I sailed through Eunice, Opelousas, Baton Rouge, and Hammond in Louisiana, then crossed into Mississippi at Slidell. A few miles farther on 190 hooked back into 90 again, and I rolled along the Old Spanish Trail through Liny St. Louis, Pass Christian, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula. Along that sunlit stretch I was seldom out of sight of white sand and blue Gulf. When I pulled into a motel in Mobile about five o'clock, the odometer said 343 miles.
I washed up, had dinner, and drove downtown to the Golden Peacock, Manny Sebastian's joint. After midnight the place swung like a steeple bell, but at this time of night it was quiet. Manny had a finger in a lot of pies. He hadn't seen me in quite a while, but he recognized me as soon as I walked in. He came over and shook hands. He'd put on weight since I'd last seen him, and his jowls and extra chins transformed the face I remembered as jovially ugly Into something sinister.
"The back room?" he asked with a cocked eyebrow.
I nodded. He walked behind the bar and engaged in small talk with a couple of the half-dozen customers. After live minutes he selected a key from a huge ring on his belt and opened an unmarked door at the end of the bar alongside one marked "Office."
I gave it a couple of minutes before I went to the door and tapped. Manny let me in and closed and barred the door. He had a bottle and glasses already out on a small table—the room's only furnishing except an old-fashioned Iron safe in one corner.
"Long time, man," Manny said expansively. "How's old hit-the-squirrel-in-the-eye-at-a-hundred-yards?" He poured and handed me a drink. "What's your problem?"
"Not the same as yours, I hope. You talk too much, Manny." I took a swallow from my glass. "How are you fixed on Florida registrations?"
He nodded. "What're you driving?"
"A Ford all over mud on your parking lot." I handed him one of my Chet Arnold business cards. "Have your boy match that up and run off a license while he's at it."
Manny went to the door and unbarred it. He called someone over to whom he spoke in a low tone, then closed the door again. "Ready in an hour. Like what else?"
"Hardware. Preferably a Smith & Wesson .38 police special and a Colt .22 Woodsman."
He nodded again. "I'll have to send for the Woodsman but I've got a .38 right here." He was already whirling the dial on the old safe. He produced the Smith & Wesson with a flourish. "Never been fired except by me an' never in anger."
"Okay. What's the damage?"
He squinted up at the ceiling. "Oh, say six hundred. Paperwork comes high these days."
I paid him. Paperwork wasn't the only thing that came high, but I had to have those guns.
"Grab a seat at the bar," Manny said. "It's on the house. It'll give you the office when I get your stuff together. How're things in general?" Shrewd eyes in the larded-over features studied me.
"Quiet, Manny."
He chuckled. "A hundred seventy-odd thousand quiet?"
I forced my face into a smile. "I read about that. A nice touch. It sounded like Toby Coates. Or Jim Griglun."
"Toby's in Joliet," Manny said smoothly. "And Jim lost his nerve after the time in Des Moines."
"Sometimes a man gets it back."
Manny shook his head. "Not if he didn't have too much to begin." He grinned at me companionably. "That Phoenix job had your pawprints all over it. "You ought to miss a shot once in a while."
Out of the mouths of fools.
I made a mental note.
"Sorry to disappoint you," I said lightly. "I've been in hibernation." But I felt a growing sense of irritation. This kind of earache I didn't need.
I le seemed to sense my mood. "Who should know better?" lie said, cryptically enough, then opened the door. "Order up. It's on the house, remember."
I sat at the bar and ordered a highball I didn't want. Through a window at the right I could see the parking lot. A slim redhead with a limp was walking around the Ford. He raised the hood as I watched, then opened the front door, leaned inside, and wrote something down. The engine number, I figured. The redhead went back to the hood and looked inside for two or three minutes before closing it.
I nursed my drink for half an hour, then had another. I was two-thirds of the way down to the bottom of it when Manny slid onto the next stool and laid a package in my lap. "Eddie says that's a real fireball you've got on the lot," he said softly. "I got a wheelman would give his front teeth for it. You want to trade? I'll give you something to boot."
"Not right now, Manny. I'll keep you in mind, though."
I waited until he left and then went out to the car. I unwrapped the package, put the new license and registration in my wallet, and switched loads from the old guns to the new. I tried them for balance, and they felt all right. I'd check them out for sighting accuracy as soon as I had a chance.
I drove out of the lot. T doubled and twisted over a circuitous route back to my motel, more from force of habit than from any real belief that someone might be following me. Still, the conversation with Manny bothered me. Manny was a gossip. Never to the wrong people, so far as I knew, but a gossip is a gossip. This business of driving around the country so soon after a job bothered me, too. Usually I had a nice, quiet place to hole up in between jobs. This time I wasn't calling the tune, though.
I slept solidly that night.
The next morning was my fifth day since leaving Phoenix. I made another early start and left Highway 90 about thirty miles beyond Seminole, at Milton. On 90-A I hustled along through Galliver, Crestview, DcFuniak Springs, Marianna, Chatahoochee, Talahassee, and Monticello. I was on the homestretch now.
At Capps I turned south on US 19. I picked out two swift-running rivers fifty miles apart, and I threw the old Smith & Wesson into the first one and the old Woodsman into the second.
I saw a sign at the side of the highway late that afternoon. It said Town Limits, Hudson, Florida. I drove
through the main square and found a motel called the Lazy Susan on the south side of town. I'd covered 362 miles since morning. I registered, showered, ate at the motel, went into the lobby and worked my way through a month-old copy of Time, then went to bed early. I wanted to start fresh in the morning.
I had breakfast in town at a place called the Log Cabin. The building looked like stucco over logs. It was early, but the place was busy. The breakfasters were blue-collar, a factory crowd. There wasn't much conversation, even from the good-looking young waitress who wore an engagement ring but no wedding band.
I walked around the square afterward. I'd estimated the town at six or eight thousand the day before. That morning I upped it a little. The store windows looked clean, and the displayed merchandise looked fresh. There were no empty stores near the main intersection. The merchants must at least be making the rent money.
I walked past the bank with its protective iron grille drawn. It was an old building, bristling in its external impression of maximum security. Like the kind of two-dollar watch that used to be called a bulldog.
I bought a local paper at the drugstore, carried it to the little park in the square, and sat down on a bench in the early morning sunlight. The park faced the shabby-looking town hall and the post office. I looked at the post office a couple of times. To be diverted, registered mail almost had to be tampered with by post office personnel. Although of course Bunny's packaged money meant for me might not have been registered when it was intercepted.
The newspaper was a weekly. I read every line of it, including the classified ads. It's a habit of mine. Tips are where you find them. For years, I've had a subscription under one of my names to Banking, the Journal of the American Hanking Association. There's a column in it called " The Country Banker," and two of the best tips I'd ever had came right out of that column. Banking used to publish pictures of newly remodeled bank interiors, but