Talk of The Town (9 page)

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 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?

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-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 pop-eyed 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 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.

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 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 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.”

“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?”

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.