The Name of the Game is Death

IX

Bucktooth moved to my right, the gun level. "Don't get careless," he said. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild-looking. His free hand snaked under my jacket and delicately removed my .38 from its holster. He tossed it to Manny.

"He carries a Colt, too," Manny said. His round, swarthy face was shiny with perspiration.

Bucktooth gave me a shoulders-to-knees hand-patting treatment from behind me. He located the Woodsman in my pants pocket, but he didn't make the mistake of trying to take it out himself. "Throw it on the bed," he ordered. "And be goddamn careful how you do it."

I fished out the .22 with thumb and forefinger, then tossed it on the bed. I could see Manny relax. I wondered how the bastards would feel if they knew I still had the little three-shot .17 caliber puff adder in the miniature holster on my shin.

"Let's take him out of here," Bucktooth said from behind me.

"We're going to take a little ride," Manny informed me. He mopped at his streaming features with a soggy handkerchief. My Smith & Wesson was in his other hand.

I went over and knelt down beside Kaiser. He was still breathing. There was a ragged-looking, bleeding furrow between his ears alongside the half-healed one from the roadside ditch. I stood up and turned around. Bucktooth

had moved in right behind me. "I suppose you hit the dog, you sonofabitch?" I blared at him.

"Just like I'll belt you if you make one more move like that without being told!" he snarled.

I walked right into him, swinging.

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" Manny bleated. "He's got to talk first!"

Bucktooth reversed his gun and swung it at my head. It landed on my left shoulder just as I put my fist out of sight at his belt buckle. He doubled up as I staggered sideways. Manny clocked me on the back of my neck with my own gun before I could regain my balance. I found myself on my knees without knowing how I got there. The room whirled sickeningly.

"Cut it out!" Manny said sharply to Bucktooth, lunging at me with his gun upraised. "You can have your fun later." Bucktooth hesitated, red eyes slitted, but reluctantly backed away. "Get up," Manny said to me. I got to my feet shakily. "Where's the money?"

"Fifteen, eighteen miles out in the swamp," I mumbled.

"Didn't I tell you he'd say that?" Bucktooth growled.

"And didn't I tell you it didn't matter what he said?" Manny rebutted. "If it isn't where he takes us, then you get to exercise that gun butt." He waved the Smith & Wesson at me. "Let's get going."

"Can't find—the tree—at night," I said.

"We'll go in the morning. Right now you're coming to our place. Less chance of an interruption." Manny sounded pleased with himself.

"The dog goes with us," I told him.

"Now here's a type practicing' to be a character," Bucktooth said in a wondering tone. He shoved his bristled chin against my face. "The dog goes nowhere, jerk!"

"I'll show you where to leave him," I said.

Bucktooth made a sound deep in his throat. Manny caught his arm as he started to swing the gun at me. "We can't leave the dog looking like that in an empty room for the maid to find," he said. He looked at me. "What's your play?"

"I know someone who'll take care of him," I said. "()pen the door and I'll carry him."

"No!" Bucktooth said violently.

"Pick him up," Manny said to me. "The dog will be a good excuse if we run into anyone," he shut off his angry partner. "Stop your bitching, will you? Rudy Hernandez told me years ago the guy was like this about animals."

1 picked up Kaiser—a hell of a lift for the shape I was In. My ears were still buzzing. Bucktooth was right beside me. "Pretty soon I'm gonna ask you what happened to Red, pal," he said softly. "An' I hope I don't like your answer. Right now you make one wrong move an' you've had it. I won't kill you, but you'll wish I had. I'll break every bone in your stupid face."

"Open the door," I said.

He leveled the gun at me again. "I'll cover you from the doorway till you get him in the car," he said to Manny.

Manny opened the door. It was black night outside. I carried Kaiser out. Manny pointed to a big station wagon parked on the rim of the driveway. There wasn't a soul around. Manny opened the front door on the passenger's side, and I straggled in with Kaiser on my lap. Manny got under the wheel, waved his arm, and in seconds I heard Bucktooth crawling into the seat behind me. I could visualize his gun three-quarters of an inch from the back of my neck.

Manny drove out of the motel parking lot. "Where to?"

he asked.

"Right. Toward town." I waited until we were across The street from Jed Raymond's office. "Pull in anywhere here." There was a light on in Jed's office.

Manny curbed the station wagon. "What's the play?" he said to me again.

"See that light up there? I'll carry the dog up one flight of stairs and leave him outside the door of the real estate office."

"An' I suppose you'll okay that, too?" Bucktooth rasped at Manny.

"We got to get rid of the dog, anyway," Manny said defensively. "I'd just as soon humor this guy till we get our hands on the money. This is one stubborn sonofabitch."

"I'll unstubborn him or anyone else in three-an'-a-half minutes, guaranteed," Bucktooth snapped, but he opened his door and got out. He opened my door. "Come on, you. Sometimes I think the whole damn world's crazy."

I lugged Kaiser up the stairs and laid him down gently outside Jed's door. Bucktooth stayed a yard behind me all the way. I knew if Kaiser came to before Jed found him, the big dog would smell Jed inside the office and wouldn't leave.

We were back in the wagon in two minutes. I felt a lot better. Jed would take care of Kaiser, and I knew Kaiser liked him. Now I could concentrate on getting rid of these Mongolian idiots.

Manny headed north on US 19. He turned into a second-rate motel a few blocks out of town. "No noise," Bucktooth warned me when we got out of the wagon. When Manny's back was turned, Bucktooth slammed me viciously in the ribs with his gun butt. I nearly went down, but when I stumbled inside the motel room, I began to make plans for Bucktooth.

Manny turned to me when the door closed. "How do we get to the money?"

"Airboat," I said.

Manny nodded.

"Air what?" Bucktooth wanted to know.

"Airboat," Manny told him. "They use them in swamps. An airplane engine on a plank, practically. They'll float on a heavy dew. I've seen movies of them."

"What's the arrangement about the cash, Manny?" I asked him, not wanting him thinking I was going too easily.

The pair of them exchanged looks. "A three-way split," •Manny said. "IT it's all there." Bucktooth turned his head, but not before I saw his ugly grin. Not that I'd ever been in doubt about their ultimate plans for me.

There was only one bed in the room. Bucktooth motioned me to a chair. "Squat," he said to me. He produced

\ a length of manila line and efficiently roped me to the chair, arms, legs, and waist. Manny tested the job, then stretched out on the bed. Bucktooth soon joined him, taking off only his shoes. They left the light on.

The room grew quiet. I could hear my own breathing. My shoulder hurt. My neck hurt. My ribs hurt. My legs went to sleep. It was a long night, but my time was coming.

When I got these two city types out in the swamp, I'd leave them there, permanently.

I must have dozed off finally, because their stirring loused me. The light was still on, but I could see early-morning sunlight at the edges of the curtains. "Where do we get the airboat?" Manny asked me while Bucktooth was unwrapping me from his diamond hitch.

"We rent it. There's a place about seven miles east on Main Street." My arms weren't in too bad shape after my night in the chair, but I couldn't stand up. I massaged my legs. It was ten minutes before I could walk decently. Bucktooth glowered while I hobbled around the room.

When we got outside, I could tell from the sun and the haze that it was going to be a hot, humid day, a real stinger. We stopped for breakfast east of the traffic light in town. They took turns going inside while one stayed with me in the station wagon. Manny brought me out coffee and a sweet roll.

Outside of town I didn't have to say a word. Manny saw the shack with the hand-painted "Airboat For Hire" sign that I'd noticed my first day in Hudson. He pulled the wagon under a tree. "Bring him down when I signal to you," he said to Bucktooth before he walked down to a little dock. We could see him talking to a slatternly-looking woman, and in a couple of minutes a boy handpoled an airboat to the dock from behind the shack. Manny raised his arm.

"We won't need any conversation," Bucktooth informed me, nudging me with his gun. He slipped it into his pocket as we went down the path. Bucktooth looked distrustfully at the airboat's wide-planked, battered hull with its high, platform seats and the big propeller encased in wire mesh. Three of the planks were fresh where someone had ripped out the bottom on a snag.

I stepped up onto the boat and started the engine. It was old, with a hand throttle. A rudimentary tiller guided the lightweight craft. I revved the engine a few times, listening. I tested the plugs and battery, then checked the gas gauge and compass. I had no intention of being stranded in the swamp myself.

The kid who'd brought the airboat saw I knew what I was doing, and he wandered off. The woman had already disappeared with Manny's rental money. "Can't you run this thing?" Bucktooth demanded of Manny. "I don't like the idea of him runnin' it."

"Sure I can run it," Manny said. I was sure he couldn't. "But he's the one who's got to do the steerin' to the right spot. Just keep an eye on him."

He climbed up into one of the front platform seats. Bucktooth settled himself in the dishpan cockpit, facing me, his back braced against a platform strut. He could watch every move I made in the navigator's bucket seat. "You'll get wet there," I told him.

"Just sec to it I don't get wet, pal," he answered me. I would have preferred them in reversed positions. Manny had my .38 and the keys to the station wagon. "How long's this goin' to take us?"

I shrugged. "Hour and a half each way." It wasn't going to take a third of that if I had my way.

I eased the airboat away from the dock. Bucktooth stared nervously at the brackish-looking water lapping at the boat's low sides. I could see Manny flinch the first few times I rammed the airboat over deceptively solid-looking areas of sawgrass.

The sun beat down upon us. Dark patches of perspiration appeared on Manny's back and under his arms. Bucktooth was sweating freely, too. Shade, but no coolness, was under the gnarled cypress trees with their trailing moss. The swamp was a miasma of sticky heat.

I turned right and left through narrow channels, often enough to get them thoroughly confused. I kept one eye on the compass and the other watching for mangrove roots that might tip us over. The engine didn't sound as noisy beneath the thick, green jungle growth overhead. Mosquitoes and gnats hummed around us. Manny and Bucktooth swatted them busily. Once or twice Manny turned to look back at me. I could see he was beginning to have doubts about the expedition.

I gave them enough time to become relaxed, then began watching for a wide enough space between the trees bordering the channel, accompanied by a lowlying branch of the right height. I passed up a couple of places that almost, but not quite, filled the bill.

When I saw what I wanted, I didn't wait.

The opening was on the left, more than wide enough for the boat. "Alligator!" I yelled and pointed to the right.

"Where?" They bellowed it together. Bucktooth turned in the direction I pointed. Manny stood up to see better. I jammed the throttle wide open and steered hard left. The boat stood up on its port gunwale as it darted between the I roes. The lowlying branch caught Manny squarely in the chest. He shot off the platform like an ice cube from a •.pilled cocktail. He crashed into the right-hand tree, and even above the engine roar I could hear the squishy splash he made when he hit the mud below.

Two-thirds of the way around the tree I shut the engine oil' with the tiller still hard right. Bucktooth had grabbed with both hands to save himself from sliding overboard as the airboat tilted. I reached down and slipped the little .17 caliber from my shin holster. Bucktooth started to turn to check the shut-off engine as we drifted back into the main channel.

"Don't turn a thing but your head, man," I told him. My voice sounded loud in the sudden quiet.

His eyes bulged when he saw what I had in my hand.

Desperately he looked up at the platform for Manny. His gaze fled to the space between the trees, and he looked stricken anew at the sight of two feebly kicking legs visible above the watery, greenish mud.

"Drop your gun in the water," I directed. I didn't even blink while he did it. His nerve was gone. He was ashen, and his hands shook.

"Listen—" he began.

"You've got a choice," I interrupted him. "You can stay out here with the heat and the mosquitoes and the bugs and the snakes and the alligators." His whole face was wet as he stared at me. I showed him the handgun. "Or you can take one from this."

He couldn't make a sound for a second. "You'd—you'd shoot me?" he croaked.

I laughed. "What the hell were you planning to do to me? Come on, make up your mind. Which is it going to be?" His eyes darted wildly in all directions. "Take the bullet," I said. "You'll go out of your mind in twelve hours here." His chest was heaving as he tried to force air through his constricted throat. "Take the bullet."

"No!" It was wrenched from him forcibly.

"Okay." I ruddered the airboat to a little sawgrass island with ;t single half-grown scotch pine slanting up from it. "Jump."

"Oh, Jesus, no! You wouldn't—"

"Jump, you bastard. Or catch the bullet."

His voice soared to a shriek. "Just gimme a chance to—"

1 moved my arm.

Me jumped.

Mis scream echoed hollowly through the green tunnel as he went In up to his knees in the gelatinous ooze. He grabbed at the tree, then screamed again as something slithered away from under his hands. He kept trying to pull his legs up out of the muck.

I stalled the engine and turned the boat around. The last I saw of Bucktooth he was halfway up into the tree which was bending double under his weight. If he was

making any noise I couldn't hear it above the engine sound.

I went back to Manny Sebastian. His legs were under water now, too. I had a hell of a time pulling him far enough up from the mud to get my .38. I didn't bother with the car keys. I dropped him back in.

I rode the compass back to the shack. I poled in the final quarter-mile and beached the airboat three hundred yards away from the dock, behind a point. The crackers weren't going to worry too much about their boat while the station wagon remained as security. I'd be long gone from Hudson by the time they started combing the swamp for the supposedly missing threesome.

I walked a mile, then hitched a ride into town. I made and remade plans all the way. I had a date with Lucille Grimes at five o'clock, a date I was going to keep. Five o'clock would be the payoff, but I had a few things to do first..

It must have been ninety in town, but it felt almost chilly compared to the swamp. I had a meal in the truck-stop diner south of the traffic light in the square. I could hardly believe it when I saw from my watch that it was only ten-thirty in the morning.

From the girl cashier I borrowed a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a pencil. Then I practiced composing telegraph messages on napkins. I finally hit on one I thought would do the trick. I printed ARRIVING SOON MEET ME LAZY SUSAN MOTEL URGENT YOU NOT FAIL ME. I addressed it to Dick Pierce, General Delivery, Hudson, Florida, and I signed it Earl.

I copied it out on the sheet of paper and sealed it in the envelope along with two one-dollar bills. I printed "Western Union" on the outside of the envelope. I watched the drivers from the northbound, diesel-rigged big vans and selected a middle-aged, steady-looking man. I gave him a five-dollar bill and the envelope and asked him to drop it off at the Western Union office wherever he was at noontime. He promised he'd be sure to do it. I sat there till he drove off.

When that telegram hit the deck in the Western Union office in Hudson, it would be sent to the post office and delivered to Lucille Grimes. I should get a little action for my seven dollars right about then. The telegram with that signature should give Lucille Grimes and Blaze Franklin something to think about besides Chet Arnold.

I walked from the diner to the motel room, where I took the phone off the hook. If Jed was trying to call me about Kaiser, it was better the line should be busy than that he couldn't reach me. I didn't want to talk to Jed right now. I spent half an hour cleaning, oiling, and completely restoring the .38. Then I got into the shower and did the same for myself.

I went back uptown at noon and parked across the street from the post office. I had a good view of the general delivery window through the plate glass. I could even see the alphabetized slots for the mail. I'd specified noon for the sending of the telegram because from twelve to two Lucille was on duty with just one clerk, and she almost always handled the front herself.

I could feel the pressure building up inside me. I don't have nerves, but I get keyed up. Everything around me is magnified, including the tick of a watch and the color of the sky.

I settled down to wait. I had a newspaper draped over the steering wheel as though I were reading it. It was hot in the car, even with the windows down, but not as hot as the swamp. It wasn't as hot as plowing up and down overgrown back roads on the cast side of Main Street, either. I was through with all that. In just a few minutes I was going to pop the weasel right out of the box.

It was "in twenty-live by my watch when the old man shuffled up to the post office entrance with the bright yellow envelope in his hand. He went inside, and I saw him place the telegram on the counter. Lucille appeared at the window, picked it up, and looked at it—for a long time. The old guy had to remind her she hadn't signed for it.

She scribbled her name on his clipboard, and the old guy left. Lucille never even looked at the general delivery

dots behind her. Telegram in hand, she made a beeline for the back of the post office. Telephone call, I told myself. A hurried telephone call. I folded up my newspaper and placed it on the seat beside me. Lucille was at the front entrance in three minutes. I could see her explaining something over her shoulder to the clerk whom she'd moved up to the front counter.

She came out on the sidewalk and walked quickly to a ted MG parked three doors down the street. A double-parked delivery van had kept me from noticing it before. Lucille climbed in, backed up, swung around the van, and zipped up the street. I already had my engine running, and I made an illegal U-turn and took out after her.

She hightailed it through town, straight north on 19. I stayed a reasonable distance behind. I didn't need to stay too close. I knew where she was going. No farther than it look to meet Blaze Franklin, Deputy Sheriff, in some kind of privacy.

They didn't bother too much about the privacy, actually. I watched Lucille pull off onto the shoulder of the road where she tucked the nose of the MG right on the tail of a two-tone county cruiser. I pulled off the road and stopped. Blaze Franklin was out of the cruiser and on his way toward Lucille in the MG before its wheels stopped rolling.

From a curve away I had no trouble seeing both his red face and the flash of the yellow telegram he snatched from her through the window of the MG. Franklin tore it open, then stood motionless for a good sixty seconds before he walked around the MG, opened its door, and sat down beside Lucille.

Their heads stayed close together for what seemed like fifteen minutes. When Franklin scrambled out of the MG and headed for his cruiser, I was ready. I swung around and headed back to town, turned off at the first intersection, and parked. The cruiser came flying along the highway, its siren rrrr ing. Franklin was hunched over the wheel, his tomato face set in bulldog lines.

Three minutes later the MG rolled past.

Lucille's face was white and strained-looking.

I tagged along behind them.

The curtain was going up.

I found Blaze Franklin cocked up against the back wall of the Lazy Susan's office in a straight-backed chair when I walked in two hours later. That's where I'd have been, too, if it were me, but I still had to grade him A for nerve. He took one quick look when I came in the door, then paid no attention to me. Mr. Franklin now had other things on his mind than Chet Arnold. They had to think now they'd had me in the wrong picture.

I inquired at the desk for mail, then got myself a Coke from the machine. The young clerk behind the desk tried to engage Blaze in conversation, and Franklin bit his head off in about eight coarsely chosen words. The clerk turned a dull red and subsided.

I went out and walked down to my unit. I could see the office from it, and I could see Franklin. Twice he got up and picked up the phone on the desk without a by-your-leave and made a phone call. I was glad to see it. The longer he sat there with nothing happening, the more time he had to think about things that could go wrong. I wanted him shook. I hoped his phone calls were to Lucille. I wanted her shook.

Most of all I wanted Franklin right where he was. His uniform made it hard for me to move openly against him. I could kill them both, but that wouldn't get me the cash. I could be sure of getting to Lucille with no interruptions as long as Franklin was nailed down at the motel. I had a five P.M. date with Lucille, although in the excitement she was a good bet to have forgotten it. If she gave me a hard time about where the cash was when I had her alone, I'd shake her till her pants fell down.

I watched Franklin for another hour. He made a couple more phone calls. He was a busy boy. At four-fifteen I shaved and started to change for my date with Lucille. I went back to the window, buttoning my shirt. I couldn't see Franklin. I could see the chair where he'd been sitting, but he wasn't in it. I waited a couple of minutes, but he didn't come back.

I finished dressing in a hurry. I shoved the .38 in its holster, slipped on my jacket, and walked to the office, Franklin still wasn't in sight. The clerk looked at me inquiringly. I jerked a thumb toward Franklin's empty chair. "The birddog gone?"

The clerk didn't spit, quite. "Good riddance," he announced.

"Did he say where he could be reached?"

"He said nothing."

"Did he get a call from anyone?"

"No, but he made enough of 'em. The last one he swore and banged down the receiver and took off."

J went outside and sat in the Ford. What could have happened? Nothing on earth should have moved Franklin from that chair. Once he read the telegram, he must have seen that his one chance to keep the lid on was to intercept the telegram-sending Earl Drake and dispose of him quietly.

The telegram from Earl Drake announcing a meeting at the Lazy Susan should have made Franklin afraid to move. He should have sat there in the motel office, getting both madder and shakier by the minute as nothing happened. Nothing should have been able to move Blaze Franklin away from that motel office.

I went over it step by step. The only logical answer forced itself upon me, finally. I'd underestimated the bastard. Suppose he'd been smart enough to call the point of origin of the telegram to check on its sender? And had been told the circumstances which the trucker wouldn't have disguised? With the telegram exposed as a phony, how much brains did Franklin need to figure out who'd sent it from up the road so it could come back and bounce off Lucille at the post office?

So why hadn't he rushed down to my motel unit and shot me up, down, and sideways, and triumphantly hauled in the riddled corpse? It was what he should have done. If lie had the sense to escape the booby trap I'd set for him, how could he have missed the obvious follow-up?

There was something I still didn't understand. Something I didn't know. It was time I learned it.

I started up the Ford. Nothing was changed, really, except that now I had to keep an eye peeled for Franklin. I drove to the post office to collect Lucille.

She was standing on the sidewalk when I pulled up in front.

One look was enough.

Wherever Blaze Franklin was setting himself up to do business with me, Lucille Grimes knew about it.