“Not for the better.”
“Oh, I dunno. Sometimes I reckon they do.” Asa laid the Spartacus razor down. “But sure not in the art of shaving. Now that silvertip there — a real fine piece of craftsmanship, handmade over in France. Make you a nice price on it if you’re interested.”
“Maybe,” the big man said. He edged away from the shelves and went over by the open inner door. When he got there he paused and seemed to take inventory of the room beyond. “You live back there, old-timer?”
“I do.”
“Alone?”
“Yep. You a census-taker, maybe?”
The stranger barked once, like a hound on a possum hunt; then he came back to where Asa was and looked up at the clock above the mirror. “Almost five,” he said. “Sign out front says that’s when you close up.”
“Most days the sign’s right.”
“How about today?”
“If you’re asking will I still barber you, the answer’s yes. Ain’t my policy to turn a customer away if he’s here before closing.”
“Any after-hours appointments?”
Asa’s brows pulled down. “I don’t take after-hours appointments,” he said. “Haircut what you’re after, is it? Looks a mite long over the collar.”
No answer. The big man turned his head and looked over at the front window, where the shade was three-quarters drawn against the glare of the afternoon sun. About all you could see below it was half of the empty sidewalk outside.
Asa ran a hand through his sparse white hair. Seemed pretty quiet in there, all of a sudden, except for the whisper of the push-broom Leroy had fetched and was sweeping up with in front of the shoeshine stand. There was hardly a sound out on Willow Street, either. Folks kept to home and indoors in this heat; hadn’t been much foot or machine traffic all day, and no business to speak of.
“Don’t recall seeing you around Wayville before,” Asa said to the stranger. “Just passing through, are you?”
“You might say that.”
“Come far?”
“Far enough. The state capital.”
“Nice place, the capital.”
“Sure. Lots of things happening there, right? Compared to a one-horse town like this, I mean.”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
“For instance,” the big man said, “I heard there was some real excitement over there just last week. And I heard this barber named Asa Bedloe, from Wayville here, was mixed up in it.”
Asa hesitated. Then, “Now where’d a Yankee like you hear that?”
The stranger’s lip bent upward at the corner again. “The way I got it, Asa was in the capital visiting his nephew. While the nephew was at work, Asa wandered downtown to look through some secondhand bookstores because he likes to read. He took a short cut through an alley, heard two guys arguing inside an open doorway, and the next thing he knew, there was a shot and one guy came running out with a gun in his hand. Asa’d already ducked out of sight, so the guy didn’t see him. But Asa, he got a good look at the guy’s face. He went straight to the cops and picked him out of a mug book — and what do you know, the guy’s name is Rawles and he’s a medium bigshot in the local rackets. So the cops are happy because they’ve got a tight eyewitness murder rap against Rawles, and Asa’s happy because he’s a ten-cent hero. The only one who isn’t happy is Rawles.”
Asa wet his lips. His eyes stayed fixed on the stranger’s face.
“What I can’t figure out,” the big man went on, “is why old Asa went to the cops in the first place. I mean, why didn’t he just keep his mouth shut and forget the whole thing?”
“Maybe he reckoned it was his duty,” Asa said.
“Duty.” The stranger shook his head. “That’s another modern idea: instead of staying the hell out of things that don’t concern them, everybody wants to do his duty, wants to get involved. Like I said before, people’d be better off if they stuck to the old ways.”
“The old ways ain’t always the right ways.”
“Too bad you feel that way, old timer,” the stranger said. He glanced up at the clock again. “After five now. Time to close up.”
“I ain’t ready to close up just yet.”
“Sure you are. Go on over and lock the front door.”
“Now you listen here—”
The sly humor disappeared from the big man’s face like somebody had wiped it off with an eraser. His eyes said he was through playing games. And his actions said it even plainer: he reached down, hiked up the front of his loose-fitting shirt, and closed his big paw around the butt of a handgun stuck inside his belt.
“Lock the front door,” he said again. “Then go over with the shoeshine boy—”
That was as far as he got.
Because by this time Leroy had come catfooting up behind him. And in the next second Leroy had one arm curled around his neck, his head jerked back, and the muzzle of a .44 Magnum pressed against his temple.
“Take the gun out and drop it,” Leroy said. “Slow and careful, just use your thumb and forefinger.”
The big man didn’t have much choice. Asa watched him do what he’d been told. The look on his face was something to see — all popeyed and scrunched up with disbelief. He hadn’t hardly paid any mind to Leroy since he walked in, and sure never once considered him to be listening and watching, much less to be a threat.
Leroy backed the two of them up a few paces. Then he said, “Asa, take charge of his gun. And then go ring up my office.”
“Yes, sir, you bet.”
The stranger said, “Office?”
“Why, sure. This fella’s been pretending to work here for the past couple days, bodyguarding me ever since the capital police got wind Rawles had hired himself a professional gunman. Name’s Leroy Heavens — Sheriff Leroy Heavens. First black sheriff in the history of Hallam County.”
The big man just gawped at him.
Asa grinned as he bent to pick up the gun. “Looks like I was right and you were wrong, mister,” he said. “Sometimes things change for the better, all right. Sometimes they surely do.”
Cat’s-Paw
A “Nameless Detective” Story
There are two places that are ordinary enough during the daylight hours but that become downright eerie after dark, particularly if you go wandering around in them by yourself. One is a graveyard; the other is a public zoo. And that goes double for San Francisco’s Fleishhacker Zoological Gardens on a blustery winter night when the fog comes swirling in and makes everything look like capering phantoms or two-dimensional cutouts.
Fleishhacker Zoo was where I was on this foggy winter night — alone, for the most part — and I wished I was somewhere else instead. Anywhere else, as long as it had a heater or a log fire and offered something hot to drink.
I was on my third tour of the grounds, headed past the sea-lion tank to make another check of the aviary, when I paused to squint at the luminous dial of my watch. Eleven forty-five. Less than three hours down and better than six left to go. I was already half frozen, even though I was wearing long johns, two sweaters, two pairs of socks, heavy gloves, a woolen cap, and a long fur-lined overcoat. The ocean was only a thousand yards away, and the icy wind that blew in off of it sliced through you to the marrow. If I got through this job without contracting either frostbite or pneumonia, I would consider myself lucky.
Somewhere in the fog, one of the animals made a sudden roaring noise; I couldn’t tell what kind of animal or where the noise came from. The first time that sort of thing had happened, two nights ago, I’d jumped a little. Now I was used to it, or as used to it as I would ever get. How guys like Dettlinger and Hammond could work here night after night, month after month, was beyond my simple comprehension.