Part 2 (1/2)

”Langston was murdered,” he said.

I didn't say anything for a moment. I was thinking of a soft and filthy laugh, and a whisper. We know you killed him, don't we? We know you killed him, don't we?

I snapped out of it then. ”Well, did they catch the party that did it?”

”Hmmmm. Yes and no.”

That was the kind of answer you liked. I sighed, lit a cigarette, and tried again. ”Did they, or didn't they?”

”They got one of 'em,” he said. ”The man. But they ain't found out to this day who the other one was. Or so they say.”

The light came up green then, and he s.h.i.+fted gears and shot ahead in the afternoon traffic. It made no sense at all, of course. I waited for him to go on.

”Course, now, they could have a pretty good idea, what with one thing and another, if you know what I mean. But they just ain't sayin'.”

I read him even less. ”Wait a minute. It is is against the law to kill people around here, isn't it?” against the law to kill people around here, isn't it?”

”Yes, sir, it sure is. But the law also says you got to have evidence before you arrest anybody and go to court.”

It was like probing a raw nerve. Well, I thought angrily, I did have evidence. It just wasn't enough.

We'd left the business district behind now and were pa.s.sing the box factory and ice plant on the edge of the town. I wished he'd slow down; there were a dozen questions I wanted to ask. ”You mean they got one of them,” I said, ”and he admits there was somebody else, but won't say who? They can't get anything anything out of him?” out of him?”

He tossed the words back over his shoulder. ”Mister, they won't never get anything out of that feller. He tried to pull a gun on Calhoun, and he was dead before he hit the ground.”

”Who's Calhoun?”

”That big cop that stopped you from clobberin' Frankie.”

”h.e.l.l, I wasn't going to hit him-” I stopped. Of all the idiotic things to waste time on.

”You look like a man that could take care of hisself just about anywhere, but let me give you a tip. Don't start nothin' with Calhoun.”

”I'm not about to,” I said impatiently. I was sorry I'd asked.

”You think that's fat. Mister, I got one word for you. It's not fat. You know, I seen that man do things-” He paused, sighed, and shook his head. ”Salty. What I mean, he's salty.”

I wished he'd shut up about Calhoun and get on with it. ”All right,” I prodded, ”you say one was killed instantly, resisting arrest. So he didn't say anything. Then how do they know there was was another one? Did Calhoun catch him in the act?” another one? Did Calhoun catch him in the act?”

”No. That is, not exactly-”

We pulled to a stop before the Silver King. Heat s.h.i.+mmered off the highway, and the glare from the white gravel of the parking area was dazzling. I could hear a jukebox inside, and through the big window opposite us I could see some men drinking coffee at a counter. The driver put his arm up on the back of the seat and turned to look at me.

”What do you mean, not exactly?” I asked.

”Well, it was like this,” he said. ”When Calhoun jumped this man-Strader, his name was-he was down there in the river bottom about four-thirty in the morning tryin' to get rid of the body. Strader was drivin' Langston's car, and Langston hisself was in the back wrapped in a tarp with his head caved in.”

”Yes, I can see where that might look a little suspicious,” I said. ”But was there anybody else in the car with Strader?”

”No. But there was another car, maybe fifty yards back up the road. It got away. Calhoun heard it start up and saw the lights come on, and ran for it, but he couldn't catch it. He was just going to put a shot through it when he stumbled in the dark and fell down. By the time he could find his gun and get up, it was gone around a bend in the road. But he'd already got the license number. They got them little lights, you know, that s.h.i.+ne on the back plate-”

”Sure, sure,” I said impatiently. ”So they know whose car it was?”

”Yeah. It was Strader's.”

”Oh,” I said. ”And where did they find it?”

He jerked his head towards the road. ”Right over there in front of Strader's room in that motel. And the only thing they ever found out for sure was that it was a woman drivin' it.”

I said nothing for a moment. Even with this little of it, you could see the ugliness emerging, the stain of suspicion that was all over the town, on everything you touched.

”When did all this happen?” I asked.

”Last November.”

Seven months of it, I thought. No wonder you sensed that gray ocean of weariness when you looked at her, and had the feeling she was running along the edge of a nervous breakdown.

”That'll be one dollar,” he said. ”Outside the city limits.” I handed him two. ”Come on. I'll buy you a beer.”

3

We went inside to air-conditioned coolness. It was an L-shaped building, the front part being a lunch-room. There were some tables to the left of the doorway, and a counter with a row of stools in the back of the window that looked out on the road. Swinging doors behind the counter led into the kitchen. There were mounted tarpon on the wall on either side of the swinging doors, and another above the doorway on the right that led into the bar. Two truckers were drinking coffee and talking to the waitress.

The bar was a longer room, running back at right angles and forming the other part of the L. At the rear, towards the left, were a number of tables, a jukebox that had gone silent for the moment, and a telephone box. I glanced at the latter. It could wait.

At one of the tables, a man in a white cowboy-style hat and a blue s.h.i.+rt sat with his back to me, facing a thin dark splinter of a girl who looked as if she might have Indian blood. Two more men were perched on stools at the end of the bar. They looked up at us as we sat down, and one of them nodded to the taxi driver. There was another mounted tarpon, the largest I'd ever seen, above the bar mirror.

The bartender came over, glanced idly at me, and nodded to the driver. ”Hi, Jake. What'll it be?”

”Bottle of Regal, Ollie,” Jake replied.

I ordered the same. Ollie put it in front of us and went back down the bar to where he'd been polis.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses. He appeared to be in his middle twenties, and had big shoulders, muscular arms, and a wide tanned face with self-possessed brown eyes.

I took a sip of the beer and lit a cigarette. ”Who was Strader?” I asked.

At the sound of the name, the bartender and both the men down at the end turned and stared sharply. Even after all this time, I thought.

Jake looked uncomfortable. ”That was the craziest part of it. He was from Miami. And as far as they could ever find out, he didn't even know Langston.”

One of the two men put down his gla.s.s. He had the sharp, meddlesome eyes of a trouble-maker. ”Maybe he didn't,” he said. ”But he could still have been a friend of the family.”

The bartender glanced at him, but said nothing. The other man merely went on drinking his beer. The ugliness of it hung there for a moment in the silence of the room, but it was something they didn't even notice any more. They were used to it.

”I ain't sayin' he wasn't,” Jake protested. ”All I'm sayin' is that they ain't never been able to prove he knew either one of 'em.”

Then what the h.e.l.l was he doing up here?” the other demanded. ”Why was he registered over there in that motel three times in two months? He wasn't on business, because they never found n.o.body in town he come to see. Besides, you don't reckon he'd be crazy enough to try to sell Miami real estate around here, do you?”