Hopscotch

by Brian Garfield

  It took the driver a little while to figure it out. Finally he was down under the car feeling for the hole. He came out cursing audibly. Kendig watched him walk back up the road slowly exploring with the flashlight—looking for the drainplug. It must have been loose, he’d be thinking; vibration must have dislodged it; it’s got to be somewhere around here. He’d walk on up to the yard, looking for the plug along the way; he’d tell the others—they’d have to bring one of the other vehicles down with a chain and tow the tanker back in.

  It would take some time. Kendig carried the jerrycan down to the abandoned car, set it down and crawled underneath to put the drainplug back where it belonged. He tightened it in place with the Vise-Grips. He noticed for the first time the three-centimeter pipe that had been welded in place across the back of the car, concealed from above by the massive chrome bumper. It ran the width of the car and there were six jet-type nozzles sticking out of it, pointing down toward the road. That was useful to know about.

  He crawled out from under and poured most of the jerrycan’s contents into the tank; he opened the hood and disconnected the fuel line from the carburetor to pour some of the stuff down the hose to prime it. Then he splashed just a little bit into the carburetor—he didn’t want to flood it—and re-connected the fuel line. He put the empty can in the back seat and glanced at the ignition lock but the driver hadn’t favored him by leaving the keys. He had to get down under the dashboard, rip a wire off the clock and feel around for the tab-contacts on the back of the ignition switch. He was no expert at hot-wiring but he knew the drill well enough; he put it in neutral and made sure the emergency brake was set and then he gapped the contacts until the starter meshed.

  The car started right up. He twisted the ends of the wire around the ignition tabs and sat up, pulled the door shut and went driving up the road less than six minutes after the driver had left the car.

  Pretty soon they’d be down there with their tow car and they’d find the tanker missing. They’d figure out how it had been done but they’d have to conclude it had been a rival bootlegger outfit. They wouldn’t report the theft to the law; they could hardly do that. They’d start banging around their neighbors’ stills and the feudist mentality of the back hills would make things pretty wild for a while. It was what he wanted: the more confusion the better.

  He drove the Olds into his barn and closed the barn doors and walked back down the track to repair the cowbell tripwire he’d broken when he’d driven in. Then he went up to the house and got out of his gasoline-soaked clothing, showered and scrubbed thoroughly, got into work clothes and returned to the barn to disguise the Olds.

  He carefully applied masking tape to the chrome surfaces and edged the tape with razor-blade cuts. The car was a dark green hardtop with a white roof. He had a dozen aerosol cans of black automobile paint. He taped newspaper over the windshield and windows and went to work with the spray paint: two coats on the roof, one on the rest of the car. He wasn’t an expert painter and the job looked mottled and amateurish but that was all right, it went with the age of the car. The paint wasn’t thick enough to blacken the roof entirely; it ended up more grey than black but again that was good enough. He removed the license plates and threw them into the toolbox of the DeSoto in the yard, and bolted the plate he’d stolen in Birmingham onto the rear bracket of the Olds.

  It was quick-drying paint. By dawn even the second coat on the roof was no longer tacky to the touch. He backed the Pontiac up to the Olds and siphoned off the Pontiac’s tank, running fuel into the Olds until it was nearly full. It left him about a quarter of a tank in the Pontiac—enough, in case. He put the Pontiac back in its usual parking space in front of the house and then he went over to the wrecked DeSoto and disconnected the dome-light toggle switch from it. He wired the toggle to the ignition of the Olds and brought a pushbutton switch from the DeSoto to act as a starter switch; there wouldn’t be time to fumble around under the dash trying to hot-wire it. When he had his wiring finished and everything screwed into place he tried it out and it worked fine: switch on the toggle, push the button and it started right up.

  Then he inspected the spray pipe under the bumper. The faucet handles of the six spigots had heavy steel cables fixed to them; the cables disappeared through drilled holes into the body of the car. He found the control after a little searching. It was an old hand-brake lever they’d taken off some truck or tractor; it lay down against the floor between the door sill and the driver’s seat. He didn’t touch it; you could only use a cable control once because you couldn’t close it again without going around and closing each of the six faucets separately and by that time you’d have poured all the oil out onto the barn floor. But he did open one of the spigots a little and a hard stream of black oil sprayed out; he twisted the handle shut immediately.

  They were guerrilla devices, the oil spigots on moonshiners’ tankers; if you were being pursued by another car all you had to do was pick the right spot and yank the handle and you covered the road behind you with a murderous oil slick. Anybody pursuing you would slither helplessly on the stuff. Pour it out on a steep bend and you’d send pursuit to their deaths.

  He didn’t intend to hurt anybody; if he could help it he didn’t even want anybody bruised. But it was a useful bonus—in case.

  An hour after sunup he drove the Olds out of the barn and ran it very cautiously across the yard into the woods along the pioneer track he’d cut. He went down the steep grade in low gear standing on the brake, taking it as slow as he could; it bottomed a few times but not alarmingly. When he got into the bigger trees he had to do a great deal of backing and filling in places but after half an hour he’d got it down through the trees to the end. He parked it there and piled brush around it. Then he walked down to the county road and prowled for twenty minutes to make sure there was no piece of the Olds that might flash a telltale reflection to a passerby on the road.

  He checked out the yard and closed in the top of the pioneer track with broken trees to conceal its existence. After that he went to bed.

  Thirty-six hours later he finished the book. He put the manuscript in the false bottom of the suitcase and cached the case in the Olds together with a bottle of water, several cans of food and a can opener. Everything he’d need with him was either in the Olds or on his person. Now it was just a matter of finding out how quick they were—Cutter and the FBI.

  He could leave now. Nothing kept him here. But it was time for the game to come alive and he wanted them to have the warm smell of him.

  Now he hoped they wouldn’t take long. If Cutter had been more of a gut player he’d worry about that; Cutter could see the clues he’d left and Cutter would realize their meaning. Kendig didn’t leave clues unless he’d meant to. Cutter would have to recognize the invitation for what it was. A gut gambler might decide to pass it up; decline the invitation, take Kendig’s neuroses into account, let him rot right where he was—anticipating entrapment but never seeing it happen. Time was Kendig’s enemy: he couldn’t sit and wait, he’d get bored with it and boredom was his essential weakness. Cutter knew that but Cutter had time pressures on him too and neither Cutter’s own personality nor the circumstances would allow him to sit still even though it might have been the smartest way to handle it. No: Cutter would come after him.

  The telephone rang.

  It had rung a few times since he’d moved in. Did he want to subscribe? Did he want home milk delivery? Did he want a charge-a-plate? There hadn’t been any of those in the past ten days. He’d made no calls out. He’d had the phone connected only as a convenience to Cutter.

  Now on the fourth ring he picked it up. “Hello?”

  Scratchy silence on the line and then a dull click. He cradled it and smiled. That had to be the FBI; if it had been Cutter he’d have played it better: sorry wrong number or would you care to contribute.

  He put a short piece of pipe in his pocket and left the lights burning and walked out of the house.

  – 15 –
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  THE PLACE WAS thirty miles out of town. Ross’s odometer showed twenty-nine and a half when Cutter said, “This’ll do. Pull over.”

  He slid it over against the wooded embankment and switched off. The two FBI cars parked in tandem behind them. Cutter stepped out and spread the topographical map across the trunk of the car and played his flashlight on it. The eight FBI agents walked forward and crowded around.

  Cutter said, “Ross and I and four of you will walk it from here—sound travels in these hills, he’ll hear the cars coming. You four give us forty minutes, then drive in. This car and your first cruiser you drive him into the farm. The second cruiser waits down at the foot of his driveway with two men in it.” He put his finger on the map. “The Scudder farm. Pay attention to these contour lines—that driveway’s damned steep.”

  Greiff said, “Any chance he’d have it booby-trapped?”

  “No. He’s not a killer. There may be telltales.”

  “He’s not a killer—what is he then?”

  “We want him. That’s all you need to know.”

  Greiff wasn’t used to being talked to that way; it showed on his middle-aged face. He was the District Director out of Atlanta and he had the habit of command.

  A car came down the road, an old one jouncing on its springs. It slowed to a crawl and the three men inside it gave Cutter’s party a xenophobic scrutiny. One of the FBI men slid his hand under his jacket. The, old car moved on. Greiff said, “They’ll figure us for revenuers—never mind.”

  Ross was looking at the map again. He saw how the farm tilted, how the driveway corkscrewed up from the road. If it was like the other places they’d passed it would be crowded pretty close by the forest.

  Cutter said, “He’s expecting us. All right, he won’t be in the house. He’ll be out in the woods watching.” Cutter’s finger moved along the lines of the map. “We won’t walk all the way to the yard. We’ll cut off the driveway and fan out through the trees. Three of us—I’ll take you two—move left. Ross and these two move right. Everybody keeps his flare pistol charged and ready. We’ll work our way through the woods and bracket the place. For God’s sake don’t go crashing around—keep your eye on where you’re walking and don’t blunder into any dead trees. Now if you spot him fire a flare. If you don’t just settle down and wait.”

  Cutter turned to Greiff. “It’ll take us about forty minutes to get positioned. Give us that long and then start up. The last car waits at the foot of the driveway on the main road. The other two go right up the driveway like you’ve got business there. Don’t crawl but don’t rush it. Keep your lights on bright. Drive right up into the yard and turn the cars around so you can pull out fast if you’ve got to. Then get out the bullhorn and challenge the house. Don’t go charging it, just give him a shout—talk to him about tear gas, show your shotguns.”

  “Then what?”

  “He’ll have some diversion set up. A fire bomb in the barn or something. Don’t stick your necks out and don’t fall for it. Just yell at him. He’ll make a move. It won’t be from the house. One of us in the trees ought to be in earshot when he does—we’ll light him up like Times Square with flares. Then we box him and throw down on him. Got it? All right—come on, let’s walk.”

  There was a good chance he’d be long gone. He’d had more than a half hour since Greiff had tested the phone. But Cutter had insisted he’d be there waiting for them. “He didn’t set this up with all that care just to leave us with a cold trail. You’ve got to understand this is a game to him. He wants to see our faces.”

  “I wish I was as sure of that as you are. Those chapters I read didn’t look like kiddy time to me.”

  “They’re not. They had to be the genuine article, hot enough to scorch a lot of big people. Otherwise we wouldn’t be playing his game.”

  They’d nailed him on the phone call to Ives actually but the Southworth Bond paper had brought them close and they’d have made him on that alone; the phone call had just speeded it up. He’d bought two hundred sheets of it in Chatsworth and then he’d bought a ream in Birmingham. Chatsworth was less than a hundred miles from here. But the phone call to Ives in New York had been placed from Adairsville and there were only nine phones in town, one in a pay booth between the gas station and the country store. The storekeeper knew Mr. Hannaway, recognized the composite Identikit portrait and said Mr. Hannaway had bought a big stock of groceries three days ago. The kid at the gas station described Mr. Hannaway’s Pontiac and remembered filling it and the five-gallon jerrycan in the trunk. The kingpin in town was a back-porch country lawyer who owned the lumberyard and auto repair yard, and probably a distillery and half a dozen county politicians, and sidelined in real estate; he’d rented the Scudder farm to Mr. Hannaway and had received a second month’s rent in advance just six days ago. Ross had been pleased with their detective work until Cutter told him Kendig had planned it that way.

  They walked up the driveway slowly, spread out. Ross’s ankle snagged something and he heard a distant tinkle—a cowbell, he thought; he listened for it again but it didn’t repeat. They moved ever more slowly, keeping close to the trees on either side of the rutted drive. Lamplight winked vaguely through the trees. The moon was hazed with a thin cloud cover but there was light enough to see where you were going. The flare pistol in his hand was slippery with his sweat; he shifted it to his left hand and wiped his palm on his trousers.

  Cutter stopped them and made hand motions. Ross took his two men into the forest and led the way with great caution, well back below the perimeter of the yard; only now and then could he catch a wink of the lamps. The footing was soft and quiet—a half-rotted carpet of needles. He touched one of the FBI men in the chest and pointed; the FBI man nodded and moved uphill and Ross waited until the man blended into the darkness. Then he took his remaining companion on with him, crossed another seventy-five yards and left the man posted in the trees and continued alone. He keened the night with eyes and ears, breathing silently with his mouth open; he shifted the flare pistol again to his left hand, dried his right hand and brought out his .38 revolver.

  He crossed into a stand of younger growth; there had been a fire here at some time, there were no big trees. Younger growth had sprouted and some of the saplings were ten or twelve feet high, no more. But they were close together and he had to move by inches to avoid sound. Above and to the left he could see the lamps of the house more clearly. Every two or three steps he stopped bolt still to scan the shadows. There was a racket of insects, and he heard water running somewhere—a creek or a river.

  He came to an opening that swathed irregularly from left to right. It began above him in a tangle of dead brush and it disappeared below him into heavier forest growth. He knelt and saw that some of the saplings had been sawed off close to the ground. Man-made then. For what purpose?

  It was a puzzle he couldn’t solve without more evidence and in any case it probably didn’t matter. He studied it in both directions and then stepped across into the trees beyond and moved on, angling closer toward the house now. Cutter would be some-where not far to his right, having come around the opposite way. This would be about right. He settled down to wait.

  He was down on one knee sweeping the yard with his eyes when he heard or felt something but he didn’t have time to move; a hand clutched his mouth and jaw, something rigid jabbed his spine and in his panic he heard a whisper:

  “Freeze.”

  The man was behind him, it was probably a gun in his back and no amount of hand-to-hand instruction at the academy could prepare a man to counter that. Ross didn’t stir; he hardly even breathed.

  “I’m taking my hand off your mouth. Yell and you’re dead. Understand me? Nod your head.”

  He nodded his head. The hand dropped away from his jaw and relieved him of his revolver.

  He still had the flare pistol. The whisper anticipated him: “Don’t even think about it. Drop it easy, right by your foot.”

  He let go. There was the sl
ightest thud when it hit the pine needles.

  “Hands behind you now.”

  He obeyed, felt something harsh against his wrists and judged it to be heavy wire of some kind—possibly coat-hanger wire. He drew breath but then something plunged into his mouth and he sucked for breath in panic before he realized the man was gagging him with a wad of cloth. He felt a strip of fabric go around his face and then the man was knotting it tight at the back. An abstract corner of his mind appreciated the economy with which it had been done.

  He kept in mind what Cutter had said. He’s not a killer. It would be an unfortunate time for Cutter to be wrong.

  Then something dropped to the earth; the man stoped to pick up Ross’s flare pistol. He saw two things: Kendig’s profile and a short piece of half-inch galvanized pipe. He’d been bluffed—it hadn’t been a gun at all.

  There was the scrape and growl of cars coming up the drive. He felt the pressure of the gun—his own—against his back. The two cars rolled into sight, high beams jiggling across the porch; the cars swung wide and stopped nose-out in tandem and the drivers slid out and hunkered against the fenders; Ross saw Greiff lift the bullhorn. The metallic voice was magnified and unreal: “FBI. Come out of the house with your hands empty. You’ve got one minute.”

  The FBI man with Greiff lofted a shotgun and cocked its slide with a good deal of racket.

  There was a whisper in Ross’s ear: “Where’s Joe Cutter?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  Greiff said on the bullhorn, “Thirty seconds. Then we fill the house with tear gas. Come on out—we’ve got you surrounded.”

  “Stay put,” Kendig whispered and Ross thought of making a run for it when the gun pulled away from his back but Kendig was still right there; Ross saw the flare pistol rise past his shoulder. For a moment he thought Kendig was going to crown him with it and he flinched involuntarily but there was no blow. The flare pistol hung in the air above and behind his left shoulder.