The Bitch by Gil Brewer Read Free Book Online

the floor. I was enclosed in a winding lane between high-roofed, windy-looking, wooden buildings. The lane dipped upward at a savage angle and the car struck loose boards across a rickety bridge and leaped off the far side. It dove downward. I stood up on the brakes and felt the brutal shocks as the car ripped through deep-shelved mud-sinks.
    A spotlight swept across the end of the alley I was nearing, flickering against bricks that glistened in the rain. Another lane cut off to the right and I took this. It ran parallel with the stream I had crossed, but down a steep bank. To the left were the beginnings of the Negro tenement homes, rising like scattered shrouds against the haloed, raining night. Rain swept like a dragged curtain of broken glass, pounding against the convertible top.
    The convertible burst out upon another dirt street and I cramped the wheels, sliding up across a grassy lawn. A dog leaped yelping out of the way and another car’s headlights swam blindingly in front of me. I cramped the wheel again, then straightened, figuring it was the cops.
    It was a battered truck. Back on the road, I opened the car up again, the wheels slithering in rutted mud.
    There was no place to go. All I could think of was those two bodies lying back there in the rain. The police would be hovering over them now, flashlights blinking, and by this time my name would have been spoken. Sam would have been warned. It was perfect.
    Who had fired those shots and killed those men. And why? Whoever it was, the cops coming must have scared them away. They hadn’t had a chance to kill me, or get the money, if that’s what they were after. I had the police and maybe
them
to contend with. It was a bad thought.
    I turned the car onto the main highway and set the gas pedal to the floor.
    I had to hide the money.
    But where?
    I couldn’t think. It was like running frantically in front of a windstorm, knowing you had to stop, but being unable to stop. I didn’t know where to go.
    There was a church up ahead on the corner, with a parking lane running up behind the building. I turned in there and drove up under a small shed and parked. It was a wooden-roofed room, cluttered with lawn-mowers and other grounds machinery—rakes, hoes, shovels. I cut the lights and sat there. Seeing the shovels made me think of burying the money. But I forgot it as quickly.
    I could hear the sirens again.
    My hands were frozen on the car wheel. I could feel the sloppy weight of the canvas money sack leaning against my leg. I flipped it across to the other side of the car, and sat there listening to my harsh breathing.
    Christ, what was I going to do?
    I knew I had to move. The entire area would be culled for this convertible in no time at all. A state wide alarm would be out. Road blocks would be set up. I didn’t know what to do. Where to go. My mind refused to come up with anything but the calm dredgings of death.
    Somebody was walking down the lane behind the church.
    I tried to see who it was. It was a man, a Negro, stooped behind a small wheelbarrow loaded with prunings from trees. He slopped along through the thin mud, rain dripping from a black hat. The streetlights shone gleaming on his black face. He looked toward the car. I ducked.
    I waited.
    The wheelbarrow ceased grinding in the mud. I could hear the steadied drip and fall of the rain. I kept absolutely still and there was no sound, nothing at all, but the rain, and the faraway call of the sirens. They were much fainter now.
    He cleared his throat just above the car window.
    I leaped back across the seat.
    “That’s all right,” he said calmly. “I reckon you all got enough reason for setting there, ain’t you?”
    I looked at him. The rain streamed around him. He wore a thick black raincoat, snapped high under his throat with heavy brass clasps. His teeth gleamed like carved soap.
    “Ain’t you?” he said.
    I still could not speak. There was a great patience in his face, the whites of his eyes