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# Agreement to Kill

PETER RABE

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

# Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

The Box

Also Available

Copyright

# CHAPTER 1

It was half a street One side had houses, a few stores, and people walking. The other side was a blank wall. Along the top of the wall and around the large gate were a few geometrical frills in stone, but it was senseless. The wall meant prison and the gate was steel. It opened without sound, the movement almost casual.

A tall man stepped through, stooping as if afraid he might hit the top of the frame, and he straightened up when the gate shut with a clank. He didn't turn at the sound. For a moment he stood on the bare side of the street and squinted in the sun's sharp, high light.

With a sudden movement he started across the street The way he moved looked greedy. Then he stood on the sidewalk, his back to the long wall on the other side of the street, watching the stores, the people, the whole view without prison in it.

After a while, he said to himself, after a while it will feel the way it should. He would know that he stood here on the street, not imagining it He breathed faster, but the feeling of not being here didn't leave him.

He squinted nervously, as if an insect were bothering him. Then he walked. A half-hour walk to the bus, and then a three-hour ride on the bus and he'd be home. He wouldn't even have to go all the way into Stone Bluff because the bus passed the farm and he'd get off right there. Walking, he felt the strain in his face and then the tense set of his jaw. He rubbed his face. Then he put a cigarette into his mouth so that his jaw would have to relax.

A half-hour walk to the bus — He went over it as if afraid he might forget the routine, then caught himself. No need to think about it. No doubts and no need for decisions because he had it all laid out beforehand and had decided his steps. The simplest, the straightest, the hardest way of all. Done with prison, go back to the farm, check over the damage and work. Three years' fallow might even have been for the better. That's how he was going to think about it; no other way. Any other way and there would be nothing for him to hold on to.

He didn't notice it, but his jaws were clenched tight again, as if he were holding something tight in his teeth.

The prison was at one end of town, which didn't make any difference to the rest of the city. The center was full of noise, amusements, and neon. The neons jumped and sparkled even though the sun was shining bright When he stopped at a traffic light a hand plucked his sleeve, another came up to his eyes. It was cupped around a picture.

"Special today, feller. The whole dozen..." The voice stopped, then started to laugh. "Hell, it's Spinner. Just got out today?"

He looked down at the man and nodded. "Just now. And let go my sleeve."

"Sure, Spinner," and the man laughed again. His old back was bent and his old face was grinning. "Beat you by maybe a week," said Moss. "Good thing for you I ran into you."

Spinner crossed with the light but the old man stayed next to him. "Seeing you and me is fraternity brothers..."

"Beat it, Moss. I'm not buying."

Moss was still grinning. He almost always did. He walked along next to Spinner and stuck the pictures back into his pocket.

"Where you going? Back to that farm you got?"

Spinner ignored the slur in the old man's voice, turned the corner, and walked into the bus station.

He bought a one-way fare to Stone Bluff and folded the ticket into his pocket. He had imagined it differently. He remembered thinking that once he bought the ticket the feeling would be something like a final decision. It would be like the show of strength which meant he had guts to go back, some magic touch which meant that for once and at last everything had to go his way.

None of this happened. He had bought his ticket and when he turned Moss was there waiting for him.

"I'll buy you a cup of coffee," said Moss. "From one con to another."

"Con?"

"You been in jail, Spinner. That makes you a con."

Spinner ran one hand down the side of his face to cover the jump in his muscle. It felt as if the muscle was sticking out like a bent spring and everybody could see it.

"And lucky," Moss went on. "Hell, you ought to be happy. I seen buddies of mine got twenty years for assault, against your three."

Spinner stopped and said, "Moss, listen. I'm so happy I don't need another thing in this world. Not even you. So go away. I keep smelling jail when I look at you."

"Here's the counter," said Moss. "Two black, for my buddy and me," he called to the girl, and then he sat down without doubting that Spinner would, too.

Spinner sat down, because he suddenly felt very tired. He thought there was no point making a struggle of everything, to make an issue over a cup of black coffee and how he envied the ease in Moss, his grin, and the way he relaxed on the stool. His ease — no. That didn't fit Moss. There was a wormlike softness in the way he acted.

"I know how you feel," said Moss, and watched Spinner sit down. "Every time I get out I go through it."

"Through what?"

"The way you feel. Like you ain't out yet."

Spinner put down his coffee and crossed his arms on the counter. "I'm out."

"Sure. Like down and out. Listen, Spinner, you got to work at it."

Spinner squinted his eyes as if the sun were in his face. He hunched his big shoulders together. It helped keep the anger down. From somewhere the anger had come up inside him and he didn't know why or what to do with it.

"Now here's how you work at it, Spinner. Expose yourself to the nice things in life, get it? Give the nice things in life a chance to get at you."

"Like that filth you showed me?"

"Naw. That's just the come-hither, the teaser. Now, my real business..."

"I never knew a pimp your age, Moss."

Moss laughed. The laugh made Spinner want to spit. "Don't worry about it, Spinner. Just sit there for a minute while I make a phone call."

"Thanks for the coffee," said Spinner. "But that's all."

Moss was getting up, taking a dime out of his pocket.

"Just work at it, Spinner, while I set it up. Just sit there and work at it" He went to the phone booth.

Spinner's shoulder started to ache and he made himself loosen up. But his anger was there again, from somewhere, and it made him work the muscles inside his throat to avoid choking on it. Something had started it — what Moss had said. Work hard and you can't lose, or something like that. Must have been his father who said that Not his mother. He remembered she had been dead by the time his father started with his homey lessons. He knew lots of homey sayings and lessons and they all had to do with work hard and you can't lose.

Then his father had lost half the farm, then his job, and in the end he had lost his life.

"All set" Moss came back from the phone and sat down. He stared into Spinner's face and seemed to he thinking. "You know, I just remembered something. You're from Stone Bluff."

"And I'm going there in about fifteen minutes."

Moss ignored it.

"Isn't that where Dixon's got his place?"

Spinner held still. He hadn't been thinking about Dixon and he had thought that the name Dixon would no longer give him a jolt He had thought he had handled all that in his mind and with his new attitude.

"How come you know Dixon?" he said. He heard his own voice like a stranger's.

"How come? He's big, ain't he?" In that way Moss borrowed Dixon's glory.

Jake Spinner shrugged. He kept turning around to look at the clock.

"He's in with St. Louis," said Moss, making it sound like magic. "Don't you know that?"

"I know that."

Moss was not making any impression. He sucked his teeth and looked Spinner up and down.

"What's the matter," he said. "You know him so good this ain't news to you? Lemme tell you something, Spinner. He may be big in Stone Bluff, but he's just one of the men in St. Louis."

Spinner sipped coffee. He did not want to hear more about Dixon. He knew enough already — that Dixon lived in Stone Bluff, that he always had lived there, and that the townspeople liked to call him Old Dixon, which was the homey way of covering their feelings when it came to a man who owned most of the town, who had made a great deal of money before repeal, and who had his fingers in everything.

That's how Spinner's father had lost half his farm — because Dixon had wanted it. He was building a park for himself.

And that's how his father had lost his job, because when the farm was cut in half, in the depression, he had started to work for Dixon in St. Louis. They had lived in St. Louis and Spinner's father had worked for Dixon at something or other, and all the while he was trying to teach his son homey sayings: work hard and you can't lose. Maybe the old Spinner had never worked hard enough, and in the end he'd been fired. There had been an argument over losing the job, something nobody did with Dixon, and Spinner's father had got thrown out of the office. That had been the last time he had ever tried anything. He had tried walking back in and Dixon had stood there, watching two of his men throw Spinner's father back out again, after roughing him up a little.

That's when Spinner's father had given up. He went to bed with a headache and died with a hemorrhage. That's how Spinner saw it. His father had given up.

"And because he's small fry," Moss was saying, "he acts big the only way he can do it — in a burg like Stone Bluff. Hey, you listening to me?"

"Sure," said Spinner, and gave Moss a short look. He did not like looking at Moss.

"I tell you something else," said the old man. He put his hand on Spinner's arm and before Spinner could pull away Moss said, "Watch your step in Stone Bluff."

Moss was pleased with the pause it brought on. He saw Spinner sit very still and he saw the nervous squint around Spinner's eyes.

Moss grinned. He would milk this dry. "Ain't you gonna ask what I mean?"

"What?" said Spinner. It sounded curt, so that his voice wouldn't show how anxious he was.

"I get around," said Moss. He looked at the clock to check how soon Spinner's bus would leave, and then said, "I keep my eyes open. All the time."

"And your mouth," said Spinner. "But nothing comes out."

"No? Then listen to this," Moss leaned closer, his hand on Spinner's arm again. "Dixon's in trouble," said Moss.

This time the pause did not give Moss any pleasure, because he saw Spinner relax. Another moment and Spinner would lose interest altogether.

Spinner said, "I thought you said I should watch my step."

"You live in Stone Bluff, don't you? Dixon does, don't he? And when Dixon's got trouble..."

"He lives on trouble," said Spinner, and turned to look at the clock.

"Not this kind. Listen." Moss grabbed Spinner's sleeve to keep him from leaving. "He's not in trouble in St. Louis; he's been monkeying around with the county vote. You know what that means? He's been getting around St. Louis itself and back at them with this monkey business from outa the county. Here they thought he was just sitting around in that Stony Bluff burg and..."

"Let go my arm," said Spinner.

"Wait, where you going? Hey, I got it all set up, like I told you — "

"Beat it," said Spinner and Moss had to run after him. "Beat it? Listen, friend, I don't go to no trouble for nothing. You don't want it, is your business, but you owe me..."

Spinner yanked his arm free and slapped it back, making Moss tumble. He didn't see whether Moss fell or not because he ran through the gate to the ramp and caught the Stone Bluff bus at the last minute.

# CHAPTER 2

At first he tried concentrating on the landscape outside, the flat land getting rounder and the fields and trees slanting up against the hillsides. He hadn't seen it in a long time and it should mean something to him. It should mean he was going home, the way he had planned it, that he was sticking it out though God knows it was harder than he had thought. That mention of Dixon hadn't been any help.

Spinner took out a cigarette and smoked for a while. It made a dry heat in his mouth, which reminded him of the farm and that he was going back to it. He was coming back at the wrong time. High summer. Dry heat Same as the last time, when he had come back to the farm from the army. That had been the wrong time. Or the time before, after his father had died and Spinner had left St. Louis to try to put the farm back in shape. That had been high summer.

It seemed he never did anything but go back to that place, work hard, as his father's homey sayings said he should, and lose out. The first time he'd come back, after St Louis, the place was almost a working farm when the army had gotten him. The second time, after the army, he had tried again. It would have been easier if Dixon hadn't owned the best part of the farm. It was now Dixon's park.

One day Dixon had come up to the fence on a horse. Spinner had let him talk because he was tired from work and Dixon took a long time making clear what he wanted. He always wanted something, but first there had been small talk about the old days in St Louis. How close he, Dixon, had been to old Spinner, how one good turn deserved another, and if young Spinner would take it as a favor, then he, Dixon, would buy the rest of the farm for high cash. As a favor.

"Not for sale," said Spinner.

"Jake," said Dixon. He favored first names when he was in Stone Bluff. "You can't make a go of it. But with cash you can do anything."

"It's a better farm now than when you cut off half of it to waste on your bridle paths."

Jake Spinner didn't like Dixon and after all the hard tries and losing each time it was suddenly easy to blame Dixon for all of it.

"Jake," Dixon said, "I want that farm. Be smart like your pappy," and then he yanked on his horse and rode away.

Spinner didn't like Dixon any better for that remark, and for the threat in his voice. Work hard and you can't lose wasn't something that had proven itself, but Spinner was still trying. More so now. he discovered — now that his anger had found a direction.

"Your pappy could tell you," said Dixon the next time he came around, "you oughtn't to cross me."

Spinner got off his tractor and climbed over his fence. He walked to the place on Dixon's road where the car had parked, with Dixon in back and the chauffeur in front. By the time Spinner got there his voice was low and controlled. He said, "It's not for sale."

"Learn something, hick," and Dixon got out of his car and walked up to Spinner.

"The farm's mine, Dixon."

"You don't look right when you're mad, Spinner. You look like somebody's gonna take a fall."

"Don't worry," said Spinner. "I'm holding back."

"Meaning you," Dixon went on. "You don't stand there and look at me that way, Jake boy."

It had been just talk so far. Jake Spinner tried to keep that in mind, keep out all the rest and just think of the situation right now, of Dixon asking a stupid question. Spinner tried to keep it out of his mind how Dixon got what he wanted, how Dixon the crook always got his way, and how Dixon kept coming up like a private plague.

Then Dixon swung.

Maybe he had been thinking of Spinner's father or of other times when crude muscle had turned the trick.

But Jake hit back. He hit back out of pure rage. It jumped out of him with the sudden push of his panicky feeling that he was going to lose again, that there might be no end to his losing.

He hit just once and then had to wait till Dixon got up out of the dirt, quite a while later. Dixon's chauffeur had looked away when it happened and didn't get out of the car to help the man out of the dirt until the last moment when Dixon had started to stir. Dixon got into the back of his car and left without saying anything else.

What kept Jake Spinner from worrying too much was the thought of one thing. It had been with him a long time and had gotten sharper. That he wasn't going to lose forever. It wasn't a plan and it wasn't a formula. But it gave him intent.

But Dixon had more than just a feeling. The next time he didn't come himself but sent the sheriff, and for the time being Dixon let the farm plans go by. He would get to that later. The real-estate plan could wait for a while, and for a better price. And it needed more than a pushing around because Dixon had learned something about Spinner's intent He wasn't like his father. Dixon would have to go to more trouble. With all the pressure at his command Dixon made the best of Spinner's intent Spinner was sent to jail for assault with intent to kill.

• • •

Spinner thought how easy the homecoming would be if Dixon weren't waiting for him. But that wasn't completely true, because the homecoming was bigger than anything Dixon could mean. Spinner had tried three times and lost twice; if he lost a third time, if he still had no luck, then he might lose his intent.

His shoulder ached, for no good reason, and Spinner held it carefully.

If that should happen, he thought, if he should lose his nameless intent, he would save it by finding a name for it He had one, ready made; an intent to kill.

# CHAPTER 3

He spent the first night at the farm without having seen anyone. He got off at the farm before the bus reached Stone Bluff because he wanted some time to rest and be alone — to get ready to start, he said to himself when he went to bed in the evening. Then, lying in bed late at night without sleep, he saw he had done it this way because he was afraid.

He must have slept some of the time because he woke bathed in sweat He got up early and spent all day on the farm. Fields to look at, the barn, the house, prime the pump — and he should go to town. The utility company should hook up his current, he should call at the lumberyard for wood for repairs, he should see the farmer down the road who had rented most of Spinner's equipment.

It was evening before he was ready to go into town. Had he been back in his cell now, he was sure he'd be able to imagine it all with so much reality, so much so that — Spinner started to curse. He should not have to imagine that he was back!

Then, from somewhere, the intent came hack to him, the thing he had saved without knowing how, and though it was nameless it rode him now like a man with a whip.

He went to the pump and washed his face, and with a careful feeling in every move, he walked down the road to town.

He remembered the signs along the way, telling that almost all of it belonged to Dixon — the filling station at the fork in the highway, the ice plant further down, the long concrete sheds where Dixon kept his construction equipment. And there was a new one. The sign said _South End Development Co., Prop_. T. _Dixon_ , and _City Homes in the Country_.

A lot of land was torn up and leveled, including a big part of Dixon's park. It was getting dark, but a crew with equipment was still working away from the road, cats and a bucket. The cats were working toward Spinner's farm.

Spinner walked on to town. If he stopped now he would lose his momentum, he would lose his mood of careful attentiveness, and something else might come over him. He walked into town and found everything very familiar. For a moment he even felt light, felt like smiling. He went to the square in the center of town, anxious to see it, and even when the light, happy feeling started to leave him nothing worse happened to his mood. It felt mostly quiet and he would have had to pay real attention to the shades of his feelings to know that it was like two eyes in the dark, looking, looking.

He wasn't recognized right away because of the hazy evening light He got halfway around the small square before anyone spoke to him.

"Jake! Hey, when did you get back, Jake?"

He stopped, hands in pockets, and walked back to the man on the bench.

"Just yesterday. How you been, George?"

George got up, wiped his nervous hands on his overalls. "Hey," said George. "You got a tan, even," and he laughed.

"Outdoor work. The rock piles," said Jake, but the joke felt forced.

George must have felt it too. The first impulsiveness of the greeting was wearing off, and he rubbed his hands along his thighs again, slowly this time.

"Well, guess you'll be around. Gonna work that farm again?"

"That's why I'm back. Why you asking?"

"Just wondered. You know. Well, I gotta get Ruth. She's shopping. See you around, huh, Jake?"

"Sure. You'll see me." Spinner watched George walk toward the row of stores.

That crack about working the farm had done it Had it been a crack? A normal question, except that Spinner's answer had been too sharp. George was going into a store to pick up his wife. He had left because he was picking up his wife.

Spinner got a few nods while he walked, and a few times there was small talk. No back-slapping and pumping the hand, because these people weren't made that way. Would he have worried about their casualness if he had come back from somewhere else, for some other reason?

Nobody mentioned Dixon. Did he expect they would? Did they ever?

Then he got invited to have a beer. Should he worry why nobody else had asked him, why only Eddy? Eddy wasn't so different from all the others, except that he came to town only once in a while. He worked in St Louis.

"If this is the first beer since you're out, Jake, I want to know about it," said Eddy. "I want to know what it's like after two years."

"Three."

"I mean three. Must be really something."

They walked into the bar and Spinner still thought about Eddy's remark. Not about the beer, but about having been gone. An easy remark, making no strain between them. Spinner smiled and was suddenly anxious to have that beer. Maybe for Eddy's sake. He would drink that beer down and sigh a big sigh, shaking his head, to show Eddy what three years without beer could mean and how good it was to be back.

The first counter was low, for eating sandwiches and soup. Turtle soup when it was in season and fried catfish sandwiches all year round. The next counter was high, for beer and hard liquor, and a few men were standing there, staring at Spinner and Eddy till they could make them out in the light over the bar. A few waved, and some nodded, and one of them shook hands with him.

"Jake here," said Eddy, "is going to give us a demonstration. He's gonna show what the first beer is like after three long dry years."

There was some laughing, because of Eddy, but mostly there was the same kind of waiting that Spinner felt He took out a cigarette and lit it And when ash had formed he would let it drop on the floor, the way all of them did it, because this was the bar in Stone Bluff, not the mess hall with lysol smell or the cell with the concrete. He looked at the oiled boards on the floor, dull and uneven. That sight was as good to him then as the open door out to the square or the windows with nothing but glass in them and an old cactus for decoration.

"Tell you what," said Eddy, "if the first one don't carry a message, you got to buy the second yourself. Here, try not to drop it."

Spinner grinned at the glass on the bar, feeling self-conscious. He said, "Maybe I lost the taste for it, Eddy. Maybe you're wasting a beer."

Eddy stared, because the thought hadn't occurred to him. Then he saw Spinner's face and they both laughed.

Spinner picked up the glass seeing cool yellow and the soft foam on top and winking at Eddy.

"There's just a chance," he said, "mind you, just a chance, and this beer's going to bring back my taste for it."

"In detail, Jake! When it's down you got to tell me in detail!"

Spinner held up the glass and held it for a moment "Tell you what, Eddy. You lay off for three years or so and I won't have to tell you about it."

"Come on, man. Drink it!"

Spinner drank the cold beer down to the bottom, and it was the best he had ever had. He put down the glass, gave a deep sigh, and started to shake his head. He stopped in the middle of it.

"Not wasting any time, huh, Spinner?"

It was the tone of voice more than the words. Spinner turned to see who it was, very slowly, because he had suddenly realized that this was the kind of thing he had really expected — cold dislike and an edge in the voice to needle him.

"Hi, Sloan," said Eddy, and some of the others said hello to him too.

Sloan wore his khakis rolled up so the work boots showed at his ankles and he stamped his feet a few times, making the dry mud break off in small pieces.

"I thought you jailbirds wasn't allowed no liquor once you got out." Sloan made a big laugh. "So us peaceful citizens shouldn't have to worry," he said.

He scratched his chest, laughing again, and when he passed Spinner he gave him a hard slap on the back, like a taunt, but too casual to make anything of it.

"I'll take another beer," said Spinner.

Sloan may not have heard iL He walked to the other end of the bar with three of his buddies following behind.

"You been working late," said Eddy. "I never knew road gangs worked late. Or at all," he added.

There was laughing again, which stopped abruptly so that Sloan could give his answer, but Sloan kept laughing and didn't bother. He walked to the pinball machine and put in a coin.

"When you work for Old Dixon," he said, "you keep jumping. Right, Spinner?" Sloan let the plunger slam home.

The pins made short buzzes and the scoreboard clacked with electric sounds.

"I wouldn't know," said Spinner.

"And if you don't work for Old Dixon, then you really jump. Right, Spinner?" Sloan laughed again, then shot the next ball.

"Is Dixon gonna break ground soon?" said Eddy. "On his South End development?"

"That's why we're pushing the road," said Sloan. "We just tore up the cutoff to the turnpike on the south end."

For a moment it seemed as if Sloan was through. He watched the tallies flash on the board and shot the rest of the balls.

Eddy turned back to Spinner and said, "How's your farm look, Jake? Could you tell it was there, under the weeds?"

"It's there. It'll take some doing."

"I mean to tell you!" Sloan was back at the bar. He leaned forward so that Spinner could see the grin. "Now I don't know farming from nothing," he said, "but I know it don't go with excavating." Then he waited.

Spinner was tapping his empty glass. He noticed how the slight move made his shoulder hurt.

"We figure on tearing it up starting next month. Part of the South End Development."

"Like hell," said Spinner.

"Like hell?" Sloan walked the length of the bar. He made his face look surprised. "You ain't selling to Dixon?"

"He knows it," said Spinner.

"He knows it? Now I'd say that's strange. How come he don't tell me those things? How come Dixon tells me a different story, huh, Jake? You think maybe he was lying to me?"

"Why should he lie to you, Sloan?" Spinner held the glass in his hands, rolling it back and forth in his palms. The glass felt warm. "Dixon lies only when it's something important"

It took Sloan a moment to get it all and when he did he took a low breath.

"You calling my boss a liar or you telling me I ain't important?"

"Forget it," said Eddy. "You gotta remember..."

"You shut up, Eddy, unless you want the same thing Spinner is getting any minute now."

Spinner felt his hands trembling, but he knew he wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid till he noticed the rage pushing up inside him, with heat on his skin and the sense of his muscles swelling.

"I'm waiting," said Sloan. "I'm dumb and you better explain it again."

"I'm not supposed to get into trouble," said Spinner. It hurt his throat, saying it. "So forget it."

Sloan's grin spread out slowly and it showed how much he was starting to like everything.

"Well," he said, "well, well, well." He leaned on the bar next to Spinner, very close. "You mean you wanna apologize? Go ahead. Lemme hear it."

Spinner swallowed and moved his neck. His shoulder was aching. "Leave me alone," he said. "Will you?"

"Say please."

"Please. Just forget it."

Sloan grinned more. He stood back and put his hands on his hips.

"Hey," he said. "You're sweating! How come you're sweating?"

Spinner didn't answer.

"It makes you look yellow all over, Jakey. How come?"

Spinner pushed away from the bar and turned to the door.

"Let me through," he said and looked down at Sloan's foot.

"Say please again."

He couldn't talk, so he stepped back and looked past Sloan, at the door. He couldn't see the door clearly, but it gave him a point of attention, to try and see the door clearly.

"All choked up, Jakey?"

Maybe Sloan would lose interest. If Sloan would hear please again, perhaps that would be the end. Spinner coughed.

"What you say, Jakey?" Sloan had a greedy look on his face.

"Please," said Spinner.

Nobody made any sound and Sloan stood there, gaping. His arms were hanging down. Then he started a slow, unbelieving laugh.

"What? What you say, Jakey?"

Spinner's voice didn't feel like his own, it was quiet and even.

"You can either get out of the way, Sloan, or you can try staying right there," he heard himself say. "And if you stay, I'll break your back."

This time, at the end of the pause, Sloan said nothing. He moved his mouth, stopped. Then he moved his foot with a slow scrape, and then jumped — not at Spinner, at the bar. He grabbed up the empty glass and in one motion smashed the wide rim and swung for the strike.

The door banged. There was a yell, "Hold it!" Sloan couldn't stop, but he swung wild. His hand hit air and Spinner set his back for the spring.

"Hold it! Damn you to hell!"

Spinner was sure it was the badge that stopped him. He saw the sheriff, the gun at his belt, his hands up by his hips, and how he stood wide-legged, ready to move. But the badge stopped Spinner.

"Drop that glass, Sloan, or I'll draw on you!"

Sloan let it drop and watched it roll.

"And you there, Spinner!"

Spinner stood still and looked at the sheriff. The man's hair had gone all white since Spinner had seen him three years ago. The red face made a contrast next to the hair.

"All right," he said. "What is this?" His breath was coming fast and gave hoarseness to his voice.

Sloan started talking, but the sheriff cut him off angrily, and Spinner didn't say a word. Eddy explained it and the barman said the same thing and the others nodded. The sheriff told Sloan to get out, and said that the next time he wouldn't care whom Sloan was working for, he'd run him out of town.

"You won't see the day," said Sloan and went to the door, his buddies following.

"Just git," said the sheriff.

Sloan stopped at the door. "I got better rights than that jailbird," he shouted. "And see if Old Dixon don't hold with me."

"He's got nothing to do with this," said the sheriff. He jerked his head at Sloan to get out, but Sloan came back in.

"It don't? That's what the whole thing is about! First day out of jail and he comes in here insulting Old Dixon. I got my loyalties. No jailbird threatens my boss and gets away with it!"

The sheriff looked at Spinner and said, "This true, Jake?"

Spinner shook his head but the sheriff didn't see it.

"Ask the rest of them," Sloan was shouting. "Did he call Dixon a liar?"

The men at the bar looked away. One of them went to the door in the back and walked out to the alley.

"You better get one thing straight, Sheriff!" Sloan had pulled himself together.

But the sheriff didn't want to listen. He said, "Out, Sloan, I don't need you for this."

He stood waiting, and Sloan backed down. He walked out of the bar and one of his men slammed the door after them.

Jake Spinner rubbed his hands over his face and the sheriff said, "I'll want to talk to you." Then he left.

# CHAPTER 4

When Jake Spinner came out of the bar it was dark on the square and the small crowd which had looked in at the windows had walked away again. A dullness came over him, obscuring his mood, and he let it be that way. He gave a brief glance at the square. The center was indistinct, and he turned away, not wanting to know who might be there. To the left the North Highway came in and Jake stood looking away from the square. Only details registered for him. It was too painful to think about Sloan or the sheriff.

The trees stood very still and the blinker light where the highway entered the town made impersonal winks. He watched the headlights of a car dip up, then spread closer. The car slowed before reaching the square and turned into a side street Concentrating on details because he didn't dare think of the other things, Jake saw that the car moved without hesitation, knowing the way, and that the plate was from a different district, St. Louis, most likely. Jake crossed the street and walked along the far side of the square. Now the trees had started to rustle.

"Jake," said the sheriff.

Spinner slowed to let the sheriff catch up with him.

"On your way to the station?" asked the sheriff.

He hadn't been. He kept walking and said, "You wanted to tell me something."

"Jake," said the sheriff, "maybe it isn't your fault, what happened, but it will be if it gets worse."

Spinner took a breath and kept walking.

"Just lay low," said the sheriff, "because I don't want trouble around here."

"You?" and Spinner heard himself laugh.

"Don't get chippy. Just do like I say."

"Do what?"

The sheriff sucked his teeth. Then he looked the other way. "You deciding to sell your farm?"

"You don't sound like you're asking," said Spinner. He wanted to say more but kept it down.

"Best thing, to my way of thinking," said the sheriff.

"I do my own thinking."

"Don't get chippy, Jake. I seen you grow up, and all I..."

Spinner stopped and turned on the sheriff without caring who would hear him.

"You fronting for Dixon, like that Sloan bastard? I don't thank you for it, just so you know. And I don't scare." Spinner bared his teeth with the strain in his face and went on. "A lot of things scare me, believe me, and half of them I don't even know. But this thing I know, and it doesn't scare me one bit I keep what I've got I want my place!" If Spinner's voice hadn't been so loud the sheriff might have thought Spinner sounded puzzled. "Hell!" Spinner shouted, "Hell. Why should I have to want something I already got!"

He walked off abruptly and for a moment the sheriff stood still. He had forgotten what he had wanted to say before Spinner had started to talk. He grunted and went after Spinner. He'd just tell him the same thing again.

"Wait up, Jake."

Spinner waited. They were off the square now, on a street dark with trees, and the sheriff couldn't make out Spinner's expression.

"Just this, Jake. Keep to yourself and don't set a bad example. I'm warning you. We got edgy days in this town right now. Dixon's been edgy lately."

"I got my own troubles."

"But when Dixon's got them he makes them everybody's. And I don't need to tell you he don't like you in particular."

"Don't tell me his troubles."

"I'm telling you yours. Sell out and get out, while Dixon's still buying."

"I'm not worried he'll drop his offer."

"He's got troubles, I tell you. Out-of-town troubles, and he's nasty enough to make all of us feel it So I'm telling you, Jake. You just came back home and you don't know. That's why I'm telling you."

Spinner felt his mood swing and he almost said thanks, but there was too much of a backlog of other things. He said, "I'll look out for my own. I've learned that."

"And how good have you been at it? Tell me, how good?"

Spinner didn't want to think about that He killed the sick feeling that started to rise in him. A flat smile was on his face.

"Maybe Dixon will die," he said. "I got to have luck some time."

There was a short silence.

"One wrong move," said the sheriff, so low that Spinner could hardly hear. "One wrong move and I'll be right behind you."

Spinner hadn't meant his remark that way, but there was no time to correct it The sheriff walked off toward the square and Spinner turned the other way. He walked with his hands in his pockets and stared in front of him without really seeing. Once he spat He walked to the end of town and then angled back along the south end, meaning to walk till he was worn enough to lie down and to sleep without thought.

He had not imagined it would be this bad, the fine edge between rage and despair. He walked with the fear riding his back that some small thing might break the balance....

Half an hour after Spinner had watched the car turn off near the square, he watched it pass him again on the street He was walking in the south end of town now and a few minutes later Spinner saw Dixon's house. It sat back from the street, though plainly visible, and the lighted French windows downstairs gave everything on the veranda the sharp lines of a silhouette.

Dixon stepped into the light, stood for a moment, and was shot dead.

Not very much later the sheriff was close after his man. Jake Spinner was running down the street, and the sheriff chased after him in his car. He had to sap Spinner unconscious, which was the only way he could take him in.

# CHAPTER 5

He sat up to get the glare of the bulb out of his eyes. It hung over his head, in the ceiling, and when he sat up he swayed a little. He saw the black bars, the bare station room beyond, and the screen door to the outside. It took a while before he could focus beyond that. They stood on the other side of the door, and what Spinner saw mostly were foreheads, white where they pressed into the screen. The eyes were in shadow and Spinner could only feel them. There was no meaning in the faces. It made the silence unbearable.

"He's up." The faces behind the door moved. "He's sitting up."

Spinner heard a chair scrape and boots coming closer. The deputy opened the cell and said, "Come on out."

"You're in deep," said the sheriff. "He's dead."

Spinner knew that. Dixon was dead, but nothing had changed for Spinner. Everything was as before. He did not even feel it was worse.

"And resisting arrest," added the deputy, as if it mattered.

"Where's the gun, Jake?"

"How come you shot him?"

"Where'd you get the gun, Jake?"

"How come you went to see him?"

Let them talk. Let them talk and don't listen and get back the strength to keep them away, even the sick strength of hate.

"I've known you all my life, Jake. You can't get any worse now."

The old bastard with the voice like a father. The old bastard with the gun and the sap and the baleful eye, as if he were worried.

"Why'd you do it, Jake?"

"Listen to me," said Spinner. It was his own voice and he was begging them.

"Sure. Go ahead."

But the deputy was licking a cigarette and the sheriff looked at the door.

"Listen!" Spinner shouted.

They didn't. The screen door opened and Sloan stuck his head in.

"We're right out here, Sheriff, so if you need any help, any kind of help —

• • •

"Get out," said the sheriff. "Slam that door shut, Teddy."

The deputy slammed the door and the sheriff took Spinner's arm to lead him into the back room. There was a table and chairs, a small window, and behind the glass a white face, then two, then more.

The sheriff yanked the shade over the window and sat down. Outside there was a slow murmuring.

"Jake," said the sheriff, "I can tie this thing up without your saying a word. You understand?"

That's what Spinner had needed. It shut his face, put steel over his insides, and gave him back his intent. "You listening?" he said.

"Jake, before you..."

"I didn't kill that bastard. I'm glad somebody did, but I didn't kill that bastard."

The sheriff didn't want to hear. He wanted to say more, before Spinner got worse. "I can tie this up, I told you." The sheriff stopped. There was a slow swell of voices outside and when it sank again it did not leave altogether.

"Jake, listen to me."

Spinner had clamped his hands into each other, so they wouldn't shake.

The sheriff said, "Dixon's dead. One thing, Jake. That means you'll have a clean trial. It means nobody's trying to tie you up any more. This town, Jake, without Dixon — "

He stopped again and the three men in the room looked at the covered window, as if they could see it there, the new garble of voices, the sudden swell and sinking of sound. But it stayed stronger now than in the beginning.

The sheriff saw Spinner sweat.

"Jake, you listening to me?"

Even the sheriff's low voice seemed frantic to Spinner. The covered window seemed alive with a terrible motion.

"I'm trying to tell you, Jake, so you wouldn't be scared — "

The old fatherly bastard pouring oil on the waters. The old fatherly bastard trying the old fatherly trick of bribing.

Spinner was breathing hard, as if he had been running. The voices outside were chasing him, they were brewing his insides with acid.

"Scared?" said the deputy.

Spinner had an ache in his throat and he turned it into a laugh, a queer, hesitant laugh.

"Listen to 'em," he said. The words were chasing out of him. "Listen to how happy they are about all of this! They're so crazy happy about Dixon being dead they don't want to stop there. They don't..."

"All right, Jake. All right now."

"Listen to the stupid..."

"Don't listen. Listen to me. Dixon made them stupid, but not forever, Jake!" The sheriff slapped his hand on the table and watched Spinner react It made Spinner turn and look at the sheriff. The sheriff saw the face set, and the eyes come back into focus.

And at the same time the murmur outside seemed to die, the shaded window making the room a separate thing again.

"Tell me what happened," said the sheriff.

Yes, tell him. For a moment Spinner felt a great gush of feeling inside, a feeling that opened him up and wanted to make him lean close to the man on the other side of the table.

"How come you shot him?" said the deputy.

Like the clank of a door or a whip at his heels. Spinner stiffened.

"Just tell it, Jake. Unless we know — "

What he knew could save his life! Unless they knew, soon, now, it might be too late to save his life, and Spinner forgot the deputy, didn't hear the voices outside, didn't wonder about the sheriff, but talked, fast and eager.

"I didn't kill Dixon, but somebody did! Find him. This car came down the street twice. The same car I saw turn off by the square. That was the first time I saw it. He knew where he was going and he had out-of-town plates, same plates on the car on Dixon's street, and right after I heard the Garand..."

"How come you know it was a Garand?"

"Shut up one minute!" The voices outside grew big again and Spinner started to shout. "The car drove on down the street, going south! I can show you. Maybe there's time. Sloan, back in the bar, he was telling they just tore up the cutoff on the south end and somebody who didn't know was driving out that way to get on the turnpike..."

"How come you know it was a Garand, Jake?" The sheriff talked as if he hadn't heard a thing.

"Why shouldn't I know? I shot one for more years than..."

"Shut up," said the sheriff. He leaned forward, listening.

They heard the front door open and feet on the wooden floor. Not many, but hard and aggressive.

The sheriff cursed and jumped out of his chair. He ran into the station room but before he could say anything Sloan was talking.

"Sheriff," he said, "I offered once and I'm offering again. Me and the boys..."

"When I need help I call the state troopers. Any more crap out of you and your riff-raff and I'll call the troopers right now. You open your mouth again, and I..."

"You talking to me like that? You think you can pull that stuff like in the bar twice?"

"Get out!" The sheriff yanked at his holster. "Either you..."

"Pull that gun on me, huh? You know who's out there, waiting for me? Citizens, you dried-up old coot. You got a notion now Old Dixon is dead..."

"Out, you son of a bitch!"

Sloan's feet clattered when the sheriff pushed him, but Sloan kept on shouting.

"I'm here to talk Dixon's cause! I'm here — "

The door banged, the lock made two clicks, and the sheriff came back.

"Bolt the back," he said to the deputy, "and break out two rifles."

Then he stood in the doorway, one hand on his gun, looking up at the wall. The crowd outside the building was suddenly silent except for one voice. The words weren't clear, but the pitch of it lashed back and forth like a whip.

Spinner started to sweat The doubt pulled at him with an equal strength — that he must lose, and that he must not give up. In the stalemate he found the worst pain of all, that all this needn't have happened, that if only they would believe him —

Glass crashed and a stone beat through the window shade which flapped wildly, and tore.

"Put him in the cell." The sheriff ran past the deputy, who came up with two guns. The sheriff picked up the phone, a wild pounding shook the front door, and the sheriff yelled again, "Lock him in the cell."

It broke the stalemate for Spinner. He got up before the deputy was back in the room, stood next to him when the front door splintered. The deputy's head snapped around at the crash and then he ran into the front room. Behind him the door slammed.

Spinner flicked the lock, snapped off the light, and pushed the table under the window. The commotion was in front. The crowd would clog at the sight of the guns, they would stop at the door with the back pushing up to see the performance and the front men trying to gauge the danger. Maybe shots even — Spinner wasn't waiting to hear. He knocked out the rest of the glass with a chair and lunged out of the window headfirst.

The fall didn't stop him. He raced across the back lot and headed back to the street where it had all started. He ran automatically because there was nothing else to decide.

He didn't go all the way back to the Dixon house, but turned to the end of the street that ran out into the country. He had gotten this far once before, running after the out-of-town car until the sheriff had caught up with him and the chase was over. The street became a gravelly road and Spinner continued running. The chase wasn't over for him, and this time he was the hunter.

• • •

There had been a shot — a Garand, Spinner was sure — and before the fact had sunk in he had seen Dixon against the light on his porch, spinning suddenly, then falling with a thud. Spinner had stopped and without any transition he had felt the panic. Nothing worse could happen to him than Dixon's being killed. He hadn't thought about this but the panic had said it for him. And then the car. With the feeling of disorganized speed inside him Spinner had thought the car was going too slowly. It shifted with normal sound and headed out to the south end, but never going too fast or hunting for the best way out of town. It found its way steadily, which Spinner could see because the car lights had been on.

The gravel made dry rattles under his feet and he swerved to the side of the road to let the grass absorb the fast thud of his feet His breathing was painful now. This is the way the car went As if the driver had been a native, knowing the short cuts out of town, avoiding the center, knowing the lanes that went through the fields and where the highway would be. If it was the same car he had seen near the square, if the driver wasn't a native, if he had just come in, if if if — The effort of running kept Spinner from thinking too much, so the doubt never grew big. And what else could he have done? He would run just the same way to keep from dying of doubt. It had to be this way.

Sloan had said they were cutting a road for the South End Development, worked until dark to cut it through there. Across from the highway? He must have meant that or else there was no sense in tearing through the south end land with road equipment, no sense tearing this lane in two in order to make an inroad from the highway for Dixon's equipment.

And no one driving a car into town from the north late in the evening — no matter how well he might know the country — could have known that Sloan and his crew had that evening torn up the lane on the south.

He would find the marks in the fresh ground. Later, perhaps, they could find the same soil dragged onto the highway by the car's tires, to show which way the car went, how much it weighed, or even fantastic things like the make and the color and the registration and the place of sale and the name of the owner and the reason for all that had happened.

It wasn't fantastic to Spinner. It was his life, and all he was running for.

Slow now. If it is true, any part of it, it had to be true now.

He smelled the loam.

Spinner slowed and stopped. Sit down for a moment? It was sure now, he could smell the loam, he could stop and imagine that all the rest was just as true as the ground broken up on the other side of the rise. He could even lie down and go to sleep and imagine — He started to curse at himself and moved. But the new, faint smell stopped him rigid.

The blood roared in his ears and his breath was the loudest of all. The smell was burnt rubber.

There should be a sound, he should hear something, if his blood and his breath weren't roaring in his ears.

He crouched on the rise, squeezed low, and felt himself tremble at wheels spinning free and a motor making a useless whine.

Spinner lay on his belly and when the trembling went away it slipped off smoothly and he took a deep breath. He almost laughed.

The car had come down the short incline, and at the bottom, where the road was supposed to continue, had slid through the fresh loam and buckled into the ruts running sideways. The speed from the incline had pushed him there. The car had plowed through a pile of dirt that ran the length of the road bed. Even if he hadn't been stuck in the ruts he couldn't have made it back.

Spinner grinned to himself and took his time. He crawled down very carefully, keeping out of the skyline, but it was more like a sport now. The car was headed the other way, and whoever was at the wheel kept gunning and idling the motor, on and off, on and off. Some time the man in the car would have to come out. He would open the door, walk to the back, and bend down to check how badly the wheels were digging in.

Spinner sat crouched next to the car and tried thinking it out before it happened. He was a few feet away from his man, next to the spinning wheel and the burnt rubber stink strong in his face and the car trembling now and then. Just a few feet, he kept thinking, just a few feet — He tried forcing patience but it made things worse. Wait — a few feet — wait — a few feet — kept buzzing at him and the wheel at his right buzzed and spat dirt and the door a few feet ahead of him never opened. Spinner stared at it, and felt the muscles along his back swelling, arching him like a bow. The wheel whined and the car made lazy nods, not half trying. He found the door handle. Spinner jumped.

The car confined his movements, but Spinner didn't need much room. His concentrated violence had only one dimension — from himself to the man behind the wheel. A gun dropped to the floor, the clawing of the mark behind the wheel grew aimless, then both men staggered out into the open as if grown together, and Spinner never stopped. When Spinner swung and swung, the sharp pull in his neck was pleasure and when the other man struck back it was like a tonic.

Spinner didn't realize it, but very soon after his man had lost the gun there wasn't really any fight Then Spinner noticed an odd passivity, a yielding as if nothing Spinner did could matter. The man stumbled and fell into the ditch, and Spinner stopped because there wasn't any more resistance. He walked up to the ditch and wondered if the man were still alive. He was. He was breathing slowly.

Spinner bent down and picked him up. The man was small and frail. A hiss of pain came out of his mouth, but he said nothing. Spinner let him down to the ground, again aware of the man's frailness. It made Spinner think that there ought to be something warm, a blanket maybe, or something soft to put under the head.

Spinner stepped back to the ditch and lifted the man's feet to the level ground. One leg, then the other. He held the leg and then — with a hasty shake of the hand — he dropped it. He had touched a clubfoot.

# CHAPTER 6

The man wasn't marked up very much. It made no sense to Spinner but there was hardly a mark. The man's face was long and white. Spinner stepped back and said, "Get up, killer."

The man rose on one elbow and then no further.

"Get up!" Spinner was angry, impatient, and kicked at the man, hitting his leg.

The killer didn't get up. He laid down slowly with a constrained breath in his throat He raised his hands and put them over his mouth. Spinner saw he was wearing black gloves of tight leather, the fingers tensed into the white face like hooks. When the man relaxed again he said, "I can't My foot The good one."

There was a swelling over the ankle. It had pushed over the shoe and tightened the laces. When Spinner touched the foot the man gasped.

"Lie back while I do this," said Spinner, "and bite on this." He picked a piece of wood off the ground and held it out to the man.

"Just go ahead," said the killer.

"I'm taking the shoe off. Bite."

The man lifted his head and tapped his teeth.

"They are false. They would break," he said and lay back again.

Spinner took the shoe off and felt the heat under the sock. It might he broken, he thought, but he didn't know. He thought of wrapping the foot when he suddenly stood and listened.

"Sirens," said the killer.

"Christ, yes — " Spinner shouted, and then, with a shock that was stronger than the high grating sound, he stopped.

"They are not coming for me," said the killer. It was dark where he lay. He was just a voice.

"Shut up," said Spinner, and the siren grew in his head and images spun and flailed at him; blank walls, men with saps, blank faces, walled cells, Dixon dead, run, police, run, police —

"Are you turning me in?"

A question. A question of taking on a new role, to go to the police of his own free will and to let them decide for him.

"They won't believe you," said the killer.

His voice was flat There was no doubt or emotion of any kind. The killer was sure and Spinner was not The killer had planned and Spinner had nothing. He had a hope that they would decide in his favor.

"What makes you think they'll believe you?"

Spinner started to breathe fast and shallow, with the sirens beating at him and the voice sifting at him, bland and impersonal, from the ground.

"I will tell them I saw you on the street. I will add that to the rest of my alibi. I have..."

He could run away. He could run and be without past and — The sirens were reaching closer.

"Are you taking me to the police?"

Same question. It meant, "Are you going to let them decide? For you?"

"They scare you," said the voice from the ground. "You must know them."

A frail cripple lay on the ground, a killer who could not move any more, but was not scared.

"Have you decided?"

Spinner was going to let the men with the saps decide for him — that's why he was scared. That's why he was more crippled than the man on the ground, all his life crippled from one loss to the next and then the last loss because he had never broken the rules, only suffered from them.

"Are you going back?"

"Like hell!" Spinner suddenly felt the difference. He felt free as a man's thoughts in delirium, and he lifted the killer off the ground, put him into the car and slammed the door. The sirens were shrieking in town and Spinner felt the sound like a goad. The more they screamed the clearer his new intent He was going to make his last try, and a new one.

"Hold on!"

The car lurched and bucked and Spinner never had any doubt he would make it. The Garand was on the floor. He threw it out, for more room.

"Now! You and me, killer, we're going to make this a break!" and Spinner shot free.

# CHAPTER 7

The killer sat in his corner and didn't talk except to give directions. He knew the terrain well. Spinner took country lanes, crossed fields, and followed highways for short stretches and then turned off into the country again. There were no more sirens now and the fields under the moon looked as if nothing had ever happened there.

"Stop after the turn," said the killer.

Spinner stopped to one side of the lane, where the bushes reached toward the road. They scraped the car and made black patterns against the windshield.

"Do you know where you are?" said the killer.

"To the north of town," said Spinner. "I'm not sure how far."

"About ten miles. To the south."

Spinner looked at the man without saying anything because the remark had lacked something. There had been no flavor in it; no reprimand, no bragging, not even a real wish to correct.

"You cross this field," it went on, "and follow the lane on the other side till we get to the woods. Park there; it's about five minutes on foot back to the place where you found me."

Spinner stared at the man, who had stopped and was concentrating on shifting his leg.

"You left my shoe there," said the man. "Bring it back here."

"Your — your shoe?"

"It's custom made. They might trace it."

At first Spinner didn't know what to do with his voice. It had taken Spinner a lifetime of pressure to make his decision that night, and the killer was already taking the step for granted.

"Go back?" said Spinner. "Go back there to get you a shoe?" Then the anger broke out "Your lousy lousy custom-made clubfoot is on the other leg, you ugly creep!"

"They are both custom made." No change in voice, no change in manner, only more information.

Spinner had to do something, so he hit the man.

The killer had tears in his eyes from the blow They looked like water. The man blinked once, to clear his eyes, but otherwise made no move. He was oddly passive and his lack of resistance defeated Spinner, as if the killer were constantly out of reach.

The man said, "You don't understand — " but then he stopped, seeing Spinner's face.

"Understand!" Spinner roared. "You understand why I'm here? Why a hick like me jumps in the car with you and drives..."

"I don't," said the killer. "But you said you would drive me. So if you're..."

"Shut up! I ran after you because you killed Dixon. You killed Dixon and I got the blame for it I've been getting the blame for everything I never did till it looks to me there must be a better way. I'm trying it now! I'm sticking to you and I'm not going back! That clear in your mind?"

"Yes. You're afraid to go back."

"You're damn right, killer." It seemed to make no impression. "And you need a driver, right? So the hell with your shoe." Spinner threw the car into gear.

"Better go back first. You left the Garand there."

"Garand? So what? That's your gun."

"That gun can't be traced, or the forty-five, either. But they have your prints on them."

He turned his head to watch how Spinner would take it, but he didn't wait for an answer. Spinner had set his teeth so the shock wouldn't touch him, and stubbornness showed in the set of his head. The killer looked ahead again while Spinner shifted, because there was no point arguing with a man who acted by hate.

"Don't cross the field," said the killer. "Follow the road."

They drove without talking and after an hour or so, when Spinner recognized the north highway at a point beyond Stone Bluff, he began to relax. But there was no change in the man next to him. Spinner thought he was like stone. Spinner tensed up again, unable to form a meaningful picture. They were driving straight and fast now, with no need for directions, so the killer sat silently and sometimes didn't even seem to be there.

"What's your name, killer?"

"Loma," said the man.

On a turn they touched briefly. Was that Loma? He was like skin, with a ghost inside. Any other man with a name like Loma would explain more. Is Loma the first name or the last name? What kind of name is it?

"Loma?" he said aloud. "What kind of name is that?"

"Just a name."

"Where'd you get it?"

It seemed to surprise Loma, unless he hesitated because he didn't think an answer would be important Then he said, "What's the difference? I'm using it now."

They had talked and Spinner knew nothing. Skin with a ghost inside called Loma.

"How's the foot?" asked Spinner.

"Bad. Keep driving. We have to make time."

He answered but it always turned into an answer about something else.

"All right," said Spinner. He kept his voice even, trying to get used to the way Loma acted, but controlling himself only made Spinner more edgy. "All right. I want to know a few things."

There was no immediate answer, since Loma was waiting to hear the rest, but Spinner was silent He was still listening to the sound of his voice which had come out flat, empty, reminding him of Loma's voice.

"You want to know what?" said Loma.

Spinner coughed.

"Why'd you kill him? Dixon, I mean."

"I don't know."

"What?"

"I don't know why. I was hired."

Spinner cursed under his breath, then kept still. If Loma had heard it he didn't show it. The highway rolled up and down without curving and the end of the headlights sealed off Spinner's vision at a fixed distance.

"Who hired you?" Spinner asked.

"St Louis."

Spinner remembered what Moss had said, that Dixon had tried getting too big.

"Who in St. Louis?"

"A St Louis contact hired me."

Did Loma think Spinner knew how it was done? St Louis hired me; I don't know why he was killed. A death had never seemed so mechanical to Spinner, not even at the worst times on the Islands when there were more corpses than living things and killing had become a day's work. But never like this: a final act for no final reason, a business decision, not a matter of life or death. Dixon had been killed because he no longer fitted into somebody's enterprises.

It was the wrong way of thinking. Now, having switched, either think of death, the way Loma did, or don't think of it at all, the way Loma did.

"I didn't know," said Spinner, "that Dixon was in that deep."

"Neither did he," said the killer.

Done with it Pushed out of the way like a small stone pushed out of the way with the foot.

Loma was back with himself, or wherever he went when he said nothing. He was leaning into the seat but he wasn't sleeping. His eyes were open. Once Spinner jerked the wheel to avoid a raccoon crossing the road and Loma turned his head. Then he looked front again. No, thought Spinner. He faced front but didn't look. There was nothing to see. His eyes were open the way a box is open. That's how he had looked at Spinner. There was nothing to see.

Suddenly Spinner said, "I'm Spinner, Jake Spinner."

"I see."

A lie. The bastard saw nothing he didn't care to see.

Spinner was behind the wheel, a part of the car, and the car was running. So why bother with Spinner.

"Understand this, Loma. You listening to me?"

"Yes."

"So you got it clear what goes on here. I'm driving you and I'm not going back. You need me and I need you and that's our bargain."

"What bargain?"

"My driving you! How far do you think you can get with those feet you got?"

"That's why you're driving me."

Spinner frowned. He wanted to back away from his confusion but then had to stop. Where would he back to? It was clear that he could not go back. He had gone through all that But the rest was clear to Loma, that Spinner was driving him because Loma himself couldn't drive.

"Anything else?" Loma said.

Spinner hadn't wanted to see it yet, but it had been clear all the time. He could not go and find work, because he had no past If he had a past, if he told it, there was his record, and worse, the new crime hanging over him. Whether it was an indictment for murder or as an accessory after the fact, it hung over him and would ruin him. It would ruin him, if he tried living again by the rules. There was no other way out.

And with a gentle switch, which Spinner noticed just barely, he made up his mind. It did not feel like a decision but like something he had known a very long time, ever since his father had lived wrong, in spite of his homey savings, ever since Dixon had been in his life, living high, wide and wrong, and ever since prison.

There was no other way out.

"Loma," said Spinner. "You're my in." And after a pause. "I'm switching sides."

It happened that simply.

"I can't be of much help," said Loma, but Spinner did not seem to hear. If he heard, he was not ready to answer. The full weight of his decision kept him silent and he was absorbing the weight so that he would never have to feel it again.

"I can't be of much help," Loma said again.

"Why? You got friends and contacts."

"My contacts wouldn't do you much good."

"Bull. You're going to show me how."

"I have only two kinds of contacts," said Loma. "The ones that pay me and the ones I get paid for."

Spinner started to curse when Loma interrupted again.

"I don't give advice much, but..."

"So don't"

Loma turned his head slightly and Spinner could see the goat eyes looking at him. There was a moment's recognition, a brief impatience with an object, and then the eyes went blank again.

"Because it can save me trouble later." said Loma. "You want to become a — what would you call it — a hood? Don't do it."

"Leave that to me. You just..."

"How can I? You asked me to give you an in."

"And that's all I asked. Not advice."

"You're not fit," said Loma.

"Loma, my old man was in with St. Louis and if he could do it, I can..."

"Where is he now?"

"He's dead. But..."

"Uh," said Loma and whether he meant it or not, it sounded like a conclusion to Spinner. "You're still alive."

Loma turned his head, but Spinner didn't see Loma look at him. Then Loma looked away, saying nothing.

"Understand this," said Spinner. He was not straining about it, he was just telling Loma. "I set this up like a bargain." He lit a cigarette and then said, "You don't do what I say and I make you regret it."

Spinner left the thought vague, but Loma answered it to the point.

"They are looking for you, not me. You keep forgetting that."

Nothing got to him. Loma stayed untouched and Spinner's skin prickled with irritation. Kick his foot. That'll make him take notice. Kick him hard and watch if he's human. Spinner let the thought warm him but left it there. Then he said, "I don't care who they're after. There's one man can set them after you."

Now Loma would have to take notice. He would have to deal with Jake Spinner.

"You?" said Loma.

"Yeah, me!"

"Don't try it," said Loma.

"More advice? I couldn't do it, you think?" and Spinner heard the rasp in his voice and felt revolted. He hadn't meant it to take this turn. "What about that shoe you left behind. Doesn't that make you anxious?"

"No. A very long chance they can trace it That's why I let it go by."

"To hell with tracing, killer. I mean me fitting the shoe on the foot, me telling them whose special-made shoe it is."

"My clubfoot is on the right," said Loma. "The shoe I lost could fit anybody. Even you."

"I'm twice your size, Loma." Spinner thought this would be the place to laugh, loud and hard. But he didn't feel like laughing.

"I use my left foot more than the club foot," said Loma. "My left foot is big."

It had started to sound like a conversation to Spinner, a casual, empty conversation between two people who meant nothing to each other. Everything that touched Loma seemed to turn into nothing. Spinner distracted himself by gunning the motor. He raced and let go, raced again, let it go. He would keep his temper, the way Loma did, and make his point again.

"Like I said." He sounded as casual as he had imagined, and felt as empty. "You and me got a bargain."

Loma said nothing.

"What, Loma? You got another solution?"

Nothing from Loma. He was holding his breath while shifting his foot.

"Shoot me dead, maybe, once I got you out of this?"

Spinner didn't see it, but Loma was closing his eyes. It could have been from the pain, or — this being the first time he had closed his eyes — it could have been his kind of sign which showed emotion.

"Thinking about it, huh, Loma?"

"No. I wasn't," said Loma. He stroked his hand over his hair slowly, and said, "I've never shot anyone for personal reasons."

# CHAPTER 8

Spinner didn't want to talk any more. He drove on, and started to smoke. He let the smoke idle back out of his mouth, making it burn in his throat. But he ignored it. Or, like Loma, he was not there to feel it. The night air became colder and the inside of the car had a chill. Spinner thought of turning the heater on, but he didn't Feeling cold would keep him awake, he reasoned. It would make him feel alive. He was on the point of asking Loma if he were cold, but he didn't really want to hear the answer. Spinner imagined something weird would come out, something about cold means feeling alive and that's why corpses felt cold. Spinner shook his head sharply, and imagined that it was the strain and no sleep that was making him think this way.

He looked at the dashboard, to see something small and concrete. "We need gas," he said.

It broke the spell, and Spinner was even hoping that Loma would say something in return. But Loma just nodded.

"This looks like the stretch before Landon," said Spinner. "There's a station on Main Street that's open for twenty-four hours."

"Take the black top to the right, just before town," said Loma.

"I said we need gas!" Spinner's foot went down on the pedal and he kept it there.

"I know. I have gas."

But Spinner didn't hear it. He felt that Loma was not only ignoring his person but also his words, his judgment, and his decisions.

"There's a twenty-four hour garage..."

"Why do you forget, Spinner," said Loma, "that they are looking for you?"

It was the first time Loma had used Spinner's name and it gave his words a surprising weight. Spinner turned, but Loma looked as before. It was a disappointment.

"What did you say?" asked Spinner. "You have gas?"

"Turn right at the black top," Loma repeated. "I'll tell you where to stop."

He told Spinner to stop past a small bridge over a creek and to walk down to the leg of the bridge where he would find a five-gallon can of gas.

"You got this planned as if you knew I was going to be along."

"No. I have it planned so I don't have to be seen this side of Landon. It's too close to Stone Bluff."

Spinner made no comment, and after he had found the can and poured the gas into the tank he threw the can into the ditch and came back to the car.

"Pick it up," said Loma. "Put it in the car."

Spinner stopped. He couldn't see Loma's face in the dark and without seeing it he couldn't make out the man's tone of voice. But the face wouldn't tell him and the voice was always without inflection. Loma had told him to do something the way he would move a lever or press a button. He was using Spinner.

"Put it in the car," said Loma. "It's safer."

Of course. The goat-eyed bastard was right. Spinner went to the ditch and picked up the can. The grass there was wet with night dew and a bush dropped wet against Spinner's neck. He almost swung at the bush.

Spinner threw the can into the back seat and drove off. Where to? Where Loma said they should drive. Stop where? Where Loma said they should stop. It wasn't the way Spinner had imagined his break. There was going to be free action, free anger, and to hell with everything else. Instead he was like a button on a machine and Loma giving a press now and then.

That wasn't going to be it. Between now and the time they got to St. Louis, Spinner was going to make his impression. Not easy, maybe, not with a ghost like Loma, but Spinner was going to make his impression because that was going to be the new life.

• • •

They drove in a long silence and Spinner almost didn't see his chance. Once he said, "How's your foot, Loma?" and when Loma didn't answer Spinner cursed himself for having said the wrong thing. A personal question, asking about pain. Loma couldn't know about pain and being personal with him was like hugging a rock.

"Damn it!" Spinner yelled. "Answer me!"

Loma said something in a voice that slurred everything but the pain he was feeling. He sat low in the seat, rigid with effort, holding his leg as if it were an object that didn't belong to him.

"Jesus," said Spinner, and slowed the car to a stop. "Bad, huh?" He leaned over the man.

Loma was gritting words. It sounded like, "Drive — don't stop — drive — " but Spinner didn't listen to him.

"You got any bandages, rags or something? How about aspirin?"

Loma shook his head slowly, not to make too much movement, but he didn't say anything. His eyes were shut tight and except for the pain giving him presence he was hardly there.

"So we'll get some," said Spinner and started to drive again.

Loma breathed more like a human being after a while.

"Just keep driving," he said with effort "Till after Fort Timber. Let me know, after Fort Timber."

"What happened?" said Spinner. "With the foot?"

"I hit it. On the turn."

"We're going to take care of that," said Spinner.

"Keep driving," said Loma. "Just keep..."

"Just shut up," said Spinner.

The beam in front of the car didn't seem to cut him off any more, but sucked him forward, and when the next cross road came with a sign that said _Spoondale, 3 miles_ , Spinner slowed to a stop, backed up, and took the turn.

"Spinner," said Loma, "this is wrong. Wrong turn — "

"Leave it to me."

Loma tried to sit up.

"I told you..."

"I'm driving."

Loma didn't say any more. He briefly thought of stopping Spinner, of making him do it his way, but gave up the idea. It wasn't important enough and would mean effort without any good reason. This road, in the long run, would come out as well as the other....

They got to Spoondale at three in the morning, which meant the small town was dark. A red light burned over the gate of the fire station, but it always burned and meant nothing. With everything dark and the tree-lined streets deserted Loma didn't pay much attention when Spinner slowed down. Spinner slowed, then stopped, and cut the headlights.

When he got out of the car and walked halfway into an alley Loma still didn't pay much attention. But then, forgetting the pain of his foot, he sat up and watched closely, because he didn't understand Spinner's behavior. As long as Spinner served his function, and drove, Loma didn't care whether he understood Spinner or not People were an effort to Loma, the kind of effort that irritated him. Spinner especially; he was confused, with a disorganized push behind all he did.

The car was parked near the dark front of a store and Spinner was now in the alley, trying a window. Loma made out the sign over the store, _Drugs, Prescriptions_ , it said. Spinner was forcing the window.

A stupid act of bravado, a thing Loma himself would never do. But it was hard to stop Spinner now, and not really worth it. He would watch and see how Spinner made out — ten minutes, unless something went wrong.

Loma did not have a chance to wait for ten minutes, because a short time after Spinner disappeared through the window there was the noise of a car taking off fast and a few moments later a light went on in the back of the store.

• • •

Spinner heard the same noise and saw the same light, but unlike Loma, he had no plan for that kind of switch. Unlike Loma, he went only by stubborn intent and by the push of excitement.

He crouched next to the big rack in the middle of the store and watched the door with the light under it The door opened, throwing a bright shaft into the store, just missing the side of Spinner's leg. And then the shadow.

"That you, Dad?" it said.

"No. But stand still," said Spinner.

He stood up and walked toward the door with a brazen grin on his face.

She was much younger than Spinner had judged by her silhouette. A high-school girl with long hair, with make-up she didn't need, and her clothes the national norm of low shoes, thick socks, long skirt, loose sweater. Her small breasts were trained into high cones and there was a small pin on one of them.

"You — you aren't — " she started.

Spinner pushed her into the room and closed the door.

"You got lipstick all over," said Spinner.

She couldn't help putting her hand to her face, but kept staring at Spinner with an unsettled look, part curious and part waiting for the fear to take over.

"Was that your boy friend taking off with the car?"

After a moment she said, "You — are you a — a criminal?"

Somehow Spinner didn't feel brazen any more. He gave a short laugh and looked over the room.

"Where's everybody?" he said.

"They'll be..."

"I know. They'll be right hack." He took her arm and pulled her into the store. "Show me the bandages.. And a splint, if there is one."

When she pulled her arm away Spinner didn't grab for her because it hadn't felt like that kind of a move. She stayed right next to him.

"Listen here," she said, "who you pushing around?" Spinner was sure she had her hands on her hips.

"Just show me the shelf, girl, and you and me won't argue."

He hadn't taken up the tack she had wanted, so she tried again, doing it differently.

"You got shot? Or a buddy of yours got shot?"

It sounded so tough and in-the-know Spinner wasn't sure whether to laugh or to feel embarrassed.

"Moll," he said, trying to live up to her expectations, "don't waste my time."

He reached out to take her arm again but it was dark and he missed, and next she was close up against him, with her arms tight around his back.

"Go ahead," she whispered. "Go ahead."

Spinner was sure she meant he should kiss her, but even if he had been in the mood her stage whisper made it too ridiculous.

"Go ahead," she said again. "I'm not afraid."

He had the sudden idea to disillusion her, to say that he never had been in a stickup, that he didn't sell dope, fix races, run rackets, that even prison had been only a spiteful mistake — when it hit him that with Loma as an in, he'd soon be exactly what she had taken him for. The thought confused him. The confusion didn't stay with him long because anger took over. He remembered what he had left behind in Stone Bluff.

"Stop horsing around," he said and pushed her away. "Show me the shelf."

He had hurt her, and she let go immediately.

"All right, over here," she said and led him around the rack in the middle of the store and behind a counter.

"Tape, elastic bandage, anything like that," he said.

She found both and held the packages out to him.

"Where are the pills, heavy drugs?"

She turned immediately and walked to the back where the pharmacy was sectioned off. Spinner followed close behind. He could hear her breathing.

"They're locked up," she said. "In here."

It was an ordinary wood cupboard but with a big lock. Spinner put one fist into the other hand and rammed his elbow into the door. The panel splintered and he reached inside.

"Light a match and hold it," he said, and gave her a match book.

She did as he told her and while he sorted through the small boxes and bottles she watched with eyes wide and mouth open, and when she lit one match from the other she did it with fast, eager motions.

"You — " She swallowed, then started again. "What drug are you on?" she said quickly.

"Saltpeter," he said, but didn't watch to see if she got it He felt tense and on edge.

He took out the big bottles last, which meant he didn't find the codeine till he had gone through all the small stuff. He shook a handful of the pills into his pocket and then took the matches out of her hand.

"All right. Get back to your room."

He pushed her ahead of him and then through the door into the light He stayed in the dark.

"Now listen to me, girl. You stay in this room and don't move. When Daddy comes back..."

"He won't be back till the morning, don't you see? That's why Jimmy and I..."

"I know how it is. Now just shut up and don't move. You know better than to make a commotion, right?"

She meant to protest, to explain that it wouldn't enter her head to make a commotion and that she wasn't afraid, but Spinner slammed the door in her face and headed back to the dark window where he had come in.

"Do you need any money?" She stood in the open door looking at him.

He came back to the room with long, fast steps. He wasn't sure whether he should yell at her, paddle her rear, or lock her into a closet somewhere. She stepped back when she saw Spinner coming, so that he didn't reach her until he was well into the room. Of all the emotions that Spinner was able to read into her face, fear wasn't one of them.

But suddenly she turned stiff.

Spinner came around fast, to see what made her stare. There was a door to the outside which swung open slowly and the darkness outside gave the movement a ghostly appearance. And there was nobody standing there.

Loma was on the floor, the pale face a mask of control, with the strain to move showing only in the stretched neck, and he was holding a gun.

The gun didn't show very long. Perhaps only Spinner had seen it. Loma had judged the situation with mechanical speed, and when Spinner lifted Loma and put him into a seat the room looked casual enough; Loma sitting back and guarding his ankle, Spinner with tape and bandages under his arm, and the girl looking eager and curious.

"That's your buddy, isn't it?" she said and walked up to Loma. "Where's the wound?" she asked him. "Is it bad?"

Loma seemed to shrink like a dead leaf. He turned to Spinner and said, "You must be out of your mind. Carry me back."

It was the first time Spinner had heard the killer speak sharply. The tone of voice stung him, like a reprimand to a wayward child, and Loma's having followed him to watch that Spinner made no mistakes was the worst part of it And Loma had come with a gun. That pale creep had been carrying an extra gun all the time.

"You been carrying that all the time?" Spinner nodded at Loma's belt.

Loma answered with a cold look.

"How come I didn't know?"

"Why should you?"

"And how come you didn't use it before?" Spinner stepped slowly closer. "There've been a couple of times..."

"There hasn't been any good reason," said Loma.

An unclear, sudden anger made Spinner move fast "You son of a bitch," he said through his teeth. He yanked the gun out of Loma's pocket and stuck it into his belt "You son of a bitch — "

Loma did nothing about it. It would not have worked right then.

"A glass of water," said Spinner, and while the girl drew water from the sink in back Spinner took out three pills.

"Take me out of here," Loma said. "You hear me?"

It meant exactly the thing that Spinner wanted to change. It meant Loma stopped him and Loma told him what next.

"Take them."

Loma said, "No."

But there was more to it A swift look of life had come over his face, too fast for Spinner to judge it, and then Loma had shut his mouth.

"Come on. Open up."

Loma wouldn't But it meant more to Spinner now than just the pills, and Loma saw it He saw Spinner step closer and he saw how Spinner's manner turned very quiet.

"Take them, Loma."

Loma pushed back into the chair as much as he could.

"What are they?" he said. "I can't..."

"Take them!"

"Listen to me! I can't take them. I can't — "

"Why is it," said Spinner, close to Loma's face now, "why is it you always want the opposite, Loma?"

Loma closed his eyes to shut everything out. He felt pain eat into his foot and leg, feeling it more now because Spinner was making the pain an issue. Take the pills, or Spinner would make an issue. He was not easily predictable. How to handle Spinner — take the pills. They would wear off in a while. Perhaps they were very strong and the best that could happen, if he could not be wide awake, was to pass out completely.

Loma opened his mouth and Spinner put in the pills.

"Now give him the water," he said to the girl.

She held the glass to Loma's mouth and watched him drink. Even when his peculiar eyes looked up at her she did not look away. She was fascinated.

Loma looked back at her with a blank expression. It guarded the shrinking feeling inside him, the sense that she was some unnatural, insane specimen and that everything around him was unreal.

# CHAPTER 9

Loma closed his eyes and waited for it to happen. The pain would go away and there would be nothing. It would mean that the drug had taken over his body, his thinking and his feeling, and none of it would be his own. A thin sweat covered his skin and Loma clenched his hands into tight, bony fists because the waiting was terrible.

"When the pain starts easing up let me know. I'll put on the bandage."

God, thought Loma, God — And if I open my eyes, I will see the ceiling, he said to himself. It will be spinning on an off-center axis. Something brushed his arm.

"Gee," said the girl. "Did I hurt you? The way you jumped — "

She didn't say any more. She didn't know what to say to a face with eyes like a goat and the thin features drawn with disgust.

She stepped away from the chair. She said, "Gee," again, to Spinner this time, and "What's the matter with him? All I did was..."

"Never mind him."

Loma could hear that Spinner was no longer close to the chair, but somewhere in back.

"Come here," Spinner said to the girl.

Then Loma couldn't make out the words, just something indistinct But they were there, to the side. He could open his eyes and see.

"All right — " Loma heard, and then he heard movement.

Loma did not open his eyes.

And then, "Here," said the girl, but Loma opened his eyes abruptly to stare at the ceiling as if that could shut out all sound.

It didn't spin, not yet, but a bulge was moving from one end of the surface across to the other. Now! It was spinning, slow and ponderous, but Loma already knew it would soon get faster.

Why didn't they make a sound? The silence was like no air and nothing to breathe. A sound, any sound, even the traveling bulge on the ceiling might make a sound. There would be a dry, inhuman sound to distract from Loma's listening. Loma tensed, hearing Spinner. It was a deep-throated breath from Spinner.

The drug spinning his blood, and the room —

Then Loma screamed. "No!"

They turned at the sound and saw Loma staring up with neck rearing back and his hands in the chair like two clamps.

Spinner had been drinking water and was going to hand the glass back to the girl when Loma screamed.

"Loma, you all right?" Spinner was by the chair, anxious. "You got pain? Didn't the pills work?" and Spinner touched Loma's arm.

Loma relaxed at the touch and when he turned his face toward Spinner it was hard to believe that he had screamed. He said, "It doesn't hurt. I'm fine now."

He sat very still now, the way he usually sat, except that his eyes moved a lot He looked at everything in the room, at Spinner, at the girl by the sink.

"Bring me some scissors," said Spinner.

She brought them and stayed close to Spinner, watching him cut off the sock.

"Little girl," said Loma. "Do you have any milk?"

They both looked at him, startled. There had almost been banter in Loma's voice.

"The pills," he said. "My stomach. Some milk would calm my stomach," he said.

The girl looked at Spinner and Spinner was watching Loma's face. Then he said, "Go get him some milk."

The girl went to the icebox and got a bottle of milk. Spinner was frowning.

"Little girl," said Loma. He took the bottle from her. "Are you going to ask me whether I've had enough?"

There was an obscene taunt in his voice. Loma had made no move except to reach for the bottle, but the girl drew back. She stood close to Spinner and was afraid to look at the man in the chair.

"Gee — " The word didn't sound right even to her. "Is he — is he safe?"

Loma suddenly laughed — like a goat, thought Spinner, only louder.

"Safe? You say safe?" Loma leaned forward then and when he turned his ankle too much his face gave a start. He changed it into a grin. "You couldn't be safer, little girl," and there was no laugh in his voice any more. His eyes started to wander, but they kept coming back to the girl and the look was vicious.

"All right," said Spinner. "Just hold still now."

He started to cut strips of tape and put them up along Loma's ankle to make a Gibson boot. He did it fast. He was nervous. Loma was holding still but he kept blinking his eyes. They had a fever glitter. And Loma was still smiling.

"Little girl," he said, "would you give me that milk again?" It was next to his chair, where he had put it. "You couldn't be safer, little girl. All I want is some milk."

Spinner was almost finished. One more strip. He was rushing.

"Loma," he said, "you're losing your grip." He stood up, ready to take Loma out of the chair.

Loma turned his face toward Spinner and there was a soft smile on the face. The whole movement was soft.

"My grip," said Loma, "is the last thing that goes. Show me your hand." He held out his own, and his smile gentle as ever. "You see?" he went on, and suddenly Spinner's wrist was caught in a surprising vise which shot excruciating pain up Spinner's arm. And all the while Loma was smiling.

Spinner tried to yank free, but it made no difference, and then Loma was talking again, "Little girl, I want you to ask me — "

"You crazy dog!" Spinner started and hauled out to slam Loma's face when he saw the face change and for an instant it held him as if charmed by the eye of a snake.

Then everything broke.

The clubfoot jammed hard into Spinner's middle, everything gagged, everything froze, and the last thing Spinner knew was a sense of bursting with pain and of having no breath. Even his rage didn't help him move. It just kept him awake so that he could hear.

She made a scream, very short and cut off, and then nothing. A strong buzzing in Spinner's ears kept him apart and far away and the rest of the room was far away because Spinner saw only gray and white shapes that kept coming apart.

He heard the girl gasp, and then she started to whimper. She did this forever, while no other sound mattered. Perhaps Loma was talking, whispering — Spinner heard, "... you couldn't be safer, little girl. The scissors — "

Then Spinner felt sick.

He was without any strength, but the room was much clearer now, and very static. Loma was in his chair with his legs out on the footstool. The girl was standing next to the chair, and she wasn't moving, but she was rigid. Spinner could not make out clearly how it was done but Loma had her in some kind of grip and it kept her still. She was whimpering.

The static look of the scene was an illusion. It had to do with the rigid cramp which lay like a giant knot inside Spinner and with the pain that kept him from moving. It made a nightmare out of the thing he saw, a nightmare that trembled with force.

Loma was talking all the time, a fast and monotonous sound which gained its intensity from the low key he forced into his voice. And the fast and monotonous sound seemed even more charged when Loma moved. His leg with the black chunk of his deformed foot came around slowly, coiled slowly around the girl so that she couldn't move.

He let go of her with his hands; he had the scissors in one hand and with the other hand he wasn't doing anything yet.

"Little girl," said Loma, fast and monotonous, "look, you couldn't be safer. Look, you're standing up and I'm sitting here. Look, you couldn't be safer — "

Her hands were over her mouth and she was too afraid to make any sound. Her sweater had been moved up at the waist, showing white nylon. Loma watched it It was slippery and breathing. "I won't touch it," Loma said, "I won't touch it — " and his free hand waved around aimlessly, ready to settle somewhere but still without aim.

Loma mumbled to himself and every so often gave her a smile. And he said, "Little girl," over and over. "Little girl. For a little girl your shape is all wrong, like a bad joke — " Then he hesitated and looked at her sideways. "Is it real?" he said and his hand stopped waving around. His hand came down on the little cone of her breast and sat there like a bug with five legs.

Then Loma started to laugh. It was a high, anxious sound and only the rhythm reminded Spinner of laughter. His hand twisted, he had the scissors, and when the girl screamed it sounded like Loma's laughter.

There was now a round hole in the sweater, open over the tip of the cone, and the nylon showed shiny and white.

"Shut up," said Loma. His hand slapped the girl hard over the mouth. "White," he said. "I don't remember it white — " And when the girl gagged on his slap Loma did it again. He cut a hole and then dropped the scissors.

Spinner had started to crawl with an effort that made him faint. Loma is out of his mind, he was thinking, Loma is out — Spinner, on hands and knees, fell on his face and fought to keep the black out of his eyes.

"White," said Loma, "I remember it darker — " He sounded more urgent now, but Spinner didn't hear the words. Spinner thought he himself might go insane, straining and fighting to see.

The girl was pressed down on her knees and nearly unconscious with fright Her head hung back and Loma's grip on her waist made her arch. It looked as if Loma were clinging to her and Spinner could hear him again, his voice like a terrible wail. "Please, please, little girl — please ask me. Please — "

By the time Spinner was up and close enough to them Loma had dropped the girl to the floor. She looked boneless there, and when Spinner pulled her up and hoisted her on the couch she still was like that Then she opened her eyes and saw Spinner. Her face screwed up and she started to cry. A little girl now Spinner thought he should give her a blanket. But there wasn't any. He turned away to find Loma, because now he had to decide about him. Kill him, maybe, for the weird and threatening thing he had done, for what he might want to do next.

Loma was in his chair. He was not even looking at Spinner. He wasn't looking at anything, but had the bottle of milk in both hands, drinking from it with long, even pulls. Milk ran over his face.

He dropped the bottle when Spinner came up, and lay back. Loma's face was exhausted: He barely looked at Spinner and gave a faint smile.

"Don't," he said. "I'm only pretending." Then he fainted.

# CHAPTER 10

When Spinner carried Loma back to the car it had started to rain.

Spinner walked quickly, in spite of the ache in his middle, walking bent, as a man does in the rain. Loma was limp and light in his arms. He put him into the back of the car, bending him so he fit on the seat and his injured leg would lie steady. He had an impulse to loosen the collar around Loma's neck, but when he touched the skin there he changed his mind. He got into the front seat and drove away. He watched the windshield wipers wave back and forth, a smear and a click and a smear and a click. The rain made no sound; he heard only the wipers clicking and the car making a whine. Spinner rubbed the side of his face and then his shoulder. The air was damp and his shoulder ached.

Spinner took out a cigarette and smoked. He kept moving it from one part of his mouth to the other. It didn't seem to fit anywhere. He held the cigarette in his hand but it interfered with his driving. He threw it out and tried to feel as he had before, pretending it was a commonplace trip, from here to there.

How long would Loma sleep? Spinner slowed down a little, because of the rain, and wondered. Then he slowed even more.

Without Loma, Spinner did not know where to go.

The gray morning came. Spinner's throat was raw from smoking, and no matter how he had turned himself under the wheel he had felt stiff and uncomfortable. He had pulled off the road under some bushes which made wet sounds on the side of the car. Sometimes, with a gust of wind, a thick splatter hit the top of the hood. The drops scurried and then flattened out into broad puddles. Spinner turned to the back seat, but nothing had changed there. Loma slept in a small heap, his small hands folded and the face very quiet. There was sweat on the forehead, a moist sheen which Spinner kept looking for as if it were the only sign of life in the man. Spinner no longer knew how he felt about Loma, a small man with small limbs and the clubfoot like a gross thickening which didn't belong. What belonged was the tired mouth and the moisture on Loma's forehead.

Spinner fingered the limp pack in his hand and wondered whether to smoke his last cigarette.

"Why did you stop?"

There was no change in the voice and Spinner was startled.

"How long have you been here?"

"A few hours," said Spinner.

He turned around and saw Loma sit up. Loma took a white handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his face and his forehead, and then his hands. There was nothing left of what Spinner had seen a short while ago.

"You want to sit in front?"

Loma nodded and Spinner helped him out of the car and into the front seat. Loma seemed less concerned with his ankle but he breathed deeply for a few moments. It had hurt when he had moved to the front. They both sat and looked out. There were no hills now and the fields spread wide in the misty light, a gray, loveless sight. Spinner took out the cigarette he had left.

"What road is this?" Loma asked.

"I went to the cutoff before Fort Timber. This lane goes back to it that way." Spinner dragged on his cigarette, exhaled slowly. He looked out the window and added, "This is east. The white streak on the sky."

Loma nodded and said nothing.

"How's your foot?" Spinner asked.

They both looked down at the bandaged ankle. The skin bulged where the tape ended.

"It's too tight," said Spinner. "I'll have to change it"

He lifted the foot up on the seat and loosened one side of the Gibson boot He stopped when Loma gasped.

"Bad?"

"Yes, it hurts," said Loma.

"We can wait Take another pill and we wait for fifteen minutes."

"No," said Loma.

No comment, no gesture that went beyond the simple remark.

"Look," said Spinner. "You take it here in the car and you can pass out all you want."

"No," said Loma.

The lack of contact was between them again and Spinner felt irritated.

"No little girls here." He sounded vicious. "Take the pill, and..."

"I can't," said Loma.

"You've said that"

"You think it makes a difference whether I'm alone or in company?"

It must be very bad, Spinner thought. Loma never put any feeling into his words, nor did the restraint seem an effort But this time his voice had been uneven and he had tried to cover it by grating his throat.

The swelling was shiny and dark, with pressure lines where the tape had ended, and while Spinner was retaping the support Loma sat very still and did not breathe.

When it was done Spinner opened the window, because it felt very hot in the car.

Loma sat back and closed his eyes. He said, "I'd like one of your cigarettes."

Spinner turned his head to look at Loma, but the man's face was immediately closed.

"I didn't know you smoked," said Spinner.

"Do you have one?"

"None left," said Spinner. "But the next..."

Loma looked at Spinner with a quick turn of the head. "The next town, you mean? Stop and buy cigarettes?" Spinner didn't have time to say anything because Loma went on, unusually sharp. "You didn't have enough? Last night was par for the course?"

"You blaming me for that? Those pills knock you out so hard you don't remember?"

"I don't care about blame. But I want you to keep in mind..."

"And the whole point of that thing last night? To get you some help for that busted foot, that you don't remember?"

"It feels much better. What I want you to keep in mind..."

"That's all? That's all you can say about it?" Spinner asked.

Loma didn't answer immediately. He looked at Spinner as if he were trying to decide what Spinner might want Then he said, "Are you thinking that last night, whatever you had in mind, was all right and worth it because of this?" He nodded at his foot on the floorboard. "That's not good enough. You did it for no good reason."

"No good reason — "

"You don't think that girl's going to keep still?"

Spinner recovered himself and said, "Listen, you bastard. I knock myself out..."

"I didn't ask you. And from now on remember they're not just looking for us; they also know where to look!"

"That kid was no trouble until you lost your head."

"It won't happen again, but she's trouble now."

Maybe she wasn't, thought Spinner, but he didn't say any more about it, and followed Loma's directions.

They stayed on country roads most of the time and they no longer headed for St. Louis. They were still going north, but toward one side of the city where no towns showed on the map. Loma didn't explain the place but said it was a hide-out Spinner didn't ask any questions, because as long as it meant sticking with Loma he would go along. He never questioned that part of his moves, because by now, and without quite knowing it, that part was the only thing in which he still had a choice.

# CHAPTER 11

They drove, they ate, and then Spinner needed to sleep. He drove by Loma's directions, he bought food in a town and then walked back to the car which he had parked near the outskirts, and at noon his head swam so much he pulled the car into the parking lot of a busy restaurant on the highway. Loma gave no argument and Spinner slept sitting behind the wheel.

Then Spinner drove again, feeling as dull as the day. "Stop the car," said Loma. "We'd better change plates."

"What?"

"We have to take the main drag for a while, so we'll change plates."

Spinner slowed the car. Loma told him where to find the set of plates, under the mat in the trunk. After Spinner had exchanged them Loma told him to throw the old ones away.

They drove again and nothing changed. The light was the same gray as in the morning, rain threatened, and they didn't talk. A car overtook them and Spinner, almost automatically, pressed down the gas not to fall behind.

"Stay at sixty," said Loma.

Spinner said nothing, because it would have meant an argument He did not want to talk, so he slowed back to sixty and watched the car disappear into a dip in the distance. He felt as dull as the day....

A little while later they passed the car where a highway cop had stopped it to the side of the pavement Loma said nothing about it and that too made Spinner feel irritated. He started to whistle and drove.

"Slow down more," said Loma.

Then Spinner saw Loma sit up.

"You see it?" said Loma.

Spinner had seen it, but it hadn't meant anything. He had sat wrapped securely in the dull task of driving, forgetting why he was driving and who he was, too tried to act his new role.

"Easy now," said Loma. His hands were on the dashboard. "A roadblock."

It was far away, but one of the cruisers had the red light on top revolving, and of the two cars stopped for inspection one had the trunk lid open.

Spinner cursed. It had nothing to do with having sat at the wheel half asleep, because now he was thinking of nothing except what to do now. He wanted to do something violent, something to keep him from racing the car or cross the ditch or jolt the car into the fields.

There was nowhere else to go. Fields, a farm, or a straight, slick road up to the roadblock. The red light on top of the cruiser got brighter.

"Turn back," said Loma. He was sitting as before, his back straight, but leaning forward.

"They'll see it. How about that farm?"

"Turn back at their drive, but slow, now."

"It's too damn close to that bunch up there, Loma."

Loma held out his hand but kept looking straight "Give me the gun."

Spinner gave it to him without any question.

The car moved fast and in the only direction that was open, straight toward the roadblock. It looked unconcerned from a distance, like all mechanical motion, and when the car slowed, turned into the drive, it rolled toward the farmhouse like any car going home. The car stood there for a moment while nothing moved, just the fast, red wink from the light shooting through breaks in the hedge.

There were rain-heavy trees, the damp farmhouse, and a dark barn further on. The farmer stood in the hall of his house and looked through the glass in the door.

"Loma, you stay in the car and I go in alone."

"Do it right," said Loma. "That's all."

Spinner didn't answer. He reached into the back and pulled up Loma's overcoat.

"Around your legs, like a blanket And then take a shirt or something, a towel — " Spinner pulled Loma's small canvas bag out of the back — "and fix that arm. A bad leg or the clubfoot will give you away that much sooner, but a bad arm..."

"Go in," said Loma. "I'll be ready."

Spinner got out of the car and went up to the house, where the farmer was standing behind the door. Spinner saw him. Then the door opened.

"You want something?" said the farmer.

He stood in front of his door and watched Spinner come up to the porch.

"I'm sorry to bother you," Spinner started, and he tried to smile. "My friend and I..."

"What?"

He could have used any other word. He had only said something to show his dislike. He was dark and thin, his patched overalls much too large for him.

Spinner came closer and said, "My friend's in the car there and I've got to get to a doctor. Can I use your phone? He's in a bad way — " Spinner felt himself smile. He felt his smile begging the man to help.

"What's he got?"

Spinner's smile stayed, growing stiff, covering the hate he felt for the man. "He broke his arm and the pain is getting bad."

Spinner thought the farmer was thinking and said nothing for a while.

The eaves dripped slowly and something turned in the dark barn.

"I got wood in back," said the farmer. "You can pick a right piece and make him a splint."

The red light from the highway kept flashing behind the hedge and each time the flash came it looked like small sparks through the leaves, small pin sparks that stung into Spinner.

"Next to the barn," said the farmer and stepped back, closing the door.

Spinner did not think any more. He was through the door, and stood close to the farmer, holding him tight by the front He heard his own voice like a dry scrape in his throat "I need help, man, I need help bad, so don't stop me. You hear? Don't stop me — "

The other man's face had changed from sudden shock to growing wonder. He wasn't scared yet, but puzzled, with the fear growing slowly.

"Where's your phone? Come on!" Spinner gave him a shove.

The sudden movement and the change to an understandable sentence broke the spell for the farmer. The phone. He understood that "This way," he said, and walked down the dark hall. Spinner was walking behind him, out of sight, and the farmer said, "I want pay for that call. It's fifteen cents if you're calling the next town."

The kitchen was as dank as the rest of the house. A can was open on top of the stove and two dirty pots stood there. Spinner went to the phone and when he had the operator he asked for a doctor, any doctor. It took long enough for Spinner to feel the shock coming over him, remembering how he could have ruined the whole delicate plan, everything, because he disliked this man and was not going to take it — couldn't take it! Spinner stared out the window at the barn and the fields beyond that. And then he heard a new sound. Sirens. The sound grew and Spinner had to clench his teeth. It was a sound and a waiting just like the first time he had listened this way, back in the mud where he had found the cripple, and when he made the switch.

The switch was over. There was no wish to run, but a growing coldness now that kept him immune. He was learning what Loma did, learning it step by step without knowing it...

"... Yes, are you the doctor?"

"Doctor Calvin," said the instrument.

"Doctor Calvin, I'm in a bad fix with a friend. His arm's broken, bad, and I'd like you to come right away. I'm..."

"Broken arm? He can walk, can't he?"

"Listen, I want you to come get him. I'm out — What's the name here?" he asked the farmer. "Come on, hurry it!"

"Ransom."

"The Ransom place," Spinner said to the phone. "You know where?"

"Bring him in, please. I can't leave my office and in a case like..."

"You refusing the case?"

"Is it compound? Does the bone protrude?" Spinner heard, but his impatience made the conversation lose all meaning and his mind was skipping around madly, thinking of other ways.

"No. We'll be over," he said and hung up. Then he called the operator and asked for an ambulance service, fast It would have been good to ride through that roadblock with a physician, but the ambulance might even be more impressive....

"... will he there right quick," said the mortician who ran the ambulance service, and Spinner hung up. He reached into his pocket and found a halfdollar coin.

"I owe you thirty cents." He held out the coin.

"I got no change." The farmer took the coin and stuck it into his pocket.

Spinner left without saying a word. The farmer was no longer a sour man who revolted him, but only something he had finished with. Next, the shortest way from the house to Loma.

He could see Loma in the car — his arm wrapped in a towel, his shirt made into a sling, and his cautious posture favoring one side. Spinner walked up and then gaped. The man with the sling wasn't Loma, but with a face so terribly old that the smooth, black hair looked wrong and out of place. The face showed tired sagging and a worn look of pain.

"Loma — "

"I took out my teeth." His voice hissed, like some old mechanical gadget. And then: "What did you arrange? Hurry up, the farmer is coming."

Spinner turned, saw the tall man stand on the porch, watching them.

"I couldn't get a doctor but an ambulance is coming. Maybe five minutes. He's rushing it." Spinner looked at the porch, saw the farmer come closer. "Loma, listen to me. Once in town we're going to play it all the way through. You're going to see that doctor."

Loma's eyes were closed. He nodded. He did it carefully and in obvious pain. "We're splitting up."

"Once we get — " Spinner stopped, put his hands on the door, hard. "What did you say?"

"Shut up. He's close."

"You son of a bitch, listen to me," Spinner's voice was a whisper. "We don't split! Before I let you get away — " He trailed off, watching the farmer. The farmer had gone to the hedge and stopped there. "And how in hell you expect to drive? Look at you sweat. You're trembling. The pain's killing you — "

"I'm seeing the doctor. You can join me there. Better not to cross the roadblock together."

"Like hell. I'm not letting you out of my sight!"

"Ambulance coming," said the farmer, and walked up to the car.

Spinner felt like hitting the farmer, bashing him hard into that miserable, glum face.

"Can you drive a car?" Loma was asking. He was looking at the farmer.

A long, black hearse swung into the lane. It moved silently, and the red light on the front did not blink.

"Sure," the farmer answered. He walked to the ambulance.

"What was that for? Why'd you ask him?" Spinner was frantic, time pushing him.

"In case you don't get through," Loma said. "I'll need the car." He shivered with pain, but none of that reached his clear, inhuman thinking.

"Loma, I'll kill you first I'm sticking. I'll spill all I know. Those cops are two minutes from here. You son of a bitch, I can — "

"Why should you?" said Loma. "Your way, you're in for murder. You have a chance my way."

The man from the ambulance had opened the doors in back and was coming over, smiling. Spinner ripped open the door of the car and picked Loma up. Loma was light as a ghost, and could disappear like a ghost Spinner wouldn't allow himself to think about that. There was only one thing to hold to. Stick with Loma.

He hoisted Loma into the back of the ambulance while the mortician was pattering. "Yes sir, that's the way, let me give you — Ah, you got it. Yes sir, in no time at all you'll be right as rain. Are you going to come along too? Ah, I see you are," he said when Spinner got into the back. Then the mortician started closing the doors.

"Leave them open," said Loma.

Spinner started to climb into the back of the ambulance when Loma said, "I left my grip in the car. Go get it for me."

Simple enough. Simple way to get Spinner out.

Then Loma whispered, "The gun. It's under the seat"

They needed the gun, but the farmer stood near the car, watching. Spinner jumped from the ambulance and ran to the car. He heard Loma call to the farmer to get him away from the car — and then Spinner found the gun under the seat There were no more tricks left in Loma, because he needed the gun and Spinner had it in his pocket He also picked up the grip and went back to the ambulance, to ride with Loma.

"Start driving," he said to the mortician and jumped into the back of the hearse. The farmer was walking away, folding some bills into his pocket Spinner paid no attention. He looked at Loma once and then turned away. He held himself by the hinges of the open door because the hearse would start moving now.

"What — "

"Quiet," said Loma.

"What in hell — "

"I told you. I might need the car," said Loma.

The ambulance started rolling. Spinner held on, swaying, then got his balance and let go his hold. Then a touch, just a touch between his shoulders without any force or speed but right enough, decisive enough to make Spinner lose balance and fall through the open doors of the ambulance and hit the lane.

He rolled for a moment, stopped, reared up to shout But he couldn't The ambulance was in the turn and to shout and run after it would mean they would look up at the roadblock and want to know why he was calling after a hearse.

His way, it could mean murder. Loma's way, he had a chance.

Spinner walked down the lane, brushing the dirt off his pants.

# CHAPTER 12

He had hitched a ride at the end of the lane and he had driven through the roadblock with no trouble at all. At the roadblock they had a minute description of the man they wanted. He was fifteen, blond, and wanted for hit-and-run driving.

All the way into town Spinner sat in his seat with arms folded, clamping his hands under his arms. He had the shakes. All the tension and straining for nothing — except to show once again that Loma came out on top.

When Spinner got off at the doctor's he was not shaking any more. He did not look like the man in the lane any more. If Loma was gone, he would find him and tear out his brains. If Loma was here, that would be even better.

Spinner saw the car then. It stood in the lot next to the doctor's office, half hidden by a garage. Loma must have told the farmer to do that Loma, half dead with pain, had taken one of his little precautions.

The waiting room was the glassed-in porch of the house. There was nobody there. Spinner walked to the door where a sign hung saying _Doctor In_. He heard nothing. He knocked. When he knocked a second time the door jerked open and a pale young man in a white coat stared out at him.

"What? What do you want?"

That was Doctor Calvin. Spinner remembered the same tone from the telephone.

"Your patient there." Spinner saw Loma sitting on a couch. "He's a friend of mine. I'd like to come in."

"I'll be through shortly. When I'm done you can..."

"Let him in," said Loma,

Doctor Calvin frowned. Then Loma said it again, exactly like the first time, and Calvin still didn't know how to take it Spinner saw that Loma had the same effect on other people.

Calvin let Spinner pass, closed the door, and came into the room with hard little steps.

"Are you the one who phoned and told me this man had a broken arm?"

"That's right."

"There is no damaged arm. There is a damaged ankle."

"Well — "

"Precisely. And you thought I'd come out to that farm on your diagnosis."

"It turns out," said Spinner, "the patient is worse than I said over the phone. Maybe you should have come." He stared at Loma, hating the man, not knowing what he could do with his hate.

Doctor Calvin walked up to Loma, and they seemed to be continuing something that started before Spinner came in.

"You are in no position to argue the point If you think such heroics will help you to imagine that the damage is less severe than is actually the case — "

"Just go ahead, as I said."

Loma sounded different without the teeth in his mouth but the coldness was there as always, and the impersonal tone which made the listener into no more than an ear. It made Doctor Calvin shout at Spinner.

"You talk to him. The leg needs a cast and he refuses an anesthetic!"

Spinner looked at Loma and then away again, quickly. He shrugged and said, "He's your patient, Doctor Calvin."

Doctor Calvin pursed his mouth but said nothing. He sat down at his desk and tapped a spatula into his palm. It made fat little smacks.

"I'm not in the habit of arguing with laymen on matters like this." He spoke quietly and with an air meant to convey his detachment It made him look mean. "As a professional — as your physician," he said, "I refuse to assume responsibility for results limited by your lay — "

"Just put on the cast, will you, Doctor Calvin?"

"I was speaking to the patient"

"All right, but I heard you too."

Doctor Calvin got up and went back to the couch.

"Perhaps this will clear it up for you. I don't have adequate restraints on that table for anyone who's going to get your kind of pain. Does that make more sense to you?"

Loma sighed and looked at his hands. His new features kept the meaning of the sigh unclear. He said, "I'll pass out, probably. That should help you."

Neither Spinner nor Calvin knew what to say next. Calvin turned on his heel and went to the far end of the room. He started preparing the plaster.

"Put him on the table," he said without turning.

Spinner did that Loma seemed now a very small man, frail built, with eyes that wouldn't tell what was behind them. Spinner put him down on the narrow steel table and wondered why the pad on top was so thin. Because nobody lies here and is conscious, he thought, so the hardness doesn't matter. He said, "Loma, you know what happened?" He mumbled it "The roadblock is off. They got their man."

For a moment it looked as if Loma would spring off the table. Then he closed his eyes and lay still. His eyelids had a small tremble.

"They were looking for a hit-and-run driver. A fifteen-year-old kid."

Loma didn't blink, didn't move. If Spinner had hoped for some sign of anger from Loma, anger over the wasted effort, none came.

Loma said, "Good." Nothing else.

Doctor Calvin put down his dish with the plaster and laid out bandage and instruments. Spinner kept looking at that and wondered what kind of a pain it would have to be before Loma's cold mind would boil over. Or what kind of a poison the doctor would give him and what impossible stresses would show in Loma's face.

Spinner stood behind Loma's head so that if Loma should start to squirm Spinner could hold him down on the table.

Doctor Calvin cleaned the leg and the foot with a wet swab and then he laid out the leg the way he wanted it. Spinner wasn't looking at Loma but he felt the table make a small move.

"No anesthetic?" said Doctor Calvin.

Loma shook his head.

Then Calvin started the bandage. It meant he had to position the foot.

How Loma kept still is hard to know, but a short while later his eyelids fluttered. With a long sound of air from his throat he seemed to flatten out on the table.

Doctor Calvin let go of the foot Loma knew it and Loma could hear. There was the faint clink of glass, and Doctor Calvin became busy with something.

Spinner watched the syringe suck up the clear liquid. He heard Loma's breathing, a thin sound which could almost talk. The thin sweat was on Loma's face, on the white forehead. Loma did not move, did not blink, but his eyes were suddenly open and staring up into Spinner's face. The eyes were no longer blank but open in a way which Spinner had never seen. Anything Loma would say after this wouldn't mean much.

Then it was gone because Loma did not have the strength to keep his eyes open. But he could still hear, through a sick fog.

"What's in that hypo?" Spinner's voice came from directly above him.

And from the end of the table, where his foot was screaming with pain, came Doctor Calvin's voice like a thin bark.

"No more interference. I will not be responsible unless this patient, like any other case, receives adequate preparation."

Loma heard, but he was past action. The pain and the fear left him immobile, with all his remaining strength glued to the voices, all of him drained except for the strength he might gain if he sucked in the sound of the voices.

"I asked you, Doctor."

"Stay at your end, please."

"He can't stand it. Drugs do terrible things to him."

"When I need your advice..."

There was movement, movement, and then a thin sound of glass breaking on the floor.

"Now get to work on that foot" Spinner's voice was harsh.

Doctor Calvin had not yet touched the foot again when Loma let go and passed out.

• • •

It was warm inside the cast. The soreness warmed it Loma moved his foot on the floorboard, just to feel again that the pain was so much less than before. Then he looked at Spinner behind the wheel, then at the night outside the car.

They hadn't talked at all since they started driving again. Loma hunched over, arms folded, and looked out at the night. Without turning he noticed how Spinner drove. Loma wondered why Spinner didn't seem tired. He noticed that Spinner looked at him once and then front again. Loma noticed even the least important of Spinner's motions; he rubbed his nose, he swallowed a few times. Spinner said nothing, looked blank, but Loma knew he was present. It has to do with the pain, he thought, the relief.

"How is it?" said Spinner.

Loma was surprised. "Fine. Much better."

A while later Spinner said, "Why don't you put your teeth back in?"

"Oh, yes," said Loma. He took them out of his pocket and put them in. Then he said, "You have time to buy cigarettes, Spinner?"

Spinner gave him one. After holding it for a while Loma opened the window a crack and threw the cigarette out. He rarely felt like smoking, but this time he had thought he had wanted to smoke. But the unsettled feeling had to do with the foot, it had to be that because it was the only thing different. Perhaps exchange a few words, for distraction.

"We can make it by morning," said Loma. "Can you drive through?"

"Fine with me," said Spinner.

"Uh — Spinner."

"Yes?"

"At the office — why did you do it?"

"What you talking about?" said Spinner.

"I'm talking about the drug. I heard you and the doctor."

"Oh, that."

Spinner might have said more, but Loma didn't think he had made himself clear and had to say more. It was nonsense, but for the moment, to be talking was important.

"What I mean is, there was no good reason for you — "

"I don't know what you heard there," said Spinner. "But Calvin was going to give you a shot I told him not to."

"Yes. Yes, I know that part." Loma looked out past the beam from the headlights. "But you did it for no good reason — "

Loma let it go: it was nonsense anyway. Also, he no longer wanted to hear whatever Spinner might answer.

# CHAPTER 13

When morning came they had both come back to their old ways with each other. They hadn't talked any more, and in the silence Spinner had become glum again. He was gnawing the inside of his cheek and his eyes squinted as if there were something to see where there was nothing. And Loma, as most of the time when he didn't talk, was hardly a presence at all.

They had made a wide swing around St Louis and gone into the hills. The sun came up clear, hurting Spinner's eyes.

"Take the road that goes into those woods," said Loma.

"How much longer, wherever you're going?"

"An hour, perhaps."

"What is it, what kind of a place?"

"A resort," said Loma.

"We're going to hide out in a resort?" But Spinner should have known better than to ask. Loma didn't answer, and Spinner was too tired to bother with any more questions.

The road through the woods was new and well kept, but if there were a resort nearby it was not advertised at all. No signs, no traffic, only the road through the woods. Once the car passed a small lake and a rowboat was pulled up where the water came close to the road, but there was no sign of a human.

"This resort," said Spinner. "Does anybody go there?"

"Yes."

"Where's the traffic?"

"There are several roads going up to it," Loma said. "Quite a number."

And at the end of those roads, none of which showed anywhere, was a deserted farmhouse, or a house looking deserted with blinds drawn and a closed garage which had doors going both ways. Something like that, thought Spinner. And for good measure an old mountaineer on the front stoop. He would be chewing a blade of grass, maybe spit tobacco at a fly that kept pestering him, and across his lap he would have a shotgun. The image had become set in Spinner's mind when the next turn in the road showed the cabin on the side of a hill, a squat little building with a chinked chimney and bushes growing up to the windows. But the road never turned that way. It swung off again and the cabin disappeared from view.

"Hour is almost up," said Spinner.

"I know."

Spinner was dead tired. He felt he was awake only where his palms touched the wheel, where the sole of his foot pressed the pedal, and where the road and the trees moved past his eyes.

"You're passing it," he heard.

Loma had said it twice. The cutoff was as good as the main road, but it climbed more. Spinner had to back up, swing hard to the left, and once on the road he could see nothing from the car but tall woods and a curve ahead. Each successive curve turned the other way, and then came the last one. The road seemed to splay as it dipped into the plateau and for a moment Spinner kept driving as if he hadn't seen the change; the tennis courts to the left, the lawn with the benches to the right, and the golf course which leaned up the side of a shorn hill in the distance.

"Not there," said Loma. "The big house. The one with the porch."

The big house with the porch was a small hotel.

"Pull up to the stairs," said Loma.

Spinner pulled up and looked. There were a few guests on the porch, mostly men. They wore colored shirts, and were reading papers or talking over drinks. Then a younger one came out with a tennis racket and the man with him explained about foot position for a good backhand. They walked past the car. A sign tacked to the porch railing read _Movie Tonight: Lonely Love_.

Loma rolled down his window and watched the man come down the stairs. A bellhop was following him, but without that signature the man still would have looked like the host. He was dressed in a business suit with a carnation in the lapel and in his hand he carried a pencil. He came down the stairs smiling his happiness, and his free hand made eager little pats across the thin hair.

"Gentlemen!" he began and then he saw Loma. His face became more reserved and he said, "Oh."

"You have room?" said Loma.

The host looked from Loma to Spinner and back.

"He's with me," said Loma.

"Oh."

"Well?"

"Uh — of course. If you say so. It's just that I didn't know..."

"I'm working for St Louis."

"I know, I heard that But I didn't know you were coming here. What I heard..."

"Right now I need a place, Betman."

"Uh — how hot are..."

"I don't know if I am. That's why I need a place."

"All right," said Betman, not wanting to hear any more. He tapped the pencil against his front teeth and looked into space. Then he said, "Number Seven. You can have Number Seven." Then he stepped back, waiting for Loma to come out.

"Show me the place. If it's what we need — "

"Very well." Betman walked ahead of the car.

Spinner followed slowly, past a croquet game on a lawn and down a small road with cottages visible in the woods. Loma was known, apparently. They hadn't expected him, they weren't happy to see him, but Loma seemed to command a certain respect.

Number Seven was the last cabin at the end of a clearing. Several roads left the clearing, Betman held the door of the car while Spinner carried Loma into the small house. There were two rooms, a bathroom, and a carport with a door into the cabin.

"Is there a phone?" asked Loma.

There was a phone. There wasn't the right kind of chair for Loma, and Betman promised to get one immediately. Loma paid a large sum in advance and sent Betman away.

There wasn't much for Spinner to carry in from the car, and then he sat on the bed, rubbing his face. Loma stood by the window on one leg.

"I'm going to sleep," said Spinner.

"Before you do, see if that phone will reach here."

Spinner brought the phone to the window and went back to the bed. He wasn't even interested in what Loma was going to do next Loma couldn't walk, and he couldn't drive. That's all Spinner thought about for the moment — and sleep. He stretched out on the bed and thought about sleep. The trip was over, the strangeness was wearing off. Loma stood by the window on one leg and that too seemed commonplace. Spinner was no longer in touch with anything but the slow pleasure of sleep growing in his body. Loma was talking now, a talking bird on one leg by the window.

"... not alone," he was saying. "I'm staying here for the moment"

To whom would he tell this? Betman again?

"Send me your contact," Loma was saying. "I can't come in to St Louis."

Long distance, perhaps. His employer.

"No... As short a time as I can... Yes." He hung up.

At the hide-out, for as short a time as possible, and he wouldn't go to St Louis, at least not until they sent him another man!

Spinner sat up with a sudden shock, trying to focus.

"What!" he said. "What was that?"

"I was on the phone," said Loma. He had moved so that he half sat on the windowsill.

"I wasn't out," Spinner said. "If you think you're going..."

"What did you hear?"

Spinner got off the bed and walked to where Loma was. The tiredness stayed with him but the anger gave him a look of aliveness.

"You don't skip out," he said, close to Loma's face. "You and me stick till you're no good to me any more. No other way, do you hear?"

"Go to sleep," said Loma.

Spinner shouted, hoping to wake himself. "Do you hear?"

Loma didn't blink, but he moved his head a little.

"I told you right from the start, killer, just the way..."

"You want to know my plans?" said Loma.

Spinner nodded. He was surprised and could only nod.

"My job didn't run the way I had planned it I don't know how bad it turned out, or whether I'm covered."

"How about me?"

"I don't know about you. I'm telling you my plans, since you asked."

Spinner kept still, waiting.

"I'm staying here to see what develops. Until I know if they're looking for me, or just for you, I'm staying here."

"You son of a bitch." Spinner said it low and with heat, but, as he could have expected, he got no reaction from Loma Spinner said, "But that phone call. I heard..."

"You know my job was for St. Louis. I called them so they would know where I was. And the contact," he added, "is the man who brings me my money."

Spinner tried to think about Loma's answers, but things were slow in his head. He said, "Are you lying, Loma?" Spinner was hoping that was all he had to say to get an answer and no more doubt. He was very tired.

"I don't lie," said Loma.

Spinner believed him. He went back to the bed and sat down.

"No. Maybe not And as soon as I fall asleep you just as soon put a bullet through my head as give me the time of day."

He saw Loma reach into his belt and then, with the soft movements he had, Loma tossed the gun on the bed.

"There wouldn't be any good reason," he said. "Go to sleep."

Spinner fell asleep without having touched the gun.

# CHAPTER 14

He woke in a sweat and when he opened his eyes the sunlight slammed at him, making him curl over and away from the light He lay that way for a moment Then he jumped up.

The gun wasn't there, and Loma was gone.

Spinner didn't bother to look in the other room or to check the door to the carport, but ran to the front, where the sun beat down on the clearing. Two men on the opposite side looked up from their checkerboard when Spinner came out the door, making it crash against the side of the cabin.

He saw the tail end of the car stick out of the port but that didn't mean a thing. Not after the phone call Loma had made, even asking Spinner to get off the bed so he could reach him the telephone; bothering to explain himself — something Loma never did; performing the gesture with the gun tossed across the room, like a melodrama; and he, Spinner, too drugged with sleep or too stupid with trust to watch that man, to watch that machine of a man whose insides were so unknown to Spinner —

Over here."

Loma sat under a tree where the shadow seemed black. He was in a wheelchair. He was shaved, wore a fresh shirt, and his black hair, as always, was combed back smoothly. The empty goat eyes left Spinner to read his own meaning into the look.

"What time is it?" shouted Spinner.

It was stupid, both the question and the way he had shouted, but it helped a little.

Loma said, "I don't know."

Spinner walked to the tree and stooped when he got into the shadow.

"What did you say?"

"I said I don't know"

Spinner pulled a bench closer and sat down, feeling angry. He got out a cigarette, but the thought of smoke in his mouth made him throw it away. Maybe he should kick Loma's cast, crack it maybe. It would mean something violent done and Loma might scream. Hell, he wouldn't scream, not Loma. Loma would pass out, slip away, smooth and soundless. The way that ghost could make silence

"Well?" said Spinner. "What next?"

"When?" said Loma.

Spinner took a deep breath and crossed his arms. He concentrated on dipping his foot up and down over one knee and then he noticed how Loma moved his wheelchair away a little. Spinner stopped swinging his foot.

"I was too worn out to ask the right questions before," said Spinner. "Tell me again. What happens next?"

"I told you. I'm staying here for a while."

"Yes. I know. But how about me? Why keep me around?" Before Loma could answer Spinner said, "And don't tell me I can go where I please or some wash like that."

"I wasn't going to."

Spinner had nothing to answer and Loma went on.

"I'm here to see what develops. I told you that And when I know I can plan how to move next. As for you — " he swung his chair around with a push on the wheels — "I don't know how you are going to act That's why I want you in sight"

"You — you want me in sight?"

"Why are you surprised? You know more than you should."

It hadn't occurred to Spinner that Loma might think this way; as if normal cautions weren't the kind that Loma needed to worry about.

"Tell me, Loma. And if I go to the cops..."

"I didn't say that"

"You didn't have to. When you said I know more than I should..."

"Perhaps you think I've forgotten, Spinner, but I'm keeping in mind why you came along, and how you did it You came along to get in and that, most of the time, was behind everything you've been doing. But..."

"Most of the time? What in hell do you think I've been doing the rest of the time?"

"I don't know," said Loma. He looked away, but then turned back and talked as before. "It doesn't matter. It matters to me, though, that you must have forgotten what I told you. I can't give you an in. I don't know anybody."

"You're working," said Spinner, sounding vicious.

"I work alone."

"When you called St. Louis before..."

"I'll tell you again. I can't help you. And you don't understand, believe me. That's why I need to know what you are doing, because you're not listening to me and I can't predict you."

Spinner sat back and had the feeling of having been watched without knowing it For a moment it gave him a strange feeling of pleasure, that Loma had taken account of him, that he, Spinner, had all this time not been a blank to Loma. But the satisfaction didn't last very long, because what Loma had said was that Spinner was on his own, as in the beginning, as if Spinner had never met Loma at all. As if all this and what had gone before had been nothing.

"That's your side," said Spinner. He got up abruptly and stepped close to Loma's chair. "You called somebody in St. Louis."

"Yes."

"When is he coming?"

"Some time today."

"I'm going to meet him. You want me out of your hair, Loma, here's your chance."

"You can meet him."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. Just somebody they're going to send."

"It'll do. Anybody of flesh and blood will do, Loma." Spinner walked back to the cabin.

He used Loma's razor and then he took a shower. He didn't feel like getting back into his dirty clothes but he didn't have any others. Then he sat in the front room. From there he could see Loma under his tree. He didn't have to talk to him and he didn't have to suffer his silences. If there had been some money in Spinner's pocket he would have liked to buy himself something to eat. But it would have meant leaving his watching post. The last one maybe, because once Loma's contact showed up Spinner would make his pitch. He felt for a cigarette but forgot to light it. He had no pitch. All he had was intentions, but that wasn't going to stand in his way. Anybody with reasons like his behind him didn't need a pitch. Spinner didn't puzzle about where he had gotten his confidence, but he kept feeling that way as he watched Loma.

Nobody stopped where Loma sat A few times someone would walk past the tree and a few times someone nodded at Loma without waiting to see if he nodded back. A man with a blonde came by Spinner's cabin and he heard the blonde say, "You mean you know him, over there?"

"I'd just as soon not," the man said, and they talked about something else.

A warm pine odor blew into the cabin. Spinner leaned back in his chair and put his hands in back of his neck. But he couldn't see Loma that way. He leaned forward again and then he stood up.

The Cadillac looked out of place coming through the trees. Passing from light into shadow, the big body flashed on and off and then the car stopped under Loma's tree. A brown-haired girl was behind the wheel and a man with a glittering thread in his sports shirt got out of the car. He walked up to Loma, nodded, sat down. They didn't shake hands.

Spinner got up and licked his lips. He wished his shirt were clean. He walked to the tree with long steps and when he looked down at the two men he said, "That him, Loma?"

The man in the glittery shirt turned around and looked up at Spinner, his mouth open. His eyes showed a lot of white, and he had thick, black hair.

"You don't know much, do you?" he said, and when he started to laugh it was just a loud sound without mirth.

"Loma and me..." Spinner started, and the man stopped laughing.

"Is that the guy?" he said to Loma.

"Yes."

"Come back in five minutes, okay, boy?"

"Why?" said Spinner.

"Give us a moment," Loma said.

"Yeah. Say hello to precious over there," said the man. "She deserves the best"

Spinner ignored it and walked away.

"But watch out," the man called after him. "She's in a biting mood." Then he laughed again.

Her brown hair was curly and came down over her forehead. It made her eyes look very big. She watched Spinner with no special interest, but kept turning her head as he came around the car. The way she sat in the big car Spinner couldn't see much of her, except that she wore a white blouse, and that her arm was brown from the sun.

"Who is he?" said Spinner and nodded his head at the man with Loma.

"Some bum."

He didn't have patience for her troubles and her answer made him feel hard, just the way she had sounded.

"So what are you doing with him?"

"He pays high," she said. When she saw Spinner squint at that she started to laugh, a laugh with no interest in it.

They didn't talk any more and Spinner leaned against one front fender and smoked. He watched a buzzard making a turn over one of the hills.

"Who are you?" the girl said.

He didn't turn. He didn't want to hear her voice. It had a slight hoarseness in it, making him listen to it against his will. She got out of the car, walked over in front of him.

"Who are you?" she asked him again.

"I haven't got a cent," he answered.

"Now that you told me you can be crude, do you feel any better?"

He looked at her full length the first time. She was very attractive. What spoiled it was what he had said, and what she had said, and he might as well stop looking.

"I bet you'd like to say you're sorry," she said.

If she laughs now, he thought, if she laughs now — She didn't laugh, though. She leaned against the fender, the way he was doing it, and looked at the buzzard too. After a while the buzzard wheeled out of view and the girl moved away from the car.

"Now that we lost that conversation piece, let me ask you something else."

Spinner said, "How come you act that way? Had a fight with him?"

"That's right."

"Don't take it out on me."

"There's nobody else," she said. "Besides, you don't look too sensitive. Are you?"

"Like you," he said.

She gave a short laugh for an answer and turned away She walked back and forth a few times, kicked at a stone, then came back to the car.

"Can I have a glass of water?" she asked.

Spinner nodded and led the way to the cabin. Halfway there he regretted having said yes, because it meant leaving Loma and the man with the shirt out of sight. But that was foolish. He regretted going because he didn't like the girl. That was the reason. It wasn't her needling that bothered him, it showed her spirit But the hard part, her coldness, that made him dislike her. Cold, like Loma, he thought, except that it didn't jar when he thought of the coldness in Loma. With her it did, as if no woman had any business being cold.

He gave her a quick look and then coughed. They went into the cabin.

"How can you stand the heat in here," she said.

"The bathroom's this way." Spinner walked ahead of her to look for a clean glass.

She stood in the room and fluffed her blouse.

"You live here with that Loma?"

"You want this water or don't you?"

She came into the bathroom and took the glass from him. She drank and ignored his remark. Spinner watched her chin and her long neck curving back. The skin was whiter there, where the sun hadn't reached, and if she hadn't been such a cold bitch, Spinner thought, he would tell her what a fine neck she had. Then she put the glass down with a satisfied sound and licked her wet lip. Spinner looked away, at the glass.

"You want more?"

"No, thanks. Leave the bathroom a minute, will you?"

She turned on the tap before he got out and he heard the splashing while he stood at the front window.

"Don't you have any towels?" she called.

He didn't know where to look for one. If she didn't like the ones in the bathroom let her shake her hands for a while and they'd be dry in this heat soon enough.

"Every towel in here is wet," she called. "You got any more?"

"All right Just a minute."

He started to bang drawers open and shut. The girl in the bathroom started to whistle and Spinner felt himself getting on edge, without knowing why. The waiting, it must be the waiting. Throughout the trip with Loma he waited, now with the man from St. Louis he waited, and on top of that, as if nothing else mattered, she whistled in there, looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, most likely, to see how she looked while whistling. Probably turning and posing in front of the bathroom mirror, to see how good she looked and taking the sight for granted, the whistling for granted, and Spinner hunting around for a towel for her, for granted, too.

He found a drawer with towels and yanked out the one on top.

"Can't you find one?" he heard.

Spinner pushed the door open and held out the towel but then he let it drop down again. She was watching herself in the mirror and with arms up was fluffing the short brown hair. Spinner could see the skin white on the inside of her arms, where the sun hadn't reached. The rest was brown and shiny with water. She had kept on the skirt and her bra but the rest of her glistened; face, neck, shoulders, and the roundness over the bra.

"Give it to me," she said and held out one hand. Aside from that she ignored him. "You wouldn't have a comb, would you?"

The bra was white and next to it was the brown of her tan and Spinner thought he could smell the warm skin. A cold bitch like her —

"In the cabinet," he said.

She opened the cabinet which made Spinner's mirror image swing into view. It stared at him with fine lines at the ends of his eyes and the brows drawn together. And he didn't like the look of the mouth, or the chin, or anything showing. He looked away, feeling rotten without knowing why and there was the girl again. The bathroom was very small.

"Watch my elbow," she said, "when I comb my hair."

Maybe he expected too much. Maybe Loma wasn't a cold bastard with a feel like metal and the girl, maybe she was just like any of them or all of them and he, Spinner, with the heat of anger inside, just expected too much.

"Step back some," she said.

It wasn't too much to expect that she didn't really feel like a stone, and he put out his hand. Her arm felt warm.

She stopped combing and said, "Forget it, will you?"

She felt warm, but she wasn't, and with sudden anger he grabbed the soft arm and yanked.

She looked up at him and he didn't like the slant she put on her mouth.

"You can't rape me, you know," and she pulled her arm out of his hand, quite slowly, as if it didn't matter.

"You always talk tough like that?" he said.

"With your kind, it helps." She suddenly jerked away. Or almost, because he held on again, feeling the muscles move under her skin.

She relaxed suddenly and it almost stopped Spinner — but then she laughed. It was like a kick. His arm clamped around her back, more like a hit than anything else, and he heard the sound when it squeezed the breath out of her. She didn't tense again and she didn't struggle, and Spinner might not have gone ahead had he known how she felt — feeling nothing.

# CHAPTER 15

She sat up on the bed, shook out her hair, and got up. She smoothed down her skirt and adjusted the brassiere. Then she went to the bathroom and Spinner heard the faucet again, as before. When he got up he walked around the end of the bed and saw Loma with the man in the glittery shirt They hadn't moved, though Spinner didn't pay any real attention. There was a pack of cigarettes in his pocket, and the Cellophane made a crackling sound. He took the pack out, dropped it on top of the dresser. He pushed the pack to the edge and watched it drop into the wastepaper basket that stood there. Spinner wished he knew how he felt.

In a moment she'll turn off the water, he thought, and then what. But the water kept running and Spinner couldn't continue to stand at the dresser because the edge cut into the back of his thighs, hurting him. And he wanted to see her.

When he came in she took her hands away from her face and shook off the water. Her face was wet, and the rest of her, too, as before.

They looked at each other and he said, "Here. I brought you a towel."

She didn't take the towel right away because she was still looking at his face, but then, whatever her expression was going to be, she let it go and reached for the towel.

"Thank you," she said.

Spinner leaned against the door frame and watched her rub herself dry, and for a brief moment it felt as if he knew her and something felt good. But that happened only for a brief moment when everything else came back to him, except without the anger.

"I don't know your name," he said.

It would have been the time for her to make a crack, some very seasoned kind of remark, and he even got ready for it, ready to ignore it, but she only said, "Ann." She wasn't looking at him. "And yours?"

"Jake. Jake Spinner."

She nodded at that "I forgot where I put the comb. Do you have one of your own?"

He gave her the comb from his pocket and she started going through the back of her hair.

Spinner didn't know how to say it but then it came all by itself.

"We were lousy."

Then there was nothing else to say. She put on her blouse while Spinner walked back into the room in front where the windows looked out on the clearing. After a while she came in and opened the door.

"I'm going back," she said.

"Yes. Let's go back," and they walked together toward the car.

# CHAPTER 16

The sun had moved just enough to reach the bottom of Loma's chair, and touched the cast, which lay white and hard. It gave the impression of not belonging to anything. Loma looked down at it, but didn't move.

"I can't use him. Perhaps you can."

"He's your problem." The man picked up a twig and stuck it into his mouth. "If you can't take care of him, who can?"

"We'll see," said Loma, and then looked up.

They both watched Spinner and the girl come back from the cabin. The girl walked toward the car and Spinner came to the tree. But the man wasn't watching Spinner. His face spread with a wide grin and he called, "Ann, doll," and when she looked at him from the car he said, "how was it, Ann, doll?"

Spinner said nothing, but he hoped that the girl would have an answer.

She said, "Is that how you get your kicks?"

She watched from the car, waiting for more, but the man only laughed. When he looked up at Spinner the laugh petered out and he spat the twig on the ground. "Loma says you drove him back."

"This is Keel," said Loma to Spinner. "From St. Louis."

Spinner sat down on the bench next to Keel and looked the man over. He might not like Keel, but this was what Spinner was after. This was the whole point of having come this far.

"I drove Loma for an introduction. My name's Spinner."

Keel leaned back and grinned.

"Changing jobs, or something?"

"More than that But I'm looking for a job."

"Well," said Keel, "jobs like driving Loma here, and busting his ankle, don't come along every day." He laughed.

Neither Loma nor Spinner showed any reaction and Keel stopped laughing.

"You're in hot water," said Keel. "I don't call that a recommendation."

"Me? No more than Loma."

"You ain't Loma, uh — what was that name?"

"Spinner. Jake Spinner."

Keel worked his tongue around the inside of his cheek and started to frown.

"Spinner? Where you from?"

"Stone Bluff. The same place..."

"Yeah. Dixon. You got a name rings a bell, Spinner, but I can't place it."

"My father worked for Dixon some years back."

"Is that so?" said Keel.

For a moment Spinner had thought that his father, in a queer, tangled way, would suddenly be of some help, but the tone of Keel's voice didn't let it happen.

"Dixon used to pick up all kinds," said Keel. "I think I heard the name." And after a pause, "What did he do? Your old man, I mean."

Spinner didn't answer right away. He looked at the green on the side of the hill and then up the hill where the trees looked darker. He wished there were nothing else to do but look at those and sit in the shade here.

"I don't think he ever did a damn thing," Spinner heard himself say. "He fell down the stairs and died from that Why you asking?"

"Just questions. I thought maybe he was big with Dixon or something. Seeing I remember the name."

"He wasn't What's that got to do with anything?"

Keel shrugged. "You're looking for a job, aren't you? So I'm asking. Qualifications and so forth."

"Then ask what's important! I don't waste time..."

"I don't like lip, Spinner."

"Loma — " Spinner looked over at him — "is this guy the best you can do?"

"He's the one that come," said Loma, showing no interest.

Keel looked from one to the other, as if he didn't believe his ears.

"Hey!" he said. "Who says I got to listen..."

"You tell this when you get back to St. Louis," said Loma. "Tell them he saw the whole thing from the beginning. That he has made no wrong move, so far, for only one reason. He told you what that was." Loma paused, to see if Keel was listening. Then he said, "And you can't kill him. He and I have been together ever since Dixon. If they're looking for me and he turns up dead, it would be bad. If they're looking for him and he turns up dead, it would be the same because they'll be after me."

Keel went more by the tone of voice than the content and he didn't say any more. Spinner had followed the reasoning and he didn't say anything either. The shock was Loma's inhuman bookkeeping. Not that this was anything new; but it hadn't happened so clearly before, with Spinner the cipher that had to be balanced.

And it made sense. Spinner felt cold, but said nothing. It made sense, and this was all part of his switch and he mustn't forget it.

"I don't get paid to argue," said Keel, and got up. "I'll tell 'em."

"Let me know tomorrow," said Loma.

Spinner said nothing. The machine was set in motion and this was all part of the plan. He mustn't forget it.

When Keel got to the car Spinner got up from the bench and walked into the sunlight. He didn't want to sit under the tree with Lorna. He looked at Ann, who was standing next to the car and who dropped her cigarette when Keel came closer. She made a short laugh when she saw his face.

"What you been doing? Tried arguing with somebody?" she asked.

Keel frowned at her, then looked down at his sleeve, brushing it When he looked up he was grinning. He felt best when he could manage a grin.

"There's us with beautiful bodies and then your kind, with the brains."

"Either way you turn it," she said, "I come out on top."

Spinner heard how they were talking and he walked up closer. Keel was saying, "Either way, I can buy you." His grin made it sound worse.

"For cold cash, what temperature do you think you'll be getting?"

Spinner put his hands on the end of the hood and held the ornament He could feel it bite into his fingers.

"Hell, you talk like I want something from you. Hey, Spinner — " he cocked his head, looking at him like a buddy — "what makes these dames think they got it all? Tell her."

Spinner saw Ann look away and he wondered about her expression.

"Maybe, just to show her," Keel went on, "I'll go back by myself. Hey, Ann."

She turned back and for a moment Spinner thought she was going to look at him, but then she didn't. Keel grinned at her.

"Annie, you ever been dumped?"

She didn't answer, and any moment Keel was going to laugh.

"She's staying here," said Spinner.

Keel's mouth came open but Spinner was looking at Ann. He could see nothing in her face.

"What did you say? What did he say, Ann?" he heard Keel ask.

She nodded her head slightly and said, "I'm staying here."

The best Keel could do at that moment was laugh. He roared himself up and down the scale a few times and got into his car as if he didn't care one way or the other. The girl stepped back and Keel kicked the starter, while his laugh slowed to a wheeze.

"Back to the farm," he said; "back to the farm." And then he added, "Anyway, Annie. I'll be up tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll see you," she said, and watched him drive off.

The girl and Spinner stood with the space between them where the car had been, and neither of them said anything.

# CHAPTER 17

He squinted at the hill behind her and then looked down, without having seen anything.

"Spinner," a voice said from behind him, where Loma was under the tree.

Spinner didn't turn. He took his hands out of his pockets and walked toward the girl.

"Spinner," Loma said again.

"In a minute," he said. He stopped in front of the girl. "I don't know you, Ann. But I didn't like — I didn't like what Keel was doing. I thought it was too rough," he finished quickly.

"It was," she said. "Thank you."

He looked at her and gave her a short smile.

"You don't have anything with you. Clothes, or anything?"

"That's all right. He'll be back tomorrow."

"Yes." He coughed once and said, "You understand, this doesn't mean a thing, about tonight. If you want to go back to town," and he waved at the car sticking out next to the cabin.

"Yes, I know. It's all right, though. I think I know some people up here."

"Oh?"

"Spinner," Loma called.

"Sure. Don't you know this place?" she went on.

"My first time here."

"Most of the guests," she said, "are from St. Louis. Like Keel."

"Oh."

"He wants you, I think." She nodded in Loma's direction.

"Yes. Come along."

Loma had moved his chair but wasn't able to get any further. A root was caught in one wheel. Spinner untangled it and when the wheelchair was free Loma pushed at the wheels with both hands to get away.

The girl said, "Which way are you going?" and put her hands on the back of the chair.

Loma looked up at her but kept turning the wheels. "I'm not going far. I can manage."

"The cabin?" she said.

"Yes." Loma looked straight.

At the door Spinner had to lift the chair over the sill, and then Loma wheeled himself to the phone.

"I'm going to order something to eat," he said. "Do you want anything?"

He was looking at Spinner.

"Why don't we go to the main house," said Ann. "It's cooler there."

When Loma looked at her Spinner noticed that she didn't react to the stare in any way, as if his eyes and his manner — as if Loma himself were nothing different.

"You've been here before," he said.

"Sure."

"Then you understand why some of the guests, like Spinner and I, don't mingle."

"I know what this place is. That's why you don't have to stay out of sight Look across there." She pointed out the window. "You know who's playing checkers there, in front of that cabin?"

"I'm not interested," said Loma, and reached for the phone.

"Suit yourself," she said. "And I was going to push your chair all the way to the main house."

Loma, of course, didn't react to the joke. He held the phone to his ear and said to Spinner, "There's a menu on the dresser. Order something."

"I'm going to the main house."

"Just a moment," said Loma into the phone. He covered the speaker with his hand and looked at Spinner. "You seem to forget," he started but Spinner cut him short.

"We're not running any more. We made it here."

Loma didn't answer. He didn't understand Spinner's remark, and when he realized that Spinner was one of those who thought that you run for a while and then rest, and then run for a while and then it is over, he dropped the argument because it wouldn't do any good.

Loma turned away and talked into the telephone.

Spinner took Ann's arm and led her out of the cabin.

They had their food at a corner table in the big dining room, next to a window where a pine branch kept scraping against the screen. The sun was going behind the hill and it got dark suddenly. The pine branch started to get on Spinner's nerves but he said nothing about it He looked out the window, then at his food, and out the window again.

"You notice how it gets dark here?" she said.

"Yeah. You've noticed it before?"

"Yes. I've been here before."

"That's right. You said that."

When they stopped talking he heard the pine branch again and he tried to think of something to say.

"See anybody you know?"

She stretched her neck and said, "I haven't looked. No. I don't think so."

"Maybe you don't recognize them."

"Who?"

"I don't know who you know," he said, and when he shrugged his shoulder he felt it ache.

They ate for a while and then she said, "This man you're with, who is he?"

"His name's Loma."

"I know. Keel mentioned it. Are you with Loma?"

"With Loma? How do you mean?"

"You know. Work together."

"I just met him. I don't think he really works with anybody."

She took a sip of water and then she licked her wet lip. Spinner had seen her do it before; it must be a habit, he thought.

"You know," she said, "I had the same kind of feeling. He doesn't even look as if he is in a racket."

"He's got to be," said Spinner, trying to end the topic. "Why else would he be here?"

"What I mean is," she went on, "whatever he does he doesn't look as if he works it like a racket. You know what I mean?"

"Yes. He doesn't"

Ann didn't say anything else because with some people she knew it wasn't good to ask certain things, but she thought from Spinner's answer that he knew Loma better than he had said.

"You want more coffee?" Spinner asked, but the remark didn't do what he had meant it to do; a casual thing to say, to make him feel casual. It must be because they had talked about Loma, as if Loma still bothered him. Why should he? He had set it up for Spinner the way Spinner had wanted it, and even tomorrow, perhaps, they would be through with each other. And Spinner would have his wish and maybe go to St. Louis.

"Why did you talk to him the way you did?" he suddenly asked. "You expect a cold bastard like that to go for an ordinary kind of joke?"

"Talk how? I don't remember..."

"Why'd you push his chair, for instance. You think he liked it?"

A waiter came up to take the dishes away and when they had been cleared she put her elbows on the table.

"Why not? He's a cripple."

Spinner laughed, a hard sound. He leaned over the table and said, "You know what kind of a cripple he is?" and then he frowned, trying to think of a way to express it.

"I don't know what kind," she said. "Should that make a difference?"

Spinner made a sound that could mean anything, and leaned back in his chair. He didn't want to think about Loma. He shook a cigarette out of his pack and offered it to the girl.

"Here. You smoke?"

"Sure." She took one.

"I don't know if you smoke, I don't know anything. What else do you do?"

She blew out smoke and smiled. The topic meant nothing to her and she would go through it with practice.

"I used to be a model. Sometimes I model."

"Is that so?"

She laughed when she saw his face, because he was stuck. She had a number of remarks for that situation.

"I'm a whore, because it pays better," she said, and then she saw that it hadn't been the right choice. He didn't take up her tone.

"I don't know," he said. "It's got to do more for you to stick with it." He looked at her. "Doesn't it?"

"What makes you think I'm going to stick with it?" she said, and this time she had lost her easy way of looking at him and started to rub her eye as if smoke had gotten into it. She rubbed hard and the exaggerated motion made her feel angry. "How would you know?" It came out mean. Then she controlled herself and tried to make it more superficial. "Perhaps you've known a lot of them," she said, but she didn't feel light about it "Intimately," she added.

"No," he said, and then, "Intimately?" He covered himself by making a laugh and asked, "Can you?"

"How do I know? I don't remember the subject ever having come up before."

It struck Spinner that this was like the time with Keel, when Keel dug at her and she had talked back at him sharp enough, but all of it surface. He felt again that he didn't like this to happen to her.

"I didn't mean to pry at you," he said and tried to smile so the whole thing would sound easy, "about why you — why you do this work."

"Money," she said.

"I know."

"I don't know why we're even talking about it," she said.

He said nothing for a while but she saw he was thinking about it. She hadn't said the right thing again and it made her feel uneasy.

He looked up at her and said, "I know why. Just a while back, you know, we went to bed together."

"That's right" She reached for another cigarette and lit it herself. "And this is the rehash."

"I don't know. Anyway, that wasn't money. You knew that ahead of time."

"I make mistakes."

"Yeah. And it never got anywhere."

She had no wish to talk any more and tried to think of something else, almost anything else, even looked across the room to see someone she knew, perhaps, when she heard herself saying it anyway.

"Maybe that's why I keep trying," she said.

She wished he would say something now to distract them, but he didn't and she kept her head down while she stubbed out her cigarette because that way she wouldn't see how he looked or what he was doing.

After a moment she heard him shift in his chair.

"Someone to see you, I think," Spinner said.

She looked up and saw someone she hardly remembered which was the best, she thought, because it was more familiar.

# CHAPTER 18

One was called Joe and the other was Phil and they had a girl with them whom they all called Dickie. The one Ann knew from before was Phil, who didn't look much different from his buddy Joe, both feeling on top of the world and much younger than they acted. They invited Ann and Spinner to have a drink at the bar and later, maybe, they'd think of doing something else though who the hell cared what happened later. They couldn't talk to each too well sitting side by side at the bar so they went up to Phil's room on the second floor of the main house. The girl Dickie took off her shoes first thing and Ann took hers off too while the men dropped their jackets. Spinner kept his on because his shirt was so dirty.

"Come on," said Dickie, "let's make a racket. I can't stand those damn crickets outside and they get louder when it gets dark."

"How's this?" said Joe and started to sing a loud, dirty song. Dickie knew the refrain and made harmony while Ann laughed a lot and held her glass out for Phil to fill.

"You're the one never says 'when,' ain't you, Annie?" and Phil gave the bottle an upside down tilt, spilling whisky over the glass and over Ann's arm. They all laughed like crazy and Ann kept shouting it tickled when Phil grabbed her hand with the glass and started to lick up her bare arm.

"That Phil!" said Dickie, "just like in the song. You got more verses, Joe, any more?"

"The rest I'm too young for," said Joe, and slapped Dickie's rear.

"What about me?" said Dickie. "I'm younger than any of you."

That meant more laughter and Joe slapping her rear and yelling, "You can't prove it by me. Lookit that. You can't prove it by me!"

Spinner drank faster than any of them and tried to get into the spirit of things. Like a nasty pup a voice kept yapping and yapping at him that this was the way when you switch and this was the new life which had its good sides to it, like now.

"Jake," said Ann and stood close to him. "Let's you and me dance while they sing," because Dickie had started one of her own and the two men were chiming in at the right places.

"The hell with that," said Spinner. "I'm getting drunk."

"Here, Jake," yelled Joe, "take it" He waved the bottle at Spinner.

"You trying to make that boy pass out on the floor?" said Dickie.

"The faster the better," said Joe. He laughed loud when he said it and gave Ann's arm a loud slap. "Huh, Annie?"

Spinner thought that he'd get used to the tempo after a while and even gave Ann a slap too.

"And another thing," Joe was saying, "when it comes to..."

"It won't come to that," said, Dickie, but neither of them knew what they were talking about so they took a long pull from the other bottle and then Joe started saying the same thing all over again. "When it comes to that, and even that — "

Spinner felt the pressure behind his eyes and gave his bottle to Phil.

"You take it," he said. "You pass out."

"No," said Phil, "please. Be my guest I'll join you later."

"Join what?" Dickie called from the bed. "You talking about your double-joint jaw again? Jake, let Phil show you his double-joint jaw"

Phil put his hands into his mouth and then, without any noise, his jaw ended up at a crazy, undershot angle which shortened his face and seemed to make his nose very flat.

Dickie squealed at the sight and said, "I can't stand it. Hang it together again."

"I can't," said Phil, without moving the jaw back into place. "I gotta pass out It don't work any other way."

Dickie jumped up from the bed and ran over to Phil. She hugged him around the middle and kissed the side of his neck.

"You're not even warm," said Phil, in that peculiar murmur the jaw gave him. "Do it again."

Spinner shook his head a few times and worried about not having fun like the others. And here was a game that was going to include everything. Part of this game ought to be slugging each other, he thought, and started to look at Phil's jaw with interest. Ann was looking too and started to rub the sides of her face. Then she turned away and sat on the bed with Joe. They made room for Dickie, who flung herself on her back, and started to moan, "Why do I keep asking him that I can't stand it — "

This time the thing did make a snap, giving Spinner a start, and Phil looked all right again.

"It starts hurting after a while," he said to Spinner. "So I always put it back in. What happened to Annie?"

"On the bed," said Spinner.

"You bring her up?" asked Phil. "She's with you?"

Spinner knew what he was going to answer but he didn't answer immediately.

Ann said from the bed, "No. He's with Loma."

Joe and Phil looked at each other and nobody talked.

Then Phil, to be doing something, picked up his glass from the dresser and looked at the ice cube.

"Gee," he said. "You know Loma?"

"Sure."

"You mean — you mean you're working with him?"

"Christ," said Phil. "He even takes on apprentices?"

"No," said Spinner. "I just met him."

"Who's Loma?" Dickie wanted to know.

"You mean you never heard of Loma?" Phil made it sound big. "He's a trigger man."

"Yeah. For who?"

"Whom," said Joe.

"Nobody. He's like calling in a consultant"

"So why you acting all scared?" said Dickie. "No consultant would be looking for you. For you they'd hire themselves some kind of broken-down pug who — "

"Will you stop talking like that?"

"I'm sorry, sweet. I didn't mean."

Phil shrugged and grinned at Dickie. Then he looked at everybody in the room with an expectant smile, but the mood had gone away. Phil shrugged again.

"We're not scared, you understand," said Joe. "It's just, you know — you talk about Loma and you talk about something different You just hear about Loma. You don't know him."

"That's right," said Spinner.

He put his glass down and looked over at Ann. She didn't see him. She was fixing a button on the front of her blouse.

"All right," he said. "I'll see you guys around."

There was no more party and he went to the door. He didn't even look back. When he was through the door and tried pulling it shut, the knob came out of his hand and he turned. He stood in the hall and Ann was closing the door, half leaning against it and holding both hands on the knob behind her.

"I want to go with you," she said. "Didn't you ask me?"

# CHAPTER 19

They walked side by side at first but after a while Spinner took Ann's arm and they walked closer together. It was dark under the trees and they kept their bearings by looking up at the sky where the trees stood apart over the road.

"I wanted to ask you," said Spinner, "back at the brawl, but I know you so little."

"That's right," she said and laughed. Spinner couldn't see her face.

"This way," he said. "You're walking into the woods."

It seemed a long walk back to the cabin and the quiet made the girl stay close to his side.

"If you want, Jake," and her voice sounded too bright, "we can go back to the party."

"I don't want to."

"Loma will be in the cabin," she said.

"I don't care. I wish you wouldn't."

She didn't say anything then, but Spinner knew she was trying to. She tried laughing instead but the sound got nowhere.

"Stop thinking so hard," he said.

"Jake?"

He waited.

"You know, we can just go to bed. I'm so tired."

They stopped at the clearing and Spinner wished they could see each other more clearly, but she thought he was smiling at her and he stroked her arm.

"Sure," he said. "You'll sleep well."

They started to cross the clearing when the moon fused through the clouds, making a cold light in the air and on the ground. Next to the door, a small shape, sat Loma.

"Oh," said the girl, and then, "you shouldn't be out here this late."

Spinner couldn't see Loma's face in the shadow but he knew the expression, and he knew how the eyes looked, and he knew how Loma would sound, like the cold light.

"I couldn't get in," said Loma, "because of the step."

Spinner let go of the girl and cursed under his breath. He walked up to Loma's chair and started to reach for it.

"Leave me here," said Loma. "I'll stay out here for a while."

It didn't hit Spinner immediately but when it did his scalp prickled with heat and he couldn't find enough breath with the anger squeezing him. Everything Loma touched, everything —

"You shouldn't stay..." the girl started, but the violence of Spinner's movement made her stop. He yanked the chair up to the house, pulled the screen door open and kicked it back with his foot, and then he pushed Loma's chair through the first room, making the wheels turn with a fast whisper.

"You can get into bed yourself?" he asked Loma.

"Yes."

"Fine," said Spinner, not daring to say more. He came back to the front room and slammed Loma's door.

The girl stood by the window and he could see her unbutton her blouse. He watched her. Something in the way she undressed made him relax, and when he walked up to her she smiled at him and then turned back to what she was doing. Spinner was no longer upset. She waited for him while he took off his clothes. She stood by the window, holding her arms, rubbing them slowly as if she were cold.

When they lay down her head was next to his face and he put his chin into her hair. He held her with one arm down her side and one hand near her throat. He could feel a small pulse there and after a while it seemed to slow and grow softer. She stretched out her legs and turned her head toward him.

"Does the light bother you?" said Spinner.

"No. I don't even see it."

They lay like that for a while, with Ann so quiet that Spinner was sure she was asleep.

"Do you hear something?" she said.

"No. What was it?"

"It's so quiet," she said. "I'm not used to it. I keep listening for something to spoil it."

"You can hear small noises outside," he said. "But they don't spoil it"

She nodded. He felt it on his chest.

"What did Keel mean," he said, "when he said back to the farm?"

"Keel? I don't remember he said that — "

"I thought perhaps he meant that's where you came from."

She laughed and said, "No. Keel just said that to be in line, I guess. Something like country girl comes to the big city and gets good and bad, or whichever."

"Oh. I see."

"Why do you ask? I look like a farm girl?"

"Oh no. Not at all. I'm from a farm."

"I've been on one, but that's all. Fact is, I'm from a bigger city than St. Louis."

"How'd that happen?"

She laughed again, to herself this time.

"New York wasn't big enough for me and my family. It was either their way or no way."

Spinner shifted a little but didn't let go of her.

"I can see that," he said. "Running around with the likes of Keel, I can see why they..."

"There weren't any Keels. Just nice, approved bastards my family liked. The real filth. So I picked my own friends." She paused. "At least they weren't filthy."

"So how come," Spinner asked, "you ended up with the Keels?"

She moved her head away and looked out the window.

"I just — I lost my bearings somewhere along the way."

Spinner lay still and stroked her side. He felt her grow stiff under his hand, or perhaps he imagined it. "Anyway, it's okay if you like it in St. Louis."

"Sure," she said. "What happened to your farm? You didn't like it?"

He stopped moving his hand, and put both his hands up behind his head.

"Oh. I liked it all right."

"Did you lose it?"

He laughed at the thought, remembering that he still owned it, but what did that get him?

"No. It's still there."

"But you can't go hack?"

"Sort of like you," he said. "Why don't you go back?"

She turned on her side, to curl herself up, and then said, "Sort of like you and so forth."

Her tone gave them an out and they pushed the whole thing aside, laughing about it, but then had nothing else to say. They didn't want to talk or to think any more and when she turned the next time, his way, that was the distraction. He pulled her closer and she didn't say no or try to lie the way she had done before. It was more familiar this way, even to the kiss, which was mechanical. Then she was going to laugh and say something about it always ending this way when Spinner held still and listened into the dark. She heard Spinner curse.

"Doesn't that bastard ever sleep?" he demanded.

"Who?" She sat up too.

"Loma. Don't you hear him?"

Then she heard the sound of somebody breathing. It was in the next room.

"He never breathes like that," said Spinner. "I've never heard that before."

Spinner let himself drop back and stared at the ceiling.

She leaned down on one elbow, and said, "Why does he bother you? He never does anything and he always seems to bother you."

Spinner didn't know what to answer, but hearing the breathing in the next room he couldn't keep silent.

"Because he's all wrong!" And when it didn't feel like enough, "He's everything opposite!"

The girl lay down next to him, and Spinner saw her nod. Then she turned to put her hand on Spinner's face.

"Why are you with him?" she said.

"Yeah. It's a question."

She kept her hand on his face and he turned her way, and then she moved closer.

"I don t hear him any more." She kissed him, small and warm.

"Stay close."

"Jake," she said. "I'm glad he interrupted, before." She knew that he felt so too when suddenly Spinner pulled back their sheet.

"Come on," he said, "get up."

"Now? You mean — "

"Come on. Let's get out of here. You and me."

She started to laugh and held his arm when they ran out of the cabin because of the way he was dragging the blanket along. She took one end of it and he the other and they went a short distance into the woods.

# CHAPTER 20

Loma — it turned out in the morning — could walk. Spinner was tying his shoes, and Ann stood smoking and watching him when they heard the hard sounds, as if something had fallen. Loma opened his door.

"Christ," said Spinner.

Loma was holding himself with both hands in the frame of the door. His small body was bent to balance himself and the foot with the white cast was swinging slightly, tapping to find its place.

"Here," said Ann, "let me help you," and she went up to Loma to take his arm.

"No. You needn't."

"Doesn't it hurt?" she asked.

"No."

He let go of the door frame and walked with a grotesque stumble till he got to the bed.

Spinner finished tying his shoe and sat up. "Loma, how come you always say no? She asks you if it hurts when you can barely crawl; but you got to..."

"The pain is minor," said Loma. "I have trouble walking because I'm used to favoring my other side." He looked down at his clubfoot. "As it is, I have to learn it the other way."

Spinner looked at Ann and said, "You see? He's got a reason. Always no, but he makes a reason." He shrugged and got up. He hadn't been aware of it but his tone when he talked about Loma had been something new, as if either Loma were human or Spinner didn't care one way or the other.

"We were going to breakfast," said Ann. "Sit in your chair and I'll wheel you down."

"He's going to say no," Spinner said and watched Loma.

Loma sat down on the bed, near the phone, and moved his leg with the cast so it would be more comfortable.

"Keel is coming this morning," he said. "Or is it no longer important to you?"

It was. That and the fact that Loma could walk, if he wanted to, meant a great deal. Loma no longer needed him and St Louis was sending word whether they wanted Spinner or not It should feel like a turning point, but Spinner could not force a feeling beyond that of a strange, very vivid dream. It meant that he might wake up, had he thought of it, and then he would not know what to do.

"That's right," said Spinner. "We'll stay here, so I don't miss him."

"He's also coming for you?" said Loma and looked at the girl.

Spinner had turned away so that the girl saw only the back of his head.

"Sure," she said. "For the ride."

They had breakfast brought to the cabin and then they waited for Keel, hoping he would come soon.

• • •

Keel had left St Louis early, as he had been instructed, but no part of his errand was very important. A message for Loma, instructions about Spinner, and to pick up Annie — if she were free. None of it seemed too important to Keel so he stopped on the way for breakfast, stopped again where he saw a big sign on a barn which read _Auction_ , and when he came to a railroad crossing where a freight train was coming through he sat counting the cars with interest.

Driving into the resort he made a bet with himself that Loma would be under that tree again, and another bet — with odds much lower — that Annie was still in bed, and that it wouldn't be with Spinner. Keel knew Annie from way back; they were all alike, they didn't faze him one way or the other, and this time when he took her back, no more monkey business. If there was anything he despised, Keel said to himself, it was a dame acting up.

He roared up to the clearing, made an impressive stop, and saw he had won one bet and lost two. Loma was under the tree; so was Spinner, and Ann was sitting next to him. Keel started laughing, first thing, because he thought the three of them looked very funny, and it also kept him from tallying up how much he owed himself for the lost bets.

"Hey, back to the farm, huh?" he yelled and walked over to the tree.

They all nodded hello at him and Keel stood looking from one to the other.

"Boy," he said, "lemme tell you it's getting hot in the city. Even early this morning."

"When did you leave?" asked Loma.

"Eight in the morning. I had to be in the office before eight, and got chased out to here right from there. And the heat..."

"How come you didn't get here till now," said Loma, "if you left that early?"

"Hell. I don't know. The road, I guess. How you been, Annie, had a good night?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Thank you?" and Keel started laughing again. "Hell, I had nothing to do with it I wasn't even here!"

But Spinner, just sitting there, dampened Keel's fun. Keel sucked his teeth and looked at Loma.

"Well, I haven't got much. Little early to tell."

Loma looked at the girl and said, "Would you leave for a moment?" He followed Ann with his eyes when she got up and walked to the cabin, and then turned back to Keel.

"Let's hear it."

"Well, there's nothing on you, right now. You either got through clean or they're playing it cagey."

"What about the trip?"

"Looks like the little girl in the burg you stopped in and that doctor in that other burg you stopped in didn't report a thing. And that farmer outside that one burg don't know from nothing either. He thinks you're a fine little gentleman, he says."

"You talked to him?"

"Me? Hell, no. We got a man there doing legwork."

"I don't quite understand about the girl," said Loma. He treated the whole thing as if he hadn't been in iL "After all, the store got robbed, and so on."

"Oh. She said that was robbers. She got scared and hid in the closet, she said, and didn't see who it was."

Spinner looked at Loma's face, wondering if there would be relief, or perhaps doubt, any emotion about that part of the trip. There was nothing, and Loma went on.

"What about Stone Bluff?"

"Oh, that Dixon's dead, all right You knew that," he added, smiling.

"Go on."

"And nobody's looking for you there, that's for sure. They're sure as hell looking for him, though," and Keel nodded at Spinner.

It was nothing new to Spinner, and should have meant nothing to him. He looked away. His face felt tight and he squinted at the hill in the distance.

"They figure they got him dead to rights, with evidence and everything."

"What evidence?" Spinner asked.

"We didn't get that part. That sheriff and prosecutor aren't easy to get by." Keel scratched his ear. "Because Dixon's dead, that's why, I guess."

"Anything else?" said Loma.

"No, I think that's it, so far."

"There's got to be more," said Spinner. "Aren't there any details, anything else about what happened in Stone Bluff?"

"How come you're so anxious?" said Keel. "Hell, you got out from under. All they're doing is looking for you."

"All? If I'm going to stay healthy..."

"Hell, you should worry. You should know what they got against me!" He started to laugh again. "Or Loma here, huh, Loma?"

Keel was just about to slap Loma's back when he suddenly stopped laughing and changed his swing with the arm into something else. He slapped his leg and coughed hard, thinking how terrible it would have been to slap a man on the back who was wearing a cast, or sat in a wheelchair, or had a clubfoot — anyway, a man like Loma.

"Well?" said Loma. "What else?"

"What about — did they find the place where I met Loma? Where the car was?"

"I don't know," said Keel. "So what?"

"If that's all," said Loma, "you can go back to town. Tell them I'm staying a few days longer, to be sure nothing else develops. Tell them I want more information tomorrow"

"Okay, Loma. I'll do that"

Keel turned to Spinner. He put his hands in his pockets and started to grin.

"Now I bet you're anxious as hell about what's with you, huh?"

"Let's have it, Keel."

"I'm taking you back with me, to St. Louis. They want to see you. Happy?"

Spinner hadn't heard the last part They wanted to see him and he was going with Keel, that's what he had heard. He inhaled deeply, held it, and let the breath come out slowly. He clenched and unclenched his hands which he held between his knees, and repeated the words in his mind to make them sink in. He should feel something terrific right now, because this was it. The way he had planned it, the way he had imagined it, and now it was true. There should be a big sense of another step taken and a big scene of strength about everything but maybe this caution was better. The way Loma would feel about something like this: hold it a little bit longer, until it was sure, until it was over, and then — like with Loma — it would be over without any feeling at all!

"Come on," said Spinner. "Come on, let's go, this is big!"

He had talked so loud that Ann stepped out of the cabin to see what went on. Spinner kept pushing himself.

"You got something else to say, tell me about it on the way down. The way I've been waiting for this, Keel, this is no time to..."

"I want you to bring him back afterward," said Loma, ignoring everything, and before Spinner had time to react to it Keel answered the same way.

"Sure. He's supposed to, anyway."

"Why? Why in hell..."

"Jesus, stop yelling," said Keel. "This is just for a talk. After that you hang around some and wait. And that's what this place is for. Come on over, Annie." Keel waved to her.

The girl came back to the tree and nobody except Spinner felt there was any more to say. Loma wheeled himself back to the cabin, Keel started asking the girl again what kind of a night she'd had, and Spinner was left with what he had heard. It still wasn't over, maybe it never would be, and maybe this was part of the switch too, waiting for somebody's word and someone else's decision. It was maybe not much of a switch from anything else.

# CHAPTER 21

The ride back was a pain in the neck to Keel, because Spinner started out acting sour and when Keel tried to make light conversation Spinner got mean. They sure knew how to pick them, thought Keel, first Loma and now Spinner.

Then Keel tried it with Ann but she didn't even start out easy, the way Spinner had done it, but got rough right from the start. She said she was sick and tired of listening to the same tired old line and that he, Keel, couldn't do a thing for her. Talked as if she had to be convinced, like some square with a job someplace or a boy friend waiting for her somewhere out of town.

It saved the day for Keel when he told himself he could take 'em or leave 'em, they were all alike. He drove fast and steady and paid no attention even when Ann suddenly climbed into the back, never mind top down and wind blowing, and sat in the back with Spinner. It didn't mean a thing, Keel could tell, because they hardly talked and just sat there. He couldn't hear what they said, the few words now and then.

"Let me off at my place," she said when they came in on St Charles Rock Road.

"Your place? What do you mean — "

"You know where I live."

She cut him short so hard Keel was glad to get rid of her. She didn't live much out of the way.

When he stopped at her apartment house he let her push the front seat out of the way herself and the same with the door. When she slammed it shut again he knew she wasn't going to say good-by but he hadn't expected she'd talk to Spinner either.

"You'll come by?" she said.

"As soon as I'm through."

"I'll be ready," she said and Keel wondered whether she was going to kiss Spinner. He started to make a bet with himself but was too slow. Ann smiled at Spinner and gave a small wave with her hand. Then she walked away.

"Come on, Keel. Let's go."

That jerk in the back seat again, as if looking at somebody walking up to an apartment was against the code.

"Come on, sit in front," said Keel. "You're no big shot yet"

Spinner did. He couldn't even he insulted, like his buddy, that Loma bastard, except Loma never got mean but kept still, as if he was nothing.

When Keel parked in a downtown lot he was wishing that Spinner would try his stuff on Mercado. That's when Spinner would learn a thing or two, once he was with Mercado. Except nobody ever acted up with Mercado, and also he wouldn't be in on the conference. But Keel thought about it.

"You watch your onions once we get in here," said Keel. "This is a legitimate business."

He opened the frosted door with the name St. Louis Distributors on it and walked right through the front office, where a girl sat at a switchboard and another one was filing her nails. Spinner followed close behind and then through a door marked Number 2.

"Wait here." Keel made a general wave with his hand.

There was a conference table and charts on the wall. Keel knocked on the next door. He went in when a voice said to.

Keel never had time to shut the door. He stayed very close to it so that Spinner could see his back, and did nothing to interrupt when the voice started yelling at him.

"You stupid cluck, come in through the front door? With that Spinner? Don't you know he's hot from here to hell, you stupid jackass? And how'd you drive into town, with the top down on that bus you got? Never mind! Just get the hell out of my sight!"

Keel left fast, with just enough time to tell Spinner, "He's ready for you."

• • •

Mercado was a man who wore green tinted glasses at all times. The color did not disguise his eyes and there were no fancy rims for the sake of appearance. He wore these glasses for one reason only, the fact that light irritated him. He sat at a desk with his back to the windows, he gave Spinner the briefest of looks, and while Spinner sat down Mercado picked through the mess on his desk, his movements hasty and sharp.

It was like a job interview starting bad; the applicant silent and the boss distracted and showing no interest, except that Spinner didn't think of it that way. It was bigger than that. It was the last and the necessary suspense before everything else became final.

"I hear your old man used to work for Dixon. Is that right?" It was very sudden, and Mercado had hardly looked up.

"Yes. Some time ago. The reason I'm here..."

"What did he do, you know?"

"What did he do?" Spinner didn't know and wasn't interested. He was interested in now, and that had nothing to do with his father.

"You don't look like you know," Mercado went on.

"I was a kid. And besides..."

"He went around and saw voters. Sometimes he worked an adding machine."

And all the time Mercado acted as if all this annoyed him because it was an interruption, and if he got snide enough maybe Spinner would go away.

"Look," said Spinner. "I don't care if he ran an elevator someplace. What I..."

"Honest man, though, the way those things go. Are you?"

"What?" Spinner might have said more, but Mercado didn't wait.

"You were in jail for three years, right?"

Spinner moved in his chair, leaning forward and twisting his head, because the light from the windows kept him from seeing Mercado's face clearly enough. Perhaps that's what made this whole thing so abrupt and disconnected. He and Mercado weren't seeing each other and weren't talking about the same things.

"Meet anybody there from St. Louis?"

"Where? You mean in jail?"

"What about you and Dixon? You ever do jobs for him?"

"About jail," said Spinner, trying to get his bearings; "the way I got into jail..."

"I got a record on you."

"Let me finish for once! How can I get anything straight if you keep..."

"What are you trying to say, you went to jail as a fall guy?" For once Mercado looked straight at Spinner and there was no doubt that Mercado was annoyed. "That doesn't cut any ice, Spinner. We're all fall guys, when you look at it right"

And then, as if he were sorry that he had bothered, Mercado looked down and piled some papers together.

This was all part of the big switch, this was all part of the small details after a big decision, and don't lose the long view or nothing made sense. Spinner wiped the palms of his hands together but stopped it when Mercado looked up at the sound. Mercado looked elsewhere immediately but Spinner felt more watched than before, and the worst was the confusion about it Watched for what? Was it an interview, was it a brushoff, was it anything that showed anyone's interest?

"I'm going to start from the beginning," said Spinner. He didn't look at Mercado because Spinner was going to say this without interruption and get back the sense of importance about all this. He was going to get through because the push inside him was bigger than Mercado and his petty annoyances.

"I'm here because I'm through trying anything else. I want a job and what I have to recommend me is no commitment to anything else. If that doesn't sound like much, here's what it means. Anything you got, I'll take. If I like it I stick with it If I don't like it, I'll do it so good you got to give me something better. You don't know me and I don't know a soul here, but what I got for a recommendation..."

"Never mind."

"Never mind?" Spinner got out of his chair and Mercado had to sit up to see Spinner's face. "You call me in here to do me a favor? You don't owe me a thing. I'm here to show you what I can offer and if you don't need anything, say so. Either that or pay some attention!"

"You think I got the time for some kind of a confession or something, then let me..."

"I wasn't finished!" Spinner was standing and Mercado had gotten up too, glaring, but Spinner didn't care about that He didn't care about what had gone wrong or what had been lost but only that he shouldn't lose more.

"Why in hell you ask me up here, to see if I can keep my temper? I can't! I've kept my temper for..."

"Next question," said Mercado with a fine edge in his voice.

"Next? I'll give you..."

"Shut up, the next one is mine. The next one is what can you do, Spinner?"

"Qualifications? What qualifications has that boob out there, this Keel with the gorgeous shirts?"

"How about yours? It's so dirty I can smell it from here."

"I make a better hood with a clean collar on?"

"All right, next question. Can you figure odds? Do you know why it's good business paying the Water Commissioner more than the Chief of Police? Do you know why a half per cent return on the pinballs is all we need? Have you got..."

"Did you when you started? To hell with it!" Spinner turned on his heel and walked to the door.

It felt good, and he even knew how to explain the whole thing to himself later, when the heat had worn off. There hadn't been enough difference between this and what he used to know in the past Not half enough of a difference and that, in the end, was what mattered.

"Spinner!"

Spinner stopped with the door half open and turned.

"What? Some parting advice?"

"You got a job."

After a moment Spinner closed the door, then gave it a small tug to see if the latch had caught He came back to the desk and put his hands in his pockets.

"Why?" he said.

"On the level. You'll get..."

"I said why."

"Not because you blew your stack, if that's what you're thinking." Mercado was as irritated as he had been before. "I got you all down here, in the record. That's why." He sat down again, not looking at Spinner. "Keel is going to take you back to the resort. I don't want you hanging around town till you're needed."

"When?"

"Tomorrow! The day after! Wait your turn. You go back with Keel, you wait a few days, and then you'll get your instructions. Here." Mercado reached into his pocket. "Buy yourself a clean shirt"

The bill was for a hundred dollars. Mercado told Spinner to beat it.

# CHAPTER 22

Keel had the top up when they got into the car and he watched Spiner as if he expected a comment Spinner made none. He sat in the front, arms folded, and stared out the window without seeing a thing. Once he felt his pocket and heard the bill make a crackling sound. There was the bill. The whole thing was real. It had happened but Spinner sat feeling as if it were just going to start. Then he thought it all through again and came to the part where Mercado said, "You got a job." And that had happened too. What had not happened yet was a feeling, how Spinner felt about it, how he might safely allow himself to feel about all of this — because all of it hadn't happened yet.

Spinner gave his head a sharp shake. Drifting off the way he was doing, guessing and checking and hedging, he might even forget what had happened. The real thing was better than planned, faster and easier and as sure as the hundred bucks in his pocket Spinner pulled out the bill and started to grin. He waved it at Keel and said, "I'm in!"

"In what?"

But Spinner wasn't listening. He put the bill back, stretched in the seat and grinned to himself. Why feel surprised? He couldn't lose. The big part had been over a long time ago, the time he beat Loma into the dirt and then made Loma show him the way. Ever since then, Spinner felt now, he hadn't been able to lose.

"Hey! You're halfway out of town, Keel!"

"I'm a good driver. You know, when I set my mind..."

"Turn around, damn it, I'm picking up that girl!"

"Oh, Annie? I forgot about Annie."

"Turn around and..."

"Couldn't do that, what with all the things I got to do after dropping you off."

"Keel, listen to me. I told Ann..."

"I know, I was there." Keel took off after his stop at a light and swung the car up the ramp to the freeway going out of town. "You shoulda reminded me. I clean forgot"

That's all it was. Spinner was sure Keel hadn't meant anything by going straight out of town, because Keel really didn't care one way or the other or he would have acted different about Spinner and Ann long ago. Keel took a cigarette out of his pocket and licked the end. "Got a match, Spinner? My lighter don't work. The car cost me six thousand plus and the lighter don't work."

"At the next ramp, Keel, I want you to turn back."

Keel looked up from his driving and said, "You really mean that? Hell, Annie's a nice kid, here and there, but hell, I don't see..."

"Just do what I say."

"Listen, Spinner — what's your first name, Jake? Listen, Jake, don't take it hard or anything. She's been stood up before, she don't give a damn."

Spinner kept still, watching for the next ramp.

"You know, she and another kid like her. Paula, from New York, they used to have an arrangement where one..."

"Just shut up, Keel, will you?"

Keel frowned and licked his unlit cigarette.

"I don't get you. How about that match, Jake? I'm still waiting."

"There's the ramp. Slow down."

This time Keel didn't answer. He laughed most of the time, or talked most of the time, but that was only half of him. One reason he drove the car he did and paid the prices for the shirts he wore was because he made money like dirt. He was paid well because he followed orders and was a hard man to stop. He was dumb, but very valuable. Spinner reached for the wheel. Keel gave him a hard slap in the teeth.

"Don't do that again, Jake."

Spinner hadn't expected it, but the next thing was automatic. He saw the cutoff fly by, lunged for the ignition and when he had the key in his hand he drew back to wait for the car to slow. The next thing after that was even surer, he'd beat Keel's ears off and then argue.

Keel let the car roll and watched Spinner out of the side of his eye.

"Feel my pocket, Jake."

"Just get that car on the grass safely and then I'll give you something to feel."

"Here, just touch it," said Keel. He wasn't laughing and he wasn't angry; this was just business, so when Spinner made no move to do what Keel had said, Keel reached into his pocket and his hand came out with brass knuckles over his fingers. They were big and shiny. "You interfere once more, Jake, and I'll peel your face."

Keel put the hand with the brass knuckles back on the wheel and let the car roll to a stop. There was no doubt in Spinner's mind that Keel would do what he said.

"Put them away and I'll show you a trick or two," Spinner said.

"You nuts or something? What you think I got it for?"

"Is this a habit or did you just think this up, pulling a stunt like this for nothing?"

"I don't go around hitting for nothing at all. Hell, what you take me for?" Keel braked the car to a stop on the shoulder and held out his free hand.

"Gimme the keys."

Spinner gave them to Keel. He didn't get any of this and sat there puzzled.

"What do you call nothing at all?" he said finally.

Keel didn't put the keys in right away because he was watching Spinner to see if he had changed his mind.

"You don't think," he said, "I can let you just go and walk all over me, do you? I'm taking you back, and I got things to do, that's all."

"That's all?" Spinner still didn't get it.

"What else?" said Keel and looked puzzled.

This time Spinner gave up because Keel had him convinced. This was something to learn, Spinner thought Keel seemed to have no troubles to speak of, but drove a big car, liked all the chores he was doing, or, at any rate, didn't have any feeling about them, like an ape. This was something to learn.

"All right, Keel. You can put it away"

"You gonna be good?"

"I'm going to be real good, Keel. Let's get going."

It took Spinner longer than Keel to forget about what had happened, but after a while he did. He worked at it, thinking of Keel and of Loma. They both had it down pat, this thing to be like an ape or a machine. Spinner thought about Ann now and then, but he pushed it away, working on it.

• • •

When they got to the cabin Spinner got out and Keel drove off immediately. Spinner walked into the cabin.

"You're back sooner than I expected," said Loma. He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He had been lying on Spinner's bed.

"Yeah. Anyone phone here?" said Spinner.

"No. Who would?"

Who would call. Spinner took off his jacket and tossed it on a chair. Ann would, he was thinking, but the hell with that kind of thinking at a time like this. Loma got into his chair and wheeled himself out of the room. And to hell with telling Loma the news. And if Loma had asked about St. Louis, that would have been the real pleasure, telling him to mind his own business and to hell with all of it. I'm going to sleep.

"I'm going to sleep," said Spinner, but Loma was already out of the room and couldn't have heard.

Spinner slept for a long time. He tossed and a few times made sounds in his throat, but kept sleeping until the sun was almost down. He woke very suddenly and sat up, but then lay back feeling exhausted. There was no good reason to feel that way, and the thought irritated him. Everything he looked at and the small, meaningless sounds he could hear from outside, everything irritated him. He twisted to look at the phone and the squat, black shape which did not move or make a sound. He got up, took off his clothes, and went into the shower, but the pleasure of that got killed by the thought of the clothes he was going to put on afterwards. He still only had his dirty shirt. He had a hundred bucks, a future, and a dirty shirt to irritate him.

When he got dressed he looked into Loma's open door and saw that Loma was gone. He saw him under the tree, in his wheelchair. Loma was learning to get around by himself. He got the wheelchair out of the door and sat where he wanted to sit without any help. Then why still use the wheelchair? Spinner could hear what Loma would say. He would say, "There is no good reason why I shouldn't."

Spinner put on his tie so that the dirty collar of his shirt wouldn't show. He raked his fingers through his moist hair and stood by the door for a moment. Now what? Till morning or the day after there was nothing. Go eat, and talk to Loma. Or talk to anybody, maybe Dickie.

He tried not to think about Ann.

Then he suddenly cursed under his breath and walked out the door.

"You haven't told me," said Loma when Spinner got to the tree. "What happened in St. Louis?"

Spinner sat down on the bench and crossed his legs.

"Everything else being equal," said Loma, "if you made your contact in St. Louis, that means I can be rid of you."

"What makes you think that, killer? What makes you think I want to be rid of you?"

"I didn't say that."

"But that's how I'm putting it I fall, you fall. Remember that."

Loma looked at his hands and then said, "You keep thinking I want to do you some kind of dirt Why should I?"

"You said you want me around, remember? You said..."

"Once it looks like I'm in the clear and they aren't looking for me, then you don't mean a thing."

"The gadget wears out, throw it away." Spinner got up from the bench and suddenly talked with a hard rasp in his throat. "You got another guess coming, killer. This gadget's got life in it! You'll never know what I'm going to do next!"

"I don't know what you mean," said Loma He leaned back a little, because Spinner was bending close, but aside from that he didn't change.

"I mean you get on my nerves and all of a sudden it comes into my mind to finger you to the cops. You can't figure that out on your adding machine, can you, killer?" Spinner straightened up and started to laugh. He sat down and was still laughing when he said, "I forgot I keep calling you killer and I forgot what your answer is going to be. Shoot my head off, right? That's what you'd do."

Loma took a deep breath and let it out with his mouth stretched so the lips disappeared. It made lines in his face, but didn't change his eyes one way or the other.

"I told you once before, Spinner. I don't do that..."

"... for no good reason," Spinner said for him. "Or for no pay, is that right? Tell me, what else can you do?"

"I can stop you in a hundred ways, if I have to."

It was the closest Loma had ever come to sounding ominous, with threat in his voice. He felt annoyed with Spinner, and with himself, and wished that Spinner would take his mean streak out on something else.

"Like what?" Spinner kept on. "Maybe you fìnger me?"

"It's one way," said Loma.

"Boy!" Spinner laughed, forcing it out "That's brains. That's real, high speed, electronic brains! You think that's going to shut me up?"

"It'll keep you out of my way"

"Until I've sung my song to the dicks and chase them after you. Man," said Spinner. It sounded hearty and confident "You and I don't understand each other at all."

"You wouldn't talk," said Loma.

"I wouldn't what?"

Loma moved his cast leg into the vertical and put some weight on it, testing. When he was through he said, "You're the one that isn't thinking this through. You have the brains, probably, but you're not thinking this through. If you get arrested, Spinner, it'll be for murder."

"Yes. Your murder, the one you did. And you know, don't you, Loma, I wouldn't sit on that secret"

"You may not, but so what?"

Spinner grinned with an evil line down the side of his face, and started counting off on his fingers. "One, your gun."

"Could be anyone's."

"Two, your shoe and the place where you got stuck with the car."

Loma just shrugged.

"And to prove you were around, there's a few upstanding witnesses who saw us together. There's the little girl with the torn sweater, the farmer with the big connections, the doctor who hasn't had a patient since he came from up north, except for you."

Loma shook his head while he kept looking at Spinner. "Why should you bring that up?" he said. "All those people who saw you and me together think of us as being together. You helping me, you calling me buddy, you seeing to it we made out all right If you try making a stink about me killing Dixon, and if you use those witnesses to show I was in the neighborhood, then you come out an accomplice. Don't you see that, Spinner?"

Spinner did. But before it made him feel caught, before anything else happened, he remembered that none of this need concern him. He was in, which made him safe. He had made his switch, and what Loma was talking about could never happen. He sat quietly for a moment and then said, "You trying to scare me, Loma? What makes you think that you got to try?"

"Nothing. You brought it up."

Loma was right, as always, right from beginning to end. Even that didn't bother Spinner any more, because Spinner was in and could feel the dry crackle of the bill in his pocket to prove it He laughed and looked over Loma's head, watching a squirrel on a tree back in the woods.

"You asked me what happened in St Louis."

"Yes."

"I'm in." He smiled the proper smile for a time like this.

"Whom did you see?"

"Mercado. Some kind of wheel down there."

"I know Mercado. He's no wheel."

"Anyway, Loma, he gave me the message. I'm in."

"That was very fast," said Loma.

Spinner sat back and looked up at the foliage over their heads, a big, moving, green roof. He smiled again, and though he had meant to be no more than a murmur it was loud enough for Loma to hear: "I can't lose," he said. "Not after everything — "

"Too fast, almost," Loma was saying.

Spinner sat up and a sharp line cut down the side of his face. He was gnawing the inside of his lip and the sharp line came and went.

"Why? You hate seeing me go?"

Loma didn't bother to answer.

"Then what? You don't see why they should take me? Or maybe you got an idea..."

"What can you do?"

"Mercado asked me the same thing, Loma. And then he hired me."

"I believe you. But do you know why they took you?"

"Because they can use me. No other reason."

"Of course," said Loma. "Of course they can use you."

"So don't sit there like a dried-up lemon and make out that none of this makes any sense. I'm in. That's what I came for, and that's what I got"

Loma shrugged but then he started up again, which surprised Spinner. "But you don't know what for."

"All right, Loma. I don't know what for. I didn't ask because I figured one thing at a time wasn't bad for a starter, seeing I just got what I wanted and not being worried whether I can do any damn thing they want done. What else do you want?" He added, "And why this sudden keen interest? Something wrong with you, all of a sudden?"

"Maybe there's something wrong with your job," said Loma. "They don't often hire that way."

"Oh. How did they hire you? With a trial period and a long look at your pedigree?"

"By reputation," said Loma.

"And me, because of my good looks and because I needed a clean shirt! And if you don't believe that, then you tell me why."

"All right," said Loma, "I will."

Spinner wondered about the sharpness in Loma's voice — a rare thing — and sat very still while Loma explained it.

"You've got nothing. You don't have the background and you don't have the training. What you think you got? A sharp interest in making a change in your life — and that they don't count That's your interest, not theirs. But you've got one thing they can use. You got a hard push behind you and it's got nothing to do with your wishes. It's got to do with the fact that the cops are after you! They're after you so hard, once you figure it the way St. Louis does, that you'll bend over backwards to jump when Mercado says to. Because you think they're giving you a good deal." Loma paused to lick his lips. "And they've got you double, Spinner, it's got to be that way, because what if you get caught? Did you think of that? If you get caught they've got to be in a position to wash their hands of you. It's got to be that way, don't you see?"

"Say it, Loma. What's on your mind?"

"I can't tell what the job is, but I can tell that it's got to be dirty. The way they took you, to give you one reason, it's got to be real dirt The only other thing I'm sure of is that once you've done the job it won't matter to them if you're caught."

"Why, you lousy — "

"You asked me. You have no value except for the thing they have in mind and you're going to do it. After that they don't care. It's got to be that way, because you're nothing to them."

Spinner suddenly felt exhausted. Loma's hard talk, his hard argument, there was nothing to answer.

"You're the brain, Loma. What's the job?"

"It fits murder," said Loma.

# CHAPTER 23

Keel drove Spinner almost all the way back to town, and then cut off on a road that went down to the river. A few times, with the turns of the road, the Mississippi showed flat and shiny, but after a while the view got dark where a deep stand of old trees grew down to the river. It smelled moist under the trees, and nothing was moving. Then they came to the estate, with lawns in the sun like big clearings and the old trees making a frame. When the car stopped at the house they could see the river again. It lay in back, and, like the lawns, was there to give the big house a setting. White paint made the house look new, except for two-story stone columns on which green stains showed in streaks.

"Come on," said Keel. "I don't like to keep Talbot waiting."

Spinner got out of the car and hitched his jacket so that less of the shirt would show. The night before he had washed the shirt, and stretching it in the right way the wrinkles didn't show very much, except at the collar. The tips curled up and the white cloth had wavy shadows. But the shirt was clean. He hadn't rinsed it enough and every time he moved Spinner smelled soap.

They stood at the front door and Keel pressed a button that seemed to make no sound anywhere, but a few moments later a butler opened the door, unless the uniform meant something else. Except for his clothes and manner, the man had nothing to remember him by.

"This way, Mr. Keel," he said, but Keel was already ahead of him.

Spinner came last He studied the ballroom staircase, the big vase with wisteria, and smelled the wax that seemed to be on the woodwork everywhere.

"Come on, Spinner. I hate to keep Talbot waiting."

The setting distracted him and Spinner walked slowly, to keep his bearings and to remember what this place was like.

"Jesus," Keel hissed at him. "You trying to louse yourself up? They're waiting. Make an impression!"

The door was open and in the back of the long room, against curtains that looked like tapestry, stood a short man.

"Come on in. Close that door."

"Sure, sure." After closing the door Keel led the way across the long room.

Spinner saw that the man's tie was pulled down, that the shoulders of his suit hung back without finding support, and that his thick hands weren't clean. The man sucked his teeth once and when Spinner stopped, he said, "Let's go into the next room."

They all went into the next room because the long one didn't have any chairs. The next room had chairs, a table, and a portable bar. Mercado was there, putting down a drink.

They sat down, except for the short man, who put his foot on a chair. Now it was real. Now, Spinner thought, in spite of the queer meeting with Mercado the day before, and in spite of Loma and all he had said, this was real. Spinner plucked at the collar of his shirt, then put his hands under the table. They were all looking at him and Spinner felt a twinge in his shoulder. Waiting for him — he was through waiting.

"Where's Talbot?" he said.

"I'm Talbot," the short man answered.

"All right. What's the job?"

"A hit," said Talbot. Talbot sat down, looked at his nails for a moment, and then said, "You're the man for it, Spinner. Glad to meet you."

"A hit Who gets murdered?"

"You're the man for it because for you it's a setup." Talbot got up again, put his foot on the chair, and picked at his nails.

"Who?" said Spinner.

"Loma."

• • •

Spinner felt very hot but when he wiped his hand over his face it came away dry. He looked at Keel and Mercado and Talbot and then he looked to the back, at the bar.

"Give him a drink," said Talbot, and Mercado got there first He came back with the drink and said, "What's the matter, you got an attachment to Loma?"

Spinner swallowed the drink. The whisky was good, but Spinner wished it weren't so smooth.

"No," he said.

He held his lip in his teeth, not knowing what next Keel was looking at him, not understanding what all the hesitating was for. Mercado pushed at his glasses impatiently, and Talbot leaned on his knee.

"What are you staring at?"

Spinner felt like something for sale. It stiffened his back and his eyes got narrow.

"I don't see this thing yet. I'm confused because I don't do this kind of thing every day."

"We know that," said Mercado. "We got your record."

Talbot shifted his legs and made a grin.

"Sure, Spinner. Just take it easy. Give him another," he said to Mercado.

"I don't want another. I want to know why."

"You get paid five thousand," said Mercado.

"Are you in?" asked Talbot.

They were rushing him. They wanted to buy because Loma had figured it right He, Spinner, had the qualifications. Spinner felt the hate rise inside him because of the pushing around they were giving him. He didn't like it He got up from the table and walked to the windows that looked over a lawn running down to the river. Who looked out of this window, he thought, and enjoyed that sight? He turned back to the room and the three men at the table tried to see his face against the light from outside. When he came closer they saw how hard it had gotten. That could mean he was good for the job or maybe he was going to be trouble.

"Why me?" said Spinner. "How come Keel doesn't get this? I bet Keel could..."

"There's no setup for Keel, don't you get it? You know Loma, you live with Loma, you and him might even be buddies. Christ, Spinner, all your work should be a setup like that."

"Setup. You know damn well Loma's ready to blow. All that's holding him..."

"We're holding him. He's waiting to hear if he's clean. He's clean all right, but he won't hear about it" Talbot sat down at the table and suddenly slapped his hand down. "All right, Spinner, you want this five G's or don't you?"

That hadn't been the right way either, because it rushed Spinner and he wasn't through thinking, The whole thing was a shock, so strange and foreign that it had taken till now to really reach him. But that mustn't happen, that wasn't the way you talk about business no matter what the merchandise was, so Spinner cut it all up into small details and questions. He had many questions: He might have to ask them all before he was sure of his grip and knew how to hang on. That's how he had to do it.

"Why Loma?" he said. "I don't get..."

"You don't have to get nothing," said Talbot. "You just..."

"I don't like a job, I don't do it Not any more. You open up and tell me about this or I might kill the wrong guy, I'm that dumb."

"Not that dumb," said Mercado and his ill temper made him sound as if he had another appointment somewhere, something important "You're not so dumb that you think we can't make you..."

"Shut up," said Talbot He said it off-hand and it wasn't clear if his tone had done it or the look he gave Mercado. But when he turned back to Spinner, Talbot looked almost friendly. Impatient, but friendly. "It's Loma because he fouled us up. We don't go for that Simple."

"Fouled up what? I don't get it He made his mark; I saw him do it!"

"Look, you're new," said Talbot "But you're here to do a big job for the outfit so I'll lay the whole thing out for you. A professional like Loma gets paid for a clean job. If it ain't clean the dirt comes off on the employer, get it? If..."

"Don't gimme that double talk," said Spinner. "He made his mark and got away."

"He run into you, didn't he?" said Talbot.

"And how come he didn't drop you and get away clean?" said Mercado. "We pay for a clean job. We expect..."

"Shut up," said Talbot and then, with his patient look, he turned back to Spinner. "The thing is, fellow, Loma knows a hell of a lot; maybe you know that." Talbot watched Spinner until Spinner realized he was supposed to answer.

"He's a clam. I don't know what he knows."

Talbot nodded and went on.

"He knows why he had to do the job, he does the job, and he remembers who paid his bill. Then he gets maybe picked up and they twist him a little..."

"You son of a bitch," said Spinner and the low voice, very intense, made all of them sit up and listen. "You just said a mouthful. And when I get done with Loma, who's gonna do it to me?"

"What are you talking about, Spinner? This ain't no mountain feud, damn it"

"You just said..."

"I said he knows stuff. You don't know nothing!"

"You can walk out of this when you're done," Keel put in, "and you don't even have to stick around here. You can blow. Nobody cares. You can talk, but what can you say?"

"Or I can get shot to make sure," said Spinner.

"Hell, why?" There was real puzzlement in Talbot's voice. He rubbed his nose and then he said, "Damn it all, I've never gone through anything like this before. Maybe you don't know business, but in business you don't do more than you have to. With you we don't have to, with Loma we do. And for an easy mark and five whole G's I can't figure why..."

"Because I'm eager. I'm so eager for that five G's I want to be sure I can collect So all these questions keep bothering me. Here you say Loma got away clean, then you say Loma's got to go because he messed it all up. Come on, straighten me out."

"He got away clean," said Talbot, "means for right now. But he's been seen."

"Yeah. By me."

"You don't count. You're in it yourself; and you open your mouth and it's curtains." Loma had said that too. "But there's three civilians that seen him..."

"Where do I stand?" said Spinner.

They frowned at him and Talbot said, "You're in, aren't you?"

Spinner closed his eyes because he hadn't heard them say it before. He was in now.

"That's why I asked," he said but he still wasn't sure.

"All right. So in a while they catch up with Loma — you know he's in this business full-time — and they can tie him up with the job he done here. Don't you get it, Spinner? It's simple!"

"Maybe so is Spinner," said Keel. "Hell, it's all in how important the mark is. Take you, you ain't important Loma is."

"And after Loma, I am."

"How can you be?" yelled Talbot and banged his hand on the table.

"Maybe he likes Loma. You like Loma?" asked Mercado.

"How can you?" said Keel. "Don't you know about Loma? He don't belong! So how..."

"All right! Lemme think!"

They looked at each other and then back at Spinner. He was as crazy as Loma, Keel thought, and wrinkled his nose. And Mercado kept telling himself that it was worth the trouble because Spinner was made for this job. Talbot sat back, sucked his teeth twice. Better push a little, before the thinking got much too heavy.

"Spinner," he said. "You don't want the job?"

This was a new tone. No more wheedling him, no more doing it his way, no more going along with him because Spinner was dumb.

"You want in, or you want out?"

"Out?"

"Out to where they're looking for you!" yelled Mercado.

"In or out, Spinner?"

If you did it like an ape or a machine it was simple. Spinner breathed and the air felt heavy inside his lungs. If you did it the other way, the old way, then you were out, and outside they were waiting to kill you. Spinner's skin felt cold.

"If you kill you live, if you don't you die," somebody said. Could have been anyone of the three saying it Could have been Loma. Is that why Loma lived?

But already the question was hardly a thought because thinking that way was no way to live. The choice now was already a technical one — to do it, like an ape or a machine. He didn't like Keel, but he hated Loma. Like a machine then. Spinner said, "I need a gun."

# CHAPTER 24

The early evening made a strange, colorless light, turning greens to grays and washing out contrasts, but to Spinner it would have looked the same in any other light. The change had already gone far. He sat very calmly, watching Keel drive. Keel moved the wheel this way and that, turned his head and his eyes as required, but the drive meant nothing to him any more. He hardly thought, because all the thinking had already been done; there was nothing more to decide, because all the decisions were over. Spinner was in.

The car pulled up to the clearing and when Keel stopped the car bounced. Keel liked to brake that way.

"Hey," he said, "there he is."

Loma was at the side of the cabin, leaning there with one hand and testing his foot. The wheelchair stood behind him.

"I'll say hello," said Keel, and got out of the car.

Spinner got out of the car too and watched Keel cross to the cabin. He heard Keel say, "Well, lookit you. Looks like you'll be up on your feet pretty soon now, huh?'" Spinner didn't hear any more but they talked for a while. Loma probably was asking what the picture was, if the police were looking for him, and Keel was probably answering they didn't get a clear picture yet, but they'd have one tomorrow for sure.

Then Keel came back. He looked at Spinner and said, "See you tomorrow." Then he grinned and slapped Spinner's shoulder. "All yours," he said. Then he drove off.

There had been a low, gnawing ache in his shoulder, the way it happened to him off and on. But now the ache started burning painfully.

Loma started to walk along the wall of the cabin, carefully, holding himself, watching his feet. The sight was like nothing Spinner had ever seen before, but when he looked away it wasn't because of any feeling. He looked away to see if anyone else was on the clearing. Nobody was there. Not that it mattered. Then Spinner walked toward Loma. His shoulder seemed like a pain that didn't belong to him and his walk was normal, because things were working all by themselves.

"You want your chair?" said Spinner.

Loma was at one end of the cabin and the chair at the other. Spinner stood with his hands in his pockets and watched how Loma's feet moved. The feet stopped their struggle and Loma said, "No. Not yet." Loma turned around slowly, holding the wall, and Spinner watched the two crippled feet make their short, sudden movements. "Was I right?"

"Right? Oh. The job."

The feet stopped and Loma leaned by the wall, breathing hard.

"Yes," said Spinner. "You were right"

"Are you going to do it?"

"What else?" said Spinner and looked at the feet again. They weren't resting. They made small shifts and anxious plays for balance.

"When?" said Loma.

Spinner looked up and thought Loma's face and Loma's feet were not part of the same man. The struggle and pain in one, and shut blankness in the other, except for a thin line of sweat down the side of Loma's cheek.

"When?" he said again.

"Pretty soon," said Spinner.

Loma wiped the side of his face and took a deep breath. He looked at Spinner and said, "Can I have my chair now?"

Spinner brought it and wheeled Loma under the tree. It was darker there, with even less contrast than the rest of the evening. Spinner took out his cigarettes and sat on the bench.

"Want one?" he said mechanically and held the pack toward Loma.

"Yes."

That's when Spinner remembered that Loma didn't smoke, only sometimes. He lit both cigarettes and leaned back to exhale, as if tired.

"I'm sorry you're going to do it," said Loma.

Spinner felt himself tense. He sat up straight because his shoulder had touched the backrest. The sharp ache was like a drill in the point But he, himself, seemed to be somewhere else and that's how he could talk very evenly.

"You say you're sorry? I've never heard you talk like that, Loma."

"I rarely talk," said Loma.

They sat in the silence for a while. The evening spread down, big and quiet Spinner turned his head along the dim clearing and all the cabins were dark. They had said they would see to that It was all ready.

"I don't think you should do it," said Loma. "I don't think you can."

"No? You can. I'm no different from you."

"But you are," said Loma.

Spinner shrugged. It made him wince with the pain in his shoulder. Then he thought about how he was sitting here talking to Loma and Loma was going to be dead in a short time. Loma was now talking for the last time, but there seemed nothing final about it to Spinner.

"What's there to it?" he said.

"Did you ever hear me say that?"

"No. You don't talk." Spinner crossed his legs and rubbed one sole into the earth. "But now that you're — now that you're talking, wouldn't you say so?"

"Yes, I might. But you can't."

"Yeah, I know. You're better than most, in everything."

"It's not that way."

Loma stopped and Spinner saw the red glow of Loma's cigarette brighten twice, very hot. Then he spoke and the smoke had made him hoarse.

"I can't do many things." He stopped to let the cigarette fall, not watching it "Many things. And you can."

Spinner got up and stretched. He walked out from under the tree and stretched again.

"I'm going in," he said, and started walking across the dark clearing. "You coming?"

Spinner didn't hear whether Loma answered. A sudden weird waving of light hit the tops of the trees and when Spinner turned, the white eyes of the car dipped over the rise. They nodded toward him and then stopped.

"Jake? Oh Jake!" Ann came out of the car and ran toward him.

Against the light he saw her fine legs, then the rest of her, she was waving at him with her face dark and in shadow. He didn't see what was there and didn't look for it because the shock of the change in everything pounded at him. There was noise, there was light, the dark clearing was gone, and Spinner was no longer alone with Loma.

"Jake," she said, "what's the matter?"

"I didn't expect you. I — "

She was up to him now, and hesitated. Then she stopped. She started to smile but then stopped that too.

"I just thought, the way we missed each other in town — "

"I couldn't help it I'm sorry." He tried to look past the light and see Loma.

She turned that way and then she smiled, like changing a topic.

"Is he there? Your friend? I've got something for him," and she ran back to the car.

Loma was wheeling himself into the light, and watched when the girl came back.

"Here," she said to Loma. "Nice? I thought you could use it.'" She held out the cane she had brought.

Loma stretched out his hand and took the cane.

"Thank you. That was very nice of you."

Spinner had moved back where the light wasn't strong, and nobody saw how his face had grown stiff and his hands were shaking. Ann pushed Loma's chair to the cabin and when she stopped Loma got out and entered the cabin using the cane. The light went on inside, first one room, then the other.

"Jake?" Ann called. "Will you turn off the car lights? I forgot"

He turned off the car lights and saw her small bag on the front seat Then he went to the cabin.

"How long are you staying?" she was asking Loma. "Till your foot is better?"

"That would be too long," Loma answered, and when Spinner came into the room Loma looked up. "You can close the door," he said, "I'm going to sleep."

Ann said good night. She walked out of the room while Spinner held the door for her without looking up. Then he closed the door and he and the girl were alone. She had sat down on the bed, but when Spinner had closed the door she got up.

"I — I don't want to bother you," she said. "I just thought, the way we missed each other, I thought you might still — " she stopped and bit her lip. Spinner thought she looked angry. "Anyway," she said with a different voice, "anyway, I wanted to see you."

To keep himself the way he had become Spinner looked at a detail, the lobe of her ear, and tried to think of nothing else. He saw where the lobe had been pierced, which he didn't think was done any more. Then he felt her hand on his arm.

"What's wrong, Jake?"

He stepped back, making her drop her hand. "Nothing, Ann. I didn't expect you, that's all."

"And you don't want me to stay?"

"I — No. I don't want you to stay. I'm leaving myself."

"Oh? Business?"

"That's right. That's why."

It would have been time for her to leave then, with nothing to say and with her hopes dropping away because she'd been wrong again. But she stood for a while longer unable to find the right way, the old way for handling this kind of thing. It wasn't a new situation. What was new was that she allowed it to happen this time.

"Okay," she said. "If you're in St Louis sometimes you know where I live."

"Yeah. I know," and he took her arm to lead her out of the door.

Perhaps the push did it, or the fact that Spinner didn't seem himself and she hadn't really been talking to him. She stopped in the doorway. They stood very close. "Jake, I just want to tell you..."

"What?"

He said it fast, very sharp, because he did not think he could hold out much longer. Not at this time, when everything had been decided and the girl and many other things had been left out Later, perhaps, when the job was done and his new ways were a little bit better established.

"Listen to me," she said, and looked at his face. "I'm going to say this now because I don't think I can again."

"Not in here. Outside." He pushed her out the door. The interruption, he thought, that's what would do it Either she would go away or be like the first time, clever and hard to reach.

But she kept hold of his arm, walking quickly, not wanting the feeling to go away. Once outside she stopped. She pulled him to the wall of the cabin and talked fast so that he could not interrupt her.

"I don't know you at all, Jake, like anyone else I can call by name. Except there's a difference. Jake, are you listening?"

He was listening, wishing he didn't hear.

"With a difference, Jake: I want to know you."

Let her finish, he thought, and when she's through it'll be over.

"I don't know why, Jake, I don't know that any more than I know why you suddenly changed. But I do know! It's happened to me when I suddenly can't go on any more. But I know I must because there's nothing else to do. I can go on because I've learned how to turn myself off. You know how to do that, don't you, Jake? You can go on because you feel nothing. You can do a million things feeling nothing, Jake; a million. I know!" She held his arms hard, and he reached out to her.

"Don't touch me!"

He winced, pulling back, but the wall behind him didn't let him go any further. His shoulder boiled with pain.

"You know it, Jake. And you know it's no good." She didn't touch him, but all her intensity came into her voice. "I don't want to do a million things that I can't feel. I want one thing I can feel. And you do too, I know that from the way things went after we met. I want one thing I can feel, Jake. You." She stopped, and when she said the rest the control in her voice pushed tears into her eyes. "Don't you want me, Jake?"

She was tearing him open. She was trying to come into his new life. He held on, closing his eyes as if the darkness were hurting them.

"Not now Go away now. I'll see you later."

"Jake, will you? Will you later?"

"Get the hell out of here..."

Her gasp stopped him. She had touched him again, to make sure he could feel her, and then she gasped when she felt the gun in his pocket.

"No!" she said. "That's it, isn't it?"

He found his voice the way he wanted to hear it It came even and smooth and sounded as if he were standing next to himself.

"You know Keel, don't you? He's in the same business, and you know Keel. Why the shock all of a sudden?"

"I don't want Keel, I want you!"

"I'm busy, Ann. Later... I know where you live," he added, and it sounded very smooth to him, like in a movie.

"Jake, please, come with me now. We can leave. We won't be alone together, Jake, and that's how we can leave, don't you see that — "

"Later," he said, like a record, because he couldn't talk any other way And then he knew she was crying even though there was no sound, and before it tore him open again — he thought about this very clearly — he lifted his hand and hit her in the face.

A big star of pain exploded in his shoulder, making him tremble. It kept bursting, next to him, it kept shining all the time he could hear her feet running away and the way she breathed, running away down the road through the trees. He had reached such perfection in this that he walked to her car to make sure where she was. She had run past the car and down the road. Dickie would be at the main house with one or two friends and that's where the girl was running; which was as expected. But her overnight bag was still in the car. She was hysterical right now; she'd come for it later. In the meantime — now, as a matter of fact, because the car and the girl would come in handy later — now for the business. It was a very small, surprisingly small matter to do this job now. That's the advantage of this new technique. Turn himself off and do a million things. Of course, one at a time, and each one — by comparison — very small, even unimportant. He walked into the cabin.

# CHAPTER 25

He left the lights off and walked into Loma's room. He walked past Loma's bed to the dresser, and picked up the comb that was lying there. He took that with him and walked out of Loma's room.

In the bathroom he turned on the light, to complete the enactment, and stood in front of the mirror with the comb in his hand. A clever thing, and so simple it had to work. It was nothing for Spinner to be in Loma's room. He borrowed a comb. And the proof was that Loma had made no move. Had he been asleep? Very good. Had he been awake and done nothing? Very good.

And now Spinner saw a man in the mirror and Spinner and the man stood looking at each other, one very calm face which showed nothing, then the mirror man's arm raised to comb his hair. Spinner twitched just slightly from the grinding in his shoulder, so the mirror man dropped the comb because that wasn't the thing to take back to Loma's room anyway. Spinner watched the mirror man reach into his pocket and come out with the gun. He would take that back to Loma. The mirror man didn't show what happened but Spinner's pain hurt him badly. Any moment the set face in the mirror might show the pain. Spinner closed his eyes. Now only Spinner knew that there was a stiff grinding inside the shoulder, but before he would concentrate on himself — Walk, Spinner.

He had the gun in his hand and walked back to Loma's room. He should walk faster, because the pain glowed and it seemed harder to keep it to himself. Spinner walked into the room, then stopped in the dark because he couldn't see. There was Loma on the bed, and Spinner stopped. It felt very dark around him, which made him feel safe. He would raise the gun, which was simple.

Raise it, raise it! If the pain weren't there, how much simpler the whole thing would be. But the big, sharp star of pain felt like a glow that got brighter. Could Loma see it? Quick. Go through it again, fast and precise to prove that he was doing exactly what he must do: I am a machine which can move, can do anything which the brain tells it to do because what can stop a machine with a brain, nothing can hurt a machine with a brain — Spinner gritted his teeth. He should feel nothing. He lifted the gun. But this pain?

It was like the star bursting and throwing the gun on the floor and turning, running out, was all one thing to him because it was all himself, Spinner himself. He ran out into the open. Now he was no longer running away from Loma's room. He was not running away from anything, but toward something.

The car was there, empty. Her bag was there; she hadn't come back. Spinner ran down the road through the woods, and he thought his lungs would burst.

He ran for the light in front of the main house where some people were standing. Spinner could hear them talk, saw someone holding a glass, a girl giggled — Dickie — and then she stopped, and the three men and the two girls turned around when they heard Spinner running.

"Ann!" he called. "Ann, here I am!"

Ann was holding a cigarette. She put it up to her mouth and took a drag, watching Spinner. She let the stub drop to the gravel and exhaled smoke in a thin stream. She watched Spinner without moving out of his way.

He didn't stop till he was up against her and when his arms went around her he started to laugh, loud and full. He also tried to say something, but the laughter was the only clear thing, and his arms around her.

"Ann," he said, "I'm back! I'm here! You see, Ann. You and me now, the way you wanted it, the way I want it," and he laughed and he cried. Then he felt her arms tighten around him, her face close, her kisses, and she was laughing too.

• • •

Loma had stayed on his bed. His open door was a square of light but he didn't watch it any more, and since Spinner would not be back Loma returned his gun to his pocket He had been holding it for quite a long time. It had taken Spinner a while to come in, but he wouldn't be back. Loma stayed on his bed like that till he heard the motor start up and the lights flit past the cabin. Then he got up and collected his things and the gun which Spinner had dropped on the floor, and walked out of the cabin with the help of the cane. He kept the headlights off and drove away.

• • •

They got lost on the way to St. Louis because it was still dark and they weren't watching the signs very closely. But it didn't upset them. Spinner drove and Ann, next to him, talked and laughed and finally got them back on the right road.

"It'll be just dawn when we get there. Won't that be nice?" she said.

Spinner said, "Then we can drive off in the daylight and see what we're leaving."

"I won't take but a minute," she said. "I'll just run up to the apartment and right back down."

"I won't even turn off the motor."

"And we'll drive, drive, drive — "

"And when we stop, everything will start new."

They smiled at each other and said nothing else for a while, just thinking about it. Ann leaned against his side and he put his hand into her lap.

"I can type, you know," she said next.

"I haven't got a thing to dictate," said Spinner.

"I mean when we stop. I can get a job typing and help out."

"I thought you said you had all that money saved," said Spinner. "Or am I marrying a pauper?"

"Take your choice," she said. "You want to marry a pauper or me?"

Spinner didn't answer but slowed the car to a stop. Then he bent over and gave her a kiss.

"My answer," he said, and started to drive again.

"You're in," she answered, and Spinner laughed.

"Fact is," he said after a while, "you won't have to type. I got some talent."

"Like what? I mean, what kind that can earn you a living."

"Well, I got a thing from the army says I'm a good mechanic. Trucks and so forth."

"Where are you going to find all those army trucks to..."

"Wait, wait. And then, when I was guest of the state for three years, more trucks. All kinds. I also got a written thing to prove that part of my training."

She laughed. "How about ordinary cars? And bicycles, maybe."

"No bicycles. Tractors, though. On my farm — " He hesitated, and then said, "Did you know I went to agricultural school for a while? Didn't, did you? You thought I was a peasant, huh?"

She squeezed his arm and smiled. "You know, Jake, perhaps a small town would be best. Perhaps you can work a farm. Would you like that?"

"I would like that best," he said after a while. "But you may not like it You've lived in the city all your life."

"I won't miss it, Jake."

They drove and shared a cigarette.

"You would like that, wouldn't you, Jake?"

"What?"

"Have your own farm — "

He gave her the cigarette and blew the smoke against the windshield in front of him.

"I can't think that way, Ann." Then he laughed. "Besides, all those weeds are there."

"I just like to think about it And perhaps, after a while — "

"I can't think that way, Ann."

She put her hand on the back of his neck and said, "I bet you didn't know I could cook, did you? And that I'm a good housekeeper."

"I'll find out," he said.

"And that I once learned how to candle eggs. That's a talent you didn't know about, did you?"

"You just hold on to that talent You may get it into your mind one day, when you bring home a dozen from the store, to candle those eggs."

She smiled and tucked her legs under her. She looked out the window and said, "I'd like to do it on your farm. I'm just thinking how nice it would be, you know?"

"I know. I like to think of it too."

When they drove into St Louis it was dawn. The main streets had some traffic already but elsewhere the city looked empty. Ann's street had some trees on one side. They looked cool and clean in the morning air and at the end of the street Spinner could see the road they would be taking. He stopped in front of the apartment house.

"I'm leaving the motor running. Two minutes flat or nothing."

"You won't get away," she said, and jumped out of the car.

Spinner watched her run into the building and after she had disappeared he kept smiling at the front door which closed slowly. She would be a few minutes. For a few minutes he would look the length of the empty street toward the road that went out of town. For a few minutes he would just look at it, and then he and Ann would drive out that way. They would drive west There was more land that way and fewer cities, and after leaving the state and crossing some others, he would know how it was not to be chased, he would soon feel that freedom too. He rubbed the wheel, thinking about it He could feel it in his bones.

He could see Ann behind the glass door, running. She was smiling at him. She opened the door and Spinner had never seen a woman look so beautiful.

He saw nothing else. He still grasped nothing else when Ann screamed and her face became white with fright.

They wore mufti and uniforms. Two grabbed the girl, two yanked open the doors of the car, and all Spinner saw was Ann screaming and her arms reaching for him.

They had to sap Spinner unconscious, which was the only way they could take him in.

# CHAPTER 26

Loma did not stop until he reached Seattle, as he had planned. The timetable was off, and while still in the vicinity of St. Louis there had been some special precautions; but aside from that Loma stuck to his original plan since it was still good. And because of the way Loma worked and because of his habits, that should have been all as far as the St. Louis job was concerned.

But he went over it again and again, the last part of the affair, the reasons why he had Spinner arrested. They were all good reasons. The arrest made sure of Spinner's whereabouts, an important point in Loma's flight.

It made sure that Spinner would not try to involve Loma further. Arrested for murder, Spinner could prove innocence only by establishing Loma's existence. To do this he would have to call the very same witnesses who had seen Spinner and Loma together acting like friends. And it would keep Spinner away from the St. Louis people, at least as long as it would take Loma to get out of reach.

Having Spinner arrested only made sense. He was going over it again and again, Loma decided, for no good reason. When he got to Seattle, Loma disappeared.

• • •

The prosecutor had speckled gray hair and a well-trained voice with full modulations. The attorney for the defense had also gray hair and a voice that fit his performance. There were differences between the two men, but Spinner did not see them. He rarely looked at anyone and when he did, he saw nothing. He ate when there was food and he slept when he was alone in his cell. He answered when he was spoken to but volunteered nothing. He no longer felt any interest.

Everything had collapsed, and after the first shock of his failure it had almost seemed to Spinner like part of a design. He was still angry then.

Until he lost Ann.

He hadn't seen Ann while she had been under arrest, but they released her quite soon. She had not been an accomplice, she had not even been an accessory to Spinner's flight Ann had been with him for professional reasons.

She had been released very soon and then had come to see him. They had been strained with each other. He hadn't asked her to come. He had started to wonder about her release and about his arrest He did not know how Loma could have timed his arrest, how Loma could know he would be at Ann's house. Spinner's doubts grew. But before they got too big, Spinner went suddenly dull. He felt bored with thinking about it, which saved him from doubt and which kept him from finding an answer. He turned dull and did not need an answer. All he needed was to be left alone. And after a while Ann did not try to see him any more.

The trial was dull. Spinner's presence threw a pall over the room, a sense of disinterest, and it was difficult to question his guilt Even the cross-examination lacked drama. The opposing lawyers both suffered from lack of an audience and only rarely worked themselves up to a spirit of personal enmity. But the prosecutor had to cover a number of points.

"Is it not true, Mr. Spinner, that you spent three years in jail for criminally assaulting Alvin Dixon because of a long-standing feud between..."

"Objection," said the defense.

The prosecutor stopped, the judge cocked his head to one side, and defense counsel said, "... on the grounds that the question is irrelevant to the particulars, namely..."

"We know the particulars," said the judge. "I'm sorry, were you through?"

"... and on the further grounds that an answer by the defendant would tend to be self-incriminatory..."

"Sustained," said the judge, and to the prosecutor, "Do you want to rephrase your question?"

The prosecutor decided to save it for his summation.

"Mr. Spinner, I show you Exhibit A, a Garand bearing your fingerprints. You are aware of the fact, Mr. Spinner, that this gun shot and killed..."

"Objection!"

"Sustained. Mr. Prosecutor, if you want to rephrase..."

"Thank you. Mr. Spinner, have you ever been in the army?"

"Yes."

"As part of your training, did you ever shoot an M-l?"

"Yes."

"And in combat, over a long period of time, have you not shot and killed, repeatedly shot and..."

"Objection."

"Sustained," said the judge. "I particularly want the jury to disregard this last — "

The prosecutor did not press the point any further. He would save it for the summation.

"Back to Stone Bluff then," said the prosecutor. He craned his neck for a moment, closing his eyes, because he was tired. "How did it happen, Mr. Spinner, that you drove the getaway car..."

"Objection — "

"Sustained — "

"... that the getaway car _was driven_ into a torn-up road?"

Spinner, after a moment, shrugged. He might have thought of an answer but the prosecutor went on.

"Strike that," he told the stenotype man, and said to Spinner, "On the night that Alvin Dixon was killed you had come to town for the first time in about three years?"

"Yes."

"Indeed. Isn't it true, Mr. Spinner, that you could therefore not know of the recent excavations on the south end of Stone Bluff and could therefore not know that the lane where the getaway car got stuck had been made impassable?"

There was some legal activity on that point, especially when Spinner refused to answer, but then the prosecution relinquished the point. It would be simpler to make it again in summation.

"Mr. Spinner," said the prosecutor, "I have here a shoe." He lifted the shoe off the table where the exhibits were kept. "You and all of us have heard detailed, expert testimony about this shoe." The prosecutor was tired and sighed. Then he said, "This shoe was found at the place where you got stuck with the..."

"Objection. Really, Your Honor, I object..."

"Sustained."

"Expert testimony," said the prosecutor, tired as before, "establishes that dirt on this shoe is identical to dirt found near the hedge of Alvin Dixon's lawn, and identical to dirt found in a spot which is in line with the shot that killed Alvin Dixon, and..."

"Your Honor, this dirt on the shoe could have been..."

"Do you wish to make an objection?" asked the judge.

The defense made an objection and got very technical about dirt There was an argument which developed some heat. Defense got carried away into raising the point that there might have been somebody else, that it was strange indeed —

"You mean, where is the other one?" the prosecutor started to shout "Where is the other shoe? Mr. Spinner!" The whole thing was out of order, but the prosecutor kept shouting. "Where is the other shoe, Mr. Spinner, would you tell us? Who's wearing the other shoe, Mr. Spinner, could you say?"

The gaveling and the yelling left Spinner completely out of the picture. It was now important to establish order in the court and the activity turned to that. This ended in silence. The heat of the free-for-all was shortlived because there had been nothing behind it, just some personal irritation. It ended so suddenly that the silence was quite complete.

The prosecutor closed his eyes. When he opened them he looked past the judge.

"Will the court direct the accused to put on this shoe."

They gave Spinner the shoe.

The shoe fit.

There was a room in the courthouse which they let Spinner use during the recess, because the jail was too far away. The room had varnish on all the woodwork and lettuce-green paint on the ceiling and wall's. Spinner's guard sat by the window and looked at the trees outside. Under the trees the guard saw a bed of yellow asters. They had just opened.

"Did you notice the — " the guard started to say, but he let it go. He was going to say something about the plants, but Spinner sat with his back turned the other way and was looking at the walls and the woodwork. He was thinking that if he had a blanket he might roll up on the floor and try to sleep. But the lawyer would be sure to come and interrupt him. He always came in some time during recess to interrupt with questions.

Spinner heard footsteps come down the hall and watched the guard get out of his chair. The guard, too, knew about the lawyer's useless visits.

There was a knock, and the guard unlocked the door, but it wasn't the lawyer. The sheriff came in.

"Hello, Jake."

Spinner grunted. He put his hands in his pockets.

"Jake. I haven't come to see you since the start of the trial. There wasn't any point — "

"Even less now," said Spinner and turned his chair so he faced the window. It kept him from seeing how the sheriff controlled himself, how the old man felt sick about all of this.

The sheriff pulled up a chair and tapped on the table in front of him. He tapped with one finger, making a dull, restrained sound. Then he suddenly stopped.

"Jake, turn around. What I've got to say..."

"You don't tell me to turn around, Sheriff," said Spinner, and saying it quietly, with no effort showing, made the cut in his voice that much sharper. "You're not talking to a man that's green, Sheriff. I'm not scared any more."

Since Spinner was facing the other way he didn't see what was happening. The sheriff had not been able to hold back any longer. He was up and now began shaking Spinner back and forth by the shoulders.

"Listen to me! At least listen to me! Maybe it will take a thrashing to knock that idiot stare out of your face and the bullheadedness out of your head. Maybe you think you're sitting there, all through, but if you were, Jake Spinner, you wouldn't know where to get the strength to be bull-headed like that!"

The sheriff stared at the man on the chair, then turned away. When he faced.

Spinner again he was ready to try it differently. "I know how you got this way, Jake. I was in on it, that's how I know. I'm going to try and make good."

"Sure."

The sheriff ignored it He even thought it was just bravado the way Spinner had said it.

"I'm from a different town now, Jake. Stone Bluff is a different town now Dixon is gone, and we're trying to..."

"Trying to thank me for the favor that killing did you and that town?"

"Why?" the sheriff was suddenly roaring. "Why? Because you're guilty?"

_"You_ think so," said Spinner.

The sheriff waved his arms without saying anything, as if groping for the right, convincing word. Then he let his breath out and sat for a moment.

"Jake," he said. "I'm trying to tell you, Jake, nobody thinks — I don't think you're guilty, until there's proof."

Spinner looked at the sheriff for the first time. He did not think the old sheriff was a good actor, so he must have meant what he said. Spinner said nothing, though. He was afraid to think of this too much.

"Jake, you going to listen to me?"

After a moment Spinner nodded his head.

"Here's what the prosecutor brought up," said the sheriff, and he suddenly talked as eagerly as he had wanted to do from the start "He said you drove down that road, that plowed-up road out of town, because you didn't know it had been torn up, you'd just come back into town and couldn't have known that it wasn't a road any more. You remember he said that?" Spinner had started to nod but the sheriff went on. "And then I remembered. You told me about that road being torn up when I had you in the station. You said Sloan, back in the bar, was telling you they just tore up the cutoff on the south end. You said that, trying to make us go out there and look for the killer. You remember?"

"Yes. I remember — "

"You knew that road was no good long before Dixon got killed, so you wouldn't have taken that road. You knew it wasn't good long before because they had told you, back in the bar. I checked that they told you."

"You checked?" said Spinner, and then he said it again. "You checked — "

"Yes," said the sheriff and he saw what it meant to Spinner, that it meant all this hadn't been false talk of encouragement or a visit to just ease the guilt of the sheriff, or to thank the killer for a killing and tell him his death would be worth-while.

"You mean," said Spinner but he was still afraid, "you mean what you said about thinking I might be innocent?"

"Yes, Jake, yes! Now listen, we got to follow the steps. First Dixon — why he got killed. You could have had reason, and that lawyer today showed how you could. But I also know about Dixon and the trouble he had with St. Louis. They could have done it, Jake. I'm not good enough to find out for sure, but I've looked as best as I could. St. Louis had reason and they could have done it. If they sent a killer it must have been all cased ahead of time, and taking the south end cutoff out to the highway makes sense. And coming into town for the killing, the man they sent wouldn't know about the road being no good. Now the gun, with your prints — how come it had your prints?"

"I touched it. I threw it out of the car."

"And the killer wore gloves."

"Yes. He..."

"Now the shoe, Jake. Was that his shoe?"

"Yes. He lost — No, I took it off him. He'd busted his ankle. He..."

"So let's say it was his. It was his," the sheriff repeated. He had gotten out of his chair and was pacing back and forth. "It was his. Therefore — " The sheriff frowned with the strain of finding the angle that might make the shoe the killer's, for sure. But he couldn't think. "How about it, Jake? You remember what happened to the other one, the mate of that shoe. One shoe left, maybe he threw it away, maybe left it somewhere or..."

"No," said Spinner. "He never took that one off. He had a clubfoot"

"Oh — You say a clubfoot?"

"Yes."

"Don't you know, man, how big that is? How big that can be? If the mate to that shoe is a clubfoot shoe, how could that shoe back there in court be one of yours? That can prove you didn't kill Dixon, that would prove it no matter what the killer might say!"

Then came a silence, like a great hesitation.

"You don't know where he is? Who he is?" said the sheriff.

Spinner looked at his hands, shrugged his shoulders.

"Anything at all, Jake?"

"I went with him," said Spinner. "It's too late to explain all of it — "

"Perhaps you don't need to say," said the sheriff. "But the killer. Can't you describe him? Can't you try, now that you know that I'm trying to help you. Can't you..."

"All right!" The old hopelessness inside Spinner made him shout "He is small and frail, as if he hadn't grown up; he is stooped and lined, like a monkey, his mind is the only thing that's alive about him, and that mind is like a machine! Is that a description? It's better than height and weight and color of skin, but is that going to help with a ghost? And he's got a clubfoot and he never does anything except for a dead cold reason from his live-machine brain! Is that going to help? You know what he'd do if he were here? He'd _prove_ I did the killing. He'd prove it just because there would be no good reason why not! And his name? Loma, he said, is the name he's using."

Spinner stopped when the door opened behind him and his lawyer came in. Spinner stopped to catch his breath and to shake his head so it would distract him. He did not want to think about this, he had not thought that he would again, and then he sat down on his chair. The lawyer had asked the sheriff a question and the sheriff had started to answer. Fast and eagerly he went over all of it and Spinner sat in his chair, and after a while he just sat and looked at his hands. They felt swollen and useless. Spinner barely listened to the two men.

"You mean to tell me he _knew_ that road was impassable?" The lawyer was loud with irritation. "And why haven't I been told about this?"

"And why haven't I been called to the stand before? I tried right in the beginning — "

" — and this entire second-person theory, why haven't I received the support any normal defense — "

They hacked at each other because they were frightened and it showed in their anger.

"The mate to that shoe a clubfoot? You realize that could be tantamount, could have been if I had been apprised in time for adequate investigation — "

" — got to follow that up. And the Dixon angle. The gangland angle I been telling you — "

It went on for a while and then the excitement died down. When it did there were a few facts at the lawyer's disposal. There were new avenues for exploration — too late almost, too late for a motion — but a strong point for a retrial if that man could be found, or even the shoe.

Spinner stopped listening. He had heard the important thing. _Too late_. He looked at his hands, which seemed swollen and useless.

# CHAPTER 27

The prosecutor had his summation prepared by one of his clerks who had nothing to do but to excerpt the unfinished points from the cross-examination. This method was not pure lack of interest on the part of the prosecutor, but he was busy preparing two other cases. Of course, the prosecutor delivered the summation himself. He was not tired now and he felt almost sorry not to have any opposition.

He said, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," and his smile was indulgent "There is a saying, _mana lavat manam_ , meaning simply that one hand washes the other. You have borne with me, ladies and gentlemen, and you have shown perspicacity. In return I shall therefore be brief." He paused, turned serious, and in a short while, from professional habit, became quite vehement "I have shown you motive, _modus operandi_ , and the _corpus delecti_. We need no more; you need no more. I will not insult your intelligence.

"The defendant, as I have shown, has nurtured over the years the kind of animosity which in the weak often results in violence. Years of friction between the victim, Alvin Dixon, and this poor man, the defendant, years whose hate was first crowned with just punishment by incarceration — three years in jail which the defendant had used to nurture his hate — so that, upon his release, his unmitigated criminality found culmination and release in the murder of Alvin Dixon!

"You have seen the gun which killed the victim, you have been shown that the gun bore the defendant's prints, you have seen the shoe worn by the defendant, the same shoe which bore dirt from the place close to the victim's home, the place where the killer stood to consummate his intent to murder!

"Ladies and gentlemen, I would add nothing more. Even in the face of defense's valiant attempt to disperse this logic, to cloud the evidence by the spurious introduction of a possible second to the execution of the crime — even so, I will say no more. Because does it help the defense to claim that the shoe lost by the defendant belonged to someone else? Does it help the defense to invoke a ghost? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it might help and supply comfort in the same way that it might help to blame illness upon the evil eye! The ghost has not materialized as the myth has grown larger. But I refuse to insult your credulity by enlarging a myth. I return you to the facts of the crime, for which, in good conscience, you must return your verdict of guilty as charged!"

The prosecutor bowed, then sat down. It had been one of his shortest summations. He had not needed more.

When defense rose to walk to the jury box, the prosecutor did not even look up. He knew his jury and he knew what the quiet in the room meant, a settled silence which meant it was over. The prosecutor did not envy defense.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," said the attorney. The prosecutor thought that it did not sound very vital. Stubborn, perhaps, but without life. "I cannot make your heavy task any easier than it is. I cannot ease it for you, the way my colleague — "

He had started with a negative, the prosecutor thought Not very good strategically. And he is hesitating —

The defense counsel had done even more, he had stopped. The silence in the room had grown heavy, but no longer with that sense of conclusion. It was heavy with waiting, with suspense made frightening by a low rush of whispers.

Two guards came down the aisle with a girl between them. The prosecutor could not remember her name, but she had been with the defendant She looked tense, rushed, and held her large purse tight in both arms. The prosecutor got up. He would have to join them. He walked to the group under the judge's bench and even the whispers died in the room, like a wind leaving.

Spinner had not recognized Ann in the beginning. He had not looked up till she was up front, and all he had seen was the back of the girl and the group around her. Then she had turned to look at him.

Spinner sucked in his breath with his sudden, strong rush of feeling. It had come too fast for him to know what name or direction his feeling had. So he sat in his chair and clamped his hands to the seat with a strength that felt like a tremble inside. He did not want the feeling to grow. If they stopped whispering under the bench, if they stopped charging the air with their hisses and their fast, checked gestures — if the girl would go away —

Ann came toward him, her eyes large and anxious. She walked fast and there was strain in her face. When she talked the pressure made her voice hoarse.

"Jake — " she said, close to his car. "Jake, dear — one moment longer. Hold on one moment longer, please — " And she added then, "You need a miracle, Jake. Please, dear, I'm with you now — Look!"

Spinner thought all their faces looked alike. The tight, hustling bunch at the judge's bench had turned to look at him, two eyes each, mouths silent and immobile now. They stepped apart.

There was a small table behind them. And on top was the black, lumped, massive-heeled shoe of a clubfoot.

• • •

When it was over and Spinner and Ann walked to the girl's car, he was silent and still did not know what to feel.

"Jake," she said, "aren't you glad?"

He smiled at her, but only because she was looking at him.

They drove south, and Spinner saw the flat land getting rounder and the fields and trees slanting up against hillsides. It was a bright day, and early. They would still have daylight when they reached the farm.

Ann said, "Can't you believe it, Jake?"

He shook his head, not knowing how to say what he felt. "Why," he said. "Why? Why did he do it?"

Ann reached into her pocket and gave a small white paper to Spinner.

"He sent you this," she said. "With the shoe."

Ann hardly knew Loma but she knew what it said on the note and that Spinner would understand it.

It was very short: _To Jake Spinner. For no good reason. Loma_.

THE END
If you liked Agreement to Kill check out:

The Box

# Chapter 1

This is a pink and gray town which sits very small on the North edge of Africa. The coast is bone white and the sirocco comes through any time it wants to blow through. The town is dry with heat and sand.

The sirocco changes its character later, once it has crossed the Mediterranean, so that in Sicily, for example, the wind is much slower, much more moist and depressing. But over Okar it is still a very sharp wind. It does not blow all the time but it is always expected, fierce with heat and very gritty. The sand bites and the heat bites, and on one side the desert stops the town and on the other the sea shines like metal.

None of this harshness has made the inhabitants fierce. Some things you don't fight. There are the Arabs there and there are the French. Once, briefly, there were the Germans, the Italians and the English, and a few of these remained. The people move slowly or quietly, sometimes moving only their eyes. This looks like a cautious, subdued way of living, and it is. Anything else would be waste.

There were not so long ago five in Okar who moved differently, perhaps because they forgot where they were, or maybe they could not help what happened; none of them is there any more. They were Remal, the mayor, who also did other things, and Bea, who did nothing much because she was waiting, and Whitfield, who was done waiting for anything, and Turk, who was so greedy he couldn't possibly have made it. And Quinn, of course. Put simply, he came and went. But that's leaving out almost everything....

• • •

"You got me out of my bath, you know," said the clerk.

"Mister Whitfield," said the captain, "this is your pier."

"Because of this bleedin' box you got me out of my bath."

"Mister Whitfield. I'm tied up at your company's pier, and in order to lower the box I need your permission."

"If Okar isn't the destination, why lower your box? And during siesta," the clerk sighed.

"I'm sorry I interrupted your sleep."

"I take a bath during siesta," said the clerk. He did not seem angry or irritated, but he was interested in making his point. It reminded him of the bath and he smiled at the captain, or rather, he smiled just past his left ear.

The captain thought that the clerk did look very clean — Englishman-clean — and he thought that he smelled of gin. Take an Englishman and give him a job where the sun is very hot and he soon begins to smell of gin. Perhaps this one, for siesta, bathes in gin.

The captain squinted up at his ship which showed big and black against the sun, much bigger than the tramper actually was, because the pier was so low.

"The winch man dropped a crate on the box down in the hold," said the captain, "and something cracked."

"I can understand that," said the clerk because he felt he should say something.

He looked at the captain and how the man sweated. How he sweats. Why doesn't he shave off that beard? Siesta time and I must worry about his cracked box. Such a beard in this heat. Perhaps a Viking complex or something.

"So the crew in the hold," said the captain, "two of the crew down there, they went and took a look and next they came out running and screaming. Uh — about something bad," said the captain and looked the length of the empty pier.

The empty pier was white in the sun and much easier to look at for the moment than anything else, such as the clerk, for example, and his patient face. And why doesn't he sweat — ?

"Eh?" said the clerk.

"And they described a smell. A bad smell."

The captain looked back at the clerk and went rasp, rasp in his throat, a sound to go with the beard.

"Now, you understand, don't you, Whitfield, I can't have something like that down there in my hold."

"You're Swedish," said the clerk.

This sounds like nonsense, thought the captain, all of this, including Whitfield's unconnected remark, because of the heat. Otherwise, everything would make sense. He made his throat rumble again, out through the beard, and thought a Swedish curse.

"Is your crew Swedish, too?" asked the clerk.

"Those two from the hold, they are Congolese."

"And they described a strange smell. And perhaps a strange glow? You know, something wavering with a glow in the dark, eh?"

"Goddamn this heat," said the captain. "Don't talk nonsense, Whitfield."

"I?"

"Whitfield..."

"Captain. You know how ghost-ridden they are, those Congolese. Very superstitious, actually."

"Whitfield," said the captain. "I understand you want to get back to sleep. I understand..."

"I take a bath during siesta."

"I also understand about that, Whitfield, and that this is an annoyance to you, to come out here and sweat on the pier."

"I'm not sweating," said the clerk. His blond hair was dry, his light skin was dry, and the gin smile on his face made him look like an elderly boy. "However," he said, "I wish you would take your box to destination. It would save us so much paperwork." Then he thought of something else. "And I'm sure the smell doesn't reach topside and nobody lives in the hold anyway."

The captain looked way up at the sky, though the brightness up there hurt his eyes. Then he jerked his face at the clerk and started yelling with both eyes closed.

"I must look at the box and repair the box! I can't repair on deck because of the freight lashed down there! All I request..."

"Heavens," said the clerk, "how big is this box?"

"Like a telephone booth. No. Bigger. Like two."

"Jet engine," said the clerk. "I've seen those crates when the company had me in Egypt."

"They — don't — stink!" yelled the captain.

"Of course. Or glow in the dark."

But the clerk saw now how the siesta was being wasted. With the gin wearing off on him under the heavy sun he got a feeling of waste and uselessness, always there when the gin wore off; when this happened he would take the other way he knew for combating these feelings, these really cosmic ones, in his experience, and he became indifferent.

"Very well," he said. "Lower away, if you wish. Gently," and with the last word he again and for a moment found his own dreaminess back. He smiled at nothing past the captain's left ear, and then up at the ship where a box would soon be swinging over. For a moment, inconsequentially, he thought of a childhood time in a London mews; it was so clear and still, and he saw himself walking there, eyes up and watching his green balloon. How it floated.

All this went by when the captain roared suddenly, giving the clerk a start of fright and alertness. Someone roared back from the high deck of the tramper and then the winch started screeching.

"What was it this time?" said the clerk.

"The papers," said the captain. "We need a bill of lading and so forth. Someone will bring them."

"Ah," said the clerk. "I should think so."

The winch started up again but because of the strain on it the sound was now different. It mostly hummed. From the pier they could see the black line of the gunwale above, and the boom over the hold, the boom holding very still while the humming went on. The clerk, for no reason at all, felt suddenly hot.

"I'll be glad," said the captain, "to weigh anchor tonight."

"Of course."

"Load, unload, go. Nothing else here."

"In Okar?" said the clerk, feeling absent-minded.

"What else is here?"

"I don't know," said the clerk. "I don't even know what is here."

It's the heat, thought the captain, which makes everything sound like nonsense, and when a seaman came off the ship, bringing a clipboard with papers, the captain grabbed for it as he might for the coattails of fleeing sanity.

"Where did you load this thing?" asked the clerk.

"New York." The captain kept flipping papers. "And your route?"

"Tel Aviv, Alexandria, Madagascar, New York."

"Find the destination of your thing yet?" The clerk looked up at the sky where the boom was, swaying a little now and all stiff and black against the white sky. Then the box showed.

"Just a minute," said the captain and licked his finger. The box also looked black, because of the white sky. It was very large, and swayed.

"Where to?" the clerk asked again.

"New York. Un — "

The boom swung around now and the black load hung over the pier.

"New York is port of origin," said the clerk. "You mentioned that earlier."

"Just a minute — "

When the box was lowered the winch made a different sound once again, a give and then hold sound, a give then hold, a sagging feeling inside the intestines, thought the clerk as he watched the box come down. It grew bigger.

"New York," said the captain.

"My dear captain. All I've asked..."

"Destination New York!" said the captain. "Here. Look at it!"

The clerk looked and said, "Queer, isn't it. Port of origin, New York. Destination, New York."

They both looked up at the box which swung very slowly.

"What's in it?" asked the clerk.

"What's in it. One moment now. Ah: PERISHABLES. NOTE: IMPERATIVE, KEEP VENTILATED."

The clerk made a sound in his throat, somewhat like the captain's rumble, though it did not rumble when the clerk made the sound but was more like a polite knock on a private door.

"That's a very queer entry, captain. They do have regulations over there, you know, about proper entries."

The captain did not answer and kept riffling the papers. The box was low now and really big. It no longer looked black, being away from the sky, but quite stained.

"And you know something else?" said the captain and suddenly slapped his hand on the clipboard. "There's no customs notation here anywhere!"

Now the winchman above kept watching the seaman who stood on the pier. The seaman made slow signals with wrists and hands to show when the box would set down. He is an artist, thought the clerk, watching the seaman. Sometimes he only uses his fingers.

There were also two dark-looking Arabs who stood on the pier and waited. One held a crowbar, resting the thing like a lance. The other one had an axe.

The box touched, not too gently, but well enough. It just creaked once. A pine box, large and sturdy, with legends on the outside to show which side should be up. The side panels, close to the top, had slits. The top panel was crashed down at one end.

"It does smell, doesn't it?" said the clerk.

"Christus — " said the captain.

The seaman by the box undid the hook from the lashing, fumbling with haste because he was holding his breath. When the hook swung free the seaman ran away from the box.

"Look at those Arabs," said the clerk. "Standing there and not moving a muscle."

"And in the lee of that thing yet," said the captain.

Then the hook went up and the winch made its high sound. No one really wanted to move. The clerk felt the heat very much and the bareness of everything; he thought that the box looked very ugly. Siesta gone for that ugly box. It doesn't even belong here. That thing belongs nowhere. Like the winch sound, the screech of it, which doesn't belong in siesta silence.

Both Arabs, at that moment, gave a start.

"What?" said the captain.

The winch stopped because the hook was all the way up. The boom swung back but that made no sound.

"What?" said the captain again. He sounded angry. "What was that?"

But the Arabs did not answer. They looked at each other and then they shrugged. One of them grinned and rubbed his hand up and down on the crowbar.

"Goddamn this heat," said the captain.

"Sirocco coming," said the clerk.

They stood a moment longer while the captain said again that he had to be out of here by this night, but mostly there was the silence of heat everywhere on the pier. And whatever spoiled in the box there, spoiled a little bit more.

"Open it!" said the captain.

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Cincinnati, Ohio 45236
www.prologuebooks.com

Copyright © 1957 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
Renewal Copyright © 1985 by Peter Rabe
All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4000-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4000-4

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook