The Name of the Game is Death

Lucille reluctantly directed me to turn on couldn't have been more than three-quarters of a mile beyond the point where I'd so painfully slogged over brambled trails. No wonder Franklin had been getting itchy.

11 was a small cabin way out in the middle of nowhere. I got out of the Ford and ran a flashlight around the building. There were no telephone wires. I circled it cautiously. A mound of cut branches loomed up in the light. I pulled away a handful. There sat the blue Dodge, up on blocks.

So Lucille hadn't lied to me this time. I returned to the Ford. She sat in it, motionless. I had to take her by the arm again to get her out. She didn't want to come with me.

I got a chisel and maul from the trunk of the Ford, herded Lucille up to the door ahead of me, and smashed the lock. A wave of dry heat rolled out at me as the door shivered open, a musty, long-closed smell. Lucille was still dragging her feet, but I kept a good hold on her arm.

I moved her away from the door inside before I closed il. I walked through the place quickly. A skillet was still on the two-burner stove. The flashlight picked out Bunny's clothes, neatly arranged on hangers. There were two more locked doors. A couple of swings of the maul disposed of the first. There was nothing at all in the room. Bare walls, bare floor. I smashed the lock on the second door. I beamed the flash around the interior rapidly, and then it hung, motionless.

I'd found Bunny.

He was face down on the rough pine flooring. His wrists were handcuffed to ringbolts in the floor at right angles to his head. The ringbolts were new. Fresh pine sawdust was still visible where the holes had been drilled for them.

Despite the dry air in the place, there was an almost overpowering odor. Bunny had been in the cuffs for a long time. Not even his great strength could achieve leverage with his chest flat on the floor and his arms spread- eagled. He had thrown himself onto his right side in a final contortion. The bone in his left knee glistened at me from raw-looking meat, trousers and flesh long since abraded away in his ceaseless struggle against the flooring. His upper left arm was mincemeat where he'd gnawed at himself.

Bunny had lain in the cuffs till he died.

Which kills first, hunger or thirst?

1 couldn't remember.

I couldn't think.

The game had dealt Bunny a rough hand. He must have temporized, looking at Franklin's gun, thinking he'd find a way to turn it around. He hadn't counted on the cuffs. How do you break a stubborn man? You starve him. When he's out of his mind with hunger and thirst, he'll tell you what you want to know.

If he's not too far out of his mind.

Willi the hunger, the thirst, and the maddening heat, Franklin had returned to the cabin one day and found a mindless animal who could never tell him anything.

I stooped and examined the head, cruelly battered from endless, raving contact with the floor. There had been no merciful bullet.

Franklin had left him to die.

Blaze Franklin and Lucille Grimes had left him to die

I knew now why the blonde had been so afraid to tome in here with me. She'd known exactly what I was going to find.

I turned to her. 'Blaze did it!' she screamed when she saw my face. 'Blaze did it! I wanted to let him—'

I pulled the .38 and shot her in the throat, three times. 'Tell your story in hell, if you can get anyone to listen,' I told her. She thrashed on the floor, blood pulsing between the fingers of the hands clasped to her neck. 'If they can patch up your lying voice.'

I stepped over her.

I had work to do.

I went outside, into the clean darkness. I looked up at the stars to orient myself. I knew where the sack with the money was. Bunny and I had always followed a pattern for a cache in the country. I stepped out due north as accurately as I could figure it. I knew it wouldn't be more than thirty or forty feet from the front door of the cabin.

It would have been a cinch in the daylight, and even in the darkness it wasn't hard. My feet told me when I arrived at softer earth. Bunny had planted something green. I ripped it up, pulled the chisel—the only tool I had— from my pocket and dug into the loose ground. A foot below the surface I ran into the sack.

I hauled it up and by the light of the flash made sure the bulk of the swag was still in it. Then I buried it again, stamping down the loose earth. There was no sense in lugging it around with me. I'd come back for it. I'd come back for it when I brought Blaze Franklin out here and roped him to Bunny's body and left him to die the same way he'd left Bunny.

I went back inside for a look around. Lucille was unconscious. Bubbles of blood pulsed gently instead of jetting with each ragged breath. She wouldn't last long. She was lucky. If I'd stopped to think instead of going off hair-trigger when I found Bunny, I'd have figured something different for her. She was just as guilty as Franklin.

I'm used to death, but Bunny's infuriated me. Where would Franklin be now? Back at the Lazy Susan, probably, chewing up the rug. He had to hope I came back there. He'd get his wish in a way he never expected.

I drove straight to the Dixie Pig.

I wanted Franklin so bad I could taste it, but I had another errand first. I scouted the back lot carefully. There was no two-tone cruiser. I went inside.

Hazel was at the end of the bar with a slim, black-haired, dapper-looking man. Her face lit up when she saw me, but I thought she looked anxious. 'This is Nate Pepperman, my money manager,' she said when I approached her. 'Chet Arnold, a good friend, Nate.'

'I keep telling you the correct phrase is business consultant,' Pepperman said easily as we shook hands. 'Nice to meet you, Arnold. See you later, Hazel.'

Before he was out the door Hazel raised the hinged flap at the end of the bar and motioned me through it. I followed her through the hanging curtain in the center of the back bar. I'd never been out there before. It was set up as a lounge, with a couch and a couple of chairs, a Primus stove, and a coffeepot.

'Get a bag packed,' I said when she turned to face me. 'I'll he back for you in an hour.'

Her hand caught mine and squeezed it, hard. 'Listen to me, Chet, please.' Her voice was low and intense. 'Franklin has everyone out looking for you. They never dreamed you'd come back here. There's half a dozen of them waiting for you down in the motel yard.'

So.

End of the line in Hudson, Florida.

And I couldn't get Franklin.

I couldn't? The hell I couldn't. I held out my hand to Hazel. 'Forget what I said about a bag. Give me your car key. '

She turned to her handbag which was on a chair. 'Chet, please let me come—'

'Tell them I took the keys away from you.' I couldn't take her with me now. I was a lot less than even money to make it. She handed me the keys. I punched her in I In eye. Big as she was, she went over backward and landed on the couch. The eye would be her alibi and keep the police off her back. 'So long, baby,' I said from the curtained opening. I didn't look back. I didn't want to see the expression on her face.

I drove to the Lazy Susan in Hazel's car. They should have been looking for my Ford. It turned out they were looking for anything. I'd no more than rolled into the yard and opened the car door when some eager beaver tapped his headlights. Three more sets came on instantly. I was semicircled by police cruisers. The motel yard looked bright as day.

Blaze Franklin came roaring out of the nearest cruiser, leveling a gun. He couldn't afford to let anyone capture me. He couldn't afford to let me talk. At ten yards I put five in a row into him—five shots a playing card would have covered. He went down, bellowing like a wounded bull. He was a wounded bull. A dark red stain spread over the crotch of his uniform trousers. He'd live, but he wouldn't enjoy it as much. I put the last shot in the .38 into his jaw as he flopped on the ground. That would keep him quiet if I got away.

Firecrackers were going off all around me. They couldn't shoot worth a damn. I dived back under the wheel