The Name of the Game is Death

by Dan Marlowe

  He brought his gun up and snapped off a shot at me just as I let go at him with the Woodsman. He turned as if to run. I put one into his ankle that brought him down with a crash. He landed all sprawled out, his gun flying off into the bushes. I got over to him fast in case he had another.

  When I got the flash full on him, I saw it wouldn't have made any difference if he'd had a machine-gun. He'd been moving on reflex. The hard core of light shone down on a round, dark hole between his eyes, just to the right of center. The little old Woodsman might not have the stopping power of a .38, but it gets there just the same.

  It was quiet in the clearing after the sound of the gunshots. I walked over and put the flash on the bandit's car—a Ford, too, but apparently in better shape than mine. I got his car keys from his pocket, got under the wheel, and started it up. The engine vrom-vroomed with power. Something extra under the hood.

  It looked like I'd won myself an automobile.

  I switched on both cars' dimmers and opened the trunks. I loaded his gear in mine and mine in his, took both cars' license plates off, and chopped them up with a hammer and chisel. With a screwdriver I finally loosened the red flasher on the roof of the bandit's car. I removed the bulb and knocked down the edges of the socket; then I slapped black friction tape, which blended with the color of the car, over the hole.

  I rummaged around through saws and climbing irons in my toolchest till I found a set of Florida plates that I put on the new Ford. I always carry a number of different identifications until it becomes dangerous to do so.

  I cleaned out my wallet and started from scratch. Someone in Hudson, Florida would be looking for Earl Drake, so Earl Drake had to disappear. When I put the wallet on my hip again, I was Chester Arnold of Hollywood, Florida. I had business cards identifying Chet Arnold as a tree surgeon. When it's necessary, I am a tree surgeon. A good one.

  I went back for my unknown benefactor when I had everything ready. I dragged him to the new Ford and stuffed him into its trunk on top of my toolchests. It was a tight squeeze, but I finally got the back deck lid closed.

  Then I took off.

  Every five miles, I threw a chopped-up piece of license plate out the window. It helped me to stay awake. Then it started to rain. It doesn't rain too often in west Texas, but when it docs, it doesn't fool around. I hunched down over the wheel, watching the highway through the streaming windshield as I pitched license plate fragments.

  Forty miles further, I ran into a torn-up section of road under repair. In those parts they're so sure it won't rain, they don't bother with the nicety of preserving one lane of macadam. They tear up the road from shoulder to shoulder, roll it, and drive on the dirt till they get the blacktop back on. A wrong guess means a driving rodeo through four to six inches of Texas gumbo.

  It was raining so damn hard that in less than a mile the entire graveled roadbed was solidly under water. The new Ford slipped and slithered along. Even at five miles an hour, a couple of times I wasn't sure I was able to keep on going. It was like driving across a ten-mile lake. To be sure I was still in the channel, I had to watch the highway department right-of way slakes glistening in the headlights.

  I finally emerged on blacktop again, and for the next ten miles I listened to Texas mud slurp from the undercarriage at every little jounce. From what I saw, I could have won a few bets from people who thought they knew the car's original color. I concentrated on driving and staying awake.

  When the odometer said I was two hundred miles from El Paso, I started looking for a deep culvert. I pulled over on the shoulder when I found a likely-looking one. As I walked around to the back of the Ford, I never saw a night so black—and raining as though someone had turned on a petcock and gone off on vacation. I was soaked in less than a minute.

  I got the trunk open, then hauled out my passenger. When I rolled him down the high bank, he went in with a satisfying splash. After I got back under the wheel, I started slogging up the highway again. No one would connect my benefactor to me or to much of anything else when they found him. Ditto the Ford I'd left behind in the brushy clearing.

  I'd passed Marfa and Alpine a long way back, clusters of lights in the dripping darkness. I was between Marathon and Haymond when I dumped the body. Twice on the long stretch between Sanderson and Del Rio I nearly went to sleep. By that time I was driving myself as hard as I was driving the car.

  Dawn was breaking in a dirty gray sky outside Bracketville when I got a leg cramp so bad it pulled my foot right off the accelerator. I stopped the car and got out and limped around it a couple of times, but I couldn't shake off the cramp. I drove through town with my left foot on the gas pedal and hobbled into a motel on the outskirts. I woke up the owner, shut up his grumbling about the ungodliness of the hour, took the key he gave me, and headed for the room he pointed out.

  I was 450 miles from El Paso, and it had been a long, long day.

  I shed clothing all the way from the door of the room to the bed, and I was asleep before I was halfway down to the pillow.

  IV

  A year after I left home I worked the midnight-to-eight shift in a gas station near the edge of a northern Ohio town. It was colder than a whore's heart in December, but it kept me eating. From two to seven in the morning I wouldn't average half a dozen cars. I'd sit inside with my feet cocked up on the heater and wait for daylight.

  Or listen to Oily Barnes.

  He was an odd one. I couldn't figure why a good-looking guy with a college degree should spend his time hanging around a gas station till all hours in the morning, talking to a kid like me. At first I thought he was a queer, naturally. Then I decided he wasn't, but I still couldn't make him out.

  He was slender, with a pale, narrow face dominated by a high forehead, straw-colored hair, and steel-rimmed spectacles. He was about thirty. His small, well-shaped hands usually fluttered nervously while he talked. He had a beautiful speaking voice.

  Two or three nights a week he'd hang around the station till five in the morning. I never understood how he could keep his eyes open on his bookkeeping job. I noticed one thing about him: he talked a lot about the places he'd been and the things he'd seen, but never about the people. He talked travel, books, painting, opera, ballet; talked with a passionate intensity. I tried to tell him he was way over my head with what he had to say. Then I saw it didn't matter, and I shut up and listened. Oily brought me books I didn't read, and he tried to hide his disappointment when I didn't.

  And then one morning the police came and took him away. It was about three-thirty, and he'd been talking about books as usual, when the cruiser pulled up outside. Olly's good-looking face crumbled like aspirin in water when he saw the big man in plainclothes walking toward the station entrance. I thought for a second he was going to run, but if he considered it he didn't have time.

  The big man stood in the open doorway, cold air pouring in all around him. "Let's take a ride, Oliver," he said. He had a broad, flat face with high cheekbones and no more expression than an iron skillet.

  "No," Oily whispered. "No!" The second time it was a scream. Then he started to run, all right, toward the garage area, but the big man cut him off and scooped him up by the shirt front, like I'd snatch a fly from a table. He half-carried, half-dragged Oily outside without saying another word. The door slammed behind them.

  I went outside to the cruiser. It was none of my business, but I went out, anyhow. A uniformed man was driving. I rapped on the rolled-up front window. I could see Oily and the big man in the back seat. Oily was crying. The uniformed man lowered the window and looked out at me. "What's it all about?" I asked him.

  lie sat with his head cocked as if he were listening for something from the back seat. Nobody said anything, and after a minute he rolled the window back up and wheeled the cruiser around the pumps and out onto the highway.

  I watched the tail-lights diminishing up the road. It was a bitterly cold night, without stars or lights of any kind except at the station. It wasn't any of my
business, and I couldn't walk off and leave the place. I went back inside, out of the cold. Olly's overcoat was still draped on a chair where he'd dropped it when he came in.

  I called the police four times between then and seven o'clock. No one I talked to had ever heard of Oliver Barnes. I described the big man who had taken Oily away.

  They knew him, all right. His name was Lieutenant Winick. No one had seen him, either.

  A little after four it started to snow. Between calls to the police I was kept busy clearing the station's driveways. My dawn there was six inches on the ground, and it was blowing hard. After seven I was too busy to call any more. When my relief came on at eight I had to stay over an hour to help with the rush of cars.

  There were no buses running by the time I was able to get away. I put Olly's coat over my arm and walked the mile-and-a-half into town. Drifts were already a couple of feet high in some places, and the wind was spraying line-drive sheets of snow. Cold as it was I was sweating by the time I reached the police station. That kind of weather made heavy going.

  I didn't really know what I was doing there. I guess I'd always known Oily wasn't exactly a hundred cents on the dollar. Still, a deal like that—what if it had been me? Wouldn't I have wanted someone to find out the score?

  I might as well have talked to a totem pole as the sergeant at the desk. He asked a hell of a lot more questions than he answered. Who I was. Where I lived. Where I worked. What my interest was. He finally made a pretense of checking the blotter and said that no Oliver Barnes had been booked for anything. For him that ended it.

  I hung around anyway. Nobody actually tried to run me out, but they didn't make it easy for me to stay. I tried my questions on two or three newcomers, with the same results. The heat in the waiting room kept putting me to sleep every time I sat down. At eleven o'clock I gave up. J left Olly's overcoat with the desk sergeant in case he came in looking for it, I said—and went home to bed.

  It was still snowing when I woke at four. I dressed and walked back to the police station after a quick meal. The same sergeant spoke before I could when he saw me come in. "Lieutenant Winick wants to sec you, kid," he said, pointing to a door. "Second door on the left inside."

  Winick looked up from the paperwork on his desk when

  I knocked and entered his office. The room smelled of cigar ash and stale coffee. Winick's high-cheekboned features were just as expressionless as they'd been before. He leaned far back in his chair, folded his arms, and looked me over. "Stanton said you wanted to see me," he said at last.

  As though he'd just got the word. "Where's Oily?" I asked.

  "In a cell. Where he belongs."

  "Why? What for?"

  Winick's slitted eyes were unwinking. "Your friend has a bad habit. He coaxes little girls behind buildings and takes their pants down." His harsh voice deepened as his eyes bored into mine. "Little girls. Seven, eight, nine. He's done it before, you know. So it wasn't hard to know where to look, even without the kid's description of him, when her mother brought her in."

  The roof of my mouth felt dry. "How good—what kind of a description?"

  "Oliver Barnes' description." Winick's voice blared at me suddenly. "He served a reformatory term and a prison sentence for the same thing. You're not very choosy of your company. How long have you been in town?"

  "Six mouths. When what lime did it happen?"

  The big shoulders rose and fell in an elaborate shrug. "Five, six o'clock yesterday. The kid wasn't sure."

  I felt a quick stir of excitement. "Five or six o'clock in the evening?"

  "Five or six o'clock in the evening," Winick conceded with exaggerated patience.

  "Then it couldn't have been Oily!" I said triumphantly.

  Winick smiled, "lie confessed."

  "Confessed?" I felt staggered. "Look, you said it happened between five and six yesterday?"

  He was watching me narrowly. "That's what I said."

  "Then it couldn't have been Oily," I repeated. "He brought Mime books over to my room at four in the afternoon and he stayed until I went out to eat at seven. It couldn't have been Oily, you hear me?"

  Winick stood up behind his desk. "You're mixed up on the days. It happens to you nightworkers. Besides, he confessed."

  "The hell I'm mixed up on the days! How could he confess to something he didn't do? You must have—"

  "Careful of the territory you're taking in, kid," Winick's hard voice cut me off. "Where do you fit into this? What kind of friend is Barnes to you?"

  "Why don't you ask me what kind of friend I am to Barnes? The way I see it, I'm the friend he needs. I want to talk to him."

  "Sorry." Winick shook his head. "He's havin' a fit of remorse."

  I could feel myself shaking. "Listen, I tell you I'll testify Oily couldn't possibly have—"

  "You're goin' off half-cocked, kid." Winick's voice could have cut wood. "Did you hear me say Barnes had confessed? In stinking detail?"

  "You made him confess! He was afraid the minute he saw you. Because he did it before doesn't mean he did it this time. You must have forced—"

  "Listen to me." Winick's voice was quiet again. "He did it. He confessed. Can you get that through your thick skull?"

  "There must be somebody else for me to talk to around here besides you," I said desperately. "You're not even listening. Oily couldn't have—"

  "You're not listenin' to me." Gimlet eyes drilled into mine. "Barnes is a menace to society. He's proved it. He should never have been out on the street. This time I'm tuckin' him away for a good long stretch."

  "But he didn't do it! Not this time!"

  "He did it." Winick's heavy voice was Hat with authority. His eyes appeared almost closed. "Should I ask Barnes if you were with him?"

  My hands clenched. "Is that supposed to make me run out of here? I know what I know, by God. I don't care what he did before. This he didn't do, and I'll talk till I get someone to listen."

  Winick's voice became slow and draggy, emphasizing each word. "You sound to me like someone fixin' to get his balls caught in the machinery, kid." He leaned down over his desk, resting his weight on his big-knuckled hands. "I know what Barnes is. The people in this town know what he is. When you talk to me, you're talkin' to all of them."

  I went out of there in a tearing rage.

  I didn't believe Winick, but I found out he was right. Everyone I tried to get to listen to me gave me a blank stare. Nobody would believe it couldn't have been Oily.

  Then I found out the hard way that some of them were never going to believe it. The next day I lost both my job and my room. Winick had been to see my boss and my landlady. All of a sudden I was on the street with twenty-three dollars between me and the icy gutter.

  I stuck around another day, still trying to get someone to listen. I was half out of my mind, crazy-mad at the town and the people in it. And at Winick. Especially at Winick. That night I slept till four A.M. in the railroad station with my head on my bag. Winick's cops found me then and threw me out into the snow. I must have ground a quarter-inch oil my teeth, stumbling around the slippery, frozen streets, lugging my bag. I was half numb by the time the first one-arm coffee joint opened.

  In the cold gray light of morning I gave up. I walked out to the edge of town and stopped a highway bus and told the driver to take me eleven dollars' worth away from there. I purposely hadn't bought a ticket at the bus station because I figured if Winick wanted to keep a string on me he'd have checked there.

  I wound up across the state, a hundred-eighty miles away. I got a job as a stockboy in a chain grocery. Three times a week I bought a northern Ohio newspaper and read every word of it, looking for news of Oily.

  It was three months before I found it.

  The black headline said Oily had been sentenced to fifteen years.

  That day I quit the human race. I never went back to my job. The only legitimate work I've done since has always been with an illegitimate purpose in mind. If that was the way it was,
I'd play it as it lay.

  I bought a gun in a hockshop. I didn't even have a car. The local paper nipped hard at police heels about the series of gas station holdups by a quick-moving pedestrian who always disappeared into the darkness.

  I was surprised at how easy it was. I had only two close calls. Once I was scared off before I'd committed myself, and another time I had to stop an attendant from chasing me by shooting over his head.

  I was no high liver, and the money piled up. I had a purpose for it. I bought a secondhand car and learned how to drive it. Ten weeks after Oily started his sentence I drove the hundred-eighty miles back across the state.

  Back to Winick.

  I rang his doorbell at ten o'clock at night. He opened the door himself. Not that it made any difference; I was all ready to go right into the house after him.

  I shot him in the face, four times. He went backward in a kind of shambling trot. "That's for Oily, you bastard," I told him, but I don't think he heard me. I think he was dead before his big shoulders hit the floor.

  Winick was the first.

  I woke at sundown in the Bracketville motel, humped myself across the street to a combination grocery-restaurant, and loaded up on bacon, eggs, and black coffee. I recrossed the highway and went right back into the sack. I woke the next morning at five-thirty, feeling better physically than I had in weeks.

  I had breakfast at the same restaurant and was ready to leave. I climbed into the new Ford, listened appreciatively to the engine sound when I started it up, and tried to back out of my parking place. The car rocked back and forth, but it wouldn't budge. I sat there blankly for a moment before it dawned on me what had happened. All that Texas gumbo I'd driven through had frozen the brakes, including the emergency, when dried.

  I went back across the road again. I rousted out a barefoot kid at the restaurant and brought him back to the car. He crawled underneath it and clawed out a couple of pecks of rich-looking mud. He had trouble freeing the emergency, but he finally managed it. I gave the kid two dollars, and he turned cartwheels all the way back to the restaurant.