Free The Bitch by Gil Brewer

it?”
    “No,” I said. “You wouldn’t make a slip like that, would you?”
    “On the defensive again,” he said. “Well, you’ve got good reason for that. You’ve really done this up fine and forever, tonight.”
    I straightened in the seat. The pain had gone away now.
    “Where’s the money, Tate?”
    I looked over at him, then straight ahead again.
    “All right,” he said. “We’ll see. You didn’t take it home with you, did you? That would have been a damned silly thing to do.”
    I still said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say, not now. I didn’t want to talk with him, and yet I knew I would have to. He had me really fouled up inside now and I kept trying to figure a way to get free of him. There wasn’t any way. You had to go along with a thing like this and that was that.
    Only now there was a feeling of slow desperateness coming into me. I thought of Janet back there, going through her private little hell over this. And she didn’t know that Sam had picked me up and it was all over so soon.
    “Where you taking me?” I said finally.
    “Down to the office, Tate. How’s Janet? Did you tell her about this? You tell her you killed two men and robbed a payroll we were under contract to guard? Under honor? Did you tell her?”
    “I didn’t kill anybody.”
    “Did you tell her?”
    “What’s it to you?”
    “Where’s that money, Tate?”
    I shut up tight then, and tried to think calmly. I still had the money, and there had to be some way of keeping it. I wanted it more than ever now. There was something about Sam that always made me want to strike out, to rebel against him. I knew what it was. He was always so right, and I was always so wrong.
    • • •
    I don’t know. You do something and you’re caught and then you’re caught again and again, and the feeling inside you is hell. It’s something you cannot combat, cannot deal with, sometimes. I knew I was rattled. I knew I hadn’t been able to think right since that moment when we heard the shot at Halquist’s soft-drink plant, and that crazy-eyed Gunnison took off down the hall, running with the money sack, running stupidly, and as fast as he could go, straight into the waiting arms of death. But he hadn’t suspected death out there in the alley. He had run to it without care, with hope—need, even. That part was plenty puzzling, and I couldn’t deal with that, either. Anymore than I could deal with myself.
    We turned onto the bayside road, the boulevard that winds proudly along Tampa Bay, past the stately royal palms that have for decades stood in the face of hurricanes, lost fronds, but returned to grandeur with such seeming ease. It was difficult for a human being to react like nature. Maybe it was crazy thinking again.
    Sam drove easily and without speaking again. I had no idea what he was trying to do, and that worked on me too. The unknown was only a little worse than the known tonight, though. It was beginning to equalize, in its own fashion. I had finally reached some kind of apex, or something. Traveling the middle road—all that. What a middle road I had discovered for myself!
    Maybe that was it. Maybe this is what I should have done so long ago, instead of fooling around with minor bits of business. I should have gone out and robbed a bank and shot a couple tellers in the head, or murdered Janet, or something. Then it would have been over long ago. Because Sam could have caught me and put an end to it—and an end to me, too. Because that’s what it would be.
    Raiford would be the spot. I could visualize the bars, and maybe even the endless finally retrospective years purling off into the darkness, one by solemn one, regular and faithful and without speed, yet with haste. It was funny, in a way, if you looked at it right.
    A fool, she had said. Well, she was right.
    Everybody and everything was right, but me.
    You can take some guys and give them a dollar bill and say, “Go on out into the world, now, and make your