I drove past the sign and stopped at a roadside stand down the road. I bought two washable sport shirts and two pairs of washable slacks from an elderly colored woman. She eyed my trooper's uniform but didn't say anything. The second turn beyond her stand I found a dirt road and turned into it. Within a few yards semitropical foliage hemmed in the cruiser on both sides. I parked in deep shade where the car was almost engulfed in big trees.
The sound of the engine died out to be replaced by the sound of insects. I relaxed my hands on the steering wheel and drew a deep breath. It was still only eleven thirty A.M. I had reached this point with a minimum of difficulty, and if I connected with Blind Tom as I was sure I could, I had it made.
I stripped off the uniform, climbed into the back of the cruiser, and Went to sleep. When I woke, the car was in even deeper shadow. It was nearly sundown. I was in a lather of perspiration from the buildup of heat in the car, but rather than expose my new skin to mosquitoes I kept the windows closed. I knew what I had to do, but I needed darkness to do it.
When the thick blackness of the Florida night suddenly enveloped the area, I wriggled into sport shirt and slacks. With the aid of backup lights I inched my way out to the highway. I headed toward Tom Walker's Cabins, but a quarter mile away I turned into a sandy lane.
There was no road. The headlights picked out a baseball diamond, a horseshoe court, and a tennis backstop in the nighttime-quiet of the county park. I drove on dead pine needles through widely spaced trees to the riverbank. I stopped on a slight downgrade, cut the headlights, pulled up the emergency, and got out of the car, leaving the motor running.
I checked everything twice. Cash in my pocket and extra slacks and sport shirt on my arm. Everything else in the cruiser including the trooper's uniform, Franklin's keys, the sawed-off shotgun, and the clothing Spider Kern had supplied, which I'd brought with me in case I needed to get out of the uniform suddenly. It was too dark to see the swift-running current below me but I could hear it. I leaned through the front window, put the cruiser in gear, then released the emergency brake.
The car crept toward the bank. The front wheels went over, and then it hung. I thought I was going to have to push, but the bank crumpled under its weight and the cruiser lunged forward. It dropped off into the darkness with a splash I could hardly hear. I knew the river was deep enough at that point so it was unlikely the cruiser would ever be found.
I walked out to the highway and on to Blind Tom's. All the known artifacts of Chet Arnold had disappeared with the cruiser. If I could stay out of sight for a while, the break would be clean. The big advantage I had now was that no one knew what the ex-Chet Arnold looked like in his new incarnation.
I turned in from the highway at the cabin-camp entrance. The same crazily tilted, hand-lettered sign I remembered hung on the wall of the building that served as a gatehouse. The sign said OFFIS. The gate was chained, barring traffic unapproved by the "offis." Tom paid off to avoid surveillance. It was this factor that brought him steady customers.
The only light in the gatehouse came from the dial of a desktop radio. I knocked once and entered. A white-haired, elderly Negro sat at the shabby desk. "Hello, Tom," I said. "Can you take care of me for a while?"
His blind walleyes stared in my direction while his wrinkled features screwed up in concentration. Blind Tom
Walker had a fantastic memory for voices. "Mought be," he said cautiously at last. "Dependin'."
"I'd like to have the riverbank cabin with the full-size bed on the north branch of the Y, Tom."
"Flood got that one three-four years ago," he observed. "But I rebuilt." He was silent again, evaluating.
I remembered something. "How's Cordelia, Tom?" Cordelia was a five-foot female alligator Tom kept penned at the river's edge.
"Cordelia in love," Tom informed me solemnly.
"In love? Who with?"
"With love." Tom chuckled unexpectedly, a high-pitched cackle. "You take that cabin on the Y, the bulls courtin' Cordelia every night gonna keep you awake with their roarin'." He leaned back in his chair. "Drake," he said. "That's who you be. Drake. You fixed a thirty-two for me."
Seven years ago I had passed as Earl Drake, itinerant gunsmith, during my stay with Tom. Earl Drake had never been in trouble with police anywhere. It was as good a name as any. "That's right, Tom. Earl Drake. And this time I'd like to buy a thirty-two from you."
"They come high," he cautioned me.
"Like the cabin?"
He grinned toothlessly. "Hundred a week."
"Only if you fix me a mess of catfish Sunday evenings." He cackled again, then sobered. "Fixin' to stay awhile?"
"Yes."
"Then mought be we could shave a mite off the rate."
"What about the thirty-two?"
He fished a key from a ragged pocket of his tattered white pants and unlocked a drawer in the desk. "How 'bout this one?" he inquired, pulling out an automatic and handing it to me.
It was a German-made Sauer, the 1930 model with three-inch barrel and duralumin slide and receiver, which reduced its weight to fifteen ounces. I turned the knurled block at the rear of the slide and eased slide and assembly forward from the barrel. It was reasonably clean. The standard thumb safety was on the left side of the receiver and the magazine release catch was in the butt. Magazine capacity was seven cartridges, and it was fully loaded. Although hardly a modern gun, the Sauer was a well-made weapon.
"You've sold a thirty-two, Tom," I told him. "How much?"
He rose to his feet. "We'll settle up t'morra," he said. "C'mon."
He led the way from the office and struck out surefootedly in the darkness along a dim path. No flashlight was ever necessary for Blind Tom. I stayed close behind the sheen of his once-white pants. We took the north fork of the branch of the Y in the path that I remembered, and I could hear the river again. Tom was unlocking the door of a cabin high on the riverbank before I could even see it in the blackness. He handed me the key. "If Cordelia's beaus get noisy, throw a saucepan down," he advised me.
"I'll do that," I promised.
He went back down the path. I opened the cabin door, went in, and turned on the light. The flood that had taken the old cabin had been a blessing in disguise, I decided. Tom had rebuilt it completely and the furnishings, while not new, looked much more comfortable.
I made a quick, approving tour of the facilities, then started shedding clothes. My day had begun at eleven P.M. the previous night when Spider Kern had given me the all-clear signal to go into the hospital washroom and change into my escape clothing.
By any standards, it had been a full day.
I slid into bed and relaxed fully for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours.
Not Cordelia's beaus nor anything else woke me until morning sunlight streaming in the cabin window hit me in the face.
5
Even as a kid I was a loner.
I never knew why, since I was the youngest in a family of eight. I had five sisters who tended to tell me what to do. Long before I was in my teens I ran them off the reservation on that point. They got the idea eventually that I'd manage my own life. They pouted, but they got the idea.
What clinched it was an incident that happened when I was twelve. I had a Persian kitten named Fatima. I never played with the other kids the way my family kept urging me to do. I played with Fatima. She was a ball of fluff with bronze eyes.
Some women in the town put on a pet show. I entered Fatima, and in the finals of the judging I was in the ring with her. So was a fat boy who went to the same school that I did. He had a big boxer dog. Fatima didn't like dogs, and I asked the fat boy to keep the boxer away. He laughed and let the dog come closer. The boxer sniffed curiously and Fatima raked his nose. The dog snapped once and Fatima died in an instant of a broken neck.