4
I called a cab and went on into town and caught the next bus to Galveston. It was a little after midnight when I got back to my room in the hotel. I stripped off my sweat-soaked clothing, took a shower, and lay down on the bed with a cigarette.
There were a lot of angles to figure, and it was going to be dangerous as hell. Assuming I was right so far, he had already killed two men; there was no reason to believe he’d be bashful about running up his score if he suspected I was moving in on him. Of course, I had an idea now of what he looked like, which cut his chances of being able to catch me off guard as he had Purvis and brain me with that club, but I still had to sleep sometime, and there was nothing in the by-laws said he couldn’t switch to a gun if he wanted. Once I knew his name and was sure I had the right man I knew how to tie his hands so he couldn’t do anything to me, but until I did I was wide open for the same kind of pay-off Purvis had got. And I had to go back there to be sure.
It was odd Purvis hadn’t recognized him; he was the first to grasp the fact Mrs. Cannon must have a boy friend and that he should be a big man somewhere around my size, but still he’d goofed off and let the big joker walk right in on him. That indicated the guy had been keeping himself as well covered as she had. Purvis must have been up there several times, snooping around trying to find out who he was, and all he’d accomplished was to set himself up like a duck in a shooting gallery. There were a couple of factors in my favor, however. The first, of course, was that I had seen him once, even if only from the back. And the second was that he might come out a little more into the open now that—as far as he knew—the only person left who suspected him was dead. The police had written the thing off as a traffic fatality, so he had nothing to fear from them. Purvis had been the only killjoy spoiling his fun, and now that Purvis had been eliminated he could relax. Unless—
I lit another cigarette off the old one and thought about that. He’d had his eye on Purvis, obviously. So maybe he knew Purvis had been to see me. There wouldn’t be much doubt as to what we’d talked about, and when I showed up around there a couple of days later there’d be even less. My name would go right onto his list. Dangerous? Dangerous was hardly the word.
Bat sweat. Since when was I this impressed by a thug with a piece of pipe? Let him scare me off? This was big. This was once-in-a-lifetime stuff. So maybe I could just tell the police about it and they’d give me a cigar and a parking ticket, and I could go to work selling aluminum pots to housewives. I could be a big shot like my old man and live in a stinking dark apartment over a dry-cleaning shop, lying in bed with a bottle of muscatel while the termites ate the frilling place out from under him a two-by-four at a time and the crazy short-order cook in the next apartment chased cockroaches up the walls with a cleaver. Sure. Be a big operator like that just because some meatball drives a Cadillac up your leg trying to kill his wife and her boy friend and you don’t like to send them a bill. This is Whore Harlan! The boy who can see a loose buck farther than most people can see the Washington Monument? Turn the knob, children; you must have the wrong channel.
Of course, the whole thing could still be only a pipe dream, just a bunch of coincidences strung together. The big guy who killed Purvis might be a visiting brother from some other lodge altogether; Purvis probably had more than one iron in the fire. But it looked good this way, no matter how you shook it up; there were too many interlocking pieces that matched.
Cannon was doing about sixty-five. At best, all he had was a brief glimpse of the silhouette of some big guy in his headlights and then an even briefer glimpse of somebody else apparently trying to hide from the lights by crouching down in the seat. To make up his mind that fast, provided he did crash me deliberately, he must have had a preconceived idea of who those people were. The chances were he was actually looking for them. I knew Mrs. Cannon was out there by the lake; so maybe the big guy was out there too. She had been waiting beside the swamp road for somebody in a car, because when she saw me coming she stepped out into the road for an instant, and then realized her mistake and stepped back. It was still only twilight and I didn’t have my lights on, so she could see the car all right. Therefore, the car she was waiting for could have looked something like mine. She couldn’t have been expecting Cannon, because his was a gray Cadillac sedan. So suppose it was a convertible with the top down. That tied in with the theory Cannon had smashed me deliberately; I was the same size as this big joker and presumably even our cars were similar.
Say they were both out there. To get back to town they had to come right past where we had crashed. They stopped and investigated when they saw Cannon’s car. He was in it, unconscious or helpless. He’d wanted to kill them, apparently; maybe the feeling was mutual. At any rate, they’d never have a better opportunity. Nobody would ever suspect. And nobody had, except Purvis. He kept getting in their hair, sniffing around, so they stepped on him too. They’d also step on me in a minute if they suspected me, but I should have seen enough of the game by this time to know how it was played. Swing first and never turn your back on anybody.
So far, I didn’t have any actual proof of this, except that I knew Mrs. Cannon had been out there at the lake and I’d been in the next room when Purvis was killed, but I didn’t need too much in the way of evidence. The threat was enough if I backed it up with some real pressure, and I was beginning to have an idea about that.
I crushed out the cigarette and lay back on the pillow, it was a little while before I got to sleep because the thought of that taxi driver began to nag me again. A lot depended on how much publicity there was when Purvis’s body was found. If he came forward, a little heads-up police work would put the finger on me without too much trouble. They’d know he picked me up at the bus station, and the approximate time. Check that against bus arrivals and Galveston wouldn’t be too difficult to arrive at. A record of his telephone calls would show he had talked to somebody down here twice in the past two days, to somebody in this hotel. From then on a kid could do it. Of course, I hadn’t killed Purvis and I was pretty sure I could tell then where to find the guy who had if they started leaning on me too hard, but it would be a damned expensive speech if I did have to tell them.
When I awoke the next morning my throat still felt as if a horse had stepped on it. That judo, I thought, they could keep it. Just give me good, clean, bone-crunching professional football where you could tell by looking at a guy about how hard he’d be able to hit you. I thought of Purvis before I got out of bed, but there was no particular feeling about him one way or another aside from the fact I’d just as soon forget what his head had looked like if it was all right with everybody. It was something about the combination of dark blood and gray hair. He was an odd-ball, all right. I wondered what he would have done with the money if he’d got it. Probably spent the rest of his life following a ballet troupe around like a baseball filbert following the Giants. He must have been dreaming of that one big score for years, and then when he was near enough to put out his hand and touch it he wound up looking like something somebody had stepped on.
I turned Purvis off like closing a tap and rolled out of bed. There was a lot to be done to get the show on the road, and if I didn’t want my head pushed in, it had to be planned and executed with a hell of a lot of precision. I shaved, took a hurried shower, and went down to the coffee shop for breakfast, picking up a Houston Post on the way. There was nothing in it about Purvis’s murder. I hadn’t expected there would be, this soon. This edition probably went to press about the time he was killed. It wouldn’t break before the afternoon papers at the earliest, and maybe not until tomorrow morning. Hell, it might be days before anybody found him. The longer the better, I thought; let that hackie forget the address.
I stopped at the cashier’s desk on the way back up to the room and asked them to get my bill ready, saying there would be one more long-distance call they’d have to get the charges on. It was to George Gray in Fort Worth. I was lucky and caught him just as he was coming into his office in the oilwell supply outfit he and his father owned.
“Who is calling?” his secretary asked.
“John Harlan,” I said.
He came on. “Hey, you big ape, why haven’t you been to see us? Where are you?”
“Galveston,” I said, “right at the moment.”
“Well, look—” He hesitated slightly. “I mean, I read about it in the papers. It’s a rotten shame. What are you planning to do, John?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. “But that’s what I called about—”
“Well, come on up and let’s talk it over. I think we can use you. We need another salesman, and you worked in the fields a couple of summers, long enough to know something about the business. That is, unless you figure on trying it again next year.”
“No,” I said. “I’m washed up for good. That next year stuff is newspaper talk. I haven’t settled on anything yet, and want to get off by myself for a couple of weeks and sort it out a little. I thought I’d go back and finish that fishing trip, provided nobody’s using the cabin.”
“Say, that’s fine. You’re as welcome as the flowers in May, boy. Nobody up there at all, and the way it looks now I won’t be able to get away till duck season. Have yourself a trip, and keep what I told you in mind. You got a key to the place?”
“No,” I replied. “I mailed it back to you. Or rather, one of the nurses did, while I was in the hospital.”
“Sure. I remember now. Well, get a hacksaw and saw the lock off. You can buy a new one and send me the keys when you leave. No. Wait— That’d mean I’d have to replace all the duplicates I’ve got scattered around among my friends. Why don’t I just mail you a key?”
“That’s what I was going to suggest,” I said. “Mail it up there to Wayles, care of General Delivery. I can pick it up when I get in town.”
“I’ll get it off today. Jesus, I wish I was going with you. Catch a four-pounder for me. Guess all your duffle and tackle is still up there, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I hope you have better luck this time than you did the other. That was rugged.”
“It’s the breaks,” I said. I stared at the cigarette burning in the ash tray. “By the way, did you ever meet this Cannon? The drunk that clobbered me?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I did, once. Why?”
”Just wondering,” I said. “I thought somebody said he had a camp out there too.”
“He did. However, that wasn’t where I met him. Just happened to run into him clear over in Mississippi one time, hunting quail. Struck me as something of a creep; I didn’t care much for him.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“A lush, for one thing. Wonder he didn’t kill himself long before he did. And he had a highly specialized sense of humor; the things he’d do for kicks. Liked to shoot birds to watch ‘em blow up, or something.”
“Quail?”
“Not quail. Sparrows, cardinals, anything that was handy. You ever seen a cardinal shot from twenty feet with the full-choke side of a twelve-gauge double?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But it sounds like something that would have to grow on you.”
We yakked a minute or two about old times in school. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about Mrs. Cannon, but decided against it. I was supposed to be merely going fishing; there was no use starting anyone wondering. When I had hung up I took an inventory of the money situation. I’d cashed a draft in New Orleans, and still had a little over nine hundred dollars in traveler’s checks. That would have to do. I could get by with making a down payment on a car. I had sold the Buick after it was repaired following the wreck, and deposited the money along with the insurance company settlement in the bank in Oklahoma City, but it would take too long to cash another draft now. I was in a hurry. I packed the two bags and checked out and caught the next bus to Houston.
It was a little after eleven when I arrived. I left the bags in two lockers in the station and went out. White sunlight blasted into the streets and traffic fumes and the stink of diesel buses hung heavy in the air. Early editions of the afternoon papers were on the street now. I bought one and ducked into an air-conditioned coffee shop to order a hamburger and a glass of iced tea. There was no mention of Purvis. I went through the paper from front to back, hurrying up one column and down the next, scanning the leads. Somebody had been run over by a loaded ten-ton truck. A man was dead of knife wounds in a brawl out near the turning basin. The body of a young girl had been found in some weeds on a vacant lot. All of a city’s twenty-four-hour output of violence had been run down and checked out and put into print, but Purvis was still waiting. I thought of him lying there in the hot living-room with his head smashed open like a dropped piggy-bank and the blood dried now and black, with all the poised and graceful ballet girls looking down at his body from the walls. I shrugged irritably and pushed the hamburger away. It was tasteless. So Purvis had leaned out too far after the brass ring and fallen off. They wouldn’t get me. By the time they realized I was moving in on them they’d already be in the cage and all I had to do was drop the lid on them.
Maybe, I thought uneasily. Then I brushed it aside, There was too much to do and I was itching to get started. Turning hurriedly to the back of the paper, I took a quick look at the used car ads. The nearest lot was only a few blocks away. I walked. The place was overflowing with cars; salesmen climbed into my arms and made little cooing sounds in my ears, but the tune changed after I’d picked out a ‘54 Olds and we started to make out the papers for financing. The out-of-state address was bad, and so was the fact I didn’t have a job at the moment, here or anywhere else. I cursed, thinking of the delay in cashing a draft. It would take another whole day, anyway. All the bright salesmen cried a little and assured me if things were different they would like nothing better than to adopt me and let me dribble leopard-upholstered Cadillacs through my fingers all day and lie naked among Lincoln Capris all night, but you knew how those nasty bastards in the finance companies were.
I said, “Sure, sure,” and on the way out I saw a 1950 Chevrolet tagged at $595. I looked at it once, kicked the right front tire, and went on toward the sidewalk. They hauled me back, rubbed the Chevy up against me with a lingering, hot-bellied caress and said we could do business for five and a quarter. I fumbled in my pockets and dropped the folder of hundred-dollar traveler’s checks on the ground, and said I guessed I’d look around. I got almost to the sidewalk again. I drove the Chevy around the block while a salesman pointed out how they’d just refurbished the frammistan and put new whirtles in the springerwarp, and I said sure, but maybe his sister was diseased. Very young, he said; first time piecee, she don’t catch nothing from sailors. It was a one-owner car used by an elderly clergyman just to go back and forth from the parsonage to the church on Sundays when it was raining. I said, sure, you could see that; he’d only rung up 76,000 miles on it and had the fenders ironed out so often you could read Braille through them. But, hell. It ran, and the motor sounded all right. I offered $425. They said $500. We all cried some more. I came in on the second chorus with an offer of $450, and started for the street again. We closed at $475, with a free tankful of gas and an offer to clean the windshield.
“Never mind,” I said. “Just kiss me, and help me up.”
I drove it around to a parking lot not too far from the bus station, and put the bags in. It was one-thirty. The next stop was a pawnshop. I picked up a second-hand portable typewriter, a pair of 7-by-50 binoculars, and a Colt .45 automatic. Then I stopped at a sporting goods store, after thinking it over, and bought a box of ammunition for the gun. I didn’t like the idea, but this wasn’t a child’s garden now: Stowing all this in the car, I looked up the biggest store in town that specialized in sound and recording equipment. I was there nearly two hours getting a thorough fill-in on tape recorders and trying out the different models. When I left I had a good one with a sensitive microphone designed for wide-angle pickup. I caught a cab and went back to the lot with it. After putting it in the trunk of the Chevy I walked out to the corner again. A boy was calling the final edition of one of the afternoon papers. I bought one and sat behind the wheel as I shuffled through it. They had found Purvis.
“Private Investigator Slain,” the second page story led off. “The body of Winton L. Purvis, 38, private detective and former insurance investigator, was discovered early this afternoon in his apartment at 10325 Can line Street. He was apparently struck on the head with terrific force by some heavy object, though no trace of the murder weapon was found at the scene. Police are as yet without clue as to the identity of the assailant, but are convinced he is a large man of great physical strength.”
There wasn’t much more. Apparently it had broken just in time to get the bare essential facts in the last edition; there’d be more tomorrow. But there was enough here to start it rolling—the address and the fact they were looking for a big man. I hoped that cabby wasn’t sitting behind his wheel somewhere in the city as I was, leafing through the paper.
Well, the ball had to bounce—one way or the other. But I couldn’t sit here and waste time. I switched on the ignition and rolled out into the river of traffic. Mrs. Cannon, here I come.