Day Keene Sleep with the Devil (pdf)

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teacher s certificate, and a business card introducing him as a representative
of the King James Publishing Society. He returned Parrish s wallet to his
pocket and laid the cordovan wallet beside the rag and whiskey bottle.
He d done what he could do. The rest was up to the gods. He opened
the door of the garage and stepped on the starter of the Plymouth. There
was a dull click. He tried again and the click was repeated.
Sweat beading on his forehead, Ferron got out of the car, closed the
garage door, and lifted the battered hood of the Plymouth. He was relieved
to find the source of the trouble. The ancient, greasy battery cable had jolted
off its terminals. He replaced it, getting his gloves liberally smeared with
grease in the process. When he stepped on the starter again the motor turned
over reluctantly, pooping like a two cylinder outboard motor.
Ferron peeled off his gloves and laid them with the things to be thrown
away. He opened the garage door. He backed the Plymouth out. He closed
and locked the door, making certain he didn t leave a clear fingerprint on
either the door or the lock.
Sweat was blinding him. The tight stiff collar made breathing difficult.
He tried to ease it and smeared it and his face with grease that the gloves
had left on the wheel. So? Paul Parrish didn t care how he looked. Paul
Parrish had put aside those things that were vain.
He drove back through Fort Lee. On the far side of the black
water the staggered skyline of New York was outlined boldly against
the moon. Ferron hated to see it drop behind him. New York had
been good to him. He d had a good time in New York.
He thought of Lydia and laughed. She would be fit to be tied in the
morning. She d call him everything she could think of. Still, when the big
eyes questioned her, there wasn t a thing she could tell them. Ferron
laughed even louder. His spending most of the night with Lydia would still
further confuse the issue. The police wouldn t know what to think.
He drove on steadily, as fast as the car would go, a modest thirty-
five miles an hour. Ten miles past the bridge he dropped the oil rag from
the car. Ten miles still farther on he dropped one of the gloves. An hour
out of Fort Lee he wiped the bottle with the remaining glove and
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SLEEP WITH THE DEVIL
dropped the bottle on the pavement. There was a satisfactory crash.
Two hours, then three hours, passed. Dawn wasn t far away when he
pulled over onto the shoulder of the road, extracted Les Ferron s identity
cards from their glassine envelopes in the wallet and tore them into minute
shreds which he spread over another five miles of highway. Now all that
remained was the wallet and one glove.
Ferron waited until he came to a culvert he remembered and dropped
the wallet into the swiftly flowing stream cascading down the hillside to join
the river. He was sorry to see the wallet go. It was an expensive wallet. It
had brought him good luck from the night he d pinched it from a drunken
civilian employee at the separation center in L.A.
The trees were beginning to brighten and the birds to sing as he dropped
the second glove. His set smile grew even more smug. Let the law find him
now. If he should happen to be picked up, the law couldn t prove a thing.
Les Ferron had ceased to exist. He was Paul Parrish, son of the late Tom
Parrish, former soldier and rural schoolteacher and current itinerant peddler
of the authorized King James version of the Holy Bible, as translated out of
the original tongues.
Traffic increased with the growing dawn. State patrol cars passed him
twice, one going the other way, one headed the same way he was.
With full dawn, reaction and fatigue set in. Ferron s hands shook on
the wheel. He wanted a drink. He wanted a cigarette. He wished to Christ
the whole thing was over and he was wherever he was going to head for
after he d tumbled Amy and conned old man Wayne.
A tinkling sound annoyed him. Ferron tried to locate it and couldn t. It
was lost among the rattles and piston slap and squeaking of the car. He tried
the lock of the glove compartment. He tried the handles that rolled up the
windows. Then he realized what it was and swore softly. It was his wrist on
the steering wheel. He was still wearing the platinum wristwatch Lydia had
given him, and it was worth more than his stock and car.
Anything? he d taunted Lydia.
I ve already done that, she d told him. Where do you think your
thousand-dollar wrist watch came from?
There were cars in front and in back of him now. His hands shaking so
badly it was almost impossible for him to drive, Ferron swung into a scenic
turn-out overlooking the river and sat a moment, motionless, until his panic
subsided.
Then getting out of the car he slipped the watch from his wrist.
The back of it was inscribed, With All My Love, From Lydia to Les.
Ferron wiped the watch on the skirt of his coat, waited for a lull in
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SLEEP WITH THE DEVIL
traffic, then hurled the watch as far as he could. Here the banks of the
river were sheer. The watch twinkled silver in the growing sun, then made
a small splash as it struck the water.
Ferron brushed the palms of his hands together. A lot Lydia loved
him. The goddam little red-haired tart might have gotten him electro-
cuted.
Nine o clock found him out of the hills in gently rolling farm
country. The speedometer of the Plymouth had long since ceased to
work, but as closely as he could calculate he was at least two hun-
dred miles from Fort Lee.
A hearty breakfast resting easy in his stomach, Ferron studied the
country around him. It was as good as any. Reaching over the back of the
front seat he took a large and rather garish Bible from a carton and laid it
on the seat beside him. He called it his large economy family size and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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