by A. A. Glynn
“Gas station a little ways up the road. I have to call there to make a phone call. I can give you a ride so you can buy a can. You don’t have far to walk back.”
“That’s big of you,” said I, a little distrustful of him. I got out of the car and walked towards the truck. The big guy walked beside me.
I climbed up to the seat next to the driver’s. The cab smelt oily and it chugged and rattled to the thrumming of the heavy engine, making Marilyn Monroe, cut from a magazine and pinned above the windshield, perform a jittery dance.
“Don’t like to see a guy stranded without gas,” said the Samaritan as he hoisted himself into his seat. “Happened to me too many times.”
I was still dubious of him. Also, I didn’t like the idea of leaving my radio-publicised car standing by the edge of the highway while I went to the service station.
“Must be a trying job on occasion, yours,” I observed as he put the truck into motion.
“Yeah, it’s that, all right,” said Jungle-chest. “It gets real tryin’ at times.”
“D’you have a radio in the cab to make things less boring?” I asked.
He snorted. “The lousy outfit I’m workin’ for don’t provide no radios. They can’t even give a guy his correct delivery instructions. I trucked out of South Bend with a load for Kokomo, and I just now discovered my papers cover an entirely different load for Shreveport. Imagine that.”
I imagined it, but was too relieved at finding the truck had no radio to have much sympathy.
“Big fuss in South Bend,” said Jungle-chest, out of the blue. “Guy got shot, it seems.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Up near the University campus. In broad daylight, too.”
“What d’you know?” I said, as though I wasn’t particularly interested.
I changed the subject quickly. “How do I get to Rollinsville?”
“What do you want in a hick town like Rollinsville?” he asked. “Last place God made.”
“Looking up my wife’s Aunt Anastasia, since I’m passing through this part of the country,” I lied.
“Uh-huh. You go through Plymouth and keep on until you hit a side road running off the highway just before Peru. That’ll take you into Uffotsberg, the second last place God made, and Rollinsville is the next town you hit.”
He pulled the truck to a snorting stop. We were at the gas station, a clutter of white buildings and gasoline pumps. We stepped down into the sunshine and the mingled smell of gas, oil, and sun-beaten asphalt.
In the larger of the buildings, there was a counter, littered with equipment. A round faced, sleepy looking character, whom Jungle-chest addressed as “Al,” was leaning on the far side of the counter, looking like an impassive moon floating over the ocean of tools.
I wondered whether Al had heard that radio flash, but he looked as though he hadn’t even heard who won the 1948 Presidential Election yet. He didn’t open his eyes more than halfway while I bought a can of gasoline from him.
In the background, the truck driver was bellowing into an old-fashioned wall telephone. He was telling someone named Carl about having the wrong delivery papers. I paid Al and he closed his eyes the full distance to go into his doze again.
“Thanks for the help,” I called to Jungle-chest.
“Y’wanna waken up that office staff, Carl—okay, Mac, y’welcome. Hate to see a guy stranded without gas. Yeah, I know it ain’t all your fault, Carl, but, hell, I should have had today off but for Stan Kolowicz bein’ sick—”
I carried the can out of the gloomy garage building, leaving the truck driver bellowing into the wall-telephone.
Back along the highway I walked, keeping to the grass plot skirting the asphalt ribbon along which the Sunday drivers zoomed.
It must have been my lucky day. The coupe was standing where I left it. There were no inquisitive motorcycle cops lurking around it, as I feared there might be.
When I’d gassed up, I caught sight of an old hat I’d thrown on the rear seat during the Florida vacation. I jammed it on my head and stripped off my jacket. Thereafter, I drove in my shirtsleeves with the hat pulled well over my eyes. The car was still a glaring red and cream coupe and a dead giveaway, but I might get past some half-asleep cop who was looking out for the hatless man in the grey sharkskin the South Bend announcer described.
I got back into the stream of traffic and kept pushing south, feeling as sore as a bear in a briar patch. Time was wasting all to hell, Shelmerdine’s monkeys and the girl must have been miles ahead of me, and I wasn’t distinguishing myself any.
A cake-brained oaf like me didn’t deserve such luck. I went clear through Plymouth and out the other side, passing the bend where the wide-mouthed wench advertised toothpaste from the billboard which had a wrecked sedan wrapped around it, without even seeing a cop. Maybe they were all away at the inter-station-house poker tournament.
I didn’t see any cops all the way between Plymouth and the dirt road turn-off leading to Uffotsberg, either.
That road was a museum piece of rural Americana. I expected to see a war-party of Indians come around every bend as I bounced along it.
For a guy who had police tabs on him, however, it was better than the highway. I kept on going, bumping and bouncing and thinking of a poem by Joaquin Miller: “Crossing the Plains.”
After a long time of bouncing past fence rails, another road appeared, intersecting the Chisholm Trail I was following. It wasn’t a first-class highway, but it was surfaced, after a fashion. Close to the intersection stood a sign-post with a single finger marked: “Uffotsberg.” There was a weary droop to the finger as though it was tired of pointing to a place nobody ever wanted to go.
So, I went to Uffotsberg.
The trucker was right. It was the second last place God made.
The second-rate road straggled along until it became the main drag of the town. Frame houses and stores stood along either side, and a wooden church, with its short spire out of plumb, stood off to one side. There was also a run-down gas station, a few shade trees, a line of lopsided telegraph poles, three or four ancient cars parked at the kerbs, half a dozen people—and that was Uffotsberg.
It was Sunday with a vengeance, but this town looked as if it hadn’t moved with any speed since the last time the Indians attacked.
An old-timer was tilted back in a chair outside one of the frame stores. He was a type. The kind of old-timer who has lived in his small town all his life, and always knows better than the fellows in Washington how the country should be run.
I pulled up at the kerb opposite him. He looked at me. I could see the words passing through his head: “Stranger. Wonder where he’s from?” I was wafted by a sudden zephyr of panic. I hoped this oldster had not heard the broadcast about the wanted driver of the red and cream coupe.
“I suppose,” I called across the cracked sidewalk, “if I keep on straight ahead, I’ll come to Rollinsville?”
The old man regarded me with an interested stare.
“Yeah,” he said, after a while. “Y’keep straight on.”
Then, a voice behind me said:
“Hey you! Hold it!”
I turned around and saw a paunchy figure advancing. A figure in a khaki shirt, a black tie, khaki pants, and a peaked cap on a big, fat head.
This took some getting over. After riding along the broad highway in safety, I had to run into a small-town cop. I didn’t know where he came from, I never passed him on the street, but there he was, a fat, officious figure.
He waddled right up to the coupe and put two fat hands on the top of the door, big pink hands. At his belt, was a holstered Army Colt, as big as a beer-can. I wondered if he could do a fast draw, like a Western marshal in the old days. I also wondered whether Al and Jungle-chest had been putting their heads together. The trucker knew I was headed for Rollinsville, and Al might have heard that broadcast for all his doziness. They could have phoned this hick town’s police outfit.
“Your car answers
the description of one the state and county police have been alerted to look out for,” said the rural gendarme. He was about forty-five, with chubby jowls and a wheezy voice. I guessed his police experience was limited to standing on the street corners of this half-horse town, nodding to the folk he grew up with. “And you answer the description of Mike Lantry, of New York, wanted in connection with a killing in South Bend. Your car has a New York registration,” he added pridefully, just to show me he was observant.
“You, yourself, are not unlike my Uncle Otto, who was killed in a fall,” I answered coldly. “He fell down an open manhole in Dayton, Ohio, when he was transporting a load of whisky under his belt buckle. Take your hands off my car, please, officer.”
The cop blinked at me. He kept his chubby hands on the door of the car. In the background, the old-timer was sitting bolt upright and blinking as if somebody had just broken the news of McKinley’s assassination. The hick cop cleared his throat.
“What’s your name?” He growled it like a hard-boiled veteran of the New York Homicide Department. Maybe he’d seen one or two movies.
“Take your hands off my car, please,” I repeated.
He took them off.
“Thank you. My name’s Louis O’Callaghan. I live at Jackson’s Heights, New York. I’m a teller in a bank, but I’m on vacation. My wife used to be Myrtle Hicks before I married her. She has a brother named Ed and we have a dog called Skipper. Also, I take a size fifteen collar. Now, tell me your life story.” Sometimes I got scared at my own facility for lying.
The hick cop blinked again.
“I’d like to see your driving licence, please.” He was uncertain to the extent of getting courteous, anyway.
I swivelled further around to get a good look at him and to stare at his badge, as though absorbing the number stamped on it. I turned on a highly injured voice.
“Look, officer, I’m getting sick of this. I stop in your town to ask directions and a bumptious policeman tells me I’m wanted. I don’t believe in serfdom, but I do believe in common courtesy. Your attitude is most offensive. I was just passing through this town, but now I intend to find your superior and lodge a complaint. I’ve noted your number.”
This shook him. Possibly the hat and the shirtsleeves, throwing me out of line with the broadcast description, had him wavering from the start. My outraged attitude probably completed the process of pulling his legs from under him.
“Okay, keep your shirt on, Mr. O’Callaghan.” He’d forgotten all about the driving licence.
“I’m not a vindictive man, officer, and I realise you have your duty to do,” I continued, like a touchy dowager, “but I really think you could show more courtesy towards a law-abiding citizen.…”
“Okay. Okay,” said the cop. He was flushed. Maybe he had visions of his pension taking wings.
“Okay. Okay,” I replied. “I’ll let the complaints ride this time, but this incident doesn’t give me a good impression of your town.”
That touched his small-town pride. He looked very crestfallen.
“Good-bye,” I snorted. I put my foot down hard and shot away from the kerb, heading out of Uffotsberg.
Just before Main Street dwindled away at my back, I turned and saw the cop and the old-timer standing at the edge of the sidewalk, watching me go. It had been a close thing.
And none of this chasing around and powwowing with the rural law was getting me any nearer to Joanne Kilvert and the guys who had snatched her.
I kept tearing up the second grade road, heading for Rollinsville. The sun was shining in good earnest and time was a-wasting fast. I took a sly look at one of my shoulders, half-expecting to see sawdust there. Some of the stuffing out of my head. I’d been behaving of late like I had a hole in the nogging. Bringing big trouble home to roost with Jack and Beth Kay, getting the cops on my tail—they’d have the four-state search system all primed for me by this time—and losing Joanne to the Shelmerdine monkeys.
I had a hole in the head all right.
I should have been an insurance representative or a painter of fences.
A big slice of Indiana blurred by the coupe as I kept on gunning it along the country road, also a lot of time went by before I saw any sign of life. A clutter of distant houses and trees showed on the flat horizon, maybe two miles away.
Rollinsville, I thought.
The road took a quick bend, as though suddenly stretching the monotony out of itself, then there was a long downward sweep. Halfway down the grade, was a nearer sign of life. A form of life I didn’t want to see too urgently right then.
Cops.
Four of them, standing in the roadway. Waiting for me. A big black vehicle stood a little way at their backs. The paddy-wagon.
I cut the engine down and let her purr gently down the slope, delaying contact with the spread-legged, uniformed quartette until the last minute.
“Damn that fat cop,” I snarled aloud. My voice sounded like somebody rubbing a callous on his foot with the rough edge of a matchbox. That hick patrolman back in Uffotsberg must have had second thoughts and phoned his brothers in handcuffs at Rollinsville. And here they were, waiting for me. Four of them. There would be no way out by fast-talking this time. I could feel it in my bones.
I hadn’t seen their particular line in uniforms before. Light blue pants and caps and, despite the summer heat, brown leather windcheaters with big metal badges glittering on each left breast. They weren’t county police, but I was pretty sure this was county territory.
Reluctantly, like a bashful maiden entering the arms of her lover, I pulled the coupe to a halt where the reception party stood.
Now, I could see three sets of characters lettered on the rear door of the paddy-wagon: “Rollinsville Police Dept.”
Hell. Rollinsville had its own gendarmerie; the town must be bigger than I thought. And Rollinsville was Athelstan Shelmerdine’s town.
Furthermore, I was sure this was county police territory. Any Rollinsville boundary signs I may have passed must have been well camouflaged.
A hefty cop with a sergeant’s chevrons opened the tête-à-tête. He looked like the poor man’s Marlon Brando. One of his men stood with him at the driving side of my car, while the remaining pair stationed themselves at the other side.
The sergeant put two big hands with dirty fingernails on the top of the car door, right next to where I was leaning my elbow, casual-like. I didn’t ask him if he would please remove them.
“Is your name Louis O’Callaghan?” the sergeant asked. So that cop in Uffotsberg had tipped them off.
“Yeah,” I said. Suddenly, I felt kind of old and my mouth began to ache where Tescachelli hit it with his gun.
“In a pig’s eye it is,” said the sergeant.
He pulled his lips back, baring long teeth. The two cops at the off-side came running around the front of the car. The sergeant swung the door of the coupe open with a quick action and grabbed hold of my shoulders. One of the others gave him a hand—a couple of them, in fact.
“Like hell you’re Louis O’Callaghan,” the sergeant panted. “You’re Lantry, the private eye who shot a guy in South Bend—and we want you.” They hauled me out of the car. I tried to fight back, but I hit the dirt of the road before I knew what was happening.
I had a fleeting impression of the cops grouping themselves around me, with their legs spread wide. I began to pick myself up, but never got around to reaching my full height.
There was a speedy movement from the sergeant and a baton appeared in his hand. It was even bigger than a New York cop’s night stick. The sergeant’s pals made the same quick movement and similar clubs appeared in their hands.
For the next few minutes, I had the distinct impression that every cop in Indiana marched down that road and took a swipe at me with his club, with one or two guys who’d been out on pension for a while joining the clubbing party, just by way of reliving the old days.
The last thing I remembered was looking at my shoulder to
see how much sawdust they had knocked out of the hole in my head.
CHAPTER FIVE
A room came into being around me, but I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. I was too distracted by the armoured column that was trying to force its way out of my head.
Tanks, bashing and pounding and grinding caterpillar tracks against the inside of my skull. I lay back on whatever my aching bones had been laid out on and waited until the battle inside my head subsided. Then I opened my eyes again, slowly and with effort.
The little room crowded in on me.
A small room, a small window with bars, high on one wall; a small bunk, on which I lay. A cell.
“So, you’re in jail,” I said to myself, not quite aloud.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Wonder what the charge is.”
“Running around the landscape with a hole in your head.”
“They can’t jail me for that.”
“Look around you, Mac, then reconsider that last statement.”
I shook my head and tried to think straight.
Very slowly, seeping through what the battling tanks had left of my skull, it came. As it came, it hurt, like iodine being poured into a cut.
I remembered the cops and their clubs and the paddy-wagon waiting to carry what was left of me away after they got through with their batting practice.
Taking it very easy, I sat up on the bunk, holding my head. The cops in the blue pants and leather windcheaters had put knots on it. I thought of those cops in somewhat colourful terms. I was still sure they had been poaching on county territory and I was stolen game.
The door of the cell was wide open, which surprised me. On the other side of the barred, postage-stamp sized window, I could see the half-hearted darkness of a summer night.
I thought suddenly of Joanne Kilvert. I had to get out of here quick.
The floor made a couple of attempts to spring up and swipe me under the chin as I wobbled over it towards the open door. But I made it to the narrow and dingy passageway outside.
I didn’t bargain for one of the blue-trousered, leather-jacketed club swingers being in the passageway, but he was, leaning against a dirty wall and smoking a cigarette.