by Dan Marlowe
I liked her. I could tell she had guts. I was sure she'd spit in the eye of the devil himself, given provocation. I
enjoyed it, sitting around batting the breeze about racetrack used-to-be and might-have-been, but inside I was getting restless.
It wasn't why I had come.
We were sitting in the corner booth one night, waiting for Jed. He was in high good humor when he arrived. "Made a sale today," he informed us. "Drink up, drink up. I'm buyin'. Got to keep the country's money circulatin'."
Hazel went out back to put on the steaks. The bar became busy with before-dinner thirst quenchers, and she didn't come back. Everyone came in the back door. Hazel could have nailed up the front door and never lost a nickel's worth of business.
Jed broke off his highly-flavored account of his real estate triumph to lean toward the window which overlooked the back parking lot. "Well, well, well," he said softly. "Here's company." He stood up, a bright smile pasted on his face as a tall blonde walked in the back door. "Here's Lucille now," he said loudly enough to be heard by her. "Maybe she'll have a drink with us." He moved out of the booth.
I could hear his laughing cajolery as he intercepted the blonde. In seconds he was leading her toward our booth. "OP Chet here's been admirin' your post office, especially the fixtures that aren't government issue," Jed was saying. He winked at me as I stood. "Lucille Grimes, Chet Arnold. Chet's a tree surgeon, Lucille." He grinned at her. "I don't need to tell him who you are. Chet had the word on our beautiful postmistress twenty minutes after he'd hit town."
"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Grimes?" I said to cut off the flow of words. She murmured something I didn't get and slid into the booth opposite me. Her face was cool and composed-looking under her blonde hair. Her features were a bit too long and pointed from brow to chin for beauty, but her skin had a delicate pallor that was attractive. Her eyes were surprisingly dark for the rest of her
coloring. Despite the lack of high points, there was nothing
low-keyed in her appearance.
Jed crowded into the booth beside her and called for drinks. Lucille folded slim, capable-looking hands together on the booth table and looked directly at me. "I hear you're a very capable workman, Mr. Arnold," she said. Her voice was low-keyed, too. No stress or strain and no artificiality.
"Thank you, Mrs. Gr—"
"Hear, hear," Jed interrupted. "Lucille, meet Chet. Chet, meet Lucille. What's all this Mr. and Mrs. business?" He got up and advanced upon the jukebox in the corner. He fed it coins and punched buttons indiscriminately. "Dance?" he offered Lucille when he returned to the booth. "Illegal, but the custom of the country," he grinned down at me while Lucille Grimes rose to her feet. "Join us for dinner?" Jed asked her. "Private little celebration of mine."
"Another time, thanks." She sounded genuinely regretful. She danced with Jed. She danced with me. I'm not much of a dancer, but she followed me easily. She wasn't nearly as willowy as she appeared. She filled a man's arms. I tried to guess her age. Thirty, maybe.
1 was on the floor with her again when the back door opened to admit a stocky man in gray uniform trousers with red piping down the sides and a khaki shirt open at the throat. I recognized the blunt red face. It was my opponent from the side-road encounter of the other day. He sat down at the bar and ordered a beer.
Lucille excused herself to us after another dance with Jed. "It's been pleasant," she said, gathering up her gloves and bag. She smiled at us impartially and exited through the rear door. Three minutes later the uniformed man left his half-finished beer and followed.
Jed was watching, too. "They're not usually that obvious," he said softly. "That's Bart Franklin, one of our risin' young deputies. Popularly known as Blaze due to a high-voltage temper. I'm a jackleg deputy around here
myself in emergencies. Blaze isn't one of our better-loved
members."
"He's married?"
"His wife is," Jed returned. "Blaze has a lech for the blonde widow."
"It always helps to know if another dog's after the same bone," I remarked.
"You go for her?" Jed asked in a half-protesting tone. "I brought her over because I remembered you asked about her the other night, but—" He shook his head. "It's ail yours, man. Yours and Blaze's. That gal spooks me. Somethin' about her just don't entrance my entrancer."
The conversation died when Hazel brought our meal. Jed left at eight-thirty to keep a date, and I said good night to Hazel shortly afterward.
I drove back to town, parked in the square, and went into my act. A week ago I'd marked off four taverns as the type most likely to have attracted Bunny's trade. Each night I stopped off in two of them for a glass of beer. I'd sit for half an hour, exchanging an occasional word with the bartender. They all knew me now when I came in, and had my beer drawn before I said a word.
In another few days I'd throw each of them the same bait, starting with the friendliest. "What's become of that big, dark, quiet fella used to be in here this time of night?" I'd ask each of them. "I haven't seen him lately."
A bartender's customers come and go, but they'd try to remember. "Oh, yeah, that big guy," I hoped one or more of them might say. "That's right, he hasn't been around lately, has he?"
If they remembered Bunny, I might get a lead. I needed a lead badly. I was on my second stretch of mapped-out side roads, and I'd found nothing. If a bartender even remembered the direction Bunny drove in when he left a tavern, it would be more than I had now.
I couldn't racket around this area asking for Dick Pierce. A small town is wired together so tightly it would be almost sure to get back to the interested party. Of
course if I crapped out all around the green-covered table in my efforts to find Bunny, a direct query was my ace in the hole.
Or deuce.
The day I asked I had to be ready for anything.
I wasn't planning on it.
Not yet.
VII
The next night I was making the second of my tavern stops when the limping redhead made a mistake. He didn't know it was a mistake, because he didn't know I'd seen him in Mobile. I'd just climbed out of the Ford, ready to go inside for a beer I didn't want, when he cruised by in a black sedan at eight miles an hour. I got a good look at him.
The redhead didn't turn to look at me. He just drove past. The sedan turned the next corner, pulled into the curb, and stopped. I could tell by the quick glow and then the extinguishing of the taillights. I knew the redhead was tailing me as plainly as if he'd written me a letter.
I went inside and had the beer. I talked a little baseball to the bartender and gave some thought to the redhead. He was a luxury I couldn't afford. That decision left only two things to be settled: finding out if he'd already reported back to Manny Sebastian where he'd followed me, and how I was going to get rid of him.
I said goodnight to the bartender and went outside to the Ford. I pulled away from the tavern and turned the same corner the black sedan had turned. There wasn't a car in sight, parked or moving. I circled the block twice, cursing myself for losing him, and then a pair of headlights settled in behind me. I don't know where the bastard came from, but he was good. It takes ingenuity to tail a man in a car without the victim's knowing it. This boy had it.
I took him back uptown, then cast on Main from the
traffic fight. A little privacy was necessary now. From the edge of town I settled down to a steady fifty miles an hour. I was in no hurry. Somewhere out in the boondocks I'd find a place to leave the redhead, permanently.
I found out in the first five miles how he'd followed me from Mobile without my getting wise. He was an artist with an automobile. He didn't just lock himself onto my taillight and leave me to wonder eventually about the lights that remained the same distance behind in my rear-view mirror. There was only a sliver of moon, but he rode some stretches with his lights out. He'd be almost bumper-to-bumper with me for short distances, and then I wouldn't see him for miles. Twice he passed me, once do
ing about eighty, only to pick me up again from behind. The first time he went past I wasted a look at his license plate. It was carefully, unreadably mud-spattered.
Twenty-five miles up the road I emerged from the woodsy darkness enveloping the highway into a sleepy-looking, wide-place-in-the-road intersection with a blinking yellow light. There were darkened storefronts and a lighted telephone booth just before the blinker. I turned right at the intersection, right at the next corner, and right at the next. I was out of the car and sprinting between two buildings before the redhead's lights turned the last corner and cruised past the Ford. v
T he last time he'd turned the next corner and parked. I was gambling he'd follow a pattern. If he did, I had him in my pocket. I angled through another space between buildings, headed for the street.
I was in time to sec his lights arc around the corner onto the highway after he passed my parked car. Sure enough, lie pulled in and stopped not fifteen feet from the phone booth. I le cut his lights before he even stopped rolling. He'd probably figure he was getting close to the payoff I le was, but not the kind he expected.
lie climbed out of his car in a hurry, took a quick look around the silent intersection, then started to trot back to the cot net he'd just turned. He didn't want to lose me. He didn't.
I was between him and the corner, and I stepped out from between the buildings and intercepted him, the .38 in my hand. "Hi, Red," I said. "How're things in Mobile?"
It would have stopped the average man's heartbeat. This was a different breed of rooster. Even in the poor light I could see him straightening his face out. "You got me wrong, Jack," he protested, deadpan.
"Walk up to the phone booth," I told him. I wanted to see his face in better light when I asked him the question that was bothering me. I followed right behind him, shoving the gun under my armpit. "Get inside it," I said when he reached the booth. "Make out you're dialing." He took down the receiver before he turned to look at me again. "Don't make the mistake of putting your hand into your pocket for change."
"You're akin' a big—"
"You must be the wheelman who wanted the Ford," I cut him off. "Did Manny tell you that you could have it if you kept tabs on me for him?"
It must have rocked him, but he still didn't lose his nerve. "I don't know any Manny," he said sullenly. He was eyeing me, wondering where the gun had gone. He had a thin, pale face with a scattering of freckles.
"Have you called Manny since you followed me to Hudson, Red?"
He dropped all pretense. "Manny says you're a tough boy," he sneered. "You don't look so tough to me."
"One more time, Red," I told him softly. "Have you called Manny since—"
"Up your ass with a meat hook!" he snarled. He snatched the booth door closed with his left hand while he went for the gun in his shoulder holster with his right. His hand was still on its way under his lapel when I put one in his chest and one in his ear. Both of them took out glass before they ticketed Red. He did a slow corkscrew to the booth floor, his freckles stark in his white face. I emptied the Smith & Wesson into the booth, spraying it from top to bottom. I put the last bullet into the light. Nobody was going to call this one a sharp shooting job.
I walked back to the Ford at a good clip. I backed up to the next corner without putting on my lights, then reversed the way I'd driven in there. I put my lights on just before I reached the blinker. Around me lights were popping on in houses as I turned left and headed for the Lazy Susan.
The intersection's citizenry would be a while finding Red with the booth light out. When they did, they'd be another little bit jawing while they tried to unscramble the jigsaw puzzle. I put the .38 on the seat beside me in case I had to pitch it if anything came up behind me.
Nothing did.
Kaiser greeted me at the motel room door.
He stretched out at my feet and watched for twenty minutes while I cleaned, oiled, and reloaded the Smith & Wesson.
I didn't know whether Manny knew where to find me or not.
He wasn't going to if he didn't.
I went to bed.
I took Kaiser along with me on my next trip to the Dixie Pig. There was the usual sprinkling of a dozen cars in back, including Jed Raymond's sportscar. I went in with Kaiser padding sedately beside me. Jed waved from a booth. I was two-thirds of the way across the floor before I saw Lucille Grimes seated opposite Jed with her back to me.
Jed, with his fey grin, tried to maneuver me into sitting beside Lucille. I pushed him over and sat down beside him. "Good evening, all," I greeted them.
Lucille smiled but didn't speak. She was eyeing Kaiser nervously. Jed reached under the table to pat the big dog. I watched closely, but Kaiser didn't take any offense. "Hey, there, big boy," Jed said to him. He glanced at me. "Who's your gentleman friend, Chet?"
"Kaiser, meet Jed," I introduced them. I noticed that Lueille's long legs were as far withdrawn beneath the booth as she could manage. "Well, folks, what's the chief topic of conversation?" I inquired.
"The star-spangled, unmitigated dullness of life in a small town," Jed replied promptly. "Right, Lucille?"
Her thin smile was noncommittal. "Perhaps Chet hasn't always lived in a small town."
Jed got me off that hook. "They're all small," he asserted. "How much town can you live in? A couple of blocks near where you work and a couple of blocks near where you sleep, even in New York. The rest is as strange as Beluchistan. I'll take little ol' Hudson."
I thought Lucille looked tired. There were dark circles under her eyes. She kept watching the parking lot through the booth window. She hadn't long to wait. A two-tone county sheriff's department cruiser swung slowly through the lot and down the driveway on the other side. The blonde ritualistically gathered up gloves and handbag. "Excuse me, gentlemen," she said, rising. "Good night."
"For a guy slaverin' for blonde meat you don't move very fast," Jed accused me when Blaze Franklin drove Lucille away.
"Pay attention," I told him. "You could learn something. Your hurry-up technique is all wrong."
"Not since I got out of high school it hasn't been," he said cheerfully. He turned serious. "Listen, don't let me needle you about the widow. She's—well, there's a damn sight better fish in the creek. Why don't you let me slip you a number or two from my little black book?"
"All this just because a county cruiser circled the parking lot, Jed?"
He nodded. "So you saw it, too. Blaze Franklin—" Jed hesitated. "Blaze is a little bit primitive. You know? Like he's rednecked all the time. Who needs it to get involved with a thick turd like that?"
"So he's the jealous type."
"In spades, he's the jealous type." Jed pushed his glass around in the wet circles on the table without looking at me. "I've heard some stories about Blaze." He loosed his quick grin at me. "Some of 'em might even be true. Hey, Hazel!" he hollered over to the bar in a quick change of subject. "Bring on the fatted calf!"
We ate diligently. Jed fed small cuts of his steak to Kaiser, who accepted them with dignity. "You'll spoil him," I said.
"He can stand spoiling. That's a lot of dog. I like his looks." Jed glanced at his watch. "Duty calls. Five-foot-two, eyes of blue."
When he left, I sat around waiting to see if Hazel was going to be able to get away from the bar long enough to visit. I got a surprise when she did. She'd changed to a dress. It was the first time I'd seen her in anything but the skintight Levis. She'd done something to her hair, too.
"What's the occasion?" I asked. She set a drink down in front of me and one on her side of the booth, too. I'd never seen her take a drink before.
"No occasion." Her voice sounded husky. "Every once in a while I take a notion to give the animals somethin' to think about besides my ass." She plunked herself down across from me.
Her eyes indicated that the drink in front of her wouldn't he her first of the day. I remembered Jed's warning,. and I wondered if the storm signals were up. Hazel was no shrinking, violet. Every once in a while
a half-splashed customer would get carried away by a sudden biological urge in connection with the contents of the Levis.
Hazel always fractured the house with her rebuttal. "What's with you, fella?" she'd rasp in her deep voice. "Your insurance paid up? Nobody told you I got my own cemetery out back for wise guys snatchin' a feel?" It took a hardy ego to survive that little speech intact.
She tossed oil her drink in a swallow and accepted my light for her cigarette. She still wore her cowboy boots, and out heel tapped steadily. Kaiser's ears pricked forward as In stretched out on the floor beside me.
Hazel picked up my drink and downed the remainder of it. She stated at me across the table as she set down the glass "I'm not a blonde," she announced defiantly, "but whatever she's got I'll double an' throw away the change. I'm closing early tonight. Come back and pick me up. Twelve-thirty."
I opened my mouth, and closed it again. "Twelve-thirty," I said finally.
She nodded, ground out her cigarette in the ashtray, then got up and went back to the bar. She didn't return.
I had time to kill. I drove into town, thinking about Hazel. I liked her. She was good company, and she had a caustic sense of humor. When she took the trouble to fix herself up, she was a damn fine-looking woman.
But—
Ahhh, what the hell, I told myself. Play the hand the way the cards are dealt. What do you have to lose?
I backed away from that bit of bravado in a hurry.
I knew what I had to lose.
I stopped in at the baseball-oriented bartender's tavern. He was the friendliest on my beat, and I was just about ready to pull the trigger on a few questions to him. I knew it wasn't going to be tonight, though, as soon as I walked inside. Blaze Franklin was sitting at the bar. It must have been a short date. Franklin had found out the reason for the dark circles under the blonde's eyes, I told myself smugly.