by Dan Marlowe
He saw me come in, but he thought it over before he did anything about it. Finally he couldn't leave it alone. He left his stool, which was two-thirds of the way up the bar from mine, swaggered past the half-dozen customers in the place, and pushed himself onto the stool beside mine. His elbows were out wider than they needed lo be. "Don't b'lieve I've heard your name," he said in a loud voice.
"Arnold," I answered.
He waited to see if I was going to say anything else. "Understand you're quite a dancer," lie went on. I wondered how much of his tomato face was due to weather and how much to alcohol. Around us the little tavern conversations had died out. Franklin wasn't satisfied to accept my silence. "I see you peart near ev'y day thumpin' around in the bresh out yonder," he said. "You keep it up you're gonna put your number 12 down on someone's still an' git your head blowed off."
"I carry a spare."
He didn't get it for a second. When he did, he clouded over. "You in town for long, Arnold?"
"It depends," I said.
He took a deep breath as though holding himself down. "Depends on what?"
I turned on my stool until I was facing him. "It depends on me," I told him, and returned to my beer. Franklin put his hand on my arm. I looked down at the hand, and then at him. He removed the hand, his face darkening. I knew the type. He wanted to lean on me just to show he could. I could feel the short hairs on the back of my neck stiffening. The bastard rubbed me completely the wrong way.
Franklin changed his mind about whatever he'd been thinking of doing. He snorted loudly, then got up and walked out the door. Around me the conversations slowly came to life again. The bartender sidled down the bar, his long arm going in concentric circles with a dirty rag. "That's Blaze Franklin," he said almost apologetically. "He's a little—quick. What was that about dancin'?"
"I haven't the faintest idea." I wasn't supposed to know the blonde was Franklin's playmate. Outside the cruiser roared as Franklin petulantly gunned it away. "Quick, huh? Who's he buried?" And then as the words hung in the air I shook my head mentally. It was crazy. More trouble I couldn't use. Where were my brains?
The bartender's laugh was a cackle. "That's a good one. Who's he buried?" He looked up and down the bar to assure himself a maximum audience. "Well, no one he's stood trial for," he grinned. It was his turn to listen to the sound of his own words in the stale-beer flavored air. His grin faded. "I mean an escaped convict or two—things like that," he amended hastily. He sloshed his rag about with renewed vigor. "Blaze is one of our best young deppities." Having retrieved the situation, he favored me with another smile.
I finished my beer and got out. I killed a couple of hours reading at the Lazy Susan while I waited for midnight. I left Kaiser in the room when I went out again. The fights were out in the Dixie Pig when I turned into the driveway except for the night light. There was only one car in back. Hazel's. She was standing inside the back door, waiting, but she came out and turned the key in the lock when she saw the Ford.
"Let's use my car," she said. She got in on the driver's side. I wondered how much more she'd had to drink, but I climbed out of the Ford and got in beside her. She spun the wheels backing up in the crushed stone.
She turned south on the highway. Past the traffic light in town she leaned on it. She had a heavy foot, but she was a good driver. I watched a full moon rising over the Gulf and the road unwinding in the headlights. There was no conversation. Sometimes I know ahead of time, but that night wasn't one of the times.
Fifteen miles down the road Hazel turned left on a dirt track she must have known about because she couldn't have seen it. A mile in on it she turned left again, and her car bumped along for three hundred yards over deep ruts until a cabin showed up in the headlights. Hazel switched off the car lights and we sat and looked at the cabin in the moonlight. "I built it myself," she said. "And I mean I drove the nails. Therapy. Come on."
She unlocked the cabin door and we went inside. "Well?" she challenged me in the soft darkness. "It's a damn good thing I'm shameless enough for both of us. You weren't going to ask me out. Why?"
"When I think of a good answer, I'll let you know," I told her. She closed the cabin door and I heard the snick of a bolt. I couldn't make out many details except the furnishings.
She came up behind me and dropped her hands on my shoulders. "Get into something cooler, Horseman," she said, and walked into the next room.
I undressed slowly. When I padded after her, barefoot,
she was buck naked in the moonlight on the full-sized bed. She could have been the model for all women for all time. Her eyes were closed. I knelt on the edge of the bed. "Hazel—" I began.
She opened her eyes and reached for me. "Don't tell me I've gone and emasculated you," she said softly. "You're a man. You'll do all right."
Some time later when it became apparent even to her that I wasn't going to do all right, she sat up on the bed. "Get me a cigarette, will you, Chet?" she asked me. She sounded tired. I went back out to my clothes and found my cigarettes. She studied my face in the glow from my lighter. "Is it me, Chet?"
"It's not you."
"You're not a queer." It was a statement, not a question.
"No."
"But this happens?"
"Yes. Not all the time."
She blew out a convulsive lungful of smoke. "You shouldn't have done it to me, Chet." Then her big hand closed on mine. "I'm sorry. It was me who did it to you, wasn't il?" The bed creaked as she changed position. "What do you think It is?"
"Everybody has his own opium for this sort of thing." I stubbed out my own cigarette. "Years ago I saw a cartoon in a magazine. A slick looking battalion is marching along in cadence except for one raggedy-assed, stumble-footed type who's out of step. A rock faced sergeant is giving him hell. The tag line had the out of-step character telling the sergeant he heard a different drum."
"What's your drum?" Hazel asked immediately.
I almost blurted out the truth. "Excitement," I said after I caught myself. I'd nearly said "guns." With a gun in my hand and tension crackling in the air, I'm the best damn man right afterward that you ever saw.
"Well, I've heard about bullfighters," Hazel said philosophically. "And I've known gamblers who were on-again-off-again with women." She got up from the bed and walked to the chair where she'd left her clothes. Her superb big body glistened in the moonlight that filtered into the bedroom. She came back to the bed when she was dressed and punched me in the ribs. "Forget it," she said. "Let's just scratch tonight from the results, Horseman."
But it was a quiet ride back to the Dixie Pig to pick up my car.
I've had a few quiet rides in my time.
The next night at the Dixie Pig I couldn't see any change in Hazel's attitude. She made no reference to the previous night. I hadn't gone there expecting to find the details of the disaster soaped on the back bar mirror, but it makes a difference and the difference usually shows. Hazel wasn't big only in her physical dimensions.
"I hear you're picking on our poor little deputy sheriffs now," she began without preliminary, sitting down in the booth.
"Your hearing's good, but you've got the story wrong."
"You could be underestimating Blaze Franklin."
It irritated me. "I'm not overestimating him or underestimating him. I don't give a damn about him."
"Don't get narky, Chet. I'm telling you for your own good. Blaze is dangerous."
"So how come a dangerous man is wearing a badge?"
Hazel frowned. "I don't think anyone had the full picture on Blaze until he had the uniform. A psychiatrist would probably say it gives him the opportunity to work out his aggression safely."
"Lucille Grimes must go for aggressive types."
"Something's happened to that relationship lately," Hazel said quietly. "I see it in her, not him. She always had a cocky way of flipping a hip that had the pigeons crossing the street to bask in the sunshine. It used to be that Blaze rolled over when she sn
apped her fingers. I don't see that now. She's lost weight, and her eyes look like two burned holes in a blanket. Something's gnawing
on that gal. I'll tell you the truth, I've been wondering lately if she isn't dipping into the till at the post office."
I had to hold myself down. "Why in hell would she need to do that?"
Hazel planted her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. "I'll tell you a tale out of school. When Charlie died, he was on his best winning streak ever, and he left me cash. I invested it. When Lou died, I inherited a whole bunch of stuff I never knew he had. In a small town that kind of thing gets around."
Her voice took on a brooding quality, as if she were thinking aloud. "Two months ago Blaze Franklin came to me and tried to borrow three thousand dollars. He had a red-hot business opportunity, he said. I'd learned from Charlie how to keep an approach like that from becoming a problem. Blaze knew that my investments were being handled by Nate Pepperman, a business consultant with an office above the bank. I told Blaze to explain his proposition to Nate, and if Nate okayed it to tell him I said it was all right for Nate to milk something and finance the deal."
Hazel gave me a little-girl grin. "I've seen Charlie send three a week like that to his business consultant, and then he'd light up another cigar and tell me that the day the guy okayed a proposition was the day Charlie got himself a new business consultant. When they couldn't lean on friendship, most propositions turned out to be swiss cheese in texture."
She sobered again. "A couple of weeks later Nate came ill to see me about something else, and I asked him about Blaze. I wasn't too surprised to hear Blaze had never been near him. Even a professional big-touch artist might choke up trying to explain a deal to a gimlet-eye like Nate."
Hazel shook out a cigarette from my pack on the table and leaned forward to accept my proffered light. She blew out a lungful of smoke and licked at a loose filament of tobacco on her lip. "About the same time I heard from one of my barflies that Lucille Grimes had been into Dick
Turnbull's auto agency pricing foreign sport cars. That seemed to be two and two adding up to four." Hazel leveled the cigarette at me. "Then lo and behold, the next time I saw Lucille she was burnin' rubber on a bright red, brand new MG roadster."
She smiled at my raised eyebrow. "Yes. I was curious enough about it myself to make it my business to find out that Blaze had paid for it, in cash. That's not the way the title reads, but that's the way it happened. So either Blaze found himself another golden goose, or I figure Lucille is into the till. She sure looks like she's waitin' for her pants to be dropped an' the paddle to burn her up."
"Blaze probably saved up for it out of his green stamps," I said, but I was doing a lot of thinking.
"Lucille was all over town in the MG for ten days or so, champagne-bubbly," Hazel continued. "Then the blight set in. I don't know how he managed it, but the reins are definitely in Deputy Franklin's hands these days. Lucille looks like a lamp with the flame blown out. It must be that jealous men are hard on the nerves. She certainly looks like something is grinding her down. Maybe a man wouldn't notice it, but it's there for a woman to see."
There was a lot that interested me in the story. A whole hell of a lot. Had I been knocking my brains out for nothing on the west coast of Florida's brush-overgrown back roads, when the pair of them had been practically under my thumb all the time? Franklin's persistent interest in my supposed timber-cruising, and then the direct connection to the post office. . . .
I gave it some more thought when the bar became active and Hazel went back to work.
I thought about it still more on the way back to the motel.
I was already in bed when something that had come to mind previously occurred to me. I got up, slipped on a robe, and went outside. I unlocked the back deck of the Ford and opened my small toolchest. I found what I was looking for: a miniature Italian automatic that fired
three .17 cartridges. It had its own little holster that strapped on a man's shin under his sock. It was no bulkier than an ankle bandage.
1 went back inside the motel room and strapped it on my shin. I didn't know yet whether Manny Sebastian knew where to find me. When I found out, it could be on goddamn short notice. I might need a little something extra going for me—like a hidden shin holster.
But right now there was Blaze Franklin.
And Lucille Grimes.
I was in the post office lobby at nine o'clock the next morning. The outer doors were opened earlier to allow boxholders to get their mail, but the windows didn't open until nine. Right on the dot Lucille raised the general delivery window. I could see two clerks, but they were busy in the back of the long room. I stepped up to the window, in a hurry to get my piece spoken before we were interrupted by someone walking in. "Morning, Lucille," I said.
She looked surprised to see me. "Good morning," she said almost as an afterthought. The dark circles beneath her eyes were still in evidence, and her blonde hair looked stringy. A trace of blotchiness marred her otherwise velvety pallor. "May I help you?" She recalled herself to business from whatever she was thinking.
"How about having dinner with me one of these nights, Lucille?"
Her original surprise was obviously redoubled. "I don't believe I should," she answered. She stood there testing the sound of it. "I really don't think—"
"You're not wearing his ring," I interrupted her. "Or his collar, I hope."
Her chin lifted "If you're implying—" "I'm implying I'd like to have dinner with you. Say Wednesday night?" "I'll think about it." She appeared confused. A woman came in the door and walked up to the window. I had to step aside. "Wednesday night?" I pressed the blonde.
"I'll have to—call me tonight," she said hurriedly, then smiled at the woman. "Yes, Mrs. Newman?"
I backed away under Mrs. Newman's bright-eyed inspection. No need to put an ad in the paper saying that I'd invited the postmistress out to dinner. The Mrs. Newmans of Hudson would eventually get the word back to Blaze Franklin. And if Hazel was right about who was calling the shots for the loving pair, an acceptance from Lucille would mean that Blaze had okayed it. That would be an interesting situation in itself.
I drove out east on Main Street, and for six hours I beat my way up and back two dozen monstrously tangled dirt roads, old logging trails, and footpaths, a few of them no more than twenty yards apart. I sweat gallons. I lost my temper. And I found nothing.
I went back to the Lazy Susan and showered, then stretched out on the bed for a couple of hours. I couldn't sleep, although I was tired. The continual frustration was beginning to do things to the hair-trigger of my temper. If it continued much longer, a little shove from one direction or another might send me careening off on a course not necessarily the correct one, just because action itself would be a release.
I was still in a bad mood when I whistled up Kaiser and headed for the Dixie Pig and dinner. The first three minutes there compounded it. I walked in to find Jed Raymond in the corner booth wearing the khaki shirt and red-piped uniform trousers I'd come to associate with Blaze Franklin. It jarred me. "Where's the masquerade?" I asked Jed. He looked at me curiously. I didn't like the sound of my voice myself.
"I told you I was a jackleg deputy in an emergency," he said in his usual cheerful manner.
"So what's the emergency?"
His grin was sheepish. "Opening of a new supermarket. I'm on traffic."
I '..it down in the booth. "You must be younger than I thought, playing cops and robbers."
"Cut it out, will you? Around here a guy's expected to do this or go into politics. This takes less time and money."
"Suppose you had to arrest a real estate prospect, Jed?"
"Now you know no prospect of mine could ever be involved in anything requirin' me to arrest him."
"But suppose?"
"If I didn't have the deposit, he just might have a little runnin' room," Jed grinned.
Kaiser padded over to Jed's side of the booth and rested his
muzzle on Jed's thigh. Jed reached down and scratched him between the ears. Kaiser took Jed's arm in his mouth. Jed growled at the dog, and Kaiser growled back. I could tell the dog wanted to play, and Jed reached the same conclusion.
"You want a little roughhouse, boy?" he asked. He slid out of the booth and got down on his knees. In seconds the big gray and brown dog and Jed's ginger-colored head were locked in mock combat. They rolled around the floor in a ferocious-sounding battle so real the bar customers scattered like quail. One customer climbed on a table.
Jed got to his feet finally, laughing. He brushed the floor dust from his uniform. Kaiser wagged his big tail appreciatively. Jed sat down in the booth again. "That's a lot of dog," he said, then continued in the same breath, "I hear you're dating Lucille Grimes."
"She hasn't said yes."
"lint yon asked her, according to a dear lady who can give a large mouthed bass cards and spades. You know, I feel a little guilt in the matter. Are you tryin' to prove somethin' to me because I threw you smack dab up against the shark-toothed widow?"
"Shark-toothed?"
"I live in this town, Chet. Do you need a blueprint?"
"I asked the woman to dinner. Does that enlist me among her love slaves?"
"It enlists you on Blaze Franklin's shit list," Jed said soberly.
"How come Franklin's got this whole town buffaloed?"
Jed spread his hands. "You've met the gentleman."
"I've met him," I agreed. "And I size him up about twenty-five cents on the dollar."
"Goddammit, you're askin' for it with that attitude!" Jed bristled. "Look, I'm just concerned my big mouth pushed you into somethin' with a stinger attached."
I pulled up on the reins. The kid meant all right. "Forget it, Jed," I said. "She hasn't said yes. If she does, we'll have dinner. It's a big deal?"
His expression was still serious. "Would you believe a couple of guys who've gone out with our beauteous postmistress have had—ah—accidents? I don't believe she's had an invitation in a year. Until yours."
