The Long Ride Read Free Page A

mouth of the alley. Their car was a block behind them through the alley, on 18th. Willy Tyler’s nerves were going crazy. And he was thinking how pleasant it would be in his own bed at home right now, right here in Loma City, if so many things hadn’t happened.
    If he hadn’t been drafted, he’d never have been sent to that California camp where Harry Wells was stationed. If he had never drawn Harry Wells for a sergeant, Harry wouldn’t have known him. If Harry hadn’t been transferred to Fort Allison outside Loma City to finish up the last year of his twenty-year hitch, Harry would have never gotten interested in that fort payroll money, waiting inside this bank right now to be delivered to the fort later in the morning. If Willy hadn’t come back to Loma City to live at home after his discharge, Harry couldn’t have looked him up. And if that kid lying on the bed in that crummy motel hadn’t gotten a job as a junior teller at the Midwest Federal Trust three weeks ago, if he’d been short and fat instead of Willy’s build, then Harry might have let it go and not got Willy into it and instead re-enlisted to finish out ten more.
    But all the ifs had dropped into a neat pile, one upon the other, and they had added up to what was going on right now. It was all Willy could do to stop himself from turning and running back down that alley to jump in the car and get away before they’d gone any further with this. But the hard, frightening look in Harry Wells’s eyes held him.
    “Harry, this isn’t going to work!”
    “Shut up,” Wells said thinly.
    Willy was having trouble talking through his dry mouth. He tried to dredge up a little courage thinking about what he could do when this was over and he had his share of the money. He thought about girls. He thought very hard about girls. He could have models and dancers, maybe even a movie starlet or two. He would find them in Vegas and Hollywood and New York, you name it. Because you could do anything, with enough money.
    But his courage failed again. You couldn’t think right about girls when you were so frightened your mouth felt like it had been packed with cotton. He opened his mouth and nothing came out. Finally he managed, “That kid we left in the motel, Harry. They might find him any minute and he’ll blow the whistle on us—right in the middle of it. He knows everything we’ve got planned!”
    “That kid won’t blow the whistle on us,” Wells said softly.
    Willy looked at his eyes, and something snapped inside of him. All at once he was no longer trembling. It was as though somebody had pumped cold water into his veins. He shuddered once, then stood very motionless, staring at that look in Harry Wells’s eyes. He breathed, “You killed him, didn’t you?”
    “Now,” Wells said, “you’re growing up.”
    “How?”
    Wells lifted his hands, smiling coldly.
    Willy shook his head once. He wanted to scream and pound on the man, condemning him for ruining everything—Harry had promised nobody would get hurt… But Willy said nothing.
    “You’re into it now,” Wells said, looking at him with hard eyes. “Let’s do it and do it right. Move.”
    Willy nodded woodenly and moved ahead of Wells to the door. It was exactly one minute after eight. Behind the thick glass doors, the guard, large and white-haired in a blue uniform, peered out. Willy felt his breath speeding until he thought he might choke, then he was suddenly almost lifeless again. He didn’t give a damn now. He just didn’t give a damn at all.
    The door was unlocked from the inside. Willy waited for the guard to draw his gun and point it at them; instead he said, “Morning, Norman. What happened to the eye?”
    Willy stepped inside. Harry Wells waited behind him. Willy had a peculiar feeling that if he did anything wrong now it would not be the guard who would gun him down, but Hairy Wells. “Good morning, Mike. How do I look? Some stupid woman driver ran into us last night. It’s not