I'd passed Marfa and Alpine a long way back, clusters of lights in the dripping darkness. I was between Marathon and Haymond when I dumped the body. Twice on the long stretch between Sanderson and Del Rio I nearly went to sleep. By that time I was driving myself as hard as I was driving the car.
Dawn was breaking in a dirty gray sky outside Bracketville when I got a leg cramp so bad it pulled my foot right off the accelerator. I stopped the car and got out and limped around it a couple of times, but I couldn't shake off the cramp. I drove through town with my left foot on the gas pedal and hobbled into a motel on the outskirts. I woke up the owner, shut up his grumbling about the ungodliness of the hour, took the key he gave me, and headed for the room he pointed out.
I was 450 miles from El Paso, and it had been a long, long day.
I shed clothing all the way from the door of the room to the bed, and I was asleep before I was halfway down to the pillow.
IV
A year after I left home I worked the midnight-to-eight shift in a gas station near the edge of a northern Ohio town. It was colder than a whore's heart in December, but it kept me eating. From two to seven in the morning I wouldn't average half a dozen cars. I'd sit inside with my feet cocked up on the heater and wait for daylight.
Or listen to Oily Barnes.
He was an odd one. I couldn't figure why a good-looking guy with a college degree should spend his time hanging around a gas station till all hours in the morning, talking to a kid like me. At first I thought he was a queer, naturally. Then I decided he wasn't, but I still couldn't make him out.
He was slender, with a pale, narrow face dominated by a high forehead, straw-colored hair, and steel-rimmed spectacles. He was about thirty. His small, well-shaped hands usually fluttered nervously while he talked. He had a beautiful speaking voice.
Two or three nights a week he'd hang around the station till five in the morning. I never understood how he could keep his eyes open on his bookkeeping job. I noticed one thing about him: he talked a lot about the places he'd been and the things he'd seen, but never about the people. He talked travel, books, painting, opera, ballet; talked with a passionate intensity. I tried to tell him he was way over my head with what he had to say. Then I saw it didn't matter, and I shut up and listened. Oily brought me books I didn't read, and he tried to hide his disappointment when I didn't.
And then one morning the police came and took him away. It was about three-thirty, and he'd been talking about books as usual, when the cruiser pulled up outside. Olly's good-looking face crumbled like aspirin in water when he saw the big man in plainclothes walking toward the station entrance. I thought for a second he was going to run, but if he considered it he didn't have time.
The big man stood in the open doorway, cold air pouring in all around him. "Let's take a ride, Oliver," he said. He had a broad, flat face with high cheekbones and no more expression than an iron skillet.
"No," Oily whispered. "No!" The second time it was a scream. Then he started to run, all right, toward the garage area, but the big man cut him off and scooped him up by the shirt front, like I'd snatch a fly from a table. He half-carried, half-dragged Oily outside without saying another word. The door slammed behind them.
I went outside to the cruiser. It was none of my business, but I went out, anyhow. A uniformed man was driving. I rapped on the rolled-up front window. I could see Oily and the big man in the back seat. Oily was crying. The uniformed man lowered the window and looked out at me. "What's it all about?" I asked him.
lie sat with his head cocked as if he were listening for something from the back seat. Nobody said anything, and after a minute he rolled the window back up and wheeled the cruiser around the pumps and out onto the highway.
I watched the tail-lights diminishing up the road. It was a bitterly cold night, without stars or lights of any kind except at the station. It wasn't any of my business, and I couldn't walk off and leave the place. I went back inside, out of the cold. Olly's overcoat was still draped on a chair where he'd dropped it when he came in.
I called the police four times between then and seven o'clock. No one I talked to had ever heard of Oliver Barnes. I described the big man who had taken Oily away.
They knew him, all right. His name was Lieutenant Winick. No one had seen him, either.
A little after four it started to snow. Between calls to the police I was kept busy clearing the station's driveways. My dawn there was six inches on the ground, and it was blowing hard. After seven I was too busy to call any more. When my relief came on at eight I had to stay over an hour to help with the rush of cars.
There were no buses running by the time I was able to get away. I put Olly's coat over my arm and walked the mile-and-a-half into town. Drifts were already a couple of feet high in some places, and the wind was spraying line-drive sheets of snow. Cold as it was I was sweating by the time I reached the police station. That kind of weather made heavy going.
I didn't really know what I was doing there. I guess I'd always known Oily wasn't exactly a hundred cents on the dollar. Still, a deal like that—what if it had been me? Wouldn't I have wanted someone to find out the score?
I might as well have talked to a totem pole as the sergeant at the desk. He asked a hell of a lot more questions than he answered. Who I was. Where I lived. Where I worked. What my interest was. He finally made a pretense of checking the blotter and said that no Oliver Barnes had been booked for anything. For him that ended it.
I hung around anyway. Nobody actually tried to run me out, but they didn't make it easy for me to stay. I tried my questions on two or three newcomers, with the same results. The heat in the waiting room kept putting me to sleep every time I sat down. At eleven o'clock I gave up. J left Olly's overcoat with the desk sergeant in case he came in looking for it, I said—and went home to bed.
It was still snowing when I woke at four. I dressed and walked back to the police station after a quick meal. The same sergeant spoke before I could when he saw me come in. "Lieutenant Winick wants to sec you, kid," he said, pointing to a door. "Second door on the left inside."
Winick looked up from the paperwork on his desk when
I knocked and entered his office. The room smelled of cigar ash and stale coffee. Winick's high-cheekboned features were just as expressionless as they'd been before. He leaned far back in his chair, folded his arms, and looked me over. "Stanton said you wanted to see me," he said at last.
As though he'd just got the word. "Where's Oily?" I asked.
"In a cell. Where he belongs."
"Why? What for?"
Winick's slitted eyes were unwinking. "Your friend has a bad habit. He coaxes little girls behind buildings and takes their pants down." His harsh voice deepened as his eyes bored into mine. "Little girls. Seven, eight, nine. He's done it before, you know. So it wasn't hard to know where to look, even without the kid's description of him, when her mother brought her in."
The roof of my mouth felt dry. "How good—what kind of a description?"
"Oliver Barnes' description." Winick's voice blared at me suddenly. "He served a reformatory term and a prison sentence for the same thing. You're not very choosy of your company. How long have you been in town?"
"Six mouths. When what lime did it happen?"
The big shoulders rose and fell in an elaborate shrug. "Five, six o'clock yesterday. The kid wasn't sure."
I felt a quick stir of excitement. "Five or six o'clock in the evening?"
"Five or six o'clock in the evening," Winick conceded with exaggerated patience.