She was a right sweet little girl, that Sissy. Her mama hadn’t allowed her to come out and play in the yard with him when he worked there, and that had irked him some, but he had tried not to be mad at Ellie for that. Mothers were always worrying about keeping their little girls fresh and clean-looking and dressed up.
He drove up the rutted road with the Chevvy taking the bumps and holes so smooth you hardly noticed them, and turned off after about two miles on a narrower track that led down toward the creek and a one-room weathered shanty nestled in a grove of scrub pine. The yard was neat and clean in contrast to his own place, and a hound dog stretched lazily in the shade of one of the trees, and Pristine Gaylord came out onto the porch with a wide smile of welcome on his black face when Alonzo shut off the motor.
The name of Gaylord had come down with the family from slave days, and the boy had been named Pristine by his mother at birth because her white-folks where she did washing were well-educated and she had heard the word used to indicate something new and bright and shining. Well, she allowed her new baby was just about the newest and brightest and shiningest thing there ever was, and she was probably right at the time, but unfortunately he had grown up into a hulking, ape-like sort of man with a big torso that was much too heavy for his spindly legs, and with a broad, flat face that looked forbidding until he smiled.
Pristine was considered simple-minded by those who knew him, although not quite “teched in the head.” It was said about him that he did not know his own strength, and he had spent two long stretches on the chain gang for having badly smashed up opponents of his own race during Saturday free-for-alls when the moonshine had flowed too freely.
Since his latest release, two years previously, Pristine had lived alone in the little shack by the creek, living a happily solitary life and doing whatever drinking he did in the company of his hound dog who was named Franklin D. Roosevelt. He made a little shine and sold it mostly to those who came to his door with a dollar bill to exchange for a quart Mason jar of the white stuff, and he led a quietly uneventful life as behooved a circumspect colored boy who had twice been in trouble with the law.
Now he leaned lazily against a post holding up the porch roof and grinned widely and said in his soft voice, “Good evenin’, Mist Peters, suh. Shoah is hot, ain’t it?”
Alonzo said, “It sure enough is at that.” He got out of his car and slammed the door shut. “You been listening to the radio, Pris?”
“No, suh. I ain’t. I bin down to thuh crik mos’ all the day runnin’ off a li’l batch.” He came down off the porch, moving lightly for his hulk, and moved toward a wooden bench in the shade of the trees which caught any vagrant breeze that might be around.
“Then you ain’t heard about Ellie Blake up in Sunray last night?” said Alonzo eagerly, following him. “She got herself killed in bed, that’s what.”
“Do tell? Miz Marvin Blake, I reckon you mean.”
“You know the one I mean.” Alonzo chuckled obscenely. “Don’t tell me you ain’t looked at her walkin’ down the street the way she was always doing.”
“Nuh- uh, Mist Peters. This here colored boy don’t never look at no white women the way you mean. I got troubles enough ’thout that. They know who done it to her?”
“Not yet.” Alonzo sat on the bench and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dust between his feet. “They got detectives from Miami and the State Police and all. I reckon they’ll be around here to your house any time, checkin’ alibis and all. You got one for last night, Pris?”
“Got one what?” The Negro appeared honestly bewildered.
“An alibi. Can you prove where you was at?”
“I was right here to home asleep.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Must I needs to?” Pristine wrinkled his forehead. “I ain’t bin off the place for three days, an’ that’s the truf. My ol’ pick-up is busted down an’ I cain’t even get to town to take in a load to my customers what I promised a delivery yestidy.”
Alonzo said, “Is that a fact? I reckon that’s about all the alibi you need, Pris. How about fetchin’ me a quart?”
“Shuah. I get it from back the shed.”
Pristine Gaylord got up from his end of the bench and strode toward a shed at the rear of the shack which housed his pick-up truck. Alonzo watched him go, and began to shake violently. “A thousand dollars!” he thought, awed. “A thousand goddamn dollars.” He got to his feet slowly, fingering a sharp-bladed knife in his pocket while a devious and delightful and horribly evil plan formed swiftly in his mind.
As soon as Pristine disappeared behind the shed, Alonzo darted forward to his car, drawing the knife from his pocket and opening a long and wickedly pointed blade. The right rear tire was worn almost paper thin, and Alonzo drove the point of the knife into the soft rubber on the side, twisting as it went in.
Air whooshed noisily from the tire and Alonzo hurried back to the bench. He was seated there, dipping forefingers into his sack of Mail Pouch when Pristine returned carrying a Mason jar of moonshine dangling from his big right hand.
Alonzo exchanged a dollar bill for the jar and unscrewed the lid, glancing aside at his car as he did so. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, “Looks like I got a flat tire there.”
Pristine followed his gaze, and both men walked over to look at the flat tire. “Must of just oozed out when I drove up.” Alonzo kicked the flat tire moodily. “Tell you what, Pris. I was jest about to say I’d drive you in town to make that delivery. If you’ll get the jack outta the back and put on the spare, I’ll do it. Me, I’ll set in the shade and have me a drink of corn likker an’ watch you sweat doin’ it,” he added gleefully.
“I shuah will do that, Mist’ Peters,” Pristine grinned back at him. “I’ll have that ol’ tire changed in nothin’ flat.”
Accordingly, Alonzo sat on the bench in the shade and screwed the lid off the Mason jar and tipped it up and drank from the sweetish liquid inside, and presently he was behind the wheel of the Chevvy and rolling in toward Sunray Beach with Pristine Gaylord seated happily beside him and on the floor of the car, behind the front seat, there was a cardboard carton containing twelve Mason jars of shine destined for customers who had expected delivery the preceding day.
And in the locked trunk of the car was a flat tire and a jack and a lug-wrench, and in Alonzo Peters’ mind was the vision of one thousand one-dollar bills fluttering about in front of him, his for the grasping, his for the taking, his to do with as he would.
Alonzo Peters sat very erect, looking from side to side as they entered the town from the west on Main Street, and Pristine stirred uneasily beside him and said, “You best turn to the left next corner, Mist’ Peters. Maybe best if I get off there.”
Alonzo drove straight on across the intersection and headed toward the center of town. He didn’t say anything. He was hunched tightly over the wheel, his face in a concentrated frown. Pristine began to protest again beside him, in a low, hesitant voice, as the Chevvy approached the City Hall and Police headquarters, and Alonzo slowed, seeking a parking space in front.
He swung in sharply, directly in front of City Hall. There, by the grace of God, was Randy Perkins just pulling in to the curb in front of him. Randy Perkins was the grizzled veteran of the Sunray police force who hated niggers and loved to keep them in line. Alonzo jumped out from behind the steering wheel and hurried around the front of the Chevvy to intercept Randy as he got out of his patrol car. He grasped the officer fiercely by the elbow and pulled him around so he confronted Pristine, who still sat in the front seat of the Chevvy.
“You better arrest him quick,” he said harshly to Perkins. “I done brung him in, and this is as far as I kin go. I’m turnin’ him in,” he whispered into the officer’s ear, “fer murdering Miz Blake last night. You better stick him in jail while I go inside and claim the thousand dollar reward they’re offering fer him.”
15
It was almost seven o’clock when Michael Shayne returned from his trip to Moonray Beach down the coast. He drove directly to the motel where he found Rourke waiting for him in his room. The reporter was slouched on the bed with a pint bottle of bourbon open on the table beside him, and a sour expression on his face.
