The New Black Mask (No 5)

Robert Sampson Rain in Pinton County

Robert Sampson may be best known to students of popular culture for Yesterday’s Faces, a five-volume study of pulp magazines that is being published by Popular Press. Volumes one and two — Glory Figures (1983) and Strange Days (1984) — have appeared, and the next two volumes are with the printer. In addition to his scholarly work, Mr. Sampson, who is a management analyst at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, has published about two dozen mystery stories.

Fat raindrops rapped circles across puddles the color of rusty iron. Ed Ralston, Special Assistant to the Sheriff, said, “ 'Scuse me,” and pushed through the rain-soaked farmers staring toward the house. Ducking under the yellow plastic strip — CRIME SCENE, KEEP OUT — that bordered the road, he followed the driveway up past a brown sedan, mud-splashed and marked “Sheriff’s Patrol.”

Behind him, a voice drawled, “He’s her brother.”

The house, painted dark green and white, sat fifty feet back from the county road. That road arced behind him across farmland to hills fringed darkly with pine. Black cattle peppered a distant field. The air was cold.

In the rear parking lot, a second patrol car sat beside a square white van with “Pinton County Emergency Squad” painted across the state outline of Alabama. On the shallow porch, a deputy in a black slicker watched rain beat into the yard.

Ralston said, “Punk day, Johnny. Fleming get here yet?”

The deputy shook his head. “They’re still calling for him. Broucel’s handling things inside.” And, as the door opened, “I’m sure as hell sorry, Ed.”

“Thanks.”

He entered a narrow kitchen, went through it to a dark hallway that smelled faintly of dog, turned left into the front room. There a handful of men watched the photographers put away their gear.

When he entered the room, their voices hesitated and softened, as if a volume control had been touched. Men stepped forward, hands out, voices low: “Sorry. Sorry. Ed, I’m real sorry.”

He crossed the familiar room, keeping to a wide plastic strip laid across the beige carpet. He shook hands with a little, narrow-faced man who looked as if he had missed a lot of meals. “Morning, Nick.”

“Sorry as hell about this, Ed,” Nick Broucel said.

Ralston nodded. His glasses had fogged, and he began rubbing them with a piece of tissue that left white particles on the glass. Without the glasses, his eyes seemed too narrow, too widely separated for his long face. His dark hair was already receding. Scowling at the flecks on his glasses, he said, “Well, I guess I better look at her.”

A gray blanket covered a figure stretched out by the fireplace. Ralston twitched back a corner, exposing a woman's calm face. Her hair was pale blond, her face long, her lipstick bright pink and smudged. On the bloodless skin, patches of eye and cheek makeup glared like plastic decals.

He looked down into the face without feeling anything. There was no connection between the painted thing under the blanket and his sister, Sue Ralston, who lived in his mind, undisciplined, sharp-tongued, merry.

He stripped back the blanket. She was elaborately dressed in an expensive blue outfit, earrings and necklace, heels; nails glittered on hands crossed under her breasts. “Well, now,” he said at last. “It’s Sue. What happened?”

Nick said, “She went over backward. Hit her head on the corner of the fireplace. Pure bad luck. Somebody moved her away. Smoothed her clothes. Folded her hands. Somebody surprised, I’d say.”

“Somebody shoved her and she fell?”

“Could be.”

“Or she just slipped.”

“Could be.”

Rain nibbled at the windows. The investigative work had started now, and the room squirmed with men standing, bending, looking, methodically searching for any scrap of fact to account for that stillness under the gray blanket.

Ralston asked, “Why the full crew? How’d we hear about this?”

“Anonymous call. Male. Logged at 5:32 this morning. Gave route and box number. Said the bodies were here.”

“Bodies? More than one?”

“Not so far.” Broucel looked sour and ill at ease. “This is Fleming’s job, not mine. I’m just marking time here. I don’t know where the hell he’s got to. Where’s the sheriff?”

Ralston said carefully, “He’s taking a couple of days vacation.” He slowly scanned the room. Money had been freshly spent here, money not much controlled by taste. New blue brocade chairs bulked too large for the room. The couch seethed with flowered cushions. The lamps were fat glass creations with distorted shades. Tissues smeared with lipstick scattered a leather-topped coffee table.

“And there’s something else,” Broucel said.

He gestured toward the shelves flanking the fireplace. Cassettes of country music littered the bottom shelves. On upper shelves clustered carved wooden animals, ceramic pots, weed vases. Centered on the top shelf was the photograph of a grinning young man. It was inscribed “To Sue, With Ever More Love, Tommy.”

“You recognize that kid?” Broucel asked.

“Isn’t that Tommy Richardson? His daddy owns the south half of the county.”

“That’s the one.”

“Daddy’s going to enforce the dry laws, jail the bootleggers, clean up the Sheriff’s Department — come elections. That’s a mike, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, that’s a mike.”

A fat wooden horse had tumbled from the second shelf. Its fall had exposed the black button of a microphone, the line vanishing back behind the shelves.

In a slow, reflective voice, Ralston said, “Sue never had a damn bit of sense.”

“Let’s go down in the basement,” Broucel told him.

Steep wooden stairs took them to a cool room running the length of the house. Windows along the east foundation emitted pallid light. Behind the gas furnace, a small chair and table crowded against the wall and black cables snaked out of the ceiling to connect a silver-gray amplifier and cassette tape recorder. On the table, three cassette cases lay open and empty, like the transparent egg cases of insects.

Broucel said, “We found three mikes. About any place you cough upstairs, down it goes on tape.”

Ralston gestured irritably at the equipment. “I don’t understand this. She didn’t think this way. She couldn’t turn on the TV. Why this?”

Broucel fingered his mouth, said in a hesitant voice, “I sort of hoped you could help me out on that.”

“I can’t. I don’t know. We didn’t speak but once a year.”

“Your own sister?”

“My own damnfool sister. She had no sense. But she had more sense than this.”

“Somebody put this rig in. She had to know about it.”

“Must have,” Ralston agreed. “Must have. But what do I know? I’m no investigator. I’m a spoiled newspaper man. My job’s explaining what the sheriff thought he said.”

Feet hammered down the stairway. A deputy in a dripping slicker thumped into the basement, excitement patching his face red. He yelped, “Nick, we found Fleming.”

Broucel snapped, “Where the hell's he…"

“He's in his car, quarter of a mile down the road. Tucked in behind the brush. Rittenhoff saw it. Fleming’s shot right through the head.”

Broucel sucked in his breath. He became a little more thin, a little more gray. “Dead?”

“Dead, yeah. He’s getting stiff.”

“Oh, my God,” Broucel said. His mouth twitched. He put two fingers over his lips, as his eyes jerked around to Ralston.

Who said, with hard satisfaction, “I guess we’re going to have to interrupt the sheriff’s vacation.”

He drove his blue Honda fast across twelve miles of back-county road. A thick gray sky, seamed with deeper gray and black, wallowed overhead. Thunder complained behind the pines.

He felt anger turn in him, an orange-red ball hot behind his ribs. Not anger about Sue. That part remained cold, sealed, separate. It’s Piggott’s doing, he thought. Piggott, Piggott, Piggott the beer runner and liquor trucker, the gambler, briber, the sheriff's poker-playing buddy. Now blackmailer. What else? And Sue’s very particular good friend, thank you.

Whatever Piggott suggested, she would, bright-eyed, laughing, follow. No thought. No foresight. Do what you want today, ha ha. More fun again tomorrow.

When he last visited her, they had quarreled about Piggott.

“He’s lots of fun,” she said loudly. Her voice always rose with her temper. “He’s interesting. He’s different all the time. You never know with him.”

“You always know. He’ll always go for the crooked buck. He handles beer for six dry counties. He owns better than two hundred shot houses. He’s broke heads all over the state. Even a blond lunatic knows better than to climb the sty to kiss the pig.”

It ended in a shouting match. She told Piggott the next day, with quotations, and Piggott told Ralston and the sheriff the day after.

“A full-time liar and a postage-stamp Capone.” Piggott pushed back in his leather chair and yelled with laughter. “I swear, Ed, I didn’t know I was that good.”

“Hardly good,” Ralston said.

The sheriff’s eyes, like frosted glass, glared silence.

Ralston said, “Look, Piggott, Sue’s just a nice, empty-headed kid. She sees the fun, but she don’t smell the dirt. She’s got no sense of self-protection. She’s different.”

Piggott swabbed his laughing mouth with a handkerchief and straightened in his old leather chair. Amusement warmed his face. “I know she’s different I’m going to marry her, Ed.”

The Honda reeled on the road. He jerked the wheel straight It was not quite nine o’clock in the morning and cold, and the road twisted as complexly as his thoughts.

Two miles from the highway the fields smoothed out bordered by white fencing that might have been transplanted from a Kentucky horse farm. When the fence reared to an elaborate entrance, he turned right along a crushed-gravel road gray with rain. A square, big house loomed sternly white behind evergreen and magnolia. In the parking lot two Continentals and a dark green BMW sat like all the money in the world. Rain sprinkled his glasses. As he walked across the road to a porch set with frigid white ornamental-iron chairs, the front door swung open to meet him. A slight man with very light blue eyes and a chin like a knife point waved him in.

“Out early, Ed.”

Ralston nodded. “I need the sheriff bad, Elmer.”

“He just got to bed.”

“Tough. Tell him it’s official and urgent.”

The man behind Elmer snorted and showed his teeth. “Official and urgent” he said, arrogantly contemptuous. He was thick-shouldered, heavy-bodied, round-faced, and scowled at Ralston with raw dislike.

Elmer said, “I can’t promise. The game lasted all night You and Buddy mind waiting here?”

He stepped quietly away down a high white hallway lined with mirrors and horse paintings. The hall, running the length of the house, was intercepted halfway by a broad staircase. Beyond lounged a man with a newspaper, his presence signifying that Piggott was in.

A sharp blow jarred his arm. He turned to see Buddy’s cocked fist.

“We got time for a couple of rounds, Champ.”

Ralston said, “Crap off.”

Buddy, hunched over shuffling feet, punched again. “Ain’t he bad this morning.” Malice rose from him like visible fumes. “The sheriff’s little champ’s real bad. Couple of rounds do you good. You lucked out that last time.”

“You got a glass jaw,” Ralston said.

Elmer appeared on the stairway to the second floor. He jerked his hand, called, “Come on up.”

Ralston walked around Buddy, not looking at him. Buddy, clenching his hands, said distinctly, “You and me’s going have a little talk, sometime.”

The second floor was carpeted, dim, silent expensive, and smelled sourly of cigars. Eddie pointed to a carved wooden door, said, “In there,” wheeled back down the hall.

Ralston pushed open the door and looked at Tom Huber, Sheriff of Pinton County, sitting on an unmade bed. The sheriff wore a white cotton undershirt tight over the hairy width of his chest, and vivid green and yellow undershorts. Hangover sallowed his face. He was a solid, hard-muscled old roughneck, with a hawk-nosed look of competence that had been worth eighty thousand votes in the last four elections.

He said, “Talk to me slow, son, I’m still drunk.”

Easing the door shut, Ralston said, “Last night, Fleming was shot dead. In his own car. In the country. With his own gun, couple of inches from the right temple. Gun in car. Wiped off. Far as we know, he wasn't on duty. You need to show up out there. Broucel’s in charge, and he’s got the white shakes.”

“Fleming shot?” A slow grin spread the sheriff’s mouth. “So that grease-faced little potlicker went and got himself killed. That’s not worth getting a man out of bed for. Let Broucel fumble it.”

“Fleming was your chief deputy,” Ralston said sharply. “You have to make a show. The media’s going crawl all over this. You got to talk to the TV — sheriff swears vengeance. Hell, we got an election coming.”

“There’s that.” The sheriff touched his eyes and shuddered. “Lord a mighty, I didn’t hardly get to sleep. Cards went my way all night.”

In a neutral tone, Ralston said, “You don’t ever lose, playing at Piggott’s.”

“That's why I play at Piggott’s.” He got up carefully. “God, what a head. Well, now, that’s one less candidate for the high office of Pinton County Sheriff. Ain’t it a shame about poor old Lloyd Fleming?”

He moved heavily into the bathroom to slop water on his head and guzzle from the faucet. Ralston drifted around the bedroom, face somber, peering about curiously, fingering the telephone, light fixtures, pictures.

The sheriff emerged, toweling his head. “I’m scrambling along, Ed. Don’t prance around like a mare in heat.”

Ralston said, “I need to tell you a little more. But I’ll save it. Too many bugs here.”

“I counted one,” Huber said pleasantly.

"Two, anyhow.” He knelt to reach under the airspace of a dresser and jerk. His fingers emerged holding a microphone button and line. It seemed a twin of the one on Sue’s shelf. “These may be dummies to fake you off an open phone tap.”

The sheriff sighed. “It’s hard for an old fellow like me to bend over to squint in every hole. You know, you got to like Piggott. He don’t trust nobody.”

They returned unescorted to the first floor. “I best make my good-byes,” the sheriff said. “Not fit for a guest to leave without he thanks his host for all those blessings.”

Ralston followed him to the rear of the white hall. The watcher there, a burly youngster with a face like half a ham, stared at them eagerly. The sheriff asked, “Piggott up?”

“Oh, Lordy, sure,” the youngster said. “He don’t hardly ever sleep.”

He clubbed the door with his fist, opened it, saying, “Mr. Piggott, it’s the sheriff.”

A cheerful voice bawled, "You tell him to bring himself right in here.”

It was a narrow, bright room stretched long under a hammered-tin ceiling. The walls were crowded with filing cabinets and messy bookshelves, stuffed with as many papers and magazines as books. A worn carpet;_: the color of pecan shells, led to an ancient wooden table flanked by straight-backed wooden chairs. Behind the table, Piggott lolled in an old leather chair.

He bounced up as they entered. He burst around the table, vibrating with enthusiasm, grinning and loud. He had curly black hair over a smooth face, deeply sun-burned, and he looked intelligent and deeply pleased to see them. “Didn’t expect you up till noon, Tom.” He smiled brilliantly. “Lordy, you’re tough.”

He pounded joyously on the sheriff’s shoulders, then seized Ed’s arm. “Now you come over here and look at this picture. You’ll like this.”

He extended a large color photograph. Sue Ralston beamed from it. She stood close to Piggot, arms clutching each other, heads together, delighted with themselves.

Through rigid lips Ralston said, “Nice photo.” He felt nauseated.

Piggott burst into his rolling laughter. “That’s our engagement photo, Ed. Listen, don’t look so sour.” His arm slipped around Ralston’s shoulders. “It’s OK. I’ll make a great husband. I grow on you.”

Ralston swallowed, standing stiff within the embrace. “Piggott…”

“ ’s all right, Ed. I know.” He smacked Ralston's shoulder amiably. “It’s a funny world. Who wants a postage-stamp Capone for a brother-in-law?”

He emitted a howl of joy, throwing back his head, opening the deep hollow of his mouth. “Even us booze merchants fall in love, Ed. We even get married. Ain’t it a crime?”

Ralston forced, “Congratulations, then,” from his closed throat It was now imperative to tell them about Sue. But he could not. He listened to Piggott and the sheriff bantering. He could not.

Piggott had set it up, sometime, for some purpose. And she was dead because of it. Somehow. Set a trap and what dies in it is your responsibility.

“Fleming!” Piggott was saying. “I can’t believe it. Who’s Moneybucks Richardson going to run for sheriff now?”

Laughter. The sheriff edged toward the door.

The need to tell them about Sue, the urgency of it, tore at him. At the door, he blundered to a halt, said, “Piggott…” Terrible pressure locked his throat. He said, instead, “Piggott — what about that ancy-fancy recording stuff in Sue’s basement?”

Fleeting hardness in Piggott’s face softened to laughter. He flung out joyous arms. “Wasn’t that something. We told some friends we were engaged. Then I went out to the car and let them warn her about me. Then we played the cassettes back to them. Funny! Hell, they’ll never speak to me again. Hey, you got to hear those tapes. And they’re my good friends.”

Joy wrinkled his big face. He bellowed laughter like a furnace. “I mean, funny.”

They sat in the sheriffs car behind Piggott’s house. Rain rattled on the hood and glass.

Ed asked, "What are they doing with Tommy Richardson?”

“Son, you probably don’t want to know anything about that.”

“I got to. It’s important.” Their eyes met, held, strained, force against force. “Yes,” Ralston said. “I mean it’s important. It’s important to me.”

The sheriff shrugged. “ ’Tain’t but a trifle. They’re just roping the boy a little. Just a little business insurance.”

“Business insurance?”

“Why sure. Here’s a nice respectable boy gaming around with beer runners. Well, shoot, people game and people have a drink now and then. Least I’ve known them to do it in Pinton County. Don’t expect they’ll change. No harm in it, less they get mean. The mean ones is what sheriffing is about. But you can’t never tell when sin’s going to get a bad name. So maybe Old Richardson goes and gets a hard-on against sin. Then they got something for him to listen to while he gets calm. Or maybe not. You can't ever know.”

“That’s all?”

“All there is. Nothing a’tall.”

“Merciful God,” Ralston said. “Is that all?”

He got out into the rain. He stood staring blankly, hunching up his shoulders, rain smearing his glasses, distorting the world so that it appeared twisted and in strange focus. He circled the car and tapped the sheriffs window, and rain ran in his hair, wet his forehead, ran from his chin.

The sheriff's window rolled down.

Ralston said, “Sheriff, Sue’s dead. At home. Fell and hit her head. I couldn’t tell Piggott.”

He turned away and walked toward the front parking lot The cement driveway danced with silver splashes.

Behind him, a car door slammed and heavy footsteps hurried back toward the house.

The Honda streaked toward Pintonville. He had, perhaps, a ten-, even fifteen-minute start on them. More if Piggott delayed. The road flew at him, glistening like the back of a wet serpent. Soon they too would think of questions to ask Tommy Richardson.

If it had been Tommy who was with Sue last night.

If he had read the evidence correctly.

If Sue had got herself up, polished and shining, to dazzle the son of Old Man Richardson, the fun and indiscretion funneling into the cassette’s hollow maw.

If the boy had found the mike. If his suspicions blazed…

But Fleming. He could not understand Fleming’s presence.

The Honda slid on the shining asphalt, and the back end fought to twist around. He corrected the wheel, iron-wristed, jabbed the accelerator.

First, talk to Tommy Richardson. Before Piggott.

The car leaped. The rain came down.

“I’m Tommy Richardson,” the boy said in a low voice, affirming that being Tommy Richardson was futile and burdensome. His head drooped, his shoulders slumped, his body was lax with self-abasement “I’m Sue Ralston’s brother Ed. I’m with the Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to talk with you.”

“I guess so.” He pushed open the screen door separating them, exposing his consumed face. He was unshaven, uncombed, unwashed. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes, and despair had drawn his young face and glazed his eyes. “Dad says you guys are incompetent but you got here quick enough.”

He looked without hope past Ralston’s shoulder at the rain sheeting viciously into the apartment complex. Lightning snapped and glared, blanching the pastel fronts of the apartments and rattling them with thunder. “Come in. You’re getting soaked.”

Ralston stepped into the front room, saturated trousers slopping against his legs. Tension bent his tall frame.

Stereo equipment, lines of LPs, neat rows of paperbacks packed the cream-colored walls. A table lamp spilled light across a card table holding a typewriter and a litter of typed pages, heavily corrected.

“I’ve been up all night” Richardson said. He gestured toward the typewriter. “Writing out my incredible… stupidity.”

He turned away, reaching for a typed page. As he did so, Ralston saw, behind the boy’s left ear, a vivid pink smudge of lipstick.

The room convulsed around him, as if the walls had clenched like a fist.

“Mr. Ralston?”

He became aware that Tommy was holding out typewritten pages to him, eyes anxious. “This explains it.”

“Sit down,” Ralston said.

“Thank you. Yes, I will.” The boy collapsed loosely on a tan davenport, long legs sprawled, head back, eyes closed, hands turned palms uppermost, the sacrifice at the altar. On the wall behind, two fencing foils crossed above the emblem of the university team.

Tommy added, without emphasis, “I thought really serious things were more formal. You expect personal tragedy to have dignity and form. But it doesn’t. It’s only caused by trivialities — stupid mistakes, misjudgments. Nothing of weight. All accident.” He might have been whispering prayers before sleep.

Ralston, set-faced, read:

The balance of the paragraph was crossed out. There were four pages, scarred by revision, ending with his full signature.

Ralston took out his pen and laid the pages in Tommy’s lap. “Sign your usual signature diagonally across each page.” He watched, immobile, as the boy wrote. Then he folded the sheets and thrust them into his breast pocket.

“Now tell me what happened,” he said.

“I loved her. We were planning to get engaged. At first I thought she was a criminal with Piggott. But she was sensitive and warm. You’re her brother. You know. She didn’t know about Piggott, what he did. We fell in love. We were going to get engaged after I graduated.”

“How did you get involved with Piggott?” Ralston asked. The tremor shaking his legs and body was not reflected in his voice.

“It was Fleming. Dad had a Citizen’s Committee for Law and Order meeting at the house. Fleming came. He said that the sheriff and the bootleggers were cooperating. But he needed more evidence. He said that Piggott would try to blackmail me to make it seem like I was participating in his business. He called it a business. Dad didn’t like it, but he agreed that I would let them try to blackmail me.”

“So then Fleming introduced you to Sue.”

“I met her at his house. Twice. He said that she knew Piggott. Then I went to her house, and Piggott was there a couple of times. He doesn’t look like a criminal, but he laughs too much. It makes you distrustful.”

“Why was Fleming there last night?” He glanced at his watch, and anxiety crawled in him.

“I told him I loved her. That we were almost engaged. Fleming wouldn’t believe me. I told him to wait outside, last night, I could prove it easily. He thought that if I were right, she could help us.

“I walked down to his car. This was after the accident. There was lightning on the horizon, like a bad movie. I told him they’d been recording everything I said. He laughed and said he knew it. I asked to see his gun. I didn’t tell him about Sue. When I shot, there was all this light. I thought lightning had struck by us. Then it smelled like blood and toilets. I wiped off the gun. I wrote it all down. You just have to read it.”

Ralston asked gently, “I don’t understand. Why did you shoot Fleming?”

“He would have known right off I killed her. He said she was working for Piggott.”

His head shook blindly, and he jerked forward in his seat.

“He would have been sorry for me. I couldn’t have faced him if he had known. Isn’t that a dumb reason? It doesn’t even make sense. But she told me she wouldn’t have given the cassettes to Piggott. She told me. She loved me. We were almost engaged.

“You and I,” he said, “would have been brothers-in-law.”

He lifted his head.

“Are you corrupt, Mr. Ralston?”

“Not always,” Ed said at last. He glanced again at his watch, and his heart pulsed. “Will you come with me and make a formal statement?”

“I wrote it down.”

“We still need a statement.”

“OK.”

He rose slowly, a sleepwalker awake in his dream. He looked slowly around the room. “This is real, isn’t it? I keep thinking that I’m going to wake up, but I am awake.”

Ralston said, “You better hurry. I think Piggott knows you were there last night. He knows Sue… had an accident. He’ll want to ask you about it.”

“I pushed her away from me and she fell.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“It’s just that simple. I pushed her away and she fell.”

“We have got to get moving.”

He followed the boy into the bedroom, watched him find a coat, pick up wallet, keys, money from the dresser.

“Not that.” He took a fat pocketknife from Tommy’s fingers.

“Dad gave me that.”

“You’ll get it back. Better give me the cassettes, too.”

“Sure.”

They left the apartment. Driving rain lashed their faces. As they came into the parking lot, a black sedan jerked to a stop before them. Its doors opened, like an insect spreading its wings, and Buddy and Elmer bobbed out.

Ralston whispered urgently, “You left the house early. Nothing happened.”

“But that’s a lie,” Tommy said.

The two men splashed toward them. Buddy’s mouth was opened. He stopped before Ralston, hunching in the rain, hands jammed into his pockets. “Goin’ somewhere, Champ?”

Elmer said, “Hello, Tommy. I think we met once at Sue’s. Mr. Piggott would appreciate it if you could stop by and see him.”

Tommy nodded gravely. “I’d like to see him. I have a lot to say.”

Elmer looked respectfully at Ralston. “Mind if we borrow him, Ed?”

Ralston looked at Buddy’s weighted pocket. He said, “I was just going that way, myself. Might as well join you.”

They sat in the rear seat of the rain-whipped car. Elmer drove. Buddy, in the front seat, sat turned, looking at them.

Tommy lay back on the brown leather upholstery, his unshaven face wan in the pale light. His eyes were closed. His lips twitched and jerked with internal dialogue.

When they had driven for a quarter of an hour, he said unexpectedly, “Mr. Ralston?”

“Yes?”

“It feels — it’s rather complicated to describe. It’s as if I had been walking along someplace high and it fell apart under my feet. I feel as if I am in the act of falling. I’m suspended. I haven’t started to fall yet. But I will. I don’t understand how I feel. Is that guilt?”

“It’s lack of sleep.”

“I think it is the perception of guilt.”

“Get some sleep if you can. Keep quiet and get some sleep.”

Buddy said sharply, “Nobody asked you, Ralston. Let the kid talk. What’d you do, kid?”

Tommy’s unkempt head threshed right and left.

Ralston jerked hands from pockets as he said, “Tommy, keep quiet,” in a savage voice.

“Can it, Ralston,” Buddy said.

“Screw you.”

Buddy’s arm flashed across the seat. He hit Ralston on the side of the head with a revolver. Ralston grunted and, trying to turn, was struck twice more.

He let himself fall loosely into Tommy’s lap. To his surprise, he felt himself rising very swiftly up a shimmering incline. As he rose, he thrust the knife he had taken from his pocket into Tommy’s hand. Light turned about him in an expanding spiral, and his speed became infinite.

He awoke almost at once. His nose and cheek were pressed against Tommy’s coat. Elmer was snarling at Buddy with soft violence. Tommy was saying, “Mr. Ralston, Mr. Ralston,” his voice horrified. The blows, Ralston decided, had not been hard. He reasoned methodically that the angle for striking was wrong, and therefore insufficient leverage existed for a forceful blow. This conclusion amused him. Tommy’s coat faded away.

When it returned, he heard Tommy saying: “You're bleeding.”

“Let it bleed,” he muttered.

He levered himself erect. His stomach pitched with the movement of the automobile and, when he moved his head, pain flared, stabbed hot channels down his neck. He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the seat and bled on Piggott’s upholstery until the car stopped. He felt triumphant, in an obscure way.

The door opened. Ralston worked his legs from the car, gingerly hauled himself out. Rain flew against his face. Pain hammered his skull, and nausea still worked in him. He stood swaying, both hands clamped on the car door until his footing steadied.

Buddy stood smirking by the open door.

Ralston hit him on the side of the jaw. The effort threw white fire through his head. He fell to his knees. Buddy tumbled back against the side of the car, striking his head on the fender. He lay in the rain, eyes blinking.

Ralston staggered up, got his hand in Buddy’s pocket, removed a heavy .38 with a walnut handle, a beautiful weapon. He stood swaying as Elmer glided around the side of the car.

Looking down at Buddy, Elmer said, “He never got past the third round, anytime.”

“Let him lay,” Ralston said, with effort.

“Gotta take him in,” Elmer said. He and Tommy hoisted Buddy between them, hauled him loose-legged, foul-mouthed, into the white hall. They flopped him into a chair, walked toward Piggott’s office. The ham-faced youngster bumbled up from his chair, stared round-eyed at them.

“Mr. Piggott’s busy,” he said.

“Go back to sleep,” Ralston said, and pushed the door open.

Piggott was working at his table, shuffling papers with two other men. He looked sharply up as Ralston came in, then began to chuckle. “Ed, it must have been a strenuous morning.” He glanced at the two men. “Boys, let’s chase this around again in half an hour, OK?”

They left silently, not looking around, their arms full of paper.

Tommy, at the table now, looking down on Piggott, asked, “Mr. Piggott, why did you feel it necessary to involve Sue?” His voice was formal and mildly curious. “I mean — I should say, in your efforts to entrap me.”

Glee illuminated Piggott’s face. “Lordy, Tommy, there wasn’t a thing personal. You’re a real nice boy. Sue just completely enjoyed it.”

Amusement shook his shoulders. He added, “Now, don’t you take it too hard. Women just fool men all the time. It’s their way.”

Tommy said in a clipped voice, shoving hands into his pockets, “I blamed her at first. I made a serious mistake. I should have realized that you were responsible. I was most certainly warned. But she would never have turned those cassettes over to you. She loved me, and she wouldn’t have countenanced blackmail.”

Incredulous delight lifted Piggott’s shoulders. “Tommy, my friend, you are one of a kind. You really are.”

“She loved me. We were going to get engaged.”

Piggott’s laughter poured into Tommy’s face, a stream of sound. “Son, she did a real job on you. Not that she didn’t like you. She thought you were grand. You just look here.”

He tossed the engagement photograph across the table.

He said, “I was marrying her next month, Tommy. You were just a mite late.”

“I love her,” Tommy said, looking at the photograph. His voice began breaking up. “You never did.”

The hall door came open hard, and Buddy came into the room, taking neat little steps. In his plaster face the eyes were terrible things. He called, “You, Ralston.” A silver pistol jetted from his clasped hands.

Laughter stiffened on Piggott’s face. In an unfamiliar voice, the texture of metal, he said, “Buddy, did I call…”

“I love her,” Tommy said again.

He executed a fencer’s flowing movement, an arc of graceful force that glided up the leg to the curved body to the extended right arm. His knife blade glinted as it entered Piggott’s throat. His shoulders heaved with effort as he slashed right

Incoherent noise tore from Piggott and a sudden scarlet jetting. He fell back in his chair, his expression amazed. His feet beat the floor. The chair toppled over with a heavy noise.

Gunfire, sudden, violent, repetitious, battered the room.

Tommy was slammed face forward onto the table. Papers cascaded, and a single yellow pencil spun across the pecan carpet.

The gunfire continued.

Pieces jumped out of the tabletop as Tommy’s legs collapsed. He sprawled across the table, right arm extended, body jerking.

Buddy darted forward, the revolver bright in his brown hand, concentration wrinkling his face. He fired into Tommy’s back.

Ralston shot him in the side of the head. Buddy fell over sideways and his gun, bounding across the floor, thudded against a gray filing cabinet.

Ralston whirled, knelt looked down his gunsights into the enormous hollow hole of the .45 in Elmer’s hand.

Confused shouting in the hallway.

Elmer said, white-lipped, “There’s not five-cents profit for more shooting, Ed.”

“No.”

“We’d best put the guns up.”

“All right.”

The thumping of feet behind the table had stopped.

Men poured into the room.

Ralston sucked air, roared, “I’m Ed Ralston of the Sheriff's Department. This is police business, and I want this room cleared.” He paced savagely toward them, face rigid, eyes gleaming, the horror in him intolerably bright.

Their faces glared anger, fear, shock. His voice beat at them. Elmer pushed at them, a confusion of voices and shoving bodies.

After one lifetime or two, the room emptied. Ralston shoved the gun away, said, “I’ll call the sheriff.”

“You might want to give us maybe half an hour. Some of the boys might want to fade. Give them a chance to get packed.”

“Fifteen minutes. It’ll have to be fifteen minutes.”

Elmer nodded. “See you around, Ed.”

The door closed and he was alone with the dead.

The strength leaked out of his body. He dropped into a chair and began to shake. His head blazed with pain. He could not control the shaking, which continued on and on.

Outside, engines began to roar, and he heard automobiles begin to go.

At last he wavered up on fragile legs, took a tissue from his pocket, and approached the table. Splinter-rimmed holes pocked the wood. He removed Tommy’s wallet, took thirty of the sixty-two dollars. When he replaced the wallet, the body shifted and he thought that it would slip from the table to press its tom back against him. He wrenched back, white-faced. The body did not move again.

Piggott’s wallet contained nearly six thousand dollars. Ralston removed four thousand in fifties and hundreds, counting them out slowly. He returned the wallet to a pocket the blood had not touched.

“They can both help bury her,” he said.

His voice sounded stiff and high.

“We’re all dead together,” he said. He began to laugh.

When he heard himself, he became suddenly silent. Hard rain whipped the windows.

At last, bis hand reached for the telephone.