He said it again, "Jesus. Did it ever enter your goddam head that she might commit suicide?"
"Yes," I said. "Yes, it entered my head. I don't think she will but it's a possibility. But it doesn't really matter, does it? It would save everyone a lot of grief, wouldn't it?"
It was his turn to blow his breath. I heard him do it.
"Thaxton-I'll be out there just as quick as I can find my pants and a squad car. You stay right where you are. Hear me? You and I are going to have a long, hard father and son talk today."
"I've still got a couple of things to take care of," I told him.
His voice leaped along the wire.
"Goddammit, Thaxton, I said _stay where you are!_"
"Take it easy, Ferris. You know where to find me when you want me." I hung up.
One of the rummies woke up and yelled at me to turn off the goddam light. I told him to go himself. He didn't but he roiled over and went back to sleep. I looked up Billie's number in the directory.
There was no answer. I figured she was dead asleep and I let it ring a dozen times but there was still no answer. I repeated the old Anglo-Saxon word I'd just said to the rummy and hung up and walked out of the bunkhouse.
It was getting on to four by the time I reached the basement in Dracula's Castle. I asked the lookout on the door if Gabby was still in the game and when he said yes, I said tell him I wanted to see him out in the hall a minute.
Gabby was wearing insomnialike smudges under his eyes when he stepped outside and closed the door after him. He looked at me with a tired, incurious expression and I handed him his automatic.
"Thanks for the loan," I said. "But you better replace the firing-pin. It works better when all the parts are intact."
Gabby looked at the gun in his hand and wet his lips. He didn't say anything, didn't look at me.
He wasn't my big by a damn sight, but I didn't mind taking him apart because I knew he was a handy little bastard and even if he didn't have a switchblade on him at least he had that Roscoe to use as a sap and that would help equalize our size.
But he just stood there, staring at that gun that wasn't a gun, waiting for it like a convicted war criminal waiting for the inevitable noose. Then he said something that was so incongruous to his nature it caught me offbase.
"Forgive me, Thax."
And then I knew I couldn't do it and that made me feel so goddam mad and frustrated I started yelling at him.
"_Why the hell did you do it?_ We were friends, weren't we?"
He let out his breath like a weary man lowering a heavy burden.
"Are they dead?" he asked. "Did you kill 'em?"
"Who? Mike and May? Mike is, and the johns are coming for May."
"Well," Gabby said, and for a long moment I didn't think he was going to say anything else. Then he started to talk.
"They had me in a bind, Thax, and I didn't have enough guts to get up off the ground and make like a man. About four years back me and May worked for the same outfit up north. There was a beef one night on the lot and a mark got killed. I sapped too hard. A few of the carnys knew who did it but they figured the rube had it coming so they clammed up. May was one of 'em."
He grunted with disgust.
"I should have known better. Should have known May better. I came here a couple of years back and got a job with Cochrane. I didn't know that May was his wife or that she was even on the lot. Then one day she walks by my gallery and looks at me. That's all, just looks. No sign, no word. But I knew then she was going to make me pay somehow, sometime. Every day for two years I've waited for the ax to fall. And it finally did-a couple a three days back.
"Mike Ransome came to see me. He gave me this toy. He knew that you and me had become buddy-buddy and he had an idea that before very long you'd be looking around for a gun. He figured you'd come to me and said I was to give you this Roscoe. Said it was all a part of a joke he was going to pull on you and that I'd better help with my end of it unless I wanted the law to take another healthy look at that four year old murder. So…"
He raised his head and for the first time since I had known him a look of urgent appeal came into his sallow face.
"But at least I tried to head you off, didn't I, Thax? I told you not to take the damn thing-to cut and run instead."
"That's right, Gabby," I said. "You tried."
I felt empty, disillusioned. I had thought of Gabby as one of those self-contained characters who would always stand up and spit in the world's mean face. Now I saw he had never been anything but a frightened little man.
"Let's forget it," I said. "It doesn't matter now."
But I knew that neither of us could forget it and that nothing would ever be the same again. Gabby knew it too. He didn't say a word when I turned and went up the steps.
I knew I'd be in for a long hard day once Ferris got his hooks in me and started scrubbing me over the washboard, and I didn't want to go into all that without a little sleep under my belt. It was after four by then and I was out on my feet. But I couldn't go back to the tree house because Ferris would send his storm troopers there first thing.
Then I remembered the unused room up in Dracula's Castle. I went up there and closed the door and threw myself on the bed. The last thing I heard was the wailing police sirens coming from a long long way off.
20
Well, and where are they now? -Silver was saying. _Pew was that sort and he died a beggarman. Flint was and he died of rum at Savannah. Ah, there was a sweet crew, they was, only where are they Thax. Thax wake up Thax…
Someone was pulling me out of my dream by my shoulder. I opened my eyes and day was smiling through the archer's cross and Billie was standing over me not smiling.
Her eyes were very wide and dark and her face looked pallid. She was wearing a little V of worry between her plucked brows.
"Thax, I've been looking everywhere for you! And so have the police. How long have you been up here?"
I sat up and reached for a cigarette but changed my mind when I remembered that they had had a bath in that ducky lake.
"What time is it?"
"It's nearly nine. Thax, there's policemen all over the place." I said, "Where were you last night, or early this morning? I tried to phone you."
"I was right here. I never went home. When you didn't meet me at the gate I went over to the tree house to see what had happened to you. I saw your shirts and things on the floor so I stayed there to wait for you. Then I guess I fell asleep. Some policeman woke me up over an hour ago. He was looking for you."
"Do you have a cigarette?"
She sat down on the edge of the bed and gave me one from her purse. She said, "Thax-they're saying that Mike Ransome was killed last night."
"That's right. He had an accident and fell on one of May's knives."
"May Cochrane? What happened to her?"
I looked at her. "Nothing that I know of. The last I saw of her she was sitting in the Hispaniola in a daze waiting for the law to come cart her away."
Billie made a little impatient shake with her head.
"I don't understand, honey. What-"
"Mike and May killed old man Cochrane," I said. "Mike did the dirty work. But right off the bat they discovered there had been a witness-when blackmail reared its ugly head. And that's when things started to get messy."
"Blackmail?" Billie said. "You mean there's been a blackmailer in on this murder all along? Who? Bill Duff?"
I really wanted a toothbrush more than a cigarette. It tasted like a freshly printed newspaper. I got up and pitched it out the window.
"Duff," I said, "had an idea what it was all about, and he certainly had blackmail on the brain. But he couldn't get off the ground with it because he lacked a vital part. He didn't have a witness."