The Name of the Game is Death

X

I opened the passenger-side door and she got in. "Let's stop for a drink at the Dixie Pig first, shall we?" she said with no preliminary. Her tone was icicle-brittle.

My first impulse was to refuse. For one thing, I wasn't fussy about waving the blonde under Hazel's nose. But there were overriding factors. The Dixie Pig was now obviously just another gambit in the game.

Okay, we'd go to the Dixie Pig.

I drove there and drew up in front. I reached across her and opened her door again. "You go on in," I told her. "I just remembered I've got to pick up a few dollars a guy owes me. I'll be right back."

She didn't like it, but what could she say? She climbed out reluctantly and closed the door. "Hurry back," she said with an attempt at a smile. The shark teeth were polished to a high gloss.

I circled the Dixie Pig driveway when she went inside. My hunch had paid off. Snuggled in among the six or eight parked cars at the rear was Franklin's cruiser. Lucille had brought me here so that he could take up the trail without difficulty for their intended final act of the drama.

I pulled out on the highway and in half a mile found a shiftless-looking country store where I bought two pounds of brown sugar. I opened the sack and placed it carefully on the front seat beside me. Back at the Dixie Pig, I nosed into a parking space near the cruiser.

1 sat and watched the booths whose windows overlooked the back parking lot. I couldn't see anyone in either booth. I picked up the sack of sugar, got out of the Ford, walked to the rear of the cruiser and removed its gas cap, dumped in the brown sugar, replaced the cap, and crushed the bag and stuffed it in a pocket. It might have taken me ten seconds. The sugar I spilled was indistinguishable from the crushed stone.

I brushed off my hands and walked through the Dixie Pig's back door. If Lucille and Blaze had seen me drive in, I was right on schedule. Franklin was at the bar, his back elaborately to the door through which I'd entered. Lucille bounced up from a booth and met me in the center of the floor. "I've changed my mind about a drink right now, Chet. Why don't we wait until we eat?"

"Anything you say," I told her. Franklin was already gone from the bar when we moved toward the door. Behind the bar Hazel all but stood on her head trying to attract my attention. I avoided looking at her.

The cruiser was gone from the parking lot. Franklin would take up the pursuit on the highway. How would he know whether to turn north or south? I found out how he knew. "There's a nice place south on the highway, Chet," Lucille said. "I understand it's quite good."

"Anything you say," F repeated. Full twilight wasn't many minutes away when I turned left from the Dixie Pig driveway. "How far is it?"

"A dozen to fifteen miles. The decor is supposed to be attractive." Her voice was as cool as a mountain brook. Only the hands clenched in her lap betrayed her tension.

A dozen to fifteen miles was the superlative of fine. Franklin shouldn't be able to fetch half that before the sugar in his gas line froze his engine. It was a bonus that he'd ho decommissioned outside of town.

I switched on my lights south of the square. I kept an eye on the shoulder of the road. A mile south we passed a car pulled off on the right, almost indistinguishable in the gathering darkness. I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been looking for it. I watched its parking lights come on in my

rear-view mirror as it rolled out onto the highway behind us. The wolf was in the sheepfold.

We played follow-the-leader down US 19. Franklin dogged me from so far back I caught only an occasional glimpse of the cruiser's parking lights. He didn't need to stay close because he knew where we were going. After a few miles there were no lights of any kind behind us. I didn't think even Franklin would be running that letter-S stretch without them. Right about now he should be cursing up a storm.

It was a silent ride. Lucille roused herself from a private reverie when we'd been on the road twenty minutes. "Three's a big white sign," she said, leaning forward in the seat. "And then it's off to the left about a mile."

Naturally they wanted a spot away from the main highway. We both saw the sign at the same time. A little beyond it Lucille pointed out a graveled road. I turned into it. No lights of any kind turned in behind us.

A wagon road branched off in the headlights, and I turned up it. "Not that way!" Lucille said sharply. I drove about fifty yards farther and cut the motor and lights, insurance against a raging Franklin commandeering another ear.

"Plenty of time for food," I said, slipping an arm around Lucille. My purpose was to keep her from fleeing if she suspected anything, but she didn't. She lowered her head on my shoulder. She was content to await the arrival of the rear guard in the darkness under the trees.

I wished I could see her face. Her expression should be interesting. As far as I was concerned, Lucille Grimes was already dead. It was just a question of when and how. In a way it was too bad. This was a really talented bitch.

Right then she gave me another demonstration of it. She grabbed the horn, and it blatted twice. She was reaching for the light switch when I caught her arm. She sat there tensely with her arm in my grasp, waiting for Blaze Franklin to come from the darkness and kill me.

I could sense the shriveling of her self-confidence when

nothing happened. "You beginning to get the idea he's not coming?" I needled her. "He's not splitting with you, Lucille. He's splitting with me. Your boy friend's sold you out. I'm supposed to bury you twenty yards off this side road."

It shook her to her round heels, but she was too smart to go for it completely. "He'll k-kill you," she rasped. She tried to look over her shoulder.

"Where is he, then?" She was silent. "Get smart, woman. It's lucky for you I like you. Get on the ball now and steer me to the money. I'll take care of Franklin for you."

There was only one thing she could think. Even if Franklin hadn't sold her out, he'd flubbed his end of the deal, and she had to protect herself. Her steel-trap mind should have been telling her she was in perfect position to play it cool right down to the finish line and then choose up sides with the winner.

I couldn't understand why she hesitated.

"We—we never found the money," she said at last. Her voice was husky. "Only the—the thousand in the envelope, and a f-few thousand on—on him." She drew a quivering breath. "If only I'd never mentioned to Blaze the odd-looking man who mailed such odd-looking—" Her voice died away.

So that was why Franklin wanted me alive.

He hoped I knew where to find the cash.

The funny thing was that I did.

Now.

I tightened my grip on Lucille's arm. "Franklin killed him before he found out where the money was?"

"Hell yes," she whispered.

It wasn't too surprising that Franklin hadn't been able to crack I Bunny. I started up the Ford. "Tell me where he was staying, Lucille." She didn't say anything. I turned my head to look at her. Her face was an indistinct pale oval. "Tell me," I said impatiently. "Franklin might not have been able to find it, but I can."

She told me.

She had difficulty in getting it out.

Her directions would have put Bunny's place north "I town. I switched on the dashlight. She was watching me,

and she backed away in the seat as far as she could get. I lowered my hand over my chest and drew my .38. Her face

crumpled in fear. I pulled her toward me, reversed the gun, and slashed her across her soft inner arm with the gunsight. She cried out in pain and shock as the blood welled. "I'm giving you one chance to change that story,' I told her. "Because if there's nothing there, the gunsight is what happens to your face till my arm gets tired."

She changed her story.

The new one put Bunny's place east of town, which sounded a lot more reasonable to me.

I rammed the Ford out. Lucille sat huddled beside me. I hadn't expected her to go to pieces so completely. She

should have had no difficulty riding with a foot on each addle until either Franklin or I got dumped.

II was odd riding east on Main Street past the shack with its sign, "Airboat For Hire." The side road which Lucille reluctantly directed me to turn on couldn't have been more than three-quarters of a mile beyond the point where I'd so painfully slogged over brambled trails. No wonder Franklin had been getting itchy.

11 was a small cabin way out in the middle of nowhere. I got out of the Ford and ran a flashlight around the building. There were no telephone wires. I circled it cautiously. A mound of cut branches loomed up in the light. I pulled away a handful. There sat the blue Dodge, up on blocks.

So Lucille hadn't lied to me this time. I returned to the Ford. She sat in it, motionless. I had to take her by the arm again to get her out. She didn't want to come with me.

I got a chisel and maul from the trunk of the Ford, herded Lucille up to the door ahead of me, and smashed the lock. A wave of dry heat rolled out at me as the door shivered open, a musty, long-closed smell. Lucille was still dragging her feet, but I kept a good hold on her arm.

I moved her away from the door inside before I closed il. I walked through the place quickly. A skillet was still on the two-burner stove. The flashlight picked out Bunny's clothes, neatly arranged on hangers. There were two more locked doors. A couple of swings of the maul disposed of the first. There was nothing at all in the room. Bare walls, bare floor. I smashed the lock on the second door. I beamed the flash around the interior rapidly, and then it hung, motionless.

I'd found Bunny.

He was face down on the rough pine flooring. His wrists were handcuffed to ringbolts in the floor at right angles to his head. The ringbolts were new. Fresh pine sawdust was still visible where the holes had been drilled for them.

Despite the dry air in the place, there was an almost overpowering odor. Bunny had been in the cuffs for a long time. Not even his great strength could achieve leverage with his chest flat on the floor and his arms spread-eagled. He had thrown himself onto his right side in a final contortion. The bone in his left knee glistened at me from raw-looking meat, trousers and flesh long since abraded away in his ceaseless struggle against the flooring. His upper left arm was mincemeat where he'd gnawed at himself.

Bunny had lain in the cuffs till he died.

Which kills first, hunger or thirst?

1 couldn't remember.

I couldn't think.

The game had dealt Bunny a rough hand. He must have temporized, looking at Franklin's gun, thinking he'd find a way to turn it around. He hadn't counted on the cuffs. How do you break a stubborn man? You starve him. When he's out of his mind with hunger and thirst, he'll tell you what you want to know.

If he's not too far out of his mind.

Willi the hunger, the thirst, and the maddening heat, Franklin had returned to the cabin one day and found a mindless animal who could never tell him anything.

I stooped and examined the head, cruelly battered from endless, raving contact with the floor. There had been no merciful bullet.

Franklin had left him to die.

Blaze Franklin and Lucille Grimes had left him to die

I knew now why the blonde had been so afraid to tome in here with me. She'd known exactly what I was going to find.

I turned to her. "Blaze did it!" she screamed when she saw my face. "Blaze did it! I wanted to let him—"

I pulled the .38 and shot her in the throat, three times. "Tell your story in hell, if you can get anyone to listen," I told her. She thrashed on the floor, blood pulsing between the fingers of the hands clasped to her neck. "If they can patch up your lying voice."

I stepped over her.

I had work to do.

I went outside, into the clean darkness. I looked up at the stars to orient myself. I knew where the sack with the money was. Bunny and I had always followed a pattern for a cache in the country. I stepped out due north as accurately as I could figure it. I knew it wouldn't be more than thirty or forty feet from the front door of the cabin.

It would have been a cinch in the daylight, and even in the darkness it wasn't hard. My feet told me when I arrived at softer earth. Bunny had planted something green. I ripped it up, pulled the chisel—the only tool I had— from my pocket and dug into the loose ground. A foot below the surface I ran into the sack.

I hauled it up and by the light of the flash made sure the bulk of the swag was still in it. Then I buried it again, stamping down the loose earth. There was no sense in lugging it around with me. I'd come back for it. I'd come back for it when I brought Blaze Franklin out here and roped him to Bunny's body and left him to die the same way he'd left Bunny.

I went back inside for a look around. Lucille was unconscious. Bubbles of blood pulsed gently instead of jetting with each ragged breath. She wouldn't last long. She was lucky. If I'd stopped to think instead of going off hair-trigger when I found Bunny, I'd have figured something different for her. She was just as guilty as Franklin.

I'm used to death, but Bunny's infuriated me. Where would Franklin be now? Back at the Lazy Susan, probably, chewing up the rug. He had to hope I came back there. He'd get his wish in a way he never expected.

I drove straight to the Dixie Pig.

I wanted Franklin so bad I could taste it, but I had another errand first. I scouted the back lot carefully. There was no two-tone cruiser. I went inside.

Hazel was at the end of the bar with a slim, black-haired, dapper-looking man. Her face lit up when she saw me, but I thought she looked anxious. "This is Nate Pepperman, my money manager," she said when I approached her. "Chet Arnold, a good friend, Nate."

"I keep telling you the correct phrase is business consultant," Pepperman said easily as we shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Arnold. See you later, Hazel."

Before he was out the door Hazel raised the hinged flap at the end of the bar and motioned me through it. I followed her through the hanging curtain in the center of the back bar. I'd never been out there before. It was set up as a lounge, with a couch and a couple of chairs, a Primus stove, and a coffeepot.

"Get a bag packed," I said when she turned to face me. "I'll he back for you in an hour."

Her hand caught mine and squeezed it, hard. "Listen to me, Chet, please." Her voice was low and intense. "Franklin has everyone out looking for you. They never dreamed you'd come back here. There's half a dozen of them waiting for you down in the motel yard."

So.

End of the line in Hudson, Florida.

And I couldn't get Franklin.

I couldn't? The hell I couldn't. I held out my hand to Hazel. "Forget what I said about a bag. Give me your car key. "

She turned to her handbag which was on a chair. "Chet, please let me come—"

"Tell them I took the keys away from you." I couldn't take her with me now. I was a lot less than even money to make it. She handed me the keys. I punched her in I In eye. Big as she was, she went over backward and landed on the couch. The eye would be her alibi and keep the police off her back. "So long, baby," I said from the curtained opening. I didn't look back. I didn't want to see the expression on her face.

I drove to the Lazy Susan in Hazel's car. They should have been looking for my Ford. It turned out they were looking for anything. I'd no more than rolled into the yard and opened the car door when some eager beaver tapped his headlights. Three more sets came on instantly. I was semicircled by police cruisers. The motel yard looked bright as day.

Blaze Franklin came roaring out of the nearest cruiser, leveling a gun. He couldn't afford to let anyone capture me. He couldn't afford to let me talk. At ten yards I put five in a row into him—five shots a playing card would have covered. He went down, bellowing like a wounded bull. He was a wounded bull. A dark red stain spread over the crotch of his uniform trousers. He'd live, but he wouldn't enjoy it as much. I put the last shot in the .38 into his jaw as he flopped on the ground. That would keep him quiet if I got away.

Firecrackers were going off all around me. They couldn't shoot worth a damn. I dived back under the wheel and aimed Hazel's car straight ahead through the largest gap in the encircling headlights. Gravel spurted from the car's rear wheels just as someone shot out the windshield. I ducked flying glass while I bumped over the lawn, through a flowerbed, around the swimming pool, and over a white picket fence. The car jounced down onto the highway, and I floored the accelerator. For the first live hundred yards, part of the fence I'd crashed through kept banging against the front wheels. Then it fell away.

Behind me there were lights and sirens. No shortage of cither. I roared through the square and set sail for the Dixie Pig. I had a chance of outrunning them in the souped-up Ford. Right now I could just about smell the overheated engines pursuing me.

I cut the lights a thousand yards from the Dixie Pig, got over on the shoulder, and drove in darkness. If there had been anything parked it would have been all over. I whirled the wheel hard when I saw the lighter outline of the crushed stone driveway, took a section of hedge with me, but I made the turn. Outside on the highway the cruisers screamed by.

I got Hazel's car stopped and lit running on the back parking lot. The door on the driver's side of my Ford stood open. I didn't remember leaving it open. I came to a sliding stop beside it, my hand on the butt of my .38. I saw a dark figure on the other side of the front seat. I came within a tick of pulling the trigger before I recognized Hazel. "Get the hell out of there!" I ordered, trying at the same time to listen for sounds on the highway.

"Take me with you, Chet," she pleaded. "Give me a gun."

"Don't make me do it, baby," I warned her. "Get out of the goddamned car."

She climbed out. I could see she was crying. "Chet, why won't you let me—"

"Stop making these losing bets, will you?" I crowded under the wheel. "Get back inside and keep your mouth shut. They can't touch you." I backed up, swung around, and belted the Ford down the driveway. The last I saw of Hazel was the glitter of her cowboy boots' silver conches in the big swing of the headlights.

I doubled back toward town. There were bound to be roadblocks north and south on 19. I'd head east on Main. The added power of the Ford felt good under my foot. I slowed down approaching the traffic light in the square. I'd just started to make the left turn when there was the snarl of a siren practically in my ear. Someone in the posse had had the brains to leave a trailer.

I le was headed the wrong way, but I saw the shine of his lights as he came after me. My forty-five-mile-an-hour turn carried me up onto the sidewalk before I got straightened out on Main. I really rolled it away from there.

The pursuing headlights grew smaller. I was doing eighty-five on a road built for forty, so the Ford was all over the highway. I watched the dark ribbon of macadam unroll in the headlights, the soft night breeze whistling through the open windows. The wailing shriek of the siren in the cruiser following me grew fainter. I was outrunning him comfortably. V

Then I burst out of a curve into a long straightaway, and far up ahead winked the red fights of trouble.

Roadblock.

I lifted my foot from the gas pedal instinctively, but I still rolled up on it fast. A spotlight came on when they saw me. A tiny figure stood out in the roadway, waving me down with flapping arms.

I sized it up.

Two cruisers across the road, their snouts extending out onto the shoulders. Three-quarters of a car's width between them in the center. A ditch on the light. An open field on the left. And in the rear-view mirror the lights of the trailing cruiser gaining rapidly.

A roadblock you do or you don't. I mashed down on the gas again and headed for the center opening. I just might rip my way through. The fool with the flapping arms stood in the center of the gap. The headlights picked him up clearly. The Ford's engine snarled with power as I suddenly recognized the white, strained face of Jed Raymond.

I hoped he'd jump, but if he didn't, he'd have to take his chances as I was taking mine. I couldn't have been twenty yards from him—and he hadn't made a move— when Kaiser pranced out in front of Jed, head cocked, tongue lolling, tail wagging.

My brain sent me straight through, over the dog, over the man, to try the odds with the blockading cruisers. But my hands spun the wheel, hard left. Somebody else will have to explain it to you. I missed them both, caromed broadside from the left-hand cruiser in a whining, ear-splitting shriek of tortured metal. The Ford hurtled a hundred fifty yards out into the field. The front wheels dropped into a ditch suddenly. There was a loud whump, and the Ford stood up on its nose. The doors flew open. I flew out. I landed hard, then rolled.

I didn't lose consciousness. I still had the gun and loose cartridges in my jacket pocket. The Ford was down on its knees in front, its ass-end up in the air. The wheels were still spinning. There was something the matter with my left hand. I started to crawl toward the Ford and realized that my right leg was broken.

Up on the highway the spotlight pivoted and crept down through the field. It caught me, passed on, hesitated, and came back. There was a sharp crack, and a bullet plowed up the ground beside me. A rifle. It sounded like a .30-.30. I dragged myself over the uneven ground to the Ford, underneath its back wheels where I could see up to the road.

I reloaded one-handed. A thousand hours of practicing reloading one-handed had come to this: a final time in a black earth Florida field. I looked up toward the road again, and I got the spotlight with my third shot.

They turned the other cruiser around, the one I hadn't hit, and its spotlight started down through the field. I popped it before its beam reached me. Not that it made any real difference. More red lights, sirens, and spotlights were whirling up to the roadblock every second now.

To get to me in a hurry they had to come through the field. By now they knew enough not to hurry. The .30-.30 went off again, and a large charge of angry metal whanged through the body of the car over my head. The rifle would keep me pinned down while they circled around me.

Nothing for it now but the hard sell.

Nothing for it but to see that a few of them shook hands with the devil at the same time I did.

The spotlights crisscrossed each other eerily in the open field, but one of them kept the Ford bathed steadily in luminously glowing, eye-hurting brilliance. A hump in the ground kept me in shadow. I couldn't see anyone coming through the field.

I heard the ride's sharp crack again. Above my head (here was a loud ping! Suddenly I was drenched to the waist in gasoline. The .30-.30 slug had ripped out the belly of the gas tank. I swiped at my stinging eyes and shook my dripping head. I looked up just as gas from my hair splashed onto the hot exhaust.

Whoom!!

I saw a bright flare, and then I didn't see anything.

The explosion knocked me backward under the Ford. I rolled out from beneath it. I didn't even feel the broken leg or the damaged hand. I couldn't see at all. I could hear the crackle of flames. Part was the Ford. Part was me. I was afire all over.

I tried to smother the flames by rolling on the ground. It didn't help. I still had the gun. I hoped they could see me and were coming at me. I knelt up on my good leg and faced the highway, bracing the .38 in both hands. I squeezed off what was left in it, waist-high in a semicircle, blind.

I threw the empty gun as far as I could in the direction of the road.

There was a dull roaring sound in my ears. I tried to put out the fire in my hair. I could smell my own burning flesh.

The last thing I heard was myself, screaming.