The Name of the Game is Death (11 page)

I looked at my watch. I still had an hour of daylight. "Come on, boy," I said to the shepherd. He was up at once, hobbling but expectant. He was ready to jump into the front seat when I opened the car door, but I picked him up and put him in. "We'll pamper you for a day or two," I told him. He nuzzled my arm and sat down, dignified as a college president.

I went around to the trunk and hauled out knee-high boots, a machete for underbrush, and a steel-shafted number 3 iron for snakes. I'd seen enough of the side roads around Hudson to know I'd be doing more walking than riding. And I planned to cover every cowpath a car or a man could traverse in the five-mile area I'd marked off. I'd cover it a yard at a time, if necessary. Whatever it took, I was going to find Bunny.

We drove out Main Street, Kaiser sitting up as steady as a sergeant-major on dress parade. Me had a big head and a wicked-looking mouthful of teeth. His coat was mostly gray, flecked with brown, and he looked all business riding shotgun beside me.

The first two side roads I turned up weren't too bad. I checked them out without too much trouble. At the third one I took one look, pulled the Ford off the road, and changed into the boots. I didn't have enough daylight left to do much, but I wanted to get the feel of it. I found out I had a bull by the nose in the first hundred yards. Clouds of gnats and mosquitoes dive-bombed me. I lunged through knee-deep brush, chopping steadily, streaming perspiration. Only a few signs of recent car traffic lured me on to the end of the track. When the faint ruts petered out by an abandoned tarpaper shack, I turned around and slogged my way back to the road.

I emerged from the brush to find a two-tone county sheriff's cruiser pulled in behind the Ford. Kaiser was showing a handsome set of fangs to a uniformed man trying to look into the front seat. My brush-crackling progress had announced me, and the uniformed man turned to inspect me.

"Deputy Sheriff Franklin," he announced curtly. "You'd better keep that damn wolf on a leash." I said nothing. Franklin was a stocky man with a red, weathered face. His gray trousers had red piping on the sides, and his khaki shirt was open at the throat. "What's your business out here?" he asked me.

"I'm a timber cruiser," I said.

"You're a what?"

"I'm scouting the area for a stands of second-growth black maple I heard is in here."

He scowled. "We're two hundred miles too far south for black maple. If you know your business, you know that." He glanced at the weedy-looking trees in an area that had obviously been viciously slash-cut.

I made my voice firm. "I had a drink with an old-timer who told me they took a million feet of black maple out of here fifty years ago. If the slash hasn't been burned over, then-should be a buck in it today for the guy who finds the right spot." Franklin was studying me, frowning. "I'm also working for Mr. Craig and Judge Carberry in town," I added.

Whatever Franklin had planned to say, the names stopped him. He wasn't the type to bow out gracefully, though. He swaggered to the rear of the Ford and made a production of writing down the license plate number. "We keep an eye on these badlands," he said gruffly and stalked back to his cruiser. He backed out on the road at fifty miles an hour and roared wide open down the road.

I changed back to my cordovans, put boots, machete, and golfclub back in the trunk, then patted Kaiser's scarred head when I got back into the Ford. "Good dog," I hold him. He
rrrrrrr'd
deep in his throat, then nipped at my arm. I had a feeling Kaiser and I understood each other about uniforms.

It was full twilight by the time I got back to the motel.

I began to make a habit of eating my evening meal at the Dixie Pig. Jed frequently joined me, and we'd sit over a drink and talk. When the bar wasn't busy, Hazel sat in, too.

Jed was a complete extrovert, like most salesmen I've known. In a roomful of people he'd crawl onto Hazel's lap and talk babytalk to her. He had a high-pitched, infectious laugh that turned every head in a room. But he was still a sharp-witted kid who looked both ways before crossing the street.

Between them Jed and Hazel knew every living soul for fifty miles. I'd get them started and then listen while they rattled family skeletons past and present. I didn't Know what I was listening for. I just hoped I'd recognize it when I heard it.

Early in the game I introduced the subject of the post office. They both shook a few feathers loose from that bird, but I couldn't find anything meant for me. Lucille Grimes was the postmistress, widow of a postmaster deceased five years. Jed said the town wondered why she didn't remarry, since she didn't lack for suitors. He also said zestfully that she was a tall, leggy, cool-looking blonde.

Hazel had her own idea why the beauteous Lucille hadn't remarried. She hinted that the favored suitor already had a wife. Since Hazel, minus her usual spade-is-a-shovel outspokenness, failed to name him, I deduced that he was a Dixie Pig customer. Lucille Grimes wasn't one of Hazel's favorite people, judging from the redhead's attitude. Jed kidded her about it openly.

I wasn't interested in the postmistress' morals or lack of them, but that post office continued to bother me.

It took me eight working days to clean up the Craig and Landscombe properties. Evenings I got out and plowed up and down the side roads north of Main Street. I found nothing. Nobody remarked that I didn't seem to be knocking down stone walls looking for more work after I finished with the Craig and Landscombe properties. The sun coast of Florida is an easygoing place.

Jed Raymond led an active social life, even for a young fellow his age. The nights he didn't show for dinner, it came to be understood I'd postpone my own meal to seven-thirty, and Hazel would serve us both in the corner booth. We'd sit and swap stories about horses and horse-players over coffee and cigarettes.

The big girl was comfortable to be around. Once in a while she'd have to get up and tend bar, but not too often. The Dixie Pig did its real business from nine-thirty to two
a.m
. The talk was knowledgeable. Hazel had made the racetrack scene from Ak-Sar-Ben to Woodbine, and so had I. It's not the biggest club in the world.

Jed warned me once that she could be moody and her drinking a problem. So far I'd seen no sign of either. I felt she had a chance to let off steam with me that had been a long time bottled up. Blueshirt Charlie Andrews had died a few years before of a heart attack. Hazel had rushed into a no-good second marriage with a mystery man, Lou Espada, who had died as mysteriously as he'd lived. Andrews and Espada between them had left Hazel well off.

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.

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.