Carny kill

16

It cost me an hour to reach the highway and another halfhour to find an all night coffee stand. I phoned for a taxi from there and it was 12:45 when I paid off the hack in front of Billie's apartment, the Regency.

Billie was getting ready for bed and she was in one of those skimpy nylon nighties that end where Eve wore the fig leaf. She looked at me as if I'd just dropped out of the moon.

"Why, Thax!"

I stepped into her room and closed the door and said, "I had a little trouble."

She gave me a half wondering, half critical look.

"You look like you've been rolling in it. What happened?"

I told her it was a car accident.

"Well, whose car? Was anybody hurt?"

"Nobody was hurt. Just three guys were killed. Okay I use your bathroom? I feel as grimy as a Union Pacific engineer."

I told her about it after I got out of the shower and put my shorts back on. "It was an anachronism. An honest to God old-fashioned ride. Like something out of the _Little Caesar_ days."

"But why, Thax? Who would want to do such a crazy thing to you?"

"Someone who figures I'm getting too smart."

"You mean the same person who killed Rob Cochrane and Terry Orme?"

I shook my head and asked her if she had a drink around there. After-reaction was setting in and I suddenly needed a drink very badly. She had bourbon.

"No," I told her. "It wasn't the same person. The person who fixed Cochrane and Orme does his own dirty-work. This Edward G. Robinson-type ride is someone else's style."

Billie looked annoyed. "I don't understand. Just how many people at Neverland have homicidal tendencies?"

I grinned at her. "One too many. That's what had me going in circles so long. I didn't figure it that way."

"Honestly, Thax. You're the most maddening person I know. Are you going to tell me what it's all about, or just leave me up in the air?"

"Up in the air is one place I'm not going to leave you. Not while there's a nice warm bed waiting ten feet away. Shut up now like a good little girl, huh? And come to daddy."

I didn't want to talk about murder. I had just been too damn close to my own. I had been lucky and now I was full of the joy of living and I had to do something vital and energetic to establish my love of life.

"Really, Thax," Billie said. "Sometimes I wonder about you." But she was smiling.

I took her by the hand and walked the ten feet.

We drove to Neverland around noon. We had decided I should find myself a room somewhere. There were no doors I could lock in Tarzan's hut and it was no longer a very safe place for me to sleep in.

"I've got a couple of clean shirts and whatnot tucked under Tarzan's bed," I told her. "I'll pick 'em up after we close tonight and meet you at the main gate."

"Thax," Billie said, "be careful. Don't trust anyone."

"Stop worrying about it, will you?"

"I can't help worrying about it. We're so close to everything I've ever wanted. In another week we'll be starting out for a glorious new life."

I nodded, thinking about it, looking at Neverland.

"Like conquistadors in a fabled city, plundering the treasure vaults of their frozen jewels," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just something else de Saint-Exupery said about aviators and the stars. It doesn't matter."

Billie looked at me doubtfully.

"Well, I'm afraid I don't see the connection," she said. "But just the same, don't do anything to spoil it."

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll take care of myself. See you tonight."

I was never more wrong in my life. I wasn't going to see her that night and someone else was going to take care of me. I had forgotten that a man's will has very little to say about the direction he is going when he is caught in a current.

It was a hot, almost sultry day with no help from the sea, and we had a good crowd. I worked my stand for a few hours but my mind wasn't on it. I kept waiting for something to happen and when nothing did I began to wonder if I'd been wrong.

The way I figured it a crack had to appear in the egg-shell soon so that the chick could show its beak. When it didn't, I started to get nervous.

I stayed at my stand till about four and then I went over to Gabby's gallery.

"Smoke break," I said.

He was agreeable. He said, "Want a snort?"

"No. But let's step around back a minute."

We went around to the little tented area and lit up. There was a small locked shack back there and I knew he kept his twentytwos and live ammo inside.

I said, "Look, Gabby. You mentioned something about if I ever needed a gun."

He gave me a sharp look and forgot to drag on his smoke.

"Has it come to that, Thax?"

I shrugged. "I've got a funny feeling it might."

My funny feeling was a matter of nerves. I was getting spooky with suspense. Nothing was happening when I damn well knew that something should happen. Everything pointed to it.

The corners of Gabby's mouth dipped into points.

"Why don't you use your head, Thax, and cut and run?"

"I'm in too deep. I've got to go along with it."

"You mean you want to go along with it," Gabby said.

I thought about it. Maybe he was right, and maybe he had just put his finger on the cracked keystone of my character. I had been content to drift as a nonentity through a life I didn't understand or like, blaming my inadequacy on fate, when it was actually my own gutlessness that kept me a nothing, a Then person.

This train of thought was more of an emotion than an idea and the emotion had a personification. The picture I suddenly saw of myself made me lonely, empty, and it fified me with distaste.

"Well,"I said defensively, "it doesn't really matter, does it? Because one way or another I'm going to see the end of it."

"Yeah," Gabby said, "and I think you're a goddam sap."

"You ain't alone in that thought. But can you help me or not?"

He made points with his mouth again.

"That's the thing. I ain't helping you any by giving you a gun."

"Look, Gabby. Let's not make with the pseudo-profound platitudes. Let's just call it backass help and let it go at that."

"Well, but you don't want to go wandering around with a twentytwo rifle over your shoulder like a goddam sentry, do you?"

No, I didn't want to do that. In fact I'd been thinking about kicking myself because I'd been so goddarn hasty in throwing away that pistol the night before.

"Look," I said. "A couple of days back you offered me the loan of a gun if I thought I needed one. You weren't thinking about a twentytwo then, were you?"

Gabby scowled at the ground. "No," he admitted. "I've got a Roscoe put away-but you're a damn fool if you try to use it'

"Gabby-let me sweat it, will you? How about it? Do I get the Roscoe?"

Gabby shrugged. "It's your neck."

He unlocked the shack door and went inside and made some noise and climbed out again with an automatic in his hand. He didn't look one bit happy about it when he passed over the weapon.

It was a fortyfive, a Colt. I thumbed the clip latch and extracted the magazine. It was loaded. I palmed it home and pulled the slide and made sure the safety was on. Then I shoved it under my belt and buttoned my jacket over it and nodded at Gabby.

"Maybe I won't have to use it," I said.

He looked at me and said, "I hope not. I hope you figure out another way."

"Maybe somebody will figure out another way for me," I said.

The funny thing was-somebody already had.

Nothing happened. Six o'clock ticked around and I knocked off and went over to the Queen Anne Cottage and had a New York cut and amused myself kidding with the cute waitress over my smoke and coffee.

I asked her what she thought of _Treasure Island_ and she told me she had gone over there one night with one of the college boys who worked on the lot and had she ever had a time fighting him off, and I said no I meant the book, and she gave me a blank look and said huh? Then she said oh and went on to tell me that _Treasure Island_ was just a kid's book.

"You're only half right," I said. "_Treasure Island_ was written for those who won't let youth slip away. For those whose attitude toward life has not been ruined by life."

She gave me a look that was supposed to imply that I just might be some kind of nut.

"I can't imagine what you think you're talking about"

"Neither can I," I said. "Because my attitude doesn't fit in that picture. I've already been ruined for life by sexy young things like you."

Now we were on her ground. She laughed and called me naughty and went rump-twitching on about her business. I spent a few seconds meditating on her locomotion, as viewed from the rear, and then I thought about _Treasure Island_ again.

The big clincher moment in the tale had been when Jim Hawkins and John Silver, George Merry, Tom Morgan and the lad known as Dick arrive at Flint's treasure cache and find that the map they have carefully followed is wrong. The treasure had been moved.

_There never was such an overturn in this world_, Stevenson had written about the pirates' shocked emotion.

I finished my coffee and went back to my stand and still nothing happened. Bill Duff had been giving me peculiar stares for about an hour, and finally around eight or so he strolled over and said hi.

"Bill," I replied. I showed him the little pea and covered it and made a right-over-left pass and he tapped the right shell with his finger. I didn't palm it because there was no profit in it. Anyhow, he had something on his mind and I didn't want to derail his train of thought.

"You want your orchid gift wrapped?" I asked him.

"Keep it for your bitch," he told me.

I was curious about what had brought him over to see me so I didn't get mad at that. Duff didn't look at me. He toyed with one of my walnut shells.

"I've been thinking, Thax, that you and I are a couple of saps."

"I'll go along with half of that," I said. "I've been thinking that one of us was."

He gave me the lovable old Duff dagger look.

"No, I'm serious. We've been at loggerheads when if we had any brains we'd be a team. You know what I mean?"

"Uh-huh, and it's a funny thing. I said the same thing to Ferris not so long ago."

"You did?"

"Uh-huh. A slapstick team. You slap a pie in my face and then I plaster your face."

"No, no, for godsake. I don't mean the cutthroat way we've always acted. I mean we should start putting our heads together. You know?"

"Like the two-headed calf in the illusion show."

He gave me an aggrieved but patient look and said, "Will you knock off the hilarity? I'm serious. And you know what I'm talking about. I figure together we could both do ourselves some good. Some real good."

"Well, Bill, everybody's opinion is worth something. Even a clock that's stopped is right twice a day. What is it that you want to share with me?"

"C'mon," he snapped. "You know as well as I do what the score is. There's a fortune in it"

"Um. I said that to a man last night and nearly got my head blown off." I started to rotate the walnut shells.

"The trouble with you, Bill, is you want to go fishing with my bait. You're seeing about a yard beyond Ferris' view- while I'm looking at the whole vista. No deal."

I raised my head and started a spiel.

"This way, ladies and gentlemen! The one cylinder ballbearing ride is about to start again. Three little tepees with a little white medidne ball. Step aside, mister, let the little lady with the pretty face see the white rabbit." I looked at Duff.

He gave me an icepick look and walked away.

The funny thing is that for the first time in the seven years I had known Duff, I felt sorry for him. A little. He, like most of us, had a hunger that could never be gratified in this life. But for a brief moment he had had a glimpse at the menu-just before I slammed the door in his face and hung out the Closed Indefinitely sign.

"The little lady's shriek of delight is a wail of woe in the gambler's ear," I said as I handed over a dime-a-dozen orchid to the girl with the pretty face.

The Viking horn moaned and the marks started their noisy, confused, semi-happy evacuation. There would probably be much misbehaving in the cars in the parking lot that night and you could risk a guess that there would be a few inevitable results in about nine months and maybe even a few venereal catastrophes a hell of a lot sooner.

But as far as I was concerned nothing had happened.

I went up to the treehouse to dig out my spare shirts and shorts and socks. The truth was, I felt a little sad about leaving Tarzan's hut. Maybe I was too much like those who wouldn't let youth slip by, like Peter Pan or Mike Ransome. Maybe I was doomed to bumble through life without ever realizing total maturity.

"Well," I thought, "it doesn't matter, does it? So I like to live in a tree house. What's so goddam wrong in that?"

I pulled out the Coke bottle carton which I kept my spare shirts and underwear in and I stared at it in the brilliant light of Terry Orme's Coleman lantern. And with an odd sense of unreality I felt the world turn back twenty-some years-back to the first time I read _Treasure Island_ and came to the part where Blind Pew put the piece of paper in Billy Bones' rum-palsied hand.

A little round piece of paper was pinned to my top shirt. It was black on one side and white on the other; words had been printed on the white side.

_One o'clock_.