Summer Cool

26

Paine didn't like wearing disguises. When he had used the drinking glass to listen in on Sims and Martin, it had made him feel as if he were playing detective. But there were times when playing detective worked, and was necessary. He had colored his hair blond, and he wore a red baseball cap, and he had a blond mustache called "the Baron" that he had ordered from an outfit in New York that supplied Broadway theaters, and he wore an old denim jacket and a pair of faded jeans with the bottoms frayed, and an old pair of sneakers. All of these things together made him look like someone else, a guy from Yonkers who worked on the crew that mowed your lawn, perhaps. He looked like someone on a budget heading to Tucson to see a friend, or, perhaps, to try to persuade his errant girlfriend to come back to New York. He didn't look like someone who would succeed in getting the girlfriend to come back, but that was all right.

At La Guardia, he told the ticket seller that his name was Jimmy Plunkett and paid in cash. He smiled a lot. People smiled back, and soon he was on a flight with his headset on, thinking about the fed he had seen hanging around outside his apartment building in Yonkers. He knew the disguise was all right, and the makeup covering the bruises, because he had gone up to the fed and asked him the time, smiling, and the fed had not smiled but had given him the time and then put his dead eyes back on the front of the building.

"Thanks, man," he had said.

The fed had answered, "Get lost."

The flight was long, and he slept a little, but Bobby Petty didn't haunt his dreams any longer. When he didn't sleep he listened to the headset and stared at the flat earth below and enjoyed the stale air-conditioned atmosphere of the plane until it landed in Tucson, where it was still 100 degrees with no help in sight.

He rented a car, paying cash and showing his Jimmy Plunkett driver's license. He kept smiling, and everyone smiled. When you pay cash, he thought, it didn't matter if you looked like a landscaper's assistant from Yonkers, everyone returned your smile.

He wondered how long it would be before the fed outside his building, and Bryers, and Sims and Martin, found out he was not in Yonkers.

He figured he had twenty-four hours.

He drove past the hotel he had stayed in before, thought of going up to room 419 to see if Martin and Sims were still there and ask them the time. He kept driving.

He drove a long while.

He was almost where he wanted to go when he knew for sure that he was being followed. A tan Datsun had made all of his turns, and he didn't know how long it had been back there but he knew it had gotten closer. He tried to make it get closer still, to see the driver, but it hung back, refusing to bite.

He made a few more turns, getting fancy with the wheel, but the Datsun stayed with him.

Finally, he picked a wide street with lots of light on it and pulled over to the curb.

The Datsun, a half block behind, pulled over and stopped.

Paine got out of his car and began to walk toward the Datsun. The sun was in the windshield, and he still couldn't see the driver. And then, as Paine approached the car, the driver's door opened, and the driver got out.

"Paine," Philly Ramos said, smiling. "What a lousy disguise."

As Paine got close, Philly held out his right hand in greeting. In it was a small can, the top of which he depressed. A small cloud came out of the can, up into Paine's face. "Sorry, man," Philly Ramos said, affectionately.

Paine began to choke_; his eyes watered and he could not see. He threw out his arms and backed away from Philly Ramos.

But then Philly said, "Sorry," again, with gentleness, and something came down hard on the back of Paine's skull and he met blackness.