October 21, 2010

Talk of The Town by Charles Williams(4)

He nodded. “That’s right. Maybe a kind of home-town
hero, in a way. A local boy that made good down there in
that big-wheeling-and-dealing crowd in south Florida, or at
least showed ‘em we could hold our own with ’em. We were
always a little proud of him. He played some mighty good
football at Georgia Tech. He was officer of a submarine that
sank I don’t remember how many thousand tons of Japanese
shipping in World War Two. After the war he went into the
construction business in Miami—low-cost housing. Made a
lot of money. They say he was worth pretty close to a million
at one time. But the thing was he never seemed to lose
touch like so many kids do when they go away and get
successful. Even after his daddy died—he used to be
principal of the high school—after he died and there weren’t
any Langstons left around here at all, he used to come back
and go duck-hunting and fishing and visit with people.”
“But what happened?” I asked. “Why did he retire and buy
a motel? He was only forty-seven, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right. He got hit by several things all at once.
There was a bad divorce, with a big property settlement—”
“Oh,” I said. “Then how long had he and the second Mrs.
Langston been married when he was killed?”
Talk of The Town— 69
“A little less than a year, I guess. Four or five months
before they came up here and bought the motel.”
“What were the other things?” I asked.

“Health,” he replied. “And a business deal that went sour
on him. He started a big tract development and then ran
into a court wrangle over the title to part of the property. He
lost it, and on top of the split-up of community property in
the divorce thing it just about wiped him out. But mainly it
was his health. He had a mild heart attack somewhere back
in ‘fifty-four or -five, and then a pretty serious one, and the
doctors told him he had to slow down or he’d be dead before
he was fifty. So he came up here and bought the motel with
what he had left. It would make him a living, and he could
do the things he liked to do—hunt quail and fish for bass and
root for the high-school football team in the fall. Then six
months later he was butchered in cold blood, like
slaughtering a pig. Sure there’s bitter feeling; why shouldn’t
there be? Just knock his head in and take him down there to
the river bottom and leave him so it’d look like an accident.
It’d give you the horrors if you kept thinking about it. What
kind of woman could that be, for the love of heaven?”
“Not what kind of woman,” I said. “What woman would be
a little more to the point.”
The fragile and essentially gentle face went blank, as if
he’d drawn a curtain behind it. I was used to it now. “Maybe
they’ll never know,” he said, speaking to me from a great
distance.
“What about insurance?” I asked. She said she didn’t have
any money. “Who was the beneficiary? And was it ever
paid?”
He nodded. “Fifty thousand, or something like that. To his
daughter. It was paid, or is being paid, rather, into a trust
fund. She’s only thirteen.”
“No other policies?”
“No. He couldn’t take out any more when he remarried.
He was too poor a risk, with a history of two heart attacks.”
Then, where was the woman’s motive?” I asked. “It wasn’t
money.”
“They don’t know who the woman was.” he explained
carefully and precisely from behind the drawn blinds. “So
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naturally they don’t know what her motive was. They don’t
know anything about her at all, except that she was with
Strader.”
Which answered everything very neatly, I thought. It was
a closed circuit, like two snakes swallowing each other: she
was a tramp because she was with Strader, and she was
with Strader because she was a tramp. How could you argue
with that? I went out and dropped the envelope in a postbox
and drove back to the motel. When I walked into the office
Josie came out of the curtained doorway and said there had
been a call for me some ten minutes ago.
“A woman?” I asked.
“Yes, suh. She say she would try again.”
“Thanks,” I said. “How is Mrs. Langston?”
“She’s still sleepin’ quiet.”
“Good,” I said. “You stay right here with her.”
I went across to the room and sat looking at the telephone,
trying to make it ring. It was some twenty minutes before it
did. When I picked it up, u feminine voice asked softly, “Mr.
Chatham?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Are you still interested in that deal?”
“Yes,” I said. “What happened before?” I listened intently,
but there was no trace of the noisy fan in the background
now.
“I almost got caught and had to hang up. I’m calling from
a different place. Look—it’s going to cost you more. Three
hundred; take it or leave it.”
“So the other call was a build-up? Don’t try to con me.”
“I’m not,” she replied. “I just told you you could take it or
leave it. But if I spill anything I’m going to have to get out of
here for good, and I’ll need it. They’ll guess who it was and I
don’t want any of that acid in my face.”
“What do I get for three hundred?”
”Names. The man that did the job and the one who hired
him.”
“Names are no good. I need proof.”
Talk of The Town— 71
“You’ll get it. Listen—they’re going to do it again. It’ll be a
different man, of course, but I’ll give you a description of
him and tell you what night. What else could you need?”
I thought about it. “Sure, I could catch that one. But he
might not talk, and I want the guy behind him.”
“Use your head,” she said impatiently. “You’ll have his
name. If the police pick him up at the same time and tell him
his boy talked, how’s he gonna to know the difference? He’ll
crack.”
“He might,” I agreed. It was an old trick, but it still
worked.
“Then it’s a deal?”
“Okay,” I said. “Where and how do I meet you?”
“You don’t. I told you that before. I’m just as close to you
right now as I want to be.”
“Then how do I get the money to you?”
“In cash. Put it in a plain Manila envelope and mail it to
Gertrude Haines, care of General Delivery, Tampa.”
“H-a-i-n-e-s or H-a-y-n-e-s?”
“What difference could it possibly make?” she asked
boredly. “Send it in twenties.”
“How do I know you’ll call after you get there and pick it
up?”
“You don’t. But if you’ve had a better offer, grab it.”
“I know a little about con games myself,” I said. “And
before I fork over that kind of money I want something more
specific than cheap wisecracks.”
“Well, I don’t know how to help you there. You either trust
me or I trust you. And I don’t trust anybody. So where are
we?”
“Try selling it to the police. Maybe they’ll make you an
offer.”
“Wise guy. Well, I just thought you might be interested—”
“I am,” I said. “And I’m not being unreasonable. If I’m
willing to send you three hundred dollars, blind, I’m entitled
to some assurance you know what you’re talking about.”
Talk of The Town— 72
”We-ell,” she said slowly. “The acid was the kind they use
in car batteries. And it came off a hijacked truck. How about
that?”
“Sounds fine,” I said. “Except I still wouldn’t know
whether it’s the truth or not. About the truck, I mean.”
She sighed with exasperation. “God, you’re a hard man to
do business with.” She paused, and then went on, “Well,
look—I could tell you where the rest of the acid is—”
“That’s better.”
“But it won’t do you a bit of good by itself, because there’s
no connection where it is and who put it there, if you get
me. It’s on an old abandoned farm, and the man the farm
belongs to doesn’t even live here any more.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Just tell me how to get there.”
“Not so fast. You get this straight. If it looks like
somebody’s following you, don’t go out there. They don’t
think I know where that stuff is, but it could still get plenty
rough when they started trying to find out who tipped you. I
don’t care what happens to you, but I bruise like a peach.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll watch it. Go on.”
“All right. From the motel go on out east till you pass a
concrete bridge over a creek. It’s about four miles. Just
beyond it, maybe half a mile, there’s a dirt road going off to
the left through the trees, and a couple of mailboxes. One of
the mailboxes says J. Pryor, I think. Follow that road. You’ll
pass two farmhouses, and then you go over a cattle-guard
and past a corral and a chute for loading cows into trucks,
and then there’s not anything for about three miles except
pine trees and palmettos. The farm is on the right. The
farmhouse burned down a long time ago and just the
chimney is standing, and in back of it is an old barn. The
acid is up in the loft, eight glass jugs of it buried under some
moldy hay. You won’t have any trouble finding it, because
there’s also a few five-gallon cans of paint hidden with it.”
“Right,” I said.
“When you get back, mail the money. I’ll call you within a
week, as soon as I know for sure who it’s going to be.”
“That long?”
”They’ve got to wait at least till you reopen the place,
haven’t they?”
Talk of The Town— 73
They apparently watched every move I made. I felt like a
man trying to set up housekeeping in a lighted display
window. “All right,” I said. “Incidentally, where are you
calling from now?”
“You’re cute.”
“Where did you call from before?”
“Why, I thought I told you. From somewhere else.” She
hung up.
* * *
Traffic was only moderate on the highway. I could see five
cars strung out at varying distances behind me as I settled
down to about forty-five and started checking them in the
mirror. About half a mile ahead, on the right, was the El
Rancho motel. I glanced at it as I went past. It was in the
same class as the Spanish Main, only perhaps somewhat
larger. It looked as if there were twenty-five or thirty units
spaced around the semicircular drive, with a pool and a lot
of colored umbrellas and lawn furniture out in front. Apart
from all the rest of it, she was bucking rough competition in
the motel business.
Three of the cars passed me and went on out of sight at
about sixty or sixty-five. Another joined the two still behind
me, coming up from far back. It passed the three of us and
disappeared. Neither of the other two made any move; fortyfive
appeared to suit them perfectly. When I came to the
concrete bridge we were still strung out in the same order. I
saw the mailboxes, marked the location of the dirt road, and
began easing in the throttle until I hit sixty. They dropped
back, and in a few minutes were out of sight. About ten
miles ahead I spotted a road leading off to the right.
Wheeling into it, I parked just around the first bend and
walked back to where I could watch the highway. In two or
three minutes they went past, still traveling at the same
moderate rate of speed. I was in the clear. I turned and went
back. When I came to the mailboxes and swung off into the
dirt road there was no one behind me and nothing coming
from the opposite direction except a big tandem rig.
I passed the two farmhouses in the first mile. Beyond the
cattle-guard, the road deteriorated into an unfenced and
poorly graded affair running through scrubby pine and
Talk of The Town— 74
palmetto. Dust boiled up to hang in the still hot air behind
me. The road tilted up a slight rise after another ten minutes
and the cleared fields appeared, sloping away to the right.
They were abandoned, grown up with weeds and dead,
brown grass. A pair of ruts turned off the road into the old
farmyard at the top of the slight grade. I swung into them
and stopped the station wagon in the shade of a lone tree
growing in front of the foundation blocks and the fireblackened
monolith of the chimney where the house had
been.
When I cut the ignition and got out, the drowsy stillness of
summer afternoon closed in around me. There was
something peaceful and timeless and utterly isolated about
the place that made it almost attractive. A painter would
love it, I thought. Heat waves shimmered above the brown
and empty expanse of the fields stretching away towards the
timber beyond. The old barn, gray and weather-beaten and
its roof full of holes, leaned in an attitude of precariously
arrested collapse some eighty or a hundred yards away. I
crushed out my cigarette and walked down to it through the
brittle weeds. Some kind of burrs stuck to the legs of my
trousers and shoe-laces. The door was at this end. It was
closed, but I could see no padlock on it. Above it was a small
square opening through which I could see the edge of the
pile of hay in the loft.
The door was secured with only a doubled strand of baling
wire pulled through two holes and twisted together on the
outside, but when I had unfastened it I had trouble forcing it
open far enough to squeeze inside because of the sand that
had washed down the slope against the bottom of it in past
rains. The interior was gloomy and smelled of old dust and
dried manure and straw. Narrow shafts of sunlight slanted
in through cracks in the wall, illuminating the dust motes
hanging suspended in the lifeless air. My shoes made no
sound on the springy footing. There were some empty stalls
on the right, and about half-way back, against the left wall,
was the ladder going up into the hayloft. There was an
opening about three feet square above it, the top rung of the
ladder gilded by a shaft of sunlight coming in through one of
the holes in the roof. I stepped over in the dead silence and
mounted it.
Talk of The Town— 75
My head was just coming up into the opening, my eyes
level with the last rung of the ladder, when my breath
sucked inwards and the skin tightened up, cold and hard,
between my shoulderblades. In the thick coating of dust
there, where the puddle of sunlight was striking the top of
the two-by-four, were the fresh imprints of four fingers and
part of the palm of a hand. I threw my feet out into space,
pushing against the rung above as if I were trying to shove
myself downwards through clinging mud or tar, and for one
awful fraction of a second I seemed to be hanging
suspended in the air, unable to fall, like a balloon half filled
with helium, and then the gun crashed behind me,
paralyzing my eardrums. Pain like a hot icepick sliced across
the top of my head and the air was filled with dust and flying
splinters, and then I was falling at last, turning a little and
trying to swim downwards into the gloom below me and
away from that deadly shaft of sunlight. I landed on my feet,
but off-balance, and fell backwards and rolled, all in one
continuing motion, and as my feet went up and over and I
was staring in horror at the opening above me, I saw the
bent, denim-clad leg and the knee in the shaft of yellow
light, and the beefy hand, and the searching twin barrels of
the gun, still swinging.
I was over and down, then, with my knees under me,
pushing up, and turning, and the gun crashed again. I felt
the knife edge of pain once more, this time along my left
arm from shoulder to elbow, as the shot string raked the
powdery manure and dust and exploded it into the air about
my head and into my eyes. I was blinded. I came on erect
and crashed into the wall, and fell again. I pushed up, and
staggered, tearing at my face with one hand to get my eyes
clear, and felt the stickiness of blood mixed with the dust,
but I could see a little, enough to make out the narrow
oblong of light that marked the door. But even as I whirled
and plunged towards it I heard the sharp metallic click of
ejectors above me and then the thump as he closed the
breech of the reloaded gun, and at the same time the swift
and deadly rustling of dry hay as he ran towards the front of
the loft. I was trapped.
While I was squeezing myself through the half-blocked
door he would be right above me, leaning out of that
opening with the shotgun barrels less than six feet above my
Talk of The Town— 76
head. He’d cut me in two, like cheese under an axe blade. I
veered and slammed against the wall with a hand to stop
myself from going on into the opening and being blown to
pieces. I whirled. There was no other way out, and all he had
to do was jump to the ground and come in after me.
Then my mind began functioning a little better, and I
realized there had to be another way out somewhere
because he hadn’t come in at the front. I was running even
as I heard the heavy thud of his feet against the ground
outside the door, and was already three-quarters of the way
to the rear wall when the light cut off behind me and I knew
he had made it and was squeezing through the doorway with
his gun. But there was no sign of a door or opening of any
kind ahead of me. And I was already past the ladder. Before
I could turn and make it up into the loft to try to get out the
front that way, he would blow my legs from under me and
kill me at his leisure. There was nothing to do but keep
going. I could hear him struggling with the door. I swept my
eyes frantically across the cracks of light ahead of me, and
then I saw it, one that was a little wider at the bottom than
at the top. It had to be the plank he had pried loose to get
in. I hit it head on, without slackening speed at all. It gave
and my right shoulder tore loose the one next to it, and then
I was out into blinding sunlight, fighting to keep my balance
because if I fell now I was dead. I stayed on my feet
somehow, and when I was running under control again I
leaned and cut sharply to the left, like a half-back turning
the corner, to get out of line with the opening behind me.
All the muscles in my back were drawn up into icy knots
as I pounded across the open ground expecting at any
second to feel the shot charge come slamming into it, but
there was only silence behind me. I turned on one more
burst of speed and then risked a glance over my shoulder.
There was no sign of him, and I was nearly a hundred yards
from the corner of the barn, well beyond the dangerous
range of a shotgun. I cut left again and began running
towards the car before he could head me off. I made it and
looked back, sobbing for breath as I fumbled in my pocket
for the keys. He was nowhere in sight. He hadn’t even come
out. His gun was useless at this distance and he was
standing quietly inside somewhere, just waiting for me to go
away. As long as I didn’t know who he was, he could always
Talk of The Town— 77
try again. I shuddered. He was in no danger of my coming
back to get a look at him; a shotgun at point-blank range is
one of the deadliest and messiest weapons in the world.
I scrambled into the car and whirled it out onto the road,
conscious that I was dripping blood all over the seat. I had
to keep wiping my eyes free to drive. When I had put a mile
behind me I slid to a stop and got out to see if I could find
out how bad they were; I had an idea they were isolated
pellets from a blown pattern, but they hurt excruciatingly
and were making a mess of the car whether the loss of blood
was serious or not. I felt the top of my head. The scalp was
split for some three inches where a shot pellet had raked
across it, but the pellet itself was gone. I ripped off my shirt,
spraying buttons into the road, wiped the blood and dust
from my face with it, and looked at my arm. A single pellet
had grazed it in a long and deepening gash downwards from
the shoulder before it penetrated. I could feel it just under
the surface in some muscle near my elbow. It felt large. A
No. 2, at least, and possibly even one of the smaller sizes of
buckshot.
I thought about the first shot. He couldn’t have been over
six feet behind me, and at that distance, with even a badly
blown pattern, the stray pellet wouldn’t have scattered more
than a fraction of an inch from the rest of the shot column.
Another fraction of a second in getting my head down out of
that opening and it would have exploded like a dropped
water-melon. The reaction hit me. I was weak and shaky and
had to sit down.
I slumped back against the end of the seat and fumbled
with a cigarette, but it was a mess before I could even get it
into my mouth. I let it fall into the dust of the road beside
the little tapping drops of red, and listened to the peaceful
droning of an insect of some kind out in the timber. There
was something chilling about the way they had
outmaneuvered me. They had used the oldest con game
formula in the world, and made me go for it like a
greenhorn.
They were good; they were so good they scared me. An
anonymous tip that I could find the acid if I’d go out to that
isolated place would have put me instantly on guard. I would
have been suspicious, at least, and careful. But she hadn’t
done it that way at all. The tip was something else, and I had
Talk of The Town— 78
demanded this part of it. I’d talked her into it against her
will. And then she’d warned me about being followed. While
he was already waiting for me there in that loft with his
shotgun.
These people were yokels?
Talk of The Town— 79
7
Dr. Morley dropped the shot pellet onto the white enamel
surface of the table, and grunted. “Humph. Goose load.” He
was a large, florid man with either a naturally bluff and
hearty attitude or a chameleon-like adaptability in suiting
the bedside manner to the patient. I was big, healthy, and
relatively unhurt, so I was getting the he-man-to-he-man
treatment, with overtones of gallows humor. “Sure wasn’t a
quail hunter, was he?”
“No,” I said. Maybe I would think of some funny stuff
myself later on, when I quit hearing that gun go off just back
of my head. “It was a double barrel,” I added, and winced a
little as he swabbed the incision and started putting a
dressing on it.
“Oh.” He grinned. “Not much he can do with it, then.”
Except make sure next time, I thought. I didn’t have any
idea who he was or what he looked like. He could get behind
me any time. The only thing I knew for certain was that I
was no longer merely looking for an acid-throwing hoodlum
who faced a few months in the County jail if he were caught.
You didn’t treat a minor headache with brain surgery.
“Better give me a tetanus booster,” I said. “I can’t
remember when I had the last one, and that place was paved
with manure.”
“Oh, you’ve got to have a tetanus shot, all right,” he
agreed with vast humor. “But first I want to do a little hem-
Talk of The Town— 80
stitching on that head. You’re not fussy about your hair-do, I
hope?”
“No,” I said. “Just so it’s still up there and not sprayed
across the side of some dirty barn.”
“Now you’re feeling better. I knew you would. You have
any idea who he was or why he was after you?”
“No,” I said.
“I have to report it to the police, you know. Gunshot
wound.”
“Sure.” And while we were at it we could report it to the
Garden Club and the nearest chapter of the Literary Society.
We needed all the help we could get.
I’d managed to get the bleeding pretty well stopped at the
motel, and changed clothes before coming on into town in a
cab. The receptionist in Dr. Graham’s office had said he was
out on an emergency call, and recommended Morley, who
was just down the hall. Their offices were in a sort of
medical-dental warren occupying the second and third floors
above a beauty shop and pharmacy near the east end of
Springer. I looked at my watch and wished he’d hurry. It
was almost four and I had to be back there to take Lane’s
call at five. The local he’d shot into my scalp had taken
effect now, and he started putting in stitches after shaving
off part of my hair. He gave me a tetanus shot.
“You’re as good as new,” he said, and reached for his
phone. “Wasn’t inside the city, was it?”
“No,” I said. “Sheriff’s jurisdiction.”
“Hmmm. Let’s see. Name . . . local address. Anything else
I should tell them?”
“No,” I said. “Except you ought to make sure they’re not
there alone before you tell them I’ve been shot.” I started
out.
“You’ll be around, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going over there now.”
I paid his receptionist, stopped in a store to buy a cheap
straw hat to protect my head from the sun and from popeyed
stares, and walked over to the courthouse. They were
waiting for me, Magruder and the big red-haired Deputy
whose name I didn’t quite catch because nobody ever
Talk of The Town— 81
bothered to tell me what it was. He had very pale gray eyes,
a basaltic outcropping of jaw, and hairy red hands that had
too many sunken and offset knuckles to be very reassuring.
They took me into one of the back rooms, fanned me
individually and then jointly, and shoved me into a chair
while they stood over me barking questions. Apparently,
being shot at was a felony. In spite of all the adroit
interrogation I finally managed to tell them what happened.
“Where’s your gun?” Magruder snapped.
“I haven’t got one,” I said. “Nor a permit.”
“You got in a gunfight without a gun?”
“I wasn’t in a fight. I was shot at twice and I ran. Not that
I’m really stupid enough to need two to start me, but I was
flat on my back.”
“Who was this man?”
“I told you. I never did see anything of him except one leg
and a hand. I think he was wearing overalls, faded ones. And
it was a pretty big hand. The shotgun was a double barrel,
and it was probably an expensive one. Doubles with the type
of ejectors I heard don’t come in cereal boxes.”
“Did you kill him? Where’s the body?”
“No, I didn’t kill him. I would have tried, if I’d had a gun.”
“Describe this place again.” I described it again.
They looked at each other and nodded. “The old Will
Noble place,” Magruder said. “There’s a hundred spare
miles out there you could hide a body in.”
“I think that had occurred to him,” I said. I lit a cigarette.
The big redhead leaned down casually and slapped it out of
my mouth.
“Step on it,” he said.
I stepped on it. I wondered where Redfield was. Not that
he would be in any sweeter frame of mind than they were,
but if you had to sit there endlessly answering questions
while your head hurt and the man who’d tried to murder you
went home and went to bed, at least it helped if they were
intelligent questions.
”Where’s the car?” Magruder demanded.
“Out at the motel,” I said.
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Magruder nodded to the redhead. “Take a run out there
and shake it down. Gun, bloodstains—”
“If you’ll look carefully you may find a bloodstain in the
front seat,” I said. “I drove it nine miles with my scalp and
one arm sliced open.”
“You haven’t got any on your clothes.”
“I changed them. You’ll find the others in the bathtub. Or
would, except that of course you wouldn’t dream of
searching a room without a warrant. They’re bloody for the
same reason.”
“So you say.”
“There’s enough of it to type. Or would that be the easy
way?”
“I could get enough of this guy,” the redhead said.
“Where have you been?” Magruder asked him.
I was feeling worse all the time, and didn’t much care
what they did. “What’s the penalty in this state,” I asked,
“for being shot at with a rifle? I might change my plea.”
They ignored me. “While you’re out there,” Magruder said
to the other one, “run on out to that old barn and look it
over.”
The redhead left. I forgot the house rides and stuck
another cigarette in my mouth and lit it. Magruder slapped
it out. It was a change, anyway. He stepped on it.
“Thanks,” I said.
He sat down at the desk and stared coldly at me. I stared
longingly at the cigarette. “Am I under arrest?” I asked.
“And if so, what’s the charge? Target illegally in motion?”
“Let’s just say you’re being held for questioning till he
gets back.”
“About how long do you think it’ll take him to search that
hundred square miles? Half an hour, maybe? I’ve got a date
at five.”
“With your lady friend? I thought she was crapped out
with the jim-jams.”
“She’s in bed from complete nervous and physical
collapse,” I said politely. “That might be what you meant.” It
didn’t dent him, but it was probably just as well. I was in a
Talk of The Town— 83
very poor position to be trying to provoke him. I’d just get
my ears tenderized with a gun barrel, and thirty days in jail.
I heard footsteps as someone came down the hall. It was
Redfield. He had his hat on and had apparently just come in.
He looked hot and bad-tempered. Leaning in the doorway,
he stared bleakly at me for nearly thirty seconds before he
said anything at all.
“All right. Who did you kill?”
“Nobody,” I said. “I haven’t been in a gunfight, and I don’t
—”
“Shut up,” he said tonelessly. “We’ll get to that in a
minute. I thought you might be interested to know,
Chatham, that I just got an answer from San Francisco.”
“Yes?” I replied.
“Unofficer like conduct. Has a nice sound, doesn’t it?”
Magruder perked up his ears, and I realized it was news to
him that Redfield had even sent a wire. “What’s that?” he
asked quickly. “Was this monkey kicked off the force back
there?”
Redfield nodded. “He’s a real bully boy; he beats ’em up.
Probably gets his kicks that way. So when San Francisco
can’t hold him any more, he comes over here to give us the
benefit of his talents.”
“Well, what do you know?” Magruder asked, his eyes
bright. “You suppose he can catch, as well as pitch?”
Redfield ignored him. “Well, Chatham, you have anything
to say?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, come now,” he said. He was smiling faintly, but his
eyes were bitter.
“If they sent you a telegram,” I said, “they told you the
whole thing, not half of it. So if you want to ignore the rest
of it when they tell you, why should I bother?”
“Oh, sure,” he said contemptuously, “they said you
resigned. Don’t they always?”
“I did,” I said. “And voluntarily. I drew a thirty-day
suspension, but before it was up I decided to get out
altogether.” Then I wondered why I bothered to explain; I
Talk of The Town— 84
seldom did to anybody. It was odd, but in spite of everything
he was the kind of cop you instinctively liked and respected.
”Of course. And you weren’t guilty of the charge, anyway.”
“Yes,” I said. “I was guilty.”
He looked at me strangely, but remained silent for a
moment. Then he went on, hard-faced, “So now you’re a
free-lance muscle boy. A professional trouble-maker. What’s
your connection with Mrs. Langston?”
“There is none. Except that I like her. And I’m beginning
to have a great deal of admiration for her. I like people with
her kind of poise under pressure.”
“Crap. What’s she paying you for?”
“I told you, Redfield, she’s not paying me for anything.”
“Then why are you still hanging around?”
“I could tell you it’s simply because my car's not ready yet.
You can check that with the garage.”
“But that’s not it.”
“That’s right. It’s not. I could give you several reasons.
One is that I don’t like being pushed. Another is that the
motel itself interests me, but that’s business, and none of
yours. But the principal one is that that acid job there was
partly my fault. I started sticking my nose into something
that didn’t concern me—as you told me yourself— and it was
a little hint that I was just going to do her more harm than
good by meddling. So now, after buying it for her, am I
supposed to go off and leave her to enjoy it all by herself?”
“You got a license in this state to operate as a private
detective?”
“No.”
“All right. Just stick your nose in one more thing around
here and I’m going to shove it in your ear and pull it out the
other side.”
“You’d better start checking things with your District
Attorney, Redfield. As long as she’s not paying me, I’m not
acting as a private detective. I’m a private citizen and that’s
something else entirely.”
His face was bleak. “There are ways, Chatham. You ought
to know.”
“I do. I’ve seen some of them used.”
Talk of The Town— 85
“And you just keep going and you’ll see some of them used
again. Now what’s this crap somebody took a shot at you,
this note from Dr. Morley?”
I told him the whole thing, from the woman’s first call. It
was easy and took only a few minutes with nobody barking
irrelevant questions and leaning on the back of my neck. He
sat on the edge of the desk, smoking a cigarette and
listening with no expression at all. When I had finished, he
glanced around at Magruder. “Any of this been checked
yet?”
Magruder nodded. “Mitch is out there now.”
“Right.” He swung back to me, and snapped, “Let me see
if I’ve got this fairy tale straight. The woman, whoever she
was, set you up out there so the man in the loft, whoever he
was, could kill you.”
“Yes.”
“That makes it premeditated, of course, so it would be
first-degree murder. You’re still with me?”
“Sure.”
He leaned forward a little, jabbing a forefinger at me. “So,
look—am I supposed to believe that this stupid pipe dream
makes sense, even to you? Two people are so worried about
you they’re going to kill you, commit first-degree murder
with a chance of winding up in the death house, and for
what? Simply because they’re afraid you’re going to find out
they were the ones who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s
chowder.” He sighed and shook his head. “Chatham, do you
have any idea what they’d probably get for that acid job? If
they were ever convicted?”
“A year. Six months. Maybe less.”
“But still I’m supposed to believe—”
“Cut it out. You know the answer as well as I do.”
“Do I?”
“They’re jumpy as hell about something, but it’s not I
some two-bit rap for vandalism or malicious mischief.”
“Well, don’t keep us all a-twitter. Tell us what it is.”
“Try murder,” I said. “What would they have to lose after
the first one?”
Talk of The Town— 86
He went on watching me, his face very still now. “Has
somebody been murdered?”
“Langston,” I said.
“I thought so. But isn’t there a hole in your argument
somewhere? We’ve been investigating it for seven months
and nobody’s tried to kill us.”
I didn’t like the way it was going, but there wasn’t much I
could do about it. He was backing me right into the corner
while I watched him do it.
“Well?” he prodded. “Or, wait; maybe I see what you
mean. They’re not worried about us, because we’re so stupid
we’d never stumble onto ’em anyway.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And of course, there’s always the other possibility,” he
went on. The tone was conversational, but I was tuned in on
the savagery—still under control—that was behind it. I
hoped it stayed under control. Magruder looked at him
inquiringly. He didn’t even know what was going on. “I
mean, from your point of view, we could have been bought
off. All we’d need is a patsy like Mrs. Langston, and even if
we couldn’t frame up enough evidence to convict her she’d
take the heat off the others. Everything’s rosy, nobody’s
hurt, and you don’t have to pay taxes on it. It makes perfect
sense when you look at it that way. Doesn’t it? . . . Well,
come on; speak up. Say something, you goon son of a bitch
—”
He slid off the desk, caught the front of my shirt, and
hauled. I had to come with it or have it torn off me. He
slapped me backhanded across the mouth, and I felt the lip
split against a tooth. He swung again, his face pale with
suddenly uncontrollable rage and his eyes tormented and
crazy-looking as if he were in pain. I jerked back, stumbled
over the chair, and fell. I slid back and got up warily,
expecting to have my head torn off, but he turned away
abruptly, grinding a hand across his face.
He took two deep breaths, and you could see the battle
going on inside him. “Get out of here,” he said raggedly,
“before I use a gun barrel on you.”
“Wait a minute, Kelly,” Magruder protested. “We can’t let
him go till we hear from Mitch—”
Talk of The Town— 87
Redfield turned savagely and cut him off. “We know where
to find him if we want him! Get the son of a bitch out of
here!”
Magruder looked at me. “You heard the man.”
“Yes,” I said. I picked my hat up from the floor and dabbed
a handkerchief at the blood in the corner of my mouth. “I
heard him.” I went out and walked over to Springer to find a
cab, not even particularly angry at him. Or not nearly as
angry as I knew he was at himself. He was too good a pro to
give way to rage that way, with so little provocation.
Somewhere inside Redfield a bunch of mice were eating the
insulation off his nerves. But what mice? And where had
they come from?
Well, when it came to being jumpy, he had company—
plenty of it. If there was ever a place that was wired, this
was it. It’d be a poor location, I thought, for the type of
practical joker who liked to slip up behind people and say
“Boo!” He wouldn’t last till the coffee break.
It was ten minutes to five when I paid off the cab in front
of the office. One of the Sheriff’s cars was parked in the area
and the door of my room was standing open. I walked over
and looked in. The big redheaded Deputy was pawing
through one of the chest drawers. He looked up at me
without interest, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his
mouth, and pushed the drawer shut.
“Looks like you just haven’t got a gun,” he said.
“Where’s your warrant?” I asked.
“I forgot to pick it up. Want me to go back for it and
search you again?”
“No,” I said.
“I’d be glad to,” he said helpfully. “No trouble at all.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to monopolize you.”
“You got a great sense of humor,” he said. He looked
around for the ashtray, saw it was on the table between the
beds, and shrugged. He ground out the cigarette on the
glass top of the chest. “Yes, sir, a great sense of humor.”
“How did you get in?” I asked.
“Maid. I told her you wouldn’t mind a bit. Hell, I told her,
a man with a sense of humor like that?”
Talk of The Town— 88
I said nothing. He gave the room another indifferent
glance and came out past me. “I guess you’re doing right,
friend. You’re from out of town, and that seems to be all it
takes.”
I turned and looked at him with my hands shoved in my
pockets. He waited a minute, hoping I’d be stupid enough to
swing at him, and then stepped off onto the gravel. “Well,
give her back the key, huh? Tell her I said you didn’t mind a
bit.” He climbed into the cruiser and drove off.
I stepped inside and closed the door, took a deep breath,
and lit a cigarette. In a minute or two I simmered down. I
went into the bathroom and washed my face with cold
water. The bloody clothes were still lying in the tub. Nothing
was badly torn up in the room; he’d merely been killing time
hoping I’d get back before he left. I finished the cigarette
and felt all right again when I went over to the office. I put
the key on the desk. Josie heard me and came out, grinning.
“Miss Georgia’s awake.”
“Good,” I said. “How is she?”
“Jest fine. You know what was the first thing she asked
for?”
“A three-pound T-bone?”
“No, suh. A comb and a lipstick.”
Well, I thought, a psychiatrist would probably score it the
same way. “That’s great. Will you ask her if I can come in?”
“Yes, sir. She’s been asking where you was.”
She went in back, and came out almost immediately and
nodded. I went through. I still had the hat on and wondered
if I could get by without removing it. Probably, I thought,
remembering the slob way I’d acted when she came over to
the room. She no doubt assumed I slept in it and ate with my
feet. When I stepped into the bedroom, however, she solved
the problem for me. She was propped up on two pillows with
a filmy blue wrap about her shoulders, still too pale perhaps,
but damned attractive, and smiling. She held out her hand.
Well, I’d been answering questions all day.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said warmly. “I was afraid
you’d gone on without even saying good-bye or giving me a
chance to thank you.”
Talk of The Town— 89
She was the only one in town, I thought, who didn’t know
by now that I was her lover, bodyguard, partner, hired goon,
sweetheart, private detective, and the father of her three
Mongol children. She’d been asleep.
“Josie kept saying that you were still around, that you’d
just gone to town—Oh, good heavens, what happened to
you?” She broke off, staring at the strips of bandage and
tape and the haircut.
“Just a little accident,” I said, glad the other was covered
by my shirt sleeve. “Couple of stitches, that’s all. But never
mind me. How do you feel? You look wonderful.”
“How did it happen?” she asked firmly.
Maybe a few details would do it. “Your coloring’s a lot
better and there’s more light and animation in the eyes—”
“My coat’s shinier too,” she said. “That’s always a good
sign.” She pointed to the armchair beside the bed. “Drop the
red herring, and sit down, Mr. Chatham. I want to know if
you’ve been hurt and why—”
I remembered what the doctor had said about rest and no
more emotional upheavals. Except for luck and a good
constitution, she could be lying there now picking at the
coverlet or staring blankly at the wall. No shotguns.
“Clumsiness,” I said. “And not having a flashlight. I got an
anonymous tip that acid was part of the cargo of a hijacked
truck and that the rest of it was hidden in an old barn out in
the country. I went out there, and while I was poking around
in the loft I raked my head on a nail. The acid wasn’t there,
either, though I think it might have been at one time.”
She appeared to believe me. “I’m sorry,” she said simply.
“It’s my fault.”
“Not at all,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’m partly to
blame for their wrecking that room.”
“How could you think a thing like that?”
I told her. “I think he caught onto what I was doing when I
was checking those telephone booths. It’s the same man.
And probably the same one who sent those two kids out here
last night trying to get you in trouble with the police. When I
helped you get rid of them, he decided I was meddling too
much. The acid was just a hint that I was going to do you
Talk of The Town— 90
more harm than good by hanging around. I don’t know what
his object is, but let’s find out.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Yesterday you wanted to hire me as a private detective to
look into it. You still can’t, because I have no license to do
that kind of work; the minute the Sheriff’s office could prove
you were paying me I’d be in jail. But there’s nothing on the
statute books that says I can’t take over the direction of this
motel simply because you’re a friend of mine and because
I’m interested in buying a part of it—both of which are true
—”
“You’re going a little too fast for me,” she said.
“We’ll go into the business angle later. Obviously you
don’t have to sell me a part interest in it unless you want to,
but as of the moment that’s what the status is. We’re
considering it. When they call you, tell them that. As a
matter of fact, I’ve already taken over the operation of it,
and to some extent, the operation of you. I’ve closed the
motel because there’s no way in God’s world you can stop
them from coming back and doing it to another room as long
as you’re open to the public and obviously can’t search your
guests’ luggage for acid. And I’ve accepted the
responsibility for seeing that the doctor's instructions were
carried out, and those instructions were that you were to
stay in bed and rest, with this whole thing off your back,
until he said you could get out—”

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn