There followed an accurate description of the clothes I was wearing, and then the entire bulletin was repeated. There was no description of me as an individual. It amused me to think of the dispatcher's frustration. "Where's the guy's description? What the hell do you mean you don't know what he looks like?"
The police had probably had the flash thirty minutes before it went out over the commercial station. Spider Kern's car was a late model green and white Dodge with Florida plates 244–356. I was in fairly good shape as long as the police kept looking for that car I had to get out of the clothes Kern had provided, though. Just as soon as I had my hands on the sack with the Phoenix loot buried in the ground near Bunny's cabin, getting rid of that clothing assumed top priority.
I pulled over to the side of the road, opened up the map, and studied it in the light from the dash. I saw that if I back-tracked five miles I could get off the black-topped secondary road I was on and complete the remainder of my drive to Hudson on little-traveled dirt roads. It would add to my driving time, but country roads were less likely to have troopers in prowl cars on the lookout for me. I dropped the map to the floorboards, covering up the sawed-off shotgun, and started up again.
I swung around and headed back along the macadamed road toward the dirt road turnoff I'd seen on the map. When I swung onto it, I almost chickened out in the first hundred yards. It was narrow, no more than eighteen feet wide, with a high crown and a deep drainage ditch on either side. The road was covered with a fine powdery layer of reddish dust. In the rearview mirror I could see it streaming behind in the taillights like a granular fog.
The map had showed it as a usable road, though, and the weather had been dry for days, so I kept on. The headlights bored a bright path in the darkness through a green tunnel of huge trees meeting over the road. I saw the trunks of jackpine, cypress, chinaberry, and shagbark hickory fringing the edges of the ditches.
I had no watch, so I could only estimate the time. I knew that sunrise came about six-thirty at this time of the year. I hunched over the wheel, apprehensive about the sideways drift of the rear wheels in the loose dust every few hundred yards. My doubts increased with each passing moment. If someone took the notion, one man alone could roadblock an army on a road like this.
But the miles fell away behind me with no sign of life except an occasional rabbit darting through the headlight beams, kicking up puffs of dust from the road. I changed course twice as I had plotted it from the map when intersecting dirt roads loomed up in the headlights. Sooner than I would have believed possible, I found myself approaching the outskirts of Hudson.
I had planned my approach so there was no need for me to drive through the town. If anyone had the cabin staked out, they should be looking for me to drive in from U.S. 19. Instead, I took a seven-mile detour around three sides of a square. When I ended up on the road that led past Bunny's cabin, I was moving in on it from the side away from town.
I drove until I estimated I was within a mile of the cabin, and then I pulled Rafe James's car as far off the road as I could manage. The brush was so thick I couldn't penetrate it deeply, but at least the car wasn't out in plain sight. I picked up the shotgun and started down the road on foot. The air was clammy, moisture-laden from the nearby swamps. Wisps of fog were beginning to curl up from the damp ground. My head felt hot and uncomfortable.
I had only an occasional glimpse of the stars through the thick foliage of trees meeting far above my head. It was so dark I was beginning to wonder if I'd passed the cabin without seeing it when I heard a metallic ping from somewhere ahead of me. I stopped and listened. The faint ping was repeated. I moved over to the side of the road and advanced a cautious step at a time. Even at that, I almost ran into the automobile before I saw it.
It was pulled off to the side as I had pulled James's car off. I eased up to it silently. No one was in it. I couldn't make out its color, but I could see the domed silhouette of the flasher on its roof. The car was a police cruiser. I was going to have unwelcome company at Bunny's cabin.
I placed my hand on the car's radiator. It was warm, almost hot. The metallic plinking sounds I'd heard had been the metal of the radiator cooling and contracting. I opened the cruiser's door boldly, knowing that interior lights don't come on in a police car. I was hoping to find a spare handgun, but the only thing in the front seat was a riot gun locked into its boot. Even if I could have worked it free, it was no improvement over the shotgun I already had. A dark blur on the left side of the back seat turned out to be a trooper's uniform on a wire hanger. It was enclosed in a thin plastic bag. On the back seat lay a wide-brimmed trooper's campaign hat.
I started up the road again, leaving the car door open. Two hundred yards ahead there was a break in the trees, and I knew I was at the cabin. I started to take off my shoes, then stopped. All I needed was to put my foot down on a cottonmouth. I edged in from the roadside a careful step at a time. A chill dawn breeze rustled the bushes on either side of me, reminding me that time was running out. I wanted to move faster, but I held myself down.
The blacker outline of the cabin came into view. I studied it for a moment before moving in. At my first step there was the sound of a slap from inside the cabin, "Damn mosquitoes!" a hoarse voice muttered.
"Shut up!" Blaze Franklin's voice replied instantly.
"Don't get narky," the first speaker replied in an injured tone. "We'll see his headlights comin'. How 'bout a cigarette, Blaze?"
"I told you no cigarettes, Moody! This bastard is smart and dangerous!"
"At least you could tell me who this dangerous bastard is," Moody returned sulkily. "An' why you dragged me out here to wait for him at this God-forsaken place."
"Because a friend put through a telephone call," Franklin replied. "You just stick with me an' you'll wear diamonds."
"Like yours?" Moody said. His voice turned sly, "The boys been wonderin' where you're gettin' your money since you resigned from the force."
"We should be listenin' instead of talkin', Moody."
Moody grunted but subsided. I moved stealthily away from the cabin. I didn't like what I'd overheard. If Franklin were living high as a nonworking civilian, it almost had to be on the Phoenix money. He'd had plenty of time to look for it. The thought that he might find it had somehow never occurred to me.
I looked up at the star-dotted sky and moved straight north from the cabin's front door exactly as I had that other night that seemed so long ago. Even in the dark I noticed that there was a lack of brush. Someone had cleaned it out. The ground was soft and shifting underfoot. Someone had patiently dug up the area foot by foot. Franklin had dug up the area. Franklin had found the money.
Dry paper rustled under my feet as I turned around and looked toward the cabin. I bent down and reached for as much of it as I could find without moving my feet. It felt like newspaper. I twisted it into a tight spill, put it under my arm, and crept back to the cabin. Franklin was going to tell me where the money was.
When I was a few yards away from the front door, I could hear them talking again. I couldn't make out what they were saying because this time the solid cabin wall was between me and them instead of the side containing an open window. Had Franklin bolted the front door? If the door was bolted, we were in for a prolonged shootout. If it wasn't, and I could burst inside with the element of surprise in my favor…