John D. MacDonald

Scared Money

He drove fast through the night, thinking of that last hand. Damn that Devlan, suggesting raising the limit for that last hand. As though he knew he was going to get the case ace in the hole. It had been a long and very expensive hand. As he drove, Harry Varney figured he had dropped forty dollars on that last hand. Poker seemed to be getting too rich for his blood, lately. The disastrous last hand had left him with almost an eighty dollar deficit for the evening.

And that was too much. Way too much. He remembered with self-contempt the elaborate casualness with which, as the game broke up and as Dick Winkler was paying off the chip stacks from the bank, he had suggested to Devlan that they cut high card for twenty dollars. Devlan, he knew, had not been derived. But Devlan, as big winner, couldn’t very well refuse.

Harry Varney remembered the bright light shining down on the green table top. The others were over putting their coats on. He remembered his own hand reached out, taking a thin cut, remembered the hot good feeling as he turned the thin stack just enough so that he caught a glimpse of the spade jack. But Devlan, almost contemptuously, had cut the remaining cards, flipped over the heart king. And Harry Varney, taking the last two tens out of his wallet, instinctively turned so that Devlan could not see the two remaining bills — two lonely and ineffectual one-dollar bills left out of the hundred dollars he had taken to the club with such high hopes at eight o’clock.

“Guess you’ve had one of those nights, Harry,” Devlan had said.

For a moment Varney had been tempted to suggest another cut for twenty dollars. Devlan couldn’t know that the wallet was nearly empty. But a thing like that — should he lose — betting without the stake, could mean being barred from the game. So he had said, as casually as possible, “You boys bruised me a little tonight.”

Bruised, hell! Izobel, when she found out about it, as she inevitably would, was going to be merciless. He could hear her thin voice: “Oh, you have to be the big shot! You have to, don’t you? Swagger and brag and throw your money around. I hope you can remember what we owe.”

Last year he had won pretty consistently. Last year, of course, when he didn’t have to win. Now he played with scared money. And the damn fool thing tonight had been to sign for those drinks at the club. Six rounds was it, or seven? Seven — by the way the yellow line down the middle of the highway kept turning into two lines. Vision was better if he kept one eye shut.

Losing the Taylor account had been the advertising agency’s first blow. For years it had accounted for almost half his income. Things seemed to be getting worse at the agency, and Izobel seemed to become shriller every day.

There was a dull anger in him at the way things seemed to be closing in. The poker crowd could sense it all right. They could smell scared money. He remembered what had happened to Stolts last year, remembered the night that Stolts had been banker, and had kept dipping into the bank chips so that at the end of the evening he couldn’t pay off all the way around. And Stolts had given Devlan a check that later turned out to be bad. Harry Varney remembered last year, how he had told Dick and Devlan that if Stolts showed again, it would be better to tell him he couldn’t play.

The club dues were overdue, and the bill would be fat this month. It made him feel cold inside, the way things were going. The check he’d cashed, for a hundred, took the balance down. Way down, and he didn’t dare enter it in the check book, not with Izobel using the joint account. He’d cashed a counter check.

His face felt thick and sweaty and he felt faintly ill from the drinks. He was driving fast. He decided he would open the front window vent so as to direct a blast of the cool air at his face. It was three in the morning, and the highway ahead was empty. He looked away from the road for a fraction of a second as he reached for the handle to open the vent. When he looked back he saw the flick of movement so startlingly close that he did not have time to either swerve or get his foot onto the brake pedal before he felt the sick solid thump of sixty-mile-an-hour metal hitting flesh.

He got the brake on far too late. The car swerved and he fought the wheel; got the big, expensive, mortgaged car under control. He drove off onto the shoulder and managed to stall the engine. Far down the road, coming toward him, he saw the twin headlights, the smaller high lights of a truck. With an instinctive secrecy, he turned off his own lights, and sat in the darkness. The truck droned by him, the motor noise changing to a minor key as it swept by. The wind it generated rocked his car a little, and he heard the truck sound die away in the distance.

The instinct to drive away and not look back was almost too strong. At last, he took the flashlight from the glove compartment, got heavily out of the car. His brain had been shocked into complete sobriety, but his legs still felt drunk and unwieldy.

He stood in the night for a few moments, a big man with a salesman’s face and a soft waistline. He went around in front of the car and listened for traffic sound. There was none. He heard the far-off metallic honk of a diesel train. He held the light on his front right fender. It was smashed in, almost against the tire thread.

The heavy bumper guard was canted back, the headlight smashed, its chrome rim bent. A good forty or fifty dollars worth, he thought, realizing as the thought came into his mind that it was incongruous. He bent closer, but he could see no blood, or fabric or hair on the crumpled metal.

He straightened up, and turned off the flash as he heard a car coming. It seemed to take a long time. It went by him at a sedate speed, an old car with high square lines. They had had one just like it, he remembered. Years ago, when Izobel had been less shrill. How many cars since then? Six, seven at least. It was necessary to keep up appearances. You couldn’t call on an account driving an old heap.

All this was delaying what he knew he had to do. Someone might be back there, bleeding badly, dying. You had to stop, even if you ran over a dog. It was a cold night. The ruts of the soft shoulder were frozen. He found the place of impact. The bits of broken headlight glass winked coldly in the starlight.

The twin black lines of rubber picked up a few feet beyond the point of impact and continued for at least forty feet. He put the light on the glass. The road was empty. The shoulder was empty. There was a wetness on the frozen ruts. It looked black in the white beam of the flashlight.

He found the body in the shallow ditch beyond the shoulder, half concealed in the tall dead winter weeds. He held the light on the dead face, and then turned it off. Two cars went by and he stood with his back to the highway. It was the body of an old man. There was no doubt of death. None. The body wore layers of ragged sweaters. The shoes were broken. The open mouth exposed toothless gums. Over the smell of the liquor in his own system, Harry Varney could detect the alcohol reek of the body.

It wasn’t fair. Not fair; for it to have been this old bum. This useless wandering nobody. Killing this one was almost doing him a favor. He suspected that, sober, he could have carried it off. It would have been a little difficult, of course, because they could measure his skid marks and approximate his speed, but he was used to dealing with people, perfectly aware of his own ability to sell himself. But driving while drunk, at three in the morning — he knew he couldn’t pass the drunkometer test, walk any chalk line. It was frightening to be so coldly sober inside, while the body weaved and staggered. An old bum, tanked to the ears, wandering out into a public highway.

When he heard the next truck coming, he stepped across the ditch and squatted in the field behind the screen of weeds. The law had ways of finding out. They had their damn microscopes and their spectroanalysis. He hated the old man for being dead. It wasn’t fair. Even the minimum penalty would be impossible — a suspension of his driving license. He had to have the car and be able to use it. Hiding the body would be no good. He couldn’t risk taking the car into any repair garage, not looking like that, not with the bashed place so evidently made by a human body.

Still squatting, even after the truck had gone by, he hit his knee with his fist. Think, Varney. Think, damn you. If you never did before, use your head now. And to think that you were complaining about losing a hundred bucks! Life had turned sour, you thought. In retrospect, it was a delightful life.

Slowly the plan began to form in his mind. He began to have that good hot feeling in his throat, that same feeling as when he had caught a glimpse of the spade jack.

He went out without the flashlight lit, and painfully picked up the little glinting bits of glass. Twice he had to lumber back to cover as cars went by, moving fast. He made a hasty check with the flashlight and located one more fair-sized piece. The remaining glass dust he scuffed off the highway with the edge of his shoe. He was tempted to throw the glass into the weeds, and then decided they might be suspicious if they did not find enough glass. He hurried to the car and carefully placed the glass fragments inside the broken right headlight. The chrome ring retained them. He backed down the highway quickly and pulled off onto the shoulder near the body, and turned off his lights.

He dragged the body to the car, let go of it, got the door open, then got it up into the seat. It was disconcertingly slack. It toppled over against the wheel. He rolled the window down, reached through and pulled it back so that it leaned, instead, against the door. Starlight was pale on the old broken face, the stained matted hair. On a hunch he searched the area carefully and was enormously glad he had done so. He found a bulging old suitcase tied with rope, a shapeless felt hat. He put the felt hat on the head, opened the back door and set the suitcase in on the floor.

He got behind the wheel and waited until a car went by before turning his own lights on and starting out. The body toppled over against him and he pushed it away with a sudden panic that made him breathe hard.

He drove cautiously, rehearsing his lines. “It was a cold night, and I guess I just felt sorry for the old guy, seeing him there, trying to hitch a ride. I was sorry as soon as he got in the car. He was drunk and noisy. It happened when he reached over and grabbed the wheel and yanked so that it steered us right into — tree, pole, what have you. Smashed hell out of my car. That’s what I get for trying to be a nice guy. Me? Oh, I had a couple of drinks at the club, but I had the car under control until he grabbed the wheel that way.”

He drove slowly, aware of the body propped up near him, yet careful not to look at it. Just bang hell out of that front right corner of the car. Smash it up good. And open the door and tumble the old guy out, then stop the next car. It would have to be a place where a good solid tree grew close enough to the road. He peered ahead. A car came in sight in the distance, rounding a curve. That curve might be a good place, he decided. It would look right. Who would examine the car for evidence of two accidents? One impact would disuguise the previous one. He dimmed his lights for the oncoming car, put them back on high when he was by it. As he looked ahead, he noticed out of the corner of his eye, in the rear view mirror, that the car he had just passed was swinging around in a U-turn.

Harry Varney held tightly to the wheel, staring into the rear vision mirror. Somebody forgot something. Somebody changed their mind. That was all. That had to be all.

He saw the headlights coming up behind him and he suddenly saw the big red light on top of the car flick on, heard the warning touch of the siren in a low register. He jammed the accelerator down to the floor. The big car jumped ahead. He drove with his mouth open, sagging. His lips felt numb. The siren made a high screaming sustained sound. His big car rocked with the speed and he knew it was time to turn it into the trees that lined the road, but he could not force himself to do it at that speed.

The police sedan came up beside him, and all of the nerve went out of Harry Varney. He began to pump the brake. They stopped ahead of him, put a swivel searchlight bright in his face. He squinted and he saw them coming back, two of them, tall and young, guns drawn.

One of them approached on his side. “Out, Mister. Get out fast, and hands in the air.”

As Harry Varney got out, he heard the other patrolman at the other side of the car. “You too, Pop. Out.”

The one in front of Harry said, “Turn around and keep those hands up, Mister.”

The other one said, in an entirely new tone of voice, “George, take a look at this. George, you got to take a look at this.”

Harry stood, hands high. He kept his eyes shut, but the bright spotlight shone pink through his closed lids. He heard them talk in low tones. His arms were getting tired. His head ached. He felt sick again.

“Why did you come after me?” he asked. “Why?” His voice sounded thin in his own ears. Sharp and thin like Izobel’s.

He felt the wallet being taken out of his hip pocket. There was no answer to his question. He asked it again.

One of the patrolmen said: “Because, Mr. Varney, or whoever you are, we got a law in this state. We’re nice guys. We were only going to warn you. In this state when you drive at night you got to have both headlights working.”

Content

John D. MacDonald
Scared Money