by Dan Marlowe
Lucille hadn't said a word all the way back to town. She looked around when I stopped the car. It took her a moment to recognize where she was. She opened the car door and got out, unsteady on her high heels, then leaned back in to spit at me. "Blaze will kill you for this," she rasped.
I appreciate a good hater. "Think again, sister," I told her. "How are you going to explain it to your lord and master? You set up the place, and then you weren't there. What does Blaze use on you when he's a little out of sorts? His belt? A jealous man believes what he wants to believe, and Blaze is going to figure you were a partner in your disappearance tonight."
I could have counted to ten while she stared at me. I'd given her something to think about. Then she slammed the car door and started up the street. I sat and watched her
It wasn't hard to see where Jed Raymond had found the adjective "shark-toothed" in connection with the widow Grimes. I owed Jed something for keeping me from making the play with my eyes shut. Franklin and his blonde must have had a Roman holiday with the suitors she'd set up for him to knock over. And of course none of them would ever talk about it.
I couldn't show much of a plus on the real purpose of the evening. Conversation had been sidetracked in favor of action. On the other hand, it had done me good to vent a little spleen upon a truly poisonous female.
I drove off, easing the-Ford through the deserted square, toward the Lazy Susan. I parked a block away and came up on it from the rear on foot. I thought I had Franklin's reaction figured, but until I knew for sure I had to be ready to see him on short notice. There was no cruiser in the motel yard. I walked completely around the motel, my footsteps silent on the grass. I could see the night clerk through the office window, his head nodding.
There was no sign of Franklin.
Lucille would be lucky if it was tomorrow instead of light now that she was down on her knees trying to explain.
I took vicarious pleasure in the thought.
I went into my unit at last and showered and shaved. It
was dawn when I stretched out on the bed with my hands folded behind my head. A thousand flickering images of the night's activities paraded through my mind. But I finally turned off the mental projector. I began to get a feeling about Blaze Franklin and Lucille Grimes.
It was time I figured a way of getting at them.
I interrupted Hazel's preoccupied feeding of potato chips to Kaiser at our booth in the Dixie Pig. "That's the third time in ten minutes you've looked me over as though checking for ringworm," I said. "What gives?"
"Just looking for battle scars," she answered. "I heard you had a date with the blonde."
"My, my. This is a small town. You've got the blonde all wrong, though. She's really quite kittenish."
Hazel snorted. "So's a Rocky Mountain panther. Frankly, I don't get it. Has the light in your baby blues reformed her?"
"How did she get into the conversation, anyway? Let's get to something important, like what's on your schedule after closing tonight."
"I could run out in back and check my social calendar, but I'll take a chance and say I'm free." She gave me her warm, beautiful Hazel-smile. "Did you have a discussion period in mind?"
"If you can discuss on your back." "What a rejuvenation!" The smile on her lips over-flowed into her eyes. "I've got to get back to work before I lose my maidenly reserve entirely." She wagged a finger at me. "You watch out for the blonde, y'hear? She's a tricky hitch."
"And here I thought I'd successfully changed the subject."
Hazel smiled again before she went back to the bar. I took over her job of feeding potato chips to Kaiser. The big dog loved potato chips. I'd tested him with a potato chip versus a piece of steak. He ate the steak, all right, but
lie ate the potato chip first. He'd crunch the chip, then circle his muzzle with his tongue to get all the salt.
This town had already given me one surprise in the appearance of the redheaded Eddie from Manny Sebastian's Golden Peacock parking lot in Mobile. When I looked up from feeding Kaiser, I had another. Lucille Grimes was halfway across the floor, heading toward my booth.
Her hands were empty, and her bag dangled loosely from its shoulder strap. That much I made sure of in the first split second. Then she was standing beside the booth. "Sit down, if you can," I greeted her. "What color welts are you wearing these days?"
She attempted to smile, but her eyes were murderous. She sat down, and I watched her until she laid her handbag aside. I had no intention of playing clay pigeon for this dolly. When she began speaking, it was plain she had herself under a tight rein. "I stopped to ask you to come to dinner tomorrow night, Chet."
Now here was a switch. "Yeah? Where?"
"At my house."
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. "Your house? What's the occasion?"
She manufactured a smile. "Why don't you come and see? Perhaps I can use someone as foresighted as you seem to be."
"At the post office?"
She stood up. "Call me in the morning and let me know." She picked up her bag and walked toward the door. Her movements weren't as fluid as I remembered them. I was beginning to think Blaze really had worked her over. If so, it was the first time I'd been in agreement with him since I'd hit town.
Since Lucille was no Campfire Girl, the dinner invitation had to mean one of two things. Either Franklin was so crazy mad he was willing to try to drop a ton on me right in her house, or Franklin had given her such a hard way to go the blonde was looking for reinforcements to get her ass away from Franklin. I couldn't see much nourishment for me in either setup.
Of course if it was Franklin and the blonde who had short-circuited Bunny—
I'd have to give the dinner invitation more thought.
Out at Hazel's cabin I walked from the bathroom to the bedroom and looked down at her tastefully attired in one-thirty-second of a sheet. "Come on and let's take a shower, big stuff," I said.
She yawned, then stretched mightily. The effect was spectacular. "You must have otter blood in you, man," she complained drowsily. "The last two nights I've been in and out of that shower with you until my corns are waterlogged. Why don't you just tumble on down here and relax your—"
I reached down and goosed her. She bounded from the bed to the middle of the room with a strangled yelp. Hazel was touchy. I aimed my thumb at her again, and she flew into the bathroom. I herded her into the glassed-in shower compartment and turned on the needle spray. We each took soap and in silence began to lather each other. The water hissed softly while the single off-center fluorescent light made sleek flesh dazzlingly brilliant, and my hands glided gently over slippery body contours. It was a moment out of a lifetime. We stayed in the shower a long time.
I stepped out at last and grabbed a towel. I handed one to Hazel, still in the shower. She buried her wet red head in the towel. I reached in behind her and flipped the shower regulator over to full cold.
"Oooooooohohohohl" It was a yell that would have backed off a catamount. Hazel boomed out of the shower enclosure like a fullback in an open field. She ran right over me I was laughing so hard when she turned and came after me, I couldn't defend myself. She got me down and banged my head enthusiastically on the tile. I couldn't get her off me until I got into her ribs and tickled. She squealed indignantly and rolled away.
Several more wet towels and a couple of cigarettes later we were stretched out on the bed, the firefly glow of cigarettes the room's only light. Beside me I could hear Hazel's deep, even breathing. She reached up over me to stub out her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, then trailed her hand lightly along my body as she dropped back beside me with a sigh. "You don't happen to think you're pretty far out reaching for sensations, Horseman?" she asked in her rich voice.
"You can tell your grandchildren you did it under water."
She laughed, then sobered. "That parlay breaks down with the first dog out of the box, Chet. Children come before grandchildren, unless they've repeale
d a law of nature."
I didn't like what I thought I heard in her voice, so I changed the subject. "I didn't get a chance to tell you before, but I'm invited out to dinner."
Hazel came up on one elbow. "The blonde?"
"In living color."
I could see the outline of her features but not her expression as I took a final drag on my cigarette. "Chet," she began, then hesitated as though wondering whether to continue. "I don't want to know your business, and I hope I'm not jealous of Lucille Grimes, but there's something I think you ought to know." She stopped again, and it was a full minute before she continued. "Blaze Franklin is asking questions about you all over town."
Instinct is a wonderful thing. I didn't have a stitch on, but my hand was up instantly, reaching for the butt of the Smith & Wesson—in its shoulder holster in the next room with my clothes. "Like what kind of questions is he asking?"
"Where you came from. What you're doing here. Where you lived before. How much talking you do about yourself." Hazel's voice was quiet. "I don't want you to think I'm prying, Chet. I just thought you ought to know."
"Don't think I don't appreciate it, baby."
1 thought about Blaze Franklin. He wasn't asking those particular questions because of anything that had happened between Lucille and me. Things were getting warm. I had no damn business on the bed here playing with Hazel's ass when the wash was out on the line and a storm coming up. "Any reaction from the questioned?" I asked.
"Even Jed was saying it was odd how little we really knew about you." There was no emphasis in Hazel's remark. She was reporting a fact. Her hand settled on my arm. I'm going to say one more thing, and then I'm going to shut up. And that's if you think of anything I can do to help, let me know. I'm not even fussy what I'll be helping with." She rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed. "I've got to open up the bar in the morning."
It was a fact the life had gone out of the party. We dressed, locked up, and went out to the Ford. On the way back to town I thought about Hazel's last remark. It was just short of putting it in writing that she was on the team. More, she didn't care which name was on the uniform. I've run into few blanket endorsements in my life. The big woman was all gold and a yard wide.
I appreciated her help, as I'd told her, but I was damn well going to put a stop to the necessity for it. She could only get hurt. It was two-thirty when I turned into the Dixie Pig's crushed stone driveway. Our good-nights were an anticlimax.
I drove to the Lazy Susan. There was only one reason Franklin was asking those questions about me. He'd watched me tramp the sawgrass swamps and savanna intermingled with pineland, salt meadows, and mangrove thickets on the-cast side of town. Blaze Franklin had just about stamped the brand on himself. Franklin was the reason I'd come to Hudson.
It left unanswered questions. How had a mulehead like Franklin out-maneuvered Bunny, who could break Franklin up with his bare hands? And why was Franklin nosing around me at all, when by all rights he should have been keeping i low profile and hoping no one was looking in his direction?
I didn't know.
There was no question now about my accepting Lucille Grimes' dinner invitation.
That would be the first step in supplying a few answers.
The dinner was quite an affair.
We sat at opposite ends of a six-foot table, and we were served by a girl in a maid's uniform. Lucille sat at her end of the table with an expression like a medieval landowner's among his serfs. All I could think of was Lady Bountiful among the poor.
It was plain enough that I was a stink in the nostrils with the lady seated at the head of the table. It was interesting that, feeling as she did about me, Franklin could force her to issue this invitation. It made Hazel a hundred-percent correct about who was wearing the pants in the corporation.
It had to be that Franklin was pushing her to set up the deadfall again. She wouldn't have told him exactly what happened that night; she wouldn't like to admit it even to herself. Blaze would assume I had made out with Lucille after suckering him into the wrong cabin, and this would leave him grinding his teeth. But he would also assume I was slavering for another go-round and would eagerly snatch up any invitation from the blonde. Lucille knew, better, but she had to go along with Franklin's idea.
It gave me an idea of my own.
"I'm glad to see you finally wised up to Franklin," I said to her when the little maid disappeared after serving dessert.
Her mind had been a long way off. Probably gloating over an image of me staked out naked over an anthill. She came back to earth. "Wised up?"
"Sure. I'll never know what you saw in a jerk like him. Just a big bag of wind." It was no trouble to make that sound convincing. "Having me to dinner like this shows you're a smart girl. You should have cut Franklin loose a
long time ago. You and me, now—we could really play
chopsticks together on the same piano."
She didn't swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Not at first. She was suspicious as I oiled up both sides of my tongue and greased her liberally. She couldn't believe at first I was too stupid to know her reaction to me, but her suspicion gradually died. She was used to such a masculine response for one thing. By the end of the meal she had come as alive as if someone had just reported my painful demise. She was tossing them back to me as fast as I batted them at her.
Lucille was no fool. I was giving her an out on a problem through which she hadn't been able to see daylight. This was the way it should go as far as Franklin was concerned. If she could report progress to him, it was a load off her back. If she could set me up as a foil against Franklin in the infinitesmally possible event he couldn't handle me—why, how lovely. She had nothing to lose.
She didn't overplay her hand much, either. "I was very angry with you the other night," she said gravely. "I thought you were a gentleman."
Even the boob I was supposed to be couldn't let her get away with that. "My grandmother raised me to be a gentleman everywhere except in bed," I informed her. "Besides, you'd just set me up to get cut off at the knees, sweet heart. You're lucky I didn't really get mad at you."
"But I wasn't going to do anything! I was just—" Her protest died away when I forced her gaze to meet mine.
"You were just going to sit there and cheer, that's all. You got what was coming to you, sugar. Just like Franklin's going to one of these days." I threw that in as an afterthought, she was really getting restless under the Franklin thumb—
She didn't appear to notice the opening. Honest curiosity shone for an instant through her genteel facade. "I admire clever men, Chet. Whatever led you to take rooms in two different names?"
"Self preservation. I inherited large quantities of it. Look, maybe I leaned on you a little hard, but that's water over the dam. I don't see why we can't get along. You're a smart girl. You and I make a much better team than you and Franklin. Just don't try any more cute tricks. And I don't like bossy women. Do as you're told and we'll be all right."
I expected to hear her grinding her teeth at the end of that little speech. Instead, she smiled sweetly. She was a cinch to bring along a sawed-off baseball bat to our next motel room assignation. Without her realizing, it oozed from every pore that she couldn't wait to bring the loudmouthed abusive animal into the dust. "I'm not used to such a—such a forceful man," she said demurely. "Shall we have our coffee on the patio?"
We had our coffee on the patio. I buttered her up some more. She buttered me up some more. Instead of the silver fingerbowls placed on our trays, twin showers would have been more appropriate.
She finally cut across the radius of the circle. "What are you really doing in this area?" she asked directly. "I never have believed your black maple story."
"A man can make a quick dollar if he stumbles onto the right patch of second growth out in that timber," I argued.
She was beyond the point of letting me get away with it. "You don't seem to me like the type of man interested in making just a few dolla
rs."
I set down my coffee cup and rose to my feet. Lucille rose, too, surprised. "You talk too much, sweet heart," I told her. I walked around the little marble patio table and took her by the arms, below the sleeves of her short-sleeved dress, harder than necessary. "You're going to have to break that habit." Her face whitened at the pressure of my hands on her arms. "I'll give you a chance tomorrow night to start breaking it. I'll pick you up for dinner at five."
"I'll—all right. Five," she echoed breathlessly.
I let her go. Her hands came up instinctively to caress her arms, where my handprints stood out lividly. "Good night, Lucille," I said.
"Good night," she said numbly.
I went down the patio walk to the street without going back into the house. The blonde should have been thinking, A pox on both their houses. But she was still committed to Franklin. The devil you know oftentimes seems better than the devil you don't.
Lucille would see to it that Franklin took me tomorrow night.
So she thought.
I'd see that I took the unholy pair of them.
I was positive now.
Tomorrow night I'd start winding up the whole ball of yarn.
It was still early, but I didn't feel like going to the Dixie Pig. I drove back to the motel and parked in the yard. I opened my door slowly because Kaiser had a habit of sleeping against it. He wasn't against it this time. I could see him sprawled in the left-hand corner of the room, motionless, his head at an awkward-looking angle.
"Close the door," a voice said from behind it.
Manny Sebastian's fat figure came into view.
His hands were empty, but the hands of the sandy-haired, buck-toothed man who moved out beside him weren't.
A blued-steel revolver was trained steadily on my chest.
I stepped inside and closed the door.
IX
Bucktooth moved to my right, the gun level. "Don't get careless," he said. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild-looking. His free hand snaked under my jacket and delicately removed my .38 from its holster. He tossed it to Manny.