The Long Wait

Chapter Four

At half past eight I went downstairs and woke up the cop in the chair. I said, “I’m going out and eat. You want to come along or wait here?”

“Don’t be a wise guy, Mac.” He squirmed out of the chair and shuffled off behind me.

I got on the street, looked over a place that seemed to suit my purpose, and went in and had breakfast. The cop took a table near the door and ordered coffee. I put some ham and eggs away, called for another round of toast and coffee and laid a buck on the table. The cop looked over, saw I was staying and ordered more coffee for himself.

The first time he stopped looking at me and glanced out the door I made my move. I got up, half ran for the kitchen door, shoved it open and stepped behind it. The chef looked at me coldly. “You want something?”

“Just wanted to say what a swell cook you are.”

He scowled and I went back where I came from.

The cop was gone.

I told the waiter the dough was on the table and went outside. Across the street was a drugstore with a grub counter and I hopped on the end stool. Thirty seconds later the cop came pounding back down the street with a police car screaming along behind. They all stopped in front of the restaurant and ran inside.

They came back right away, looked up and down the street and started arguing among themselves. Then Lindsey got out of the car and gave them hell.

He shouldn’t have used such an old dodge. The fat cop was just a decoy I was supposed to duck and forget about, then the one they had planted behind the building waiting for me to come out would have picked me up as easy as eating pie.

Tucker found out right away that I wasn’t such a goddamn sucker as he thought. With Lindsey it was going to take awhile. I ordered some more coffee and waited for them to scram.

When the counterman came back I asked him where the public library was and he drew me a diagram on the back of a menu. I paid him, stuck the menu in my pocket and took off down the street.

The library was a new building three stories high on the block backing up the main drag. It was set in the middle of a half-acre lot that had a playground on one side and a parking space on the other. Right next to the door a bronze plaque was inscribed “Lyncastle Public Library. Donated by the Lyncastle Business Group.” It made a nice chunk of bribery, a monument to the effectiveness of having a town wide open. That Servo lad knew what he was doing.

A girl in her early twenties was sitting at a desk inside the door trying to make like she wasn’t chewing gum. I said, “I’d like to take a look at some newspapers. Where are they?”

“Current ones?”

“No. These go back six or seven years or so.”

“Oh, well, they’ll be downstairs.” She pointed over her shoulder to an arch. “Take those stairs right there. Everything is arranged by the date and you won’t have any trouble finding them. Please put them back the same way.”

I said I would, thanked her and went back through the arch.

It took about twenty minutes to get what I wanted. It was a copy of the Lyncastle News six years, two months and nine days old. There were banner headlines in big, black type that said, “District Attorney Killed.” I scanned the copy and picked out the facts. He had been shot in his office with a.38 revolver stolen a year before from a pawnshop. The police were making no comment on the shooting except to hint that the killer was known to them.

The rest of it was a flashback over the past year and I went back to where it seemed to have started and picked it up from there.

The beginning came not long after the cities on the perimeter of Lyncastle voted an option and kicked out liquor. A business survey noted that the gin mills in town were booming with new trade and Lyncastle was enjoying the mild prosperity that went with it. The original residents were the kind of people who believed in as few laws as possible, so nothing was ever done about gambling. The police were having some trouble with minor infractions of the law because of the wide-open situation, but since it was all confined to a small area it was a matter passed over lightly.

Someone introduced a resolution in the City Council to outlaw gambling, but it got beaten down because nobody wanted to give up the sudden influx of new dough. The argument was that the status quo would remain as it was and not increase and since the situation wasn’t out of hand why worry about it?

That was real nice. It was perfect.

The status quo got unstatused in a hurry. Almost overnight the town blossomed out in some of the fanciest gambling houses ever seen and the good citizens were caught with their pants down. When a half-dozen people got themselves killed one way or another the D. A. launched a probe to get to the bottom of things.

The next paper to throw any light on the matter was a Sunday sheet. A nosy reporter had dug up some dope on one Lenny Servo who had established residence in town a year before. He was red hot out of the East with some nice charges against him, but had enough dough stashed away to reach the right people and had extradition proceedings squashed in court. Evidently he had spent so much he was flat broke, but Lenny was a real promoter and in no time at all he had himself a bank roll and was in the real-estate business. It later developed that the properties he picked up were strategically located for gambling purposes and he was having a rapid turnover in buildings and lots.

Robert Minnow had him in court twice without finding out where his money had come from and for a couple of months nothing more was said. Then the D. A. pulled out the stops and at an annual Town Hall dinner affair, gave out the news that Lyncastle was in the hands of a criminal element whose hands were in the city’s pockets and around the necks of every citizen in town. He was after certain conclusive evidence that would lay several murders at the feet of the right people and promised to expose one of the biggest scandals of all time.

He never got around to doing it because a week later he was dead.

That’s where John McBride came into it.

Me.

Upon complaint of the State Auditor, the District Attorney’s office was conducting an investigation of the National Bank of Lyncastle’s books. A check revealed that the bank was short two hundred thousand smackeroos and one John McBride, a teller on vacation, had juggled the books in a neat, but not neat enough manner. The D. A. had a warrant out for his arrest.

During that time somebody knocked off Minnow. He was found dead in his office at ten o’clock at night by a cleaning woman. The gun was on the floor, the corpse behind the desk and whoever had let him have it had stepped inside, pulled the trigger and blown without anybody being the wiser. The coroner stated that he had been killed about an hour before his body was found and a later police report said nobody had seen the killer enter or leave. For a week the police made vague hints, then Captain Lindsey came out with the statement that the killer was John McBride, the motive revenge, and before the month was out the guy would be standing trial.

It must have been a long month for Lindsey.

Well, there it was in a nice little package. Robert Minnow’s rising star had been nipped just short of its peak by a dirty bank absconder. I even made some of the out-of-state papers.

I folded them up carefully and slid them back into the racks. Then I stood there looking at them. Inside, I had a vaguely unpleasant feeling, a gnawing doubt that told me I could be wrong and if I was I would hang for the mistake. The basement got cold and damp suddenly.

But it wasn’t the basement. It was me. It was that damn doubt telling me it could have happened that way after all and my lovely crusade was nothing but a fool’s errand.

I could feel the sweat start over my eyes and run down my cheeks. I got so goddamn mad at myself for thinking that I could be wrong that I balled up my fist and slammed it against the side of the metal bin until the place echoed with a dull booming and my knuckles were a mess of torn skin.

I sat down until the mad passed and only the doubt was left. Then I cursed that and everything about Lyncastle I could think of. When I got done swearing to myself I yanked out a couple of the sheets again and opened them to a feature section that sported a two-column spread by a writer named Alan Logan. I jotted his name down in my memory and tucked the papers back.

Of all the people who had anything to say about Robert Minnow or me, he was the only one who didn’t convict me before the trial. The rest had me drawn and quartered in absentium. I went back upstairs and outside where I could smoke. standing on the steps trying to think. I was so damn deep in thought that the chunk I heard didn’t make an impression until I noticed the two kids looking at the wall behind me. I turned around to see what they were looking at, saw it and went flat on my face on the concrete just as there was another chunk.

On the wall right behind my back was a quarter-sized dimple plated with the remains of a soft-nosed lead bullet and if I had been standing up the last one would have gone right through my intestines.

If I had rolled the kids probably would have followed me, so I got up on my feet and ran like hell. I tore around the back of the building, shoved the gate open and angled off into an alley that led to the street.

Now the fun was beginning. This was more like it. Guys who were better at tailing somebody than the cops. Guys with silenced rifles who didn’t give a damn about kids standing around their target. Now I didn’t have any doubt any more.

I made a quick circuit of the block until I reached the corner where I could see the library. Opposite the building the street was lined with private residences and it was a sure bet that I wasn’t being potted at from there. They wouldn’t have missed if they were that close.

But behind the private homes on the other side of the block was a solid string of apartment houses with nice flat roofs that were perfect gun platforms and anybody at all could get to the top if they wanted to badly enough. There wasn’t a bit of sense looking for them. They had plenty of time to get away, and a gun could be broken in half and carried on the street wrapped up in a mighty innocent-looking package.

Out of plain curiosity I crossed the street, walked the one block and turned in at the first apartment. It was a five-story affair like the rest with a self-service elevator. I took it to the top, got out and walked up the short flight of stairs to the roof. That’s how easy it was.

A guy was bending over fastening a television antenna to the chimney and gave me a “howdy” and a nod when he saw me coming. I said, “Anybody been up here the last few minutes, Mac?”

He dropped his wrench and stretched his legs. “Umm, no, not that I know of. Think there might’ve been somebody down a couple places or so. Heard a door slam.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He went back to work and I stepped over the barrier between the buildings.

You could see the library from nearly every roof top, but you could command it properly from only two if you wanted a good background for a target standing on the steps.

The first one I looked at was where the guy had been.

He was smart, too. There weren’t any empty shell cases around, no scratches on the parapet where a careless guy would have propped a gun, no trinkets that might have fallen from the pockets of a gunman shooting prone, no nothing. I’d even bet the bastard threw his clothes away to get rid of any dust traces he could have picked up.

Yeah, he was smart, all right, but not smart enough to rub out the marks his toes and elbows had left. They made four cute little hollows in the gravel of the roof and when I stretched out on top of them with my own toes in the impressions he made my elbows came out about eight inches above his.

Junior was a shortie. A guy about five-six. And he was going to be a hell of a lot shorter when I caught up with him.

I used the same entrance he had used and didn’t meet a soul going out. I walked to the corner and back up to the main drag without getting shot at either.

It was ten after ten and I used up another half hour buying myself a second jacket. Next to the store where I got the jacket was a pawnshop that had a nice selection of guns displayed in the window and I would have picked one up right there if it weren’t for the sign that said a certificate was required for purchase of any hand gun.

If you wanted to shoot at anybody you had to have a certificate.

Two doors down was a cigar store with a telephone plaque on the front. The old lady behind the counter changed a buck into silver for me and I picked up the Lyncastle News number from the directory.

A voice said hello and I asked for Alan Logan. There was a rapid series of clicks then, “Hello, Logan speaking.”

I said, “Logan, you tied up right now?”

“Who is this?”

“Never mind who it is. I want to speak to you.”

“What’s on your mind, feller?”

“Something that might make a good story. An attempted murder.”

That was all the answer he needed. “I’m not busy. Why?”

“Pick out a nice place where I can meet you. No people, understand?”

“You mean no cops, don’t you?”

“They’re included.”

“There’s a bar on Riverside,” he said. “It’s called the Scioto Trail and its probably just opening up. The owner’s a friend of mine and we can talk in the back room.”

“Okay. Say in a half hour?”

“Good enough.”

I stuck the receiver back in the cradle and went over to the counter. The old lady told me where Riverside was, but I wasn’t about to walk any three miles to get there. I called a cab and had a soda until the cab beeped outside for me.

The guy said, “Where to?”

“Know where the Scioto Trail is on Riverside?”

“Sure, but they ain’t open yet, bud.”

“I’ll wait for it to open.” The driver shrugged and crawled out into the traffic.

The Scioto Trail was a big white frame building that had started life as a private home, lived until the river made a bed in its back yard, then made a quick switch into a gin mill whose owner stuck a dock out from the back porch to pick up the yacht club trade. The parking lot was empty and except for the kid on the gasoline barge that was swinging at anchor near the dock, the place seemed deserted.

I paid off the cabbie and walked around the building to the veranda. A new Chevvy was crowding the back of the building behind a Buick sedan, so the place wasn’t too deserted after all. I rapped on the door a few times, heard heavy feet pounding across the floor inside and a tall skinny guy with a crooked nose pulled the door open and said, “Yeah?”

“Logan here?”

“He’s here. You the guy he’s waiting for?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on in. He’s in the back.”

He slammed the door shut and pointed to a door at the end of the bar and went back to swabbing down the floor. The door took me through a narrow hall with the washrooms opening off it and led to a square hall with a bandstand and dance floor. Tables were scattered around liberally and for the people who wanted a little privacy there were booths in an alcove that jutted out from one wall.

That’s where I found Logan.

He sure as hell didn’t look like any reporter. One ear was cauliflowered, his nose was flat and scar tissue showed over both eyes. He was bunched over a paper doing the crossword puzzle and looked like his shoulders were going to pop right out of his coat.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and came along the wall without him hearing me until I crowded the booth where he was sitting. I wasn’t even taking a little bit of a chance. The guy could be a pug, but if he was he wouldn’t be making any passes from a sitting-down position.

“Logan?”

His face wrinkled up at the edges. It went flat in surprise and wrinkled up all over again showing short, squared-off teeth under lips that were a thin red line.

“I’ll be damned. I’ll be good and goddamned!”

“Maybe. You got a driver’s license or something?”

He didn’t get it right away. He crinkled his eyes thinking about it then threw his wallet on the table. It opened to a flap that showed his license and a card certifying that he was a member of the Newspaperman’s Guild.

So I sat down.

He was another guy I fascinated. He couldn’t take his eyes off me a second. He stared until words came to him and squeezed out in amazement. “Johnny McBride. I’ll be damned.”

“You already said that.”

“When I heard about it I couldn’t believe it. I thought Lindsey was out of his head. I was sure of it when I found out what happened up there in Headquarters.” His fingers were hanging on to the edge of the table like he was trying to break off a piece.

“Nobody seems very glad to see me,” I said.

Those lips went back and I saw the teeth again. “No, they wouldn’t be.”

I could make faces too. I made him a good one. “Somebody tried to knock me off a little while ago. Right in front of the library.”

“That the story you wanted to tell me?”

I shrugged. “That was just a gimmick to get you here. First you’re going to tell me something, then if I like it I’ll tell you.”

You’d think I’d smacked him right between those narrow eyes of his. “You son of a bitch, it’s too bad they missed!” he rasped.

I grinned at him. “You don’t like me either, right?”

“Right.”

“For a guy who doesn’t like me you did a nice job of going easy on me in that column of yours. Everybody else crucified me.”

“You know damn well why I went easy. I’d just as soon see you swing as look at you. The next time I’ll take you apart piece by piece.” He half stood behind the table and sneered at me.

“Sit down and shut up,” I said. “I’m getting tired of all the crap I’ve been handed since I got here. Nobody’s taking me apart especially you. Tucker tried it and Lindsey tried it. They didn’t do so good.”

Logan started to smile, a loose nasty smile and he sat down. His hands weren’t hanging onto the table any longer. They were there in front of him and everything in his eyes said he was getting ready to take me as soon as he found out what it was all about.

I said, “Tell me about myself, Logan. Make like you didn’t know me and was telling somebody all about it. Tell me about the bank job and how Bob Minnow was killed.”

“Then what will you tell me, Johnny?”

“Something you won’t expect to hear.”

Logan was going to say something and changed his mind. He gave me a studied glance and shook his head slightly. “It’s going over my head, way over. I’ve heard some screwy things before, but this takes the cake.”

“Don’t worry about it, just tell me.”

His hand went out absently for a cigarette and he stuck it in his mouth. “Okay, you’re Johnny McBride. You were born in Lyncastle, went to school here and started working in the bank after two years away at college. You went into the army, saw a lot of action and came home a big hero. At least all your medals said you were a big hero.”

I stopped him there. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t play dumb. You’re the only one who knows the answer to that. Maybe you were a big hero overseas. If you were then something happened that changed you plenty. So you came home and went to work in the bank.” His fingers curled around the cigarette and bent it. “And you found yourself a girl. It didn’t make any difference whose girl she was. You played up that hero stuff and she went for it.”

“Who?”

Logan’s eyes were a pale, watery blue watching me steadily; eyes hazy with a venom that had never ceased being deadly. “Vera West. A lovely, wonderful girl with hair like new honey. A girl too damn good for somebody like you.”

I laughed insolently, a laugh that cut him right in half. “I took her right out of your arms, didn’t I?”

“Goddamn you!” He was getting ready and I didn’t move. His teeth came together in a crazy attempt to control himself and he had to hiss to speak. “Yeah, Vera went for you. She went overboard like an idiot and let you ruin her life. She was so much in love that even after you used her like a dirty rag she stayed that way. That’s why I went easy on you. I didn’t want her hurt any worse!”

“I’m a bad boy. What else?”

“You’re going to be a dead boy, Johnny.”

“What else? How’d I use her?”

He had to push himself back on the bench. “You know, I figured that out before the cops did. Because Vera was Havis Gardiner’s secretary she had access to a lot of private stuff you as a teller couldn’t reach. You did real well making her hand over those books without arousing her suspicions. You did a beautiful job of juggling those accounts, too. It’s too bad you were on vacation at the time the state auditor dropped in. They caught you up in a hurry then, didn’t they? It went into Minnow’s lap and he started a search for you and never found you because you found him first. You were so jerky that you blamed it on him and put a bullet in him!”

“And Vera?” I asked him.

“That’s something I want to hear from you, Johnny. I want to know why a girl as lovely as Vera went to the dogs with herself until she wound up slutting around with a heel like Lenny Servo. I want to know why she became nothing but a beautiful drunken bum who could make Servo look good even at her worst.”

“Where’s she now, Logan?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. She disappeared three years ago.” Logan’s mouth twisted in a snarl. “That’s what you did to her, you stinking yellow bastard. That’s what our hero, Johnny McBride, did to her.”

He started to reach for me across the table. Slow. His left out further than the other so I couldn’t get away before he grabbed me.

I said, “Johnny McBride’s dead.”

Those hands came to a dead stop as though they ran into an invisible wall. He looked at me like I was crazy or something, trying hard not to believe me but having to because I sat there smoking without getting excited about an ex-pug who wanted to murder me with his hands. He barely whispered, “What?”

“McBride’s dead. He fell off a bridge scaffolding into the river and all that was ever found of him were a few pieces and some torn clothes. He was battered to bits in the rapids and what was left I saw buried not two weeks ago.”

You don’t tell a guy that somebody’s dead when he’s looking at the corpse breathing and talking right in front of him. You don’t tell him that in one breath and make him believe it. No, first it has to sink in and swirl around then it has to come out in little pieces that don’t make any sense at all and show on your face like a blank mask a little too white and a little too strained.

Logan let his legs relax and he teetered on the edge of the bench. “You’re lying!”

“There’s a death certificate filed if you want to look at it.”

Nobody could have said it the way I did and not be telling the truth. He knew it and I knew it yet his face went cynical as he said, “Then who the hell are you?”

“That,” I told him, “is something I’d like to know myself.”

“You’re nuts. You’re batty as hell!”

“Nope, I’m not a bit nuts, Logan. It may seem nuts, but it’s the truth, and like I said, it won’t take you more than one phone call to find out for yourself. There’s an outfit called the Davitson Construction Company out in Colorado right now. They build bridges and rig oil wells. Ask anybody in charge about it.”

His hands covered his face until all I could see were his eyes. “Keep talking.”

“Believe in coincidence?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s what I ran into. A coincidence that won’t happen again for another thousand years. I’ll tell you about me and Johnny as far back as I can go, and that’s only two years. When I said I don’t know who I am that was only partly true. I know who, but that’s all. I know my name is George Wilson because I had that identification on me at the time of the accident, but there was no address and no history and no way of finding out who I was or where I came from. I didn’t know if I had a criminal record or ever served in the army because I don’t have any fingerprints. See?”

I turned my hands over and he nodded through a frown. “I heard about that.”

“That’s only part of the story, Logan. I can fill in about twelve hours before the accident, but that’s all.”

“Let’s hear it.”

I pulled out another butt and lit it. “Two years ago the Davitson Company sent out a bus to pick up some construction workers. Fifteen men signed on for the job, threw their luggage on the bus and had a last fling in town. At eleven that night the bus loaded up with fifteen drunks and started on to camp.

“Coming down a steep grade the bus ran off the road, went nose first over a cliff and wound up a burning wreck at the bottom of a gorge. I remember something smashing into my head and being thrown through the air.

“As far as I can figure out, I was knocked cold, lay there on the ground a few minutes, then came around. The bus was a mass of flames and you could smell the men cooking inside. It wasn’t very nice. Somebody was screaming his head off and I could see a guy trapped under one of the fenders with the fire starting his way. I managed to crawl over him and lift the wreckage that was pinning him down so he could get out. That’s how I lost my fingerprints. The damn metal was red hot.

“Just as we had gotten back about fifteen feet or so the gas in the tanks exploded, knocked us flat and scattered what was left of the bus all over the place. I went out like a light again, only this time it was dark when I woke up.

“The other fellow had found a stream and washed me down. My hands looked like raw meat and the first thing that hit me was that I had lost my memory. I got so excited I went off my rocker a little bit and passed out. Two days later I came around in a company hospital. The other guy had managed to flag a passing car and called for help.

“Here’s the funny part. When I came to in that hospital I thought I really was nuts. I was lying on the bed looking up at myself. Screwy, wasn’t it? You should’ve seen how I felt about it. It took a doctor, a couple of nurses and Charlie Davitson himself to convince me I was sane. The guy I was looking at was me in every detail and if we had been born twins we couldn’t have been more nearly identical.

“Oh, the doctors went into a big spiel about it. I made a good case history for them; first because I was a true amnesia case and second because of that freakish resemblance to the other guy. His name was John McBride. I had my name written inside my shirt, but that was all I had. My luggage was one of the ones completely destroyed. All the company records and personal papers they carried on us were destroyed too. Some of the bags had been thrown clear and Johnny’s was one of them. He was luckier than me all around.

“Anyway, after that the two of us were inseparable. Whatever we did we did together. For two guys we got into enough trouble for ten and they started calling us the ‘Devil’s Twins.’ ”

I took a drag on the cigarette and let it hang there in my throat. I had gone over it a dozen times in my own mind, but when it came to speaking about it I couldn’t get the words out.

“A few weeks ago we were working on a bridge. I slipped and was dangling by a safety rope. I was hanging over a fifty-foot drop and the wind was whipsawing the rope against a girder overhead and fraying it fast. There wasn’t much time and it looked hopeless, but Johnny came down his own rope to tie onto me and just as he secured, his own rope broke and he went down into the river. I got hauled up.

“It took a couple of days to locate his remains and bury him. As far as was known, he didn’t have any family. I sort of took over his personal effects and went through them. You see, Johnny never talked about himself. I found out why. I came across a letter he had started to write. It was tucked in some old junk where he had forgotten about it, but it gave me an idea of what his life had been like.

“I remember every word of that letter. Want to hear it?”

Logan’s nod was scarcely perceptible.

I said, “They ran me out of Lyncastle five years ago. They took my money, my honor and my girl. They took everything I had and she laughed while they did it. She laughed because she was part of it and I was in love with her. She laughed then she went with him while that sadistic bastard who works for him tried to kill me with a knife. I ran. I ran and I ran and I’ll never stop running as long...’ and that’s how it ended.”

“I didn’t hear any names,” Logan said.

“That’s right. There weren’t any names. I don’t need any. I’ll find out who they were without any names to go by and you know what’s going to happen?”

He waited for me to tell him. I let him guess at it. I grinned like a damned fool while he was guessing and he guessed right. He said, “What are you doing this for?”

“For? Because Johnny was the best friend I ever had. He was such a good friend that he died trying to save my life and by God, I’m going to get back everything they took away from him. Hear me?”

“That’s big talk. You’re taking a lot for granted, aren’t you? Without knowing anything about it you’re ready to say he wasn’t guilty.”

I got up and stuck my cigarettes in my pocket. He was right behind me. “You get to know a guy pretty well in a couple of years. When you eat, sleep and fight together you get so you know all about a guy. Johnny didn’t kill anybody.”

We were right in the middle of the dance floor when Logan tapped me on the shoulder. There was something screwy about his face and the way he stood. He was on his toes with his hands hanging limp looking like the pug he might have been at one time.

“That was a nice story, Johnny. I’m going to find out how much of it was true.”

“I told you how you could find out,” I said.

His lips folded back over his teeth. “I got a better way to find out if you’re Johnny McBride or not.”

He swung that right hand so hard I barely had time to get under it before he nearly tore the top of my head off. I caught him with the side of my palm across the neck and dug my fist into his belly the same time I rammed him against the wall. I gave him another in the gut doubling him over my shoulder then I had him in my hands and threw him halfway across the floor.

Logan lay there staring at the floor with glassy eyes, his dinner trying hard to get past his clenched teeth. I gave him a good ten seconds to get up and he couldn’t make it. He was nuts if he thought I was going to be a sportsman about it. I walked over to him and he was just about to get his goddam teeth kicked down his throat when he turned his head and grinned at me.

That’s right, grinned. Like something was funny. His mouth was all bloody and he managed a good, solid grin. “You’re okay, Wilson,” he said.

I gave him a hand up, holding him until he could do it by himself. “That was a crazy stunt. What’d it get you?”

“You,” he grinned again. “The real McBride wouldn’t’ve done that. Johnny was as yellow as they come. He was scared to death of getting hurt. You’re okay, Wilson.”

“McBride. Johnny McBride, remember?”

“Okay, Johnny.”

“And never get the idea I’m yellow, Logan.”

“No, I won’t. I know some others who might think so.”

“They’re going to be awfully surprised.”

Logan said, “Yeah,” looked puzzled a second then grinned again.