Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald Page B

of bed and moved over to the chair by the bedroom window, pulled the blinds up with silent cautiousness, lighted a cigarette, and looked out toward the silvery road and the stone wall. The night was empty. His four incredibly precious hostages to fortune were in deep sleep. The earth turned and the stars were high. All this, he told himself, was reality. Night, earth, stars and the slumber of his family. And the other thing that had seemed so valuable was just a dusty and archaic code which enabled men to live closely together in reasonable peace and safety. In olden times the village elders punished those who broke the taboos. And all of the law was a vast, top-heavy superstructure built on the basic idea of the group enforcing the punishment of the nonconformist. It was a tribal rite, with white wigs, robes and oaths. It just did not happen to apply to his own situation. Yet two thousand years ago he could have sat in council with the elders and explained his peril and gained the support of the village, and the predator would be stoned to death. So this action was a supplement to the law. Thus it was right. Yet when he got back into bed, he still could not accept his rationalization.

Six
    SIEVERS MADE NO REPORT ON WEDNESDAY , and Sam could find nothing in the paper. On Thursday morning at nine-thirty he received a call from Dutton.
    “This is Captain Dutton, Mr. Bowden. I got some news for you on your boy.”
    “Yes?”
    “We got him for disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. He got into a fight last night at about midnight in the yard in back of that rooming house on Jaekel Street. Three local punks jumped him. They marked him up pretty good before he got untracked. One got away and two are in the hospital. He threw one through the side of a shed and gave him a sprained back and multiple bruises. The other one’s got a broken jaw, a broken wrist, concussion, and some ribs kicked loose. They laid his cheek openwith a bike chain and thumped him around the eyes with a hunk of pipe.”
    “Will he be put in jail?”
    “Definitely, Mr. Bowden. He was dazed, I guess, and it was dark in the yard, and he swung on a patrolman when he came running across the yard and gave him a nose as flat as a sheet of paper. The second patrolman dropped him with a night stick and they took him in and got his face sewed and then brought him in and threw him in the tank. Judge Jamison has night court this week, and we’ll see what we can give him tonight. He’s yelling for a lawyer. Want the job?”
    “No thanks.”
    “Judge Jamison doesn’t cooperate as much as some of the others, but I think he’ll lay it on pretty good. Drop around tonight about eight-thirty and you can see how he makes out.”
    “I’ll be there. Captain, is it too early to ask you how they made out in Charleston?”
    “No. It came out like I figured. The woman was contacted at her home by the Charleston police. She admitted she was married to Cady at one time, and claims she has not seen him since he was sentenced. She told them she didn’t know he had been released. Too bad.”
    “Thank you for trying.”
    “Sorry more didn’t come of it, Mr. Bowden.”
    Sievers phoned at four and asked Sam to meet him in the same place. Sam arrived first. He took his drink back to the same booth and waited. When Sievers arrived he sat across from Sam and said, “You should get a refund.”
    “What happened?”
    “They got careless. I sent word down the line that monkey was rugged. They gave him some love taps and when he didn’t go down, they tried to love-tap him some more. And suddenly it was very much too late. And he purely scared the living hell out of those boys. The one that ran got hooked in the gut first. He can’t breathe right yet, I hear. The word is going around. It’s going to be hard to line up boys for a second shot at him. I hear that when one of them went through the shed wall it sounded like a bomb going off. I’m sorry it