From somewhere out in the night, a bird called suddenly in a harsh note of triumph.
Seven
I CHECKED MY WATCH WHICH SAID IT WAS FIVE AFTER two. The moonlight still flooded the landscape, the air was just a little crisper. Sylvia stood beside the station wagon, the gold lame glowing softly along with her. She wasn’t shivering any more.
“Danny, lover,” she said. “I don’t want to go back inside that house—not now I know about that pigpen and—”
“You have to go back, honey-chile,” I said patiently. “For the girls’ sake anyway. If you don’t come back, Tolvar and the others will get worried—they might panic and do something to the girls. You have to show up there.”
“What are you going to do about the body?” she said. “You can’t just leave it there!”
“I called the gendarmes once and they figure it as a
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lousy practical joke,” I said. 44If I try to tell them a second time there’s a body in that pen, they’ll most likely have me committed!”
“You have to do something!”
“Check,” I said. “I’m working on it. You just try and act as if nothing’s happened. I’ll come back through the day and maybe have a concrete idea of how to handle it. Just don’t worry, honey-chile.”
“O.K., Danny,” she smiled up at me. “Whatever you say. I don’t mind being kissed by a knight with his armor on!”
I kissed her goodbye over a brief five-minute period, then walked across the road and got into my car. I lit a cigarette and waited until the station wagon moved off along the road and turned in along the tracks to the farmhouse.
Another half-hour and I’d be back at the hotel comfortably in bed, I figured, and it was a welcome prospect —I reached out to turn on the ignition and at the same moment the cold rim of a gun muzzle bored into the back of my neck.
“You got a right to relax, you been a busy Boyd!” a clipped voice said close to my ear. “Just don’t move, huh? I got a nervous finger.”
“I’ve got a nervous body,” I said. “You should worry about a finger!”
“It’s you got to worry about the finger,” Tolvar said amiably. His free hand lifted the Magnum out of the harness in a routine which was getting to be monotonous. “Cheez!” he said. “How many guns you got?”
“Not enough—if I keep losing them to you the way I am lately,” I said. “How long have you been in the back of the car?”
“Thirty minutes, maybe more,” he said. “I was getting kind of cramped on the floor back there. You must have made a score with nursie, huh, you were away so long?” “She’s just a nice kid,” I said easily.
“Hot-blooded underneath the cool freeze she gives
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you,” he said enthusiastically. “I go for a dame like that —more kicks that way. Maybe i’ll give her a run after you’re out of circulation.”
That was a conjecture, like they say in television courtrooms, and I let it ride—either way there was nothing in it for me.
“You’re the kind of guy who don’t learn, Boyd,” he ' said after a few seconds’ silence. “Last time we met, I told you to lay off the Hazelton family, but you didn’t take the hint. Now it’s got so you’re embarrassing people.”
“Look,” I said wearily, “like it’s late, like I’m tired, like I know you’re a real tough Joe—so save the tough dialogue for impressing the clients, huh? What happens now—you slug me again?”
“You’re going out of circulation, Boyd,” he said easily —and I thought that maybe his worst character trait was that you couldn’t annoy him—not with words anyway.
“You’re back on that old hat dialogue again,” I said. “I’m going out of circulation—what the hell does that mean? You figure I’m a newspaper—or a pint of blood?” “Like when you got to go, you got to,” he said amiably. “It’s the end of the line—you wind up in the obituary notices that nobody even reads.”
“You didn’t call it the big sleep, anyway,” I said. “1 guess that’s something.”
“Be my guest,” he said. “You can start the motor now, Boyd—we’ll get it finished with, huh?”
“That private eye’s license you’ve got,” I said, “it maybe allows you to get away with killing somebody in self-defense if you got a minimum of six eye-witnesses to swear it was self-defense; but nobody gets away with murder.”
“Start the motor!” He jabbed the gun muzzle hard into my neck as a persuader. “You want me to bust out
crying?”
“I’ll put it another way,” I said patiently. “No hard,
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two-syllable words that you won’t understand. We both make the same kind of living out of the same racket. I never had a client yet who could pay the kind of money I'd want to commit murder—and neither have you. So why all the build-up? You want to scare me—O.K., I’m scared. Now what?”
“You start the motor and drive—or I slug you and drive myself,” he said. “Which way will you have it?” I started the motor and drove the car out onto the road again, heading back toward Providence.
“That’s better,” Tolvar said. “Just keep on driving and we’ll get along fine.”
“I’d like that,” I said earnestly. “Us beatniks warn nothing better than to communicate—a free exchange of souls. Man! That’s when id digs id and ego digs ego!” “I figure I will slug you and drive myself,” Tolvar said seriously. “Listening to that kind of jive sours my stomach!”
“Just trying to find a common meeting-ground,” I said. “If I light a cigarette will it make you nervous?”
“Nothing makes me nervous,” he said. “It’s only that finger of mine gets a nervous twitch now and then. If you’re real careful with the smoke, I guess the finger won’t worry.”
I got the pack out of my coat pocket slowly, and slid a cigarette into my mouth, and lit it from the lighter on the dash.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “Or is that a secret between you and the wheels?”
“We’ll keep it for a surprise,” he said. He pulled a sudden switch in the conversation. “Where were you and nursie all that time out back of the farmhouse?” “In the barn,” I said.
“Pete checked the bam,” he grunted. “Try again.” “He checked the bam all right,” I said. “But not the hayloft.”
“Yeah?” he chuckled throatily. “I bet you had yourself a time up there—you sure didn’t hurry.”
“Us beats were just communicating/’ I said.
“You got a new word for it—I got to remember that!” he said. “ ‘Doll, why don’t we communicate?* Sounds kind of refined, don’t it? Even the broads go for refinement. How did you come to latch onto the West dame tonight?”
“Lucky break,” I said, “or I figured it was until you popped up from the back seat. I registered at the hotel, walked down into the lobby looking for a drink—and there she was, looking for a drink. It kind of developed from there.”
“You need to do better,” he said dryly. “Try again.” “It’s a fact,” I said. “You think she’d have walked back into the house tonight if she had any idea what’s going on? Or maybe she does, huh? She’s in it with the rest of you and she was put up as bait for me tonight?” We came into an outer speed zone and I eased my foot off the gas pedal.
“What now?” I asked him. “This is Providence.” “Yeah,” he sounded surprised. “So it is—O.K., turn round and head back.”
“You’re serious?”
“Sure—I like to drive at night—I got insomnia!”
I slowed the car, made a U-tum and headed back the way we’d come. Tolvar’s gun was still firm against the back of my neck. I drove for maybe ten minutes in silence, trying to figure the point of the ride, and giving up.
“How much do you know about this caper?” I asked him when we were maybe three minutes away from the farm.