Dzhon Makdonald - Scared Money - John D. MacDonald - Justice (1955-10)

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, couldnt 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 oclock.

Guess youve had one of those nights, Harry, Devlan had said.

For a moment Varney had been tempted to suggest another cut for twenty dollars. Devlan couldnt 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, dont 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 didnt 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 agencys 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 couldnt 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 couldnt 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 hed cashed, for a hundred, took the balance down. Way down, and he didnt dare enter it in the check book, not with Izobel using the joint account. Hed 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 salesmans 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 couldnt 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 wasnt 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 couldnt 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.