Hopscotch

— 14 -

He slipped the pump attendant ten dollars before the pump started running; the man grinned conspiratorially, topped Kendig’s tank and filled the five-gallon jerrycan in the trunk. When Kendig drove out of the station the kid was watching him go; the kid would remember him well enough and that was part of his intention.

He drove half an hour up the asphalt; he stopped the car about a quarter mile short of the bootleggers’ gate and hid the five-gallon can of gasoline in the trees. Then he drove on past the moonshinery to his own overgrown driveway; unhooked the trip-wire, drove in, reset the wire, drove up to the house and lugged the groceries inside.

He diced a steak and cut up a pepper and an onion and a banana, threaded the pieces on skewers he fashioned of wire coat-hangers and marinated the kebab in a sauce he compounded of half a dozen ingredients; he boiled up some brown rice and then fried it while the kebab was broiling. He made a salad of spinach greens and sliced tomato and segments of mandarin orange. The only thing he didn’t include was wine; he’d need a clear head tonight.

He put on Levi’s and crepe-soled boots and a flannel work shirt. Over that he put a thick woven sweater and then his dark windbreaker; he needed padding and a smooth outer covering-he expected to get dragged on the gravel and he didn’t want to lacerate his back. He put the Vise-Grip in his hip pocket and then spent ten minutes putting everything he’d need into the false-bottomed suitcase. When he tossed Carla Fleming’s compact into the case he was ready. He put the suitcase in the barn and arranged the kerosene lamps where they needed to be; he didn’t light them. He measured off the cleared floor space and made sure the barn door could be closed without obstruction. He left it wide open.

Then he walked down into the pines to make sure no tree had fallen across the pioneer road he’d spent two evenings cutting into the forest.

It was crude and not very long; it ran from the edge of his yard down a slope studded with second-growth pines and the remains of a fire that had gutted a few acres ten or twelve year ago. It had been the line of easiest resistance and he’d only had to cut down saplings; he’d sheared the stumps as close to the ground as he’d been able and then it, appeared to leave sufficient clearance to get a car through, although it was going to be a tight squeeze in two or three places.

Down in the bigger trees he’d had to hairpin it back and forth. Fortunately they were heavy old pines and there hadn’t been much undergrowth to clear out; he’d blazed the trunks to give himself a guide because otherwise in the dark he’d likely make a wrong turning and get boxed in. It ended in the woods about twenty yards short of the county road and about a third of a mile south of the intersection of his driveway. There was only roadside brush and a few spindly young evergreens between the end of his pioneer track and the county road; gun a car out of there and it would crash right through breaking the bush, clearing its own path to the paved road. In the meantime he’d left that section untouched. You could conceal a Patton tank in there and nobody would see it from the road.

It felt all right, exploring it on foot; he couldn’t take the chance of testing it with the old Pontiac because he’d designed it as a one-way escape route and it was unlikely the Pontiac or any other car could drive back up it. It was too steep, the pine needles too slick.

He was as ready as he was going to be; and it was past eight o’clock. It was time to go.

In three-quarter moonlight he had his look down across the slopes. The house was big but deliberately decrepit from the outside; the outbuildings looked tumbledown but most likely they were in splendid shape from the inside. The yard was cluttered with eight or nine ruined cars of which at least three were far more lively than they looked.

He watched the ’59 Ford move out at nine o’clock but he didn’t stir. The ’64 Chevy took the Ford’s place in the barn. They’d be filling its bootleg tank with eighty gallons of hundred-proof corn. He spotted one man with a rifle on the porch of the main house, another one up in what looked like a kids’ treehouse on the edge of the yard. Probably there were two or three others scattered around on watch. He didn’t go down any closer.

At nine-fifty the Chevy rolled out of the barn and went down out of Kendig’s sight into the trees. He gave it a ten-minute start and then he walked circuitously down the hillsides to the county road and went along the edge of the trees to the moonshiners’ gate.

It was a wooden cattle-gate sprung on a diagonal board, secured with heavy padlock and chain. The barbwire fence ran along to either side, six strands, five feet high. It wouldn’t keep a determined prowler out but it would deter casual hikers. These were forest people; for security they relied not on fences but on their eyes and ears and instincts.

When the tanker cars drove in or out they had to go through a routine procedure: stop the car, get out, unlock the padlock, swing the gate wide open, get back in the car, drive through, stop again, get out, close the gate and fasten the padlock, get back in the car and drive on.

He climbed over the gate and posted himself prone in the shadows along the driveway just inside the gateway; it was a point parallel to where the rear of the car would be when it stopped.

They tended to run them out at forty-five-minute intervals; they were roughly on schedule tonight. He’d been in hiding a little short of ten minutes when he heard the Oldsmobile crunching down the gravel of the hill track. He gathered his muscles, tense as a runner in the starting chocks.

Stabbing headlight beams swayed wildly through the treetops and lanced downward; the car came over the last crest and made the bend and rolled forward without hurry. Kendig stayed put in the shrubbery and the front of the car went past within five feet of his nose. He was in motion before the car stopped.

He had the Vise-Grips in his right hand; he rolled behind the car, got a left-handed grip on the bumper and dragged himself sliding under the back of the car.

The driver’s door opened. The car moved a little on its springs; he heard footsteps. He felt for the target with his left hand, running his fingers rapidly across the bottom of the gas tank; he found the hexagonal nut and squeezed the Vise-Grips onto it and heaved.

It was an awkward position, lying on his back with his arm cramped across his chest; he thought he might not get enough torque: the nut was probbably a little rusted, likely it hadn’t been unscrewed in years and it was covered with road grit, an uneven surface for the wrench. He heard the bottom of the gate scrape across its arc, the tinkle of the dangling chain. He locked both hands on the Vise-Grips and heaved again.

When it gave there was a rusty metallic groan. He froze.

The gate stopped and he heard the driver’s footsteps approaching. But they were neither furtive nor determined; the driver hadn’t heard. Kendig turned the nut. The car swayed with the driver’s weight; the door clicked, shut to half-latch. Kendig reached up with his left hand and locked his fist on the outer cylinder of the shock absorber and tensed his biceps.

The engine gunned, the car dragged him forward, gravel ripping the back of his windbreaker. A stone hit his shoulderblade; he almost cried out, almost lost his grip but he hung on. His forehead glanced off the bottom of the gas tank; he’d have a lump there in the morning. Then the car kept moving and dragging him and for an awful moment he was afraid the driver wasn’t going to stop but then the ride ended and Kendig jackknifed his legs so his feet wouldn’t show.

The driver got out. Kendig rotated the Vise-Grips and now it turned easily; he unsnapped the wrench and turned the nut counterclockwise swiftly with finger pressure. When gasoline began to trickle down his wrist he pushed up against the nut, holding it shut, turning it another full turn to make sure it was free of its threads; he held it that way while he heard the padlock snap shut and the driver’s boots crunch their way back to the car.

The door slammed. The Olds dropped into gear. He straightened his legs out and dropped his head back onto the ground. The car began to move, the tank inches above his nose; he held the drainplug in place as long as he could but then the car was away from him and he just stayed put, lying on his back; gasoline gushed over his extended arm, an overpowering stink of it, soaking his arm and his hair and his shoulder. He lay perfectly still and watched the inverted image of the taillights moving away down the county road.

He let it drive all the way out of sight before he got to his feet and wiped some of the stinking stuff off his face with his handkerchief. Then he started trotting after the car.

He gave it not more than a quarter mile before the high-powered V-8 would use up the fuel in its carburetor and fuel line; sure enough he was just reaching the bend when he heard it cough and die. It freewheeled a bit and he heard it stop. He cut into the woods and walked quickly on the pine-needle carpet, dropping the vital drainplug carefully into his pocket.

When he came in sight of the Olds the driver had the hood up and was playing a flashlight on the engine. Kendig moved down toward the edge of the road, picked up the five-gallon can of gasoline he’d cached there and waited in the trees, not moving, stinking of gasoline.

It took the driver a little while to figure it out. Finally he was down under the car feeling for the hole. He came out cursing audibly. Kendig watched him walk back up the road slowly exploring with the flashlight-looking for the drainplug. It must have been loose, he’d be thinking; vibration must have dislodged it; it’s got to be somewhere around here. He’d walk on up to the yard, looking for the plug along the way; he’d tell the others-they’d have to bring one of the other vehicles down with a chain and tow the tanker back in.

It would take some time. Kendig carried the jerrycan down to the abandoned car, set it down and crawled underneath to put the drainplug back where it belonged. He tightened it in place with the Vise-Grips. He noticed for the first time the three-centimeter pipe that had been welded in place across the back of the car, concealed from above by the massive chrome bumper. It ran the width of the car and there were six jet-type nozzles sticking out of it, pointing down toward the road. That was useful to know about.

He crawled out from under and poured most of the jerrycan’s contents into the tank; he opened the hood and disconnected the fuel line from the carburetor to pour some of the stuff down the hose to prime it. Then he splashed just a little bit into the carburetor-he didn’t want to flood it-and re-connected the fuel line. He put the empty can in the back seat and glanced at the ignition lock but the driver hadn’t favored him by leaving the keys. He had to get down under the dashboard, rip a wire off the clock and feel around for the tab-contacts on the back of the ignition switch. He was no expert at hot-wiring but he knew the drill well enough; he put it in neutral and made sure the emergency brake was set and then he gapped the contacts until the starter meshed.

The car started right up. He twisted the ends of the wire around the ignition tabs and sat up, pulled the door shut and went driving up the road less than six minutes after the driver had left the car.

Pretty soon they’d be down there with their tow car and they’d find the tanker missing. They’d figure out how it had been done but they’d have to conclude it had been a rival bootlegger outfit. They wouldn’t report the theft to the law; they could hardly do that. They’d start banging around their neighbors’ stills and the feudist mentality of the back hills would make things pretty wild for a while. It was what he wanted: the more confusion the better.

He drove the Olds into his barn and closed the barn doors and walked back down the track to repair the cowbell tripwire he’d broken when he’d driven in. Then he went up to the house and got out of his gasoline-soaked clothing, showered and scrubbed thoroughly, got into work clothes and returned to the barn to disguise the Olds.

He carefully applied masking tape to the chrome surfaces and edged the tape with razor-blade cuts. The car was a dark green hardtop with a white roof. He had a dozen aerosol cans of black automobile paint. He taped newspaper over the windshield and windows and went to work with the spray paint: two coats on the roof, one on the rest of the car. He wasn’t an expert painter and the job looked mottled and amateurish but that was all right, it went with the age of the car. The paint wasn’t thick enough to blacken the roof entirely; it ended up more grey than black but again that was good enough. He removed the license plates and threw them into the toolbox of the DeSoto in the yard, and bolted the plate he’d stolen in Birmingham onto the rear bracket of the Olds.

It was quick-drying paint. By dawn even the second coat on the roof was no longer tacky to the touch. He backed the Pontiac up to the Olds and siphoned off the Pontiac’s tank, running fuel into the Olds until it was nearly full. It left him about a quarter of a tank in the Pontiac-enough, in case. He put the Pontiac back in its usual parking space in front of the house and then he went over to the wrecked DeSoto and disconnected the dome-light toggle switch from it. He wired the toggle to the ignition of the Olds and brought a pushbutton switch from the DeSoto to act as a starter switch; there wouldn’t be time to fumble around under the dash trying to hot-wire it. When he had his wiring finished and everything screwed into place he tried it out and it worked fine: switch on the toggle, push the button and it started right up.

Then he inspected the spray pipe under the bumper. The faucet handles of the six spigots had heavy steel cables fixed to them; the cables disappeared through drilled holes into the body of the car. He found the control after a little searching. It was an old hand-brake lever they’d taken off some truck or tractor; it lay down against the floor between the door sill and the driver’s seat. He didn’t touch it; you could only use a cable control once because you couldn’t close it again without going around and closing each of the six faucets separately and by that time you’d have poured all the oil out onto the barn floor. But he did open one of the spigots a little and a hard stream of black oil sprayed out; he twisted the handle shut immediately.

They were guerrilla devices, the oil spigots on moonshiners’ tankers; if you were being pursued by another car all you had to do was pick the right spot and yank the handle and you covered the road behind you with a murderous oil slick. Anybody pursuing you would slither helplessly on the stuff. Pour it out on a steep bend and you’d send pursuit to their deaths.

He didn’t intend to hurt anybody; if he could help it he didn’t even want anybody bruised. But it was a useful bonus-in case.

An hour after sunup he drove the Olds out of the barn and ran it very cautiously across the yard into the woods along the pioneer track he’d cut. He went down the steep grade in low gear standing on the brake, taking it as slow as he could; it bottomed a few times but not alarmingly. When he got into the bigger trees he had to do a great deal of backing and filling in places but after half an hour he’d got it down through the trees to the end. He parked it there and piled brush around it. Then he walked down to the county road and prowled for twenty minutes to make sure there was no piece of the Olds that might flash a telltale reflection to a passerby on the road.

He checked out the yard and closed in the top of the pioneer track with broken trees to conceal its existence. After that he went to bed.

Thirty-six hours later he finished the book. He put the manuscript in the false bottom of the suitcase and cached the case in the Olds together with a bottle of water, several cans of food and a can opener. Everything he’d need with him was either in the Olds or on his person. Now it was just a matter of finding out how quick they were-Cutter and the FBI.

He could leave now. Nothing kept him here. But it was time for the game to come alive and he wanted them to have the warm smell of him.

Now he hoped they wouldn’t take long. If Cutter had been more of a gut player he’d worry about that; Cutter could see the clues he’d left and Cutter would realize their meaning. Kendig didn’t leave clues unless he’d meant to. Cutter would have to recognize the invitation for what it was. A gut gambler might decide to pass it up; decline the invitation, take Kendig’s neuroses into account, let him rot right where he was-anticipating entrapment but never seeing it happen. Time was Kendig’s enemy: he couldn’t sit and wait, he’d get bored with it and boredom was his essential weakness. Cutter knew that but Cutter had time pressures on him too and neither Cutter’s own personality nor the circumstances would allow him to sit still even though it might have been the smartest way to handle it. No: Cutter would come after him.

The telephone rang.

It had rung a few times since he’d moved in. Did he want to subscribe? Did he want home milk delivery? Did he want a charge-a-plate? There hadn’t been any of those in the past ten days. He’d made no calls out. He’d had the phone connected only as a convenience to Cutter.

Now on the fourth ring he picked it up. “Hello?”

Scratchy silence on the line and then a dull click. He cradled it and smiled. That had to be the FBI; if it had been Cutter he’d have played it better: sorry wrong number or would you care to contribute.

He put a short piece of pipe in his pocket and left the lights burning and walked out of the house.