The Streamliner slid away, picking up speed with each yard out of Honda. Every glance in town watched it go. Then all the heads turned back in unison, to view the man the train had left behind.
He was a big man, bulky. His clothes looked rumpled and well worn. Towering over the excited Hastings, the man hefted his large, black Gladstone bag with an ease that matched his size.
Hastings’s voice was shrill; it carried across the quiet morning: “You for Honda?”
“That’s right,” said the big man. He didn’t look at Hastings. He was gazing at the town with a pair of calm, untroubled, brown eyes. There was nothing shrewd nor speculative about his gaze, but it seemed to record every feature of Honda with the emotionless efficiency of a camera.
“But there must be some mistake!” Hastings spluttered, disbelief in his tone. “I’m the agent here! Nobody told me about this! Nobody wired me the liner was stopping!”
The big man looked at Hastings, then, and smiled. He said again, softly and amused, “That’s right.”
Hastings sucked in his breath noisily and swallowed. “You being met?” he asked. “You visiting folks here?”
“No.”
The monosyllable was so casually dropped that Hastings wasn’t sure he’d heard it. “No?” he repeated.
The stranger nodded toward a two-story frame building that had a sign hanging vertically down one corner, with the single word, HOTEL. “That’s for me,” he said, and started for it.
Hastings followed him across the dust of the street, up the steps, and into the hotel. The slap of the screen door closing seemed to stir Honda into action. Liz Brooks turned and walked briskly around the corner of her garage. Papa Delvecchio herded his daughter back into the grocery store.
* * *
—
In front of Sullivan’s, the loungers could hear the jangle of a telephone bell as Sullivan cranked for a connection. The bar’s big Saturday trade came from the ranches, and its owner would make sure that they were informed. The loungers stirred uneasily and looked at one another.
Doc Velie brought out his knife and cut a chew off his tobacco plug. He said, munching, “Walks light for a big man.”
They knew that much themselves. A voice asked, low and quick, “What do you think, Doc?”
“How should I know?” Doc Velie answered. “He ain’t no salesman, that’s sure. Not off the Streamliner.” He laughed, a harsh, dry sound without mirth, and jabbed the point of his knife into a pillar of the porch. “Why ask me? It’s no hair off my chest, whoever he is!”
A slender, wiry man in a faded blue shirt and jeans came out of the shoemaker’s. He stood a moment in the street, smoking, and looked at the loungers. The face under a dust-colored hat was thin and tanned, and his hands were the same. He stood motionless, except for the wisp of smoke from the cigarette between his lips, and the loungers were silent. Not even Doc Velie spoke.
Snapping his cigarette away, the slender man climbed into a light truck and kicked its motor awake. He swung the truck in a smooth, competent U-turn and drove out of town.
Doc Velie spat tobacco at the settling dust. “Ask him,” he said. “Ask Lancey Horn. See what it gets you.” Again the sharp laughter rattled.
The sun climbed higher, and the shadows of Honda shortened as they always did. It was hot, the dry, breathless furnace heat that Honda expected at midday. But this day was different. Doc Velie shuffled into Sullivan’s before his usual time, and the others followed. They stood along the bar, talking quietly, drinking. Sullivan, a small, dark Irishman with a tight mouth, served his customers swiftly and said nothing. The whole room was waiting. But when Hastings came they learned only how the big man had registered:
Peter Macreedy, Chicago.
The name passed from lip to lip. No man recognized it. Sullivan slipped under his bar, went into his back room where the phone was, and shut the door. They all watched when he came back. Sullivan shook his head. The name meant nothing on the range, either.
Doc Velie tossed down a drink and slammed his glass on the bar. “He ain’t no cattle buyer, then! Not if Circle T don’t know his name!” He stopped, staring at Sullivan.
Hands on the bar propping him higher, Sullivan was on tiptoe, looking over their heads into the street. Through the window, Macreedy’s bulk was plain.
The big man was sauntering along easily, hands in his pockets, his feet stirring the dust. As he passed Sullivan’s, he glanced at the row of faces behind the window, and smiled. Macreedy went on down the street, not hurrying, and turned into the garage.
There was no one there. The gas pump in the doorway seemed to droop beneath the sun. Macreedy leaned into the car that was over the grease pit, and put his thumb on its horn. The sound was sudden and raucous.
It brought Liz Brooks from her house behind the garage. She came out to the front, walking with a long, man’s stride, saw Macreedy, and checked herself. She was a tall girl, and she carried herself well. Even the stained coverall she wore only accented the curves of her figure.
Macreedy said, “Lady at the hotel—Mrs. Jiminez. She says you rent cars.”
Liz brushed a strand of black hair off her forehead, as if to see him more clearly. “Sometimes,” she said.
“This one of the times?”
“Maybe.”
They were facing, standing apart like duelists, trying to find the range with each quiet sentence.
Macreedy moved closer. Both his manner and his voice were bland. “I need this car,” he said, “for a trip. To a place called Adobe Wells.”
The girl’s face didn’t change, but she couldn’t keep a crisp note from her tone. “Why are you going there?” she asked.
“I have to,” said Macreedy simply.
Frowning, Liz said, “There’s nothing at the Wells.” She waited for Macreedy to speak, but he just looked at her. Her next words had an edge: “Nothing and nobody!” Again she stopped, and again the big man outwaited her, his silence forcing her into speech: “What are you after, anyway?”
“A car,” Macreedy said.
* * *
—
Liz Brooks took a deep breath, and tightened her lips over it. She turned toward a battered station wagon. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll drive you myself.” It sounded like a challenge.
Macreedy nodded, followed her, and got into the car. He watched while the girl backed the station wagon out into the street, and glanced once through the rear window. If he noticed the crowd staring from Sullivan’s, he said nothing. They were away from the town, dragging a curtain of dust behind them, when Macreedy unfolded a map on his lap.
“I won’t get lost!” said Liz Brooks savagely. She drove faster, looking straight ahead, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Rocking on the seat beside her, Macreedy watched the landscape. He tilted his hat forward to shield his eyes from the glare.
The road paralleled the railroad tracks, and then swung away in a wide curve around the shoulder of the bluff behind Honda. After that they were on the plain for miles, the vast flatland slipping away beneath them. Nothing grew higher than a fence post, and only a few cattle moved.
Liz turned off the main road and bounced toward what looked like a low cloud on the horizon. They sped on. The floorboards under Macreedy’s feet became uncomfortably hot. Suddenly, the cloud ahead was a jumble of low hills. Macreedy counted them. There were four, tumbled together like carelessly piled grain sacks. In the white glare, each stood clearly etched, as if cut from cardboard, baked into the sepia of the country.
Adobe Wells was a pocket between two of the hills. A barbed-wire fence still stretched across the pocket, but its open gate hung listlessly by one hinge. Liz Brooks steered the station wagon through the gateway and braked abruptly beneath two shadeless, twisted trees.
“Here!” She practically barked the word.
Macreedy grunted, and got out of the car. Turning his body in a complete circle, he looked the place over. He gazed up at the hills, along the line of the fence. Only when his circuit was completed did the big man turn his attention to what had been buildings.
Two adobe walls maintained a right angle, but their fellows had crumbled. Inside the angle lay a mass of charred and blackened timbers. Behind this ruin, scattered dark patches on the rank brown grass showed that fire had taken to the outbuildings, too.
Beside Macreedy, Liz Brooks glared up at him. “I told you,” she said. “There’s nothing here! Nothing!”
“Since?”
“Not for years!”
* * *
—
The loud twang of metal on metal startled them. There was the high whine of a ricochet, and then, from the hills, the flat slap of a rifle.
Macreedy moved fast. He took one step, hooked a leg behind Liz’s knees, deftly shouldered her over, and fell on top of her. They were on the ground before the station wagon’s bullet-scarred fender stopped quivering.
“Stay down,” said Macreedy. The girl twisted beneath him, and he pushed her flat, holding her there with a hand on her shoulder, his arm rigid. He took a quick look at the fender, and relaxed. “It’s all right. He’s on the other side of the car.” He rolled away from Liz, and rose to a crouch, balancing on one fist like a football player. Macreedy’s other hand held a gun, a square black automatic, compact and heavy.
Liz Brooks, prone, watched, her face white and tense. But it was the paleness of anger, not fear. With sudden violence, she pounded her fist against the ground. “Fool!” she muttered. “Fool!”
“Who is?” asked Macreedy. Then, as she whirled herself to a sitting position, he said sharply, “Watch it! Down!”
“He wasn’t shooting at me! And it was only a warning, anyway!” The girl’s eyes were scornful. “You’re too big a target to miss, if a man was trying.”
“Maybe,” agreed Macreedy, smiling. But he watched the hills for a long time through the car’s windows, before he nodded. He helped Liz Brooks to her feet, noticed her glance at his automatic, and slid it back under his arm. “Habit, I guess. At his range I might just as well have thrown it at him.”
“Now will you go away?” asked Liz. “There’s nothing here!”
“Nothing?” Macreedy’s finger stroked the furrow in the fender. “Somebody doesn’t agree with you.” His head turned in a slow, deliberate survey. Shrugging, he climbed back into the car. “Let’s go.”
They drove back in silence. Once, on the flatlands, Macreedy spoke. “That gun of mine,” he said. “It’s a Beretta. Italian make. You might mention it around Honda. I’m not fond of people shooting at me.” Getting no reply, he sighed, settled himself more comfortably, and dozed.
Alongside the railroad tracks a car honked and swept past them. Liz Brooks said, “Circle T. The range is coming in.”
“That’s nice,” said Macreedy tonelessly.
The sun was lower in the sky when they came back into Honda, but it was still the same pale, yellow disk. Along the street there were more cars parked, and even a saddled horse drooped in front of Sullivan’s. Four men watching Papa Delvecchio water his vegetables stopped talking and stared at the station wagon. When Liz Brooks skidded to a stop before the hotel, a puncher in a parked sedan touched his horn twice.
Macreedy got out of the station wagon, looked at the puncher calmly, smiled. The girl shook her head impatiently, then said, gazing at Honda, “Look. Whatever you’re starting, drop it. You can’t ride these folks too long.”
“I’m not,” Macreedy said. “They’re riding themselves.” He paid Liz and mopped his face. After the wind of motion the heat was stifling. He went into the hotel.
* * *
—
Three men were waiting in Mrs. Jiminez’s dining room. They rose from behind an oil-cloth-covered table when Macreedy entered. The biggest of the three wore a seersucker suit and a bow tie. Except for his low-crowned Stetson he might have been a Midwestern banker.
“You’re Macreedy,” he said, without preamble. “I’m Coogan Trimble.”
“Circle T.” Macreedy nodded.
Trimble introduced the others: “Mort Lane, of the 31 spread. Randy Cameron. He manages Rancho Mesa.”
Lane was a square, stocky man with short bowed legs. Cameron, lanky, had a lean, shrewd face. They were both coatless, wearing clean white shirts.
Macreedy said, “Pleasure.” He drew a chair out and sat down. He waited, smiling, attentive. Trimble took a place across the table. The two ranchers stood behind the Circle T owner’s chair.
* * *
—
Trimble spoke with the easy assurance of a man to whom people listened. He grinned, teeth very white against sunburned skin, and said, “I’m a frank man, Macreedy. Your arrival was kind of a surprise to Honda. We welcome you.” The grin flashed again. “But we’re curious. What brought you here?”
“Business.”
“Fine. Just what kind?”
“Mine.”
The word hung in the quiet room. Color slowly rose behind the bronze of Trimble’s face. His grin stiffened, and disappeared. “We’re not sitting in on your game,” he said evenly. “But we all have a stake in what happens around here.”
“Sure.” Macreedy glanced at each of the three in turn. “I know. Big outfits. It’d be pretty hard to burn those out.”
Lane sucked his breath, audibly. Cameron’s voice was flat, uninterested; the tone of a dealer calling the cards. He said, distinctly, “Adobe Wells.”
“Your trail’s cold,” Trimble said. “Why not let it lie? What happened, happened. You can’t prove anything, anyway.”
“What is there to prove?” asked Macreedy.
“An old Jap squatter!” Lane spat the sentence out as if it tasted bitter.
“Born in the United States,” Macreedy said.
“Was he?” Trimble shrugged. “I never knew that. God knows what brought him to this part of the country.”
Macreedy said, “I know that, too. He didn’t like the talk on the Coast. Too much Emperor routine. He drifted this way. To be let alone.”
Trimble’s face was blank. “You’re well informed.”
“Except about the finish.”
“About that.” The rancher rubbed his chin. “I’m not saying it should have happened, Macreedy. But you know how folks felt after Pearl Harbor. And it was Sunday, and the boys were liquored up.”
“So.”
Trimble laid his palms flat on the table and leaned forward. “Maybe some of those boys rode for me. Maybe not. Nobody knows for sure. If they did, I’ll stand behind them.”
Lane and Cameron nodded in unison.
“Other places,” said Trimble, not pausing, “settled it other ways. Camps. Things like that. We only had the one. We ran him out. Burned him out. That’s all.”
“You don’t know that’s all,” said Macreedy.
“Oh, yes, I do,” Trimble said. “That’s the story I’m taking. And it’s all anybody’s going to know. The old man lived alone. There’d been some kids, but they went away years ago. Maybe a little arson spurred the old man into leaving, but that’s all anybody can say.”
Macreedy smiled. “Or wants to.”
“Or wants to.” Trimble rose, pushing back his chair. “We’ve played fair, Macreedy. You’ve got your story. Take it, and run along. There are others around here who might not just talk.”
“Lancey Horn, for one,” said Cameron, in his quiet, unaccented voice. “Liz Brooks threw him over on account of this thing.”
Macreedy looked at him, not speaking. Cameron met the gaze steadily.
“You’re sticking?” asked Trimble.
“I’m sticking.”
“Why? What’s your stake in this?
What’ll it get you?”
“There are reasons,” said Macreedy.
With a snort, Trimble turned and pushed his way through the other two to the door. There he swung around. “One thing. Are you from the government?”
“No.” Macreedy shook his head. He watched them go, not moving until he heard the screen door shut behind them. He took out a cigarette, and lit it. The tiny match flame was doubled in eyes that were cold and hard.
Not many customers came in for supper. Those who did, ate hurriedly, talking low, ignoring the big man alone at his table. Macreedy gave all his attention to his meal.
When he had finished he sat on the hotel’s porch for a while. In the clear brightness of the moonlight, Honda’s street was less shabby than by day. Overhead were countless stars; the street itself was splashed with streams of light from doors and windows. Voices, and the loud music of a jukebox, made Sullivan’s neon sign unnecessary. Beneath it, in the shadows, several red dots showed where men smoked. Two punchers, coming out of the hotel, swerved away from Macreedy’s bulk and hurried toward Sullivan’s. A voice carried back through the quiet: “Yeah. That’s the guy.” Macreedy smiled into the night, stretched, and went to bed.
Most of Honda stayed up late. Even the light in the back of Papa Delvecchio’s store didn’t go out until after midnight. Sullivan’s was packed and busy. But the jukebox music couldn’t drown the uneasy note in men’s laughter, and the arguments at the poker table were sudden and frequent. Doc Velie, drunk, started the only fight, a quick flurry of punches that ended with Doc’s being carried out to sleep it off. When Sullivan’s finally closed, men hung about the street, reluctant to go home. And in the back room a select few waited with Coogan Trimble for a phone call he had put through to Chicago.
By the time Macreedy came down for breakfast, everyone in Honda knew the result of that phone call. Mrs. Jiminez, knowing, served him nervously. The big man had been a cop. Very much a cop. A boss one, they said. Mrs. Jiminez spilled the coffee. This Macreedy had been laid off since the war’s start, but who could be certain of anything with cops, except they were always bad luck?
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 21
