Carny kill

'Well,' she said, finally, 'I've got to get ready for the next show.' She started to turn away but stopped, and she said, 'I'm really glad you got the job, Thax.'

So was I. At least right then I was glad.

I decided to grab a bite before I scouted up a flop for the night, and I went up a path to a quaint little restaurant called the Queen Anne Cottage.

I was jostled on the steps by Some people coming out and I told one of them-the biggest man in the group- to watch it, buster. He asked me how I'd like a bent nose to watch and I asked him wouldn't he rather wait until he had more than three friends to help him and he said he wasn't going to need any goddam help and then his wife or his secretary or whatever she was broke it up.

When I put my hand in my pocket my five was gone. Those luck boys were damn thorough.

I was standing on the porch muttering filthy words to myself when a highschool or college kid wearing a red-andwhite guide uniform stepped up to me and asked was I Mr. Thaxton, sir?

'So what?' I wanted to know.

'Mrs. Cochrane wants to see you, sir.' He was really a very polite boy. One of Cochrane's nice clean kids.

'Mrs. Cochrane?' I didn't get it.

'The owner's wife, sir.' He was very patient with me. Too patient.

'Look, son,' I said. 'I can add two and two. But why's she want to see me?'

'I'm sure I don't know, sir. She simply asked me to-'

'Yeah, yeah. So where do I find the owner's wife?'

'She has a suite of rooms above this restaurant, sir.'

Everybody who was anybody seemed to live and work over some kind of joint in this place. The nice clean boy told me to go around to the back, where I would find a door marked Private. Naturally.

I thanked him, and then I added, 'Oh-and don't call me Sir. I work here just like you.'

'Yes sir,' he said promptly. 'I know that.'

Very polite. But that sir business made me feel my thirtytwo years. Maybe more.

I went around back and opened the door that always had to say Private when it was around back and went up a maroon carpeted stairway that was walled in with way-out paintings that made you feel like you were trying to climb out of the paint pots of a surrealist artist's nightmare.

I came to another door. It didn't say Private so I opened it and stepped into a blaze of light. It was like stepping into an interrogation room. Some kind of baby spot stood back in a corner and hit me all over with a brffliant pink light.

I had a quick, vague impression of Swedish modern as I put up an arm to ward off that damn glare, and then something went ssst right by my head and thh-ok in the paneled wall.

I was already on my way to the floor.

It was reasonably soft-about two inches of thick carpeting and as woolly as a fat lamb. All I hurt was my left elbow. Then I turned a little and glanced up at the knife jutting out from the wall. It was no longer than a butcher knife and it had a mother-of-pearl handle and no hilt-guard.

I knew that kind of knife. In fact there was a time when I used to have bad dreams about them. My wife used to throw them back when we were in carny together.

A laugh that was a sort of throaty tinkle, if there is such a laugh, came out of the darkness beyond the baby spot. And I knew who I was going to see when the rest of the lights went on.

They went on and I saw I was right about the Swedish modern motif and about the possessor of the unusual laugh. My ex-wife was reclined on some kind of cushy sofa that seemed to be made entirely of satin pillows. She was wearing one of those gold-glittery outfits with the toreador jacket and skintight pants. And gold sandals. And her toenails too. Gold.

She had changed her hair. It used to make Monroe's platinum head look like dishwater blonde. Now she was flame headed. But her face hadn't changed in five years. The same cold, sensual, calculating look that I had fallen in love with when I was twenty and stupid was still there.

I looked to be sure she didn't have another knife handy before I picked myself off the rug.

'You'd never draw a crowd with that toss, May,' I said. 'It was off a foot.'

'You lying sonofabitch, darling.' She smiled at me. 'It took the peachfuzz off your ear. Do you want to change your pants?'

'No,' I said. 'I'm still wearing my diapers.'

I pulled the knife loose. It gave me a bit of a struggle. May always did have a beautiful throwing arm. That's what used to worry me-when we'd have our fights.

The knife had perfect balance. No matter how you tossed it the harpoon-sharp blade always led the way to the target. The mother-of-pearl handles had been her trademark. She had always been a great one for classy show. And it looked like she had made it. Mrs. Robert Cochrane. She couldn't be but twenty-five years younger than the canny Irishman.

I wagged the blade at her. 'Fun and games, huh May?'

'You know goddam well I could have put your eye out if I'd wanted to, sweetie,' she said sweetly. 'I've kept my hand in.'

I was a believer. May always kept her hand in, and not just with her knives.

'Way in,' I said and nodded around at the big, cushy room. 'Some opulence.'

'Never mind your goddam book words, Thax,' she said. She never could stand big words. At least not when I used them.

'A nice mark,' I amended. 'Very nice.'

It was the freaky coincidence of the thing-my ending up at Neverland and her being Mrs. Never Never-that surprised me. Not the fact that she had made out like a foreign loan. Some people, especially some females, are slated for affluence no matter how far down the social strata they start. The crystal gazers like to call it Kismet.

May had come out of one of those naughty houses they used to have in San Berdoo, California. I think the district was called D Street. But it hadn't phased her. The first time she was old enough to recognize the significance of the two-dollar bill one of the truck driver customers handed her mother she knew exactly what it was that made the world go around and she climbed aboard to get her share of the spin.

I had been a husky young carny kid with a good spiel and she had used me for just as long as I was worth anything to her. When she outgrew me she started looking around for a way to dump me. And I had found her the way.

But what really amazed me was that Irishman-Robert Cochrane, her husband. He must have known who I was once I told him my name, and he must have known about the jam I got into when May and I were working together for the Brody outfit. Yet he hadn't said a word. He had gone ahead and hired me. Funny guy. Unless May had held out on him.

'You tell Cochrane about you and me?' I asked her.

'Sure,' she said. 'When I first came to him. I have nothing to hide. Anyhow, he knew my name. Word gets around, you know.'

'Jesus if it doesn't. Everybody seems to know about me like I'd been here all my life. You have anything to do with hiring me?'

May smiled at me. Call it that, anyhow.

'I didn't even know you were on the lot, darling, till Bill Duff told me.'

'Good old Bill,' I said. 'Did he go to that dentist I recommended before I clipped his eyetooth?'

May kept right on smiling at me. She didn't say anything.

'Cozy for you and Bill, huh?' I suggested. 'This setup.'

'Duff showed up just like you did,' she said in a stainless-steel voice. 'Broke and whimpering for a job. Rob gave him the job because Rob can't turn down a carny buddy with an empty grouch bag. I would have told Duff to go take a flying leap at the spider lady.'

'From what I understand he already had way before we met him,' I said. But I said it out of habit-automatic