Studying him now at close range, I decided he’d probably
also fooled about as many people who had thought he was
stupid as had thought he was fat. He was a hick, a townclown,
if you weren’t careful where you looked. He wore a
farmer’s straw hat, suede shoes, and the pair of wide braces
holding up the khaki trousers could have been props in a
vaudeville skit. The eyes under the shaggy brows, however,
were a piercing and frosty blue.
We sat down. He leaned back in the leather chair with his
beer. “So you came back to look for him?” he asked “I heard
him make the crack.”
I got out a cigarette and fumbled with the lighter. “He
wasn’t the one I was looking for,” I replied. “But while we’re
on the subject, I saw you give the two of ‘em the roust. How
come?
“Why not?” he asked. “That’s what they pay me for.”
Talk of The Town— 153
“But you think she’s guilty yourself.”
“If I do, I keep my mouth shut. And women don’t get
jockeyed around on the streets of this town while I’m
patrolling it.”
“They could use you in the Sheriff’s office,” I said.
“They’ve got a good man in the Sheriff’s office,” he
replied. “He’s a friend of mine.”
I drank some of the beer and said nothing.
“What’d you go over to Warren Springs for?” he asked.
I looked at him in surprise. “How’d you know?”
“I find out things. And around here you’re about as hard to
keep track of as a moose in a phone booth. What were you
looking for?”
“I’d rather not say,” I told him.
“You should have made up something,” he said. “Don’t you
figure maybe you’ve answered the question by refusing to?”
“I haven’t said a word,” I replied. “And, incidentally, who
wants the information?”
The eyes went cold. “I wanted the information, son, and
for my own reasons. If you think it’s a trick, for somebody
else—”
“Sorry,” I said.
“It could be I’m just trying to keep you from getting
yourself killed. There’s been enough people killed already.”
“Then this party we’re so carefully not naming is
crooked?” I asked harshly. “I wouldn’t have thought so. At
least, not at first.”
“He’s not. He’s as honest as they make ‘em. But down
here they don’t consider a man’s crooked just because he
defends his wife’s reputation with a gun.”
“And what would make him think it needs defending?” I
asked.
“Easy, son. Look, I wouldn’t talk this way to everybody,
believe me. But you used to be in this business yourself, and
I like what I’ve heard about you—-”
“How’d you know I was a cop,” I asked.
Talk of The Town— 154
“I was in the Sherriff’s office when the wire came in from
San Francisco. He showed it to me. There’s nothing wrong
with the way you left the force.”
“When was that?” I asked quickly. “I mean, when did it
come?”
The other afternoon, Tuesday—”
“No,” I said. I mean, do you remember exactly what time?”
“Two o’clock. Quarter after.”
Then it couldn’t have been Redfield who’d tried to get me
with the shotgun. It was almost exactly the same time.
Calhoun must have read my mind. He shook his head.
“You didn’t really think that, did you? In the back of the
head with a shotgun? Let me tell you, son; if you’re not
careful, he may kill you, but when he does you’ll be looking
at him.”
“That’s a big help,” I said wearily. “Now I’ve got two of
‘em after me.”
“You could knock off and leave it alone. I don’t think it’ll
ever be settled, one way or the other.”
“Listen, I’m not guessing any more,” I said. “I know who
killed Langston.”
He put down his beer. “Can you prove it?”
“Not yet.”
“And you won’t. I think you’re wrong—”
I leaned forward quickly. “You what?”
He realized the mistake, but it was too late. “I mean—
you’re a mile off base. Of course you’re wrong.”
“Cut it out, Calhoun,” I snapped. “You know damn well
what you said. You thought I was wrong. So maybe you’ve
wondered just a little yourself. Why?”
He glared at me, but said nothing.
“Why?” I demanded.
“I’m not going to gossip about a man’s wife,” he growled. I
told you I was a friend of his—”
I stood up and banged down the can of beer so hard it
splashed on the magazines. “Yes, and goddammit, you’re a
cop too! You want to go on seeing an innocent woman
crucified?”
Talk of The Town— 155
“Don’t get hard-nosed with me, Chatham. I was a cop
when you were on the schoolboy patrol.”
”Forget it,” he said.
“It’s beginning to get you, huh?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“Well, it’s got a lot of people at one time or another. You
can go crazy trying to figure it out. It’s open and shut, see?
It’s routine, it’s even trite; a hundred of ‘em happen every
year—husband, wife, and boy friend. Only here they’ve
never found a shred of proof the wife and boy friend even
knew each other. And to make it even worse, the boy friend
is dead, so you can’t play one off against the other till one of
‘em cracks—”
“Right,” I said. “So then you begin to wonder if you’ve got
the right woman, and start looking for somebody else.”
“Except there is nobody else.”
I lit another cigarette. “And that’s where they’re wrong.
There not only is somebody else, I know who she is. Listen,
Calhoun, why don’t we stop pussyfooting and say what we
mean? Strader’s girl friend was Cynthia Redfield.”
He sighed. “After I just got through telling you he was an
old friend of mine. If I picked up that phone and called him,
you wouldn’t get out of this town alive if you started running
right now.”
“I know that.”
“And you’re going to take my word I won’t tell him?”
“I don’t even need your word.”
“Why?”
“I’m returning the compliment. I like what I’ve heard
about you.”
He shook his head at me with a quizzical expression in his
eyes. “Brother, you’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll admit
that with this weird and goofy set of values people seem to
have, we can’t discuss the possibility Mrs. Redfield might
have a lover, or have had one, because it’s simply not done.
But there’s no social law says we can’t speculate as to
whether or not she’s guilty of some relatively minor thing
like murder. Just talk a little shop.”
Talk of The Town— 156
He gave me a hard grin. “You should have been a lawyer
instead of a policeman.”
“I should have been a landscape architect instead of
either,” I replied. “But to get back to Mrs. Redfield. You’ve
got some ground for suspicion or you wouldn’t have known
what I was after.”
“All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “It’s nothing but a string
of coincidences. The first one, naturally, is the location of
the two places. The woman—if it wasn’t Mrs. Langston—left
Strader’s car there at the motel and walked home before
daybreak. Redfield’s place is only a little over a quarter mile,
cutting through that orchard. But if you’re going to suspect
everybody that lives within walking distance of that motel,
you suspect the whole town. This is not Los Angeles—”
“All right,” I said. “What else?”
He ground out his cigarette and sighed wearily. “Redfield
was out of town both the other times Strader came up here.”
I nodded. I suspected that, but there wasn’t any way I
could even ask about it without being racked up. That
clinches it.”
He banged the table angrily with his fist. “That clinches
what? You’d condemn a woman on the strength of a stupid
coincidence like that? Listen, Chatham, that girl’s no floozie
he picked up in a beer joint She’s a respectable married
woman. She used to be a teacher—”
“But that’s not quite all she used to be,” I said.
“If you’re dragging up that old thing about her first
husband,” he interrupted, “forget it. Everybody knows about
it. It was an accident, pure and simple. The police and
insurance company never questioned it at all.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s the deadly thing about a small
policy. If it’d been a hundred thousand, they might have
been a little more curious about what she did with the
money.”
“What did she do with it?”
“She bought a bar for a man she met just three months
before her husband electrocuted himself.”
He stiffened. “What? Who was—?” Then he sighed.
“Never mind. Are you sure it was Strader?”
Talk of The Town— 157
“It was Strader I was back-tracking when I found her,” I
told him. “A girl he called Sin, with hair about the color of
red wine. In New Orleans, the spring and summer of 1954.
That would be between the time she left Warren Springs and
showed up here.”
He was staring at the cigarette in his hand and didn’t
answer for a moment. Then he said, as if he were very tired,
“All right. How did you find out all this? Start with the day
you got here.”
I told him everything, pausing once while he went out in
the kitchen for more beer. When I’d finished, he said, “You’ll
never prove any of it.”
“I know,” I said. “Not with what I’ve got now.”
“You know what Redfield will do.”
“She committed murder.”
“You don’t know that; you’re just guessing there. And
before you even take up that part, you got to tell him his
wife is a tramp. You want to try that?”
The telephone rang. It was on the end of the table. He
reached over and picked it up. “Calhoun.”
He listened for a moment. “Who? Rupe Hulbert? Okay, tell
him to come to the phone.” There was a slight pause, and
then, “Rupe, this is Calhoun. The bartender says you’re
making a nuisance of yourself. Go on home. . . . Okay.” He
hung up.
I looked at him and shook my head. “You just tell him over
the phone?”
He made a deprecating gesture. “Oh, Rupe’s not a bad
boy. It’s just that when he gets a few aboard he starts
finding boxing gloves in his beer.”
Rupe, I reflected, had probably been thrown through a
wall.
“You think Langston went over there that morning?” he
asked. “And walked in on them?”
“He must have.”
“But why would he? Even if he’d forgotten Redfield had
called off the fishing trip, he wouldn’t have tried to go in.”
Talk of The Town— 158
“Let’s try it this way,” I said. “He knew Redfield wasn’t
there. And he didn’t know Strader was. Remember, it was
Mrs. Langston who registered him that time.”
He whistled softly. “Son, when you’re convinced of
something, you don’t care whose feet you step on, do you?
Langston was a highly respected man around here. He
wasn’t a chaser. Redfield was a friend of his. He had no
reason to believe that if he went in there Mrs. Redfield
would do anything but scream her head off.”
“I said I was trying it,” I told him. “But. dammit, Calhoun,
he went in there, and it got him killed. It has to be that way.
He could have known what she was. He might have seen her
with Strader one of the other times.”
He shook his head. “But even if he did catch them, I’m still
not convinced they’d kill him.”
“Well, the obvious possibility, of course, is that it was a
mistake. They thought he was Redfield, and panicked. They
both drive station wagons. But I’m not sure that’s it. I think
there must be more to it.”
“Okay. But here’s where you fall apart. There’s a hole in
your case a mile wide, and it’s the same old thing they’ve
had from the start. The reason it had to be Mrs. Langston.
And still does. And that’s the fact that one of them knew if
there was a homicide investigation he’d be suspected. And
there’s never been the slightest reason to suspect Mrs.
Redfield. She and Strader could have dumped Langston’s
body in a ditch anywhere and there’d never be any reason to
question either of them.”
“Check,” I said. “It took me a long time to see the answer
to that; I just got it a little while ago. Mrs. Redfield is your
cookie, all right, and the reason she’s never shown up is she
only thought she’d be suspected. It was a perfectly natural
mistake.”
He shook his head. “I don’t get you.”
“Put yourself in Mrs. Redfield’s place a minute. You’re
looking down at the body of a man you’ve just murdered,
and you realize that no matter when they find this body, or
where, people are going to know that the last place it can be
proved definitely he ever started for alive was your house,
two minutes ago—”
Talk of The Town— 159
“But he wasn’t supposed to go there-” He stopped and
stared at me. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Sure,” I said. “She simply doesn’t know that. All she does
know is that Langston is in his fishing clothes, and he’s
apparently come by for Redfield, the same way he’s done a
dozen times before. Maybe she didn’t even know there’d
been a trip planned. Maybe she knew it, and jumped to the
conclusion Redfield had forgotten to notify Langston it was
off. Either way, Redfield and Mrs. Langston both were going
to know Langston had come there.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said again.
“The only drawback to it,” I went on, “is the fact that if it
did happen exactly that way, nobody’ll ever be able to prove
a word of it. There’s not a shred of evidence: two of the
people involved are dead, and all the third one has to do is
sit tight. She’s got it made, from every direction.”
Talk of The Town— 160
14
He nodded. “It’s a dead end.”
“Check,” I said. “But there’s a chance it wasn’t quite as
simple as that Langston may have stumbled onto something
more serious than a cheating wife that morning. And on
more than two people.”
“The man with the shotgun.”
“That’s right. And remember, the woman who called me
on the phone to send me out to that barn definitely wasn’t
Mrs. Redfield.”
“So that blows your boy-friend theory all to hell. Women
cheating on their husbands don’t sell tickets, or invite the
neighbors.”
“It would seem to,” I said. “But I’m not so sure. Let me ask
a question. Was there any other crime committed around
here that night? Robbery, stick-up, anything?”
He thought about it. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Remember, when this murder broke it would get shuffled
into the background.”
“I’d have to dig back into the records. It’d have probably
gone to the Sheriff’s office, anyway. But why?”
“Well, several things,” I said. “When you jumped Strader,
he pulled a gun. Hasn’t anybody ever wondered why he was
carrying one?”
Talk of The Town— 161
“Well, he’d just committed a murder. Carrying a gun
doesn’t stack up to much, compared to that”
“But that’s not the point. Why was he carrying one?
Langston wasn’t killed with a gun, so it didn’t have anything
to do with that. And Langston’s death was incidental,
anyway. Strader came up here for something else. And realestate
salesmen don’t usually go around muscled up that
way.”
“But he didn’t have a record.”
“No. But you got to start somewhere. Did they ever trace
the gun?”
“It was stolen from a Tampa sporting goods store a year or
so ago. Could have been through a dozen hands before
Strader got hold of it.”
“It doesn’t fit in,” I said. “He didn’t need a gun.”
“Wait a minute!” he said suddenly. “You asked me a
minute ago if something else happened that night—” Then
he subsided. “Oh, hell, that was in Georgia.”
“What?” I asked.
“It was a gang that almost wrecked a town, just to steal a
couple of lousy safes. Killed a man, completely destroyed a
power substation, and burned up one of those big gasoline
tankers, at least a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of
damage, and they probably got ten thousand for it.”
“Was it the same night?”
“I’m pretty sure. But hell, this was up in Georgia.
Weaverton. Nearly a hundred miles—”
“They never caught any of ‘em?” I asked.
“Hm. Not as far as I know. But we’d have nothing to i do
with it.”
I was beginning to feel excited. “Two safes? Whose were
they?”
I think one was a supermarket and the other a jewelry
store.”
“Well, listen,” I said quickly. The telephone rang and I
broke off as he reached for it.
“Calhoun,” he said. “Yes. . . . Prowler? . . . Where’s that
again? . . . Okay.”
Talk of The Town— 162
He hung up and sprang to his feet. “I’ve got to run out in
the east end, but I’ll drop you off in town. Did you have a
car?”
“No,” I said, hurrying out after him. “I’ll get a cab.”
“I want to talk to you some more,” he said, as we shot
back towards Springer. “Make it around noon. I’ll be up by
then.”
”Sure,” I said. “And will you dig up any dope you can find
on that Weaverton thing?”
“Anything in particular?”
“Yeah. If it was the same night, and they still haven’t made
anybody for it, see if you can find out what kind of burglar
alarms those places had.”
He slid to a stop at the corner. “Burglar alarms?” But I
was already out, and he shot across on the light without
waiting for a reply.
I buttoned my jacket to hide as much of the wrecked shirt
as possible, and hurried across the street to the cab stand,
followed by silence and blank stares. I was Chatham, the
trouble-maker, the goon who bore the marks of his trade,
the split-open head, torn clothing, and the battered hands.
When I climbed in the cab and told the driver where to go,
he said curtly, without looking around, “I know where you
live.”
I let it ride. If I didn’t get into another stupid and
unnecessary fight for a week I’d still be ahead of quota.
When we pulled in at the motel, I looked around in
surprise. The station wagon was gone and the front door of
the office was ajar. Had she become worried and gone to
look for me? I glanced at my watch; it was only twenty past
ten. She wouldn’t have left the door open, anyway. I paid off
the driver and hurried inside. The lobby was dark, but
cracks of light showed through the curtains in the doorway.
I pushed through them, and stopped abruptly. The coffee
table was overturned, the glass top broken, and cigarette
butts were scattered on the rug from a shattered ashtray. A
broken cup lay near it, in a wet coffee stain. I ran to the
bedroom and peeked I into the bath. Everything was in
order in both of them, and in the kitchen. I plunged back
Talk of The Town— 163
through the living-room and snapped on the light in the
lobby. There were no evidences of struggle here, no blood
anywhere. But she wouldn’t have left the door open.
I swore at myself for wasting time and grabbed the
telephone. I couldn’t call Calhoun; he was out, and this was
beyond the city limits, anyway. Redfield was my only hope,
and he was off. I looked up his home number. In my hurry, I
botched it the first time, and had to dial it over. Cynthia
Redfield answered.
“This is Chatham, at the Magnolia Lodge,” I said quickly.
“Is your husband there?”
“Why, no,” she said. She sounded surprised. “I thought he
might be over there, Mr. Chatham. I’ve been trying to call
you for nearly ten minutes—”
“Over here?” I broke in.
“Yes. He went to a lodge meeting, and there’s a man here
at the house who wants to see him about something urgent,
so I phoned the hall. But they said he’d got a call and left.”
“Did they say he was coming here?”
“I thought so. Anyway, it’s something about the Magnolia
Lodge the man wants to tell him. About Mrs. Langston.”
“Is he still there?” I interrupted. “Yes. Has something—?”
“Don’t let him leave,” I said. I snapped down the switch,
and jiggled it furiously until I heard the dial tone. I called a
cab.
When we pulled to a stop before the house the porch light
was on, but there was no car parked in the street. Maybe
the man had gone. I could see the back of Redfield’s station
wagon in the drive, however, so presumably he had got
home. I tossed the driver a dollar and hurried up the walk.
Cynthia Redfield came to the door. “Oh, come in, Mr.
Chatham.”
“Has he gone?” I asked quickly.
She nodded. “But just downtown to look for Kelly. If he
doesn’t find him, he’s coming back. Come on into the livingroom
and I’ll try the lodge hall again.”
I followed her down the short corridor. It turned to the
right at the rear, apparently to the dining-room and kitchen.
About half-way back a door on the left led into the living-
Talk of The Town— 164
room. We went in. There was a fireplace at the far end and
another corridor going towards the bedrooms in that wing of
the house. The large picture window looking out over the
alcove and rear yard was on the right, but the curtains were
tightly closed. There was another curtained window in front,
with a sofa, coffee table, and two modern Swedish chairs
grouped in front of it. Over to my left was a record player
and beside it a low table covered with L.P. records in their
colorful jackets. The room was air-conditioned.
“What did he say?” I asked.
She turned, and smiled with a despairing shake of her
head that set the pony tail a-swing. “He’s a Cuban, and very
hard to understand, especially when he’s excited. But I think
it’s something about Mrs. Langston. Has something
happened?”
“She’s gone.”
“It’s probably nothing serious,” she said soothingly. “But
we’re wasting time. Let me try that lodge hall again.”
The telephone was on a small stand between the sofa and
record player. She dialed, and said. “This is Mrs. Redfield
again. Will you check and see if my husband’s come back?
Thank you.” She waited.
“The Cuban,” I urged. “Is he local? What’s his name, and
where can I—?”
She put a hand over the transmitter. “His name is
Montoya,” she said. “He lives on a farm just outside town.
He always goes to Kelly with everything, because Kelly can
speak Spanish to him.” She nodded towards a chair. “Please
sit down, Mr. Chatham.”
I thanked her, but remained standing. Even in the midst of
the worry sawing at my nerves, I was conscious of thinking
she was incredible. I was positive she’d killed a man, and
maybe she’d killed two, but you couldn’t really believe it. I
looked at the modest cotton dress, the flat slippers, the pony
tail caught in its round comb at the back of her head, and
the quiet, tanned face. When private eyes ran into them they
were slinky, and long in the thigh, and their round-the-clock
costume was just enough filmy nylon to raise a question as
to whether their nipples were coral or mauve, and they
carried .45’s—God knows where—but this was the generic
young suburban housewife, the psychology major four years
Talk of The Town— 165
later with two children and every other week on the
kindergarten car pool. Maybe I was crazy.
It was very quiet in the room except for the faint and
rhythmic tapping of her nails against the top of the
telephone stand as she waited. I had wandered over by the
phonograph, and suddenly something caught my eye among
the flamboyant jackets of the L.P. records piled on the little
table. It was some Flamenco guitar, and the cover was taken
up with the picture of the artist, and his name, of course, in
large letters. It was Carlos Montoya.
Montoya!
I was suddenly tense and uneasy. No, I thought; I called
her. But, still—
“All right, thank you,” she said into the phone, and hung
up. “He’s not there,” she said, frowning a little. “I think I’ll
try Farrar’s Café. He goes there a lot—”
She’d just started to turn back to the phone when she
wrinkled up her nose and glanced at the coffee table with an
exasperated smile. “But let me get that horrible cigarette
out of here before it smells up my curtains. Talk about
ground-up cigar butts.”
She picked up the ashtray and went past me. There were
two cigarette stubs in it, and one of them was an oval type
with very black tobacco. My nerves relaxed.
When she returned, I asked, “Could you make any sense at
all out of what Montoya wanted?”
She hesitated. “Well, it probably sounds much worse than
it actually is, the way he garbles things. But I gathered he
drove in there to see her about buying her husband’s old
outboard motor, and she was getting in her car with two
men. They were holding her up as if she were drunk, and
she didn’t speak to him. But let me try the café, and if Kelly
isn’t there we’ll call the Highway Patrol.”
She turned back to the phone and dialed. I waited, jumpy
with impatience. She swung around facing me, the base of
the instrument dangling from her right hand as she waited
for someone to answer.,
Then she cried out, “Kelly . . . Kelly!” in a strangled voice,
and casually tossed the instrument, receiver and all, onto
the floor.
Talk of The Town— 166
There was nothing I could do about it now, except watch.
In some far-off corner of my mind I wondered how her tan
would look under artificial light. She reached behind her to
tip over the stand and the bridge lamp beside it. Before the
crash had time to die, she picked up one of the sofa pillows
and dropped it over the phone where it lay on the rug.
Catching the yoke of her dress with both hands, she pulled
down sharply, and the seams gave way down the front all
the way to her waist. She wore no slip or bra, of course. I
could see nothing wrong with the tan.
“It’ll take him about two minutes to run it with the siren,”
she said, critically appraising the effect.
“I could kill you in less,” I said. “Had you thought of that?”
“Of course,” she said. She loosed the pony tail and let her
hair fall about her face. “But why should you? You’re not the
type. And you might get away if you start running.”
“Sure,” I said. I had a wonderful chance of getting away.
She unbuttoned my jacket and looked at the wreckage of
my shirt. “You don’t really need any touching up, do you?
Well, aren’t you going to start?”
“No,” I said. I could hear the siren now. I’d be shot down
before I could get to the highway. “I’m going to call you.
Your husband’s not nearly as stupid as you think he is.”
“Oh, you are an optimist, aren’t you?” She reached briefly
up under her skirt, and stepped out of the pants. Placing one
slipper on them, she pulled upward, snapping the elastic.
“Why did you think it was necessary?” I asked. “You had it
made. Nobody’d ever prove it.”
She made no reply. I could hear the siren quite plainly
now.
“You don’t trust the others?” I asked. “Or don’t they trust
you?”
“Aren’t you even going to try to get away?” she asked,
frowning.
“No,” I said. “I told you.”
From the sound, he was within three or four blocks and
still doing seventy. If he stopped it without turning over or
going into the orchard he was a good driver, I thought. The
siren cut and began to growl its way down.
Talk of The Town— 167
She licked her lips. “You’re a fool—”
It didn’t seem likely she was doubtful about having enough
stomach to watch it, so maybe she was thinking about the
rug.
“All right, Mrs. Redfield,” I said, and grabbed her. She put
up a struggle, but it was pretty useless because I didn’t care
whether I hurt her arms or not. I got her in front of me, both
her wrists clamped in my right hand while I held the left
over her mouth, hard, and backed up against the wall beside
the door from the hallway. When we were in position, I
leaned back against it and locked her legs with one of mine
so she couldn’t kick. The long scream of his tires died
outside and feet pounded on the porch and down the hall.
I tossed her aside as he hurtled through the door, and got
him with a high tackle around both arms. He rode down
under my weight and slid along the rug, and I chopped a
right just under his ear. It had no effect on him at all except
to make him explode. I thought he was going to climb to his
feet with me on his shoulders and neck.
I chopped at him again and tried to get at the gun. I’d
hoped he would have it out when he came through the door,
because it was a shoulder holster, but he hadn’t, so the only
way was to work for it. He was like a maniac. I outweighed
him by at least thirty pounds, but he heaved upwards and
rolled the two of us against the coffee table, upsetting it and
scattering ashtrays. I managed to pin him again, hooked my
left arm around his throat and pulled back, and shoved my
right hand under his chest He fought without uttering a
sound. He was trying to reach the gun, but I beat him to it,
worked the holster around a little to get his weight off it,
and pulled it free at last.
I dropped it into the pocket of my jacket having no
illusions at all about threatening him with it. On television
shows you ordered people around with a gun as if they were
some kind of magic wand, but this was Redfield, and his wife
had been beaten up and raped. The minute he saw her, the
only way you’d stop him with a gun would be to empty it into
him and try to stay out of his way till he died.
The thing I could use, however, should be in the right hip
pocket of his trousers or the pocket of his jacket. But before
I could try cither of them he heaved upwards and we rolled
Talk of The Town— 168
again, across the fallen bridge lamp, crushing it and
scattering light bulbs. The only one that was turned on,
fortunately, was that at the other end of the room. But in
this new battle area we were facing towards where she had
fallen when I’d shoved her, and he saw her at last, saw her
sitting up with her hair in wild disarray and her clothes torn
half off. He went silently berserk. If I’d weighed four
hundred pounds I couldn’t have held him down. He broke
the stranglehold around my throat, heaved me off, and
scrambled to his knees. I hit him on the jaw hard enough to
drop him, and it had no more effect than hitting a wall. He
battered at my face, pushed to his feet, and kicked at my
head. I caught his legs and up-ended him again, and this
time as we threshed across the floor I found the sap.
It was ugly and vicious and I hated to do it, but it was the
only thing that could stop him. Knocking him out was no
good, even if I could do it. I had to try to talk to him. I cut
his arms down with it as he was trying to get to his feet, and
then worked over the muscles at the backs of his legs. She
ran past me to the fireplace and came back with the poker,
and managed to hit me with it once before I could take it
away from her. I shoved her again. She fell.
Redfield lay against the wreckage of the coffee table. I
pinned him with a hand against his chest as he struggled to
get at me with arms and legs that would no longer answer
his commands. Wind roared in my throat and I could taste
blood in my mouth; I’d taken a lot of punishment to get that
sap.
“Listen.” I said. I had to stop for breath. “I didn’t do that.
Do you think I’m insane? She framed me. She wanted me
killed or run out of here so I could never come back. Don’t
you know yet she killed Langston, you fool? How much
longer are you going to try to close your eyes to it?”
I ran out of breath. I looked at his face as I gasped, and
realized he was hearing nothing at all of what I said. He was
conscious, and immobile, as I’d wanted him, and the whole
thing was utterly useless. There was no way it could
penetrate; there simply wasn’t room in his mind for anything
beside that implacable yearning to get to me and kill me. His
eyes moved once, towards her, and then back to my face.
They were terrible. If I lived a hundred years, I thought, I’d
Talk of The Town— 169
never completely forget them. Then I remembered that if I
lived until tomorrow morning it would be a miracle.
I stood up on shaky legs. There was no sound in the room
except that of our breathing. I went over and yanked the
phone out of the wall. I’d never find the keys to his station
wagon, but he would have left those in the cruiser. It would
make a wonderful, inconspicuous thing to try to get away in.
But there was no point in even trying to think more than a
minute ahead now. I turned at the doorway. She was lying
on her side, sobbing. It was a good act. He had pushed
himself out of the wreckage of the coffee table and was
trying to crawl towards me like a dog with a broken back,
still staring at me. And not once had he ever uttered a word.
So I was going to talk to him, I thought.
Well, anyway, I’d gained a few minutes’ time and a car.
I ran outside and got in the cruiser. The keys were in it. I
slid around the corner back at the other end of the block
and headed for the highway. By this time I was beginning to
think a little and I realized I had no chance of getting out of
the State, even if I had another car. And that I couldn’t go
anywhere until I’d found Georgia Langston. There was no
telling what they’d do now.
Talk of The Town— 170
15
Maybe Ollie had seen something. I still had a few minutes
before Redfield could get to a telephone and spread the
alarm. I slid in between two other cars in the parking area
at the side of the Silver King and jumped out quickly. There
was no one in sight. When I hurried through, the waitress
and two customers turned to stare. I wondered what I
looked like now.
The bar was crowded. A man I didn’t know was behind the
bar. Well, I thought wearily, he couldn’t stay on duty all the
time. Then I saw him down near the other end. He was
checking the cash register. I went clown and found an open
space and called his name. Customers turned to stare. I
caught sight of my face in the bar mirror. The cut place over
my eye had been opened again, and the blood had dried on
the side of my face. The other eye was developing a shiner,
and I had a big puffy area on the left side of my jaw. I
stuffed the torn pennants of my shirt down inside my belt
and buttoned the jacket. It didn’t help any that I could see.
Ollie turned, and hurried over. “Good God, Chatham, what
happened?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Have you seen anything of Mrs. Langston tonight? You
didn’t see her leave over there, by any chance?”
“No,” he replied.
Talk of The Town— 171
“But she called here a few minutes ago. Wanted to know if
I’d seen you—”
“Where was she?” I interrupted. “How long ago?”
“I don’t know where she was. But it wasn’t over five
minutes ago.”
“Was she all right?”
He looked surprised. “I guess so. Seemed a little worried
about you, that’s all.”
At that moment there occurred one of those unexpected
lulls that happen now and then in bars. The jukebox quit
abruptly and several people stopped talking at about the
same time, with the result that one voice somewhere behind
me took over the floor. It was familiar, and still it wasn’t. I
turned. It was Pearl Talley, sitting with his back towards me,
telling one of his interminable stories.
“. . . So the first man says, “”Look, Morris, we know by you
it’s a sickness already, it should happen to Hitler, but,
Morris, we’re only asking would you please—”
“Tobacco Road Yiddish,” Ollie said. “He also does a good
southern Swede.”
“It’s not bad,” I said thoughtfully, still looking at Pearl.
“Oh, sometimes when he gets wound up he’ll go on all
night with those half-witted dialects.”
“Maybe he even speaks English?” I said.
Ollie grinned and shook his head. “I’ve never heard him
try.”
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