You asked for a cop and they sent you a comic-opera
clown like this. I choked down a sarcastic remark that
wouldn’t have helped the situation a great deal, and was just
about to ask him where he wanted to start when he
shrugged and said, “Well, that’s about it, huh?” He turned
and went out.
I stared at his back in disbelief, but followed him. I caught
up with him on the porch. “What do you mean, that’s it?”
He favored me with an indifferent glance and hitched up
his gunbelt again. “I’ve seen it, haven’t I? I’ll make a report
on it, but we haven’t got much to go on.”
“How about checking this place for prints?” I asked. “Or
don’t you want to? And how about the registration card he
made out? And if you thought it wouldn’t bore you too much,
I can give you a description of him. And the car. Any of that
interest you? And what about those jugs in there?”
“Well, what about the jugs? They had acid in ‘em. So I
know that already.”
I was beginning to get it now, though not the reason for it.
Even this scenic and posturing hero wasn’t that stupid. He
knew what you did with those jugs. You checked them for
prints; you found out what kind of acid had been in them;
then you found out where they’d been stolen from, and how,
and went on from there. It was a deliberate goof-off.
“Then you’re not interested? Is that it?”
“I didn’t say that, did I?”
“How do you get hold of the Sheriff of this County?” I
asked. “Is there a password or something? I’ve tried the
office twice—”
“Try the Mayo Clinic,” he suggested. Then he added, “It’s
in Minnesota.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But maybe somebody’s in charge while
he’s gone?”
“Sure,” he said. “Redfield.”
“I see.”
“You remember him; you talked to him on the phone.” He
grinned. “He mentioned it.”
“Sure,” I said. I remember him. That’s what puzzles me.
He sounded like a cop.”
Talk of The Town— 47
He turned and stared coldly. “What do you mean by that?”
“Did he tell you how to do this? Or did you figure it out
yourself?”
“He did tell me to find out who the hell you are,” he
snapped. “Turn around and put your hands against that
wall.”
“Cut it out,” I said.
“Turn around!”
I sighed and put my hands against the wall. He shook me
down for the gun he knew I didn’t have. Then he caught me
by the shoulder and whirled me around facing him. and did
it again. He managed to get an elbow under my chin a
couple of times, pull my shirt tail out, and step on my feet,
but as a rough frisk it was pretty crude Any rookie could
have done better. Humiliation is the only object of it,
anyway, and without an audience it’s pointless. He stepped
back.
“You through?” I asked.
“You got any identification?”
“It’s in my hip pocket. You’ve been over it three times.”
“Give it here.”
I took out the wallet, deliberately removed the money from
it, and handed it to him. His face reddened. He shuffled
through the identification.
His eyes jerked up at me. “Cop, huh?”
“I was one,” I said.
“What are you doing around here?”
“I’m going to wash the acid out of that room as soon as we
finish this comedy routine.”
“I mean, what’re you hanging around for? What have you
got to do with this place? And Mrs. Langston?”
“I’m staying here, while they fix my car.”
“How come you’re working for her? Can’t you pay for your
room?”
“Let’s just say she’s a friend of mine. And I thought she
needed help.”
“A friend, huh? How long have you known her?”
“A little less than a day.”
Talk of The Town— 48
He gave me a cold smile. “You sure make friends fast. Or
maybe she does.”
“Tell me something,” I said. “How does it happen she can’t
get any police protection?”
“Who said she couldn’t?”
“Look around you.”
“What do you expect us to do?” he asked. “Stay out here
night and day because people don’t like her?”
“Who doesn’t?” I asked. “If you’re supposed to be a cop,
I’d think that would suggest something to you. It’s just
possible the guy who dumped that acid in there didn’t like
her.”
“Round up half the people in town? Is that it?”
“You know better than that. There’s not half a dozen
people in any town that’d do a job like this.”
I was wasting my breath. He turned away and stepped
down onto the gravel. “Here’s your stuff,” he said, and
tossed the wallet onto the concrete at my feet.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. And there’s one more thing. If it was
me, I’d be mighty careful who I got mixed up with around
here. She’s going to have all the police attention she wants
one of these days.”
“Yes?” I said. I’d been wondering if he’d come out and say
it. “Why?”
“If you’ve been around here all day, you know why. She
killed her husband.”
“Then you don’t arrest people for that around here, and
try them?” I asked. “You just let hoodlums burn their places
down with acid?”
“You arrest ‘em as soon as you’ve got a case,” he said.
“You’re able to tell everybody how to run a police
department, you ought to know that.”
“Did you ever hear of slander?” I asked.
He nodded. “Sure. And did you ever try to prove it without
witnesses?”
He went over and started to get into his car. “Wait a
minute,” I said. He paused and turned.
Talk of The Town— 49
I reached down and picked up the wallet. “You wanted to
see me do it, didn’t you? I wouldn’t want to spoil your whole
day.”
He stared coldly, but said nothing as he drove off.
Talk of The Town— 50
5
I located the fuse box and killed the circuits in that wing of
the building so I wouldn’t electrocute myself with the hose.
Changing into swimming trunks, I went to work. I stood in
the doorway playing the hose on walls and ceiling and
furniture until water began running over the threshold. I
broke open a half-dozen boxes of the soda and scattered it
around and washed down some more. When I tried to move
the bedclothes, curtains, and mattresses, they tore into
rotten and mushy shreds, so I found some garden tools and
raked them out onto the gravel, along with all the carpet I
could tear up. It was sickening.
Even as diluted as the stuff was now, it kept stinging my
feet when I had to step off the boards. I played the hose on
them to wash it off. In about fifteen minutes I had the worst
of it out. I dragged the bed-frames and headboards, the
chest, the two armchairs, and the night table out onto the
concrete porch and played the hose on them some more and
scattered the rest of the soda over the wet surfaces. I
showered and changed back into my clothes, and went over
to the office. Josie said Mrs. Langston was sleeping quietly.
She brought me the keys to the station wagon.
“Turn on the “No Vacancy” sign,” I said. “And if anybody
comes in, tell him the place is closed.”
She looked doubtful. “You reckon Miss Georgia goin’ to
like that? She’s kind of pinched for money.”
Talk of The Town— 51
“I’ll square it with her,” I said. “She needs rest more than
she needs money, and we’re going to see she gets it.”
That wasn’t the only reason, but I saw no point in going
into it now. I drove into town and parked near the garage. In
the repair shed a mechanic was working on my car,
unbolting the old radiator. He looked up and nodded.
“Borrow one of your screwdrivers?” I asked. “Sure,” he
said. “Here.”
I went around back and tested one of the screws holding
the rear plate. It came loose freely. So did the other one.
You could even see where he’d put machine oil on the
threads to break them loose. I heard footsteps beside me
and looked up. It was the sour-faced foreman in his white
overall.
He nodded. “What’s all the whoop-de-do with the license
plates? Man from the Sheriff’s office was fiddlin’ with ‘em a
while ago. And dusting powder over them.”
“Which man?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t know him. That hard case.”
“Magruder?”
He shook his head. “That’s the one thinks he’s hard. This
one is. Kelly Redfield.”
I thought he’d sounded like a good cop. He screamed
about it and for some reason tried to slough it off, but in the
end he had to come and see. “What he say?” I asked.
“Say? That guy? He wouldn’t give you the time of day.”
“But he did tell you where they broke in?”
Surprise showed for an instant on the sour and frozen face
before he brought it under control again. “How’d you know?
He said there was a busted pane in the washroom window.
And he wanted to know if we’d missed anything.”
“Have you?”
He shook his head. “Not as far as we can tell yet.”
“How about battery acid?”
“We haven’t got any.”
Well, he’d stolen it somewhere in this area, because he
had it here at two a.m. He couldn’t have gone very far after
Talk of The Town— 52
it. Maybe Redfield had some ideas. I should be able to catch
him at the office.
It was at the rear of the courthouse, a dreary room floored
with scarred brown linoleum and smelling of dust. The wall
at the right was banked with steel filing cabinets, and across
the room at desks near a barred window, Magruder and a
bull of a man with red hair were doing paperwork. The wall
at my left was filled with bulletins and “Wanted” posters. A
large overhead fan circled with weary futility, stirring the
heat. At the left end of the room there was a water-cooler
and a doorway leading into an inner office.
Magruder came over. I noticed he still wore the heavy
gunbelt and the .45 even while shuffling papers. Maybe he
wore it to bed. “What do you want now?” he asked.
“I want to talk to your boss.”
At that moment a lean-hipped man in faded khaki came
out of the inner office with a handful of papers which he
tossed on one of the desks. Magruder jerked his head at me.
“Kelly, here’s that guy now.”
Redfield turned with a quick, hard glance. “Chatham?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Come in here.”
I followed him into the inner office. An old roll-top desk
against the wall on the left. On the right there were two
filing cabinets, and a hat-rack on which were draped his
jacket, a black tie, and a shoulder holster containing a gun.
A locked, glass-fronted case held four carbines. One barred
window looked out onto a parking area paved with white
gravel.
He nodded towards the straight chair at the end of the
desk. “Sit down.”
Without taking his eyes off me, he groped in the pocket of
the jacket for cigarettes. He lit one, without offering them to
me, and flipped the match into the tray on his desk. He was
a man of thirty-six or thirty-eight, with an air of tough
competence about him that matched the way he had
sounded on the telephone. The face was lean, the jaw cleancut
and hard, and he had a high, rounded forehead and
thinning brown hair. The hard-bitten eyes were gray. It was
Talk of The Town— 53
a face with intelligence in it, and character, but for the
moment at least, no warmth at all.
“All right, Chatham,” he said. “What are you after around
here?”
“Magruder told you,” I said. “You sent him to find out.”
“I did. And you don’t make any sense. Start making some.”
He irritated me, and puzzled me at the same time. Honest,
hard-working professional cop was written all over him, and
he hadn’t been able to resist a police problem, but why the
antagonism? “Were there any prints on those plates?” I
asked.
“No,” he said curtly. “Of course not. And there wouldn’t
have been any in the room, or on those jugs. You think the
man who worked out that operation was a fool, or an
amateur? But never mind him; let’s get back to you.”
“Why?”
“I want to know who the hell you are, and what you’re
doing here. He went to all that trouble to use your plates
Why?”
The message was for me,” I said. I told him about the
telephone call warning me to leave, and the earlier call to
her and my efforts to find the booth with the noisy fan.
He walked over in front of me. “In other words, you’re, not
in town thirty minutes before you’re up to your neck in
police business. You’re a trouble-maker, Chatham; I can
smell you a mile off.”
“I reported it to this office,” I said. “And I was kissed off.
You’re trying to slough off this acid job, too, but you can’t
quite make yourself do it entirely. What’s with it? I’ve seen
dirt swept under the rug before, but you don’t look quite the
type for it.”
Just for an instant there was something goaded and
savage in his eyes, and I thought he was going to hit me.
Then he had it under control. “Nobody is being kissed off
here,” he said. “And nothing is being swept under the rug.
The description of that man, and his car, have gone out to all
adjoining counties and to the Highway Patrol. I know where
the acid came from—”
“You do?” I asked.
Talk of The Town— 54
“Shut up,” he said, without raising his voice. “You shot off
your mouth, and I’m telling you, so listen. The chances are a
thousand to one he’ll never be picked up. Green Ford sedans
are as common as Smiths in a raided whore house. So are
men answering that description. Even together, you haven’t
got much, and by now he’ll be in a different car altogether.
In a place this size, he had to be from out of town. That
means he was probably hired for the job, and he could be
from anywhere within a thousand miles of here. The acid
itself is a dead end. A truck was hijacked a few weeks ago
just east of here, and one of the items on the manifest was
ten gallons of sulphuric acid. I just looked it up. The
hijackers were never caught, and none of the stuff’s been
located. The bulk of it was paint, that could be sold
anywhere. So try to come up with a lead there. That just
leaves you.”
“What do you mean?”
He jabbed a forefinger at me. “You stick out of this mess
like a blonde with a pet skunk, and the more I look at you
the wronger you get. For some reason, it happens the very
day you show up. You’ve got some cock-and-bull story about
a mysterious telephone call. If you’re lying about that,
you’re mixed up in it. If you’re not lying and somebody is
trying to get you out of here, you’re mixed up in something
else. I don’t like trouble-makers and goons that wander in
here for no reason at all and seem to wind up out there at
that motel. We’ve still got the stink from the last one.”
“I thought we’d get back to that,” I said. “In other words
you don’t care what happens to her, or how she gets pushed
around. You’ve got an unsolved murder on your hands and
as far as you’re concerned she’s guilty, whether you can
prove it or not. Well, you’re right about the smell around
here. And it’s about time somebody found what’s causing it.”
He leaned over me with one hand on the corner of the
desk. “Get this, Chatham,” he said harshly, “and get it
straight the first time. I don’t know what you’re after around
here, but I know you. We don’t need any meddlers, and
we’ve got all the trouble we need. You make one phony
move, and I’m going to land on you, and land hard. Now get
out of here, and do your best to stay out.” I stood up.
“Okay. I can hear you.”
Talk of The Town— 55
Magruder had come over, and was standing in the
doorway. He stared coldly. Redfield nodded for him to let
me out, and he moved to one side. “Big shot,” he said.
I ignored him, and spoke to Redfield. “I’m not stupid
enough to bring charges before a Grand Jury as long as
you’re going through the motions, but don’t think you can
stop me from looking under the rug myself. And when you
land on me, make sure you’ve got legal grounds.”
“I will have,” he said. “Now, beat it.”
I went out, conscious that I had just made the situation
worse, but still angry enough not to care. I stopped at a
drugstore to have the prescriptions made up, and drove
back to the motel. When I parked in front of the office, I
looked at my watch. It was after eleven, and I remembered
I’d never had any breakfast. Maybe I could catch Ollie alone
at the same time. I walked across the road, ordered a
sandwich and a cup of coffee, and carried them into the bar.
There was only one customer, a man in a linesman’s outfit.
He finished his beer and went out, clanking like a walking
tool kit.
I put my stuff on the bar and pulled up a stool. “You don’t
mind if I sit here?” I asked. “As long as I’m not bothering
your regular customer?”
He shrugged, but there was amusement in the level brown
eyes. “I’m sorry about that. But you know how it is.”
“Forget it,” I said. He had a clean-cut look about him, and
I had a hunch he wasn’t one of the crowd that was on her
back. I wished I could be sure.
He came over, propped a foot on the shelf under the bar,
and leaned on his knee. He lit a cigarette. “That was a dirty
pool, that acid.”
“How did you hear about it?” I asked.
“Saw the stuff over there, where you pulled it out. I went
over, and the maid told me about it. Sheriff’s office come up
with anything?”
“Not much,” I said. I drank some of the coffee.
“That Redfield’s a good cop. Tougher than a boot, but
smart. And honest.”
“Yeah,” I said non-committally. “But why did you ask me?”
Talk of The Town— 56
“It’s all over town you’ve got some connection with her.”
I nodded. “I didn’t have. But I do now. That acid job was
partly my fault.”
“How come?”
“Let me ask you a question first,” I said. “Do you honestly
think she was involved in that murder?”
“You want to know what I really think?” He looked me
right in the eye. “I think I’ve got a nice place here. Forty
thousand dollars’ worth, and I won’t be twenty-seven till
next month. It makes me a good living and I like it. So I
think whatever my customers think, or I keep my fat mouth
shut.”
“Don’t try to snow me,” I said. “You didn’t make all this in
your twenties by being bird-brained or gutless. You know
damned well what you think, and that is she’s not the type of
woman who’d even give Strader the time of day.”
He nodded. “All right. So maybe that’s what I think. I
didn’t say it, mind you; you did. So what does it buy? I’ve got
a hobby, see—”
“Hobby?”
“Yeah. It’s chasing things. Two things—women and
tarpon. And by now I know just about everything there is to
know about tarpon, but I still don’t know one damned thing
about women. Neither do you.”
“Sure. But you can play the odds. Now, listen—do you
recall who used your telephone booth around two yesterday
afternoon? A couple of hours before I was here?”
He frowned and shook his head. “I’d probably never notice
unless they asked for change. People are in and out of it all
the time. Why?”
I told him about the filthy telephone calls and the noisy
fan. “Somewhere around town he must have seen me, and
caught onto what I was doing. If he was in your lunch-room
when she drove home—and I think he was, because he
called right afterwards—he also saw me go into the office
with her. So he knew me. You don’t remember, then?”
“No-o. There could have been several, but I never pay any
attention.”
Talk of The Town— 57
“Many people in and out of the bar between two and the
time I showed up?”
“Half-dozen. Maybe more. It’s hard to say.”
“What about the ones who were here at the same time?”
“Hmmm,” he said. “Let’s see. That big guy was Red
Dunleavy. He works at a filling station just up the road. He’s
probably made his share of improper suggestions to girls,
but he’d make ‘em in person, not over the phone. Rupe
Hulbert’s a loud-mouth, and nosy, but generally harmless.
But what you’re looking for, Chatham, is a nut. It wouldn’t
be any of those guys. Pearl Talley gets off some pretty raw
jokes, but nothing like that—”
“What about the guy in the guitar-player's shirt, at the
table with her?”
Ollie grinned briefly. “That’s who I’m talking about. Pearl
can be a man’s name too down here. Talley’s a clown type,
and to look at him you’d think they had to rope him every
morning to put shoes on him, but it’s a front. He’s sharp as a
razor in a business deal; he can swap nickels with you, even
money, and come out two dollars ahead. Owns several farms
around here; runs I cattle on ‘em, mostly.”
There didn’t appear to be anything in those three to I
warrant any further questions at the moment. “Tell me
about that night,” I said. “What was it about the fake
accident? They figure the two of them were going to leave
Langston’s car down there?”
Ollie nodded. “That’s right. Langston had all his tackle and
his motor in the station wagon, and was supposed to be
going fishing.”
”At four-thirty in the morning?”
“Sure. You fish for bass at daybreak.”
“But what about the fake accident? Are they sure of that?”
“Yes. There was never any doubt of it. You see, Langston
was a man about forty-seven years old and not very strong.
He’d been sick. Well, there at Finley’s Cut where he kept his
boat tied up, there’s a steep climb down about an eight-foot
bank to get to the edge of the water. And a big log at the
bottom of it that they padlock their boats to. His outboard
motor weighed nearly fifty pounds. So you can see yourself
what everybody would naturally think when he was found
Talk of The Town— 58
down there with his head busted open against the log with
the motor on top of him.”
I nodded. “And what was Strader doing when Calhoun
jumped him?”
“He was down there by the water with a flashlight and a
piece of the bloody tarp, fixing up the log.”
“There’d have to be more blood than that.”
“That’s right. And Strader knew it. He had his knife out
and had just sliced it into the heel of his left hand when
Calhoun told him to stand up and turn around.”
I nodded. Ollie went on, his eyes thoughtful. “You see?
Strader's a complete stranger around here, and not
supposed to know either of the Langstons. So how did he
know any of this? Where Langston kept the boat, how to get
there, about the steep bank, and the log at the bottom of it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It was deadly, all right. It was
planned, premeditated murder, and one of them had got
away with it. But did it have to be Mrs. Langston? Not so
far. Any number of local people would have known all those
things. But the really damning part of it was the attempt to
make it look like an accident. That meant somebody involved
knew he would be, or could be, suspected if it were
discovered to be murder. Somebody with a known and
provable connection with Langston. And since it didn’t seem
to be Strader. . .
“How did Calhoun happen to be down there?” I asked.
“He’s one of the town police, isn’t he?”
“Just one of those things,” Ollie replied. “He was on a
fishing trip too, camped right below there. The car woke him
up.”
“I see. And how do they know it was a woman driving
Strader's car?”
“My cook saw the car stop over there and a woman get
out.”
“Was he able to describe her?”
Ollie shook his head. “No. It was just a little after five, and
that time of year it’s still dark. He’d just come into the
dining-room from his room in the back to start coffee, and
happened to glance out the window. This car drove into the
motel and parked in front of one of the rooms over there on
Talk of The Town— 59
the right. He didn’t pay much attention, of course, and the
light wasn’t very good in that spot, but he did notice it was a
woman. He thought she had dark hair, but he wouldn’t
swear to it. She walked across towards the office, but she
didn’t go in. She disappeared into that open space between
it and the end of the left-hand wing of the building.”
“And when the police found the car, it was parked in front
of the right room? The one Strader was registered in?”
“That’s right.”
I shook my head. “It’s too pat. Do they think she’d be
stupid enough to drive the car right back here to the motel?”
He exhaled smoke and studied it thoughtfully. “The theory
is that she didn’t know Calhoun got the license number. It’s
logical. She couldn’t have seen him chasing her, in the dark,
and he didn’t shoot because he fell down and lost the gun.
And if she left it somewhere else, she’d have to walk back,
with the chance of being seen.”
“But she was seen. And she didn’t go into the office.”
“There’s a rear entrance. Out of sight from here.”
“How soon did they find the car?”
“In less than thirty minutes. As soon as Calhoun could
make the town and report it, the Sheriff drove out to tell
her, and see if she was all right. He didn’t know but what
she’d been killed too. And the first thing he saw when he
drove in was that same Dade County license right there in
front of Room Fourteen.”
”Was she asleep when he knocked? He’d be able to make
a pretty good guess.”
“No. She was in her nightdress and dressing-gown when
she came to the door, but she was wide awake.”
“Is that the straight dope? Or gossip?”
“It’s just what was in the papers. That Sheriff keeps his
business under his hat. And so does Redfield. Magruder
talked a little, but I understand he was stepped on for it.”
“Did she explain why she was awake at that time of day?”
“Yes,” Ollie replied. “She said it was a phone call. Just
before he got there.”
“Who was it?”
Talk of The Town— 60
“A wrong number. Or that is, the wrong motel. Some
woman that sounded about half-drunk wanted to talk to a
party that wasn’t even registered.”
I nodded. “So she had to shuffle through all the cards to
be sure?”
“Yeah.”
Just then another customer came in. I went back across
the road. Josie had been in to make up the rooms. I switched
on the air-conditioner and sat down to see if I could make
sense of what I was doing. The only thing that was really
apparent was that I was going to get my head knocked off.
In less than twenty-four hours I’d been warned by two
different sets of people to leave town or get hurt. And since I
had no intention of doing it, I must be crazy.
Two sets of people? Yes. It almost had to be. Redfield was
a complex man I didn’t understand at all yet, and potentially
a highly dangerous one, but I simply couldn’t believe he was
corrupt—or corrupt enough to be at the bottom of all this.
Maybe the savagery in him was warping his judgment, but it
could be the result of an honest conviction she was guilty
and that she had beaten him. Therefore, he probably didn’t
even know who the other was, and I did have two separate
outfits bent on getting rid of me.
And they might do it. I had no illusions about that. He had
all the power of the Sheriff’s office behind him, and some of
the things he could do to you with only a slight misuse of it
would make your hair curl. And as for the other one—he’d
said the acid was only a hint. That was self-explanatory. And
ominous.
It always led back to Langston’s murder. And more and
more it looked as if somebody had deliberately tried to
frame her. The telephone call that morning could have been
an honest mistake, but I didn’t think so. It was too
convenient. The woman who’d left Strader's car at the motel
knew the Sheriff would be knocking on the office door inside
half an hour to tell Mrs. Langston her husband was dead,
and that flushed and dull-eyed appearance of having just
been roused from sleep is too nearly impossible to fake to be
anything but genuine. So she had to be awake. Pawing
through registration cards and arguing with an apparent
drunk would guarantee it.
Talk of The Town— 61
Then, if you could assume the whole thing tied together,
where did I start? There was no lead at all in the acid job.
Strader, I thought. It all began with him, and whatever he’d
come up here for. So far, nobody had found out what it was,
so at least I was starting even. But Strader had come from
Miami. Well, that presented no great problem. . . .
The phone rang. When I picked it up, a woman’s voice said
softly, “Mr. Chatham?”
“Yes,” I said. “Who is it?”
“You wouldn’t know me, but I might be able to tell you
something.”
“About what?”
“About some acid, maybe. If you thought it was worth a
hundred dollars—”
She left it hanging there, and then I caught something in
the background that made the pulse leap in my throat. It
was the rough whirring sound of that fan with the defective
bearing.
“Yes,” I said, trying to keep the excitement out of my
voice. “It might be worth that. Where could I meet you?”
“You can’t,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t risk it for a
thousand, let alone a hundred. But if you get the money for
me, I’ll phone—” She stopped abruptly, gasped, and the
receiver clicked as she hung up.
I dropped the instrument back on the cradle and was out
the door in three strides. The entrance to the Silver King
was in plain sight from here. Nobody came out I almost ran,
going across. When I pushed into the lunchroom a lone
trucker was at the counter and the waitress was emerging
from the kitchen with a tray. I forced myself to slow down
and strolled casually into the bar.
It was empty, except for Ollie. He was disassembling and
cleaning a big salt-water reel on a newspaper spread out on
the bar. I looked stupidly around. He glanced up and sighed.
“Corrosion,” he said.
“Where’d she go?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The woman that just used the phone booth.”
Talk of The Town— 62
“In here?” he stared at me, frowning. “There hasn’t been
any woman here. There hasn’t been anybody since just after
you left.”
Talk of The Town— 63
6
He was telling the truth, or he was one of the great actors of
all time. But there had to be some explanation. He went on
watching me as if I’d gone crazy as I wheeled and strode to
the doorway at the rear beside the jukebox. The rest rooms
were on either side of a short, dead-ended hall. They were
both empty and there was no way out back here.
The kitchen, then—I came out of the hall, half-running,
and then braked to a stop in front of the phone booth. It
should have occurred to me before I stepped inside, took
down the receiver and held it against my ear. Ollie wasn’t
lying; nobody had called from here. It had still been less
than a minute, and the handset was as cool as the airconditioned
room.
Then I was going crazy, because the little fan was making
exactly the noise I’d heard. And had heard the other time.
There was no doubt of it. I shook my head in bewilderment
and went over to the bar.
“I owe you an apology,” I said. I told him about it, without
mentioning what the woman had called for.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Then there’s another one.”
“Not in this town,” I said. “I checked every booth in it
except the phone company and stores. And it couldn’t have
been those because I heard a jukebox.”
“I don’t get it,” he said.
Talk of The Town— 64
I heard the front door of the lunch-room open, and the
sound of hard heels behind me. Ollie reached into the icebox,
uncapped a bottle of beer, and placed it on the bar to
the left of me. I turned. It was Pearl Talley. He was still
wearing the same flamboyant shirt, apparently with a few
added food stains. I noticed now he was larger than I’d
thought, probably close on two hundred pounds. He looked
soft.
“Howdy, men,” he said, and grinned at us with that odd
combination of blue-eyed innocence and sly humor, like
some precociously lewd but none too intelligent baby.
Ollie introduced us. He stuck out his hand. “Sure proud to
meet you,” he said. “Doggone if you ain’t a big one. Like to
see you and ol’ Calhoun mix it up.” He pronounced it Kayulhoon.
I shook hands with him, wishing the populace of this place
would stop trying to match me with Calhoun. He took off the
white hat, placed it on the bar beside him, and wiped the
perspiration from his brow with his left forefinger, using it
like a windshield swipe and giving it a little flip at the end
which snapped the moisture onto the floor. He looked older
with the hat off. The sandy hair was receding across the top
of his head, revealing a large area of scalp as glistening and
white as the inner membrane of a boiled egg.
“Doggone if she ain’t a real scorcher out there,” he said.
He had a backwoods Southern accent that might have
appeared overdone to the point of burlesque on a stage but
seemed perfectly natural in him. Any other time I might
have been intrigued with it, but now I paid little attention.
My thoughts were still chasing themselves around in a futile
and endless circle. I hadn’t imagined the sound of that fan;
I’d heard it. That was definite. And there wasn’t another
booth in town with a noisy fan. That was equally definite. So
where did it leave me?
“You know what them ol’ Coulter boys done to me last
night?” Pearl said to Ollie. “They like to lift off me
everything I had. With these here rascals—”
He removed two strange objects from the breast pocket of
his shirt and placed them on the bar. In spite of my
preoccupation, I leaned forward to look. They were small
sea-shells, spiraled and rather conical in shape.
Talk of The Town— 65
“What are they?” I asked.
Ollie grinned briefly. “Hermit crabs.”
“Oh,” I said. I remembered then. The hermit crab ate the
mollusk and made its home in the shell. Or found an empty
one and moved in.
“Well, sir,” Pearl went on with a sigh, “them ol’ boys found
these things down at the beach somewheres, so they come
by my place with ’em, and the first thing you know one of
’em says to me: Pearl, he says, why don’t we have a hermit
crab race? Like this, he says. You put ’em down real quiet,
like I’m doin’ now, and you wait, and you bet on which one is
goin’ to move first.”
He took a dollar from his pocket and placed it on the bar.
“Now you get out a dollar, and I’ll show you—”
“No, you don’t,” Ollie scoffed. “So one of ’em is dead, or
you shot it full of Novocain, or hypnotized it—”
“Why, shucks,” Pearl protested. “You know I wouldn’t do
nothin’ like that. And besides, you get your choice.”
“Look, you barefooted shyster,” Ollie said good-naturedly.
“I wouldn’t bet you even money the sun’d come up in the
morning.”
Pearl shrugged dolefully and dropped them back in his
pocket and winked at me. “Heck. Some days a man just
cain’t pick up a cryin’ dime.” He took a drink of beer and
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hey, Ollie,” he
went on with a jocose grin, “I ever tell you the one about the
ol’ country boy that takened up with this here snooty society
gal? Well, sir, it looked like he just wasn’t makin’ no time
with her at all, so he went to the drugstore and he says to
this feller behind the counter—”
I waited for the dreary punch line, and left. A battered
pick-up truck I assumed was Pearl’s was parked before the
place, its spattered sides attesting that chickens roosted on
it at home. Every town has its character, I thought; San
Francisco had had its share too. I dismissed him from my
mind and took up the rat-race again. Forget the fan for the
moment. She wanted to tell me something, for a price. She
was afraid to meet me. Something or somebody had
frightened her and she had to hang up. Maybe she would try
again.
Talk of The Town— 66
I stopped at the office. Josie said there had been no
further call. Back at the room I lit a cigarette and sat down
to wait, prodded savagely by frustration and a hundred
questions to which I had no answers and no way of gaining
access to any. It was an odd sensation, this being utterly
alone and without status: I’d always had the prestige and
facilities of a metropolitan police force going for me when I
wanted to know something, but here I was an outcast. I’d
been thrown out of the Sheriff’s office and was under
suspicion myself. Anything Langston’s insurance company
had turned up was closed to me. I couldn’t even talk to her;
she’d be asleep for hours yet.
I came full circle and was back to Strader again. At least
the course of action was clear there and I wanted to get
started. I checked the money situation. I still had eight
hundred in traveler’s checks, three hundred and seventysomething
in cash. The bank statement from San Francisco
showed a balance of two thousand, six hundred and thirty
dollars. I was all right for the moment. The other, the money
I had received from my grandfather, a little over twenty-one
thousand, was in Government bonds and gilt-edge stock,
untouched since they’d settled the estate six months ago.
Apparently she wasn’t going to call again. I waited
impatiently for another ten minutes and then drove into
town to the telephone office. It was on the street parallel
with Springer to the south. I asked for a Miami directory
and flipped through the yellow pages to detective agencies. I
had nothing to go on, so I chose one at random, a man listed
simply as Victor Lane, Investigations. I went into a booth
and put through the call, and was lucky enough to catch him
in.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Chatham?” he asked, when I’d
told him my name and where I was.
“I want all the information I can get on a man named
Strader, who was killed here in Galicia last November. He
was from Miami. I don’t have the first name, or address, but
you can pick up his trai—-”
“Hmmmmm. Wait a minute— In the newspaper files.
You’re mining old ground, Mr. Chatham. I remember
Strader now and he’s been sifted over pretty thoroughly.”
Talk of The Town— 67
“I know. But I don’t have access to any of it, even the
newspaper stories, and I haven’t got time to come down
there and dig it up myself. And there’s always the chance
they missed something. Here’s what I want you to do. Hit
the newspaper morgues, and any contacts you may have at
police headquarters; by five o’clock you should have a pretty
good package on him—at least all the stuff that came out
during the investigation. Call me here at the Magnolia
Lodge motel and give it to me and we’ll see if we can find
the angle we want to follow up. What are your rates?”
He told me. “Right,” I said. “I’ll mail you a check for a
hundred on account right now. That all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “See you at five.”
Outside again in the sun-blasted street, I looked at my
watch. It was a few minutes past one. I went around the
corner and found a drugstore about half-way up the block
towards Springer. It was an old place, one of the few
establishments in town not air-conditioned. Above the
screen door a ceiling fan like an airplane propeller seen in
slow motion was drowsily warning the flies to stay out but
not making an issue of it. There were some marble-topped
tables with iron legs and a marble soda fountain, and at the
rear another counter and an open doorway leading into the
prescription department. No one was in sight; it looked as if
everybody had gone up the street to see if there was any
more news of the Titanic and had forgotten to come back.
There was a telephone booth about half-way back on the
right. I stepped inside and called the motel. Josie said
nobody had tried to reach me. It was odd, I thought; she
wouldn’t have given up that easily with a hundred dollars at
stake. Somebody had really given her a scare. And what
about the fan I’d heard? I brushed it aside impatiently; there
was no point in even wondering about it.
When I stepped out of the booth, the proprietor emerged
from the prescription department and looked at me
inquiringly. He appeared to be in his sixties, a slight, frail
man in a white jacket, with neat gray hair parted precisely
in the center, rimless glasses, and serene gray eyes. He
found me a dusty packet of envelopes and dug a three-cent
stamp out of a drawer in the cash register. I sat down at the
fountain, wrote out Lane’s check, and addressed one of the
Talk of The Town— 68
envelopes. I ordered a coke. He stirred it and set it on the
counter.
“Have you been here a long time?” I asked.
He smiled gently. “I bought the place in ‘twenty-seven.”
“Well, tell me something. Why is there so much feeling
about that Langston thing? You people haven’t got the only
unsolved murder in the world.”
“There are a lot of reasons,” he said. “Langston was well
liked. It was brutal, cold-blooded murder, and one of them
got away with it. We’re a small town here and everything is
more personal; people are not just names in a headline. A lot
of people are distrustful and jealous of southern Florida
anyway, the big money and the flashy publicity and all that,
and the man was a no-good bum from Miami.”
“How long had Langston lived here?” I asked.
“He’d only been back about six months, but he was born
here.”
“I see. A home-town boy.”
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