"I always was a sucker for a pretty face!" I told her.
She smiled demurely. "Why, Danny—^you haven't looked at my face once during the whole evening!"
It was ten after midnight when we reached the farm. I'd driven Sylvia back from Newport into Providence, and she'd picked up the station wagon from outside the hotel. Then I'd followed her out to the farm in my own car. She stopped the station wagon a couple of hundred yards down the road from the farm gates while I made
56
a U-turn and left my car facing toward Providence, and well off the road.
The air was crisp, and the moonlight much too bright. I could feel my spine prickling gently as I walked back across the road to where Sylvia waited for me. It could be a trap—Tolvar could have set up the whole thing with the blonde nurse as bait—and if they had, I was walking right into it There was still plenty of spare burial space inside the pigpens, I remembered dismally.
We walked in through the gates and down the edge of the tracks toward the house. Lights showed in a couple of rooms which didn't make me feel any better. When we were fifty yards from the house, Sylvia started to make a wide circle around it toward the pigpens which were some distance away from the back of the place.
Finally we reached the pens and Sylvia stood very close beside me, then shivered suddenly.
"O.K.," I said. "What now?"
"Take a look at Sweet William," she said softly.
I walked across to the pen and looked in. The moonlight was nearly as bright as day—in the center of the pen was a huge sow sleeping peacefully with her litter tucked in comfortably around her edges.
There was a slight rustle of Sylvia's dress as she moved up close beside me again.
"He's not here," I said. "What gives?"
"Yes, he's here," she said in a tight voice. "Two pens further along."
I checked and she was right—two pens further along and there he was. Once seen. Sweet William could never be forgotten.
"You see?" Sylvia said in a small voice. "You didn't remember the right pen."
"When you showed me around this morning, he was in that other pen," I said. "I'm sure of it!"
"I'm glad you said that, Danny." Something like relief sounded in her voice. "When I took a look tliis after-
noon, I thought I was losing my memory, so I had to be sure I wasn't."
"Yeah," I said absently.
"Danny," she said softly. "Why?"
"That Pete," I said admiringly. "He can think on his feet all right."
"What do you mean?"
"The last thing I said before I took off with Clemmie the other morning was for you to take a look at Sweet William's pen," I said. "Remember?"
"Of course I remember—but you never told me what I was looking for. What was in the pen?" she asked breathlessly.
"Someone had buried a body in dirt," I said soberly. "My guess is it belonged to Philip Hazelton."
Sylvia drew in her breath sharply and made a whimpering noise.
"Pete must have known the body was there," I went on. "He knew he could stall you from looking at the pen and seeing it, but he couldn't be sure I wouldn't tell the police—as I did. So he had to do something fast. And the easiest thing to do would be shift Sweet William into a new pen—so if anybody came to take a look, they wouldn't find anything."
"Danny," she said in a trembling voice. "That means it's still there—the body—in the pen where the sow and her new litter are right now?"
"It figures," I agreed. "Pete would've covered it up again, but he wouldn't know how much time he had, so my guess is he wouldn't have tried to move the body."
"Danny!" She clutched hold of my arm tightly. "I think I'm going to faint."
I heard a faint noise and turned around. A shaft of light showed momentarily from the back of the house, then was cut off again.
"Someone just left the house," I said. "We'd better get out of here."
"Can you see anyone?" she whispered nervously. 58
"No." I strained my eyes.
"How do you know they're coming this way?" she asked.
"How do I know they're not?" I said tersely. "We need to get somewhere out of this damned moonhght fast."
"I know," she said quickly. "The bam."
She started to run, and I followed her. It was maybe a hundred yards from the pigpens to the bam and I hadn't run so fast since that time in Las Vegas when a redhead tumed up for a date with a preacher in tow.
We made the bam and went inside. I pushed the door almost shut and then listened carefully. I could hear Sylvia's quick breathing behind me, and the loud protest of my own outraged lungs, but that was about all.
"Maybe he's gone back into the house?" Sylvia whispered a minute later.
"Maybe," I grunted. "But we'll stay here awhile and make sure."
Another couple of minutes dragged by, and Sylvia's teeth chattered slightly.
"I'm cold!" she whispered. "Can't we leave now?"
"In a Uttle while," I said, and then I heard a chinking noise as someone's shoe hit a stone. I pushed the door open another inch and squinted at the brightness outside. There was the silhouette of a man about fifty yards away, walking directly toward the bam.
"He's heading straight this way," I said. "Move over to one side out of the way, Sylvia, huh?"
"What are you going to do?" she whispered.
"I'll take him as he comes through the door," I said.
"Why don't we just hide?" she said.
"Where? He's coming straight in here!"
"What about the hayloft—he won't go up there."
"All right," I said. "If I slug him, the other two will come looking for him when he doesn't show up at the house, and it's a long way back to the road."
I followed Sylvia across the floor of the bam, and then 59
up the ladder which led to the hayloft. We lay face down in the hay and watched the door. I eased the Magnum out of the harness, holding it ready in my right hand, just for insurance.
The door creaked as it swung open, and a moment later the beam of a flashlight hit the floor. He came in slowly, playing the flashlight all around, into the corners, over the tractor and harvester. I couldn't be sure, but I thought it was Pete. Sylvia's fingers dug deeper into my arm with every passing second. For maybe three minutes, he kept the flashlight swinging, then he must have been satisfied and went out, pulling the door shut behind him.
We listened until we couldn't hear his footsteps any longer, then Sylvia sighed deeply.
"I thought any moment I'd sneeze or something!" she said. "Any more of this and I'll be needing a nurse!"
"We'll give him ten minutes before we move out of here," I said. "He must have been looking for something —or someone—pretty hard. He made damn sure there was nothing in the bam that shouldn't be here."
"Maybe he was just making a routine check?" she asked. "If they're worried about anyone else prowling around and finding the body, they could check up regularly through the night, couldn't they?"
"Yeah," I said. "I hope you're right, and they didn't spot us from the house while we were over at the pigpens."
"Maybe we should stay here for a good while and make sure?" she said softly.
"O.K. with me," I said. "I've got no place to go in a hurry."
My eyes had got used to the darkness inside the bam, and the filtered moonlight through the one window was bright enough to show up most of the detail. I rolled over onto one side and was going to light a cigarette when I remembered the hay and went cold on the idea.
"Danny?"
"Yeah?"
"It's beautifully warm in the hay up here," she said softly.
"Sure is."
"You were pretty terrific to come all the way up here just because I asked you," she went on. "And then take a chance like this to look at the pens when I asked you another favor!"
"I'm one of the original knights of the Roundtable," I told her modestly. "A damsel in distress is our bread and butter—
^you know we were the first guys to demonstrate chivalry?"
"How come?" she asked interestedly.
"Whenever we accepted the conventional offer of ■hanks from the rescued damsel, we'd take off our armor irst," I told her. "You'd be surprised what a difference it made to the whole art of love!"
She laughed softly. "Is that a hint, Danny? About the conventional offer of thanks from the rescued damsel, I mean?"
"It's a question of honor," I said. "Some girls prefer to fight for a while before they surrender—something like a boxer warming up before he gets into the ring."
She came up onto her knees and then to her feet, and brushed the small pieces of straw away that clung to her dress.
"I guess the least I can do is prove a point for you, Danny," she said. "Just to show my gratitude."
Where she stood, a shaft of moonlight slanted directly across her body from her shoulders to her knees, leaving her head and feet in shadow. I wondered if she knew and figured for sure she did.
My mouth went suddenly dry as I watched her peel off the gold lam6 and drop it gently onto the hay. Underneath she wore only a pair of white panties, sleek against her skin, and stockings held by fancy black lace garters. The high, full breasts looked like white marble imder the moonlight.
Then she dropped quickly to her knees beside me and lifted the Magnum out of my hand and tossed it onto her dress.
"You always take off the armor first, Danny!" she
said.
Her right hand gripped my shoulder, pushing me onto my back, and then she fell on top of me, her lips pressing hard against mine. I put my hands on her shoulders for a moment, pulling her even closer, then let them slide gently down her back to the waistband of the panties. She shivered violently and the tip of her tongue began a questing search between my lips. I let my hands continue on their way, sliding the soft silk down over her hips.
From somewhere out in the night, a bird called suddenly in a harsh note of triumph.
Deven
I CHECKED MY WATCH WHICH SAID IT WAS FIVE AFTER
two. The moonlight still flooded the landscape, the air was just a little crisper. Sylvia stood beside the station wagon, the gold lame glowing softly along with her. She wasn't shivering any more.
"Danny, lover," she said. *T don't want to go back inside that house—not now I know about that pigpen and—"
"You have to go back, honey-chile," I said patiently. "For the girls' sake anyway. If you don't come back, Tolvar and the others will get worried—they might panic and do something to the girls. You have to show up there."
"What are you going to do about the body?" she said. "You can't just leave it there!"
"I called the gendarmes once and they figure it as a 62
lousy practical joke," I said. "If I try to tell them a second time there's a body in that pen, they'll most likely have me committed!"
"You have to do something!"
"Check," I said. "I'm working on it. You just try and act as if nothing's happened. I'll come back through the day and maybe have a concrete idea of how to handle it. Just don't worry, honey-chile."
"O.K., Danny," she smiled up at me. "Whatever you say. I don't mind being kissed by a knight with his armor on!"
I kissed her goodbye over a brief five-minute period, then walked across the road and got into my car. I lit a cigarette and waited until the station wagon moved off along the road and turned in along the tracks to the farmhouse.
Another half-hour and I'd be back at the hotel comfortably in bed, I figured, and it was a welcome prospect —I reached out to turn on the ignition and at the same moment the cold rim of a gun muzzle bored into the back of my neck.
"You got a right to relax, you been a busy Boyd!" a clipped voice said close to my ear. "Just don't move, huh? I got a nervous finger."
"I've got a nervous body," I said. "You should worry about a finger!"
"It's you got to worry about the finger," Tolvar said amiably. His free hand lifted the Magnum out of the harness in a routine which was getting to be monotonous.
"Cheez!" he said. "How many guns you got?"
"Not enough—if I keep losing them to you the way I am lately," I said. "How long have you been in the back of the car?"
"Thirty minutes, maybe more," he said. "I was getting kind of cramped on the floor back there. You must have made a score with nursie, huh, you were away so long?"
"She's just a nice kid," I said easily.
"Hot-blooded underneath the cool freeze she gives 63
you," he said enthusiastically. "I go for a dame like that —more kicks that way. Maybe I'll give her a run after you're out of circulation."
That was a conjecture, like they say in television courtrooms, and I let it ride—either way there was nothing in it for me.
"You're the kind of guy who don't learn, Boyd," he said after a few seconds' silence. "Last time we met, I told you to lay off the Hazelton family, but you didn't take the hint. Now it's got so you're embarrassing people."
"Look," I said wearily, "like it's late, like I'm tired, like I know you're a real tough Joe—so save the tough dialogue for impressing the clients, huh? What happens now—you slug me again?"
"You're going out of circulation, Boyd," he said easily —and I thought that maybe his worst character trait was that you couldn't annoy him—not with words anyway.
"You're back on that old hat dialogue again," I said. "I'm going out of circulation—what the hell does that mean? You figure I'm a newspaper—or a pint of blood?"
"Like when you got to go, you got to," he said amiably. "It's the end of the line—you wind up in the obituary notices that nobody even reads."
"You didn't call it the big sleep, anyway," I said. "1 guess that's something."
"Be my guest," he said. "You can start the motor now, Boyd—we'll get it finished with, huh?"
"That private eye's license you've got," I said, "it maybe allows you to get away with killing somebody in self-defense if you got a minimum of six eye-witnesses to swear it was self-defense; but nobody gets away with murder."
"Start the motor!" He jabbed the gun muzzle hard into my neck as a persuader. "You want me to bust out crying?"
"I'll put it another way," I said patiently. "No hard, 64
two-syllable words that you won't understand. We both make the same kind of living out of the same racket. I never had a client yet who could pay the kind of money I'd want to commit murder—and neither have you. So why all the build-up? You want to scare me—O.K., I'm scared. Now what?"
"You start the motor and drive—or I slug you and drive myself," he said. "Which way will you have it?''
I started the motor and drove the car out onto the road again, heading back toward Providence.
"That's better," Tolvar said. "Just keep on driving and we'll get along fine."
"I'd like that," I said earnestly. "Us beatniks wan; nothing better than to communicate—a free exchange of souls. Man! That's when id digs id and ego digs ego!"
"I figure I will slug you and drive myself," Tolvar said seriously. "Listening to that kind of jive sours my stomach!"
"Just trying to find a common meeting-ground," I said. "If I light a cigarette will it make you nervous?"
"Nothing makes me nervous," he said. "It's only that finger of mine gets a nervous twitch now and then. If you're real careful with the smoke, I guess the finger won't worry."
I got the pack out of my coat pocket slowly, and slid a cigarette into my mouth, and lit it from the lighter on the dash.
"Where are we going?" I asked. "Or is that a secret between you and the wheels?"
"We'U keep it for a surprise," he said. He pulled a sudden switch in the conversation. "Where were you and nursie all that time out back of the farmhouse?"
"In the barn," I said.
"Pete checked the barn," he grunted. "Try again."
"He checked the bam all right," I said. "But not the hayloft."
"Yeah?" he chuckled throatily. "I bet
you had yourself a time up there—you sure didn't hurry."
"Us beats were just communicating," I said. "You got a new word for it—I got to remember that!" he said. " 'Doll, why don't we communicate?' Sounds kind of refined, don't it? Even the broads go for refinement. How did you come to latch onto the West dame tonight?"
"Lucky break," I said, "or I figured it was until you popped up from the back seat. I registered at the hotel, walked down into the lobby looking for a drink—and there she was, looking for a drink. It kind of developed from there."
"You need to do better," he said dryly. "Try again." "It's a fact," I said. "You think she'd have walked back into the house tonight if she had any idea what's going on? Or maybe she does, huh? She's in it with the rest of you and she was put up as bait for me tonight?" We came into an outer speed zone and I eased my foot off the gas pedal.
"What now?" I asked him. "This is Providence." "Yeah," he sounded surprised. "So it is—O.K., turn round and head back." "You're serious?"
"Sure—I like to drive at night—I got insomnia!" I slowed the car, made a U-turn and headed back the way we'd come. Tolvar's gun was still firm against the back of my neck. I drove for maybe ten minutes in silence, trying to figure the point of the ride, and giving up. "How much do you know about this caper?" I asked him when we were maybe three minutes away from the farm.
"More than you, pal," he said.
"You know somebody's been killed already?" I said. "You know what you're mixed up in—the body's buried in one of the pigpens right now!"
"Wrong, pal," he said easily. "Not now—it used to be, but while we've been riding, that cadaver's been shifted."
"I hope they're paying you enough to compensate for fifteen to twenty years in Sing Sing," I said.
"They're paying enough," his voice got enthusiastic. "This is the one big caper I've been looking for the last ten years, Boyd, and there's no chance of it going wrong."
"A lot of guys have said that."
"Ten lousy years," he said. "A private eye with a rathole for an office and clients who were right at home the moment they walked in the door! A good week I pick up maybe a couple of hundred bucks, a bad week I don't make the rent. More bad weeks than good, and a guy's getting older all the time. Then—out of nowhere—Blooey! The big caper—bingo, and it's all over. I quit with enough money to live the way I always wanted. That's the deal, Boyd, and you tell me there's six more cadavers I don't know about and it makes no difference."
Terror comes creeping Page 6