Girl Out Back - Charles Williams(4)

Cliffords was going to notice those twenties had
disappeared, but it couldn’t be helped. I knew a little about
that F.B.I, outfit and how it worked; they didn’t do
anything half-way. Right now this whole countryside was
alerted and they were poised and watching. Let just one
more of those bills stick its head out and the game was
over. There really wasn’t much Cliffords could do, anyway,
except to move the tens to a new hiding place, which was
all right with me. I wasn’t after them. And if he got worried
enough to go back and reassure himself about the real
cache, so much the better. So far I hadn’t come up with
any plan at all for finding that, but having him beat a path
to it would make it a lot easier.
I drove back to the lake. The same old futile merry-goround
started again in my mind, but I shut it off with
irritation. It was utterly impossible to explain how Cliffords
had got that money, but I no longer had to. I knew he had
Girl Out Back— 71

Girl Out Back - Charles Williams(3)

Girl Out Back— 48
She wasn’t sure of anything now. Any of them over the
age of three can see through flattery the way you can
through a pane of glass—when they want to. But they can’t
cope with a change of pace. Destroy their frame of
reference just once and they never get oriented again,
especially if you keep crossing them up.
You could see her deciding things were getting out of
hand and that it was time to blow the whistle. “Well!” she
said. “I must say you’ve got a nerve.”
When retreat is indicated, attack. Toujours l’audace. It
can get you many a fat lip, but plenty of times it’ll work, if
you know precisely where to stop the offensive. I fastened
the slow stare on her, starting at her ankles and going
north across the long bare legs and the denim shorts, the
sucked-in waist, the curves at the front of her shirt, and
finally coming to rest on a white face and a blazing pair of
eyes. It was deliberate, and infuriatingly obvious. She drew
in a sharp breath.

Girl Out Back - Charles Williams(2)

He shook his head with a faint smile. “I’m afraid not. Not
at the moment, anyway.”
He asked if he could check the register for any more of
it. There was none, of course. We shook hands and he
drove off. I watched him go up the street, feeling the other
one burning a hole in my wallet. I didn’t do anything,
though, until Otis came out. That was inevitable.
Girl Out Back— 25
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s plenty hot.”
“You can say that again. You couldn’t have raised more
stink if you’d tried to deposit a live bomb.”
“Could be a kidnap pay-off,” I said. “Or bank robbery.
Something like that.”
He turned to go back to the shop. “Well, we sure got a
high class of trade around here. You think I ought to start
wearing a carnation to work?”
As soon as he was inside the shop and at work I crossed
to the office. I sat down and took the one out of my wallet,
reaching for the pad I’d written the number on. They
checked! They were not only close; they were consecutive.
One ended in—23, the other in—24.
I turned it, studying the stain along the bottom and
feeling intense excitement. As nearly as I could tell, it was
exactly the same as that on the other, same place, same
shape. Those bills had been stacked, probably in their
original binder, when this substance—whatever it was—got
on them.

Girl Out Back - Charles Williams(1)

One
“Barney.”
Maybe if I pretended to be asleep she’d stop. She didn’t.
“Barney?”
“What?” I asked.
My name is Barney Godwin. I’ve been around for thirty
years, one day at a time. I have an utterly useless
education, a happy and industrious set of endocrine
glands, good reflexes, and a wife who’s worth two hundred
thousand dollars. It’s a living.