by James Ross
‘You might die.’
‘I don’t feel like it,’ Smut said. ‘If I do you come to see me in the hospital and on my deathbed I’ll tell you where the money is.’
‘You might die accidentally and not live long enough to tell me.’
‘Listen,’ Smut said, ‘if it’ll make you satisfied I’ll take out some insurance and make it over to you. I’ll get about a thousand dollars’ worth and I’ll get one with a double-indemnity thing in it. That way, if I croak right sudden, you’ll get your money, and I hope you have a hell of a good time spending it.’
‘If you skipped out the insurance wouldn’t do me any good,’ I said. I knew about how much insurance he was going to take out, anyway.
‘Don’t worry,’ Smut said. ‘Business is getting too good for me to run off. I aim to stay right here and have some fun. The situation around Corinth is beginning to look pretty good to me.’
Smut got up then and went out to the gas tanks, where Dick Pittman was using the water hose and cleaning things up.
Just then Sam Hall came in with the mail and I sorted it out. Most of it was letters and bills that were for Smut, so I stuck them over on the shelf where we kept the wine bottles and I commenced reading the Corinth Enterprise. Fletch Monroe hadn’t put out an issue for about two weeks, and he tried to make up for it by getting out a fat one. I read through most of the paper and there was a lot about Bert Ford. I wished Fletch would forget that. In the society column it said that Mrs. Charles Fisher left Tuesday for Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a two-weeks stay. A little farther down in the column there was something else: ‘Mr. Charles Fisher left town Monday for a business trip to New York and Boston. He will be away for about ten days.’
I wondered why they took opposite directions, but about that time Smut and the Schlitz man come in. I pointed to the mail and Smut took it. Then I went back with the Schlitz man and we checked up on the beer.
13
AFTER SMUT REFUSED to give me my fifteen hundred dollars right then, I began thinking. I began to doubt if he was ever going to give me one dollar of it, let alone fifteen hundred. Every time I thought about that fifteen-hundred-dollar offer I boiled over. A murder’s a bad thing. Here I was mixed up in one and it looked like experience was all I was going to get out of it.
Smut said he wasn’t worrying about the sheriff; the evidence was gone and there wasn’t anything for anybody to work on. But I had an idea that the sheriff would stick to the case till the cows came home. He had to. I think they paid the sheriff a salary of three thousand dollars a year. Besides that he got another thousand out of fees, and at least that much out of his graft. Five thousand dollars is big money around Corinth. Sheriff Pemberton knew that as well as anybody. If he let Bert Ford’s disappearance go by without even making an arrest it would probably be his job. No doubt he would try hard to find out what became of Bert. But when it turned out to be a cold trail I knew he’d pinch somebody anyway, later on, when he got desperate, and nominate whoever he pinched for the murderer. The man he nominated had a good chance of getting the seat of his pants warmed in the chair at Raleigh. The sheriff would work it through his deputies. They were named John Little and Brock Boone. John Little was about six feet one and I guess he weighed two hundred; Brock Boone was six feet and weighed two-fifty. Either one of them could wring a confession out of a mule.
The sheriff didn’t come out again until after the first of March. It was in the afternoon when he came. He drove up in front of the roadhouse and got out of his car. I was over in the dance hall, dusting off the booths. I knew Smut was on the other side and I decided I would let him handle the sheriff by himself. I took my dust cloth and went back into the crap-shooting quarters and started dusting around in there.
It wasn’t two minutes before I heard somebody come into the dance hall. I started to look out the door, but just then I heard the sheriff say: ‘Can’t we go back in the little room? I don’t want anybody to hear us.’
‘There’s no use of going back there,’ I heard Smut Milligan say. ‘Nobody’ll bother us out here.’ I guess Smut didn’t want the sheriff prying around in that room. He might not be interested in what was back there, then again he might be.
I eased up against the wall, out of sight. I heard them slide into a booth. Then somebody striking a match against the sandpapered side of a matchbox.
‘What’s on your mind, sheriff?’ Smut asked. I could hear him so well that I knew he was in the booth next to the wall where I was standing.
‘It’s about Bert Ford,’ the sheriff said. ‘I’m up a tree on that. I finally located his daddy’s sister—she’s the only close relative I been able to find. She lives in Selma, Alabama, but she can’t throw any light on where Bert might be. Said she hadn’t seen him in twenty-five years.’
One of them got up then. I heard something sliding across the floor, and it must have been that the sheriff got up and kicked a spittoon across the floor and placed it under the booth where he was sitting, because I heard him spit plenty after that.
‘He’s been murdered, Milligan,’ the sheriff said. ‘I can’t prove it, but I know as well as I’m sitting here that he was murdered.’
‘Do you think I murdered him?’ Smut asked. He sounded calm and easy.
‘No. Whoever did it, did it for his money. The way you make money out here you wouldn’t need to do that,’ the sheriff said.
Somebody commenced drumming their fingers on the table. I guess it was Smut.
‘Just what’s the point of coming out here and cross-examining me so much?’ Smut said. ‘I didn’t know him so well. I never paid much attention to him.’
‘Milligan,’ the sheriff said, ‘my belief is that it was somebody that used to hang around here that killed him. Somebody that had played poker with him, or had watched him play poker, and knew he toted plenty of money on him. Wilbur Brannon tells me that Bert used to lug around pretty big sums of money.’
‘I’ve seen him pull out a good-sized roll, all right,’ Smut admitted.
‘How much you pay these boys that work for you?’ the sheriff asked.
‘Why, not much,’ Smut said.
‘Exactly how much you paying each one?’
‘Well, I pay Jack fifty dollars a month,’ Smut said. ‘I pay Rufus twenty-five bucks a month and Johnny twenty. I don’t pay the others any regular wage. I let them have what tips they can pick up, and what they eat. Course I furnish them a place to sleep and give them something out of the cash register now and then.’
‘About how much does this money you give them amount to in a month?’
‘I probably give them ten dollars a month each,’ Smut said. ‘You don’t think one of them did it, do you?’
‘I’m not saying what I think,’ the sheriff said. ‘How come you pay Jack so much more than you do the rest of them? He got something on you?’
‘He’s the only one that’s got any sense,’ Smut said. ‘He can run the joint if I ain’t here.’
‘Milligan, I got to find out who murdered Bert Ford,’ the sheriff said. ‘I know he’s been murdered. The taxpayers think so too. If I don’t do something about it the Party ain’t going to renominate me in June.’
‘That’s tough,’ Smut said. ‘I aim to vote for you, sheriff, and I’ll see to it that the boys that work for me do the same. I’m going to make my usual contribution to the campaign fund too, in a couple of weeks. But I got to draw the line somewhere. I can’t furnish you with the murderer.’
‘Oh, I’m not trying to accuse any of your boys. I’m just asking you to try and remember if you ever noticed anybody watching Bert Ford. Anybody that got up and left here right after he left that last time he was out.’
‘The last time I saw him wasn’t the last time he was seen alive,’ Smut said. ‘It was back in January and I don’t remember much about it. If I had known that it would be the last time I was to see him I would have noticed closer, but I can’t see into the future.’
‘Milligan, I want you t
o work with me on this case,’ the sheriff said. ‘I want your co-operation. I know you been running a gambling-house out here all along. I reckon you sell plenty of liquor too; if you don’t, it ain’t my fault. I notice you got some tourist cabins out here, and sometimes those things are used for something other than sleeping.’
‘What you driving at, sheriff?’ Smut Milligan asked.
‘You do a little remembering for me and I’ll do plenty of forgetting for you,’ the sheriff said.
‘You got a good offer there,’ Smut said, ‘but I tell you there just ain’t anything to remember.’
‘Listen, Milligan, I’ll work on this awhile longer and then I’ll be back to see you,’ the sheriff said. ‘But I got to have the murderer. We going to have a primary in June, you know. The voters have got to have a trial before then.’
‘Listen, sheriff,’ Smut said. ‘Maybe it was somebody that used to know Bert when he was away from here. Somebody that had a grudge against him and followed him here and killed him. Maybe it was an outside job.’
‘What’d they do with the body?’ the sheriff asked.
‘Probably carried that with them and made way with it later,’ Smut said.
‘I don’t swallow that theory,’ the sheriff said. ‘I believe it was local talent that done it. I believe they were robbing him and got surprised and killed him. My idea is that they weighted down his body and threw it in the river. The catfish would get rid of the evidence in a short time.’
‘You mean he had money hid around his place and they were taking that?’ Smut said.
‘That’s right,’ the sheriff said. ‘Plenty of folks say that Bert had money buried. I’ve combed his place with a fine-tooth comb and I ain’t found a dime.’
‘I don’t believe he had any money,’ Smut said. ‘That was mainly nigger talk.’
‘Maybe it was. But I know one thing: there was a hole dug under one of his bee-gums, for no reason that I could see. Just under one bee-gum. Here’s something I found right close to the bee-gum.’
Something tinkled on the table.
‘A shell!’ Smut Milligan said.
‘It might be the shell that killed Bert Ford,’ the sheriff said. ‘If I can find the gun that the shell was fired from, then I got something. The shell’s a thirty-eight.’
‘There’s a lot of thirty-eight-caliber pistols in North Carolina,’ Smut said.
‘No doubt,’ the sheriff said. ‘Now call back, Milligan. Sometimes in poker games the boys get a little sore with each other and pull out their guns and all. I wonder if you ever noticed anything like that happen out here.’
‘I never noticed any pistol-pulling out here,’ Smut said. ‘Anyway, I can’t tell the caliber of a gun by looking at the outside of it.’
‘Nobody else,’ the sheriff said. ‘You never noticed anybody that was toting a gun out here?’
‘Hell, yes. Plenty of fellows. Bert toted one himself; most of the time. Like he was afraid of something.’
‘I haven’t found one around his place,’ the sheriff said.
‘Maybe it was on him when he was killed—if he was killed,’ Smut said.
‘Maybe it was. By the way,’ the sheriff said, ‘don’t you and Jack McDonald stay in the same cabin?’
‘What about it?’ Smut said.
‘That week in January. Think back, now; did Jack go out all night that you remember?’
‘I don’t remember it,’ Smut said. ‘Sometimes I stay out just about all night myself. He could have slipped out one of those nights.’
‘I ain’t trying to probe your private affairs, but what do you do when you stay out all night?’ the sheriff asked.
‘I get a little jellyroll if the moon’s right,’ Smut said.
‘Jack couldn’t get hold of a car, though, if you were out, could he?’ the sheriff asked.
‘Not handy,’ Smut said.
I heard somebody get up then.
‘I got to go,’ the sheriff said. ‘If you notice any thirty-eights, you keep it in mind and let me know.’
‘Why don’t you talk to his neighbors?’ Smut said.
‘I have. They all got airtight alibis,’ the sheriff said.
Smut said something that I didn’t quite catch and they went on out of the room.
14
I WAITED THERE in the little room until the sheriff had gone. Then I went out the back door and down to our cabin. I sat down on the bed there and tried to think what to do next.
Smut and the sheriff had just mentioned my name in a casual way, but any sort of mention at that time was not what I wanted. It was clear to me that I had been right about Sheriff Pemberton. He was hunting a goat for the murder. His being so sure that Bert had been murdered sounded a little queer to me, but then that was what everybody thought. I sat there thinking about it and I wanted to get out right then, but I needed some cash to do it. Since Smut refused to give me any money I decided to find it and take it.
I was just trying to figure out where to look first when Smut came into the cabin. He was whistling and looked like he felt pretty good. He sat down on the edge of his bed and commenced taking off his shoes.
‘Think I’ll take a nap, Jack,’ he said. ‘Liable to have a big night tonight and I’ll probably need all my energy. I got to relax awhile now and be prepared for tonight.’
‘Didn’t I see the sheriff’s car leave just now?’ I asked.
‘I guess you did. He was out for a few minutes,’ Smut said.
‘What’d he want?’
‘Was just checking up on who all used to play poker with Bert Ford.’
‘Was that all?’
‘That was all. I gave him a few evasive answers and he was satisfied and went back to town.’
‘I don’t like him coming out here so much,’ I said.
‘It’s nothing,’ Smut said. He flopped back on the bed and closed his eyes. I got up and went out of the cabin and up to the roadhouse.
Badeye was sitting at the cash register when I walked inside, but in a minute he went into the kitchen to take a shot. He was drinking that day. Dick was back of the cabins, working on the old car that Sam Hall had just bought. I was alone in the road-house when a car drove up outside and honked for curb service.
It was Lola Fisher in a new roadster. This time it was a Chrysler. It was a bright red one, trimmed with black. I reckon she had to have a new car because it was springtime. She had pulled up against the side of the roadhouse. I walked outside and over to where she was.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Did you blow for something?’
Lola opened the door and got out. ‘I’ve got a flat tire,’ she said. ‘You fix flats, don’t you?’
I nodded my head. ‘Which one is it?’ I asked.
She walked around to the front of the car and kicked against the right tire. ‘This one,’ she said, and pointed down at it with her finger.
Lola looked good that afternoon. Back then most of the girls in Corinth went in strong for a new sort of hair-do; they rolled it up in a knot, like washwomen. But Lola’s hair was riding in the breeze. It went back and sort of flowed around her shoulders. I remember she had on a white slipover sweater that day, and a dark red skirt. Looking at her, you got to thinking that her husband was a lucky fellow.
After I took a thorough look at Lola I looked down at the tire. It was flat, all right. ‘I’ll get Dick Pittman to fix it,’ I said. ‘Wait here a minute.’
When Dick got there he jacked up the wheel and took the tire off. I went back inside and Lola went with me.
She sat down at the counter and I got on the stool back of the cash register. Lola stretched her hands over her head and leaned back. If she had on a brassiere that day it must have already slipped down around her waist.
‘How long do you suppose it’ll take him to fix it?’ she asked.
‘Not long, unless it’s a pretty bad puncture,’ I told her.
She yawned and tapped her hand over her mouth. ‘I guess I might as well drink a beer to kill
time,’ she said. ‘Give me a Budweiser.’
I got the beer for her and she sat there sipping it for a little while. Then, when she’d finished about half the bottle, she took it and gulped it all down at once and got up from the counter.
‘I can’t be still a minute,’ she said, and walked over to the pin-ball machine in the corner.
I reckon I should have entertained her while the tire was being fixed, but I couldn’t think of anything to make conversation, so I got the newspaper and started looking at that. She put a couple of nickels in the pin-ball machine and played that, but it wasn’t long before she was back at the counter.
‘Give me a package of Camels,’ she said.
I got the cigarettes and handed them over the counter. ‘Where’s Smut Milligan today?’ Lola said. She began tearing open the package of cigarettes and didn’t look up at me.
‘I think he’s down in our cabin,’ I said.
She looked up at me then. ‘Go get him for me, Jack. I’ve got to see him,’ she said. She sounded like somebody with a bad hangover asking for a quick one.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘If any customers come in while I’m gone, tell them I’ll be right back.’
‘Yes,’ Lola said. ‘Be sure and get him.’
Smut was lying across the bed, asleep, when I got in the cabin. I shook him and woke him up. He sat up on the bed and rubbed his eyes.
‘Lola Fisher’s up at the roadhouse. She wants to see you,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Lola Fisher. Wife of Charles Fisher, the Corinth millionaire.’
‘Oh,’ Smut said.
We went back to the roadhouse and Smut went in, but I stopped outside a minute, where Dick was fixing the flat.
‘What was the matter, Dick?’ I said.
‘Had picked up a twenty-penny nail,’ Dick said. ‘Went all the way through that new tire.’
I went inside then, but Smut and Lola weren’t in sight. In a couple of minutes Smut called to me from the dance hall to bring them two beers. I took the beers and the glasses over there. Smut and Lola were sitting in a booth back next to the private room and they were talking until I came in. Then they got quiet, and when I got there Lola was tapping a cigarette that wasn’t lighted on the top of the table. Smut Milligan sat there looking down at the palms of his hands.
