don't believe it. All I need is a little time.” “You wouldn't like my world,” she said. “You wouldn't like me, either, after you got to know me.”
“The way I feel about you has nothing to do with liking you. I just have to have you. As for this world of yours, all I ask is that it be different from the one I've known all my life.”
I moved in front of her, lifted her chin, and made her look at me. “You've been in my brain ever since I first saw you. After that night in my cabin I started cutting myself away from Creston and everything connected with it.”
She smiled faintly. “You're a convincing man, Joe.” “It's a deal?”
She nodded. “It's a deal, as you say. Now tell me how you're going to convince Karl.”
That was when we heard the Buick outside. It pulled into the carport beside the cabin and I said, “I won't have to tell you. You can see for yourself.”
Sheldon was surprised to find me there with his wife, but not too much surprised. He said, “Well, Hooper...” then stepped over to the table and put down a brief case and some papers. Maybe he was used to walking into situations like this. He eased into a chair at the table and Paula lay across the bed, her eyes alive, her body, tense.
Sheldon said, “Did you want to see me about something, Hooper?”
“Yes.”
“Well, out with it.”
The way he said it did something to me. A spring snapped. The words came out like pistol shots. “All right Sheldon, here it is. It has to do with you and me and an ex-convict named Bunt Manley. It has to do with a box factory and a thirty-thousand-dollar payroll. Does any of that ring a bell?”
He was surprised this time and showed it.
“I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.”
I was impatient now and wanted to get it over with. “Look,” I said, coming toward him. “I know what you and Manley are planning to do. It would scare hell out of you to know how close I came to telling the police. But I didn't. I got to thinking.”
I let it hang, watching Sheldon's face. One second it was red with rage, and then it was gray. Paula sat up on the bed, her mouth half open, looking as though she were going to laugh.
She didn't laugh. After a moment she lay back on her elbows and stared at me, not making a move, not even blinking.
Sheldon's anger was pretty thin when he said, “I think you're crazy, Hooper. I still don't know what you're talking about.”
“Goddamnit! I haven't thought this thing out just for the sake of argument. Get that through your head, will you? I came here to talk business.”
He'd had a pretty bad shock, but he was quick to regain his poise. He began putting things together, slowly at first, and then it came with a rush, like a summer storm, and he had the whole picture.
He looked at me and a suggestion of a sneer began to form at the corners of his mouth.
“You punks,” he said hoarsely. “You all think you can ride luck, nothing but luck, to the very top, but you never think of the long fall down. Eavesdropping must be very interesting, Hooper. You must hear some interesting things in these cabins, even some profitable things, maybe, although I doubt that you have the brains or imagination to bring them off.”
I almost hit him. He was big and in good condition, but I could have taken him. But I didn't. I snapped a steel trap on my temper and held it.
I said, “I think we should talk business.”
“With a punk like you, Hooper?” He looked as though he might laugh, but didn't. Instead, he dropped back into his chair and sat there looking at me, shaking his head.
I said, “There's thirty thousand dollars in that factory, Sheldon. That's ten thousand a man, not bad for about an hour's work.”
I could see that he wasn't going for it. He wasn't the kind to let himself be pushed into a thing he didn't like. My ground was falling out from under me.
Then I noticed the papers that Sheldon had put on the table, and I could see, what they were. There was a detailed diagram of the factory layout, streets and highway, and there were other sketches that I took to be diagrams of the office interior and warehouse. I took a step forward and scooped up a fistful of the papers. When I straightened up I was looking into the muzzle of a .38.
It was a Police Special. Most of the bluing had been worn off around the muzzle and the front sight had been filed off even with the barrel. In Sheldon's brown hand it looked businesslike and deadly.
“Those papers,” he said, holding out his free hand.
“You've already talked to Manley, haven't you?” I said. “You didn't like the way he laid it out, so you called off the job.”
I studied that pistol for one long second, then handed him the papers.
“You punks,” he said again. “I don't know anyone named Manley. I don't know anything about a box factory. I'm just a tourist who made the mistake of spending the night in this rat trap of yours—and after these papers are burned, you can't prove I'm anything else. Besides, I don't think you'll holler cop, Hooper. You'd have a bit of explaining to do yourself.”
He smiled.
The robbery couldn't be called off! My whole future was built on this one thing, this one night. Without its support, all my tomorrows would come crashing down.
“Look.” I hardly recognized the voice as my own. Sheldon still had that pistol in his hand, but I ignored it now. “Look,” I said again, and stepped right in front of him, right in front of the muzzle of that gun, “look at these sketches.” I grabbed them from his hand, scattered them out on the table. Then, with one sweep, I brushed them all on the floor. “I told you I was here to talk business,” I said. Get me some paper and a pencil, and I'll prove it.”
For one long moment he did nothing. I could see a thousand things going on behind his eyes, like lemons and plums and bells whirling past the windows of a slot machine. Paula still lay back on her elbows, staring with a kind of dumb fascination.
Then, at last, things stopped happening behind Sheldon's eyes. I heard the soft sound of breath whistling between his teeth. There was a little click as he switched the safety on that .38, then he slipped the pistol into his waistband and said, “Get it for him, Paula. Pencil and paper.”
Paula got up lazily, almost bored now that the moment of tenseness was over. She got several sheets of note paper and a fountain pen out of one of the suitcases and brought them over to the table. Sheldon didn't say a thing. He just waited. I picked up the pen and went to work.
I had the inside of that office and warehouse and garage down perfectly. I had stepped them off, I even had the approximate dimensions. I put it all on paper and shoved it over for Sheldon to look at.
Two full minutes must have passed before he said, “Are you sure about all this?”
“I was in the place yesterday. I made it my business to find out.”
“And also to make a suspect of yourself.” The sneer was beginning to show again.
“There's a guy in the place I know,” I said. “I owed him five dollars and just dropped in to pay him.”
The sneer disappeared. “What about the safe?”
“The biggest goddamn safe I ever saw. A Kimble Monarch, Model K-four-six-seven.”
He began to relax. He even smiled, very faintly. “Given time, I could open it with a nail file. However, that won't be necessary. What about burglar alarms?”
“The place is wired, all right, front and back. But the master switch box is in the garage, where the watchman stays. It shouldn't be much of a job to find the right switch and cut off the power to the building.”
I could see that he was interested, and I began to breathe normally again. “When we cut off the power,” J said, “it will darken the building, of course, but I don't think it will be noticed because the front of the factory is lighted with floodlights.”