Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald Page B

alone in September and having her there made him think a lot more about girls than before. He got so he’d follow them on the street, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. Frank had started his big plans. He wouldn’t talk about them. But he spent hours drawing floor plans and going over maps. They did some small operations and one turned out a lot better than they had any right to hope. Over eight hundred, it was.
    Then on Monday, the day before yesterday, it all ended in a hurry. It was a hot night. He and Frank had been out looking around and then they went back and got Hope and they left the car right there by the apartment and the three of them walked down about three blocks to a place for some beer. Frank was wearing khakis and a purple sports shirt. Billy had on old jeans and a torn T-shirt. Hope wore one of her baggy cotton dresses and a pair of sandals. The bank roll was behind the loose board in the closet, along with the two revolvers. They had some beer and about midnight they walked back. They were a block from the place when Frank stopped and said, “Trouble!”
    Billy looked and saw the prowl car parked out by the curb. They walked slowly across the street. Frank wouldn’t let them hurry. They headed on back the way they had come. They went over a block and Frank made them wait while he went back to take a look. Billy was nervous. Hope just stood there waiting, chewing gum, patient as a cow in a field. Frank came back in about ten minutes.
    “They’re up in the place, looking around. I saw them. We got to get out of here.”
    “How?” Billy asked.
    “We got to get a car and we got to get some clothes. I’ve got about twenty bucks on me. You got anything?”
    “Two dollars.”
    They took the car out of a used car lot. It was a battered old panel delivery. On the side of it it said Hollywood Seafood Company. Frank crossed the wires, and it started all right. Billy got the plate off a pickup parked on a dark street.
    Frank said they should leave town. Hope sat warmly, heavily between them. Frank cursed as they drove out of town, through Coral Gables. After an hour or so he seemed to cheer up. He told Billy that they’d had some fun for a while anyway, and it wouldn’t be too rough to start over again. But it had to be in a new town. He’d heard New Orleans was a good town. They could operate on the way over, just to get money enough for the trip.
    After buying gas and eating, they had just a few dollars left when they got to Bradenton Tuesday night. Frank said he had been thinking about how to pull something quick and simple. He cruised around and they found a bar and he parked a half block away and sent Hope back to the bar. “No bum, you understand,” he said. “Somebody that looks like they got a couple of bucks.”
    “I never did nothing like this.”
    “You won’t have any trouble. It doesn’t look like a place they’ll throw you out of. Just wiggle it around and let somebody buy you a drink then tell him you know a better place you want to go to. Then walk him up this way and slow down when you get in those shadows there by the edge of that warehouse.”
    She was gone fifteen minutes. They stood leaning against the warehouse, waiting for her. When she came along with the man, they grabbed him fast. Billy didn’t even get a look at him. Hope went and got in the truck while they went over him. He had eleven dollars. Frank was so disgusted with the take that he kicked the man solidly in the head, twice. The next place worked better. The man had nearly forty dollars and he was smaller and easier to handle. Frank said there was no reason why it wouldn’t work all the way to New Orleans.
    “I don’t like doing it,” Hope said.
    “But you’ll do it, won’t you? Won’t you?”
    She gave a little gasp of pain and said, “Sure, Frank. Yes, I’ll do it. Gee, you wanta give me a cancer or something?”
    She slept in the back on the burlap sacks the rest of the way up to the tourist