about Kaiser, it was better the line should be busy than that he couldn't reach me. I didn't want to talk to Jed right now. I spent half an hour cleaning, oiling, and completely restoring the .38. Then I got into the shower and did the same for myself.
I went back uptown at noon and parked across the street from the post office. I had a good view of the general delivery window through the plate glass. I could even see the alphabetized slots for the mail. I'd specified noon for the sending of the telegram because from twelve to two Lucille was on duty with just one clerk, and she almost always handled the front herself.
I could feel the pressure building up inside me. I don't have nerves, but I get keyed up. Everything around me is magnified, including the tick of a watch and the color of the sky.
I settled down to wait. I had a newspaper draped over the steering wheel as though I were reading it. It was hot in the car, even with the windows down, but not as hot as the swamp. It wasn't as hot as plowing up and down overgrown back roads on the cast side of Main Street, either. I was through with all that. In just a few minutes I was going to pop the weasel right out of the box.
It was 'in twenty-live by my watch when the old man shuffled up to the post office entrance with the bright yellow envelope in his hand. He went inside, and I saw him place the telegram on the counter. Lucille appeared at the window, picked it up, and looked at it—for a long time. The old guy had to remind her she hadn't signed for it.
She scribbled her name on his clipboard, and the old guy left. Lucille never even looked at the general delivery
dots behind her. Telegram in hand, she made a beeline for the back of the post office. Telephone call, I told myself. A hurried telephone call. I folded up my newspaper and placed it on the seat beside me. Lucille was at the front entrance in three minutes. I could see her explaining something over her shoulder to the clerk whom she'd moved up to the front counter.
She came out on the sidewalk and walked quickly to a ted MG parked three doors down the street. A double-parked delivery van had kept me from noticing it before. Lucille climbed in, backed up, swung around the van, and zipped up the street. I already had my engine running, and I made an illegal U-turn and took out after her.
She hightailed it through town, straight north on 19. I stayed a reasonable distance behind. I didn't need to stay too close. I knew where she was going. No farther than it look to meet Blaze Franklin, Deputy Sheriff, in some kind of privacy.
They didn't bother too much about the privacy, actually. I watched Lucille pull off onto the shoulder of the road where she tucked the nose of the MG right on the tail of a two-tone county cruiser. I pulled off the road and stopped. Blaze Franklin was out of the cruiser and on his way toward Lucille in the MG before its wheels stopped rolling.
From a curve away I had no trouble seeing both his red face and the flash of the yellow telegram he snatched from her through the window of the MG. Franklin tore it open, then stood motionless for a good sixty seconds before he walked around the MG, opened its door, and sat down beside Lucille.
Their heads stayed close together for what seemed like fifteen minutes. When Franklin scrambled out of the MG and headed for his cruiser, I was ready. I swung around and headed back to town, turned off at the first intersection, and parked. The cruiser came flying along the highway, its siren
Three minutes later the MG rolled past.
Lucille's face was white and strained-looking.
I tagged along behind them.
The curtain was going up.
I found Blaze Franklin cocked up against the back wall of the Lazy Susan's office in a straight-backed chair when I walked in two hours later. That's where I'd have been, too, if it were me, but I still had to grade him A for nerve. He took one quick look when I came in the door, then paid no attention to me. Mr. Franklin now had other things on his mind than Chet Arnold. They had to think now they'd had me in the wrong picture.
I inquired at the desk for mail, then got myself a Coke from the machine. The young clerk behind the desk tried to engage Blaze in conversation, and Franklin bit his head off in about eight coarsely chosen words. The clerk turned a dull red and subsided.
I went out and walked down to my unit. I could see the office from it, and I could see Franklin. Twice he got up and picked up the phone on the desk without a by-your-leave and made a phone call. I was glad to see it. The longer he sat there with nothing happening, the more time he had to think about things that could go wrong. I wanted him shook. I hoped his phone calls were to Lucille. I wanted her shook.
Most of all I wanted Franklin right where he was. His uniform made it hard for me to move openly against him. I could kill them both, but that wouldn't get me the cash. I could be sure of getting to Lucille with no interruptions as long as Franklin was nailed down at the motel. I had a five P.M. date with Lucille, although in the excitement she was a good bet to have forgotten it. If she gave me a hard time about where the cash was when I had her alone, I'd shake her till her pants fell down.
I watched Franklin for another hour. He made a couple more phone calls. He was a busy boy. At four-fifteen I shaved and started to change for my date with Lucille. I went back to the window, buttoning my shirt. I couldn't see Franklin. I could see the chair where he'd been sitting, but he wasn't in it. I waited a couple of minutes, but he didn't come back.
I finished dressing in a hurry. I shoved the .38 in its holster, slipped on my jacket, and walked to the office, Franklin still wasn't in sight. The clerk looked at me inquiringly. I jerked a thumb toward Franklin's empty chair. 'The birddog gone?'
The clerk didn't spit, quite. 'Good riddance,' he announced.
'Did he say where he could be reached?'
'He said nothing.'
'Did he get a call from anyone?'
'No, but he made enough of 'em. The last one he swore and banged down the receiver and took off.'
J went outside and sat in the Ford. What could have happened? Nothing on earth should have moved Franklin from that chair. Once he read the telegram, he must have seen that his one chance to keep the lid on was to intercept the telegram-sending Earl Drake and dispose of him quietly.
The telegram from Earl Drake announcing a meeting at the Lazy Susan should have made Franklin afraid to move. He should have sat there in the motel office, getting both madder and shakier by the minute as nothing happened. Nothing should have been able to move Blaze Franklin away from that motel office.
I went over it step by step. The only logical answer forced itself upon me, finally. I'd underestimated the bastard. Suppose he'd been smart enough to call the point of origin of the telegram to check on its sender? And had been told the circumstances which the trucker wouldn't have disguised? With the telegram exposed as a phony, how much brains did Franklin need to figure out who'd sent it from up the road so it could come back and bounce off Lucille at the post office?
So why hadn't he rushed down to my motel unit and shot me up, down, and sideways, and triumphantly hauled in the riddled corpse? It was what he should have done. If lie had the sense to escape the booby trap I'd set for him, how could he have missed the obvious follow-up?
There was something I still didn't understand. Something I didn't know. It was time I learned it.
I started up the Ford. Nothing was changed, really, except that now I had to keep an eye peeled for Franklin. I drove to the post office to collect Lucille.
She was standing on the sidewalk when I pulled up in front.
One look was enough.
Wherever Blaze Franklin was setting himself up to do business with me, Lucille Grimes knew about it.
X
