“She—she’s still unconscious?”
“Uh-huh, and she ain’t ever going to be any other way if you ask me.” He shook his head solemnly. “Conway don’t know when he’s well off. If that no-account Elmer wasn’t already dead, he’d be swingin’ from a tree about now.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s pretty bad all right.”
“Don’t know what would possess a man to do a thing like that. Dogged if I do! Don’t see how he could be drunk enough or mean enough to do it.”
“I guess it’s my fault,” I said. “I shouldn’t have ever let her stay in town.”
“We-el…I told you to use your own judgment, and she was a mighty cute little trick from all I hear. I’d probably have let her stay myself if I’d been in your place.”
“I’m sure sorry, Bob,” I said. “I sure wish I’d come to you instead of trying to handle this blackmail deal myself.”
“Yeah,” he nodded slowly, “but I reckon we’ve been over that ground enough. It’s done now, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Talking and fretting about might-have-beens won’t get us anywhere.”
“No,” I said. “I guess there’s no use crying over spilled milk.”
The plane began to circle and lose altitude, and we fastened our seat belts. A couple of minutes later we were skimming along the landing field, and a police car and ambulance were keeping pace with us.
The plane stopped, and the pilot came out of his compartment and unlocked the door. Bob and I got out, and watched while the doctor supervised the unloading of the stretcher. The upper part of it was closed in kind of a little tent, and all I could see was the outline of her body under the sheet. Then I couldn’t even see that; they were hustling her off toward the ambulance. And a heavy hand came down on my shoulder.
“Lou,” said Chester Conway. “You come with me in the police car.”
“Well,” I said, glancing at Bob. “I kind of figured on—”
“You come with me,” he repeated. “Sheriff, you ride in the ambulance. We’ll see you at the hospital.”
Bob pushed back his Stetson, and gave him a hard sharp look. Then his face sort of sagged and he turned and walked away, his scuffed boots dragging against the pavement.
I’d been pretty worried about how to act around Conway. Now, seeing the way he’d pushed old Bob Maples around, I was just plain sore. I jerked away from his hand and got into the police car. I kept my head turned as Conway climbed in and slammed the door.
The ambulance started up, and headed off the field. We followed it. Conway leaned forward and closed the glass partition between our seat and the driver’s.
“Didn’t like that, did you?” he grunted. “Well, there may be a lot of things you don’t like before this is over. I’ve got the reputation of my dead boy at stake, understand? My own reputation. I’m looking out for that and nothing but that, and I ain’t standing on etiquette. I’m not letting someone’s tender feelings get in my way.”
“I don’t suppose you would,” I said. “It’d be pretty hard to start in at your time of life.”
I wished, immediately, that I hadn’t said it; I was giving myself away, you see. But he didn’t seem to have heard me. Like always, he wasn’t hearing anything he didn’t want to hear.
“They’re operating on that woman as soon as she gets to the hospital,” he went on. “If she pulls through the operation, she’ll be able to talk by tonight. I want you there at that time—just as soon as she comes out of the anesthetic.”
“Well?” I said.
“Bob Maples is all right, but he’s too old to be on his toes. He’s liable to foul up the works right when you need him most. That’s why I’m letting him go on now when it don’t matter whether anyone’s around or not.”
“I don’t know as I understand you,” I said. “You mean—”
“I’ve got rooms reserved at a hotel. I’ll drop you off there, and you stay there until I call you. Get some rest, understand? Get rested up good, so’s you’ll be on your toes and raring to go when the time comes.”
“All right,” I shrugged, “but I slept all the way up on the plane.”
“Sleep some more, then. You may have to be up all night.”
The hotel was on West Seventh Street, a few blocks from the hospital; and Conway had engaged a whole suite of rooms. The assistant manager of the place went up with me and the bellboy, and a couple of minutes after they left a waiter brought in a tray of whiskey and ice. And right behind him came another waiter with a flock of sandwiches and coffee.
I poured myself a nice drink, and took it over by the window. I sat down in a big easy chair, and propped my boots up on the radiator. I leaned back, grinning.
Conway was a big shot, all right. He could push you around and make you like it. He could have places like this, with people jumping sideways to wait on him. He could have everything but what he wanted—his son and a good name.
His son had beaten a whore to death, and she’d killed him; and he’d never be able to live it down. Not if he lived to be a hundred and I damned well hoped he would.
I ate part of a clubhouse sandwich, but it didn’t seem to set so well. So I fixed another big drink and took it over to the window. I felt kind of restless and uneasy. I wished I could get out and wander around the town.
Fort Worth is the beginning of West Texas, and I wouldn’t have felt conspicuous, dressed as I was, like I would have in Dallas or Houston. I could have had a fine time—seen something new for a change. And instead I had to stay here by myself, doing nothing, seeing nothing, thinking the same old thoughts.
It was like there was a plot against me almost. I’d done something wrong, way back when I was a kid, and I’d never been able to get away from it. I’d had my nose rubbed in it day after day until, like an overtrained dog, I’d started crapping out of pure fright. And, now, here I was—
I poured another drink.…
—Here I was, now, but it wouldn’t be like this much longer. Joyce was bound to die if she wasn’t dead already. I’d got rid of her and I’d got rid of it—the sickness—when I did it. And just as soon as things quieted down, I’d quit my job and sell the house and Dad’s practice and pull out.
Amy Stanton? Well—I shook my head—she wasn’t going to stop me. She wasn’t going to keep me chained there in Central City. I didn’t know just how I’d break away from her, but I knew darned well that I would.
Some way. Somehow.
More or less to kill time, I took a long hot bath; and afterwards I tried the sandwiches and coffee again. I paced around the room, eating and drinking coffee, moving from window to window. I wished we weren’t up so high so’s I could see a little something.
I tried taking a nap, and that was no good. I got a shine cloth out of the bathroom and began rubbing at my boots. I’d got one brushed up real good and was starting on the toe of the second when Bob Maples came in.
He said hello, casually, and fixed himself a drink. He sat down, looking into the glass, twirling the ice around and around.
“I was sure sorry about what happened there at the airport, Bob,” I said. “I reckon you know I wanted to stick with you.”
“Yeah,” he said, shortly.
“I let Conway know I didn’t like it,” I said.
And he said, “Yeah,” again. “Forget it. Just drop it, will you?”
“Well, sure,” I nodded. “Whatever you say, Bob.”
I watched him out of the corner of my eye, as I went ahead rubbing the boot. He acted mad and worried, almost disgusted you might say. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t over anything I’d done. In fact, I couldn’t see that Conway had done enough to upset him like this.
“Is your rheumatism bothering you again?” I said. “Why don’t you face around on the straight chair where I can get at your shoulder muscles, and I’ll—”
He raised his head and looked up at me. And his eyes were clear, but somehow there seemed to be tears behind them. Slowly, slowly, like he was talking
to himself, he began to speak.
“I know what you are, don’t I, Lou? Know you backwards and forwards. Known you since you was kneehigh to a grasshopper, and I never knowed a bad thing about you. Know just what you’re goin’ to say and do, no matter what you’re up against. Like there at the airport—seeing Conway order me around. A lot of men in your place would have got a big bang out of that, but I knew you wouldn’t. I knew you’d feel a lot more hurt about it than I did. That’s the way you are, and you wouldn’t know how to be any other way.…”
“Bob,” I said. “You got something on your mind, Bob?”
“It’ll keep,” he said. “I reckon it’ll have to keep for a while. I just wanted you to know that I—I—”
“Yes, Bob?”
“It’ll keep,” he repeated. “Like I said, it’ll have to keep.” And he clinked the ice in his glass, staring down at it. “That Howard Hendricks,” he went on. “Now, Howard ought to’ve known better’n to put you through that foolishness this morning. ’Course, he’s got his job to do, same as I got mine, and a man can’t let friendship stand in the way of duty. But—”
“Oh, hell, Bob,” I said. “I didn’t think anything of that.”
“Well, I did. I got to thinking about it this afternoon after we left the airport. I thought about how you’d have acted if you’d have been in my place and me in yours. Oh, I reckon you’d have been pleasant and friendly, because that’s the way you’re built. But you wouldn’t have left any doubt as to where you stood. You’d have said, ‘Look, now, Bob Maples is a friend of mine, and I know he’s straight as a string. So if there’s something we want to know, let’s just up and ask him. Let’s don’t play no little two-bit sheepherders’ tricks on him like he was on one side of the fence and we was on the other.’…That’s what you’d have done. But me—Well, I don’t know, Lou. Maybe I’m behind the times. Maybe I’m getting too old for this job.”
It looked to me like he might have something there. He was getting old and unsure of himself, and Conway had probably given him a hell of a riding that I didn’t know about.
“You had some trouble at the hospital, Bob?” I said.
“Yeah,” he hesitated. “I had some trouble.” He got up and poured more whiskey into his glass. Then, he moved over to the window and stood rocking on his heels, his back turned to me. “She’s dead, Lou. She never came out of the ether.”
“Well,” I said. “We all knew she didn’t stand a chance. Everyone but Conway, and he was just too stubborn to see reason.”
He didn’t say anything. I walked over to the window by him and put my arm around his shoulders.
“Look, Bob,” I said. “I don’t know what Conway said to you, but don’t let it get you down. Where the hell does he get off at, anyway? He wasn’t even going to have us come along on this trip; we had to deal ourselves in. Then, when we got back here, he wants us to jump whenever he hollers frog, and he raises hell when things don’t go to suit him.”
He shrugged a little, or maybe he just took a deep breath. I let my arm slide from his shoulders, hesitated a moment, thinking he was about to say something, then went into the bathroom and closed the door. When a man’s feeling low, sometimes the best thing to do is leave him alone.
I sat down on the edge of the tub, and lighted a cigar. I sat thinking—standing outside of myself—thinking about myself and Bob Maples. He’d always been pretty decent to me, and I liked him. But no more, I suppose, than I liked a lot of other people. When it came right down to cases, he was just one of hundreds of people I knew and was friendly with. And yet here I was, fretting about his problems instead of my own.
Of course, that might be partly because I’d known my problems were pretty much settled. I’d known that Joyce couldn’t live, that she wasn’t going to talk. She might have regained consciousness for a while, but she sure as hell wouldn’t have talked; not after what had happened to her face.…But knowing that I was safe couldn’t entirely explain my concern for him. Because I’d been damned badly rattled after the murder, I hadn’t been able to reason clearly, to accept the fact that I had to be safe. Yet I’d tried to help the Greek’s boy, Johnnie Pappas.
The door slammed open, and I looked up. Bob grinned at me broadly, his face flushed, whiskey slopping to the floor from his glass.
“Hey,” he said, “you runnin’ out on me, Lou? Come on in here an’ keep me company.”
“Sure, Bob,” I said. “Sure, I will.” And I went back into the living room with him. He flopped down into a chair, and he drained his drink at a gulp.
“Let’s do something, Lou. Let’s go out and paint old cow town red. Just me’n you, huh?”
“What about Conway?”
“T’hell with him. He’s got some business here; stayin’ over for a few days. We’ll check our bags somewheres, so’s we won’t have to run into him again, and then we’ll have a party.”
He made a grab for the bottle, and got it on the second try. I took it away from him, and filled his glass myself.
“That sounds fine, Bob,” I said. “I’d sure like to do that. But shouldn’t we be getting back to Central City? I mean, with Conway feeling the way he does, it might not look good for us—”
“I said t’hell with him. Said it, an’ that’s what I meant.”
“Well, sure. But—”
“Done enough for Conway. Done too much. Done more’n any white man should. Now, c’mon and slide into them boots an’ let’s go.”
I said, sure, sure I would. I’d do just that. But I had a bad callus, and I’d have to trim it first. So maybe, as long as he’d have to wait, he’d better lie down and take a little nap.
He did it, after a little grumbling and protesting. I called the railroad station, and reserved a bedroom on the eight o’clock train to Central City. It would cost us a few dollars personally, since the county would only pay for first-class Pullman fare. But I figured we were going to need privacy.
I was right. I woke him up at six-thirty, to give him plenty of time to get ready, and he seemed worse off than before his nap. I couldn’t get him to take a bath. He wouldn’t drink any coffee or eat. Instead, he started hitting the whiskey again; and when we left the hotel he took a full bottle with him. By the time I got him on the train, I was as frazzled as a cow’s hide under a branding iron. I wondered what in the name of God Conway had said to him.
I wondered, and, hell, I should have known. Because he’d as good as told me. It was as plain as the nose on my face, and I’d just been too close to it to see it.
Maybe, though, it was a good thing I didn’t know. For there was nothing to be done about it, nothing I could do. And I’d have been sweating blood.
Well. That was about the size of my trip to the big town. My first trip outside the county. Straight to the hotel from the plane. Straight to the train from the hotel. Then, the long ride home at night—when there was nothing to see—closed in with a crying drunk.
Once, around midnight, a little while before he went to sleep, his mind must have wandered. For, all of a sudden, his fist wobbled out and poked me in the chest.
“Hey,” I said. “Watch yourself, Bob.”
“Wash—watch y’self,” he mumbled. “Stop man with grin, smile worthwhile—s-stop all a’ stuff spilt milk n’ so on. Wha’ you do that for, anyway.”
“Aw,” I said. “I was only kidding, Bob.”
“T-tell you somethin’,” he said. “T-tell you somethin’ I bet you never thought of.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s—it’s always lightest j-just before the dark.”
Tired as I was, I laughed. “You got it wrong, Bob,” I said. “You mean—”
“Huh-uh,” he said. “You got it wrong.”
10
We got into Central City around six in the morning, and Bob took a taxi straight home. He was sick; really sick, not just hung-over. He was too old a man to pack away the load he’d had.
I stopped by the office, but everything was pretty qu
iet, according to the night deputy, so I went on home, too. I had a lot more hours in than I’d been paid for. No one could have faulted me if I’d taken a week off. Which, naturally, I didn’t intend to do.
I changed into some fresh clothes, and made some scrambled eggs and coffee. As I sat down to eat, the phone rang.
I supposed it was the office, or maybe Amy checking up on me; she’d have to call early or wait until four when her school day was over. I went to the phone, trying to think of some dodge to get out of seeing her, and when I heard Joe Rothman’s voice it kind of threw me.
“Know who it is, Lou?” he said. “Remember our late talk.”
“Sure,” I said. “About the—uh—building situation.”
“I’d ask you to drop around tonight, but I have to take a little jaunt to San Angelo. Would you mind if I stopped by your house a few minutes?”
“Well,” I said, “I guess you could. Is it something important?”
“A small thing, but important, Lou. A matter of a few words of reassurance.”
“Well, maybe I could—”
“I’m sure you could, but I think I’d better see you,” he said; and he clicked up the receiver.
I hung up my phone, and went back to my breakfast. It was still early. The chances were that no one would see him. Anyway, he wasn’t a criminal, opinion in some quarters to the contrary.
He came about five minutes later. I offered him some breakfast, not putting much warmth into the invitation since I didn’t want him hanging around; and he said, no, thanks, but sat down at the table with me.
“Well, Lou,” he said, starting to roll a cigarette. “I imagine you know what I want to hear.”
“I think so,” I nodded. “Consider it said.”
“The very discreet newspaper stories are correct in their hints? He tried to dish it out and got it thrown back at him?”
“That’s the way it looks. I can’t think of any other explanation.”
“I couldn’t help wondering,” he said, moistening the paper of his cigarette. “I couldn’t help wondering how a woman with her face caved in and her neck broken could score six bull’s-eyes on a man, even one as large as the late unlamented Elmer Conway.”