I could drive around. Take a ride by myself. That was about all.
Gradually, the good feeling began to leave me.
I got the car out, and headed for the courthouse.
Hank Butterby, the office deputy, was reading the paper, his boots up on the desk, his jaws moving on a cud of tobacco. He asked me if it was hot enough for me, and why'n hell I didn't stay home when I had a chance. I said, well, you know how it is, Hank.
"Nice goin'," he said, nodding at the paper. "Right pretty little piece they got about you. I was just fixin' to clip it out and save it for you."
The stupid son-of-a-bitch was always doing that. Not just stories about me, but everything. He'd clip out cartoons and weather reports and crappy poems and health columns. Every goddam thing under the sun. He couldn't read a paper without a pair of scissors.
"I'll tell you what," I said, "I'll autograph it for you, and you keep it. Maybe it'll be valuable some day."
"Well"-he slanted his eyes at me, and looked quickly away again-"I wouldn't want to put you to no trouble, Lou."
"No trouble at all," I said. "Here let me have it," I scrawled my name along the margin, and handed it back to him. "Just don't let this get around," I said. "If I have to do the same thing for the other fellows, it'll run the value down."
He stared at the paper, glassy-eyed, like maybe it was going to bite him. "Uh"-there it went; he'd forgot and swallowed his spit-"you really think…?"
"Here's what you do," I said, getting my elbows down on the desk and whispering. "Go out to one of the refineries, and get 'em to steam you out a steel drum. Then- you know anyone that'll lend you a welding torch?"
"Yeah"-he was whispering too. "I think I can borry one."
"Well, cut the drum in two, cut it around twice, rather, so's you'll have kind of a lid. Then put that autographed clipping inside-the only one in existence, Hank! — and weld it back together again. Sixty or seventy years from now, you can take it to some museum and they'll pay you a fortune for it."
"Cripes!" he said. "You keepin' a drum like that, Lou? Want me to pick you up one?"
"Oh, I guess not," I said. "I probably won't live that long."
11
I hesitated in the corridor in front of Howard Hendricks' office, and he glanced up from his desk and waved to me.
"Hello, there, Lou. Come on in and sit a minute."
I went in, nodding to his secretary, and pulled a chair up to the desk. "Just talked to Bob's wife a little while ago," I said. "He's not feeling so good."
"So I hear." He struck a match for my cigar. "Well, it doesn't matter much. I mean there's nothing more to be done on this Conway case. All we can do is sit tight; just be available in the event that Conway starts tossing his weight around. I imagine he'll become resigned to the situation before too long."
"It was too bad about the girl dying," I said.
"Oh, I don't know, Lou," he shrugged. "I can't see that she'd have been able to tell us anything we don't already know. Frankly, and just between the two of us, I'm rather relieved. Conway wouldn't have been satisfied unless she went to the chair with all the blame pinned on her. I'd have hated to be a party to it."
"Yeah," I said. "That wouldn't have been so good."
"Though of course I would have, Lou, if she'd lived. I mean, I'd have prosecuted her to the hilt."
He was leaning backwards to be friendly since our brush the day before. I was his old pal, and he was letting me know his innermost feelings.
"I wonder, Howard…"
"Yes, Lou?"
"Well, I guess I'd better not say it," I said. "Maybe you don't feel like I do about things."
"Oh, I'm sure I do. I've always felt we had a great deal in common. What is it you wanted to tell me?"
His eyes strayed a second from mine, and his mouth quirked a little. I knew his secretary had winked at him.
"Well, it's like this," I said. "Now, I've always felt we were one big happy family here. Us people that work for the county…"
"Uh-huh. One big happy family, eh?" His eyes strayed again. "Go on, Lou."
"We're kind of brothers under the skin…"
"Y-yes."
"We're all in the same boat, and we've got to put our shoulders to the wheel and pull together."
His throat seemed to swell all of a sudden, and he yanked a handkerchief from his pocket. Then he whirled around in his chair, his back to me, coughing and strangling and sputtering. I heard his secretary get up, and hurry out. Her high heels went tap-tapping down the corridor, moving faster and faster toward the woman's john until she was almost running.
I hoped she pissed in her drawers.
I hoped that chunk of shrapnel under his ribs had punctured a lung. That chunk of shrapnel had cost the taxpayers a hell of a pile of dough. He'd got elected to office talking about that shrapnel. Not cleaning up the county and seeing that everyone got a fair shake. Just shrapnel.
He finally straightened up and turned around, and I told him he'd better take care of that cold. "I'll tell you what I always do," I said. "I take the water from a boiled onion, and squeeze a big lemon into it. Well, maybe a middling-size lemon and a small one if-"
"Lou!" he said sharply.
"Yeah?" I said.
"I appreciate your sentiments-your interest-but I'll have to ask you to come to the point. What did you wish to tell me, anyway?"
"Oh, it wasn't any-"
"Please, Lou!"
"Well, here's what I was wondering about," I said. And I told him. The same thing that Rothman had wondered about. I put it into my words, drawling it out, slow and awkward. That would give him something to worry over. Something besides flat-tire tracks. And the beauty of it was he couldn't do much but worry.
"Jesus," he said, slowly. "It's right there, isn't it? Right out in the open, when you look at it right. It's one of those things that are so plain and simple you don't see 'em. No matter how you turn it around, he just about had to kill her after he was dead. After he couldn't do it!"
"Or vice versa," I said.
He wiped his forehead, excited but kind of sick-looking. Trying to trap old simple Lou with the tire tracks was one thing. That was about his speed. But this had him thrown for a loop.
"You know what this means, Lou?"
"Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that," I said, and I gave him an out. I rehashed the business about fluke deaths that I'd given to Rothman. "That's probably the way it was. Just one of those damned funny things that no one can explain."
"Yeah," he said. "Of course. That's bound to be it. You-uh-you haven't mentioned this to anyone, Lou?"
I shook my head. "Just popped into my mind a little while ago. 'Course, if Conway's still riled up when he gets back, I-"
"I don't believe I would, Lou. I really don't think that'd be wise, at all."
"You mean I should tell Bob, first? Oh, I intended to do that. I wouldn't go over Bob's head."
"No, Lou," he said, "that isn't what I mean. Bob isn't well. He's already taken an awful pounding from Conway. I don't think we should trouble him with anything else. Something which, as you point out, is doubtless of no consequence."
"Well," I said, "if it doesn't amount to anything, I don't see why-"
"Let's just keep it to ourselves, Lou, for the time being, at least. Just sit tight and see what happens. After all, what else can we do? What have we got to go on?"
"Nothing much," I said. "Probably nothing at all."
"Exactly! I couldn't have stated it better."
"I tell you what we might do," I said. "It wouldn't be too hard to round up all the men that visited her. Probably ain't more than thirty or forty of 'em, her being a kind of high-priced gal. Bob and us, our crowd, we could round 'em up, and you could…"