The Getaway (Read a Great Movie) by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

switch off the radio. Then, abruptly, he turned it up. He and Carol listened silently, tensely, to a late news bulletin.
    It was over in a moment. Carol turned the switch, turned slowly, wide-eyed, toward Doc.
    "Doc…?"
    Doc hesitated, then shook his head firmly. "Huhuh. After all, it happened almost sixty miles away from Beacon City. It couldn't have anything to do with…"
    "Why couldn't it? Who else would do a thing like that?"
    "Anyone could have. Some drunk that lost his head. Some gun-happy teenager."
    "You don't really believe that, Doc. I know you don't," Carol said. "You didn't kill him. Rudy's still alive."

    Aimed straight at the heart, Doc's bullet felled Rudy Torrento like a streak of lightning. He stopped breathing, all conscious movement. His eyes glazed, his wedge-shaped face became a foolish, frozen mask, and he crumpled silently backward, an idiot doll cast aside by its master.
    The back of his head struck against a rock in the bed of the stream. The impact deepened and extended his deathlike state. So, far from giving him a second bullet, Doc McCoy hardly gave him a second glance.
    And less than thirty minutes after Doc's departure, Rudy came to life again.
    His head ached horribly, and his first move was to roll on his stomach and batter the offending rock with his fists. Then memory returned and terror surged through him, and he hurled himself to his feet, clawing. Clawing off his coat and holster. Ripping open his shirt and undershirt. Ripping aside their bloody mess, and seeing and feeling-seeing-feeling- the scarlet frightfulness of his flesh.
    He snarled, whimpered, whined. All silently, his vocal cords constricted. He threw back his head and let out a long, silent howl; the shivering, heartbreaking cry of a dying animal. That was taken care of then; the last ceremony which instinct demanded. Now he could begin the actual business of dying. He breathed more and more rapidly. Feverish, poison-filled air rushed into his lungs, his heart raced and stuttered, and his body began to jerk and stiffen.
    I knew it, he thought dully, almost with his last thoughts. Back there years ago, back when I was just a kid, back as far as I can remember, I knew it'd be like this. Everything gettin' colder and colder, and the darkness getting deeper and deeper, an'-I knew. I KNEW!
    Knew. The word drummed through his mind, sending a signal back through the years, through thousands of miles, through the grim gray walls and chilled-steel cages of a maximum security prison. And back through time and distance came a voice which told Rudy the Piehead, one of the nation's top ten public enemies, that he was a foolish little child who knew nothing whatsoever.
    Rudy blinked, and a little color came back into his fish-gray face. "Max-?" he whispered hopefully. "You-you here, Max?"
    " But of course I am. Where else would I be, when my leetle poy Rudy is in trouble? Now, do vot I tell you, instanter!"
    Rudy did so. He was quite alone, needless to say; alone with the whispering, half-dry stream and the deep shadows of the arching trees, and the salt-sweet smell of his own blood. But in his mind he was not alone. With him was the one person he had ever loved, or been loved by. Little Max. Herr Doktor Max. Max Vonderscheid, M.D., Ph.D., Psych. D.-abortionist, physician to criminals; a man who had never been able to say no to a need, regardless of laws and professional ethics.
    He and Rudy had been cellmates for three years. Those years, in a so-called tough jug, had given the Piehead the only true happiness he had ever known. One does not forget such things, or such a man. Each of his actions, his words, becomes a thing to treasure.
    Rudy stretched out flat on the ground, closed his eyes, relaxed as completely as he could, and held his breath for a moment. Then he began to count slowly, "One-two-three-" exhaling and inhaling in time with the count. When he had counted to ten three times, his breathing was near normal and his heart had