The name of the game is.., p.7
The Name of the Game is Death, page 7
He seemed to sense my mood. “Who should know better?” he said, cryptically enough, and opened the door. “Order up. It’s on the house, remember.”
I sat at the bar and ordered a highball I didn’t want. Through a window at the right I could see out on the parking lot. A slim redhead with a limp was walking around the Ford. As I watched he raised the hood, leaned in and then out, and wrote something down on a piece of paper. The engine number, I thought.
I nursed the drink for half an hour, and then ordered another. I was two-thirds of the way down to the bottom of it when Manny slid onto the next stool and laid a package down on the bar quite openly. “Eddie says that’s a real fireball out on the lot,” he said to me softly. “I got a wheel-man would give his front teeth for it. You want to trade? I’ll give you something to boot.”
“Not right now, Manny. I’ll keep you in mind, though.” I picked up the package and went out to the car. I pulled over to a corner of the lot and unwrapped the package. I put the new license and registration in my wallet, and switched loads from the old guns to the new. I tried them for balance. They felt all right. As soon as I had a chance I’d check out the Smith & Wesson. If Manny said it was throwing a little high and to the left, it was probably more than a little.
I drove out of the lot. More from force of habit than from any real belief that someone might be following me, I doubled and twisted over a circuitous route back to the motel. The conversation with Manny bothered me. Manny was a gossip. Never to the wrong people, so far as I knew, but a gossip is a gossip. This driving around the country so soon after a job bothered me, too. Before I’d always had a nice, quiet place to hole up in between jobs. This time I wasn’t calling the tune, though.
I promised myself that as soon as I got straightened out in Hudson, Florida, I’d go to earth in a hurry. Back at the motel I sacked in and slept solidly.
The next morning was the fifth day since I’d left Phoenix. I got another early start and left Highway 90 about thirty miles beyond Seminole, Florida, at Milton. On 90-A I busted along through Galliver, Crestview, DeFuniak Springs, Marianna, Chattahoochee, Tallahassee, and Monticello. I was on the homestretch now. At Capps I turned south on U.S. 19. Out in the country I picked out two swift-running rivers about fifty miles apart, and I threw the old Smith & Wesson into the first one and the old Woodsman into the second.
At four in the afternoon I saw a sign at the side of the highway: Town Limits, Hudson, Florida. I was forty or fifty miles south of Perry. I drove through the main square and found a motel on the south edge of town called the Lazy Susan. I’d covered 362 miles since morning. I registered, showered, ate at the motel, went into the lobby and worked my way through half a month-old Time, and went to bed early. After that stretch on the road I wanted to start out fresh in the morning.
I had breakfast in town at a place called the Log Cabin. It looked like stucco but could have been stucco over logs. It was early, but the place was busy. It looked like a factory crowd. Not much conversation, even with the good-looking young waitress who wore an engagement ring but no wedding band.
After breakfast I walked around the square. Driving through yesterday, I’d estimated the town at six or eight thousand. This morning I upped that a little. The store windows were clean, and the displayed merchandise looked fresh. There were no empty stores. The merchants must at least be making the rent money.
I walked past the still unopened bank. It was an old building, bristling in its external impression of maximum security. Like a two-dollar watch of the type that used to be called a bulldog.
I bought a local paper in the drugstore, carried it under my arm to the little park in the square, and sat down on a bench in the morning sunlight. The park faced the town hall and the post office. I looked at the post office a couple of times. To be diverted, registered mail almost had to be tampered with by post office personnel. Although of course the packaged money didn’t need to have been registered yet at the time it was intercepted.
The paper turned out to be a weekly. I read every line of it, including the ads. It’s a habit of mine. Tips are where you find them. I’ve had a subscription for years under one of my names to Banking, the Journal of the American Banking Association. There’s a column in it called “The Country Banker,” and two of the best tips I ever had came right out of that column. Banking used to publish pictures of newly remodeled bank interiors. Lately they’ve pretty much cut that out. It must have occurred to someone they were being too helpful.
In the Hudson Chronicle I read right down to the Help Wanted and the Positions Wanted ads. There’s something to be learned about a community from each. I read all the other ads. If there was a tree surgeon in Hudson, he wasn’t using the Chronicle to attract customers.
I folded the paper up and walked back to where I’d parked the Ford. Main Street in Hudson ran east-west from the traffic light in the square, not north-south on 19. I drove east on Main. When the stores thinned out, I slowed down. The first houses were small, with tiny yards or none at all. No work for a tree surgeon there.
A mile beyond the built-up section of town the whole area south of Main was a swamp. I remembered seeing it on a map as Thirty Mile Swamp. From what I could see of it, it was no kitchen-garden swamp, either, but a fibrous jungle of cypress and mangrove in brackish-looking water, the whole drearily festooned with Spanish moss. At the side of the road beside a shack a hand-painted sign said: AIRBOAT FOR HIRE
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I turned the Ford around and started back. Back at the edge of town again I turned north and began criss-crossing the side streets. Gradually I worked into higher ground and an improved residential area. I turned finally into a block-long street with only three houses on it. Big houses. Estates. I slowed down. This was what I needed. Property that needed to be kept up, and people with the money to pay for it. I drove around, and made notes on the edge of my newspaper.
When I’d accumulated half a dozen I headed back to the square and parked. I found a real estate office above the local five-and-dime and climbed the stairs with my paper under my arm. A young fellow hopped up from behind a desk as I entered. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt with a tie. Below the executive level in this latitude the short-sleeved white shirt is practically a uniform. Nobody wears a jacket, and after lunch the ties come off. Nobody is ever in a hurry.
“Yes, sir?” the boy said briskly. He had a nice smile. “Jed Raymond, sir. May I be of help?”
“Chet Arnold,” I said, and handed him one of my business cards. “I just came in to pick your brains.” I looked at my newspaper. “There’s a big white Georgian house up on Sand Rock Road and Jezebel Drive.” I looked at Jed Raymond. “Odd name for a street, that.”
“Old Mr. Landscombe named it, Mr. Arnold. They do say he had his reasons.” Jed Raymond looked up from his inspection of my card. “You want the tree work?” He shook his head doubtfully. “Mr. Landscombe died six months ago, and there’s an unholy dust-up about his will. Three sets of heirs suing each other. The estate’ll probably be in probate for years.” The boy had a soft drawl and a mournfully humorous smile. He had a bright, heart-shaped face under a ginger-colored crewcut. Any woman over thirty would have taken him to raise and be glad of the chance.
“Who’s the estate administrator?” I asked him. “He shouldn’t want the estate to run down.”
Raymond looked impressed. “I b’lieve it’s Judge Carberry.” He pronounced it “Cah’bry”. “If it’s not he’ll know who it is. You could have somethin’ there.”
I wrote the name down. “How about a fieldstone rancher up on University Place and Golden Hill Lane?”
“Belongs to Mr. Craig at the bank. His daddy used to be in the lumber business. So’d Roger Craig until he had a heart attack a while back. He came into the bank then. Guess his family owned most of it, anyway.”
I looked at the rest of my list and decided to skip them for the time being. A judge, and a banker. Better still, a banker who had been in the lumber business. These two looked like solid leads. If I could crack either one, I was in business in this town. “You know your real estate, son,” I told Jed Raymond. “Anything in the regulations says I can’t buy your lunch one of these days?”
“If I find anything I’ll get it amended,” he grinned. He tucked my business card into his shirt pocket. “I’ll keep this, if you don’t mind. I might hear of something for you.”
“Fine. I’m at the Lazy Susan now. If I change, I’ll let you know. You happen to have a detailed map of the area?”
He reached in a counter drawer and handed me a thickly folded-over packet. “This one’s even got the projected streets in the new development east of town.” He waved me off as I put my hand in my pocket. “Hope you do y’self some good locally, Mr. Arnold.”
I went back down the stairs to the street. I always carry two tool kits with me, a large one to work out of and a small one for show. I walked back to the Ford and got the small one out of the trunk. I tucked two double-bitted axes into the loops on either side of the chest. When a man formerly in the lumber business saw such a kit, I shouldn’t have too much trouble getting into his office.
I walked back up the street toward the bank.
CHAPTER 5
I WAS TWENTY-THREE when I killed my second man. Funny thing: it was in Ohio, too. Massillon. Five of us had flattened the bank on the northeast corner of the main intersection, but one of the boys got trigger-happy inside. In the getaway Nig Rosen and Duke Naylor were burned down in the street before we made it to the getaway car. A mile out of town I got a deputy in a cruiser trying to cut us off. Two days later the rest of us were flushed out of a farmhouse. Clem Powers was killed. Barney Pope and I were bagged.
Barney was an old lag. He knew he’d have long white whiskers before he made it outside again, if ever. Go for yourself, kid, he said to me as we stood in the farmyard with our hands in the air. I’ll back your play.
I’d left my gun inside beside Clem’s body. That scored the deputy to Clem. I told the mob scene that surrounded us I was a hitchhiker who’d been sleeping in the barn when the bandidos took over, and I stuck to it. True to his word, Barney backed me up. The police didn’t believe it, but the jury came close. The identification putting me inside the bank was fuzzy. The guilty verdict was lukewarm.
Even the judge was leaning. I had no rap sheet. They’d checked my prints from Hell to Hoboken, and they couldn’t even find a speeding charge. Two things licked me with the judge, finally. I wasn’t using my family name, of course, and the probation officer couldn’t get a line on me. The judge refused to believe I’d sprung full-blown from the earth age twenty-three without previous documentation of some kind. Also—and fatally—I could produce no visible means of support.
The judge cleared his throat and said three-to-five. I think he’d been considering probation. Barney Pope drew twenty-to-life. We weren’t tried for the deputy. They figured they had us cold on the bank job, and on the other there was a question of jurisdiction and identification. The local D.A. didn’t want to give up his own headlines by letting us go up on the other charge.
I hadn’t graduated overnight to a five man bank detail. Once I’d found out which end of a gun was which, I’d come up the ladder, from filling stations to theater box-offices to liquor stores—the whole bit. I worked alone until I met Nig Rosen. Nig talked me into the Massillon setup. I guess I was flattered. I was far and away the youngest of the five.
We worked four months on that job. I kept my mouth shut, and listened. Parts of it I didn’t like; instinctively, it seemed. Afterward I knew I was right. Complicated action with a bunch of hot sparks was no good. Even before we were hit I’d decided that what I wanted in the future was some kind of deal I could control myself.
In the can I had plenty of time to figure how it was going to be the next time. From the middle of my second year on, Doc Essegian was my cellmate. Everyone called him The Doctor. Maybe because he was such a wise old owl. I know he was no medical doctor.
The first three months he never even said good morning to me. Then I had a little trouble with one of the screws. When I came back from solitary, Doc laughed at me. “Don’t let it burn a hole in your gut, kid,” he advised me. “You’re even a better hater than I am, and that’s saying something.” After that he kind of took me over. “Life is the big machine, kid,” he’d growl at me in his after-lights-out rasp. “It chews you up and it spits you out. Don’t you ever forget it.”
He had the most completely acid outlook on life I’d ever run across. He really knew the score. He was consumptive to his toenails, but over the years he’d given them so much trouble inside they wouldn’t certify him for the prison hospital. Each day he systematically coughed up a little bit more of his lungs, and grinned and thumbed his nose. Don’t bother telling me it’s impossible for our prison authorities to function in any such cold-blooded manner. I was there.
If it hadn’t been for Doc I’d have applied for parole when I was eligible at the end of three years. Go ahead, if you can’t tough it out, he told me, but remember this: the minute you do it you’re the yo-yo on the end of the string. The least little thing they don’t like they twitch the line and back you come. Do the five, he urged me. Go out clean. Spit in their eye. Get a decent job, something you can’t do with a parole officer checking on you every time you turn around.
You’re young, Doc said to me. Develop something you can work at once in a while and show as a means of support when a prosecutor wants to put you over the jumps. Put in time on the job occasionally. Keep a name clean to work under, because when a judge hears no visible means of support, you’re gone.
I’d been there already, so I knew he was right. I had an even better reason for listening to him, though. The swag from the bank job had never been recovered. I knew where it was, and Barney Pope knew where it was. Nobody else. They’d about taken that farmhouse to pieces, but they hadn’t found it. At least not publicly. A man working alone could have tapped the till. That you never do know till you get back for a look.
The reason I was sure it hadn’t been found officially was that every three months I had a visit from the FBI. They always came in pairs, sharp boys, smooth dressers with faces like polished steel. I used to wonder if they came in pairs to eliminate the chance of my splitting with a single man after making a deal.
Not that I ever knocked down to them. I always insisted I was an innocent hitchhiker caught up in the middle of a police-bankrobber gunfight. They knew better, but they couldn’t crack me. Each time they came we’d go over the same tired old question-and-answer game about the whereabouts of the boodle. From me they got a big fat nothing.
I found out Doc was right the first time they came back after I was eligible for parole. They turned me upside down as to why I hadn’t applied. I told them I liked it where I was. That was the day I moved up to the top of their list. I knew right then that as the first pigeon out of the coop I was due to get a hell of a lot of their attention the second I hit the street. When I did I wanted it to be with as few strings as possible.
I did the bit. The day I walked out of that stinking hole I didn’t have to say mister to any man. And I’d made up my mind: I wasn’t going back. I didn’t care what it took to stay outside. I wasn’t going back.
An FBI tail picked me up at the front gate. I rode with it until he got to thinking it was a breeze. The second day I triple-doored him in a hotel lobby, and lost him.
Give the devil his due. With nothing to go on but persistence, they located me at the first two jobs I found. I wasn’t on parole, but I lost the jobs. They saw to that. I’ll leave it to you whether they didn’t want me working so I’d be driven back to the farmhouse and the swag.
I shook them for good finally by hitchhiking up into the Pacific Northwest and hooking on in a lumber camp. I never saw a town for a year and a half. The work damn near killed me at first, but I got to like it. When I came out of there I could handle a crosscut saw and a double-bitted axe with the best of them, and I could do things with a handgun people pay admission to see.
I drifted into tree work later on. It seemed a natural for part-time work, and for getting a close-up look at a few places I was interested in. Like banks. When I worked, I worked hard. If I couldn’t promote something for myself, I had no trouble at all catching on anywhere with a crew.
It was eight years before I went back for the Massillon boodle. I didn’t need the money—I’d had two good bank popovers almost back to back—but it seemed about time. The farmhouse was gone, the farm cut up into a sub-division. I had to buy a lot to do it, but I got the swag. The deed to that lot is still in a safety deposit box in the Riverman’s Trust Company in Cincinnati.
In the can nights I used to read before lights-out. At first it was at Doc’s insistence. Learn something, you lazy, illiterate slob, he’d say to me. He had two gods, the dictionary and the encyclopedia. I’d read aloud to him because he had incipient cataracts. He could have had them operated on, but I think he was afraid to let them work on him while he had any light left.
An encyclopedia article would start him talking. He’d been everywhere and seen everything, twice. There were no degrees from the school I attended, but I’d've had to be a complete jerk not to learn.
Doc had been a bank man himself. A blaster, of the old dynamite school. He had a lot of theories, but he wasn’t afraid to admit the world had personally passed him by. Forget the gangs, he’d say to me. Forget the big, involved jobs that hang up on the first weak link, because there’s always a weak link. Two good men is all it takes, he insisted. Smash them. Never let up on the pressure. Never take a backward step once you’re committed.
I listened, and I developed some theories of my own. I worked it out down to a few decimal points while I was up in the lumber camp getting the smell of the FBI blown off me. I divorced myself for all time from the vault-blowing jobs and the armored-truck jobs and the kidnapping-the-bank-manager-and-his-wife jobs. That was the hard way. A fast, clean operation: that’s what I wanted. Hit-and-run. Smash-and-grab. They’d get a look for a hundred fifty seconds, average, with the disadvantage of surprise.
