1
They said it was going to be as good as ever, but it wasn’t.
You could see that by the end of the first week of practice.
They’d stuck it back on, all right, and it looked like a leg,
but something was gone. McGilvray, who’s probably the
best T-formation quarterback that ever lived, was handing
the ball off a half stride ahead of me. We’d played together
two years in college and five in the pros, so he knew where I
was supposed to be. I did too, but I wasn’t getting there.
About the tenth time they unpiled the beef off us after the
fumble he spat out some topsoil and said, “We’re just a little
rusty yet, Harlan. Maybe I’m leading you too much.”
“It could be, dear,” I said. I knew better.
The next time he handed the ball off to me where I was,
instead of where I was supposed to be, and two rookies
smeared me back of the line. Not the Cleveland Browns;
just rookies trying out. It went on that way. When they ran
off the pictures looking for the missed blocking
assignments, you could see it wasn’t that at all. They open it
up for you, but they don’t guarantee to keep it dredged out
all summer like a ship channel. When you’re a half stride
slow in the National Football League you’re an old lady
trying to walk up Niagara Falls with a crutch; they run
down your throat faster than you can spit out your teeth.
The old man gave me every chance in the world, and even
tried me out in a defensive spot before he let me go, but it
The Big Bite — 2
was no use. I couldn’t pivot and swing fast enough to go
with the play even when I saw it coming, and they ran
through me like B-girls through a sailor’s bankroll. I’d
racked up a lot of yardage for him in five seasons and he
didn’t like it any better than I did, but in the pros when you
haven’t got it any more you’re out of anything to sell. He
came in when I was cleaning out my locker the last
afternoon and even became emotional to the extent of
lighting the cold cigar they said he’d had in his mouth since
the flying wedge went out of style.
“Rough,” he said. “Like a cob.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But cheer up. That colored boy can carry
it for you. He runs pretty good.”
“In three years he’ll run pretty good. And then maybe
some goddam drunk’ll knock his leg off. But I meant you.
You got any plans?”
“No,” I said.
“Ever think of coaching?”
”I’ve already got a crock leg,” I said. “What do I want with
ulcers?”
“You’d have had five more years. At least.”
“Yes,” I said. “At fifteen thousand a year.”
He grunted. “Maybe.” He took the cigar out of his mouth
and threw it fifteen feet across the room where it hit the
wall and bounced into the urinal. “Drunks,” he said.
I went back to the hotel to pack and check out. Four or
five sports writers were hanging around the lobby. They
slapped me on the back and told me how I’d be back next
season and the leg would be fine and I’d rack up a six-yard
average. I said, “Sure, sure,” and after a while I got away
from them and went up to the room. I undressed for a
shower, and looked at it. It had knitted all right; I didn’t
even limp. It didn’t feel awkward or look any different from
the other one except for some scar tissue. It was just great,
except that it wasn’t worth a damn any more. The only thing
I’d ever owned in my life was a mechanism that ran like
something bathed in oil and now it had been smashed and
when they put it back together something was gone. Maybe
there isn’t any name for it, actually. The medics will give
you a song and dance about co-ordination and
The Big Bite — 3
instantaneous response and frammis on the updike, but I
don’t think they know either. The nearest you can come to it
is that it’s a smooth surge of power from dead standstill to
full speed in about three strides, and you either have it or
you don’t. If you have it, you can sell it—or at least you can
until you get past thirty or thirty-two and it begins to slow
down on you. I’d taken a short cut. A drunk sideswiped me
and knocked me off the highway and when I quit rolling I
was sitting in a ditch holding a Buick convertible in my lap.
I thought of five more years and sixty to seventy thousand
dollars doing the only thing I had ever liked or was any
good at, and my hands knotted. I swung my fist at the leg
and knocked it off the luggage stand where it was propped.
The big lump of muscle on the calf ridged up and hurt as I
walked into the shower. I stared bleakly at the white tile
wall while the water poured over me. The dirty, sad,
drunken, son— There wasn’t even any use cursing him. He
was dead. He’d been killed in the same wreck.
I checked out before the squad came in from practice,
caught a bus into Los Angeles, and sat around the airport
until I could get on a plane going east. I didn’t really know
where I was going, and didn’t care. I got off in New Orleans
and for one of the few times in my life I went on a binge
myself. It was a honey and lasted a week; when I began to
come out of it I was in a motel somewhere on U.S. 90 out
toward the Mississippi line with a girl named Frances. I
never did know her last name and couldn’t figure out where
she’d come from or how we’d got away out there unless
they’d put us off a bus, but it didn’t seem to matter. She
knew nothing about football and cared less, and had never
heard of me, which was fine, but she drank like somebody
trying to finish a highball while a cab was waiting outside
with the meter running. She seemed to think something
terrible was going to happen to her if she ever sobered up.
The third morning I got up while she was still asleep and
caught a bus back to town. I didn’t know what the answer
was yet, but drinking wasn’t it. I went over to Galveston and
swam in the surf and lay in the sun on the beach until I’d
cooked the booze out of my system. The fourth day I was
there Purvis caught up with me.
I was staying at one of the beach hotels and was just
coming in through the lobby in swim trunks and a terry
The Big Bite — 4
cloth robe late in the afternoon when a man reading a paper
in one of the chairs got up and came toward me. He caught
me just as I stepped into the elevator.
“John Harlan?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“Purvis,” he said. “Old Colony Insurance.”
“Save yourself a trip,” I cut him off. “I don’t need any.”
But the elevator boy had already closed the door and we
were going up.
Purvis shook his head. “I don’t sell it. I’d just like to talk
to you a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”
I shrugged. “You an adjuster?” I couldn’t see why they’d
be pawing through it now. The whole thing had been settled
five months ago.
“Investigator,” he said.
I looked at him then, for the first time, and knew I’d seen
him somewhere before. He was about five-ten, and slender,
with a built-in slouch, and appeared to be around forty
although the hair showing under the beat-up old felt hat
was completely gray. His clothes looked as if he dressed by
jumping into them from the top of a stepladder. You
wouldn’t have given him a second glance, unless the first
one had been at his face. It was thin and gray and a little
tired, but there was a deadly efficiency about it you couldn’t
miss even if you were half asleep. The eyes were gray too,
and as impersonal as outer space. I remembered then
where I’d seen him before.
“You came to the hospital,” I said.
He nodded.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. I led the way
down the corridor, unlocked the door, and stood back for
him to go in. The room was on the south side, with a
window looking out over the Gulf, but there was little
breeze and it was breathless and hot. It was just at sunset
and the piled masses of cloud to seaward were fired with
red and orange, some of which was reflected back into the
room to give it a strange, wine-colored light. He sat down in
the armchair near the door, took off his hat and dropped it
on the carpet, and fished a pack of cigarettes from the side
pocket of his coat. I tossed the robe over the bed and when I
The Big Bite — 5
turned he was watching me. I walked over to the dresser
beyond the foot of the bed and picked up my own cigarettes.
As I lit one and dropped the match in a tray I caught sight of
him again, in the mirror, and he was still staring at me. It
was obvious and deliberate, and he didn’t seem to care at
all. I felt like a girl on a runway, and began to get hacked.
He blew out smoke and leaned back in the chair.
“Stacked,” he said. “Walk back here again.”
“You that way?” I said. “Beat it.”
He shook his head indifferently. “I’m not trying to make
you. Just want to see how you walk.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s professional.”
I came back and sat down on the bed with the cigarette.
He watched me utterly without expression, and then he
shook his head again. “You’re a screwed duck.”
“That’s news?” I asked.
“No jury in the world would give you a nickel, even if you
hadn’t already signed a waiver. Take a look at yourself. You
got any idea how far you’d get trying to look smashed-up
and pathetic to twelve average Joes with pots and fallen
arches? They’d laugh like it was the Berle show.”
“You just came over to cheer me up, is that it?” I said. “I
know all that. And I have signed the release, or waiver, or
whatever you call it—”
“What did they give you?”
“Five thousand,” I said. “And the hospital bills.”
“You took the short end, pal.”
“In another year or two I might have figured that out
myself. Look. The leg had healed perfectly. I was up and
walking. Not even a limp. The medics said it was as good as
ever—”
“And when you reported for practice, it wasn’t? You’d
slowed down?”
“It’s not measurable,” I said. “The only way you can tell it
is by trying to run through eleven pros who haven’t slowed
down. You can figure it out then while they’re walking
around on your face five yards back of where you should
The Big Bite — 6
have been. It’s nothing you could prove to anybody. X-rays
wouldn’t show it.”
He nodded, and moved his hands. “Motion is a thousand
signals, and a thousand movements, linked. One square
corner anywhere, and you break it up and the flow is gone.
You’re not a professional athlete any more; you’re just
another taxpayer with two arms and legs. There’s no
shortage.”
“So why keep kicking it around?” I asked. “The whole
thing was settled months ago.” Then I thought of
something. “What’s the name of your outfit again?”
“Old Colony Life.”
“Hell, that wasn’t the company—”
“No. Of course not. I thought you understood that. We
didn’t have anything to do with the liability he carried on
the car. That was some California company.”
“Then what’s the angle? How’d you get in the act?”
“Life insurance. About a hundred thousand worth.”
I stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t get it.”
He sighed. “Cannon was insured with Old Colony—”
“I read you,” I said. “That far. But what about it? He was
insured. He’s dead. You pick up the tab. Looks cut and dried
to me. I figure he cost me fifty to seventy-five thousand,
depending on when and if I might have got hurt in the
natural course of events, playing. And now he’s cost you a
hundred grand. That’s a pretty good night’s work for one
souse, but I don’t see what either of us can do about it now
unless maybe we send out for a box of Kleenex and have a
good cry.”
“I’d just like to ask you a few questions. If you don’t
mind.”
I shrugged. “Go ahead. But I don’t see how there can be
much room for doubt he’s dead. He was buried while I was
there in the hospital.”
“I know. Just say we’re still a little curious as to how he
died.”
I stared at him. “Don’t you read the papers?”
“Only the funnies. And today’s horoscope.”
The Big Bite — 7
“Everybody knows how he died. He was killed in the
wreck when he sideswiped me and knocked me off the
road.”
“Sure. I know. I read the Highway Patrol report. I talked
to the officers. I talked to the doctor. I talked to the other
witnesses that were there when they untangled him from
the wreck. I talked to you in the hospital. Now I’m talking to
you again. It’s a living.”
“You don’t believe he was killed in the wreck?”
“I didn’t say that, did I?”
“Why else?”
“Routine, Harlan. Any time a policy-holder dies violently,
without witnesses right at the scene—”
“Bat sweat,” I said. “Five months after it happened, and
you’re still poking around in it. Why?”
“We never close a case until we’re sure.”
“Well, look. He must have been alive when he passed me.
I never heard of a corpse driving a car, even the way he was
driving it. And when they took him out of it he was dead,
with his head caved in. What, else do you want?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Suppose you tell me the whole
thing again, the way you did at the hospital?”
“Sure,” I said. “You figure maybe I walked over and
knocked his roof in while I was pinned down with a crushed
leg under a four-thousand-pound convertible? I’ll admit I
was a little put out about it—”
He shook his head. “The whole thing, as nearly as you can
remember it.”
I sighed and lit another cigarette. “All right. It was just
after dark. I was coming into town from that fishing cabin
where I was camping, to see a movie. A mile or so after I
got out on the pavement, from the dirt road coming out of
the swamp, a car came up behind me, going very fast. I was
doing fifty, so he must have been clipping it off around
sixty-five. There was no other traffic on the road, nobody in
sight at all, so he had all the room in the world to pass me
and then pull back into the right-hand lane, but instead he
cut right in across my left front fender and knocked me off
into the ditch. The car rolled a couple of times with me on
the floorboards, but on the last one I fell out—the top was
The Big Bite — 8
down—and then it teetered on two wheels—and fell back on
top of me. He crashed, too. Just as I was going up and over
the first time—while I was diving for the bottom—I saw his
headlights swing in a big circle like somebody waving a
flashlight around with his arm. Not that I was particularly
interested in what happened to the sad bastard at the
moment, but it’s just one of those things that register on
your mind in the middle of everything, for some reason. I
don’t know how long it was before they got there with the
wrecker and pulled the car off me, but it seemed like about
two average lifetimes. I was out cold, at least part of the
time.”
“But not all of it?”
“No.”
“And his car had come to rest against a culvert about a
hundred yards ahead of you?”
“So they told me later.”
“Did you hear anything during the time you were
conscious?”
“Such as what, for instance?”
“Cars going by, people talking, anybody moving—”
“No. Believe me, pal. I was never lonelier in my life.”
“Nothing at all? You didn’t hear anything?”
“Just night sounds. You know—frogs, things like that. And
something dripping. I remember hoping it wasn’t gasoline.”
I could see the disappointment in his face. “That’s all?”
“That’s all I remem— No. Wait. Once I thought I heard
him moaning or trying to call for help, from the other car.”
He made a little gesture with his hand, and something in
his eyes told me that was what he’d been fishing for all the
time. “You said the same thing before. You really think you
heard him moan, or cry out?”
“I think so.”
“You can’t be any more positive than that?”
“You ever been knocked out?” I asked.
He nodded.
The Big Bite — 9
“Then you know how it is. It’s all fuzzy afterward,
especially if you were in and out several times. You don’t
know how much of it you might have dreamed.”
He nodded. “But there is a chance you did hear him?
Remember, you’ve told me twice, just the same way.”
“Sure,” I said. “But what of it? What difference does it
make if he did groan or something?”
“You see the pictures of his head?”
“I didn’t want to see any pictures of his head. I had
pictures of my own.”
“I thought not,” he said. “I saw them. He didn’t make any
noise, believe me.”
“Then I must have imagined it.”
He grunted. “Maybe.”
I got it then, but before I could say anything he abruptly
changed the subject. “You ever meet his wife? Widow, I
mean.”
“No.”
“She never did come to see you in the hospital?”
“No. Her lawyer, and the insurance joker. That’s all.”
He looked thoughtful. “Did that ever strike you as a little
odd? I mean, her husband crashes into you and lays you up
in the hospital for weeks and she doesn’t even bring you a
bunch of violets. They established the fact the wreck was
entirely Cannon’s fault, she didn’t know but what you might
sue the estate for steen million dollars, and still she
wouldn’t waste half an hour going out to the hospital to
butter you up a little.”
“As I said, her lawyer did.”
“Not the same thing at all. This babe’s a looker.” He
moved his hands again. He could say a lot of things with his
hands. “A dish like that can pour more oil on the troubled
waters in five minutes than a lawyer can in a month. And
they know it. All of them.”
“Well, after all,” I said, “her husband was killed in the
wreck—”
“She didn’t take to bed about it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The Big Bite — 10
He shrugged, “Nothing in particular. How long had you
been out there at that cabin before the accident?”
“About six days, I think. Let’s see, I got there on Saturday,
and it was the following Thursday night he creamed me.
Why?”
“I just wondered. How’d you happen to be there, anyway?
You don’t come from that part of the country.”
“I like to fish. Do about a month of it each spring when
I’m not working at some off-season job. A lot of bass in that
lake, and the cabin belongs to an old friend, a guy I knew in
college.”
He nodded. “I see. Ever been there before this year?”
“Once. About three years ago. Just over the weekend.”
“And you never did meet the Cannons? I thought maybe—
that is, he had a camp out there too, not far from your
friend’s.”
“Well, you might say I met him,” I said wearily. “Or have
we mentioned that? But as far as I know I’ve never seen her
in my life. I don’t even know what she looks like.”
“One of those very rich brunettes, blue-black hair, brown
eyes, fairly tall, around thirty. Lovely woman. Not classic,
but what they call striking. Coloration— you know what I
mean.”
“Oh? Sure. I—” I started to say something else, but for
some reason I bit it off and waited.
“If you’d ever seen her you’d remember her,” he went on.
“Here, I’ve got a picture of her.” He took it out of the inside
pocket of his coat and handed it to me. “What’d you say?”
I looked at it. “Nothing,” I said.
She was a dream, all right, and she was the same one. I
was almost positive of that. The light had been pretty poor,
there under the trees, but as he said himself if you’d ever
seen her once you’d remember her.
“Well?” he asked.
It was just a hunch, but I played it. “Toothsome,” I said.
“But I never saw her before.”
The Big Bite — 11
2
He picked his hat off the floor and stood up. “Well, that’s
about it. Thanks for sparing the time.”
“Not at all,” I said.
When he was gone I took a quick shower and lay down on
the bed with a cigarette. It burned down to the end and I lit
another as the sun went down and twilight thickened inside
the room. It was all crazy, but several things stood out like
moles on a bubble-dancer. The first was that for some
reason he didn’t think Cannon had been killed in that
wreck. Not in the wreck itself, or as a result of it. Why? A
man goes off the road and crashes at sixty miles an hour
and when they sift him out of the wreckage with his head
knocked in you wonder if he died of gastric ulcers? No.
Purvis believed he had been murdered after the crash. But
still he wouldn’t admit it.
Maybe, though, the latter was understandable, if you
looked at it correctly. He had somebody in mind, but you
didn’t go around making irresponsible statements like that
until you had some proof to back them up. The police had
already written it off as a traffic fatality, so he’d have his
neck out a mile. The slandered party could sue the
insurance company.
The next thing that stuck out was that it wouldn’t make
any difference at all as far as the insurance company was
concerned whether he’d died in the wreck or been
The Big Bite — 12
murdered by somebody after the wreck—unless the
beneficiary of the insurance policy was involved in the
murder. If somebody else tagged him out they still had to
pick up the tab, as far as I knew. The beneficiary would no
doubt be his widow. Therefore, he had his eye on Mrs.
Cannon. That tied in perfectly, because it was Mrs. Cannon
he kept asking about. He couldn’t understand why I’d never
seen her the whole time I was there, why she’d never come
to the hospital. I was one up on him in that department.
After looking at the picture, I was pretty sure I knew why
she hadn’t. She didn’t want to come anywhere near me
because she was afraid I might recognize her.
No, I thought; at best it was just a guess. That might be it,
or it might not. I’d never thought about it particularly while
I was in the hospital, and just assumed she was overcome
with grief and didn’t want to be reminded of the wreck any
more than she had to. It didn’t matter to me; as far as I was
concerned I’d already seen enough of the Cannon family.
And there was no reason, actually, that she had to; she had
no connection with the accident. She wasn’t even in the car
with him when he rode me off the pavement. Her lawyer
and the insurance adjuster had taken care of smoothing
down my hackles and working out a settlement that looked
fair to me at the time. So why should she show up?
But then, again, when you thought about it, why shouldn’t
she? Purvis had intimated she wasn’t grief-stricken quite to
the point of throwing herself on the funeral pyre. And in five
weeks she might have dropped around for a couple minutes
some afternoon between the first and second cocktails and
said, “I’m sorry my husband knocked your leg off. Here’s a
roll of Scotch tape.”
So maybe she had avoided me deliberately. She knew I’d
seen her out there near the lake less than fifteen minutes
before the wreck and would probably recognize her if I saw
her again. But I’d never mentioned the fact to anybody, so
presumably I didn’t know just who it was I’d seen. If it were
just any woman, it was of no importance; if it were Mrs.
Cannon maybe it became highly significant. Why? Was she
supposed to have been somewhere else at the time? I didn’t
know, but one thing was certain as hell, if she didn’t want
anybody to know she’d been out there, she would have been
very careful to stay away from me.
The Big Bite — 13
But why was Purvis digging into it after all this time? It
had been five months. Surely they must have had to pay off
on the insurance policy before this, and when they paid
you’d think they would write it off and close it. It didn’t
make sense.
There was one more thing that didn’t make a lot of sense,
and that was why I’d told Purvis I’d never seen her. It was
just a hunch, and I still wasn’t sure why I’d done it. Well, I
thought, I wasn’t Purvis’s mother, was I? Let him dig up his
own information; he sure as hell hadn’t dislocated his jaw
telling me anything. There was another angle, too. Suppose
something a little funny had been going on out there that
evening; the chump on the side-lines that got run over
wasn’t Purvis. It was John Harlan.
I got up and dressed, and went out to dinner. It was a
little after nine when I came back to the room with a copy of
Field & Stream and tried to read. It was no use. I kept
seeing a picture of a very lovely and very wealthy brunette
who became widowed and even richer while I lay there with
a Buick in my lap. Toss that seal a fish, Jeeves, so he’ll stop
barking. Five thousand will do. The telephone rang. I
reached over to the table beside the bed and picked it up.
“Harlan?” a man’s voice said. “This is Purvis again—”
“You still in town?” I asked.
“No. At home. I work out of the Houston office, or did I
tell you? But what I called about—there was something else
I wanted to ask. you. That convertible top was down?
Right?”
“Sure,” I said, frowning. “Why?”
“You were alone, of course; but do you remember whether
you had anything in the seat beside you?”
“On the seat? Not that I remember. But what difference
—?”
“Just something I got to wondering about,” he said easily.
“Not important at all. But you know how it is; you get to
working on one these things and you keep trying to get the
whole picture—”
He went on. It was a pretty fair snow job, but it would
take a better one to make you stop wondering why he’d
asked a crazy question like that.
The Big Bite — 14
“—so the seat was empty?” he wound up.
“Of course,” I said. “That is, except for some dirty
clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“A bag of laundry I was taking into town.”
“Laundry?” There was the faintest hint of excitement in
his voice. Then he said, “Wait a minute. I don’t get it. I
thought you said you were going to town to see a movie. It
was after eight p.m., and all the laundries would be closed
—”
I sighed. “You paying for this call?”
“Sure. But—”
“All right. As long as I’m not being nicked for the toll
charges, I don’t mind going into a long-winded song and
dance about some goofy thing that doesn’t amount to a
damn. There’s a kid, see, at a filling station there in town.
Just finished high school, and has an athletic scholarship at
S.M.U. Or T.C.U. Or one of those Southwestern Conference
schools. He knows who I am. Or used to be, I should say.
He’s a football maniac, so if I asked him he’d wash the
clothes himself with Lux flakes and dry ‘em by blowing his
breath on ‘em. I intended to leave the bundle there at the
station and have him call a laundry route man to pick it up
the next morning. Save me a trip into town during the day
when I could be fishing. That wrap it up?”
“Sure. I didn’t quite catch his uncle’s name, and when he
was baptized, but you can call me collect from Omaha—”
“Well, you asked.”
“So I did. It was a pretty good-sized bundle, huh?”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost the check list,” I said wearily. “If it
makes any difference how many dirty socks I had on hand in
March—”
“I mean, it wasn’t just a couple of shirts?”
“No. It was a whole bunch of stuff in a white laundry bag.
Some sheets, blankets, and so on, from the cabin—”
“Uh-uh,” he said slowly.
“I don’t scan you,” I said. “What difference—?”
“Just an angle,” he. Said casually. “As you say, it doesn’t
amount to a damn. Thanks a lot, Harlan. See you—”
The Big Bite — 15
“Hey, hold it,” I said. It was too late. I heard the phone
click as he hung up.
I sat on the side of the bed and lit a cigarette. Reading
was out-of the question now, and sleep was impossible. A
bundle of laundry on the seat beside me—why the hell had
he been interested in a stupid thing like that? Something
about the way he had said, “Uh-uh,” told me that was
exactly what he’d been hoping to learn.
Try again, I thought. Go back over the whole thing.
Everybody’s missed it so far—everybody but Purvis. Look.
Secondary road, with practically no traffic on it, this joker
comes up behind you going very fast, drunk as a skunk,
passes, cuts in— Why? Well, obviously, because he was too
drunk to drive. But if he was that drunk and driving that
fast, why hadn’t he crashed before? It would be thirty miles
back to any place he could have got that kind of a bun on,
unless he was carrying his supplies with him. No. That
wasn’t an answer. It was luck. Coincidence. A drunk can
smash up anywhere. It was just the bounce of the ball that it
happened to be me he’d leaned on.
You’re still missing it, I told myself. That’s exactly the way
everybody else has figured it from the beginning, but Purvis
is looking at it from a different angle altogether. He’s got a
bundle of laundry mixed up in it. Why? Because it was lying
in the seat. It was in a white bag— I stopped then and sat
very still on the side of the bed. Was that where we’d all
gone off the track? Taking it for granted Cannon was
drunk? Maybe he hadn’t been. Suppose he’d crashed me
deliberately? And then somebody had killed him, caved his
head in while he was lying unconscious in the wreck?
No, hell, I thought. It was too fantastic. But was it? I knew
something that even Purvis didn’t know—but probably
suspected. Mrs. Cannon was out there at the lake that
evening. Suppose Cannon had been looking for her,
believing she was out there with somebody. Maybe he came
out of the swamp road behind me, trying to get a look at
who was in the car. He caught up with me, with his
headlights splashing against the back of the car, and saw I
was alone. The top was down; it would be obvious there was
nobody with me. Then, just as he was passing, for a fraction
of a second he caught a glimpse of somebody bent over or
The Big Bite — 16
crouched down in the seat beside me, hiding from the
lights. So he blew his stack completely.
But nobody could be that crazy. He’d be taking a chance
of crashing himself—which he did. A man would have to be
absolutely berserk to do a thing like that. Well, how did I
know he wasn’t? I didn’t even know him, to say nothing of
having any idea of what was sloshing around in his mind as
he came up behind me. Maybe he thought I was somebody
else. Maybe he didn’t care if he did kill himself along with
her. Maybe— There were a dozen possibilities.
But still it was moonshine—unless you had more to go on
than that. Purvis had, or he’d never have started digging
into it. I had to talk to him again. But what good would that
do? He wouldn’t give you the time of day; he was too cagey.
Yes, but he didn’t have to tell me anything; I could find out
a lot by watching the direction his questions took. That had
worked pretty well so far. I could call him and tell him I’d
just remembered some goofy thing that might have a
bearing on it, and get him started again. Then I stopped. I
couldn’t call him tonight; I didn’t even know his first name,
and there were probably dozens of Purvises in the Houston
telephone directory.
I threw some clothes on and went out to get a cup of
coffee. When I came back it was hours before I got to sleep.
It wasn’t the coffee, however; coffee never bothers me that
way. I was thinking of Mrs. Cannon again, and of a hundred
thousand dollars, and a lot of things were growing clearer
in my mind as I tossed and turned on the sweaty sheet. I
was finished, wasn’t I? Football was the only thing I knew or
was any good at, and they’d taken that away from me. What
was left? Coaching? High school character-building?
Getting shoved around by Monday-morning quarterbacks
for peanuts? The hell with that. Selling? Nuts. I liked
violence and rough body contact and money and excitement
and then money again, and I hated failure in the way you
can hate it only if you grew up with it. I’d seen enough
ineffectual futility by the time I was twelve to last me the
rest of my life, and I was a pro making them put it on the
line when I was a junior in high school. I was big and fast
and I was good—and I knew it. They called me a coldblooded
savage and Whore Harlan and What’s-in-it-for-me
Harlan, but they paid me. Not openly, and not the school
The Big Bite — 17
itself, but I got it. In college I got more. So now it was all
over. They’d stopped the train and put me off because some
guy had crashed into me with a car. Maybe he’d even done
it deliberately. I cursed and sat up in bed, groping for
cigarettes in the hot darkness. I wanted to get my hands on
something or somebody and have an accounting. He was
dead and beyond reach. But she wasn’t, and maybe she was
at the bottom of the whole thing. I thought of the way she
looked in that picture, and of the money she or somebody
had cheated me of. I lit a cigarette and stared coldly at the
match as I blew it out. You should have done it to somebody
else, baby, I thought; I don’t like having it done to me. . . .
In the morning, after I’d had some breakfast, I came back
to the room and put in a call to Houston. In a moment a
girl’s voice trilled, “Good-morning-Old-Colony-Life-
Insurance-Company.”
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Purvis,” I said.
“I beg your pardon. What was the name again?”
“Purvis.”
“I’m sorry, but there’s no one here by that name. Are you
sure you have the right number?”
“Of course,” I said impatiently. “He’s an investigator.
Works out of the Houston office. This is Houston, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. But we have no Mr. Purvis. Just a moment,
please—”
I waited irritably. What was the matter with her? Didn’t
she even know who worked there? She came back on.
“Hello, I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I just checked with
one of the other girls who’s been here longer. There used to
be a Mr. Purvis, but he left the company several months
ago.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see—” It was a little fast, and it took me a
moment to catch up. “Well, look,” I went on hurriedly,
before she could hang up, “could you give me his last
telephone number or address, off the old personnel
records?”
“Just a minute, please.”
I dug up an old envelope and uncapped my pen. “Hello,”
she said when she came back on. “This is four months old,
but he might still be there.”
The Big Bite — 18
I wrote it down. “Thanks a million,” I said.
I hung up and lit a cigarette. So that’s the way it was. It
explained a number of things, such as why the company was
still pawing around in the mess months after they should
have paid off on the policy. The company wasn’t. They’d
probably paid long ago and written it off as closed, but
Purvis had gone into business for himself. Blackmail,
extortion—call it whatever you liked. Something had made
him suspicious when he’d gone up there to investigate,
while he was still on the payroll. Maybe he’d never reported
any of it, and now he was getting ready to put the squeeze
on somebody. He’d hoped to get a little more ammunition,
so he’d come down to pump me again. I was just the chump
in the middle. Maybe I should rent myself out as a
battleground so they could go on walking back and forth
across my face with their tug-of-war for the rest of my life.
If Cannon had crashed me deliberately, somebody in that
mess had short-changed me about fifty thousand dollars, the
way I saw it, and it was about time I found out who it was.
Purvis knew, so what better place to start? I reached for the
telephone again and put in a call to the number the girl had
given me.
There was no answer. “Shall I try again in about ten
minutes?” the operator asked.
“Please,” I said.
There was still no answer then, and I came up with the
same empty ringing when I tried twice more during the
morning. Well, maybe he had another job; he wouldn’t be
home perhaps until around five or six in the afternoon. I
went out on the beach and tried to swim, but I was wild
with impatience and kept thinking of Purvis. At a few
minutes of six I came back to the room and tried the
number again.
A man’s voice answered, a tired and irritable voice.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Purvis,” I said. “Is he there?”
“Mr. Who?” he rasped.
“Purvis. P-u-r-v-i-s. Does he live there?”
“Nah. Yah got the wrong nummer, mate. He moved away
from here a long time ago.”
The Big Bite — 19
“Well, do you know where I can get hold of him? Did he
leave a forwarding—?”
“Nah, nah. Got no idea where he is.”
He hung up.
I stood looking at the phone. What now? Get hold of a
Houston directory and start calling all the Purvises until I
found him? Not on toll charges, anyway; if I were going to
do that I’d better go up there. And what if he lived in a
boarding house? The phone wouldn’t even be listed under
his name. Well, hell, I had to do something; sitting here
wondering about it would drive me crazy. I grabbed my
clothes and started dressing. Just as I was buttoning down
the tabs on my shirt collar the telephone rang stridently. I
reached it in one leap.
“Hello.”
“Harlan?”
My pulse quickened as I recognized the smooth,
persuasive, wise-guy voice. “Oh, hello, is that you again?” I
asked casually; “What is it now?”
“Been having any trouble trying to get hold of me?” he
asked innocently.
“Trying to get hold of you? What the hell would I be trying
to call you for?”
“Oh, I didn’t know,” he replied easily. “It just occurred to
me that if you’d called Old Colony they would give you an
address, but I’ve moved from there. But since you didn’t—”
He let it trail off almost derisively and I knew he was fully
aware I had talked to the girl at Old Colony. He probably
still had a pipeline in there. So now he’d got in touch with
me again even though he knew I was wise to the fact he no
longer worked there and that any investigating he was
doing now was strictly off the record and probably for the
purposes of blackmail. As a way of sounding me out, it was
pretty smooth. I wouldn’t have tried to call him if I hadn’t
been interested in the thing myself.
“Not bad,” I said.
‘He chuckled. “I didn’t think it would take you over
twenty-four hours to decide that five grand settlement was a
bag of peanuts you’d toss to a squirrel. You did recognize
the babe, didn’t you? You covered pretty well with the
The Big Bite — 20
picture, but you’d already given it away when I described
her.”
“Well, it might be pretty hard to remember just where I
saw her before,” I said. “You know how it is. Babes here.
Babes there—”
“Oh, sure,” he replied. “I didn’t think it would be any
cinch.”
“But you might know of some way of making it easier?”
“I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t. I’ve got a little
proposition in mind, if you think you’d be interested.”
“I wouldn’t know until I’ve heard it, would I? Suppose you
come down and we look into it.”
He hesitated. “I’m expecting a phone call; if I go out I
might miss it. Would you mind coming up here?”
“No,” I said. “Give me your address.”
He told me and I wrote it down. “See you in a couple of
hours,” I said, and hung up.
The Big Bite — 21
3
I had to wait for a bus, so it was after nine when I arrived in
Houston. The night was still and darkly overcast above the
lights of the city, and a scattering of fat raindrops splashed
against the walk as I came out of the bus station to hail a
cab. I read off the address Purvis had given me. The ride
took about ten minutes; I sat impatiently on the edge of the
seat, smoking and trying to think. I had no plan of action
and wasn’t sure of anything except that this time Purvis was
going to do some talking himself. He was committed now; it
was understood he knew something specific about what had
happened that night, and he’d put a few facts on the line or
wish he had.
It was a narrow street in an older section given over to
second-hand stores and hole-in-the-wall markets and a few
old apartment buildings. The driver pulled up before a
three-story brick with a small vestibule in which a light was
burning. I got out and paid him. The street was deserted
except for two men talking beneath a bar sign down at the
other end of the block. Purvis’s apartment was on the third
floor. I pressed the buzzer. In a moment the door clicked
and I went in.
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