The Tiger Among Us

by Leigh Brackett

  "Well, didn't you look for him?" Noddy demanded.

  "Oh, sure. Next day or so, when he didn't come back. We couldn't find him, and nobody else seen him, either. We even asked the junkman where we take all our stuff. He never was there, this time."

  "You know what?" said Suby in a hushed voice. "I bet ol' Artie's lying in a ditch somewhere right now, stone-cold dead."

  "Aw, hell," said Noddy. "Sonofabitch owes me money. I'm gonna look for him."

  He got up and pulled me to my feet. "Come on, pal, we're gonna look for Artie. I'll get the flashlight out of the car."

  "Sure," said Suby. "Sure. Let's all go look for poor ol' Artie."

  We went straggling out in an uncertain line, among the tin cans and the empty jugs.

  "Hell with'm," muttered Jellyhead. But he came too, grumbling.

  We looked for Artie Clymer, in the hot night, with the thunder booming and the lightning flaring in the north, and people all over Mall's Ford watching television or going to the movies or sitting on their porches holding hands. I was looking for Artie Clymer in dank ditches choked with weeds and refuse, under stacks of railroad ties smelling strong and clean of creosote, beside the gravel bank where the highway ran, Route 422, where another man named Finelli had met his end on that same Saturday night.

  "What about these five guys?" asked Noddy. He was keeping close to me, giving me a hand now and then over the roughest spots. "You saw 'em, Suby. What were they like?"

  "I told you it was dark. I couldn't see what they looked like."

  "You said they were laughing?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, they were laughing. Give me the creeps, you know what I mean? Like they done an evil and was glad of it. Specially one of 'em. Haw, haw, haw—God! Like an animal."

  My insides were tight as a bowstring, but I kept my mouth shut and waited.

  "Five of 'em," said Noddy.

  "Yeah. But the four of 'em was picking on the other guy. At least it seemed that way."

  "Picking on him?"

  "You know, kind of hustling and pushing him around, like, and needling him. Now wait a minute, don't rush me. I'm thinking. One of 'em said something like, You wanta be on the top with us, or on the bottom like him? Something like that. Like they were threatening this guy."

  We had reached the entrance to the strip mine now, a blank mouth of desolation gaping in the night.

  Cotter said suddenly, "Hey, look at this."

  Noddy swung the beam of his flashlight over where Cotter was standing. We all moved together in a clump, looking down. There was a stand of stiff dead weed there, and mingled with it were a gunny sack and an old cloth cap.

  Suby sniffled. "Poor ol' Artie," he said. "That there's his own old cap, and the sack he took with nothin' in it."

  "Looks to me," said Cotter, "like he never made the strip mine."

  Noddy turned his head and said slowly, "I kind of think you're wrong, Cotter. I kind of think he did."

  Nature, in some localities, has provided shallow seams of coal, so that men with large machines can dig them quite easily from the surface. The machines tear up the trees and the grass, the sod and the topsoil, the clay and the gravel, and pile them in that order in little conical mountains ranged on either side of the seam, so that when they get through they have made a perfect miniature copy of a valley on the moon, and this is called a strip mine. They used to just go away and leave them when the coal was all dug. If you took the old shuttle flight from Mall's Ford to Pittsburgh you would fly, over a practically endless chain of these gray-white areas where no blade of grass could possibly ever grow until geological ages transformed the clay and gravel again into topsoil. Then I guess somebody got alarmed, and a law was passed. Now the machines have to level down the hills and fill the pits and replace the soil and seed it.

  In this particular mine the coal digging was finished and the leveling off had not begun.

  We went in over the broad access, past the rusty steel cable that kept cars out, past the Private Property—Keep Out signs and the Danger—No Trespassing signs. Me limping and four drunken scarecrows, with Noddy the only man among us that looked capable of dealing with anything, lurching and staggering in the fitful dark over the flint-hard beaten ruts of a million truck wheels, down the wide sloping valley between the conical peaks. A wind had begun to blow off the storm to the north. It lifted my hair and set my shin to flapping. It felt good but it made the darkness and the uncertain footing more confusing. Noddy's light stabbed here and there. A little way ahead I saw the gleam of water, one of those dank pits full of seepage and runoff that children sometimes drown themselves in. There were lumps of coal scattered underfoot, and occasionally a bit of broken iron or some other useless thing thrown away, treasure-trove, I suppose, to a man like Arnie Clymer.

  Noddy grunted suddenly and stopped. His flashlight steadied on a small object. Again we all clustered around and stared. This time it was a shoe.

  We found the mate to it perhaps ten feet farther on. The men swore they were Arnie's. He had picked them up out of a trash can, they said, and they were too big for him, so that they might easily have fallen off. Jellyhead started to pick them up, but Noddy stopped him.

  We went on, moving slower now, down the slope toward the pit. It was roughly square, perhaps forty feet across and Lord knew how deep. As deep as the coal pocket had been. It seemed awfully cold even on that hot night, the surface riffling very faintly in the wind, as though the lead-colored water was as heavy as it looked.

  "Look out!" said Noddy sharply. "Damn you, Sligh, you're tramping all over it. Move over. Yeah, you too. Now stand still a minute." He hunkered down, switching the light back and forth till he got an angle that suited him. "You see that, Sherris?"

  The ground was looser here close to the pit where the trucks had not pounded it down. There were marks in it, smoothed but not effaced by the wind. Sligh came and breathed on the back of my neck and we considered them together, with Suby and Cotter and Jellyhead bending over Noddy.

  "Something's been dragged," I said.

  The beam of the flashlight followed the marks, and our heads followed the light. On the very edge of the pit the dirt was churned and dented, as though by heels dug into it during a period of effort.

  "God," said Cotter almost gently. "Do you think——"

  Noddy grunted. "We better leave it right here." He straightened up. "Don't go no closer, you're liable to trample out some evidence."

  He made them go off to the side where the trucks had been, where nothing would show anyway. Then he and I started working our way back slowly, toward the entrance, treading as on eggshells, his flashlight twitching this way and that like the fading lightning. One of the men, perhaps it was Suby, seemed to be sobbing.

  We found what we were hunting for close to where that first shoe lay capsized in a rut, its broken sole turned to the sky. This was back on the flinty ground, but even so you could squint and find the scratches, the scrapes and gouges, the kicked-up pebbles.

  You could see another thing, now that you were expecting it. You could see a spattering of dark stains on the light yellow clay. They might have been spilled oil, but you knew they were not. Even at night you knew that.

  "Well," said Noddy at last, "let's go call 'em."

  "Call who?" asked Jellyhead.

  "The cops, stupid. Who the hell else?"

  "Cops," said Jellyhead. "Oh, no. I won't have no part of no cops."

  Noddy went over to him and took the front of his shirt in a bunch in one hand. He shook him, just once, very hard. Jellyhead did not protest. Noddy said slowly and distinctly so that they all could hear,

  "Artie Clymer's laying dead in that pit there. Somebody dragged him in here and beat him up and threw him in. That's murder. When there's a murder you got to call the cops."

  "I didn't have nothing to do with it," said Jellyhead, showing his teeth.

  "Well, you got something now," said Noddy. "Cotter, you got more sense than the others. You know how it'll l
ook if any of you guys run away. It'll look like you were maybe in on it. You keep 'em here till I get back and you got nothin' to worry about. Okay?"

  "Okay," said Cotter doubtfully.

  "You and your free wine," growled Jellyhead. "I knew there was a catch in it somewheres."

  Noddy gave him another shake. "You, Jellyhead," he said. "You're the stupidest sonofabitch in the whole damn jungle. Listen. I'll tell you something. If these guys that killed Artie ain't caught they'll be back after another sucker, and how do you know it won't be you laying under the cold water next time?"

  Jellyhead snorted and pulled himself free but he sat down on a rock at the edge of the truckway. The others, Suby and Sligh, were looking back at the glimmering pit, swaying slightly in the wind as they stood. Cotter was rubbing nervously at his chin, rasping the bristles and cursing almost inaudibly. Noddy looked at me.

  "Coming?"

  "No," I said. "I'll stay here."

  He seemed doubtful. "I can go faster without you," he said, "but I don't——"

  "I'll stay." I had a feeling our four scarecrows would melt away into the night if they weren't watched, in spite of Noddy's threats. I had my gun if I needed it. And I had done enough walking for a while.

  "There's a garage about a half a mile down the highway," said Noddy. "I can phone from there. It won't take long."

  He went off up the slope at a fast trot. I found myself a rock not too close to the one Jellyhead was sitting on. The wind had dropped and the storm was rumbling off toward the east. I lighted a cigarette and gave the rest of the pack to the others to shut them up and then I turned, like Suby, to look at the still water of the pit.

  I thought, That's what they did that night. That's why they had to kill Finelli.

  That's why Chuck tried to kill me, so that I wouldn't do what I have just, with Noddy's help, done.

  And they're just kids, I thought, my God. Just kids.

  I felt sick. The sour wine turned in my stomach and the smoke of the cigarette tasted bad. I threw it away.

  I wondered how it had happened. The boys had been pretty careful so far. They had not beaten any of the four other men as badly as they had me, and me they had tackled in hot blood, in anger and frustration. The others they had done with a certain restraint, a judicious knowledge of when to quit. Chuck had threatened to kill me that night in the garden, but it was only a threat, and he had a reason—if anybody ever has a reason. I was trying to get to him. Artie Clymer wasn't. Why did they kill him? For the fun of it? Or by accident, that almost inevitable accident that I remembered having mentioned once to Koleski?

  The air was hot again, stale and heavy now that the wind was gone. I sat hunched over on my rock, staring at the blank earth, and I thought I could see how it had been. The scuffling, the swaying back and forth, the blind minute of pleasure as old and dark and primitive as night, and then the sudden silence. One blow too hard, one blow too many, and now it was not pleasure, it was death. I thought I could see that swift flare of panic and then the hurried frantic effort to hide what had been done, to cover it up and go away, pretending it had never happened.

  And then they had realized they were followed, and not all the lies in world would do them any good.

  The journey begins with a single step, but once you have taken it you can't turn back, and every precipice you come to is steeper and darker and more cruel than the last one, but you can't turn back.

  I wondered where Chuck's next precipice would be.

  16

  AN hour later the place was swarming with people and Artie Clymer was getting more attention than he ever had when he was living. Floodlights had been set up. Areas of dirt had been carefully fenced off and men were busy at them with cameras and scrapers and moulage kits. Another crew, grotesque fishermen beside a ghastly pond, were casting grapnels into the water, and drawing them, and moving, and casting again.

  Koleski was standing beside me with Hartigan. He was smoking and looking blue, and I didn't blame him. This call had dragged him from a pleasant date with his girl and it was nothing to exchange for it. Hartigan was grumpy too. He'd been home with his family. There was a man from Homicide down by the pit, talking to the lab men. There was also a man from Juvenile. The boys between them were spreading out now to involve the whole police department.

  "They haven't found anything yet," I said, looking at the crew with the grappling hooks.

  "They just started. Give them time," Koleski said.

  "Suppose they don't? I mean— suppose we're wrong."

  "There's something in there. Chances are it's a body," Koleski threw down his cigarette and stepped on it, although there was nothing in this place to burn. "They may not find it for hours. No reason for you to hang around anyway. I'll let you know."

  "Yes," I said. "Noddy'll be back with the car in a minute. That's what I'm waiting for."

  The man from Homicide came up. His name was Quinn. He was older than Koleski and harder-looking, a short dark powerful man with grizzled patches over his ears.

  "They got a couple of fair heel-prints," he said. "Might be useful. Good thing it hasn't rained since Saturday."

  He looked at me. "All the signs point to it, mister, and if we do turn up a body I'd like to talk to you myself. There's a lot of background on this case I don't savvy yet."

  "There's a lot of it we don't savvy either," said Koleski. "It's one of those damn senseless things. No motive. Well, obviously there's a motive, but you know what I mean. No reason to it. And no witnesses. Not one single loving witness. They like it dark and they like it quiet and so far they've been luckier than they deserve." He added with cynical impatience, "Assuming of course that the same gang did this."

  "You heard Suby's story?" I asked. "About meeting them in the freight yard?"

  "I did. I believe it. I believe they probably killed this tramp—what's his name, Artie something?—and tossed his body in the hole to hide it. I believe that Finelli either saw them do it, or more likely saw them come in here, or come out, or both, but in any case would have been able to place them here definitely at that time, and would certainly have investigated to see what they were up to if he didn't already know. I believe they spotted him and ran him off the road. And all that means, of course, that I believe he was trailing Everett Bush, and that therefore Bush is one of the gang."

  He shrugged. "Maybe Quinn can prove it. I haven't been able to get a handhold anywhere."

  "But this is different," I said. "You can question the Bush boy now, can't you?"

  "Sure," said Koleski. "We can question him. We will question him. And if he's got sense enough to keep his mouth shut, we haven't got a thing on him and you're liable to get sued for hounding him with a detective."

  "You sound kind of defeated, pal," said Quinn, grinning.

  "I hoped it wouldn't come to this," Koleski said.

  We looked for a moment without speaking at the glaring lights and the neat efficient bustle of men working at the business of murder.

  "Yeah," said Quinn. "I know what you mean. Kids. It's nasty."

  "Something new around here," said Hartigan. "That's big city stuff. Mall's Ford must be growing."

  Koleski shook his head. "I don't think this has anything to do with towns or cities or even much to do with juvenile delinquency. This is a matter of the individual."

  "It always is, isn't it?" said Quinn. "When you come right down to it. I mean, it's the individual neck that gets stretched."

  I shivered. Suddenly I was afraid I wouldn't get out of there before they found the body and I had an idea I might do something disgraceful like vomiting in front of these policemen. I had never met Artie Clymer and I didn't want to meet him now. His old pals of the can-gang were gone, an unhappy crew being ridden down to Headquarters for interrogation, and not much cheered by Noddy's promises of free jugs. I was glad when I saw Noddy's gaudy shirt in the distance, coming my way.

  I made sure Koleski had the address and phone number. He seemed relieved
that we had abandoned our house for the time being.

  "The regular patrols are keeping an eye on your place, in case somebody shows up there. But I'd feel better with you somewhere else, that's for sure. Particularly after this business breaks in the news. This is probably exactly what Chuck was afraid of."

  "By that time," I said, "we may have Chuck where we want him."

  "I hope so," said Koleski, without any conviction. "Anyway, Walt, just go on home to bed and don't do us any more favors tonight. Huh?"

  "I promise."

  Koleski shook his head. "I hate to see you coming. And it's too bad. I think I'd have liked you if I'd met you any other way."

  "Sorry," I said. We shook hands, and I said good night to Hartigan and to Quinn, who looked as sharp as an old dog fox. I went off with Noddy.

  I was glad to get into the car and rest after bucketing around over all that rough ground and perching on stones. We passed the curve where Finelli went off. There was a tree broken short where his car had hit it, the sharp stump still white and new. In daylight you would see a long sliding scar down the steep bank to the bottom. Noddy said, "I could use a couple shots myself. How about you?"

  "No more of that vino. Gah!"

  "Were you drinking that stuff? I told you."

  "Yeah. Well, your hunch paid off. Hadn't been for you, they'd probably never have found Artie Clymer."

  Noddy grunted. He drove for a while without speaking. Then he said, "Artie was no-good. All those guys are no-good. I don't love 'em. But this is wrong. You know? It ain't natural. Now if Jellyhead or Cotter had knocked his brains in over a bottle of booze or a dollar's worth of scrap iron, I wouldn't turn a hand. But this ain't natural."