Bountiful among the poor.
It was plain enough that I was a stink in the nostrils with the lady seated at the head of the table. It was interesting that, feeling as she did about me, Franklin could force her to issue this invitation. It made Hazel a hundred-percent correct about who was wearing the pants in the corporation.
It had to be that Franklin was pushing her to set up the deadfall again. She wouldn't have told him exactly what happened that night; she wouldn't like to admit it even to herself. Blaze would assume I had made out with Lucille after suckering him into the wrong cabin, and this would leave him grinding his teeth. But he would also assume I was slavering for another go-round and would eagerly snatch up any invitation from the blonde. Lucille knew, better, but she had to go along with Franklin's idea.
It gave me an idea of my own.
'I'm glad to see you finally wised up to Franklin,' I said to her when the little maid disappeared after serving dessert.
Her mind had been a long way off. Probably gloating over an image of me staked out naked over an anthill. She came back to earth. 'Wised up?'
'Sure. I'll never know what you saw in a jerk like him. Just a big bag of wind.' It was no trouble to make that sound convincing. 'Having me to dinner like this shows you're a smart girl. You should have cut Franklin loose a
long time ago. You and me, now—we could really play
chopsticks together on the same piano.'
She didn't swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Not at first. She was suspicious as I oiled up both sides of my tongue and greased her liberally. She couldn't believe at first I was too stupid to know her reaction to me, but her suspicion gradually died. She was used to such a masculine response for one thing. By the end of the meal she had come as alive as if someone had just reported my painful demise. She was tossing them back to me as fast as I batted them at her.
Lucille was no fool. I was giving her an out on a problem through which she hadn't been able to see daylight. This was the way it should go as far as Franklin was concerned. If she could report progress to him, it was a load off her back. If she could set me up as a foil against Franklin in the infinitesmally possible event he couldn't handle me—why, how lovely. She had nothing to lose.
She didn't overplay her hand much, either. 'I was very angry with you the other night,' she said gravely. 'I thought you were a gentleman.'
Even the boob I was supposed to be couldn't let her get away with that. 'My grandmother raised me to be a gentleman everywhere except in bed,' I informed her. 'Besides, you'd just set me up to get cut off at the knees, sweet heart. You're lucky I didn't really get mad at you.'
'But I wasn't going to do anything! I was just—' Her protest died away when I forced her gaze to meet mine.
'You were just going to sit there and cheer, that's all. You got what was coming to you, sugar. Just like Franklin's going to one of these days.' I threw that in as an afterthought, she was really getting restless under the Franklin thumb—
She didn't appear to notice the opening. Honest curiosity shone for an instant through her genteel facade. 'I admire clever men, Chet. Whatever led you to take rooms in two different names?'
'Self preservation. I inherited large quantities of it. Look, maybe I leaned on you a little hard, but that's water over the dam. I don't see why we can't get along. You're a smart girl. You and I make a much better team than you and Franklin. Just don't try any more cute tricks. And I don't like bossy women. Do as you're told and we'll be all right.'
I expected to hear her grinding her teeth at the end of that little speech. Instead, she smiled sweetly. She was a cinch to bring along a sawed-off baseball bat to our next motel room assignation. Without her realizing, it oozed from every pore that she couldn't wait to bring the loudmouthed abusive animal into the dust. 'I'm not used to such a—such a forceful man,' she said demurely. 'Shall we have our coffee on the patio?'
We had our coffee on the patio. I buttered her up some more. She buttered me up some more. Instead of the silver fingerbowls placed on our trays, twin showers would have been more appropriate.
She finally cut across the radius of the circle. 'What are you really doing in this area?' she asked directly. 'I never have believed your black maple story.'
'A man can make a quick dollar if he stumbles onto the right patch of second growth out in that timber,' I argued.
She was beyond the point of letting me get away with it. 'You don't seem to me like the type of man interested in making just a few dollars.'
I set down my coffee cup and rose to my feet. Lucille rose, too, surprised. 'You talk too much, sweet heart,' I told her. I walked around the little marble patio table and took her by the arms, below the sleeves of her short- sleeved dress, harder than necessary. 'You're going to have to break that habit.' Her face whitened at the pressure of my hands on her arms. 'I'll give you a chance tomorrow night to start breaking it. I'll pick you up for dinner at five.'
'I'll—all right. Five,' she echoed breathlessly.
I let her go. Her hands came up instinctively to caress her arms, where my handprints stood out lividly. 'Good night, Lucille,' I said.
'Good night,' she said numbly.
I went down the patio walk to the street without going back into the house. The blonde should have been thinking, A pox on both their houses. But she was still committed to Franklin. The devil you know oftentimes seems better than the devil you don't.
Lucille would see to it that Franklin took me tomorrow night.
So she thought.
I'd see that I took the unholy pair of them.
I was positive now.
Tomorrow night I'd start winding up the whole ball of yarn.
It was still early, but I didn't feel like going to the Dixie Pig. I drove back to the motel and parked in the yard. I opened my door slowly because Kaiser had a habit of sleeping against it. He wasn't against it this time. I could see him sprawled in the left-hand corner of the room, motionless, his head at an awkward-looking angle.
'Close the door,' a voice said from behind it.
Manny Sebastian's fat figure came into view.
His hands were empty, but the hands of the sandy-haired, buck-toothed man who moved out beside him weren't.
A blued-steel revolver was trained steadily on my chest.
I stepped inside and closed the door.
IX
Bucktooth moved to my right, the gun level. 'Don't get careless,' he said. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild-looking. His free hand snaked under my jacket and delicately removed my .38 from its holster. He tossed it to Manny.
'He carries a Colt, too,' Manny said. His round, swarthy face was shiny with perspiration.
Bucktooth gave me a shoulders-to-knees hand-patting treatment from behind me. He located the Woodsman in my pants pocket, but he didn't make the mistake of trying to take it out himself. 'Throw it on the bed,' he ordered. 'And be goddamn careful how you do it.'
I fished out the .22 with thumb and forefinger, then tossed it on the bed. I could see Manny relax. I wondered how the bastards would feel if they knew I still had the little three-shot .17 caliber puff adder in the miniature
