The Name of the Game is Death

by Dan Marlowe

  It was a beautiful morning when I hit the highway. Everything was fresh and clear after the storm. The road was dry and there was no traffic that early in the day. I laid into the accelerator the first straight stretch to see what the engine in the Ford could actually do. I chickened out at 116, and it felt like I had an inch of gas pedal left. The thing was a fireball. It held the road well, too.

  I drove on through Uvalde, San Antonio, Seguin, and Luling. I had lunch in Weimar. In the afternoon I plowed on through Houston, Beaumont, and Orange. I spent the night in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The odometer said 469 miles for the day.

  I'd pushed it a little because I wanted to make Mobile the following night. I could get guns and other things I needed in Mobile from Manny Sebastian. I had to ditch the artillery I was carrying. One gun traced to two bank guards in Phoenix, the other to a body floating in a rain-swollen ditch. If Manny hadn't lost his contacts, I could get a Florida license and registration from him to match what I was driving.

  1 was out on the highway again by six-thirty the next morning. Ten miles east of Lake Charles I turned north on Route I ON at a little place called Iowa. I stayed with the new route for twenty miles to Kinder, then headed east again on 190, the New Orleans bypass.

  I sailed through Eunice, Opelousas, Baton Rouge, and Hammond in Louisiana, then crossed into Mississippi at Slidell. A few miles farther on 190 hooked back into 90 again, and I rolled along the Old Spanish Trail through Liny St. Louis, Pass Christian, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula. Along that sunlit stretch I was seldom out of sight of white sand and blue Gulf. When I pulled into a motel in Mobile about five o'clock, the odometer said 343 miles.

  I washed up, had dinner, and drove downtown to the Golden Peacock, Manny Sebastian's joint. After midnight the place swung like a steeple bell, but at this time of night it was quiet. Manny had a finger in a lot of pies. He hadn't seen me in quite a while, but he recognized me as soon as I walked in. He came over and shook hands. He'd put on weight since I'd last seen him, and his jowls and extra chins transformed the face I remembered as jovially ugly Into something sinister.

  "The back room?" he asked with a cocked eyebrow.

  I nodded. He walked behind the bar and engaged in small talk with a couple of the half-dozen customers. After live minutes he selected a key from a huge ring on his belt and opened an unmarked door at the end of the bar alongside one marked "Office."

  I gave it a couple of minutes before I went to the door and tapped. Manny let me in and closed and barred the door. He had a bottle and glasses already out on a small table—the room's only furnishing except an old-fashioned Iron safe in one corner.

  "Long time, man," Manny said expansively. "How's old hit-the-squirrel-in-the-eye-at-a-hundred-yards?" He poured and handed me a drink. "What's your problem?"

  "Not the same as yours, I hope. You talk too much, Manny." I took a swallow from my glass. "How are you fixed on Florida registrations?"

  He nodded. "What're you driving?"

  "A Ford all over mud on your parking lot." I handed him one of my Chet Arnold business cards. "Have your boy match that up and run off a license while he's at it."

  Manny went to the door and unbarred it. He called someone over to whom he spoke in a low tone, then closed the door again. "Ready in an hour. Like what else?"

  "Hardware. Preferably a Smith & Wesson .38 police special and a Colt .22 Woodsman."

  He nodded again. "I'll have to send for the Woodsman but I've got a .38 right here." He was already whirling the dial on the old safe. He produced the Smith & Wesson with a flourish. "Never been fired except by me an' never in anger."

  "Okay. What's the damage?"

  He squinted up at the ceiling. "Oh, say six hundred. Paperwork comes high these days."

  I paid him. Paperwork wasn't the only thing that came high, but I had to have those guns.

  "Grab a seat at the bar," Manny said. "It's on the house. It'll give you the office when I get your stuff together. How're things in general?" Shrewd eyes in the larded-over features studied me.

  "Quiet, Manny."

  He chuckled. "A hundred seventy-odd thousand quiet?"

  I forced my face into a smile. "I read about that. A nice touch. It sounded like Toby Coates. Or Jim Griglun."

  "Toby's in Joliet," Manny said smoothly. "And Jim lost his nerve after the time in Des Moines."

  "Sometimes a man gets it back."

  Manny shook his head. "Not if he didn't have too much to begin." He grinned at me companionably. "That Phoenix job had your pawprints all over it. "You ought to miss a shot once in a while."

  Out of the mouths of fools.

  I made a mental note.

  "Sorry to disappoint you," I said lightly. "I've been in hibernation." But I felt a growing sense of irritation. This kind of earache I didn't need.

  I le seemed to sense my mood. "Who should know better?" lie said, cryptically enough, then opened the door. "Order up. It's on the house, remember."

  I sat at the bar and ordered a highball I didn't want. Through a window at the right I could see the parking lot. A slim redhead with a limp was walking around the Ford. He raised the hood as I watched, then opened the front door, leaned inside, and wrote something down. The engine number, I figured. The redhead went back to the hood and looked inside for two or three minutes before closing it.

  I nursed my drink for half an hour, then had another. I was two-thirds of the way down to the bottom of it when Manny slid onto the next stool and laid a package in my lap. "Eddie says that's a real fireball you've got on the lot," he said softly. "I got a wheelman would give his front teeth for it. You want to trade? I'll give you something to boot."

  "Not right now, Manny. I'll keep you in mind, though."

  I waited until he left and then went out to the car. I unwrapped the package, put the new license and registration in my wallet, and switched loads from the old guns to the new. I tried them for balance, and they felt all right. I'd check them out for sighting accuracy as soon as I had a chance.

  I drove out of the lot. T doubled and twisted over a circuitous route back to my motel, more from force of habit than from any real belief that someone might be following me. Still, the conversation with Manny bothered me. Manny was a gossip. Never to the wrong people, so far as I knew, but a gossip is a gossip. This business of driving around the country so soon after a job bothered me, too. Usually I had a nice, quiet place to hole up in between jobs. This time I wasn't calling the tune, though.

  I slept solidly that night.

  The next morning was my fifth day since leaving Phoenix. I made another early start and left Highway 90 about thirty miles beyond Seminole, at Milton. On 90-A I hustled along through Galliver, Crestview, DcFuniak Springs, Marianna, Chatahoochee, Talahassee, and Monticello. I was on the homestretch now.

  At Capps I turned south on US 19. I picked out two swift-running rivers fifty miles apart, and I threw the old Smith & Wesson into the first one and the old Woodsman into the second.

  I saw a sign at the side of the highway late that afternoon. It said Town Limits, Hudson, Florida. I drove

  through the main square and found a motel called the Lazy Susan on the south side of town. I'd covered 362 miles since morning. I registered, showered, ate at the motel, went into the lobby and worked my way through a month-old copy of Time, then went to bed early. I wanted to start fresh in the morning.

  I had breakfast in town at a place called the Log Cabin. The building looked like stucco over logs. It was early, but the place was busy. The breakfasters were blue-collar, a factory crowd. There wasn't much conversation, even from the good-looking young waitress who wore an engagement ring but no wedding band.

  I walked around the square afterward. I'd estimated the town at six or eight thousand the day before. That morning I upped it a little. The store windows looked clean, and the displayed merchandise looked fresh. There were no empty stores near the main intersection. The merchants must at least be making the rent money.

/>   I walked past the bank with its protective iron grille drawn. It was an old building, bristling in its external impression of maximum security. Like the kind of two-dollar watch that used to be called a bulldog.

  I bought a local paper at the drugstore, carried it to the little park in the square, and sat down on a bench in the early morning sunlight. The park faced the shabby-looking town hall and the post office. I looked at the post office a couple of times. To be diverted, registered mail almost had to be tampered with by post office personnel. Although of course Bunny's packaged money meant for me might not have been registered when it was intercepted.

  The newspaper was a weekly. I read every line of it, including the classified ads. It's a habit of mine. Tips are where you find them. For years, I've had a subscription under one of my names to Banking, the Journal of the American Hanking Association. There's a column in it called " The Country Banker," and two of the best tips I'd ever had came right out of that column. Banking used to publish pictures of newly remodeled bank interiors, but

  they've mostly cut that out. It must have occurred to

  someone that they were being too helpful.

  I trail the classified section carefully. If there was a tree surgeon in Hudson, Florida, he wasn't using the local paper to attract customers. I folded up the paper and walked back to where I'd parked the Ford.

  Main Street in Hudson ran east-west from the traffic light in the square, not north-south on 19. I drove east on Main. When the stores thinned out, I slowed down. The first homes were small, with tiny yards or none at all. No work for a tree surgeon there.

  A mile beyond the built-up section of town the area south of Main Street became a swamp. I recalled seeing it listed on a map as Thirty Mile Swamp. From its looks it was no kitchen-garden swamp, either, but a fibrous jungle of cypress and mangrove in brackish-looking water, the trees drearily festooned with Spanish moss. A hand-painted sign beside a shack said "Airboat for Hire."

  I turned around and started back. Near the edge of town again I turned north and began crisscrossing side streets. Gradually I worked into higher ground and an unproved residential section. I turned finally into a block-long street with only three houses on it. Big houses. Estates. I slowed down again. This was what I needed: property that required upkeep and people with the money to pay for it. I made notes on the edge of my newspaper while I drove around.

  I headed back to the town square when I'd accumulated half-a-dozen addresses. I parked in front of the local five-and-dime. Above it a sign fisted a real estate office. I climbed a flight of stairs with my paper under my arm. A young fellow hopped up from behind a desk as I entered. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt with a black tie. Below the executive level the short-sleeved white shirt is almost a uniform in this latitude. Nobody wears a jacket, and after lunch the ties come off. Nobody is ever in a hurry.

  "Yes, sir?" the real estate man said briskly. He had a nice smile. "Jed Raymond, sir. May I be of help?"

  "Chet Arnold," I said, and handed him one of my business cards. "I just came in to pick your brains." I looked at the notes on my paper. "There's a big white Georgian house at Sand Rock Road and Jezebel Drive." I glanced at Jed Raymond. "Odd name for a street, that."

  "Old man Landscombe named it, Mr. Arnold. They do say he had his reasons." Jed Raymond looked up from a quick inspection of my card. "You want the tree work there?" He shook his head doubtfully. "Mr. Landscombe died six months ago, and there's an unholy dustup about his will. Three sets of presumptive heirs suing each other. The estate'll probably be in probate for years." Young Mr. Raymond had a soft drawl and a mournfully humorous smile. His bright, heart-shaped face was under a ginger-colored, conservative haircut. Any woman over thirty would have taken him to raise, glad of the chance.

  "Who's the estate administrator?" I asked. "He shouldn't want the property run down."

  "I believe it's Judge Carberry." He pronounced it "Cah'bry." "If he's not he'll know who is. You could have somethin' there."

  I wrote the name down. "How about a fieldstone rancher up on University Place and Golden Hill Lane?"

  "Belongs to Mr. Craig at the bank. His daddy used to be in the lumber business. So'd Roger Craig, until he had a heart attack a while back. He came into the bank then. I guess his family owned most of it, anyway."

  I decided to skip the remainder of my list for the time being. A judge and a banker. Better still, a banker who had been in the lumber business. If I could crack either one, I was in business in Hudson, Florida. "You know your real estate," I told Jed Raymond. "Anything in the regulations says I can't buy your lunch one of these days?"

  "II there is I'll get it amended," he grinned. He tucked my business card into his shirt pocket. "I'll keep this, if you don't mind. I might hear of something for you."

  " Thanks. I'm at the Lazy Susan now. If I change, I'll let you know. D'you happen to have a detailed map of the area?"

  He reached in a counter drawer and handed me a thickly folded-over packet. "This one's even got the projected streets in the new development east of town." He waved me off when I put my hand into my pocket. "Hope you do y'self some good locally, Mr. Arnold."

  "Chet," I said.

  "Jed," he returned with another smile.

  I went back down the stairs to the street. I always carry two toolkits with me, a large one to work from and a small one for show. I got the small one out of the trunk of the Ford after tucking two double-bitted axes into the loops on either side of the chest.

  When a man formerly in the lumber business saw such a kit, I shouldn't have too much trouble getting into his office to talk to him.

  V

  I walked back up the street to the bank which was now open.

  I was twenty-three when I killed my second man.

  Funny thing: it was in Ohio, too.

  Massillon.

  Five of us had taken the bank on the northeast corner of the main intersection, but one of the boys got trigger-happy inside. During the getaway Nig Rosen and Duke Naylor were burned down in the street before we even reached the getaway car. A mile out of town I scratched a deputy in a cruised trying to cut us off. Two days later the rest of us were flushed from a farmhouse. Clem Powers was killed. Barney Pope and I were bagged.

  Barney was an old lag. He knew he'd have long white whiskers before he made it outside again, if he ever made It. Go for yourself, kid, he said to me as we stood in the farmyard with our hands in the air. I'll back your play.

  I'd left my gun inside beside Clem's body. That scored the deputy to Clem. I told the mob scene that surrounded us that I was a hitchhiker who'd been sleeping in the barn when the bankrobbers took over, and I stuck to it. True to his word, Barney backed me up. The police didn't believe It, but the jury came close. Identification putting me inside the bank was fuzzy. The guilty verdict was lukewarm.

  Even the judge was leaning. I had no rap sheet. They'd checked my prints from Hell to Hoboken, and they couldn't come up with even a speeding charge. Two things licked me with the judge, finally. I wasn't using my family name, of course, and the probation officer couldn't get a line on me. The judge refused to believe I'd sprung fullblown from the earth at age twenty-three without previous documentation of some kind. Also—and fatally—I could produce no visible means of support.

  The judge cleared his throat and said three-to-five. I think he'd been considering probation. Barney Pope drew twenty-to-life. We weren't tried for the deputy. There was a double-barreled question of jurisdiction and identification. The local DA didn't want to give up his headlines by letting us face the murder charge. They wrote off the deputy to Clem.

  I hadn't graduated overnight to a five-man bank detail. I'd come up the ladder—filling stations, theater box offices, liquor stores—the whole bit. I worked alone until I met Nig Rosen. Nig talked me into the Massillon job. I guess I was flattered. I was by far the youngest of the five.

  We worked four months on the job. I kept my mouth shut and listened. Parts of it I d
idn't like, instinctively it seemed. Afterward I knew I was right. Complicated action with a bunch of hot sparks was no good. Even before we were hit I'd decided what I wanted in the future was a deal I could control myself.

  I had plenty of time in the gow to figure how it was going to be the next time. Doc Essegian was my cellmate from the middle of my second year ©n. Everyone called him The Doctor, maybe because he was such a wise old owl. He was certainly no medical doctor.

  The first three months Doc never even said good morning to me. Then I had a little trouble with one of the screws. When I came back from solitary, Doc laughed at me. "Don't let it burn a hole in your gut, kid," he advised me. "You're a better hater than me, even, and that's saying something."

  After that he kind of took me over. "Life is the big machine, kid," he'd growl at me in his after-lights-out rasp. "It chews you up and it spits you out. Don't ever forget it."

  He had the most completely acid outlook on life I'd ever encountered. He really knew the score. He was consumptive to his toenails, but over the years he'd given them so much trouble inside they wouldn't certify him to the federal prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri. Each day he systematically coughed up a little more of his lungs while grinning and thumbing his nose. Don't bother telling me it's impossible for our pure-minded prison authorities to function in such a cold-blooded manner. I was there.

  I'd have applied for parole when I was eligible if it hadn't been for Doc. Go ahead, if you can't tough it out, he told me. But remember this: the minute you do it you're the yo-yo on the end of the string. The least little thing you do they don't like, they'll twitch the string and back you come. Do the bit, he urged me. Go out clean. Spit in their eye. Get a decent job, something you can't do with a parole officer checking on you every time you turn around.