The loud staccato of the auctioneer’s voice followed him, its hammering rhythm soon making his head ache, the fast gibberish pounding unrelieved, mixed with the voices and laughter of crowds of people pushing and jostling around him. He walked through the lines of trucks for sale and then stepped into the barns where it was quieter. The narrow pens were nearly empty, only a few motley farm horses and half a dozen saddle horses left unsold. The morning auction had been livestock, the afternoon sales had begun with small vehicles and would work up to the big trucks and the heavy machinery that Jake was waiting for. Lee lingered over the saddle horses, speaking quietly, smoothing a rump, watching their ears swivel around at him. None of the horses impressed him much; but hell, for what he wanted, most any crowbait would do. Fellow could pick up one of these leftover nags real cheap.
But he wasn’t ready to make a purchase. He stood looking, and then left the auction area, heading for the center of town, the rattle of the auctioneer following him a long way, only slowly fading. In the center of Blythe he crossed the wide main street, its baking heat reflecting up at him like an open oven, and he moved off in the direction of the post office.
Along the curb, cars were angled in solid, not a parking space to be seen. Auction was a big day in town. The little grocery was crowded, women and children carrying out wooden boxes loaded with staples, cornmeal, sugar, salt, and lard. An occasional horseman threaded through the street traffic; two farm horses stood hitched to an open wagon in front of the drugstore, heads down, sweat drying on their necks and shoulders. He could smell heat-softened tar from the roofs above him, the flat roofs of the one-story buildings that had to be retarred every few years to keep from leaking. The tall, spindly palm trees that had been planted here and there in front of the stores looked like oversized, upside-down floor mops stuck in the sidewalks and streets, their drooping fronds ragged from the desert winds.
The crickets were mostly gone, at least the live ones, not crawling up every wall, but piles of dead crickets were still heaped in the gutters, their dark rotting bodies not yet shoveled up into some refuse truck, their stink so sour he could taste it as he approached the burned bank next to the post office. Heavy equipment was still at work there, a backhoe with a bucket, cleaning up the last of the black, sodden refuse.
Moving on to the post office, he’d meant to check his P.O. box; though there was no way they could have his new birth certificate to him yet, he burned to have a look. But the line snaking out the front door made him draw back, pausing in a shadowed doorway. Standing in the entrance to a small sandwich shop, he watched the longpost office queue that trailed away down the sidewalk. Men in work clothes, a few men in suits, a few women, all in housedresses, half a dozen cowmen in faded Levi’s and worn Western boots. His gaze paused on two men carrying heavy money bags, the canvas bulging beneath their zippers. Lee, his pulse beating quick with interest, tailed onto the line trying to look bored and patient.
Most of the patrons were buying money orders. As he edged nearer, then was finally inside the door, he watched amazed the amount of money passing across the counter. Stacks of fifty-and hundred-dollar bills being counted out, some bundles handed across to the patrons, some put over into the care of the two postal clerks. Behind the clerks on a long oak table stood tall piles of greenbacks that, he supposed, had all come out of the safe. That made him smile, guessing that the meager wad of his creased tens and twenties from prison was mingled in with all that wealth. Shyly Lee glanced at the man behind him.“I thought it would only take me a minute. Is there always such a crowd?”
The soft, florid man hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, laughing.“You’re a newcomer, all right. There’s no bank in town, since the bank next door burned. Otherwise, you’d see these lines over there. Since the bank burned they do their business here. But even so, the post office is always busy, a lot of us pay our bills and make catalog purchases with money orders.”
This was better than Lee had guessed, there was more money here than he’d ever dreamed. If he could bring off a heist like this, he’d be set real nice for wherever he wanted to travel.
“Won’t be this crowded for long,” the pudgy man was saying, “just until the new building’s up.” He shifted his weight as if his feet hurt. “Right now, you’d have to drive across into Arizona for the nearest bank. Not far, just to Parker. But it’s easier to do business this way.”
The line edged forward and they moved with it, Lee trying not to show his excitement.“That’s a bummer, you have to go into Arizona to cash your paycheck.”
“Oh, no. Folk here don’t get paychecks. The pay, everything we do in this town, is pretty much on a cash basis. Most of the farmworkers are paid with cash. Same with the mining company. Payroll comes in by mail on the last train. Fridays, this place is like Fort Knox. They shut the front doors but the small operators come in that way. Foremen from the big outfits, most of them come around the back, from ranches and mines from all over, to pick up their cash so they can pay their men the next morning.” The man seemed innocent enough in imparting the information. And why not, it was obviously common knowledge. Lee watched man after man, likely local businessmen and independent ranchers, approach the counter pulling out fat rolls of bills. The man ahead of him, dark hair slicked back, peeled off three one-hundred-dollar bills and two fifties as casually as Lee would flip out a quarter for a beer. When it was Lee’s turn at the counter, he had to grin as he asked for four more stamped envelopes, thinking that in some way he might need them—and giving him time for a closer look at the stacks of money behind the counter, money he coveted.
Leaving the post office, he strolled along the outside of the building, looking more closely at the layout. The burned-out bank was on his left, facing the street. Beyond that was a vacant lot, then a cheap two-story apartment house. On the other side of the post office, a small hardware store, boxed in by adjoining stores, dry goods, a dime store, used furniture. When he walked around behind the solid row of buildings he found a narrow dirt alley running their length, with access to half a dozen back doors, including the heavy post office door with its barred window on each side. Just the simple snap lock on the outside, giving no indication of the big padlock concealed within. Across the alley stood an old wooden building that he thought might be storage for the hardware store, a stack of empty wooden nail boxes was piled by the back step. Behind that were more vacant lots, then a line of willows, then the empty desert stretching away.
He returned to the main street thinking about the moves it would take to bring off a robbery here, and about Mark Triple and his duster plane. He had seen Mark again on Saturday, loading up to dust another run of melon fields, and Mark had kidded him about trying a flight. The young pilot was flying up to L.A. in a few days, before he headed for the East Coast, he said he needed to get some work done on the prop. He had invited Lee to go along, and Lee, with the same flash of certainty that had led him to James Dawson, had eagerly accepted. Strange how things fell into place. Seemed like all his life, he’d fallen into situations which, most of the time, turned to his benefit, fitting right in with the plans he’d already started putting together.
Thinking of his possible moves in L.A., he paced the length of Blythe again. Even here in the center of town the desert wind brought the stink of the big cattle-feeding yards that lay outside of Blythe, with their modern feed mills and storage tanks. Thinking about that wealth, the wealth he knew lay in the big farms, and the cash he had seen in the post office, he stopped in a small grocery for a pack of gum, stood unwrapping a piece of Doublemint, smiling at the white-haired old man behind the counter. Old, Lee thought. Older than me but still working all day every day for a two-bit living.