"Sure enough?" I said, "Is that a fact?"
I laid my cigar down on an ashtray, leaned back on the pillow and closed my eyes. A chair creaked and squeaked real loud, and I heard Howard say, "Now Jeff"-and there was a sound like he'd sort of stumbled.
I opened my eyes again. Jeff Plummer was standing over me.
He was smiling down at me with his lips and there was a.45 in his hand, and the hammer was thumbed back.
"You right sure you ain't coming with us?" he said. "You don't reckon you could change your mind?"
The way he sounded I knew he hoped I wouldn't change it. He was just begging, waiting for me to say no. And I reckoned I wouldn't say all of even a short word like that before I was past saying anything.
I got up and began to dress.
22
If I'd known that Rothman's lawyer friend, Billy Boy Walker, was tied up in the East and was having trouble getting away, I might have felt different. I might have cracked up right off. But, on the other hand, I don't think I would have. I had a feeling that I was speeding fast down a one-way trail, that I was almost to the place I had to get to. I was almost there and moving fast, so why hop off and try to run ahead? It wouldn't have made a particle of sense, and you know I don't do things that don't make sense. You know it or you will know it.
That first day and that night, I spent in one of the «quiet» cells, but the next morning they put me on ice, down in the cooler where I'd-where Johnnie Pappas had died. They- How's that? Well, sure they can do it to you. They can do anything they're big enough to do and you're little enough to take. They don't book you. No one knows where you are, and you've got no one on the outside that can get you out. It's not legal, but I found out long ago that the place where the law is apt to be abused most is right around a courthouse.
Yeah, they can do it all right.
So I was saying. I spent the first day and night in one of the quiet cells, and most of the time I was trying to kid myself. I couldn't face up to the truth yet, so I tried to play like there was a way around it. You know. Those kid games?
You've done something pretty bad or you want something bad, and you think, well, if I can just do such and such I can fix it. If I can count down from a thousand backwards by three and a third or recite the Gettysburg address in pig-latin while I'm touching my little toes with my big ones, everything will be all right.
I'd play those games and their kin-kind, doing real impossible things in my imagination. I'd trot all the way from Central City to San Angelo without stopping. Or they'd grease the pipeline across the Pecos River, and I'd hop across it on one foot with my eyes blindfolded and an anvil around my neck. I'd really get to sweating and panting sometimes. My feet'd be all achy and blistered from pounding that San Angelo Highway, and that old anvil would keep swinging and dragging at me, trying to pull me off into the Pecos; and finally I'd win through, just plumb worn out. And-and I'd have to do something still harder.
Well, then they moved me down into the cooler where Johnnie Pappas had died, and pretty soon I saw why they hadn't put me there right away. They'd had a little work to do on it first. I don't know just how they'd rigged the stunt-only that that unused light-socket in the ceiling was part of it. But I was stretched out on the bunk, fixing to shinny up the water tower without using my hands, when all at once I heard Johnnie's voice:
"Hello, you lovely people. I'm certainly having a fine time and I wish you were here. See you soon."
Yes, it was Johnnie, speaking in that sharp smart-alecky way he used a lot. I jumped up from the bunk and started turning around and looking up and down and sideways. And here his voice came again:
"Hello, you lovely people. I'm certainly having a fine time and I wish you were here. See you soon."
He kept saying the same thing over and over, about fifteen seconds between times, and, hell, as soon as I had a couple minutes to think, I knew what it was all about. It was one of those little four-bit voice recordings, like you've just about got time to sneeze on before it's used up. Johnnie'd sent it to his folks the time he visited the Dallas Fair. He'd mentioned it to me when he told me about the trip-and I'd remembered because I liked Johnnie and would remember. He'd mentioned it, apologizing for not sending me some word. But he'd lost all his dough in some kind of wheel game and had to hitchhike back to Central City.
"Hello, you lovely people…"
I wondered what kind of story they'd given the Greek, because I was pretty sure he wouldn't have let 'em have it if he'd known what it was going to be used for. He knew how I felt about Johnnie and how Johnnie'd felt about me.
They kept playing that record over and over, from maybe five in the morning until midnight; I don't know just what the hours were because they'd taken away my watch. It didn't even stop when they brought me food and water twice a day.
I'd lie and listen to it, or sit and listen. And every once in a while, when I could remember to do it, I'd jump up and pace around the cell. I'd pretend like it was bothering the hell out of me, which of course it didn't at all. Why would it? But I wanted 'em to think it did, so they wouldn't turn it off. And I guess I must have pretended pretty good, because they played it for three days and part of a fourth. Until it wore out, I reckon.
After that there wasn't much but silence, nothing but those faraway sounds like the factory whistles which weren't any real company for a man.
They'd taken away my cigars and matches, of course, and I fidgeted around quite a bit the first day, thinking I wanted a smoke. Yeah, thinking, because I didn't actually want one. I'd been smoking cigars for-well-around eleven years; ever since my eighteenth birthday when Dad had said I was getting to be a man, so he hoped I'd act like one and smoke cigars and not go around with a coffinnail in my mouth. So I'd smoked cigars, from then on, never admitting to myself that I didn't like them. But now I could admit it. I had to, and I did.
When life attains a crisis, man's focus narrows. Nice lines, huh? I could talk that way all the time if I wanted to. The world becomes a stage of immediate concern, swept free of illusion. I used to could talk that way all the time.
No one had pushed me around or even tried to question me since the morning they'd locked me up. No one, at all. And I'd tried to tell myself that that was a good sign. They didn't have any evidence; I'd got their goats, so they'd put me on ice, just like they'd done with plenty of other guys. And pretty soon they'd simmer down and let me go of their own accord, or Billy Boy Walker'd show up and they'd have to let me out… that's what I'd told myself and it made sense-all my reasoning does. But it was top-of-the-cliff sense, not the kind you make when you're down near the tag-end of the rope.
They hadn't tried to beat the truth out of me or talk it out of me for a couple of reasons. First of all, they were pretty sure it wouldn't do any good. You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off. Second-the second reason was-they didn't think they had to.
They had evidence.
They'd had it right from the beginning.
Why hadn't they sprung it on me? Well, there were a couple of reasons behind that, too. For one thing, they weren't sure that it was evidence because they weren't sure about me. I'd thrown them off the track with Johnnie Pappas. For another thing, they couldn't use it-it wasn't in shape to be used.
But now they were sure of what I'd done, though they probably weren't too clear as to why I'd done it. And that evidence would be ready to be used before long. And I didn't reckon they'd let go of me until it was ready. Conway was determined to get me, and they'd gone too far to back down.