The Name of the Game is Death (14 page)

"I've met him," I agreed. "And I size him up about twenty-five cents on the dollar."

"Goddammit, you're askin' for it with that attitude!" Jed bristled. "Look, I'm just concerned my big mouth pushed you into somethin' with a stinger attached."

I pulled up on the reins. The kid meant all right. "Forget it, Jed," I said. "She hasn't said yes. If she does, we'll have dinner. It's a big deal?"

His expression was still serious. "Would you believe a couple of guys who've gone out with our beauteous postmistress have had—ah—accidents? I don't believe she's had an invitation in a year. Until yours."

"Why doesn't Franklin have any accidents, Jed?"

"Who likes to go up against a badge?"

"Okay, okay. You told me. Thanks. Now can I buy you a drink before you leave to show off that Boy Scout uniform?"

"I'll have to ask you to speak with more respect to this minion of the law, suh. I'll take a raincheck on the drink." Jed reached down under the booth to pat Kaiser on the head before he got up and left by the back door.

For the first time since I'd known him I was glad to see him go. It's strange what the sight of a uniform does to me. I was happy to see Kaiser take to Jed so quickly, though. If the cards fell so I had to pull stakes in a hurry, I wouldn't be leaving the big dog high and dry.

I went to the phone booth and looked up Lucille Grimes' home phone number. "Chet Arnold, Lucille," I said when she answered. "How are we fixed for Wednesday night?"

"Oh, ah—" There was a five-second pause. She hadn't repeated my name. I wondered if Franklin was with her. Not that I gave a damn. "Would five o'clock be too early? You could pick me up at the post office, Chet." Lucille's voice sounded a bit breathless.

"Five o'clock will be fine." She didn't want me picking her up at her home for some reason. "See you then."

"I'm looking forward to it."

I replaced the receiver. She'd almost cooed the last words. Something about the way she said it—it was almost as though she'd suddenly turned up the voltage. She was definitely an attractively long-legged female, yet there was usually nothing soft about her. In Dixie Pig conversations I'd surprised an occasional feral gleam in the eyes under the long-lashed lids. Unless I missed my guess, she was a dandy little cutting tool. And now she was sounding cuddly. Interesting.

Hazel was at the booth when I returned to it. "Is Jed coming back after he finishes with his deputy routine?" I asked.

"No. He said he was going courting."

"I wonder what it feels like," I said before I thought.

"What's that?"

"Oh, sitting with a girl on her living room sofa." I tried to say it lightly. "Object: matrimony, if you can't get it any other way."

"I imagine you never tried it." It was a statement, not a question. I didn't try to reply to it. Neither of us said anything for a couple of minutes.

"I've been thinking " I began.

"Do you suppose " Hazel started to say at the same time.

We both laughed.

"You've got the floor, Horseman," Hazel said.

I searched tor the right words. "Maybe we ought to try it again some flight."

"There's a point to it?" She reached across the table quickly and captured my hand. "No, no; I didn't mean that lie way it sounds. Why do you want to try it again?"

"Maybe because you don't have 'Chet Arnold is an impotent slob'up on the front of the building in neon lights."

"What the hell do you think I am?" she began indignantly, and then she started to laugh again. "Can the corn, man. Why d'you want to try it again?"

"It offends my miserly soul to see such a brick pagoda going to waste."

"I suppose even a left-handed compliment is more than I rate most days around here," she said good-humoredly. Then she turned serious. "The fact you want to is what counts with me. I've been around enough gamblers to know that a lot of the time they're wired into different sockets." A glass bottom rapped on the bar. "I'll be back."

I watched her walk away from the booth, and suddenly I knew it was going to be all right.

I never know how I know.

I just do.

The bar stayed busy, and Hazel couldn't get away. I went over finally to one end of the bar, away from the customers. "I'll be back at lock-up time," I told Hazel when she joined me.

She looked at me quizzically but nodded acquiesence.

I had a couple of hours to kill, so I drove downtown. I went into Bobby Herman's tavern, where I'd been when I ran into Franklin. Herman was friendly because I let him show off his encyclopedic baseball knowledge. He had the type of mind that could rattle off the batting orders for the Yankees and the Pirates in the '28 World Series.

Herman greeted me with a smile and the usual tight-collared shell of beer. "Quiet tonight," he said, automatically wiping off the already spotless bar in front of me. There was only one other customer at the bar and a young couple in a booth.

Herman retreated to his washrack and began rinsing out beer glasses. The other customer finished his beer, grunted goodnight, and departed. The only sounds were the low murmur of voices from the booth and the clink of glasses as Herman placed them on the drainboard.

When he looked my way again, I was ready. I nodded down the bar in a way that took in two-thirds of the tavern. "Say, whatever happened to the big, rugged-looking guy who used to stand down there when I first started coming in?"

Herman paused, a sparkling glass in his hand. "Big, rugged—? Oh, yeah. The one with the scar on his throat. That's right, I haven't seen him lately. He must've found greener pastures. He wasn't a regular, anyway."

I felt a tightening sensation in my stomach muscles. "Did he work around here? He reminded me of someone, and I finally remembered who. I thought I'd ask him if he was related."

Herman had returned to his glasses. "I don't think he works around here. I never heard him say. He was a real quiet fella. Drove a blue sedan with out-of-state plates."

A real quiet fella.

I've seen people lose hard cash betting Bunny could talk after they'd been around him for days. He had a trick of walking into a bar and getting his first beer by holding up a finger when the bartender drew one for someone else. He got his refills by snapping a coin down on the bar. He never joined a group but stood in the background, smiling and nodding at the general conversation. He usually anticipated a direct question by turning his shoulder so that his attention seemed elsewhere, and the question flew harmlessly by.

"Could he be staying at the Walton House? Seems to me I've seen a blue sedan parked there," I said.

"I doubt he's at the Walton House." Herman dried his hands on his apron. "Every time I saw him pull away he'd swing around and head east from the traffic light." He paused as if checking his memory. "I don't think he lived in town at all."

"Oh, well, it's not that important. Put another head on this thing for me."

At least it was confirmation of sorts that Bunny had hidden out east on Main as I'd originally figured. I'd been beginning to wonder. I might be stubborn, but I had no intention of working my way to the east coast of Florida a side road at a time. I'd have to keep at it, though, now that Herman's recollection had strengthened my first guess. Bunny was out there somewhere. Not that I was going to be able to do him any good now. It had been too long.

I left the tavern and drove back to the Dixie Pig parking lot. Hazel was sitting in her car, the glow of a cigarette illuminating her face. "Let's go in mine," I called to her.

She came over and got in. I caught a whiff of perfume. She was wearing a dress again. I headed down the driveway and out onto the highway.

"Relax, big stuff," I told her. "Everything's going to be all right."

She looked at me curiously. "Don't go building yourself up for nothing, Chet. It's not that important."

"Relax," I repeated.

I drove with my left hand and held her left in my right. The full moon was past; it was a darker night. I nearly missed the turn-off road, so I had to back up before we jolted down the final three hundred yards and sat looking at the cabin that was a darker blotch in the blackness.

Hazel gave me her key, and I unlocked the door. It was so quiet it almost hurt the ears. We didn't bother with any lights. Hand in hand we stumbled from the cabin's living room into the bedroom.

I undressed her myself. She showed up whiter and whiter with each layer removed until she gleamed in the dark like phosphoresence in the Gulf. I forgot her cowboy boots. I heard the click of her boot heels when her legs came together over my back as we settled down on the bed.

We really dusted off that bed. I made it so big it was a lumped-up, soul-satisfying taste deep in my throat. I could feel the wild pulse in Hazel's neck under my lips. When she blew her boiler it was a damn good thing for me there were no spurs on her boots. I rode for a long time before my cannon fired.

Hazel's voice was a muted, husky sound against the background of our mutual deep breathing. "Welcome back, Horseman. You covered a spread of ground."

I didn't say anything. We were still in the missionary posture. I slid my hands beneath her and took a solid double-handful of her powerful, sleek-feeling nude buttocks. I pulled her up against me, tightly.

"Oh, no!" she chuckled as she felt my renewed manifestation. "Honest to Christmas, Chet—" She started to laugh, a full-throated richness of sound that remained in my mind long after it had died out in my ears.

It was absolutely the finest sound I'd heard in longer than I liked to think about.

I was on my back, relaxed, when Hazel came back into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I ought to sue you for misrepresentation, man," she said quietly. "You had me thinking there was no fire in the boiler at all." She bent down over me, searching for my face in the dark.

"There's fire enough, baby, when the damn engineer's on the job. The trouble is that every so often he takes these two-week lunch hours."

She stretched out beside me lengthily, a healthy animal. Her big arms pulled me closer to her. "At the moment I couldn't care less," she murmured. "Although I'll admit I don't understand it."

I understood it. Up to a point, anyway. I was geared to a different ratio. Bed-bouncing had never been mainline for me the way it is for most guys. Although with this big, warm-hearted, understanding, two-hundred-percent woman—

She stirred beside me. "Funny how okay it can make things, huh? When it's right?"

"You said a hammered-down mouthful, baby."

Her voice was soft when she spoke again. "Nobody's ever called me 'baby.' It sounds-—nice."

We stayed on the bed for a long time.

We showered together finally. The tiny bathroom looked us il a couple of whales had been turned loose in it. Then-was even water on the ceiling. I was conducting a mopping up operation with towels when Hazel came back in. dressed. "Leave it," she said. "I'll drive out tomorrow and take care of it."

We rode back to the Dixie Pig in a comfortable silence. I put Hazel in her car, and she ran down her window and waved to me before she drove off. I set sail for the motel and bed.

I woke with a start from my first deep sleep. A glance at the luminous dial on the alarm clock beside the bed showed I'd been asleep half an hour. My subconscious had somehow put together a nice, neat package: kick the whole bit in Hudson, Florida, and take off with Hazel. For anywhere. Really catch up on living.

I looked around the motel room's long, dappled shadows and blurred dark corners. I heard Kaiser's breathing at the foot of the bed. I listened to the thump of someone turning over in the next room, plainly audible through the thin partition.

I didn't need the cold light of day to squelch that crazy idea.

Don't try to be a bigger goddamn fool than nature intended, I told myself.

I knew what I was.

A leopard doesn't change his spots.

I closed my eyes again.

After awhile I even slept.

I picked Lucille Grimes up at the stroke of five in front of the post office. "I made a reservation at the Black Angus, since it's early enough for a drive," I said. "Okay?"

"It's a nice place," she replied. She smoothed her skirt beneath her on the front seat, palms flat against her pliant thighs. Her eyes were bright. There was an electric current between us from the instant she got into the Ford.

I headed north on the highway and just rolled it along. It was about a thirty-mile drive. I watched the rear-view mirror without being obvious about it. I saw no indication of a jealous deputy sheriff in pursuit, but Jed's warning stayed in my mind.

Lucille sat beside me in seeming tensed expectation. I couldn't understand it, and it made me cautious. Still, I was satisfied to leave it that way for the time being. I intended to probe a bit during dinner and try to find out what made this woman tick.

It didn't work out that way. Lucille had three Martinis in quick succession in the huge dining room. She apologized for asking me to order the third, but she downed it quicker than its predecessors. She ordered steak but just toyed with it. Conversation stayed at a minimum as Lucille closed out my tentative leads with terse replies. Her tone was brittle.

Her responses included incomplete sentences, dangling phrases, and half-finished verbalizations. These were punctuated by an occasional loose-lipped, dazzling smile.

An aura of almost febrile excitement emanated from her. I almost expected to see sparks fly from her fingers. She was the epitome of promise if I ever saw it.

All this for me, I asked myself?

Careful, man. Careful.

I suggested brandy after dinner. She had two, then another after a cigarette. I was becoming more curious by the minute. Lucille took on a high gloss. She was pronouncing her words carefully. She stepped a bit too high over the threshold when we left the restaurant.

She lapsed into complete silence in the car. Her gaze was fixed dreamily straight ahead down the road. If she felt the car slow down as I studied the motels we drove past, she gave no sign. When she finally spoke, she surprised me. "This one," she said huskily, and pointed.