Go Home, Stranger

Six

He was out on his feet, but sleep would not come. An endless horde of questions chased themselves through his mind. Who was Conway, and what had he been trying to do? And why, in the name of God, had he needed a boat? Where was the one little thing that tied it all together? Mac’s death, Counsel Bayou, the girl with the dimple in her chin, Mrs. Conway’s long-distance telephone call and the attempt on her life—they were all parts of the same thing; there was no longer any doubt of that, but what was it?

He sat on the side of the bed smoking cigarettes and pawing wearily through this senseless jumble of evidence. Counsel Bayou, he thought; you always come back to that. It was the last place anybody had ever seen Conway; it was where Mac had gone to ask questions that last day before he was killed. He stopped and jerked his head upright. The thing Vickie had said—that the only word she heard in the mumbled conversation between Mac and the killer there in the hotel room was something that sounded like “counsel.” That figured, he thought; but what did it prove?

The thing that was so terrible was that it was just beyond the tips of his outstretched fingers. Mac had known who Conway was. He found out definitely. The telephone call to Mrs. Conway proved that. He shook his head and groaned. If only Mac had had a chance to tell somebody . . .

At last, in desperation, he put through a call to Carstairs’ residence in San Francisco. “Dick,” he said, “this is Pete again.”

“Sure, Pete,” Carstairs replied. “Anything new?”

“A little,” Reno said. He told briefly what had happened to Mrs. Conway and added that he had finally read Mac’s reports. “The answer to this thing is down around that Bayou somewhere. But look. What I called about—I’m grabbing at straws. Mac found out something after he wrote that last report. He learned who the guy really was. And you gathered up his gear here at the hotel. There wasn’t anything in it that would give us a lead? No unfinished report? No notes of any kind?”

“No,” Carstairs said regretfully. “There wasn’t a thing, Pete.” Then he added, as an afterthought, “There was a letter that came the other day, forwarded out here by the hotel. But it didn’t have anything to do with Conway.”

Reno frowned. “A letter, you say? From where?”

“Oh, from some friend of Mac’s in the FBI. Came after he was killed, and the hotel sent it on out here with the rest of his things. But as I say, it wasn’t about Conway. Some other guy entirely.”

Reno was gripping the telephone with sudden tenseness and leaning forward. “Who?”he barked. “What was his name?”

“As I remember, it was some joker named Counsel. Yes, that was it. Robert Counsel.”

Reno exhaled slowly. “All right, Dick,” he said softly. “Read it to me. I don’t care if you have to walk down to your office in your bare feet and pajamas to get it, but read it to me. Slowly, so I can write it down.”

“It’s right here at home, in Mac’s gear. You think Counsel was—?”

“Dick, will you read that letter?”

It took several minutes, writing it down in longhand. When he had hung up he read it over again.

Dear Irish:

Always glad to hear from an old classmate. This is all I’ve been able to dig up since your phone call this afternoon, but I think it’ll answer your questions. I just happen to have a friend who’s a major over at the Pentagon, and he was able to get at the joker’s service record.

Robert Counsel was a rare one, from the looks of it. Inducted as a private in 1942, though he had the educational background for a commission if he’d wanted it. Refused OCS also, so guess he meant it. Made sergeant, and was busted back to private for insubordination. General snottiness, the major said, judging from the record. Served in North Africa, then in Italy, and was still in Italy after the war ended. Had points enough to go home, but didn’t seem to care whether he did or not. Court-martialed in 1946 for black-market operations with stolen Army supplies. Sent to military prison Stateside and was released in 1951. Dropped out of sight and nothing on him since. No criminal record or arrests for anything in civil life, as far as I can find in our records.

Odd thing about the case was the fact that they knew definitely that he’d got away with thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes and medical supplies, but never did find any of it or any money. He hadn’t sent any money out of Italy that they could discover and apparently hadn’t spent more than the usual GI quota in entertaining the local belles, nothing at all on liquor because he didn’t drink. He had lived in Italy before the war, however, and spoke the language fluently, so probably had good connections. Good crooked connections, that is.

Nor did they ever catch anybody else involved in the shenanigan. He probably wasn’t working alone, but they never did find the others, and he wouldn’t talk. The general impression seemed to be that he was bored with the trial, and considered the officers of the court his social inferiors. Snooty; or did I say that?

Any time I can help you with an easy one like that, just let me know.

As ever,

CHUCK

There was a postscript. Reno studied it for a long time and shook his head. It didn’t seem possible, but the more you learned about the mysterious Conway, the less you understood.

“P. S. They discovered he had a room in town. But when they searched it, all they found was a vacuum pump, the kind you use in physics or chemistry lab in college. When you figure out what he was doing with that, drop me a line, will you?”

Reno sat on the side of the bed and looked at the cigarette in his hands. I’m headed in the right direction, he thought, but I’ll be nuts before I get there. Mac was killed because he was looking for Conway. Mrs. Conway was almost killed, apparently for the same reason. And if you accepted all the evidence and agreed that Conway and Counsel were the same man, what did you have? You had a dilettante GI with overtones of larceny, and a vacuum pump, and a trailer hitch, and a boat that had disappeared. You also had his showing up back in Italy a year after he was released from military prison, and something he read in the Waynesport paper . . .

I’ve got to get some sleep, he thought. A few more hours of this and I’ll be running down the street foaming at the mouth.

* * *

The next morning he felt refreshed, with his mind clear again, and he knew what he had to do. He bought a secondhand car with out-of-state license plates and checked out of the hotel, giving San Francisco as a forwarding address. Then he bought some fishing tackle, picking it up in secondhand stores and pawnshops so it wouldn’t be glaringly new.

Then he went to see Vickie.

She came into the little room with the detective and sat down across from him at the table as she had done before. There were shadows under her eyes, and he knew how desperately she was fighting for composure. Strain, he thought bitterly; nobody could stand it forever.

“What’s new, Pete?” she asked, trying very hard to smile. She took a long puff on the cigarette he gave her.

He leaned forward and spoke rapidly, keeping his voice down. “Conway. He gets riper every time you look at him.” He told her about reading Mac’s reports, but omitted any mention of the murder attempt on Mrs. Conway. Vickie had enough on her mind without worrying about him.

“You think he might be the one who—”

“I don’t know,” he said grimly. “Not yet. But the whole deal is rotten, and I’m going to find out what it was. And the place to find out is Counsel Bayou. I’m going down there, but I’m not taking a brass band or wearing a sandwich board. I’ll keep in touch with you through Gage. So don’t let any of those damn reporters find out who I am or where I am, and don’t talk to anybody.”

“It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” she said. —He shook his head. “No. It’s just that I wouldn’t find out anything.”

“No,” she said, her voice going thin and tight. “You can’t lie to me, Pete. And I can’t let you do it. He’s already killed M-Mac.” She had been holding her face together with an intense and concentrated effort, but now it all gave way at once and she broke. She put her head down on her arms and her body shook with crying.

He waited helplessly until she had recovered. When she looked up at him at last with her eyes full of tears he patted her hand and said, “Don’t worry about me, Vick. I’ve hunted a lot in that kind of country, and I know the ground rules. You just hang on a little while longer, and we’ll have it made.”

* * *

“Counselor,” the sign said, its twisted tubes of red and blue glass blank and unlighted in the sun. A glaring shell driveway led off the road to the left to swing up before the wide veranda of what had obviously been a residence at one time, a large house with the columned stateliness of another era. An expanse of lawn was now a parking area, completely empty at this time of the afternoon.

Reno slowed, going past on the highway. This was where it was, he thought. He was pulled off here at the side of the road with the car and boat trailer, just looking at the place, when the girl went by and saw him. Maybe he was waiting for somebody, or maybe, if he really was Counsel, he was looking at the house he used to live in turned into a joint with two tons of neon out in front. He glanced around at the drowsy late-summer afternoon, the dark wall of moss-hung oaks on both sides of the highway beyond the inn, and the steel bridge up ahead shimmering in the sun, appraising the somnolent peacefulness of it. And, on the other hand, he reflected, maybe his name was just what he said it was and he was only running out on his wife like a thousand other men and I’ve got rocks in my head.

Beneath the bridge the water was dark and still, some fifty yards across and overhung with trees. One of the arms of Counsel Bayou, he thought, trying to remember the map he had studied. It connected with the larger, dredged Bayou that was the ship channel, off to the left, and there should be another arm of it crossing the highway a mile or so ahead. Then he saw the other sign on the right, just beyond the bridge. “Gulfbreeze Camp,” it read. “Cabins. Boats. Live Bait.” The road swung off the highway into the oaks, and as he made the turn he caught glimpses of buildings and the sheen of sunlit water somewhere beyond.

One weathered building contained a lunchroom and a store with a gasoline pump out in front, and behind it, along the edge of the bayou, a row of cabins squatted dejectedly under the trees with their backs to the water. Weeds poked their way up through the ubiquitous shell paving in places and all the buildings needed a coat of paint. Dying on its feet, Reno thought, as he got out of the car.

He went into the lunchroom. It was empty except for a blonde girl in a white apron sitting at one of the stools rasping her nails with an emery stick. She glanced languidly up at him as he came in, and got up to go around in back of the counter.

“Yes, sir?” she asked, raising her eyebrows a little. They were plucked to a thin line, and the somewhat petulant small mouth was a crimson splash of lipstick.

“Cup of coffee,” Reno said. As she was drawing it he noticed a large mounted bass over the door going out into the store at the other end of the counter. Good eight pounds, he thought.

“They catch that around here?” he asked, nodding.

She put the coffee down and glanced indifferently at the fish. “I reckon so.”

“Nice bass.”

She shrugged. “Is that what it is?”

Fine front man for a fishing camp, Reno thought. But maybe bass just don’t do anything to her. “You got a vacant cabin?” he asked.

“Sure. Lots of ‘em.” She was studying her nails again.

I can understand that, he thought. “I’d like to rent one, if it wouldn’t trouble you too much. How much are they?”

“By the day or week?”

“By the week.”

She appeared to look at him for the first time. “Alone?”

“That’s right.”

“Eighteen dollars, I think. You can talk to Skeeter. He’ll be back in a minute.”

“Skeeter?”

“Mr. Malone. He owns the place.”

He wondered if Mac had talked to her. It was a girl living at this camp who saw the car and boat parked in front of the inn. And where was it he first began to get the hunch that Conway was Robert Counsel? It couldn’t have been from this girl, though, because she wouldn’t remember that much about Counsel. She wasn’t old enough. He had been gone from here for nine years, and she wasn’t over twenty-two or twenty-three. But somewhere down here Mac had found out a lot of things. Too many things, he thought.

“Business a little slow?” he asked, stirring the coffee.

“Lousy. Except on week ends,” the girl replied. A car pulled up in front and he could hear a man come into the store. “There’s Skeeter now, if you want to talk to him.”

He paid for the coffee and went through the door into the other room. The shelves were filled with groceries, and a long showcase contained fishing tackle, mostly cheap stuff from the looks of it, the kind of things vacationers and tourists bought. The man was behind the opposite counter at the cash register.

He glanced up at Reno with the briefest of nods, a thin, tough slat of a man dressed in khaki trousers and shirt, the sallow face and small black eyes as devoid of expression as a closed door. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’d like to get a cabin for a couple of weeks if the fishing’s any good,” Reno said. “How’re the bass hitting?”

“They been taking some. Mostly with live bait, though. Water’s pretty warm.”

“Well, I’ll give it a whirl.”

He paid a week’s rent in advance, and Malone came outside with him, carrying the key. Getting into the car, he followed the lank figure around the corner of the building and along the row of cabins. It was the last one, directly behind the store building and next to the boat landing, where a half-dozen skiffs were tied up. Malone unlocked the door and they went in. It smelled musty, but the bare pine floor looked clean. It contained a bed and an old dresser with one of the drawers missing, and a door at the back opened into a small kitchen with a wood cookstove and an oilcloth-covered table. The door at the right of the room led into the bathroom, which had a small window looking out toward the boat landing.

“Hot water tank’s hooked to the cookstove,” Malone said. “If you don’t figure on doing any cooking, you can get hot water to shave with up at the kitchen.”

“O.K.,” Reno said. They went out and stood for a moment on the small porch, squinting at the white sunlight. “Boats are extra, I suppose?”

Malone nodded. “Two dollars a day. I’ll bring down a pair of oars.” He went off toward the store and Reno began carrying in his duffel from the car. Malone came back in a minute and leaned the oars with their leather guards against the wall of the porch.

“Take any boat you want,” he said, jerking his head toward the landing float.

“Thanks.” Reno leaned against the door and lit a cigarette. “Lots of water back up in there, I guess.”

Malone took out a plug of tobacco and whittled off a corner with his knife. “Never fished here before?”

Reno shook his head. “I’m from out of state.” He jerked a hand toward the license plate of the car.

“I wouldn’t go too far, then, without a guide. Them bayous wind all over hell, and a man could get lost if he didn’t know ‘em.”

“Why’s everything around here named Counsel?” Reno asked casually. “The roadhouse over there, and the bayou?”

“Counsels used to own all of it. Rich family.” Malone spat out into the yard, the black eyes flashing at nothing.

“But not any more?”

“Don’t own any of it now. Ain’t but one of ‘em left, anyway, and nobody knows where he is. In the pen, probably, now he ain’t got enough money to keep him out of it.”

Not one of the old family friends, Reno reflected. If Conway was Counsel and he was coming back here, it probably wasn’t to see Malone.

After the other had gone he finished unpacking and took off the suit he had been wearing, slipping on khaki trousers and a T shirt and an old pair of Army shoes. Going out on the porch to escape the stifling heat inside the cabin, he squatted in the shade and opened the tackle box. He took the reel out of its cloth bag and began methodically to oil it, his mind busy with the same old rat race of thought.

You figured out the answer to one question, and a dozen new ones sprung up to take its place. You could see now why Conway had brought his own boat, if he had to have one for some reason he alone knew. It figured if you added it up that way: Conway was Counsel, he’d grown up in this country and everybody would know him on sight, if he tried to rent one he’d be recognized, and presumably he didn’t want anybody to know he was here. But that still left the big one. Why had he needed a boat?

And the new one, Reno thought. If everybody knew him, how was it possible he’d been here since the twentieth of July without anyone’s seeing and recognizing him? He considered it, and knew there were a couple of good answers to that. Maybe he wasn’t here any more, and hadn’t been since that first night. And maybe he was dead.

And in that case, who was doing all the shooting?

Impatience; took hold of him and he was no longer able to sit still. He slid the reel back in the tackle box. And stood up. One thing I can do right now, he thought, is to find that road where he turned off the highway. Setting the box back inside the cabin, he locked the door and was just going out to the--car when he heard a boat. The sound was different from that of an outboard, and he looked curiously up the bayou.

It shot into view around a wall of trees a hundred yards away, a two-seated runabout planing swiftly down the channel. Off the camp the man at the wheel swung hard over and came skidding in toward the landing, giving it full astern at the last moment. The boat settled as if pushed down in the water and eased up alongside the float. Reckless, Reno thought, but he can handle a boat. The man reached out a hand and steadied it while a girl stepped nimbly out, holding what looked like an old brief case under her arm.

She turned, laughed, and said, “Thank you.”

The man in the cockpit raised his white cap in a mock-courtly gesture that revealed flaming red hair, and pushed at the float with his hand. There was a deep-throated growl of power as the boat slid away from the landing and vanished around the turn in the channel. The whole thing hadn’t taken more than a minute.

Reno stood beside the car watching the girl come up from the landing. She was a little over average height wearing white slacks and a short-sleeved blouse, her short jet-black hair wind-blown from the ride. As she came nearer he observed that her eyes were dark brown, heavily lashed, and that the face was beautifully tanned.

Memory stirred. There was no doubt of it. Her chin, though quite stubborn and firm, was undeniably dimpled. This was the girl Vickie had described.

“Hello,” he said, as casually as he could.

The girl met his inspection coolly, nodded a “Good afternoon,” which was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and went on past. She turned into the third cabin up the row.

He had turned and started toward her cabin, but before he had taken a step he checked himself. Suppose it wasn’t really the same girl? Or suppose she was, but denied it? He’d have tipped his hand before he had been here twenty minutes. And there was something else. The papers had been full of the McHugh murder case for over ten days, and she had never come forward to back up Vickie’s story. Maybe he’d be a sucker to let her know who he was before he found out a little more about her. At least he’d found her. She would keep.