The Empty Trap Read Online Free PDF Page A

thousand. And if it didn’t work out at all, the forty thousand would be a reserve for them. He felt very clever. He wanted to wake Sylvia up and explain to her how cleverly he was handling everything. He had thought of burying it in the ground. He looked around the cottage. The walls were paneled. He went out and got the tire iron. He chose a spot where the bathroom door opened against a wall of the bedroom. There were no light outlets there. He carefully pried off the quarter round, then pried one panel board loose at the floor level and pulled it back, yet not so far back it would pull the top molding free. The jar sat neatly on one of the cross joists, and seeing that it was exactly the right size made him feel his plan was more valid. He nailed the board and the molding back, using a towel to keep from marring the wood. The cottages were quite new. There was no reason why it should be disturbed for years. He put everything away and went to bed.
    He did not remember hiding the money until he was thirty miles west of Zimapan, on the new road. Sylviawas surly and sullen with the pangs of hangover. When he told her about it, she reacted violently and they had a bitter quarrel, the worst quarrel yet. Finally he got her to admit the wisdom of what he had done.
    The new road dipped close to the village of Talascatan and then climbed gently up the heart of a valley for a mile and a half, to the Montañas Motel, a new place on a hill overlooking the highway. It was secluded. Cars beside the units could not be seen from the road. The units were set very far apart. The sign said in Spanish and English that there were cooking facilities.
    They stopped and the quarrel was forgotten. Their unit was at the end the farthest from the others. The owners were Swiss, a gentle couple who had lived in Mexico for many years, and who had managed a hotel at Acapulco until it was torn down to make room for a more flamboyant structure. They had saved their money, had speculated in oceanfront land, and had made enough to build this motel. They said business was slow because the road was new. Next year the new road would join the secondary road that ran from Rio Verde to San Luis Potosi, and there would then be a great deal of through traffic.
    Lloyd registered as Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Floyd. Their unit was clean and new. There were two large double beds in the bedroom, a cot in the small living room. That night, in the barranca behind the motel, the insects made a night-long shrilling. She lay in his arms and whispered, “I think it’s going to be all right, Lloyd darling. Tonight for the first time, I think we will … be safe.”
    During the days they toasted in the sun behind the motel. In the evenings they walked down to Talascatan and sat at one of the tables in front of a small restaurant and cantina facing the square and watched the young people walk around and around the square with the stained fountain and grubby bandstand. They drank the dark strong beer called Dos Equis, and they ate great bowls of rich caldo gallego, and later walked hand in hand through the night, walked back to the Montañas Motel, slightly drunk on the beer, hand in hand and singingsoftly in the night. On those few nights it seemed to him that what they had done was both good and necessary. A marriage to Harry Danton could not be called a marriage. This woman was his now, and would be forever his.
    They walked back on the night of the ninth and the stars were very clear and high. They walked by all the other units to their own place where there was a starlight gleam on the bumper of the Pontiac parked behind it, under their bedroom windows.
    He unlocked the door and she went in first and the lights went on. Sylvia screamed once. Perhaps she screamed again, but by that time the portable radio was on at full volume, Lloyd had tried to fight Tulsa with his fists. Tulsa, grinning and clowning, had worked him back into a corner, wedged him there, big shoulder under