”Are you going to be here very long, Mr. Harlan?” ‘she
asked. “Two weeks,” I replied. “Maybe a little less.”
“And you’re out at that same cabin where you were
before?”
“I will be,” I said. “Right now I’m at the Enders Hotel. The
friend of mine that owns the shack is mailing me a key. It’ll
probably be here today.”
“Well, I do hope I’ll see you again while you’re here,” she
said.
The Big Bite — 61
I stood up on cue. “It’s been nice meeting you,” I said
earnestly. “I probably won’t come to town much, but if
you’re out that way drop in and go fishing with me. Heh,
heh.”
She smiled, the way you would at a meat-head who wasn’t
too bright, and came to the door with me. She held out her
hand very graciously. I took it. The brown eyes looked up at
me from about the level of my shoulder. Brother! I thought.
I simpered like a clown and said good-by three times,
standing on one foot; then the other, gave her another poorbut-
honest pitch about how nice it was of her to let me call,
and finally backed out the door like a high school kid
escaping from the stage after winning a scholarship in the
essay contest. She’d call Tallant all right the minute the
door was closed, but they’d just have a good laugh. was
utterly harmless.
I drove on around the corner and down the hill, casing the
terrain, and went back to the hotel. I parked car behind it
and went shopping. I bought a small pencil flashlight in a
drugstore, and in Woolworth’s picked up a three-way outlet
plug for a wall receptacle, some typewriter paper, a pad of
yellow second sheets and a few sheets of carbon paper.
What else? I already had the cardboard box. Oh, yes.
Wrapping paper twine, and some address stickers.
I walked back to the hotel, avoiding the south side of the
square and keeping a lookout for Tallant. I didn’t see him
anywhere.
The Big Bite — 62
7
It was almost noon now; blazing sunlight fell straight into
the square, and it was very hot inside the room. I put down
all the stuff I’d bought, turned on the fan, and lit a
cigarette. The minute I stopped moving and planning I
started thinking about her again. I could see the sleeping
devil inside those cool brown eyes and that slender figure
packed into those bullfighter pants and the way she moved.
I became uncomfortable, and cursed her, trying to drive her
out of my mind. The hell with Mrs. Cannon. Stick to
business. There’d be plenty of that later. With a hundred
thousand dollars I’d be using types like Mrs. Cannon to
strike matches on.
I pushed her off me and got back on the track. Now. The
typewriter was down in the car, the recorder was up here,
and for the next two moves I had to switch them. But I
didn’t want to go lugging stuff back and forth past that desk
down there like an ant at a picnic; there was no use starting
people wondering what I was doing. I was supposed to be
on my way to a fishing camp. Then why not go on out there
now? But maybe the key hadn’t arrived. Everything had
broken so smoothly and so fast I was way ahead of
schedule. Still, it could be. If George had mailed it yesterday
—
Well, hell, one way of finding out would be to go around
there and ask. I went down in the street again and one of
The Big Bite — 63
the locals told me how to find the post-office. It was on a
side street north of the square.
“Harlan?” The man at the General Delivery window
looked in his pigeonholes and shook his head at me,
“Nothing today.”
“Any more mail coming in from the west in the next few
hours?” I asked. “From Fort Worth?”
“Putting up some now,” he said. “Try in half an hour.”
I went over to the coffee shop that’s across the street
from every Federal office building in the country and
ordered a coke. There was a wire rack near the entrance
with a stack of Houston Posts on it. I grabbed one off and
shuffled through it while I drank the coke. Purvis was there,
near the bottom of the second page but it was about the
same story as last night with no new developments. Then I
remembered this was the out-of-town edition and probably
went to press about the time I left Houston last evening. It
was still hard to realize I’d accomplished so much in such a
short time. God, this time tomorrow— Easy, pal, easy. It’s
long time till tomorrow, and a thousand things could
happen.
A whistle blew somewhere and it was twelve o’clock. The
coffee shop began to fill up with government stenographer
types, Honey Chile division, wearing cotton prints and
ordering lettuce and tomato sandwiches. I ordered a
sandwich myself but got to thinking of Mrs. Cannon and
choked on it. I paid the check, went back across the street,
and stooged around the postoffice for another ten minutes,
looking at the mug-shots of the wanted men stuck up on the
wall next to last year duck hunting regulations. Then
suddenly while I was staring at them and thinking of what
some psychology prof had told a class of us in college about
there being no such thing as a criminal type of face, a little
chill ran up my back. I was breaking the law, and they could
blow the whistle on me. But, hell, who’d tell them? Mrs.
Cannon? She’d go to the chair just to get me sent up for a
couple of years? That was a yak. But still—
I shrugged it off impatiently. What the hell, it wouldn’t be
the Federals, anyway. It was nothing to them. Then I
stopped suddenly. Wasn’t it? The way I had it planned I had
to send something through the I mail, didn’t I? The fact I
The Big Bite — 64
was sending it in the other direction and to nobody in
particular didn’t make any difference; I was still using
Uncle Sugar’s mails for something illegal and there was
hardly anything that’d cause him any quicker to take a
good, long look down your throat. No, I’d have to fake that
part. Uncle I’d just as soon leave alone.
Well, that could be done easily enough, I thought. All I
had to do was mail something else, something legitimate
that looked like the same package. No sweat there.
I went back to the General Delivery window again. This
time the key was there. It was stuck to a piece of cardboard
with Scotch tape and mailed in a brown Manila envelope.
On the way back to the hotel I went past a hardware store
that had a display of sporting goods in the window. One of
the items was a big card full of cork-bodied bass bugs, the
kind you use with a flyrod. I went in and bought six of them.
George would appreciate them, and I had to mail something
to somebody.
I packed everything, checked out of the hotel, and loaded
the car. On the way out of town I stopped at a small grocery
store and bought some eggs, bacon, bread, and coffee. The
road going out toward the lake ran south from the square, a
little-traveled secondary road that connected with an eastwest
highway about thirty miles beyond at a town named
Breward. Some people contended it was a short cut in
coming up from Houston, or had been until they’d widened
and speeded-up the other highway, and that Cannon had
been coming from Houston when he’d hit me. He’d been
down there on a business trip. Purvis, apparently, had found
put he had come into town on the main highway and then
gone out to the lake. How, I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter
now because I was using a different approach to the matter
of proving the whole thing.
It was a narrow blacktop pavement not too well kept up,
winding over rolling, red clay hills with rural mailboxes here
and there and ramshackle farmhouses sitting back from the
road behind them. The road shimmered with heat and the
fields looked withered and brown as if it hadn’t rained for a
long time. Eight miles out I came down into the river bottom
where he had wrecked me. The road went straight across
on a long fill about six feet high. I crossed the bridge over
the river first, steel girders with wooden planking that
The Big Bite — 65
rattled under the tires. About two hundred yards beyond it
was the concrete culvert where he had crashed. There were
no other cars in sight. I slowed, looking at it.
They had repaired the place where he’d knocked a chunk
off the wing of the culvert, and the weeds and shredded
bushes were beginning to grow back again. I looked ahead
to where I had spun in myself. The scars were still visible on
the side of the fill where the wrecker had dragged the Buick
back onto the road. It wasn’t as far from Cannon’s car as I
had thought. I’d said a hundred yards, but I could see now it
was considerably less, not much more than a good booming
punt. Call it sixty. Mrs. Cannon and Tallant were bound to
have seen it; it hadn’t gone any further off the road than
Cannon’s had. So they must have come back to have a look
at me and be sure I was unconscious or dead before they
slugged him. Maybe they’d even checked again, before they
shoved off, to make certain I was still out. A little chill
chased itself up my back. Suppose I’d come around about
that time and said something to them, or groaned. I’d have
probably got the same treatment. These two characters
played a rough brand of ball, and they made up their own
rules as they went along. I thought of what I had to do
tonight and tomorrow morning. For a little while it was
going to be like juggling dynamite caps, and if I didn’t have
control of the situation every second it could blow up right
in my face.
I drove on. The road in to the lake turned off to the right
about two miles ahead. An arrow-shaped sign that read
Pete’s Live Bait Skiffs, had fallen down and was propped
against a stump in some dead grass. The road itself was just
a pair of ruts wandering over a sandhill through some cutover
pine. A mile or so ahead there were some fields and an
abandoned farmhouse, and then it dropped back into the
river bottom again. The air was a little cooler under the big
timber, but the sloughs were mostly dried up now in late
summer and the mud had dried and cracked in geometric
patterns. In about fifteen minutes I came to a fork in the
road with Pete’s sign pointing to the left. I’d never been
down there, and presumably the Cannon camp was in that
direction. The other fork was just a dim trace. It went
nowhere except to George’s camp, around the upper end of
another narrow arm of the lake.
The Big Bite — 66
In another few minutes I came abruptly into the clearing.
The gray, weather-beaten little two-room shack with its
shake roof stood under a couple of big oaks near the water.
Beyond it I could see the inlet extending straight ahead, the
water flat and glaring in the sun like a sheet metal between
the dark walls of timber. I stopped the car in the shade
before the front porch and got out. It was intensely silent;
there was a feeling of isolation about the place as if it were
a thousand miles to the nearest road instead of only six.
I unlocked the door and went in. Everything was just as I
had left it. A deputy sheriff had come out am locked it after
the wreck. The front room held a cook stove and a
homemade pine table covered with oil cloth. Cooking
utensils hung from nails in the wall behind the stove and
there were some shelves of staple groceries. I unlatched
and opened the small window at each end of the room and
went into the back one. It was a little larger and held two
single beds and an army cot. Some more cots were folded
and stacked in a corner and my two flyrods in their
aluminum cases lay on one of the beds. Hunting and fishing
clothes hung on nails all around the room. The trapped,
dead air was stiflingly hot. I opened the windows, feeling
my shirt sticking to me with sweat.
I looked at my watch. It was a little after two. Leaving the
recorder in the car, I brought in the bags and the
typewriter. Putting the bags in the back room, I set the
typewriter on the table in the front and took the cover off. I
opened one of the bags and got out the yellow typing paper
and carbons. Then I remembered I hadn’t bought an eraser.
Must have had a lot of confidence in myself, I thought
sourly; I hadn’t used a typewriter since I’d got out of
college. I scouted around the cabin and finally scared up the
stub of a pencil that had a little eraser left on the end of it.
It was still intensely hot in the cabin and I was thirsty. I
stripped off my shirt and slacks, hung them draped over
hangers on the front porch so the perspiration would dry,
took the water pail, and walked up the trail to the spring in
my shorts. I dipped up a pail full with the small aluminum
saucepan hanging from a nail driven into a sweetgum tree
beside the spring, took a good, long drink of it, and came
back.
The Big Bite — 67
I arranged the paper beside the typewriter, got a pad of
cigarettes and some matches out of one of the bags, and
located an ash tray. I dragged up a chair and sat down
before the typewriter. It was deathly silent. I had this whole
end of the world to myself and I was about to put down on
paper the highest-priced short piece of prose ever written. I
grinned. All it took to be a successful writer was a
guaranteed audience; Hitler had proved that.
Never mind the gags, I thought impatiently; get to work. I
rolled a sheet of the yellow paper into the machine for a
rough first draft and began. I made a lot of mistakes at first
because I wasn’t familiar with the machine and hadn’t used
one for a long time. I didn’t like the way it began, and after
I’d wadded it up I didn’t like the next version either. The
pile of discarded yellow pages grew higher on the floor
beside me. Sweat ran down my body and I got a towel to
mop it off. It was an hour and a half before I had it all down
the way I wanted, a little more than a full page, single
spaced.
I read it over:
To the District Attorneys at Houston, Texas, and “Wayles,
Texas, it began.
My name is John Gallagher Harlan. I was born in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, July 10th, 1927, the son of Patrick and Marianne
Harlan, both now deceased. I am a graduate of ____________
University, class of 1949, and former professional football
player. I am six feet, three inches tall, and weigh two
hundred and thirty pounds. There is a hirsute mole under
my left shoulder-blade, and considerable scar tissue around
and below my left knee. An examination of the bones of my
left leg will show it was badly broken in two places, not very
long ago. The bridgework, the result of teeth lost in football
scrimmages, was done by Paul J. Scarff, DDS, Medical-
Dental Building, San Francisco, California.
The above data is unimportant except for purposes of
possible identification and verification of the fact I actually
existed, because if you receive this at all it will only be
because I am dead. I will have been killed by Daniel R.
Tallant and/or Mrs. Howard L. Cannon, both of Wayles,
Texas.
The Big Bite — 68
I do not know whether you will be able to find my body,
or, in the event that you do, whether you will ever be able
to gather sufficient evidence to convict them, but this will
assist you to the extent of explaining their motive. I was
killed to prevent my disclosure of the following information:
Both Mrs. Cannon and Mr. Tallant are already guilty of
murder. Mrs. Cannon’s husband did not die as the result of
an automobile accident on the night of March 4th, 1956, as
was believed, but was bludgeoned to death by Mr. Tallant,
with Mrs. Cannon’s connivance and/or assistance, shortly
afterward as he lay unconscious in the wreckage of his car.
I was present at the time, pinned under the side of my own
automobile some sixty yards away. I heard voices, followed
by the sound of a blow, but feigned unconsciousness to
keep from being killed myself.
I went on to explain how I had seen her out there near the
lake a few minutes before and how Cannon had driven me
off the road because he believed I was Tallant and that she
was in the car with me.
I wound it up:
This will also clear up the death of Mr. Wilton L. Purvis of
10325 Caroline Street, Houston, Texas, on the night of
August 8, 1956. He was attempting to blackmail the
aforesaid two murderers on the strength of the evidence he
had collected against them, and was himself killed by a
single powerful blow on the head delivered by Mr. Tallant. I
was present in the apartment at the time, in the kitchen
where I could not be seen from the living-room or the
doorway to the dining-room. Mr. Tallant gained access to
the Purvis apartment by posing as a Federal radio inspector
investigating complaints of neighborhood television
interference. In corroboration of the fact that I was there, I
offer the following: Mr. Purvis was wearing a dark blue
sports shirt and gray flannel slacks. His left arm was broken
by the blow. There were two bottles of imported beer on the
drainboard in the kitchen, opened but untouched.
I am aware that none of the above is acceptable as
evidence in a court of law, but I believe that, given the
facts, you can eventually get a confession from them or
enough evidence of your own to convict.
The Big Bite — 69
Your inference, as to why I withheld this information is
correct. I am using it for extortion, to the extent of
$100,000. This disclosure, I realize, will tend greatly to
discredit my story on the ground that I am a criminal
myself, even if a first offender. There is another, and
slightly more subtle, side to this, however, if you will
consider it closely. I freely admit the attempted extortion;
the mere fact that you are reading this guarantees I am
dead. Therefore it is, in effect, a deathbed confession, and
should carry some weight.
Signed: JOHN GALLAGHER HARLAN.
I rolled in two fresh sheets of paper with a carbon
between; and copied it very neatly, going slowly and making
no mistakes. When I had finished I tore the originals into
strips, wadded them up with all the discarded versions and
the carbon paper, and burned them in the cookstove, later
using the poker to reduce the ashes to powder. The two
pages of the carbon copy I folded and left on the table. I
closed the typewriter and put it away. So much for that.
There were two rolls of spare recorder tape in one of the
bags. Removing them from the flat cardboard boxes they
were packed in, I took them down to the edge of the lake
and threw them far out into the water. They sank. Coming
back to the kitchen, I put the six bass bugs I’d bought in one
of the boxes, wrapped it with some of the brown paper, tied
it with twine, and put on an address sticker. The other box
was identical, and would look just the same when it was
wrapped. I took both of them out to the car and put them in
the glove compartment, along with the wrapping paper,
address labels, twine, and a book of stamps.
I took the .45 automatic out of the bag, loaded the clip
and inserted it, and put it in the car. It was late in the
afternoon now. I walked out on the little pier where the skiff
was tied up with a padlock and chain and went for a swim.
When I came out I built up a fire in the stove, made some
coffee, and fried a couple of eggs. Afterward I washed the
dishes and sat on the front porch in the gathering dusk,
smoking a cigarette. This time tomorrow I’d be well on my
way to becoming rich, or any one or all three of us might be
dead. I wasn’t too nervous. I felt about the same way I
always did standing in my own end zone on opening kickoff
while I watched the ball come sailing down toward me.
The Big Bite — 70
When it was completely dark I dressed in a charcoal
flannel suit, crepe-soled shoes, and a blue shirt. I made sure
I had the pencil flashlight and my pen, locked the windows
and doors, and went out and got in the car. I was as ready
now as I was ever going to be.
The Big Bite — 71
8
Just before I came out on the highway I pulled off the road
among the pines far enough to be out of range of any
passing headlights, and waited. No car came out behind me.
I lit a cigarette, and looked at my watch. It was a little after
eight. I still had lots of time to put in, and this was a good
place to find out if he was checking up on me. An hour
dragged by, and then another. Mosquitoes buzzed around
my ears and an owl went who-who-who-ah-who somewhere
out in the timber. Now and then a car went past on the
pavement beyond but none of them turned in. I pulled back
onto the road and went on. About halfway to town,
headlights showed up behind me. I slowed deliberately to
see if he would pass. He did. It was an old pickup truck. It
went on and out of sight.
When I came into town I turned left, taking to the side
streets. There were big trees on both sides, with street
lights only at the intersections. It was after eleven now and
few cars were about. Some six blocks over I turned north
again until I hit the street that went up the hill past the
Cannon house. I followed it for several blocks, until I came
to the playing field which was on the left. The street began
to rise here, going up the hill. There were four or five
houses on the right. I pulled to the curb in dense shadow
under the streetside trees and cut the lights. There was no
one in sight; no cars went past. I waited a few minutes,
The Big Bite — 72
letting my eyes become accustomed to the darkness. There
was no sound except a radio playing faintly somewhere
inside one of the houses. I got out and lifted out the
recorder, checking to be sure I had the three-way outlet
plug, the ball of twine, and my pocketknife.
Stars shone brilliantly in a clear sky, but there was no
moon. I crossed the street and went up past the playing
field. There were no street lights ahead now. The sidewalk
stopped and I stayed near the edge of the pavement, ready
to fade into the darkness away from the road if a car
appeared. None did. I went on up the hill. When I reached
the wooded area behind and below the Cannon house I
crossed the street again and stepped in among the pines.
The dense shadows were like velvet. I stepped softly on pine
needles, moving on up toward the light I could see briefly at
intervals through the trees. I came out at last in a narrow
open strip just behind the patio wall, the easement where
the utility poles went through in back of the lots. Standing
beside one of the poles, I looked at the rear of the house.
Lights were on in the living-room. The drape was still
drawn across the big plate glass window, but I could see
through it well enough to make out four people seated
around a card table. It looked like two men and two women.
I wondered if one of them could be Tallant but didn’t see
any silhouette that appeared to be large enough. It was
going to be a long wait, though, because even after these
people went home I had to be sure he wasn’t going to show.
A half hour crept past. I began to want a cigarette very
badly, but I couldn’t light one here in the open. I put the
recorder down near the pole and walked back among the
pines. When I was screened by them on all sides I hunkered
down and lit one with a brief flare of a match. I smoked it
slowly and ground the stub out against the ground. When I
came back up in the easement the bridge game was
breaking up. They all disappeared into the hallway at the
left end of the living-room, and in a moment one person
came back. Presumably that was Mrs. Cannon. I could hear
two cars driving away from the front of the house. Lights
began to go out in the room. Then one came on at the rear
of the right wing of the house. That would be her bedroom.
The curtains over the windows were opaque here, but I
could see the glow of illumination around the edges. In
The Big Bite — 73
about twenty minutes these lights clicked off too and the
whole house was in darkness. She had gone to bed. Alone?
So far, I thought. If Tallant had been one of the bridge
players, he would have left to come back later. I looked at
the luminous hands of my watch again. It was ten minutes
past midnight.
I settled down for the monotonous wait. Mosquitoes
swarmed about my ears and bit me on the backs of the
hands. Then suddenly a light came on behind a small
ground-glass window just forward of the bedroom. Bath, I
thought. Did that mean Tallant was there? No. It went off
again almost immediately. She was probably after a
sleeping pill or glass of water. If Cannon’s head had looked
anything like Purvis’s after they hit him, I thought, she
probably bought sleeping pills by the quart.
The minutes dragged on: It was one o’clock. Then onethirty.
There were no signs of Tallant. He must not be
coming, or he’d have been here by this time. Some Tallant, I
thought. I’d have been in there before the light bulb got
cold. I thought of her in that room alone and wondered if
she slept in one of those shortie nightgowns or maybe just
in the raw. Then I wrenched my mind away from her and
cursed under my breath. Thinking about her always made
me uncomfortable. Well, maybe she’d told him not to come.
That happened, too.
The house was dark and silent and the others in the
neighborhood had long since put out their lights. I began to
grow impatient, and a little nervous, wanting to get it over
with, but I made myself wait. Being caught in there would
ruin everything. Give her until three o’clock, anyway. She
should be asleep then if she was going to sleep at all. I
began to worry about the door again. Suppose she had
discovered the night latch was off? But I’d seen her leave
the living-room to go to bed, and she hadn’t checked it. Stop
stewing about it. Mosquitoes sang about my face. I flailed at
them with my hands. It was a long, long hour.
When the hands of the watch came up to three I was
tense and eager. I set the recorder on top of the wall and
climbed over, landing softly on the grass on the other side.
Going slowly and avoiding the lawn furniture from memory,
I eased up to the flagstone terrace outside the living-room
The Big Bite — 74
door. The soft-soled shoes made no sound on it. I located
the door and reached for the screen. It didn’t open.
I stood for a moment, cursing silently. I’d been right there
at the door and hadn’t had brains enough to check the
screen to see if it was unlatched. But maybe it had been
latched since then. That would mean the door was locked
again. Well, there was no way to tell until I got the screen
open. I set down the recorder and took out my pocketknife.
Switching on the little flashlight, I ran the beam along the
edge of the frame inside until I located the hook. It took
only a few seconds to work the knife blade through the
mesh, place it under the hook, and pry upward. It came free
with a little rattle as it bounced up and fell back against the
wood. I switched off the light and waited, holding my
breath. The night was silent all around me. It was all right, I
thought; she couldn’t have heard it inside with all the doors
and windows closed. The door, damn it, the door! I eased
the screen open and took hold of the knob. It turned. I
breathed softly.
I stepped inside, gently closed the door, and pushed
around the end of the drape. It was cool after the heat
outside. The blackness was impenetrable. I stood motionless
for a long minute, listening intently. There was utter silence
except for a faint whirring noise somewhere in the house
from the blower mechanism of the air-conditioner. I
switched on the flashlight and stepped across the room to
the long, custom-built sofa. Lifting the red-shaded lamp off
the end table, I placed it on the sofa and moved the table
out of the way. Nothing made any sound on the carpet.
Squatting, I looked behind the sofa. It was fine. There was
plenty of room for the recorder, between the back of the
sofa and the wall. I set the light down on the table, picked
up the end of the sofa, and moved it out from the wall until I
could get behind it.
I was working fast now, and silently, with all the moves
worked out and memorized in advance. Taking out my knife,
I cut away a section of the fabric of the sofa back, near the
center, and stuffed it in one of the pockets of my coat. I
could see the coil springs now, and the padding in front of
them. I opened the case of the recorder, took out the
microphone, and put it in position between two of the
springs, facing the front. I lashed it securely in place with
The Big Bite — 75
some of the twine. Feeling around with my fingers, I was
satisfied. It wasn’t quite touching the padding.
I turned and located the electrical outlet in the baseboard
under the drapery of the window. Just as I had thought, it
was a dual receptacle with both circuits in use by the big
lamps at each end of the sofa. I pulled out one of the lamp
cords, inserted the multiple plug in its place, and then
plugged in the lamp and the recorder in two of its outlets. I
put the recorder on the floor against the wall and set the
controls, all except the on-off switch. Moving the sofa back
to its original position very carefully, I replaced the end
table, and put the lamp back on it. Sitting on the end of the
sofa, I reached back with my right hand. I could just touch
the switch. I turned it on and brushed my fingertip against
one of the spools. It was turning. The drape wasn’t fouling it
anywhere; everything should be all right. I turned it off
again and stood up. Moving away a little, I swung the light
around the end of the sofa to see if there was anything
visible that would give it away. It was all right. The end
table cut off any view behind the sofa.
I straightened and wiped my face with my handkerchief,
suddenly conscious that in spite of the air-conditioning I
was soaked with sweat. I had been oblivious to everything,
working under pressure with tremendous concentration. It
was all set now; the only thing that remained was getting
out of here. I swept the light around once more to be sure I
hadn’t left anything, and eased over to the door. Pulling
back the drape, I slipped out, closed the door gently, eased
the screen back into position, and was outside on the
terrace. I exhaled a long breath and felt the tension unwind
inside me. I went back down the hill and looked at my watch
as I unlocked the door and got in the car. It was twenty
minutes past three.
I rolled down the windows and lit a cigarette. I had four
and a half hours to wait, and then came the tricky and
dangerous part of it. I wondered if I’d be able to sleep if I
sacked out somewhere. No. There wasn’t a chance. I was
still keyed too high. It would be better not to go back to the
cabin, anyway. I didn’t know where Tallant was, and as long
as I didn’t it would be a good idea to stay away from
anywhere he could find me. The best thing to do right now
was stay out of sight and keep moving. I drove back through
The Big Bite — 76
the quiet streets and hit the road going south, but when I
came to the turnoff I went on past. It was twenty miles
down to Breward. I drove slowly. When I got down there I
found an all-night café open on the highway and had some
breakfast.
I took my time eating it and read yesterday’s paper as if I
hadn’t heard any news since Hitler marched into Poland.
Dawn was breaking when I started back. A few miles out of
Breward I found a place to pull off the road at an old
abandoned sawmill. There was a huge pile of sawdust and a
pond with pads growing in it. I got out of the car and sat on
a big timber, smoking cigarettes and thinking while it grew
light and the sun came up. The air was intensely still. I
looked at my watch every few minutes, growing tighter
now.
Timing was very important. I wanted to hit them early in
the morning while they still had sleep in their eyes, and it
was vital I get there before the maid showed up and started
work. But it also had to be within shooting distance of 8:30
so the postoffice would be open when I was ready for it.
It was time to go. I flipped the last cigarette into the pond
and stood up. I took the .45 out of the glove compartment
and slid it into the right-hand pocket of my jacket,
wondering how easily people bluffed who had already
committed two murders. Probably not too readily, I thought.
I wheeled the car onto the road and started back to town.
* * *
It was ten minutes of eight when I pulled to the curb in
front of the Cannon house. The sun was higher now and
growing hot; nothing stirred along the street except a dog
making his morning rounds. I hurried up the walk. A rolled
newspaper lay on the concrete slab of the porch. I picked it
up and leaned on the buzzer. I could hear it somewhere
inside the house. I waited a moment and jabbed it again,
long and impatiently. Standing there in the sun, I was
roasting inside the flannel suit. Somewhere down the block
I heard a garage door fall, and a car backed out into the
street I was just reaching for the buzzer again when the
door opened.
The Big Bite — 77
I’d got her out of bed, all right. The dark hair was tousled
and she was wearing a blue, robe tied tightly about the
slender waist. The big eyes were still a little, sleepy and the
irritation in them came into focus as she looked out and saw
me. She made a half-hearted attempt to mask it, but it
didn’t quite come off.
“Oh. It’s you, Mr. Harlan. Aren’t you up a little early?”
“I’ve got to talk to you,” I said curtly. I pushed on in. She
stepped back, a little startled. I reached back to close the
door behind me, and as I did I slid my fingers down the
edge, found the two push-buttons of the night latch and
reversed them. She was watching my face and didn’t see it.
You could see she thought all this was a little highhanded.
“I beg your, pardon—”
“Shut up,” I said.
She took another step backward and her eyes went round
with amazement. In another second she recovered, and the
surprise gave way to blazing anger. “Would you mind telling
me—”
I cut her off. “Is the maid here yet?”
“Mr. Harlan, will you please leave this house? Before I
call the police.”
I caught the front of her robe. “Shut up. And listen. If the
maid’s here, get rid of her. If she’s due within the next half
hour, call her and tell her not to come. You wouldn’t want
her to hear this.”
She was scared now, but trying not to show it.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not a sex maniac that’s flipped
his lid, if that’s bothering you. This is strictly business. Now,
how about that maid?”
She moistened her lips. “She comes at nine.”
“Good,” I said. I let go her robe and grinned at her a little
coldly. “Let’s go into the living-room, shall we? What kind of
hostess are you, anyway?”
She was still having a little trouble trying to catch up.
She’d typed me yesterday as a harmless yokel with two left
feet, and now I’d crossed her up. I had to give her credit,
though; by the time we’d walked on into the living-room and
sat down facing each other across the coffee table she had
The Big Bite — 78
recovered. I was just something she had to endure until I
decided to leave.
“Cigarette?” I asked, holding out the pack.
She shook her head.
“Better have one,” I said. “Good for the nerves. This is
going to be a little rugged.”
“Would you mind just saying whatever it was you forced
your way in here to say—”
“Right,” I answered. “I’ve got something here I’d like you
to read.”
She stared at me as I took the folded yellow pages of the
carbon copy from the breast pocket of my jacket. I held
them while I finished lighting the cigarette and dropped the
match in a tray. “Here,” I said.
She unfolded them. I studied her face as she started to
read. There was a hint of shock right at first, and I knew
that, was when she saw the thing was addressed to the two
District Attorneys. From then on her face was a mask—a
very lovely honey-colored mask dominated by two brown
eyes that were completely inscrutable. She finished, folded
it up, and dropped it on the coffee table.
I leaned back on the sofa with my hands behind my head
and the cigarette hanging out of the side of my mouth.
“Well?” I asked.
She took one of the cigarettes from the pack I had left
lying on the table. She lit it with the table lighter. Her hands
were steady. “Mr. Harlan,” she asked quietly, “do. you mind
if I ask a rather personal question? Have you ever been
confined in a mental institution?”
“Pretty good act,” I said. “But you’re wasting time.”
“I mean it.”
I sighed. “This is a nice routine, but we can skip the rest
of it, if it’s all right with you, and get on with the
negotiations. I want a hundred thousand dollars. Do I get
it?”
She stared at me. “You couldn’t be serious.”
I nodded toward the letter. “You read that, didn’t you?”
“Yes. And a more fantastic—”
The Big Bite — 79
I cut her off. “Save the arguments for the jury. If this goes
to trial you’re going to need them. The two of you killed
your husband while he was unconscious, and if you think
you can get that reduced from murder in the first degree,
you’re crazy as hell. The jury wouldn’t be out long enough
to finish their cigarettes. Now, listen—”
“Of all the utterly fantastic, insane—”
I leaned forward across the table. “Shut up, and I’ll read
the score to you. You and Tallant and your husband can go
around killing each other every day of the week and twice
on Sundays, and I couldn’t care less. But when you rope me
in on it it’s a different story. Your husband deliberately tried
to kill me because he thought I was Tallant, and he wound
up by putting a permanent wave in one of my legs. They
may not look like much, compared to Grable’s, but I made a
damn good living with them, and now I don’t any more. He
left you a hundred thousand dollars in insurance, but that
was just a clerical error. He should have left it to me. I’ve
come after it. Do I get it, or don’t I?”
She stared at me. “You have a wonderful imagination, Mr.
Harlan, even if it is slightly deranged. My husband was
drinking. He lost control of his car—”
I cut her off; “We’ve wasted enough time. Get Tallant on
the phone. I’ll tell you what to say.”
“You mean the Mr. Tallant who runs the sporting goods
shop?”
“Among other things, that’s the Mr. Tallant. Now get with
it.”
Her eyebrows raised. “And if I don’t?”
I reached across the table, caught her by the front of the
robe, and hauled her to her feet. “You’re not big enough to
tell me whether you will or won’t. Where’s the phone?”
The brown eyes were full of contempt. “You’re looking
right at it.” She half turned her head and nodded. The
telephone was on a stand in the corner of the room between
the rear window and the dining-room door.
“Come on,” I said. I took her arm and propelled her ahead
of me. The directory was on a shelf under the instrument. I
handed it to her opened to the first page inside the cover.
The Big Bite — 80
“There are the numbers,” I said. “The local police, and the
Sheriff’s office. If you think I’m bluffing, or crazy, here’s
your chance to call me. Dial either one. Tell them a man has
forced his way into your house and is threatening you.
They’ll have a car here in less than three minutes.”
She eyed me coolly. “And in less than two I would be
disfigured for life.”
“I won’t touch you. I’ve got a gun, but I won’t resist
arrest, either. I’m not that silly. Add it up. Carrying a gun
without a permit, illegal entry, assault, attempted extortion
—say five to ten years for a package deal. Go ahead.”
She looked at me and then at the telephone. I picked up
the instrument and held it out toward her. “Call the police.
Or call Tallant. It’s up to you.”
She tried to bluff it out. For an instant her eyes locked
with mine, but then they dropped. She lifted the receiver
and dialed.
It wasn’t one of the emergency numbers. She was calling
Tallant.
The Big Bite — 81
9
“Just say something’s come up,” I ordered, “and that he’s to
get over here as fast as he can. Not another word.”
She stared coldly. In the dead silence of the room I could
hear the phone ringing at the other end. It stopped.
“Mr. Tallant?” she asked. “This is Mrs. Cannon.
Something has come up, and I wonder if you could drive
over here right away—”
I pressed down the plunger on the cradle to break the
connection and took the receiver away from her, but the
damage was already done.
“Smart,” I said. “But that’s all right. He can’t do
anything.”
“What do you mean?” she asked coldly.
“Skip it,” I said. I put the phone back on the stand. This
girl was sharp. If Tallant had come on cold, without
knowing how much she might have already said, I’d have
had the advantage. But she’d outfoxed me, and tipped him.
She’d told him as plainly as if she’d drawn him a picture
that I was here—or somebody was here putting the pressure
on her, but that she hadn’t admitted a thing. Mr. Tallant—
Hah.
But suppose? For just a moment uncertainty took hold of
me. Maybe she really didn’t know him. I knew he had killed
Purvis, all right, because I’d seen him, but the rest of it was
The Big Bite — 82
just a lot of logical surmises strung together. And if she
hadn’t had anything to do with Cannon’s death, I was as far
up the creek as you could get without a helicopter.
No, I thought suddenly. The hell she wasn’t implicated.
Use your head. She’s given herself away twice in the past
three minutes. She chickened out when you threw that bluff
at her about calling the police. And she made an even
bigger boo-boo.
“You’re pretty smooth,” I said, “but you goofed on that
one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s Mister Tallant and Mrs. Cannon, but you dialed his
number without looking it up.”
We were still facing each other by the telephone.
“Really?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Is that so
remarkable? We happen to be on a committee together.”
“What kind of committee?”
“We’re trying to form a Little Theatre group.”
“Very interesting,” I said. I went back and sat down on the
end of the sofa. He’d be here any minute now, and I was
beginning to grow tense again. The two of them together
were going to be something to handle. She remained across
the room looking at me as if I were something that had
crawled out of a shower drain. We waited. Nobody said
anything. The silence went on building up so that when the
door chime tinkled out in the kitchen it was like a handgrenade
going off.
She turned and started toward the entrance hallway. The
instant she was through the door I reached down behind the
sofa and flipped the switch of the recorder. Then I sprang
up and followed her. I was leaning against the door frame
between the living-room and the entry hall when she
opened the outer door. Tallant was standing on the porch.
We were almost the same size exactly, but he could have
been a year or so younger and you had to admit he was a
handsome devil. It was obvious he’d never plowed up as
many stadiums with his face as I had, but nobody except a
chump would have ever called his good looks girlish. The
eyes were blue-gray and rather hard, and the cleft chin
didn’t detract at all from the tough competence of the jaw.
The Big Bite — 83
The short-cropped dark hair had a tendency to be curly. A
smooth hunk of cookie, I thought. Whether you were after
the same girl or the same fumble, he’d give you a bad time
either way.
“Come in, Mr. Tallant,” she said. I didn’t have any idea
what kind of messages she was passing along to him with
her eyes, but I watched his. I also cased him for a gun, but
didn’t see any place he could be carrying one. He was
wearing a sports shirt and no jacket.
He stepped inside the entry hall. As she closed the door
he inclined his head a little in my direction and said, “Who’s
this?” It wasn’t too convincing. He knew who I was, all
right.
I lounged against the door frame and watched his face.
“I’m a Federal radio inspector,” I said. “Checking up on
television interference in the neighborhood.”
He was good, all right, and he’d been prepared, but that
was a little too hot to field without showing it. I saw it hit
him for a fraction of a second before he covered.
He frowned then. “What’s this?” he asked quietly. “A
gag?”
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