FBI IN CHARGE, the subheadings blared. The dear old FBI. I hadn't talked to them in a long time. They'd trace the kid's prints to St. Louis, and between here and there they'd tear everything up, down, and sideways. A hell of a lot of good it would do them. When he left St. Louis, the kid didn't know where he was going, and either Bunny or I had stayed with him all the time to make sure lie didn't do any talking about his newfound partners. It should make for less heat on the west coast of Florida.
I found a short paragraph on an inside page of the paper. Area Physician Stabbed In Garage, the small-type headline said. The story continued. 'The body of Santiago E. Sanfilippo, M.D., 31, of. . . .'
I read the item three times before I put the paper aside. The police would be out rounding up all known arm-blasters and pill-poppers. It plugged the last hole in the blueprint the kid had kicked by not staying with the car.
I wasn't afraid of Bunny's getting picked up. He had the best naturally protective coloration I'd ever seen. It was^ one of the reasons I'd picked him, along with his nerve and his confidence in me. I've been in this business a
while. Two guys with guts and a to-hell-with-you-Jack disregard for consequences have about three chances in ten of pulling off a big, well-planned smash-and-grab. If one of them can shoot like me and the other one is Bunny, the odds are a damn sight better.
The first week at the Tropics I had a fever nearly all the time. The arm needed treatment which I couldn't get. I swallowed aspirin by the gross. When the arm wasn't throbbing, it was itching. The second week my fever was gone, but my legs felt like spaghetti. I'd wake from a nap dripping with sweat, needing to change from the skin out.
It was lonely in that damn motel room. When I'm on the road, I usually have a dog with me. Animals I like. People I learned a long time ago to do without.
For the first five days the newspaper headlines listed us as having been sighted in half the towns between Guantanamo, Cuba, and Nome, Alaska. We dropped back onto the ninth page after that, and then right out of the news.
The third week I began to take an interest in the restaurant's menu instead of just shoveling something down. The arm was going to be scarred but otherwise it seemed all right. A couple of times when it had been bad I'd debated slipping down into Nogales, Mexico, and trying for a doctor but I decided I couldn't risk it. If the authorities weren't watching anywhere else in the world; they'd watch that Mexican border.
I drove to the main post office the middle of the third week. I had a wallet full of crap identifying Earl Drake. There were two envelopes at the general delivery window, and I signed for them. Hack in the car I slit the first one and unwrapped ten hundred-dollar bills neatly sealed in oilskin paper, The second was a duplicate. There was no message in either, T he return address said Dick Pierce, General Delivery, Hudson, Florida. Bunny had made it big.
Five days Inter there was another envelope.
Seven days later there wasn't.
The mail clerk handed me a telegram addressed to Earl Drake. I got away from his window fast and opened it. It said IN TROUBLE STAY PUT DO NOTHING WILL CALL YOU. DICK.
I stared blankly at the recruiting posters on the walls. Bunny was in trouble, all right, but not the kind I was supposed to think. The telegram was a clinker. When we'd Inst teamed up, I'd arranged with Bunny that a telegram from either of us was to be signed 'Abie.'
I tut that was just the least thing wrong with the telegram. If he lived to be a hundred-and-four, Bunny would never call me about anything. The knife slash that gave him the livid throat scar had also reached his vocal cords. Bunny was a mute.
Bunny hadn't sent the telegram.
Only someone who had intercepted a thousand-dollar envelope meant for Earl Drake could have sent the telegram. I looked at it again. It had originated in Hudson, Florida.
I drove back to The Tropics and found Hudson in an atlas. It was a crossroads town south of Perry on U.S. 19, en route to Tampa.
I checked out of the motel.
The soreness was gone from the shoulder. It was still stiff, but it would have to do. Three-fifty, four hundred miles a day without killing myself, I figured. Five days.
Knowing Bunny, I was sure there was only one way he could have been dealt out of the game.
I had business in Hudson, Florida.
II
The only time I was ever in the pen, the boss headshrinker gave me up as a bad job.
'You're amoral,' the prison psychiatrist told me. 'You have no respect for authority. Your values lire not civilized values.'
That was after he'd Hipped his psychiatric lid at his inability to pierce my defense mechanism, as he called it. I had him taped from the first sixty seconds. He didn't care what I was; he just wanted to know how I got that way. It was none of his damn business, so I gave him a hard way to go.
Oh, I could have told him things. About the kitten, for Instance. I was maybe eleven or twelve. Fifth or sixth guide. I saw this kitten in the window of a pet shop. A blue Persian, although right then I couldn't have told it from a spotted Manx. I ran my finger across the glass and watched her little pink nose and big bronze eyes follow it, and I knew she was for me.
I went home to make my case. I wasn't from any underprivileged family. The kitten's price might have jolted my folks a little, but I wasn't in the habit of asking for much. I was the youngest in the family, with a bushel of sisters and mints, so getting me the kitten became a family project. I they'd been trying for some time to get me to play more with the neighborhood kids. I'd given up trying to explain that other kids gave me a pain, king-sized.
I named the kitten Fatima. First syllable accented, ail short vowel sounds. It seemed to suit her coppery eyes and smoky coloring. I played with her by the hour. I even taught her tricks. No one teaches a kitten anything it doesn't want to learn, but Fatima humored me. We had a grand time together.
I still got a load of guff frequently from the family about not participating more with my age group. I paid no attention. I had Fatima, and she was all the company I needed. In some moods she was a natural-born clown, but in others she had an aloof dignity. I'd never have believed that anything so tiny could be so fearless. Fatima would have tackled a lion if one had got in her way.
Some women's organization in town gave a pet show. YWCA, Junior League, Women's Club, American Legion Auxiliary, BPOE Does—I don't remember which, but I remember women were running it. I bought a little red leash for Fatima out of my paper-route money, and I entered her in the show.
Fatima and her red leash knocked their eyes out. She was a real ham. She sat up in the center of the outdoor ring and went through her whole bag of tricks, better than she did them for me in private. She went through the kitten and cat classes like a streak, and we were brought back for best in show. In the ring for the final judging there was Fatima, a big boxer dog. a black rabbit, a hamster, a goat, and a bowl of topical fish shaded from the sunlight.
The boxer belonged to a kid who went to the same school I did, a fat tub of lard a grade or so ahead of me. I knew him by sight. If I ever knew his name, I've forgotten it. When I saw the boxer, I steered Fatima to the other side of the ling, She just plain didn't like dogs. The fat kid saw what I was doing, and he followed me in a smart- alecky way.
Fatima swelled her throat ruff and hissed a Persian's surprisingly loud hiss at the boxer. The fat kid laughed. I asked 111111 to move his dog away. Deliberately he gave him more leash The boxer leaned down for a closer look, and quicker than I can say it, Fatima raked his nose. The boxer snarled, then snapped. Just once.
Fatima lay on the grass, one tiny little dot of blood on her ruff. Her neck had been broken. The big dog nosed at the inanimate bit of blue gray fur, then looked up at me as though half-ashamed. I didn't blame the boxer. He'd
