Showdown

Chapter Three

Two days later, Prine resumed his canvassing, looking for the man he'd seen noting Cassie Neville's arrival in town each morning.

The smaller boardinghouses—two-, three-roomers, no more—rarely received the kind of upkeep the large ones did. The large ones were set up like hotels, with meals, washing privileges, mail set aside, and parlors and porches where the boarders could spend their nights in a homelike fashion. These houses generally catered to workingmen, especially unmarried railroad men, who were frequently gone half a month or so and didn't want to spend their money on renting anything bigger or fancier.

The smaller houses catered more often to transients. Prine remembered reading after Lincoln's assassination that cheap boardinghouses "were dreams for assassins and unholy people of every stripe." You take a big city like Washington, D.C., for instance. You had so many boardinghouses there, searching for one man was damned near impossible. He could keep moving, for one thing, and so the search became a shell game of a kind. Now he's here, now he's there. Impossible.

Claybank wasn't big enough to have such rabbit-warrens, but it still took Prine most of an afternoon to go to every house that advertised rooms, a list he'd gotten under the ruse of "official business" from the newspaper.

With three houses left to go, a weary, wiry woman named Wilma Chambers said, "That sounds like Mr. Tolan." She had a goiter on her neck the size of a baseball. It was hairy and tufted-looking. He'd never seen anything like it and didn't want to again.

"You know his first name, ma'am?"

"Of course I know his first name." She made a clucking sound that indicated that one of them here was pretty damned dumb, and it wasn't her. "Karl."

"Karl Tolan. Thank you. You probably know what he does, then."

"What he does is come and go. And pays his rent on time. That's all I know and all I need to know. The mister, when he was alive, always told me not to answer any questions from the law unless they told me why they were asking. Has Tolan done something?"

"Not at all. We just check sometimes on people who stay in Claybank for a while."

"He done something, didn't he? He hurt somebody? Is that it? He hurt somebody?"

"Ma'am, listen. I'm telling you the truth. We run checks on people passing through just in case something does happen. That's all, and that's a fact."

"Uh-huh. You boys with the badges think you can get away with anything. I'll tell you one thing, though. He gives me any trouble—tries to molest me or kill me—I'm gonna sue this town for every penny it's got. You know right now that he's a rapist or a killer. Or maybe both. But you won't tell me, will you?"

"I appreciate your time, Mrs. Chambers. Thank you."

As he was walking down the front steps, she said, "You remember what I said. I'll sue this town for every damned penny you've got, you hear me?"

There was an empty lot directly across the street from Mrs. Chambers's. Just after dark, Prine climbed up in the large oak on the far edge of the lot, moving fast so she wouldn't see him, and waited for Karl Tolan to come home. He had to take a chance that Tolan wasn't already home.

The autumn leaves were just full enough to hide him well. The only way he could pee was to lean forward and splash it down the back side of the tree.

Several times, he wanted to roll a cigarette but decided he'd better not. At one point, a couple of teenage boys came along. Wouldn't it play hell if they decided to climb the same tree he was in?

What they did was sit under the tree and share a corncob pipe and argue about which girl at school had the biggest breasts. They both had favorites and they were both adamant about those favorites. (Kids determined to indulge in the forbidden pleasures of the pipe are oblivious to such things as a thirty-two-degree temperature. The debate went on for some time, during which Prine froze his balls off.) The argument ended when one of the boys decided to throw faces into the mix. He might concede that his friend's favorite had bigger tits by a smidgen or two, but if you figured faces into the mix—big tits and a pretty face—well, then, there was no contest, was there? His friend had to agree, though he did say several times that we were talkin' about tits here and you had to go and throw in faces. After about half an hour of this, they got up and went home, each in a different direction, each calling goodnights to each other in the chilly darkness.

Karl Tolan got home around ten o'clock.

He weaved a little, indicating he'd been drinking. He went up the front steps and disappeared inside.

The voices erupted shortly thereafter. Mrs. Chambers was screaming at him. Prine couldn't hear the words, but he could pretty well imagine them. Lawman was here askin' about you, but I got a pretty good idea what you're wanted for. Rape and murder. And I ain't about to have no rapist or murderer under my roof, you can bet on that.

A few shouts from other boarders. Shut up! Tryin' to sleep!

Followed by one of those silences that are angrier than any words could be. Feet stomping up the second-floor stairs—presumably Karl Tolan—a door banging shut. Presumably him going into his room and packing things up. No shouts from the boarders for obvious reasons. Karl Tolan was nobody to rile.

Footsteps stomping down the stairs. Mrs. Chambers's last self-righteous statement: "Ain't safe no more for decent people! Not even in their own homes!"

Shrill in the night.

And then Karl Tolan appeared, tromping off toward town. If he was drunk when he got home tonight, the argument must have sobered him up. He wasn't drunk now. He was mightily pissed off. He swung a swollen carpetbag as he stomped along.

Prine dropped down from the tree and followed Tolan back to town.

The man took a room in The Majestic, a remnant of the boom days when even a prison cell of a room brought a formidable rent for the owner. The place was so vile that a couple of town council members had tried to have it torn down.

Prine waited a half hour across the street. Then he went home, to bed.