I pried Luth’s hands from his bloody face, levered them behind his back, and did the same for him that I’d done for his fat buddy. Then I grabbed the two restraining belts, one in each hand, and dragged them over to the place where the cliff dropped off.
By then Luth had recovered enough, despite the blood and the broken teeth, to glare at me. But Heavy Foot began weeping like a baby when I propped them both upright at the edge where it wouldn’t take more than a push to send them over.
Shut up, Braddie, Luth said through his bleeding lips, his voice still flat as stone. Then he stared at me. I’ve killed people worse than you.
But not better, I replied.
A sense of humor is wasted on some people. Luth merely intensified his stare.
A hard case. But not Braddie.
Miss your gun? I asked. You can join it.
I lifted my foot.
No, Braddie blubbered. Whaddaya want? Anything.
A name.
Braddie gave it to me.
I left them on the cliff edge, each one fastened to his own big rock that I’d rolled over to them. The additional rope I’d gotten from my shack insured they wouldn’t be freeing themselves.
Stay still, boys. Wish me luck.
Go to hell, Luth snarled. Tough as ever.
But he looked a little less tough after I explained that he’d better hope I had good luck. Otherwise I wouldn’t be likely to come back and set them loose. I also pointed out that if they struggled too much there was a good chance those delicately balanced big stones I’d lashed them to would roll over the edge. Them too.
I took my time going down the mountain — and I didn’t use the main trail. There was always the chance that Luth and Braddie had not been alone. But their truck, a new ’34 Ford, was empty. An hour’s quiet watch of it from the shelter of the pines made me fairly certain no one else was around. They’d thoughtfully left the keys in the ignition. It made me feel better about them that they were so trusting and willing to share.
As I drove into town I had even more time to think. Not about what to do. But how to do it. And whether or not my hunch was right.
I parked the car in a grove of maples half a mile this side of the edge of town. Indian Charley behind the wheel of a new truck would not have fit my image in the eyes of the good citizens of Corinth. Matter of fact, aside from Will, most of them would have been surprised to see I knew how to drive. Then I walked in to Will’s office.
Wyllis Dunham, Attorney at Law, read the sign on the modest door, which opened off the main street. I walked in without knocking and nodded to the petite stylishly dressed young woman who sat behind the desk with a magazine in her nicely manicured fingers.
Maud, I said, touching my knuckles to my forehead in salute.
Charles, she drawled, somehow making my name into a sardonic remark the way she said it. What kind of trouble you plan on getting us into today?
Nothing we can’t handle.
Why does that not make me feel reassured?
Then we both laughed and I thought again how if she wasn’t Will’s wife I’d probably be thinking of asking her to marry me.
What happened to your cheek? Maud stood up, took a cloth from her purse, wetted it with her lips, and brushed at the place where the bullet had grazed me and the blood had dried. I stood patiently until she was done.
Thanks, nurse.
You’ll get my bill.
He in?
For you. She gestured me past her and went back to reading Ladies’ Home Journal.
I walked into the back room where Will sat with his extremely long legs propped up on his desk, his head back against a couch pillow, his eyes closed.
Before you ask, I am not asleep on the job. I am thinking. Being the town lawyer of a bustling metropolis such as this tends to wear a man out.
Don’t let Maud see you with your feet up on that desk.
His eyes opened at that and as he quickly lowered his feet to the floor he looked toward the door, a little furtively, before recovering his composure. Though Will had the degree and was twice her size, it was Maud who laid down the law in their household.
He placed his elbows on the desk and made a pyramid with his fingers. The univeral lawyer’s sign of superior intellect and position, but done with a little conscious irony in Will’s case. Ever since I had helped him and Maud with a little problem two years back, we’d had a special relationship that included Thursday night card games of cutthroat canasta.
Wellll? he asked.
Two questions.
Do I plead the Fifth Amendment now?
I held up my little finger. First question. Did George Good retire as game warden, has the Department of Conservation started using new brown uniforms that look like they came from a costume shop, and were two new men from downstate sent up here as his replacement?
Technically, Charles, that’s three questions. But they all have one answer.
No?
Bingo. He snapped his fingers.
Which was what I had suspected. My two well-trussed friends on the mountaintop with their city accents were as phony as their warrant.
Two. I held up my ring finger. Anybody been in town asking about me since that article in the Albany paper with my picture came out?
Will couldn’t keep the smile off his face. If there was such a thing as an information magnet for this town, Will Dunham was it. He prided himself on quietly knowing everything that was going on — public and private — before anyone else even knew he knew it. With another loud snap of his long fingers he plucked a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to me with a magician’s flourish.
Voilà!
The address was in the State Office Building. The name was not exactly the one I expected, but it still sent a shiver down my spine and the metal spearpoint in my hip muscle twinged. Unfinished business.
I noticed that Will had been talking. I picked up his words in mid-sentence.
... so Avery figured that he should give the card to me, seeing as how he knew you were our regular helper what with you taking on odd jobs for us now and then. Repair work, cutting wood... and so on. Of course, by the time he thought to pass it on to me Avery’d been holding onto it since two weeks ago which was when the man came into his filling station asking about you and wanting you to give him a call. So, did he get tired of waiting and decide to look you up himself?
In a manner of speaking.
Say again?
See you later, Will.
The beauty of America’s trolley system is that a man could go all the way from New York City to Boston just by changing cars once you got to the end of town and one line ended where another picked up. So the time it took me to run the ten miles to where the line started in Middle Grove was longer than it took to travel the remaining forty miles to Albany and cost me no more than half the coins in my pocket.
I hadn’t bothered to go back home to change into the slightly better clothes I had. My nondescript well-worn apparel was just fine for what I had in mind. No one ever notices laborers. The white painter’s cap, the brush, and the can of Putnam’s bone-white that I borrowed from the hand truck in front of the building were all I needed to amble in unimpeded and take the elevator to the sixteenth floor.
The name on the door matched the moniker on the card — just as fancy and in big gold letters, even bigger than the word INVESTMENTS below it. I turned the knob and pushed the door open with my shoulder, backed in diffidently, holding my paint can and brush as proof of identity and motive. Nobody said anything, and when I turned to look I saw that the receptionist’s desk was empty as I’d hoped. Five o’clock. Quitting time. But the door was unlocked, the light still on in the boss’s office.