place with a rubber band.
He got out of the Mercedes, walked up to Sid Fork’s front door, leaned the cane against it and returned to his car. After that he took Noble’s Trace until it reached the twin on-ramps to U.S. Highway 101. Just before he got to the ramps, Vines pulled over, parked and sat there, trying to decide whether to go south toward Guadalajara or north toward Nome.
Sid Fork left B. D. Huckins at 2:04 A.M. on Tuesday, July 5, arrived home at 2:09 A.M. and smiled when he found the black cane leaning against his front door.
In his living room he removed Kelly Vines’s business card and read what had been written on its back: “Turn to the left and pull.”
Fork turned the curved handle of the cane to the left until he heard a faint click. He pulled. The handle came off, transformed into a seven-inch stiletto. Fork grinned and touched the point to see how sharp it was. He reinserted it into the cane, turned the handle this time to the right, again removed it-along with the silver-capped cork-and poured a small measure of Jack Daniel’s Black Label whiskey into a glass.
He sat down in an easy chair, sipped the whiskey and thought about starting a new collection of American artifacts. Maybe the Fork Collection of Strange and Terrible Weapons of Death. Or something along that line.
Ross Thomas
