The Bitch Read Online Free PDF Page B

here. I couldn’t have asked him to change. It would have crocked the deal.
    They knew I knew the entire floor-plan of the place. Every alarm circuit, where to walk, where not to. Most of all, how to shut the thing off.
    In the office, I walked over to a desk, stepped high twice, reached down on the desk leg on the left hand side and flipped the switch. It was as if I were doing all these things in a deep, sick dream. But the money was inside me now, too—I couldn’t ignore that. Not this close to it.
    I kept thinking, Janet, Janet, Janet—like some fool kind of record. It was like my brain had busted loose. I was in a rut and I couldn’t get out of it. Just, Janet, Janet, Janet—like that.
    That damned Hornell.
    I stood in the center of the office and looked at the safe for a while. Not long. Maybe fifteen seconds. Sitting there, black and squat, with the dial gleaming a little. I’d seen that safe a lot of times before and it had never meant anything. Oh, I’d thought about how it would be to have all that was in it—who doesn’t think those things? But it had never meant anything. Now it was the other way around. It was it, and it was as if the safe were alive, or something, sitting there, waiting—kind of grinning blackly.
    I got out of there. I went on back to the anteroom, and outside to the front gate. There was no sign of anybody. I unlocked the gate, fixing it so it looked locked unless it was closely inspected. Then I hurried back inside and went straight on down the hall that ran right angles to the other that led to the office. I walked clear to the end of the building and unlocked the door leading into the alley. The wall of the building itself fronted the alley on this side.
    I would have just made the outside rounds along the alley, and stepped into the hallway and seen all this happening. And that’s where Gunnison would belt me with his gun and make it look good. He probably would, the way he always looked—maybe break my head. So I’d lie there until they were clear, and then come around and crawl along the hall and phone in the alarm. I had to remember to trip the alarm circuit back on before I phoned. I thought about leaving that off, too, like the unlocked front gate—blame it on whoever was supposed to switch it on for the night. It would be too damned obvious.
    Gunnison had to come in the front way. This was in case he was seen. Morrell had made him do that. Gunnison got five thousand extra just for doing it that way. He was taking a chance—but if he came in the back way and was seen, it would queer the whole thing. I might be able to talk him clear, if he was seen coming in the front way.
    I came back down the hall, nervous as hell now. Gunnison was standing just inside the door of the anteroom. It was a little like being socked in the chest with a board.
    This was the “it” of “this is it.”
    • • •
    He was tall and stooped a little, wearing a blue Palm Beach suit and a soft gray felt hat. He had a horse face, the eyebrows very thick and black, his mouth very small and tight above the broad long jaw. Gunnison was a very patient man. Patience was a big part of his trade, and there was something of the actor in him. He drew on the patience, moved with lazy, don’t-give-a-damn strides that belied what went on inside him. You could tell what went on inside him by his eyes. They were crazy.
    He stood there waiting for me to come up to him. Under his left arm, he carried a blue and gray-striped canvas satchel.
    I started to say something, but he cut me off.
    “Let’s get at it,” he said. “Where’s it at?”
    “You see anybody out there?”
    “Where’s it at. Nobody.”
    Those crazy damned eyes of his.
    I thought of Janet home in bed, waiting for me, because she never did sleep when I was out all night. She’d just lie there and stare into the darkness, and when I came home she’d be at the door—like that. I could see her in my mind’s eye, lying there, staring into