It was a walk-up. I went up two steps at a time, meeting
no one in the halls or on the stairs, but hearing snatches of
what sounded like the same television program on all three
floors. Number 303 was the first one on the right at the
The Big Bite — 22
head of the stairs. I touched the bell and Purvis opened the
door almost immediately. He nodded, but said nothing until
I had come inside and the door was closed.
It was a small living-room. Directly across from the door
was a window which presumably looked out on the street,
but the blind was drawn all the way down. At the left was an
open door going into the bedroom, while on the right, just
opposite it, another opened into a small dinette. The livingroom
was fitted with the usual landlord-tan wallpaper and
the beat-up odds and ends of shabby furniture that would
come with a furnished deadfall in this neighborhood, so
dreary and like a thousand others that Purvis’s things stood
out and hit you right in the eye the moment you walked in.
There were five or six framed copies of paintings of girls in
ballet costumes, the same pictures you sometimes see in the
anterooms of doctors’ offices. Some arty, horse-faced girl I
got stuck with once at a party told me who the painter was
that did them, but I couldn’t remember now. Dago was all I
could think of, but that wasn’t it. There were some more
pictures in one big frame over a desk at the right, beside
the doorway going into the dinette, but these were
photographs. They were all signed, and they were, all of
ballet dancers. There must have been a dozen of them. An
aficionado, I thought, remembering that way he had of
describing things with his hands and what he had said
about motion. In a corner across the room near the window
was a high-fidelity sound system that blended into the other
furnishings like a thousand-dollar bill among the nickels on
a Salvation Army tambourine. It was playing something
longhair.
“Sit down, Harlan,” he said, nodding to the old sofa at my
left. He went over and turned off the music, and then folded
his lank frame into a chair near the desk. “Les Sylphides,”
he murmured.
“Meyer,” I said.
His eyebrows raised. “How’s that?”
“A gag,” I said. “Skip it. You had something to tell me.”
He was dressed in a pair of gray slacks and a dark sports
shirt with long sleeves. It was hot in the room in spite of the
little fan whirring away on top of the desk, but he didn’t
sweat. The cynical, young-old face was fine-boned and pale
The Big Bite — 23
and very tired, but that deadly efficiency was still there in
the eyes. There wasn’t much to him inside the clothes; you
felt that if you put a hand on his chest and pushed he’d fold
up around your arm like a wet towel. He lit a cigarette and
regarded me through the smoke.
“Her husband crashed you deliberately,” he said casually.
“But I suppose you know that by now.”
“Yes,” I said. “Or maybe I was just supposed to be a byproduct.
He could have been trying to kill her.”
“Both of you, I think.”
I remembered what she had done when I saw her out
there by the lake and knew he was probably right, but I
didn’t say anything. He was going to do the talking this
time.
“What was it tipped you in the first place?” I asked.
“There’s nothing suspicious about a guy being found dead in
a bad car smash-up.”
He shrugged. “Be corny, and call it a sixth sense. I don’t
know what it is, but you get it after a while if you keep
going to these things long enough. You pull a hundred
packages out of the file and they’re all just about alike, but
one of ‘em will start you ringing like a burglar alarm. The
first thing was the way his head was pushed in—”
“Well,” I interrupted, “he did roll a car at sixty-five miles
an hour. He figured to get bruised a little—”
“Sure,” he said. “But when reliable witnesses got there he
was still under the wheel. He had four broken ribs to prove
it. His skull had been crushed by some terrific blow, and the
wound was a little to the rear and slightly to the right of the
top of his head. So what did he hit it on? The dash? That
was in his lap. Granted the top of the car was caved in until
it was practically sitting on his haircut, but what he was hit
with wasn’t flat—”
“Freaks happen all the time in bad wrecks. Nobody’s ever
explained just how you can get knocked out of a pair of
shoes that are laced up tight, but it’s been done.”
He nodded. “That’s right. But there were too many freaks
in this one. For one thing, he wasn’t drunk. At least, not
nearly as drunk as everybody thought. So the only other
alternative theory is that he deliberately tried to kill you.
The Big Bite — 24
And if the people he really meant to kill were still out there
at the lake—” He stopped and gave me a cold grin. “That’s
where you saw her, of course. Anyway, if they were still out
there, which way would they have to go to get back to
town?”
“Right past where we crashed,” I said.
He spread his hands. “You see?”
“What makes you so sure he wasn’t drunk?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t think he was that drunk.
Nobody ever established it. No laboratory tests were made.
Look at it this way. He was a prominent citizen; he was
dead; there was a smell of alcohol about his body, and a pint
bottle, about one-third full, in the glove compartment of the
car—which didn’t break, incidentally, because the highway
maps and papers in it cushioned the shock of the crash. But
still the real reason he was assumed to be blotto, drunk was
the fact that only a blotto drunk would have cut in like that.
You see? They just reversed cause and effect, and didn’t
even bother to look for any other explanation.”
“Why didn’t they make the lab tests?” I asked.
“To prove what? Liability for the accident? It was his,
from start to finish. They told you that as soon as you came
around. The skid marks and the positions of the cars proved
that, and what you told them only confirmed it. And what’s
the percentage in building a drunk-driving case against a
dead man? You going to take him to court?”
“What about your outfit?”
“What difference did proof of drunkenness make to us?
He was dead. We had to pay off on his life insurance,
whether he was crocked or sober. By the time I got up there
it would have been impossible, anyway. They'd already
buried him. I was just making a routine investigation, until I
began to see there could have been another reason for his
driving you off the road. I backtracked down the, highway
until I found the place he bought the bottle—”
“The same one? How do you know?”
He shrugged wearily. “Jesus. I don’t know. All that’s
certain is that it was a pint, and that it was the same brand.
Sure, he could have had three more in the meantime and
thrown the bottles out. But in the insurance business you
The Big Bite — 25
get in the habit of playing the percentages, and the
percentages say that was the same bottle. He appeared to
be sober when he bought it, and I doubt very much that
two-thirds of it would have made him so drunk he couldn’t
see something as big as a Buick convertible. Now, can we
drop that for the moment?”
“Sure.” I said. “Go on.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied me thoughtfully.
“I gather from the fact you’re here you might be interested
in renegotiating your settlement with Mrs. Cannon?”
"Right," I said.
“It’ll be a little extra-legal, if you follow me.”
“So it’s extra-legal. It’s money. Did she collect the
insurance?”
He nodded. “And she’s loaded, besides. Cannon left an
estate that’ll add up to somewhere around three hundred
thousand, after taxes. No other heirs.”
I leaned forward on the sofa. “All right. Go on.”
“Say a hundred grand. Split seventy-five, twenty-five.”
“Seventy-five for me?”
He shook his head with a pained kind of smile on his face.
“Seventy-five for me, chum.”
“Back off and look again,” I said. “The wind’s whistling
through your head.”
“How’s that?”
“Who got run over out there that night? You, or me?”
He shrugged. “That doesn’t enter into it. Who dug up the
evidence, after everybody else had sloughed it off as a
traffic fatality?”
“You’ve got more?”
“More what?”
“Evidence.”
“Some,” he said. “But maybe not quite enough. That’s
where you come in.”
“Where I come in is when somebody says sixty grand.
That’s my cue line.”
He sighed. “Fifty.”
The Big Bite — 26
I knew that was what he’d planned on from the first. Try
to chisel me, would he?
“Sixty,” I said. “Take it or leave it. You wouldn’t have
called me in if you hadn’t needed me.”
“I need you like I need the gon. It just happens you’re in a
very good position to put on the pressure. It’s a
psychological twist that’d make it easy, but I can do it alone
if I have to.”
I grinned at him very coldly. “Then do it alone.”
“You think I can’t?”
”That’s right. You need somebody who was right there
when he was murdered and who might or might not have
been completely unconscious all the time under that other
car. It’s a highly specialized field, and not many applicants
could qualify.”
He exhaled a lungful of smoke and watched it moodily. I
knew I’d hit him where it hurt. “Well, let’s table that
discussion for the moment,” he said. “How about a cold
beer?”
“Sure,” I said. I had him on the run now and all I had to
do was keep the heat on him. Let him drop his guard and
then jump him again. And I’d let him have it, but good.
We went out through the door at the right. It led into the
dinette and kitchen, which were divided by the refrigerator
and a serving bar about chest high. You had to go around
the end of the bar to reach the refrigerator, which opened
from the kitchen side. He flicked on the light. The kitchen
part was just a cubbyhole with a sink and a two-burner gas
stove next to the wall. You couldn’t see into the living-room
from here. He opened the reefer and took out two bottles of
imported beer. I think it was Danish. He uncapped them and
set them on the drainboard of the sink. There was no
window, and it was very hot under the light.
“You had more to go on than what you’ve told me so far,
didn’t you?” I asked casually. “I mean, beside that hole in
his head and the fact he wasn’t drunk.”
“What makes you think so?”
“You must have.”
He stared at me very coolly. “So? So maybe there is
more.”
The Big Bite — 27
“Such as?” I asked. Now was as good a time as any.
“Such as nothing, at the moment.”
I reached out with my left and caught the front of his
shirt. Pulling him to me, I gave him the open right hand
across the side of the face. “Let’s have it now,” I said. It was
a mistake.
There was no resistance in him at all. He came right on up
against me like a couple of old inner tubes hanging off my
arm, and when he got there he exploded. I had Purvis all
over me. Fragments of flying Purvis hit me in the solar
plexus and Adam’s apple at the same time, and then
something chopped me just under the left ear and I was
through. I didn’t even fall; he eased me to the floor like
somebody putting down an old mattress he’d been carrying
around. I was sick and I couldn’t get my breath. My whole
body felt paralyzed. I tried to turn over. It was no use.
A convention of Purvises stood in a circle, looking down at
me. “I wouldn’t try that again,” they said, all speaking at
once. They sounded a long way off.
I retched and gagged, trying to get air through my throat
again. The kitchen tilted and went on spinning slowly like a
carousel. I opened my mouth and tried to bite a mouthful of
air before I died of suffocation. Just before the room went
completely black I started breathing again, but I still
couldn’t move.
There was a sound somewhere like that of a buzzer, and I
thought it was just another of the ringing noises in my head
until he stepped over me and started around the serving
bar. “Don’t go away,” he said, and flicked off the light. I lay
in darkness and in agony.
If I could hit him just once I’d break him in two. The next
time I’d have better sense than to pull him toward me. I’d
take him apart. But I had to get up first. I tried again, and
this time I managed to roll over. Sweat ran off my face and I
had to fight against vomiting on the floor. I heard a door
chime and then the door opening, and voices. The door
closed. Purvis had company. It was a man. I could hear
snatches of what he was saying.
“Federal radio inspector . . . complaints of television
interference . . . amateur transmitter in the neighborhood . .
.”
The Big Bite — 28
“No, I haven’t got a television set,” Purvis said.
“Oh. Well, thanks.”
“Not at—” Purvis began. His voice cut off with a shaky
inward sucking of breath as if he had started to pull it in to
scream, and then I heard the impact itself as if somebody
had hurled a green watermelon against the wall. It was
sickening. I froze up tight, forgetting my pain, and waited.
Something slid softly to the floor, as if being helped, the
way Purvis had eased me down. Then nothing happened at
all. There was no sound. I slowly exhaled, beginning to feel
the pain in my throat again. He moved. I heard footsteps
coming toward the dinette. Something blocked off the light
coming in from the living-room, and I knew he was standing
in the doorway. He seemed to fill it. I couldn’t see him,
because I was lying behind the serving bar and refrigerator.
I waited, sweating with suspense. Would he come on in and
look around into the kitchen side? I was helpless; he’d kick
my head in like someone killing a snake. He stood there for
a moment, and then I heard him turn and go away. It
sounded as if he was going into the bedroom. He came out
again and I heard the desk drawer being pulled open. There
was a rustling of papers. I tried to breathe quietly, but air
seemed to gasp and hiss through the agony in my throat like
steam through old radiator pipes.
I could move a little now, and managed to push myself up
to my hands and knees. If he did come out here and find me
I wanted at least to be on my feet. I heard him shut the desk
drawer and then the sound of his footsteps again. They
appeared to be going toward the front door. He was leaving.
I crawled silently around the end of the bar and came
forward until I could see most of the living-room. Purvis’s
feet and legs were in view, near the sofa. I slipped along the
linoleum another two or three feet and peered around the
edge of the doorway. He was standing in the front door. I
saw his feet and legs first and then my glance went on up,
and up. He was as big as a house. His back was turned
toward me as he peered out into the hall, and he seemed to
fill the doorway. He was bareheaded, and his hair was dark
and brush-cut. He went out softly, pulling the door shut. I
never had seen his face. I sighed weakly and pushed myself
to my feet. I had to hold onto the refrigerator. My clothes
were soaked with sweat.
The Big Bite — 29
I didn’t know whether I’d ever be able to speak again. My
throat felt as if I had a logging chain doubled around it with
a tractor pulling on each end. I wheezed as I staggered into
the living-room and stood looking down at Purvis. He lay on
his back with his eyes open, staring blankly up at the
ceiling. His left forearm was broken, bent grotesquely
across the rug as if he had another elbow inside the dark
blue sleeve. He’d shoved it up instinctively, in that last
thousandth of a second he was alive, trying to ward off the
blow, and the impact had been so terrible it had broken it
and then had enough power left over to make that kind of a
mess of his head. I looked around to see what he had been
hit with. There was nothing. The big guy must have brought
it with him and then taken it away.
The whole thing had happened so suddenly I was having a
little trouble catching up. The only thing I was sure of was
that I had to get out of there, and fast. I was still groggy
from that judo manhandling Purvis had given me, but this
didn’t look like the safest place in the world to lie around
and recover. Somebody else might come up. I’d have a
sweet time explaining what I was doing here alone in the
apartment with a man who was spilling the contents of his
head onto a threadbare rug. “I was just sitting in the
kitchen having a beer, officer. Sure, I heard this guy kill
him, but I didn’t think anything about it; you know how it is,
just figured it was some friend of his . . .” Cut it out, I
thought. Get the hell out of here.
I walked softly to the door and had sense enough to take
my handkerchief in my hand as I turned the knob. I looked
out. The corridor was deserted. Slipping out, I transferred
the handkerchief to the outer knob, turned it, and silently
closed the door. I put the handkerchief back in my pocket
and went down the stairs. The hallway on the second floor
was empty. I could hear snatches of a television program
and someone laughing. Then I was out in the street, weak
and shaking a little as I turned the corner and went on.
Nobody had seen me. But what about that taxi driver? I
thought uneasily. He’d remember bringing me here. He’d
recall he picked me up at the bus station. But, hell, he’d
never actually looked at me. He couldn’t describe me,
except to say that I was pretty big. It didn’t mean anything.
The Big Bite — 30
I started walking. It was a block before I met anyone, and
then it was a colored girl who went on past without looking
at me. When she was gone and I was alone again I felt my
throat and tried to say something. I made a croaking noise. I
cleared it painfully and tried again. “Mrs. Cannon,” I said
hoarsely. It sounded like gravel being forced through a pipe.
“Rich bitch. Testing. Rich bitch.” My voice cleared up
slightly, but I wondered if I wasn’t still a little punchy.
When I was out of the area, a good ten blocks away, I
ducked into a dimly lit bar where a jukebox was wailing and
ordered a bottle of beer. Sitting on a stool between a big
blonde who was yakking six thousand feet to the mile to her
escort and a pint-sized redhead who was crocked to the
eyeballs and singing something under her breath, I sipped
the beer and tried to sort it, out. If that taxi driver
remembered me, or if the police happened to think of
looking into Purvis’s long-distance calls, I was in a bad spot.
I hadn’t been seen leaving the building, but maybe the other
guy had. We were about the same size, and the cops could
probably make out with whichever of us they caught first.
But assume I never was even connected with it? What next?
Where did I go from here? Purvis was dead; I’d never find
out anything from him now. Was I going to have to give it
up, just because some big ox had knocked his roof in?
Who was the big joker, anyway? Purvis had obviously
gone into the shakedown racket on a full-time basis, so
maybe the guy was one of his victims or intended victims—
but in that case, why hadn’t Purvis recognized him?
Wouldn’t he know him? He obviously hadn’t, because he’d
been sucked out of position by that wheeze about
investigating complaints of something lousing up television
reception in the neighborhood. He hadn’t been expecting
trouble, because if he had the guy wouldn’t have been able
to hit him with a handful of rice. I knew that from what had
happened to me. He could move faster than any human
being I’d ever seen in my life. But maybe that big guy was a
little fast too. He’d probably had the pipe or loaded club up
his sleeve. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to tangle with him in
a dark alley. He was about my size, and if he could match
speed with Purvis— I stopped.
The Big Bite — 31
I’d had to say it twice before it soaked in. I got it now, and
it all matched perfectly. I was in business, if I didn’t let him
get behind me with that piece of pipe.
The Big Bite — 32
4
I called a cab and went on into town and caught the next
bus to Galveston. It was a little after midnight when I got
back to my room in the hotel. I stripped off my sweatsoaked
clothing, took a shower, and lay down on the bed
with a cigarette.
There were a lot of angles to figure, and it was going to be
dangerous as hell. Assuming I was right so far, he had
already killed two men; there was no reason to believe he’d
be bashful about running up his score if he suspected I was
moving in on him. Of course, I had an idea now of what he
looked like, which cut his chances of being able to catch me
off guard as he had Purvis and brain me with that club, but I
still had to sleep sometime, and there was nothing in the bylaws
said he couldn’t switch to a gun if he wanted. Once I
knew his name and was sure I had the right man I knew
how to tie his hands so he couldn’t do anything to me, but
until I did I was wide open for the same kind of pay-off
Purvis had got. And I had to go back there to be sure.
It was odd Purvis hadn’t recognized him; he was the first
to grasp the fact Mrs. Cannon must have a boy friend and
that he should be a big man somewhere around my size, but
still he’d goofed off and let the big joker walk right in on
him. That indicated the guy had been keeping himself as
well covered as she had. Purvis must have been up there
several times, snooping around trying to find out who he
The Big Bite — 33
was, and all he’d accomplished was to set himself up like a
duck in a shooting gallery. There were a couple of factors in
my favor, however. The first, of course, was that I had seen
him once, even if only from the back. And the second was
that he might come out a little more into the open now that
—as far as he knew—the only person left who suspected him
was dead. The police had written the thing off as a traffic
fatality, so he had nothing to fear from them. Purvis had
been the only killjoy spoiling his fun, and now that Purvis
had been eliminated he could relax. Unless—
I lit another cigarette off the old one and thought about
that. He’d had his eye on Purvis, obviously. So maybe he
knew Purvis had been to see me. There wouldn’t be much
doubt as to what we’d talked about, and when I showed up
around there a couple of days later there’d be even less. My
name would go right onto his list. Dangerous? Dangerous
was hardly the word.
Bat sweat. Since when was I this impressed by a thug
with a piece of pipe? Let him scare me off? This was big.
This was once-in-a-lifetime stuff. So maybe I could just tell
the police about it and they’d give me a cigar and a parking
ticket, and I could go to work selling aluminum pots to
housewives. I could be a big shot like my old man and live in
a stinking dark apartment over a dry-cleaning shop, lying in
bed with a bottle of muscatel while the termites ate the
frilling place out from under him a two-by-four at a time and
the crazy short-order cook in the next apartment chased
cockroaches up the walls with a cleaver. Sure. Be a big
operator like that just because some meatball drives a
Cadillac up your leg trying to kill his wife and her boy friend
and you don’t like to send them a bill. This is Whore Harlan!
The boy who can see a loose buck farther than most people
can see the Washington Monument? Turn the knob,
children; you must have the wrong channel.
Of course, the whole thing could still be only a pipe
dream, just a bunch of coincidences strung together. The
big guy who killed Purvis might be a visiting brother from
some other lodge altogether; Purvis probably had more than
one iron in the fire. But it looked good this way, no matter
how you shook it up; there were too many interlocking
pieces that matched.
The Big Bite — 34
Cannon was doing about sixty-five. At best, all he had was
a brief glimpse of the silhouette of some big guy in his
headlights and then an even briefer glimpse of somebody
else apparently trying to hide from the lights by crouching
down in the seat. To make up his mind that fast, provided
he did crash me deliberately, he must have had a
preconceived idea of who those people were. The chances
were he was actually looking for them. I knew Mrs. Cannon
was out there by the lake; so maybe the big guy was out
there too. She had been waiting beside the swamp road for
somebody in a car, because when she saw me coming she
stepped out into the road for an instant, and then realized
her mistake and stepped back. It was still only twilight and I
didn’t have my lights on, so she could see the car all right.
Therefore, the car she was waiting for could have looked
something like mine. She couldn’t have been expecting
Cannon, because his was a gray Cadillac sedan. So suppose
it was a convertible with the top down. That tied in with the
theory Cannon had smashed me deliberately; I was the
same size as this big joker and presumably even our cars
were similar.
Say they were both out there. To get back to town they
had to come right past where we had crashed. They stopped
and investigated when they saw Cannon’s car. He was in it,
unconscious or helpless. He’d wanted to kill them,
apparently; maybe the feeling was mutual. At any rate,
they’d never have a better opportunity. Nobody would ever
suspect. And nobody had, except Purvis. He kept getting in
their hair, sniffing around, so they stepped on him too.
They’d also step on me in a minute if they suspected me,
but I should have seen enough of the game by this time to
know how it was played. Swing first and never turn your
back on anybody.
So far, I didn’t have any actual proof of this, except that I
knew Mrs. Cannon had been out there at the lake and I’d
been in the next room when Purvis was killed, but I didn’t
need too much in the way of evidence. The threat was
enough if I backed it up with some real pressure, and I was
beginning to have an idea about that.
I crushed out the cigarette and lay back on the pillow, it
was a little while before I got to sleep because the thought
of that taxi driver began to nag me again. A lot depended on
The Big Bite — 35
how much publicity there was when Purvis’s body was
found. If he came forward, a little heads-up police work
would put the finger on me without too much trouble.
They’d know he picked me up at the bus station, and the
approximate time. Check that against bus arrivals and
Galveston wouldn’t be too difficult to arrive at. A record of
his telephone calls would show he had talked to somebody
down here twice in the past two days, to somebody in this
hotel. From then on a kid could do it. Of course, I hadn’t
killed Purvis and I was pretty sure I could tell then where to
find the guy who had if they started leaning on me too hard,
but it would be a damned expensive speech if I did have to
tell them.
When I awoke the next morning my throat still felt as if a
horse had stepped on it. That judo, I thought, they could
keep it. Just give me good, clean, bone-crunching
professional football where you could tell by looking at a
guy about how hard he’d be able to hit you. I thought of
Purvis before I got out of bed, but there was no particular
feeling about him one way or another aside from the fact I’d
just as soon forget what his head had looked like if it was all
right with everybody. It was something about the
combination of dark blood and gray hair. He was an oddball,
all right. I wondered what he would have done with the
money if he’d got it. Probably spent the rest of his life
following a ballet troupe around like a baseball filbert
following the Giants. He must have been dreaming of that
one big score for years, and then when he was near enough
to put out his hand and touch it he wound up looking like
something somebody had stepped on.
I turned Purvis off like closing a tap and rolled out of bed.
There was a lot to be done to get the show on the road, and
if I didn’t want my head pushed in, it had to be planned and
executed with a hell of a lot of precision. I shaved, took a
hurried shower, and went down to the coffee shop for
breakfast, picking up a Houston Post on the way. There was
nothing in it about Purvis’s murder. I hadn’t expected there
would be, this soon. This edition probably went to press
about the time he was killed. It wouldn’t break before the
afternoon papers at the earliest, and maybe not until
tomorrow morning. Hell, it might be days before anybody
The Big Bite — 36
found him. The longer the better, I thought; let that hackie
forget the address.
I stopped at the cashier’s desk on the way back up to the
room and asked them to get my bill ready, saying there
would be one more long-distance call they’d have to get the
charges on. It was to George Gray in Fort Worth. I was
lucky and caught him just as he was coming into his office
in the oilwell supply outfit he and his father owned.
“Who is calling?” his secretary asked.
“John Harlan,” I said.
He came on. “Hey, you big ape, why haven’t you been to
see us? Where are you?”
“Galveston,” I said, “right at the moment.”
“Well, look—” He hesitated slightly. “I mean, I read about
it in the papers. It’s a rotten shame. What are you planning
to do, John?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. “But that’s what I called
about—”
“Well, come on up and let’s talk it over. I think we can use
you. We need another salesman, and you worked in the
fields a couple of summers, long enough to know something
about the business. That is, unless you figure on trying it
again next year.”
“No,” I said. “I’m washed up for good. That next year stuff
is newspaper talk. I haven’t settled on anything yet, and
want to get off by myself for a couple of weeks and sort it
out a little. I thought I’d go back and finish that fishing trip,
provided nobody’s using the cabin.”
“Say, that’s fine. You’re as welcome as the flowers in May,
boy. Nobody up there at all, and the way it looks now I
won’t be able to get away till duck season. Have yourself a
trip, and keep what I told you in mind. You got a key to the
place?”
“No,” I replied. “I mailed it back to you. Or rather, one of
the nurses did, while I was in the hospital.”
“Sure. I remember now. Well, get a hacksaw and saw the
lock off. You can buy a new one and send me the keys when
you leave. No. Wait— That’d mean I’d have to replace all
the duplicates I’ve got scattered around among my friends.
Why don’t I just mail you a key?”
The Big Bite — 37
“That’s what I was going to suggest,” I said. “Mail it up
there to Wayles, care of General Delivery. I can pick it up
when I get in town.”
“I’ll get it off today. Jesus, I wish I was going with you.
Catch a four-pounder for me. Guess all your duffle and
tackle is still up there, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I hope you have better luck this time than you did
the other. That was rugged.”
“It’s the breaks,” I said. I stared at the cigarette burning
in the ash tray. “By the way, did you ever meet this Cannon?
The drunk that clobbered me?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I did, once. Why?”
”Just wondering,” I said. “I thought somebody said he had
a camp out there too.”
“He did. However, that wasn’t where I met him. Just
happened to run into him clear over in Mississippi one time,
hunting quail. Struck me as something of a creep; I didn’t
care much for him.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“A lush, for one thing. Wonder he didn’t kill himself long
before he did. And he had a highly specialized sense of
humor; the things he’d do for kicks. Liked to shoot birds to
watch ‘em blow up, or something.”
“Quail?”
“Not quail. Sparrows, cardinals, anything that was handy.
You ever seen a cardinal shot from twenty feet with the fullchoke
side of a twelve-gauge double?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But it sounds like something
that would have to grow on you.”
We yakked a minute or two about old times in school. I
wanted to ask him if he knew anything about Mrs. Cannon,
but decided against it. I was supposed to be merely going
fishing; there was no use starting anyone wondering. When
I had hung up I took an inventory of the money situation. I’d
cashed a draft in New Orleans, and still had a little over
nine hundred dollars in traveler’s checks. That would have
to do. I could get by with making a down payment on a car.
I had sold the Buick after it was repaired following the
The Big Bite — 38
wreck, and deposited the money along with the insurance
company settlement in the bank in Oklahoma City, but it
would take too long to cash another draft now. I was in a
hurry. I packed the two bags and checked out and caught
the next bus to Houston.
It was a little after eleven when I arrived. I left the bags in
two lockers in the station and went out. White sunlight
blasted into the streets and traffic fumes and the stink of
diesel buses hung heavy in the air. Early editions of the
afternoon papers were on the street now. I bought one and
ducked into an air-conditioned coffee shop to order a
hamburger and a glass of iced tea. There was no mention of
Purvis. I went through the paper from front to back,
hurrying up one column and down the next, scanning the
leads. Somebody had been run over by a loaded ten-ton
truck. A man was dead of knife wounds in a brawl out near
the turning basin. The body of a young girl had been found
in some weeds on a vacant lot. All of a city’s twenty-fourhour
output of violence had been run down and checked out
and put into print, but Purvis was still waiting. I thought of
him lying there in the hot living-room with his head
smashed open like a dropped piggy-bank and the blood
dried now and black, with all the poised and graceful ballet
girls looking down at his body from the walls. I shrugged
irritably and pushed the hamburger away. It was tasteless.
So Purvis had leaned out too far after the brass ring and
fallen off. They wouldn’t get me. By the time they realized I
was moving in on them they’d already be in the cage and all
I had to do was drop the lid on them.
Maybe, I thought uneasily. Then I brushed it aside, There
was too much to do and I was itching to get started. Turning
hurriedly to the back of the paper, I took a quick look at the
used car ads. The nearest lot was only a few blocks away. I
walked. The place was overflowing with cars; salesmen
climbed into my arms and made little cooing sounds in my
ears, but the tune changed after I’d picked out a ‘54 Olds
and we started to make out the papers for financing. The
out-of-state address was bad, and so was the fact I didn’t
have a job at the moment, here or anywhere else. I cursed,
thinking of the delay in cashing a draft. It would take
another whole day, anyway. All the bright salesmen cried a
little and assured me if things were different they would like
The Big Bite — 39
nothing better than to adopt me and let me dribble leopardupholstered
Cadillacs through my fingers all day and lie
naked among Lincoln Capris all night, but you knew how
those nasty bastards in the finance companies were.
I said, “Sure, sure,” and on the way out I saw a 1950
Chevrolet tagged at $595. I looked at it once, kicked the
right front tire, and went on toward the sidewalk. They
hauled me back, rubbed the Chevy up against me with a
lingering, hot-bellied caress and said we could do business
for five and a quarter. I fumbled in my pockets and dropped
the folder of hundred-dollar traveler’s checks on the
ground, and said I guessed I’d look around. I got almost to
the sidewalk again. I drove the Chevy around the block
while a salesman pointed out how they’d just refurbished
the frammistan and put new whirtles in the springerwarp,
and I said sure, but maybe his sister was diseased. Very
young, he said; first time piecee, she don’t catch nothing
from sailors. It was a one-owner car used by an elderly
clergyman just to go back and forth from the parsonage to
the church on Sundays when it was raining. I said, sure, you
could see that; he’d only rung up 76,000 miles on it and had
the fenders ironed out so often you could read Braille
through them. But, hell. It ran, and the motor sounded all
right. I offered $425. They said $500. We all cried some
more. I came in on the second chorus with an offer of $450,
and started for the street again. We closed at $475, with a
free tankful of gas and an offer to clean the windshield.
“Never mind,” I said. “Just kiss me, and help me up.”
I drove it around to a parking lot not too far from the bus
station, and put the bags in. It was one-thirty. The next stop
was a pawnshop. I picked up a second-hand portable
typewriter, a pair of 7-by-50 binoculars, and a Colt .45
automatic. Then I stopped at a sporting goods store, after
thinking it over, and bought a box of ammunition for the
gun. I didn’t like the idea, but this wasn’t a child’s garden
now: Stowing all this in the car, I looked up the biggest
store in town that specialized in sound and recording
equipment. I was there nearly two hours getting a thorough
fill-in on tape recorders and trying out the different models.
When I left I had a good one with a sensitive microphone
designed for wide-angle pickup. I caught a cab and went
back to the lot with it. After putting it in the trunk of the
The Big Bite — 40
Chevy I walked out to the corner again. A boy was calling
the final edition of one of the afternoon papers. I bought one
and sat behind the wheel as I shuffled through it. They had
found Purvis.
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