All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (22 page)

He looked around at Early Boy, finding him even more distasteful in a good light.

"Really hit the skids, haven't you?"

Early Boy winked at him. "Don't be too sure. Sometimes it's the only way to get around. The yaps don't look all that close at a man who smells as bad as me."

"Is the FBI still after you?"

"Everybody's looking for Early Boy. But I told you a long time ago I'd never do a day's worth of federal time."

"There's a stall shower in the other compartment. Borrow my razor if you'd like. And for Christ's sake throw that bloody shirt away."

"I'm traveling kind of light these days."

"The major has a blouse and trousers to spare. I'm sure you're not particular about the fit."

"Skivvies too?"

"I'll lay everything out," Jackson said desperately. "Just get away from me."

Early Boy nodded amiably, then stopped short of the bedroom door. "Better not have any more hooch to drink. It's all bad, doc, every drop."

"How do you know that?"

"I know what I have to know, to stay out of jams. Maybe you're a better man than I am, doc. High-toned, let's say. But it seems to me like you're always trying to pull your tail out of a crack."

Jackson appropriated some of Champ's clothing for Early Boy, which he left in the bedroom. He held his breath while he made a thorough search of Early Boy's things. Then he went outside to stand between cars, where he smoked a cigarette and stared at the dark landscape.

How much further did they have to go, to reach this place called Dasharoons? He was unable to forget the sight of the dead young woman in the falling-away coffin, the terror and anguish in Champ's eyes. Obviously it was no accident that the coffin had been aboard this train. Someone, very callous or possibly demented, had wanted Champ to see her like that. He wondered how Nancy Bradwin had died.

The image of her lying in a weedy ditch beside or beneath her coffin many miles up the line was almost more than he could bear. He regretted not pulling the emergency cord to stop the train, a simple and rational act. Had he been in a state of shock himself, befuddled by events? Jackson couldn't remember.

Perhaps the coffin had fallen near enough to the road to be discovered by the first Passing car. Not much comfort in the thought, but it was the best he could do.

Jackson went inside and glanced at the note addressed to Champ. It was lying on the table with Early Boy's grimy fingerprints on it. Jackson decided he might as well read it too.

Darling Champ,

It's so wonderful to know that you'll soon be home! I wish I could be with you now, but I felt that I shouldn't leave Dasharoons even for a few hours in the event we do hear from Nancy. Please try not to worry, and God grant we will have her back before long. I'm sure this latest episode will be the last; seeing you again should make all the difference in her recovery.

My love,

Nhora

It was a letter that might have been written by almost anyone: Champ's mother, his sister, a mistress. In referring to Nancy Bradwin the writer seemed depressed, and not particularly optimistic despite a cheerful choice of words. Obviously Champ's wife had been missing, and not for the first time—
this latest episode
—therefore if she was ill, the problem most likely had been emotional rather than physical. . . .

Early Boy came out of the bedroom in skivvies. "Pretty fancy," he commented, toweling his hair dry. Washed clean, his hair looked two shades lighter and was heavily streaked with gray, although Jackson felt certain that Early Boy wasn't much older than he was. He hadn't touched his five-day growth of beard, which was patchy and white around the pitted bullet scar, but it was no longer difficult to linger downwind of him.

Early Boy cast the towel aside and touched the bullet scar.

"Remember, doc?"

"Very well. You shouldn't have let it go so long before you came to see me. I'm not a surgeon, but I might have been able to do something."

"You did okay. I always thought you was a swell doctor. Saved Jake McGinness, didn't you? And Petey Gailor, he might've lost that leg, it looked bad and smelled worse. Come as a real surprise to me, seeing you aboard this rattletrap."

"Where did you get on?"

"I don't know. I was sitting by the side of the road, first train along, I hopped it. I heard you was fixed up pretty good out West. Seattle, maybe."

"And a couple of other places."

"Oh, I get it. Always just one jump ahead of the dicks, like me."

"Not a bit like you, Early Boy. I treated your kind when I needed the money, but the law's never been interested in my career. It's the desperadoes who earned all the headlines."

"They tell me Hoover's thinking about a list. The ten most wanted criminals. You want odds I'll be at the top of that list when it comes out?"

"Don't flatter yourself. You don't matter anymore, Early Boy. You're a curiosity now, and all you ever had was a vulgar flair for publicity—"

Early Boy laughed. "When they talk about banks, I'm still number one."

"Is that so? When was your last job? It completely escaped my notice."

Early Boy began to tick off the years on his fingers, then looked up with an expression of exaggerated surprise. He shrugged.

"Been a while since I seen anything I liked. When I do, you'll read about it in the papers. Before I pull the job."

"You did get away with that stunt more often than not." Jackson tapped his own lip with a forefinger approximately where Early Boy had been shot in a near-disastrous escape from one of the banks that he had announced he would rob. "I've always wondered why you deliberately made life so difficult for yourself."

"Saw Harry Houdini when I was a kid. Never forgot it."

"What? Oh, yes. Many men can escape from handcuffs, even a corset of chains. But when you're holding your breath underwater at the same time—"

"Just make it simple," Early Boy said impatiently. "Any jerk with a gun can stick up a bank."

"Or break in the night before. But it requires a certain feeling for high drama to arise from a good night's sleep rested and refreshed, to shave and greet the officers when they appear, wearing a starched collar and a new tie—"

"With a corsage for the ladies and cologne for the gents."

"And a Tommy gun cradled in one arm. No, it was never the money, was it?"

"I look like a lot of money to you, doc?"

"Only the stunt mattered. The notoriety. But where's the limelight now? What happened to you?"

"It's the simple pleasures that count the most, didn't nobody ever explain that to you?"

"I think you're a liar. It's one of two things about you I've been able to depend on. You're a splendid actor, and a habitual liar. So I suppose it
is
dense of me to ask you what you're doing on this train. But I want to know. And you goddamned well had better tell me."

"Getting a little agitated, aren't you, doc?"

"I can cope with it. I can cope with
you
. If you're looking around for that marvelous skull-knocker you carry, I disposed of it. I found the knife, too. Did some whittling on the shade in the chair car, did you? But why a serpent?" Jackson took Champ's duffel bag from a cabinet and produced the army automatic. Early Boy looked pained.

"Oh, doc, what the hell's got into you?"

"Getting agitated, ain't you?
Ain't
. That's the word you should have used. After all these years of effort, turning yourself into a picaresque gangster, the breeding still crops up. Aren't. Ain't. Herodotus."

"Her what?"

"Who, not what. Herodotus was a Greek historian who specialized in military affairs. Once in a delirium you quoted him to me. At length, in the ancient Greek."

"Could have been double-talk you heard. Guy out of his head, what do you expect?"

"I was a Greek scholar myself when I was a boy; it addition to most of the medicine I know, my father also taught me the classics. I understood you very well. You're an educated man."

Early Boy said, with a hint of contempt, "And between us we ain't good for a bowl of beans." He looked at Champ, who was moaning quietly in his sleep, then again at Jackson. "You ain't too steady with that automatic. How about you just put it down, and no hard feelings? I don't know a thing more'n I told you already. But any cluck can see the bad news ain't all in yet."

"Put two and two together, have you?"

"What's
your
interest in the major, doc?"

"I'm paying off a favor for a friend. The hard way."

"Well, I don't owe nobody no favors. So I'll just get off at the next stop and go my way."

"I'll decide that."

"Better decide soon. This train's slowing down, in case you ain't noticed."

Jackson had noticed. "It could be Dasharoons."

"How would I know? I'll step outside and have a look."

"I'm not sure yet that I can do without your company. Leave your trousers behind."

Early Boy winced but unbuckled the loose uniform trousers and let them drop. He stepped out of them and left the car.

Jackson felt uneasy and looked around. Champ's eyes were half-open, but unfocused. He had raised his head from the couch. The train was rolling to a stop.

"Do you hear me, Champ?"

Champ said nothing. His head turned as Early Boy reentered the car. The two men looked at each other. There was a slight apprehension in Champ's eyes, a heavier pulse in the hollow of one temple. Early Boy smiled slantwise at him.

"Coming around okay, huh? Hello, big stuff, you know this man, Champ?"

Champ made no reply. The train stopped with a small lurch. His head sagged in response and he almost fell off the couch. Jackson propped him up with one hand. Champ rolled back with a sigh, apparently exhausted, and closed his eyes.

"Home yet?" he asked.

Jackson glanced at Early Boy.

"Siding. Signal down the line. Waiting on a redball freight, maybe, coming the other way. How about it, doc? Do I get off this rattler now?"

"You can go," Jackson said. He put the .45 automatic on the table.

Early Boy, who was buckling the khaki trousers, paid no attention to this gesture. He nodded but failed to move.

"Well, what else do you want? Get going."

Early Boy said with a beggarly whine, "Saved his life, didn't I? Now that's worth something."

"How much?"

"Ten bucks cash."

"I'll give you five," Jackson said contemptuously.

"Forget the sap, but I put in a lot of work on the blade of that jackknife."

Jackson reached into a pocket of his coat and handed the knife to him. Then he counted five singles from the few bills left in his money clip and gave those to Early Boy.

"Didn't leave you much."

"I'll have my true reward in heaven."

"Let me get my cap and bindle, then I'll say so long." A Frisco Mountain, flying white flags, was passing and shaking them; Jackson and Early Boy went outside as the lights of the redball's caboose dwindled to the magnitude of stars and the 4-4-0 at the head of the Dasharoons train began to move back onto the main line. Early Boy dropped without difficulty to the ballast, adjusted his bindle and walked along beside the departing train. "If the major don't die on you, then you ought to make out okay. doc!"

"I intend to!"

"One thing you need to be careful about!"

"When I want your advice—"

"For a quack you're as good as any real doctor I ever met!" Early Boy had begun to lag behind the train, limping from the aggravation of the pace he was obliged to maintain. He raised his voice, but not enough for Jackson to hear him clearly; the train whistle was blowing. Early Boy said something else about real doctors, and about things even the best doctors couldn't understand. Then a blackish comber of locomotive smoke swallowed him to the brim of his herringbone cap.

With the back of his hand Jackson dashed at a cinder caught in the lashes of an eye.

"Son of a bitch!" he yelled, looking back at the siding, but Early Boy wasn't there anymore. Thoroughly angered, and nauseated again by his anger, Jackson went inside.

No reason why that last-minute remark about "real doctors" should have upset him. From Early Boy's warped perspective every man's life and motives were suspect—life itself was a bad play in which he was the only actor of stature, always slyly in control, improvising brilliantly, manipulating his fellow actors, misdirecting them for his greater glory. So Early Boy had constructed for Jackson a puzzle within a puzzle and bowed off stage to applause only he could hear, leaving Jackson bumbling and uncertain before a stony and possibly sinister audience that awaited explanations he was inadequate to provide. He couldn't hope to escape from himself for a little while, thanks to good-hearted Beggs.

In his own grip he uncovered the bottle of Teacher's scotch—seal intact—which Beggs had given him. Champ Bradwin's face was dry and warm to the touch, and he snored comfortably on the sofa. Jackson took a crystal goblet to the bedroom of the private car and sat in a chair beneath a swarm of dingy cherubs painted on the ceiling. When he was halfway through the bottle, Nancy Bradwin made an appearance, leaving her coffin, stepping lightly through the air like a child going from stone to access a wide brook. Back and forth in front of him, trippingly. But her head dangled crudely, as if from a broken neck. The audience sharing this apparition with him seemed to love it. They murmured to each other in a dialect he scarcely remembered. Jackson watched Nancy Bradwin unflinchingly and treated his fear with fresh drafts of whiskey that he could barely swallow. With each drink Nancy became less substantial; but he was close to the bottom of the bottle, and she refused to entirely disappear.