The Name of the Game is Death

III

In a way it was odd about that fat kid's family leaving town that time. Six years later it was my family who were going to leave.

The way it happened was like getting struck by lightning.

I was eighteen, in my senior year in high school. It was late in the spring, and after a succession of chill, rainy days we'd finally caught a hot one. I had my sweater over my arm when I came out the school's back entrance and cut through the parking lot on my way home. I saw four policemen standing in the middle of the lot, and I wondered what they were doing there.

I knew one of them, Harry Coombs, and I nodded as I passed the group. He said something to the others, and the biggest one, who had been standing with his back to me, turned around to look. "You," he said to me. "Come over here."

I went over to them. I knew who the big one was without really knowing him. His name was Edwards, and he was a sergeant. He was a beefy type with thinning red hair. I didn't like him. No good reason. His voice was too loud. He took up too much of the sidewalk when he swaggered by. Things like that.

He looked me up and down when I stood in front of him. "What d'you know about hubcaps missing from the faculty cars three times a week?" he demanded. He looked hot and uncomfortable, still in his winter uniform.

"I don't know anything about it," I answered him. And I didn't, except what I'd been hearing in school assemblies for the last month.

The lower lip in his red face swelled pugnaciously. "Harry says you spend enough time in this parking lot to tell us what's going on," he continued aggressively.

"I said I see him going through here on his way home from school most days!" Coombs cut in.

Edwards paid him no attention. "Well?" he said to me.

"You think whoever's doing it waits for me to come by so I can see them?" I was mad. "Or maybe you think I'm doing it?"

"I'll ask the questions," he snapped, scowling. "What's your name?" I told him. I was liking him less and less every second. "Now you know you must've seen what's been goin' on out here." He said it almost coaxingly. "Who are you covering up for?"

I looked at Harry Coombs to see if Edwards was kidding. Coombs looked away uncomfortably. "Look, you can't mean it," I said finally. "I don't—"

"Answer the question!" he roared.

I started to walk away. Edwards grabbed me by the arm. I've always hated having people put their hands on me. I jerked my arm out of his hand. He probably outweighed me three to one, but I caught him on the wrong foot. He staggered sideways two or three paces. His red face looked bloated.

My sweater had fallen from my arm, and I stooped to pick it up. Edwards kicked me, hard. I went over and down, flat, skinning my palms on the parking lot cinders.

I scrambled up and went after him, the hate of the world in my heart. Harry Coombs clamped me in a smothering bear hug before I could reach Edwards. Coombs kept muttering in my ear, but I was struggling so hard I couldn't hear what he was saying. I kept yelling at Coombs to lei me pi, my head twisted over my shoulder. I never even saw Edwards when he stepped up and slapped me heavily In the lace.

"Goddammit, Sarge!" Coombs said angrily. His grip on me relaxed, then tightened again when I lunged forward.

"Shut up, you!" Edwards barked at him. "This is a wise guy. We'll take him down to the station and talk to him."

"Then take him down yourself," Coombs said. He released me. "I'm on duty on the beat here."

"You're on duty where I tell you you're on duty, Coombs," Edwards warned. "Get him in the patrol car, an' get in yourself." The sergeant clumped heavily back to the other two officers who had been standing by silently.

It was only by an effort of will that I kept my hand away from my smarting face. Don't fight it, I told myself. I walked toward the cruiser parked in a corner of the lot. Harry Coombs tramped along beside me, muttering under his breath.

The five of us rode downtown. I never said a word. Inside the police station a cop who had previously taken no part took my arm and led me to a door opening on two steel cells with cement floors. He motioned me inside.

Even a couple of years later I'd have known they were just trying to scare me. Nobody goes into a cell without a charge against him. A session in an interrogation room would have been the correct thing. But I didn't know. I took it seriously.

I looked around inside the cell. There was a steel cot without even a blanket. Nothing else. The policeman didn't close the cell door, but he closed the outside door. I got a good look at his face before he went out.

I sat down on the cot and tried to get myself organized. I knew they'd be coming in. I didn't feel worried, just mad. Edwards' tactics infuriated me, and I knew I would get that big sonofabitch some day if it was the last thing I ever did. And if I could do it today, so much the better.

I stood up quickly when the outside door opened. It was Harry Coombs. He closed the door and stood with his back to it. "Listen, kid," he said hurriedly. "I got through to him finally that you're no juvenile delinquent. He don't think so much of himself right now, but when he comes in here he's got to make a little noise to justify himself. Get smart. Agree with him. Do what he says, y'hear?" I looked at him. "Ahhhhhh, you're as thick-headed as he is," Coombs growled. He opened the door and walked out.

I took off my shoes and put them on the steel cot beside me, then stretched out on my back. I stared up at the ceiling that was covered by misty-looking cracks. Do what Edwards told me? Not a chance. Not a bloody fucking chance. If he was on a hook because of me, he'd stay there (ill his liver and lungs rotted for all the help I'd give him.

I sat up when the outer door opened again. Three of them filed into the cell, Edwards in the lead. I didn't know the names of the other two, but by now I knew their faces. Harry Coombs wasn't with them. I sat there and watched them enter.

"Let's hear the answers to a few questions now," Edwards began. His voice was rough. He looked the same, his red face as shiny as ever, but even disregarding what Coombs had said he didn't sound the same. His voice said he was uneasy. "I want a statement from you about what you were doing in that parking lot," he blustered. "A signed, witnessed statement."

I didn't say anything, and his face grew dark. He walked toward me, slowly. I sat still on the cot. "I said I want a signed statement from you!" Edwards bellowed.

I -.at there. Any statement I gave him he could probably twist around for his own purposes. He'd get no statement from me. When I said nothing, Edwards made a movement with his left hand. Just a gesture. Testing my nerve. I ■..it there "God, how I love you Hoy Scout tough guys!" he said between his teeth. He loomed up over me as I continued to sit on the cot. He jabbed me in the ribs with a stiffened thumb "Stand up when I talk to you!"

I didn't move I le slapped me. My head hit the wall behind m< One of the men with him made some kind of sound, whether assent or protest I couldn't tell. I couldn't see tin in All I could see was Edwards' bulk, his red face, and Ins let looking little pig eyes. My own were squeezed tight trying to keep the tears behind them. My face stung like fury. "Stand up, damn you!" Edwards barked. He stiffened the thumb again and advanced it slowly toward my rib cage, waiting for me to flinch. I set my teeth and sat still. Edwards jabbed me in the ribs. He jabbed me again. And again. Each time it felt like a red-hot poker.

When I saw he meant to keep it up, I reached behind me and picked up one of my shoes by the toe. When Sergeant Edwards' arm moved again, I came up from the cot, fast. I smashed him right across the bridge of his nose with the heel of my shoe. I mean I hit him with every ounce I had in me. He went reeling backward, blood spurting like a geyser from his smashed nose. Only the men behind him kept him from going down.

He rebounded from them and leaned into me, clubbing at me with both fists. His weight bulled me backward, then down. On my way to the floor he hit me three or four more good shots. I hit him in the belly with both hands on my way up. Edwards knocked me down again.

There was a lot of noise and confusion. People yelling. People hurting me. I couldn't see very well. I went down and got up twice more. I think it was twice. My vision got worse. If I could have seen Edwards clearly, I'd have butted him squarely in the middle of his ugly face with the top of my skull.

But I couldn't see or reach him.

And after awhile I couldn't get up any more.

It seemed like a long time later I heard my father's voice. I wondered how he'd gotten there. His voice was loud and angry. "—Bet someone's going to pay for this!" he was saying. "And I don't care if it's you, John!"

I opened my eyes cautiously. I could see from the left one. I was in an iron bed, covered with a white sheet, and my father and John Mullen, the chief of police, were nose to nose at its foot.

"Take it easy, Henry," the chief said. He lived just up the street from us. I'd taken his youngest daughter to a school dance. "I'll get to the bottom of it."

"You're damn right you will!" my father said hotly. "And I want the boy moved to a hospital right now!"

"Doc Everhard says it isn't necessary, Henry."

"Don't try to tell me what's not necessary, John! I said right now! Don't think you can keep my boy from getting the treatment he needs just because you've got a stinking situation you'd like to cover—"

"I said I'd get to the bottom of it!" Flint-edge steel ridged Chief Mullen's tone. His voice had risen like my father's. "The boy could have been at fault, too."

"Fault? Fault? Good God, John, have you gone out of your mind? If he burned down an orphans' home, should he look like this at the hands of your men? I know this Edwards. A thug in a uniform. A disgrace—"

Chief Mullen had seen my opened eye. He walked quickly around the end of the bed. "What happened, son?" he asked quietly. My father pushed in beside him, and they both stood looking down at me.

I had to make three starts before my voice would work. "I—fell down," I said finally in a breathy rasp.

"Fell down!" my father echoed incredulously. "Fell?" He stared at me, then whirled on the chief. "What kind of intimidation is this, John? I warn you, I'm going—"

"Take it easy, Henry." There was a warning note in the official voice. The chief's shrewd-looking eyes were studying me. "Don't forget we walked in here together. Don't let me hear you say 'intimidation' again." He was still looking at me thoughtfully. "We'll talk to him later."

"We'll talk to him right now, damn it!"

Hut Chief Mullen finally got my father out of there.

I never told them any more than that, then or later. I never heard what Edwards told them, I didn't care. I think my father thought at first the beating had affected my mind. Right from the beginning, though, the chief came closet lo the Until Day after day he came to the house with path in questions. After awhile I stopped answering them at all. And eventually he stopped coming.

I was out of school for three weeks until my face healed up I still had three broken fingers on my left hand, and from shoulders to knees I was spotted like a leopard. I didn't remember anything about the fingers. Someone must have stepped on them during the melee.

Nobody at school—or anywhere else—knew what happened. I didn't say anything, and the police didn't say anything. I found out without too much trouble that the two men in the cell with Edwards that day had been Glenn Smith and Walter Cummin's.

I took to skipping classes at school, then whole days. I spent more time out of the house at night than I ever had. The first three marking periods I'd been on the honor roll, but when the school office called me in about my sliding grades, they said I might not graduate if I didn't straighten up. I didn't give a damn. I didn't think they could flunk me so quickly after the marks I'd carried, but I didn't care if they did. I was busy.

Glenn Smith was easy. He was a heavy drinker. Watching him, I found out he spent a lot of time in the Parokeet Tavern. He had a habit of parking his car on the street behind it, then walking up a narrow alley to the Parokeet's back door. Sometimes he was still in uniform.

He came back down the alley late one night, staggering a little. I took him from behind, and I lumped him good. I kicked in a few of his ribs, finally, and left him crawling on the ground like a wingless beetle. He never even got a look at me. I left the dimly lit alley, and I felt good all the way home.

The next morning Chief Mullen came to school and got me out of my history class. We went outside and sat in his car, where he talked for a long time. He didn't accuse me of anything directly. I knew he couldn't, because Glenn Smith hadn't seen me when he could recognize anyone.

The chief went on about the idiocy of people who attempted to take the law into their own hands. He talked like a damn fool. I'd. taken the law into my own hands, and I didn't feel like an idiot. I liked the feeling. When the chief saw the expression on my face, he stopped talking and opened his car door. I went back into the classroom.

Walter Cummin's took longer. Better than a month later I discovered his twice-a-week visits to a married woman's home a mile out of town. When I had his visits clocked reliably, I caught him coming out of her back door one night. I smothered him in wet potato sacking, and I got him down.

After they found him, an ambulance brought him into town.

Chief Mullen was at our house before breakfast the next morning. He was really warm under the collar. He asked me point-blank what I knew about Cummin's. My father saved me the trouble of lying. He jumped in and wanted to know if the chief was accusing me of anything. Either make a charge you can support, my father told Chief Mullen, or get out of my house. The chief hesitated, then left, red in the face. I almost laughed. My father didn't ask me anything afterward. He didn't seem comfortable with me.

Two down and one to go.

I smiled at Sergeant Edwards every time I passed him on the street. Every time I smiled, he scowled. He knew. I wanted him to know. His scowls were intended to let me know he wasn't letting his nerves get jumped up by any crackpot kid. lie watched himself, though. He watched himself so well I couldn't get anywhere near him with the right leverage. ^v

School finished and I graduated, barely. My college entrance credits were all shot. I'd have to pass exams to get in. I didn't take the exams. I hung around all summer, into the fall. My father, exasperated, twice demanded that I get a job if I had no intention of continuing my education. I paid no attention. I had a job. A job I had to do before I could look for another one.

Harry Coombs cornered me late one Saturday night when I was coming out of a cafe on his beat. He herded me to one side. "I suppose I'm lucky they sent me away before they went into the cell with you that day?" he inquired. prodding me in the chest with his nightstick.

I gunned at him without answering. "They're going to sit you down in a square-looking chair one of these days, kid," he told me. "They'll turn on the juice, and there'll be a sizzling noise while they burn your ass up, but you won't hear it. Think it over." He walked away from me.

Harry Coombs and his predictions didn't bother me either.

By October I knew more about Sergeant Edwards than his wife did, but he never gave me an opening. I began to get restless. I didn't know what I was going to do after I got through with him, but I wanted to get it over with and find out.

Then early in November we had an unexpected sleet and ice-storm. Edwards mounted his porch steps that night, careful of the slippery footing, his chin shrunken into his coat collar. He never saw the piece of iron pipe I got him with before he reached his front door. When I finished with the pipe, I rolled him back down his porch steps and went home. Edwards was lucky. Someone found him before he froze to death.

I didn't find that out until morning. At least the clock said it was morning, but it was still dark outside. A police cruiser came by for my father and me. They hardly gave us time to dress. My father kept asking them what had happened. They wouldn't say anything, and my father kept sneaking looks at me from the corner of his eye.

At the station Chief Mullen really gave me a going-over. He tried to scare answers out of me. He should have known better by that time. I sat there for twenty solid minutes and smiled at him. It was no effort to smile; I really felt like smiling. My father horned in finally and asked Mullen what basis he had for his unfounded accusations.

That really flipped the chief. He went into orbit. He shook a finger under my father's startled nose. You've got a wild animal running loose in this town, Mullen told my father. So you've got a choice. Cage him, or leave town. Leave town, Mullen repeated with emphasis. It would be better all around.

I nearly laughed until I saw the stricken look on my father's face. I couldn't understand it. The chief couldn't do anything. Nobody could do anything. I didn't give a damn what they thought they knew about me. They couldn't prove anything, so they couldn't do anything.

On the way home my father said tiredly he hoped some day I'd realize it was necessary to live with people. I didn't understand him. He said a lot of other things that made me feel sorry for him, because he just couldn't stand up to a situation.

I couldn't believe it when the "For Sale" sign went up on our front lawn. I was completely disgusted. My father was letting them bluff him right out of the game. They couldn't make him do a thing he didn't agree to do. I simply couldn't understand it, but my father was a weakling.

Still, I couldn't let his spinelessness affect my mother and sisters. I left home that same night. I knew I could manage, and obviously my father couldn't.

I left, and I never went back.

I had to switch cars.

The minute my potbellied Mexican guide's tongue came unlatched, the police would get a description of the Ford and me from the motel. It didn't matter a damn that they wouldn't know why they were looking for me. It was up to me to change the appearance of what they'd be looking for.

Highway 80 east out of HI Paso is a long, straight, dark stretch of road. Nobody palled me, and not many headlights came at me. Ground fog, began to drift in from the fields on either side of the highway. It began to close in over the road. I wanted to make time, and if this kept up I couldn't do it.

Must of the gas stations I passed were closed. When I came upon a lighted one, I slowed down, tempted. I finally hit the gas again and went on by. Grabbing the attendant's car or one he was fixing wouldn't solve anything. Unless I buried him in his greasepit he'd pass on the word that would tie me to the new car. The presence of the abandoned Ford would put another collar around my neck.

I needed a setup that would let me run the Ford over a cliff, or the equivalent. Even more I needed to get off Highway 80. The john in a girl's dorm doesn't get much more action than that damn highway, even with the addition of the newer Interstates.

I went over it in my mind. Van Horn is a hundred-twenty-odd miles east of El Paso. A dozen miles the other side of Van Horn Highway 80 continues east, but Highway 90 heads south. It seemed a better choice. I couldn't count on Jimmy's keeping the covers over his head forever. The police could even be out looking for the pistol-packing turista already.

I made the turnoff in an hour and thirty-five minutes, fog and all. I had to fight my eyes closing down, and I hit the shoulder a couple of times, dozing off, but at twenty minutes to midnight I turned onto 90 and headed south.

It was a narrower road, less traveled. I began to watch for a motel. I'd tucked a lot of miles under my belt that day. When I found a motel with a car parked close to the road, I'd drive a mile beyond, walk back, jump the switch on the car in the motel yard, and take off. There'd be nothing to tie the abandoned Ford to the stolen car if I hid the Ford off the highway.

I couldn't have gone more than twenty miles on 90—everything as black as the inside of a closet—when a pair of headlights appeared suddenly in my rear-view mirror. Then a red flasher started bouncing off the Ford. The cruiser must have come up behind me with his lights off, because I hadn't seen a thing. I took a quick look at the speedometer. Sixty-five. No sweat there. I heard no siren, but the car behind me pulled out alongside, then burst ahead and cut in.

I had to smash the brakes and cut the wheel hard to avoid scraping fenders as the cruiser herded me to the side of the road. I could see it was an unmarked car, though I hadn't known the Rangers used unmarked cars. Live and learn.

I was ready when he leaned in the window I'd rolled down. I handed him my driver's license made out to Earl

Drake. Paper-clipped to it was a twenty-dollar bill. I could see a trooper hat silhouetted against the dark, but I couldn't see the face beneath it. I could sense rather than see him looking around the Ford's interior before he walked to the rear and put a flash on the license plate.

He returned and handed me my license. The twenty-dollar bill was gone. "Drive up the highway a quarter-mile," he said in a voice that sounded as if he regularly had steel filings for breakfast. "Turn right at the first opening. A hundred-fifty feet in, there's a white fence. Turn left and stop. I'll be right behind you." He walked back to his car. I hadn't gotten to say a word.

I could feel a slow burn taking over. If this sonofabitch thought he was going to take my twenty and then haul me up before a justice of the peace, he was damn well going to find out differently. When I buy someone, I expect him to stay bought.

He pulled ahead to let me out of the cramped edge-of-the-highway situation, and I eased back out on the road. I rolled along slowly, watching for the turnoff he'd indicated. Even at that I almost missed it. It was hardly more than a dirt dropoff. Halfway into my turn I thought I'd made a mistake, but the headlights behind me turned in, too. I came up to the white fence and turned left. Twenty-five yards farther on I faced a deadend, an impenetrable, junglelike brush tangle looming in the headlights.

I was gelling hotter by the minute. I was losing valuable time. I had missed a turn somehow despite his directions, and I'd wound up in this jackpot. I started to back out, but a red glow filled my rear view mirror. I turned my head to see the cruiser was backing into the clearing, sealing me in. Even as I looked he cut his lights.

All of a sudden I had a feeling.

I switched off my lights and motor, fumbled a flashlight from the glove compartment, and went out the door on the passenger's side Something wasn't kosher. The unmarked car, the absence of a siren, the dead end deserted spot to which I'll been directed . . .

I put the Hash on him when I heard brush crackling

under his feet. He stopped dead in the beam of light. He was holding a gun, a blued-steel job. His campaign hat looked like a Ranger's hat, especially in the dark. His clothes didn't even look like a uniform except for the color. The bastard was no more a cop than I was.

He brought his gun up and snapped off a shot at me just as I let go at him with the Woodsman. He turned as if to run. I put one into his ankle that brought him down with a crash. He landed all sprawled out, his gun flying off into the bushes. I got over to him fast in case he had another.

When I got the flash full on him, I saw it wouldn't have made any difference if he'd had a machine-gun. He'd been moving on reflex. The hard core of light shone down on a round, dark hole between his eyes, just to the right of center. The little old Woodsman might not have the stopping power of a .38, but it gets there just the same.

It was quiet in the clearing after the sound of the gunshots. I walked over and put the flash on the bandit's car—a Ford, too, but apparently in better shape than mine. I got his car keys from his pocket, got under the wheel, and started it up. The engine vrom-vroomed with power. Something extra under the hood.

It looked like I'd won myself an automobile.

I switched on both cars' dimmers and opened the trunks. I loaded his gear in mine and mine in his, took both cars' license plates off, and chopped them up with a hammer and chisel. With a screwdriver I finally loosened the red flasher on the roof of the bandit's car. I removed the bulb and knocked down the edges of the socket; then I slapped black friction tape, which blended with the color of the car, over the hole.

I rummaged around through saws and climbing irons in my toolchest till I found a set of Florida plates that I put on the new Ford. I always carry a number of different identifications until it becomes dangerous to do so.

I cleaned out my wallet and started from scratch. Someone in Hudson, Florida would be looking for Earl Drake, so Earl Drake had to disappear. When I put the wallet on my hip again, I was Chester Arnold of Hollywood, Florida. I had business cards identifying Chet Arnold as a tree surgeon. When it's necessary, I am a tree surgeon. A good one.

I went back for my unknown benefactor when I had everything ready. I dragged him to the new Ford and stuffed him into its trunk on top of my toolchests. It was a tight squeeze, but I finally got the back deck lid closed.

Then I took off.

Every five miles, I threw a chopped-up piece of license plate out the window. It helped me to stay awake. Then it started to rain. It doesn't rain too often in west Texas, but when it docs, it doesn't fool around. I hunched down over the wheel, watching the highway through the streaming windshield as I pitched license plate fragments.

Forty miles further, I ran into a torn-up section of road under repair. In those parts they're so sure it won't rain, they don't bother with the nicety of preserving one lane of macadam. They tear up the road from shoulder to shoulder, roll it, and drive on the dirt till they get the blacktop back on. A wrong guess means a driving rodeo through four to six inches of Texas gumbo.

It was raining so damn hard that in less than a mile the entire graveled roadbed was solidly under water. The new Ford slipped and slithered along. Even at five miles an hour, a couple of times I wasn't sure I was able to keep on going. It was like driving across a ten-mile lake. To be sure I was still in the channel, I had to watch the highway department right-of way slakes glistening in the headlights.

I finally emerged on blacktop again, and for the next ten miles I listened to Texas mud slurp from the undercarriage at every little jounce. From what I saw, I could have won a few bets from people who thought they knew the car's original color. I concentrated on driving and staying awake.

When the odometer said I was two hundred miles from El Paso, I started looking for a deep culvert. I pulled over on the shoulder when I found a likely-looking one. As I walked around to the back of the Ford, I never saw a night so black—and raining as though someone had turned on a petcock and gone off on vacation. I was soaked in less than a minute.

I got the trunk open, then hauled out my passenger. When I rolled him down the high bank, he went in with a satisfying splash. After I got back under the wheel, I started slogging up the highway again. No one would connect my benefactor to me or to much of anything else when they found him. Ditto the Ford I'd left behind in the brushy clearing.

I'd passed Marfa and Alpine a long way back, clusters of lights in the dripping darkness. I was between Marathon and Haymond when I dumped the body. Twice on the long stretch between Sanderson and Del Rio I nearly went to sleep. By that time I was driving myself as hard as I was driving the car.

Dawn was breaking in a dirty gray sky outside Bracketville when I got a leg cramp so bad it pulled my foot right off the accelerator. I stopped the car and got out and limped around it a couple of times, but I couldn't shake off the cramp. I drove through town with my left foot on the gas pedal and hobbled into a motel on the outskirts. I woke up the owner, shut up his grumbling about the ungodliness of the hour, took the key he gave me, and headed for the room he pointed out.

I was 450 miles from El Paso, and it had been a long, long day.

I shed clothing all the way from the door of the room to the bed, and I was asleep before I was halfway down to the pillow.