“We have the car — a new Chevrolet that’s paid for — and a little over two-thousand dollars.”
“Well,” Short smiled, “that rules John out as a kidnapping and ransom prospect — unless the local boys work awful cheap. The checking account’s in your name?”
Susan smiled archly. “Yes. I suggested changing it over, but John said, ‘Why bother?’ ”
Short nodded. “Did you and John have any kind of disagreement last night? Was everything going along okay?”
“Everything was fine. We got along perfectly. Besides, if John left me, for any reason, how would that explain the behavior of Clymer, the desk-clerk, and the others? You think he could bribe the whole town to say he didn’t exist.
“Not likely. Have either of you ever been in this town before?”
“No.”
“No connection of any kind with anybody here?”
“None.”
“Remember,” Short pointed out, “you’ve only known John three months.”
Susan shook her head. “No, he’s from the East. New York. Besides, we only came here by accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“About twenty-miles north there’s a major fork in the highway. A sign says ‘San Jacinado’ one way and ‘Silver City’ the other. Both go down into Mexico. John asked me which way I wanted to go and when I said I didn’t care he flipped a coin, heads for San Jacinado and tails for Silver City. It came up heads.”
“That’s conclusive enough,” Short said, shrugging. “Now about the hotel-register — John actually signed it?”
“Certainly.”
“Yet Clymer found your signature and it checked with the one on your driver’s license.”
“I can’t explain that. I never signed the register.”
“How long have you been driving?”
Susan looked surprised. “About three years. Why?”
“Wouldn’t your license be in your maiden-name? Shaw?
“Oh—” Susan shook her head — “I had it changed a day or two after the wedding.”
“Most people aren’t so efficient.”
“I am. I like records and things kept up to date and accurate. I also changed my library-card and my voting registration. It’s a habit you pick up working in a bank. Loose ends prey on my mind.”
“The Beats I’ve known,” Short said drily, “hardly measure up to those standards. Most of them don’t bother to keep track of the day of the month.”
“Meaning why did I marry a man like John if I like system and order?” Susan shrugged and smiled. “Maybe it’s a case of opposites attracting. To be honest, John’s hardly even conscious of the month, let alone the day. In practical matters, he’s an overgrown child.”
“Has he had any kind of success with his music?” Short asked. “Since he’s thirty, I imagine he’s been working at it a few years at least.”
“His quartets and trios have been played by the Chicago Friends of Music Society. And he’s had work played in New York. All free concerts, open to the general public. His work is very advanced — ultra modern — what we call anti-Gestalt, Primary-Process expression. It’s unsigned, atonal, dissonant, and tremendously exciting.”
“Yes,” Short said. He lit a cigarette and walked to the edge of the fountain. He stared at the dry stone, watching heat waves rise from its surface and distort the line of the opposite side. “It’s funny,” he added after a moment, “that they don’t run this thing. It’s kind of pretty.”
“They drained it,” Susan replied, moving to Short’s side. “I understand there was a serious water shortage a few months back.”
“You’d think,” Short pointed to the fish skeletons, “that somebody’d be decent enough to have put those fish in a bowl first. A little detail like that says a lot about people. Well—” he smiled and nodded at the pink stucco fronted hotel building with its sloping roof of interlocked red tiles — “I guess we go in now.”
4
Short rented room 5, next door to Susan’s. He put his bag on a chair, removed a blackjack and a pair of handcuffs from it, slipped them into his hip pocket, and looked round. It was a plain room. It had two windows, chintz-curtained and draped at the sides with gray monk’s cloth; a pair of twin beds of brown painted metal, two small chests of drawers, and two wooden chairs. A cheap printing of a dying Indian on a horse was framed and hung over one bed; nothing hung over the other. A multicolored oval rag rug was placed on the bare wooden floor between the beds. There was a Bible placed squarely on top of one chest of drawers.
Completing his survey, Short moved to the hall doorway in a quick jump and flung the door inward. His arm flashed out and caught the wrist of a thin, wiry Mexican boy of nineteen or twenty-years. The kid struggled hard and missed a poorly aimed blow at Short’s face; Short grunted, twisted the wrist round hard, and brought the kid down to his knees, yelling with pain.
“Gotcha!” Short grinned. “I bet you were listening to see if I needed water.”
“Si — yes, yes, Senor! That is right. You need ice-water, no?”
Short laughed. He passed his hand along the kid’s belt and shirt front. “No shiv?” he asked in surprise. The Mexican looked at him in stubborn silence. “Maybe,” Short said, frowning, “we’ll find something here.” He reached behind the kid’s collar and pulled from a sheath nestled between his shoulder-blades a ten-inch, leaf-bladed throwing-knife, flat at the guard and ground from a single cut of steel. “Well, well—” Short hefted the knife in his palm, testing the balance — “you’re a real little pro. Bet you could spear a fly at ten yards with this dingus, no?”
The kid’s eyelids lowered and his face froze into a stubborn mask of hate. His jaw muscles tensed as he locked them in silence.
Short let go of his wrist, saying, “Go back and tell your fat boss I’ll be around to see him in about a half-hour. Meanwhile,” he opened his coat and slipped the knife into his belt, “I’ll borrow your pig-sticker.”
“Bitch! Dog!” the boy cried, spitting and backing away. “Fat overfed Gringo!”
“That’s bad language, Son. Now go ahead and deliver my message while you still got teeth.” Saying this, Short followed the kid a short way down the hall and watched him as he descended the stairs. Then Short went back and tapped lightly on Susan’s door. She opened it at once.
“What happened out here?” she asked. “I was changing and I heard a noise.”
“Nothing. I caught the bellhop spying on me. Look, I’m going to make a couple calls. I suppose we’ll be eating at that Sierra Royal Restaurant you mentioned — Clymer’s — suppose I meet you there in about an hour?”
“All right. It’s only a block down the main street. But I thought you’d want to check in here first.”
“No point.” Short shook his head. “There won’t be anything of John’s — not if somebody thought of his razor-blade wrapper. I’ll put the time to better use. By the way, where was that razor-blade wrapper? Where’d John put it?”
Susan stepped back from the door and pointed to a small table placed between a pair of twin beds exactly like the ones in Short’s room. “He twisted it into a ball and tossed it at me in fun. It bounced off my arm and landed behind that table. Then he went into the bathroom.”
Short looked at Susan curiously. “After your first encounter with the clerk, you rushed up here to get something of John’s to prove his existence. You were in a distraught condition, near to fainting, minutes later you did faint — yet you thought of a little thing like a razor-blade wrapper behind a table? It seems strange.”
Glancing nervously at the table again, Susan caught her underlip between her teeth and frowned. She looked back at Short. “I guess it’s because he tossed the paper at me — or because it went behind the table. John’s careless about things — cigarette-ashes, coins, letters — all that sort of stuff; he tosses it wherever he happens to be standing. It... it annoys me a little. I guess that’s why I remembered.”