by Bill Crider
For the first time he noticed the computer keyboard and small monitor on the far side of the small desk. Her fingers were moving over the keyboard slowly as she tapped out the information she was seeking. Then she punched a key and words appeared in the middle of the screen.
“We don’t have any Melvin Holcomb with a lot,” she said. “We don’t have any Holcombs at all. We got a Harvey Holcombe, with an ‘e,’ on lot one-twenty-two, though.”
Rhodes got out a small notebook and wrote down the information. He would have to check it, but it didn’t give him much hope.
“Now,” Penny said. “You want all the people whose initials are J.S.?”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Well, I can’t get that very easily. I’ll have to punch up all the last names starting with S and work from there. It’s a lot of trouble.” She looked wistfully at her book.
“I’d appreciate it,” Rhodes said.
She moved her fingers over the keys, punched the command, and the names began to pop up on the screen.
There were five people who had the right initials, but no Jonathan Spence or Jeffery Sheldon among them. Rhodes hadn’t thought it would be that easy. There was one very promising name, however. John Sheldon. Could be, Rhodes thought, but he wrote all the names and lot numbers down just in case.
John Sheldon was the one Rhodes would check first. Lot 247. Now all he had to do was find the right lot. He asked Penny how to get to 247.
She had already picked up her book again and started reading. Rhodes thought that he would have to remember the title and recommend it to Clyde Ballinger. This time Penny did sigh when she put the book down, but she opened the middle drawer of the desk and pulled out a photocopied map.
“All the lots are marked on there,” she said as she handed it to him through the window. “Lot 247’s way down in the flat. You go down the hill, turn left, and walk till you pass about five roads. You can count ‘em on the map. Then turn right and go on down till you find 247.”
Rhodes thanked her, but she had already picked up the book and started reading again. He looked at the map. The numbers of the lots were written in very tiny letters that he could hardly make out, and he found himself holding the map at nearly arm’s length, trying to read them. It was the first time he had noticed himself doing anything like that, and he knew what it meant. He was going to have to get reading glasses. It was a depressing thought.
He finally located 247, approximately where Penny had said it would be, and started down the hill. He wondered if anyone would have reading glasses for sale.
Chapter 17
Reading glasses were about the only things Rhodes didn’t see. There were sunglasses galore, digital watches by the thousands, knives, dishes, tools, furniture, tricycles, bicycles, magazines, books, games, hubcaps, tires, video tapes (most of which Rhodes would bet were bootlegged), cassette tapes (ditto), pots and pans, barbed wire, beer cans, kerosene lamps, imitation-marble cutting boards, baseball cards, and a thousand other things.
It was easy to separate the professionals from the amateurs. The pros were there in bobtail trucks or in vans. They pulled into their lots, opened their doors, and set up sturdy wooden tables to display their wares. What they sold was mostly junk, but it was new junk. If it was old, it was in the collectible category, like the baseball cards.
The amateurs had come in their pickup trucks and lowered the tailgates to show off playpens and highchairs they no longer needed, old puzzles, back issues of National Geographic, children’s books with the covers missing, and food processors with cracked plastic bases.
There were more cars, trucks, vans, and pickups than Rhodes would have imagined.
And there were places to eat, too. Rhodes figured that the only people who could be sure of making a profit were the ones selling food, and since he hadn’t eaten lunch, he decided to give one a try. He chose a huge wooden trailer that looked as if the owner had built it himself, out of plywood. Half of one side folded down to form the counter space, and Rhodes walked up and ordered a submarine sandwich with Hell on the Red sauce, and a canned Dr Pepper.
The sandwich tasted fresh, the sauce was hot, and the Dr Pepper was cold, so the meal met all Rhodes’s requirements for fine dining. He finished, threw his napkin in the fifty-five gallon trash can, and went looking for lot 247.
He saw the green U-Truck-’Em van from a half block away, its roof showing up over the top of a canvas cover that extended from the camper top of a pickup parked next to the van. He walked down to the pickup and started looking at the goods displayed under the cover—an old black wash pot, some branding irons, a couple of lightning-rod balls, a rocking chair that had once had a wicker bottom and now had no bottom at all, and a wooden box that contained a socket set and a great many open-ended wrenches all jumbled together. Rhodes picked up one of the lightning-rod balls and pretended to study it while looking over the next lot.
A man about seventy years old, wearing a battered black cowboy hat, a tattered denim jacket, black pants, and worn boots got out of an aluminum lawn chair next to the pickup and walked over to Rhodes.
“You don’t see many of them balls these days,” he said in a raspy voice. “Look how milky that there glass is. You can tell there’s been a charge through it. ‘Course I won’t charge you any more for that. If you’re real interested, I got a couple of arrows there in the back of the truck. They still got the glass in them.”
Rhodes said he was just looking and handed the ball to the old man, who took it and went back to his chair, clearly disappointed that he hadn’t made a sale.
Rhodes strolled casually over to the next lot without looking back at the old man. The back of the van was open, and he could see furniture and appliances stacked inside. On the ground were two refrigerators and several color TV sets, including a Sony and an RCA.
Between Rhodes and the van were several wooden tables. On top of the tables there were handmade wooden cases with glass tops and unfinished sides. Some of the jewelry was as familiar to Rhodes as the furniture and appliances; he had read descriptions of it and heard the Storms describe it. A man and a woman were sitting on beanbag chairs near the van. They were eating sandwiches, drinking canned Diet Sprite, and not paying too much attention to Rhodes until they saw that he was paying serious attention to the jewelry.
The man got up and walked over. “Need a ring for the little lady?” he said. He was slightly built but looked wiry and had a mop of thick red hair that needed cutting and combing. His eyes were a pale blue.
The woman looked at Rhodes curiously. She looked nothing like the man. Rhodes guessed her weight at around one-seventy-five, quite a bit of it fat, and he didn’t think she would get off the chair for anything less than a catastrophic fire. She was chewing her sandwich slowly and with evident pleasure. Rhodes wondered why she was bothering with the diet soda, but then he realized that you saved your calories where you could.
“I’d like to look at that one there,” Rhodes said, pointing through the glass to the diamond solitaire with the gold band, the one very much like the ring that Miss Storm had been wearing.
“Good choice,” the man said. His voice was squeaky, as if it were still changing. “That’s fourteen-carat gold, and that’s a gen-u-wine diamond, not any of that cubic zirconium stuff.”
The case was locked in the back with a small padlock through a hasp. The man got a key out of his pocket and was opening the lock when Rhodes heard someone call out, “Hey, Sheriff! Any luck?”
It was the police chief, Hamilton, walking along in front of the displays and waving.
“It’s that goddamned law man,” the woman yelled, but she was looking at Rhodes, not Hamilton. She began fighting her way out of the beanbag.
The red-haired man wasn’t fighting anything. He was off and running in an instant, sliding between the van and the pickup as if he had been greased.
Rhodes jumped over the tables, or tried to. He hooked his left foot on one of the display case
s and went crashing into the packed dirt on the other side of the tables. When he tried to get up, the woman hit him in the face with one of the chairs. Dust flew into the air and Rhodes flew back into the table, knocking them over and sending the display cases down, their glass shattering and the contents scattering.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” Hamilton yelled.
The woman swung again, but Rhodes dodged the chair. “It’s them,” Rhodes said. “You take care of her.” He dodged another swing, got to his feet, and ran between the van and the pickup after the wiry man.
He thought he heard Hamilton yell “Ummmmmmph!” as the bag hit him and the air went out of him, but he didn’t look back.
The next road was crowded, but Rhodes could see the red hair bobbing along about half a block away, and he continued to run, thinking again how much good he would get out of a daily session on the Huffy.
The other man was clearly in better shape, but the crowd made running difficult, so Rhodes didn’t lose any ground.
He almost ran into a small boy, who took a swipe at him with his cotton candy, slowing him, but it didn’t matter. The red-headed man stepped in a hole.
The roads through the flea market had been made by running a grader over the rough ground. They were tunneled from the rains and the grading had been none too smooth in the first place, far from ideal running surfaces. Rhodes was just glad he hadn’t been the first to fall. By the time the man got to his feet, Rhodes had nearly caught up.
The man looked around him and found that he was in luck. He was right in front of a table of machetes, Bowies, and survival knives. He grabbed one of the machetes by its cheap plastic handle and made several menacing passes in the air in front of him.
Rhodes was unarmed. He carried a pocketknife, but it was hardly a weapon and was useless in any kind of fight. It was mainly good to open letters with. He looked to his right and grabbed a bullwhip from among the leather goods on a table there. It was new and stiff, but when he lashed out it made a satisfactory popping.
The crowd had magically relocated itself. Now Rhodes and the red-haired man were almost alone in the road as everyone crowded into the booths nearby to see what would happen. They didn’t know what was going on, but it looked more interesting than most things that happened at the flea market.
Rhodes, feeling only vaguely like Indiana Jones, swung the whip over his head and popped it again. His opponent didn’t look the least bit impressed. He drew back his arm and threw the machete at Rhodes’s midsection. Rhodes jumped aside and the knife clattered to the road behind him.
Then the little man was off and running again. He was wearing dirty leather tennis shoes, and he kicked up little puffs of dust as he ran. This time he didn’t have a good lead, but he was gaining because the road had cleared in front of him. People all along the way pulled aside to see what was going on.
Rhodes still had the whip. He remembered that when he was a kid he had seen a lot of movies with Lash LaRue and Whip Wilson. Either one of them would have handled the fleeing man with ease, flicking the whip and tripping him up, but Rhodes didn’t know that he was up to it.
He couldn’t think of anything else, however, so he decided he’d better give it a try. He put on a burst of speed to get as close as he could, whirled the whip around his head, and lashed out for the man’s feet.
The whip didn’t pop, but to Rhodes’s surprise it tangled up in the dirty Reeboks and sent the man tumbling forward. Rhodes was so surprised, in fact, that the fall jerked the whip out of his hand.
The man seemed less surprised by what had happened than Rhodes, or maybe he was just adaptable. He continued to roll forward, gathering up the whip as he went. Then he rolled to the side, under a table, and stood up on the other side.
This table was covered with glassware, mostly tumblers that had once been given out as premiums to people who paid a little extra for their soft drinks at various fast-food restaurants. There were glasses with Tweety Birds, glasses with Yosemite Sam, glasses with Bugs Bunny. Mr. Spock was there, along with Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and the Wookie. Rhodes didn’t really have time to examine them because he saw most of them as they came flying at his head.
The redhead had a pretty good arm, and Rhodes couldn’t avoid all the glasses. He did manage to take most of them on his arms and body, but he was afraid that he might be glassed to death if something didn’t happen. Luckily, something did.
The owner of the glasses, seeing his wares shattering on the road, jumped on the redhead’s back and bore him down. The redhead clobbered him in the side of the head with a likeness of Garfield, jumped up, and took off.
Rhodes found himself in hot pursuit again, or he assumed that it was hot pursuit. He was getting pretty warm, that was for sure, and he was also developing a stitch in his side. If this chase didn’t end soon, he was going to collapse. He wondered why he couldn’t chase people in his car, like they did on TV. The redhead had come to the bottom of the hill and started up.
Oh no, thought Rhodes, not the hill.
A dog dashed out from behind one of the tables and started biting at the man’s ankles. That wouldn’t have stopped him, but the dog ran between his legs, tripping him up.
Rhodes said a silent thank-you to the powers that be and charged forward. If he could stop him now, he wouldn’t have to try running up the hill. But the slippery little man had other ideas. He got up again, kicked at the dog, and looked to see what weapons were at hand. What he found was much better for him and much worse for Rhodes. He was standing at a table of geodes, most of them between the size of an orange and a grapefruit. He began hurling them at the sheriff.
Again, Rhodes got his arms up, but the geodes were heavy and quite capable of giving him severe bruises if they didn’t break his bones.
Rhodes dived under a table, then rose up, tumbling all the china thimbles that had been on it to the ground. Holding the table in front of him like a shield, he advanced on the rock thrower.
The geodes smashed into the table with solid thuds, taking big chunks of wood out of it each time they hit, but they weren’t hurting Rhodes. When he got close enough, he tossed the table aside and confronted the man.
The man had his hand drawn back for a throw, leaving him open to almost any kind of punch. Rhodes slammed a left into his stomach and crossed over with a right to the chest. All the man’s breath whooshed out and he fell flat on his tailbone, dropping the geode as he fell. He collapsed on the ground, and the little dog ran up and barked in his face.
As soon as he could catch his breath, Rhodes reached out and grabbed both the man’s wrists, pulling him to his feet. Then he heard the sirens.
Too bad Ivy’s not here, he thought.
The officers who arrived on the scene after having been called by Penny were named Cross and Buchanan. They drove Rhodes and the little man, whom they handcuffed, back to lot 247.
“Penny said there was a hell of a scuffle goin’ on,” Cross said. He was about twenty-five and looked eager to hear about the fight.
“There wasn’t much to it,” Rhodes told him. “This man may be guilty of a crime in my county and he didn’t want to stay and talk to me.” Rhodes had shown Cross and Buchanan his ID, but they still wanted to confirm things with Hamilton. “I think your chief might have a few charges to file against him, too, or at least against his friend.”
“What friend is that?” Cross wanted to know.
“His lady friend. The last I saw of her, she was swatting the chief with a beanbag chair.”
“Lord, he sure wouldn’t like that. I wish—” Cross looked sideways at Buchanan and shut up, but Rhodes had the distinct impression that he was going to say, “I wish I could have seen that.”
When they got to lot 247, the fight was over. The large woman was sitting back on her beanbag and Hamilton was standing in front of her with his pistol leveled at her head. He looked the worse for wear. His hair was mussed, his black uniform shirt was ripped, exposing a white undershirt, and the left leg
of his pants was torn from the bottom to about the knee. He wore over-the-calf socks, Rhodes noted.
The woman also looked as if she had been through a battle. Her clothes were torn and she had a bruise on her left cheek. Like Cross, Rhodes found himself wishing that he had been there to witness what had happened.
“Glad to see you boys,” Hamilton said when they got out of the car. “I got me a prisoner here that needs takin’ in.”
“Sheriff Rhodes has one, too, in the car,” Cross said. “We got him cuffed.”
“Well, cuff this one for sure,” Hamilton said. “She’s a damn wildcat when she gets started.”
Buchanan, who still hadn’t said a word, took out his cuffs and advanced on the woman.
“You touch me, I’m gonna kick you right in the family jewels,” the woman said in a deep, Mercedes MacCambridge voice.
Buchanan stopped.
“Don’t mind her,” Hamilton said. “I’d love a good excuse to blow her damn head off. She’s already kicked me there.”
Rhodes knew that he was going to have to revise his opinion of the woman. She was obviously not as lethargic as she had looked at first sight. Buchanan put the cuffs on her. She didn’t kick him, but she twisted around and tried to keep him from getting hold of her wrists. When he did, she spat at him.
“I don’t know for sure what you wanted with these two,” Hamilton said to Rhodes, “but you can’t have ‘em for a while. I got ‘em for assaultin’ an officer, resistin’ arrest, abusive language, and any other damn thing I can think of between now and the time we get ‘em to the jail.”
“You can keep them,” Rhodes said. “For a while at least. I’d just like to talk to them about a murder.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it,” Hamilton said. “I wouldn’t be surprised a damn bit.”
Chapter 18
The Colton city jail was small and square, made of white brick. It had a flat roof, no windows, and sat on a lot right next to the City Library. In fact, the only difference in the two buildings was that the library had windows.
