The Name of the Game is Death (12 page)

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 doing 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.

He saw me come in, but he thought it over before he did anything about it. Finally he couldn't leave it alone. He left his stool, which was two-thirds of the way up the bar from mine, swaggered past the half-dozen customers in the place, and pushed himself onto the stool beside mine. His elbows were out wider than they needed lo be. "Don't b'lieve I've heard your name," he said in a loud voice.

"Arnold," I answered.

He waited to see if I was going to say anything else. "Understand you're quite a dancer," lie went on. I wondered how much of his tomato face was due to weather and how much to alcohol. Around us the little tavern conversations had died out. Franklin wasn't satisfied to accept my silence. "I see you peart near ev'y day thumpin' around in the bresh out yonder," he said. "You keep it up you're gonna put your number 12 down on someone's still an' git your head blowed off."

"I carry a spare."

He didn't get it for a second. When he did, he clouded over. "You in town for long, Arnold?"

"It depends," I said.

He took a deep breath as though holding himself down. "Depends on what?"

I turned on my stool until I was facing him. "It depends on me," I told him, and returned to my beer. Franklin put his hand on my arm. I looked down at the hand, and then at him. He removed the hand, his face darkening. I knew the type. He wanted to lean on me just to show he could. I could feel the short hairs on the back of my neck stiffening. The bastard rubbed me completely the wrong way.

Franklin changed his mind about whatever he'd been thinking of doing. He snorted loudly, then got up and walked out the door. Around me the conversations slowly came to life again. The bartender sidled down the bar, his long arm going in concentric circles with a dirty rag. "That's Blaze Franklin," he said almost apologetically. "He's a little—quick. What was that about dancin'?"

"I haven't the faintest idea." I wasn't supposed to know the blonde was Franklin's playmate. Outside the cruiser roared as Franklin petulantly gunned it away. "Quick, huh? Who's he buried?" And then as the words hung in the air I shook my head mentally. It was crazy. More trouble I couldn't use. Where were my brains?

The bartender's laugh was a cackle. "That's a good one. Who's he buried?" He looked up and down the bar to assure himself a maximum audience. "Well, no one he's stood trial for," he grinned. It was his turn to listen to the sound of his own words in the stale-beer flavored air. His grin faded. "I mean an escaped convict or two—things like that," he amended hastily. He sloshed his rag about with renewed vigor. "Blaze is one of our best young deppities." Having retrieved the situation, he favored me with another smile.

I finished my beer and got out. I killed a couple of hours reading at the Lazy Susan while I waited for midnight. I left Kaiser in the room when I went out again. The fights were out in the Dixie Pig when I turned into the driveway except for the night light. There was only one car in back. Hazel's. She was standing inside the back door, waiting, but she came out and turned the key in the lock when she saw the Ford.

"Let's use my car," she said. She got in on the driver's side. I wondered how much more she'd had to drink, but I climbed out of the Ford and got in beside her. She spun the wheels backing up in the crushed stone.

She turned south on the highway. Past the traffic light in town she leaned on it. She had a heavy foot, but she was a good driver. I watched a full moon rising over the Gulf and the road unwinding in the headlights. There was no conversation. Sometimes I know ahead of time, but that night wasn't one of the times.