The Name of the Game is Death

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.

'Then it couldn't have been Oily!' I said triumphantly.

Winick smiled, 'lie confessed.'

'Confessed?' I felt staggered. 'Look, you said it happened between five and six yesterday?'

He was watching me narrowly. 'That's what I said.'

'Then it couldn't have been Oily,' I repeated. 'He brought Mime books over to my room at four in the afternoon and he stayed until I went out to eat at seven. It couldn't have been Oily, you hear me?'

Winick stood up behind his desk. 'You're mixed up on the days. It happens to you nightworkers. Besides, he confessed.'

'The hell I'm mixed up on the days! How could he confess to something he didn't do? You must have—'

'Careful of the territory you're taking in, kid,' Winick's hard voice cut me off. 'Where do you fit into this? What kind of friend is Barnes to you?'

'Why don't you ask me what kind of friend I am to Barnes? The way I see it, I'm the friend he needs. I want to talk to him.'

'Sorry.' Winick shook his head. 'He's havin' a fit of remorse.'

I could feel myself shaking. 'Listen, I tell you I'll testify Oily couldn't possibly have—'

'You're goin' off half-cocked, kid.' Winick's voice could have cut wood. 'Did you hear me say Barnes had confessed? In stinking detail?'

'You made him confess! He was afraid the minute he saw you. Because he did it before doesn't mean he did it this time. You must have forced—'

'Listen to me.' Winick's voice was quiet again. 'He did it. He confessed. Can you get that through your thick skull?'

'There must be somebody else for me to talk to around here besides you,' I said desperately. 'You're not even listening. Oily couldn't have—'

'You're not listenin' to me.' Gimlet eyes drilled into mine. 'Barnes is a menace to society. He's proved it. He should never have been out on the street. This time I'm tuckin' him away for a good long stretch.'

'But he didn't do it! Not this time!'

'He did it.' Winick's heavy voice was Hat with authority. His eyes appeared almost closed. 'Should I ask Barnes if you were with him?'

My hands clenched. 'Is that supposed to make me run out of here? I know what I know, by God. I don't care what he did before. This he didn't do, and I'll talk till I get someone to listen.'

Winick's voice became slow and draggy, emphasizing each word. 'You sound to me like someone fixin' to get his balls caught in the machinery, kid.' He leaned down over his desk, resting his weight on his big-knuckled hands. 'I know what Barnes is. The people in this town know what he is. When you talk to me, you're talkin' to all of them.'

I went out of there in a tearing rage.

I didn't believe Winick, but I found out he was right. Everyone I tried to get to listen to me gave me a blank stare. Nobody would believe it couldn't have been Oily.

Then I found out the hard way that some of them were never going to believe it. The next day I lost both my job and my room. Winick had been to see my boss and my landlady. All of a sudden I was on the street with twenty-three dollars between me and the icy gutter.

I stuck around another day, still trying to get someone to listen. I was half out of my mind, crazy-mad at the town and the people in it. And at Winick. Especially at Winick. That night I slept till four A.M. in the railroad station with my head on my bag. Winick's cops found me then and threw me out into the snow. I must have ground a quarter-inch oil my teeth, stumbling around the slippery, frozen streets, lugging my bag. I was half numb by the time the first one-arm coffee joint opened.

In the cold gray light of morning I gave up. I walked out to the edge of town and stopped a highway bus and told the driver to take me eleven dollars' worth away from there. I purposely hadn't bought a ticket at the bus station because I figured if Winick wanted to keep a string on me he'd have checked there.

I wound up across the state, a hundred-eighty miles away. I got a job as a stockboy in a chain grocery. Three times a week I bought a northern Ohio newspaper and read every word of it, looking for news of Oily.

It was three months before I found it.

The black headline said Oily had been sentenced to fifteen years.

That day I quit the human race. I never went back to my job. The only legitimate work I've done since has always been with an illegitimate purpose in mind. If that was the way it was, I'd play it as it lay.

I bought a gun in a hockshop. I didn't even have a car. The local paper nipped hard at police heels about the series of gas station holdups by a quick-moving pedestrian who always disappeared into the darkness.

I was surprised at how easy it was. I had only two close calls. Once I was scared off before I'd committed