churning—until I saw the lazy way he was ambling across the street. He said, pleasantly, “Hear that pretty car of yours broke down. Puzzles me: America makes the best darn cars in the world, like this old Chevvy still gets you places.... Like I told the wife, why should a body buy a foreign car and pay so much more money?”
“I got a buy on mine, secondhand.” Bingston was a damn goldfish bowl. I had to clear out of here fast. It was, or could be, as dangerous for me as New York. At least in New York I could be checking on this stooge angle. In Bingston I was a sitting duck.
“Me, I don't even hold much with the new cars coming off the Detroit assembly lines today. Too much fancy stuff on 'em. Waste of money.”
“I suppose so,” I said, wanting to say something about Thomas, that I'd read about it in the papers. But I didn't have the nerve. The N.Y.C. police must have some kind of contact with Bingston, and the last thing I wanted was to get this hick cop interested in me. He asked, “Think you can get your car fixed soon?”
“Expect to... sir. I'm having a part sent here air mail.” I waved and he nodded, as if dismissing me, and I drove off.
I parked outside the bakery. Through the window I watched Frances waiting on a customer, the pleasant contrast of her white worn jacket and her warm brown skin. When the customer left I honked the horn. Frances waved at me, then said something to the elderly white woman camped on a high stool behind the cash register. They argued for a moment, then Frances came rushing out, asked, “Did you learn anything new, Touie? I can only stay a second.”
“Nothing, except that I have to leave Bingston.”
“Why?”
“Far as the killing goes, I'm running in circles here, going no-place. Bingston isn't even a good hideaway; everybody in town knows I'm here, even about my car 'breaking down.'”
“Where will you go?”
“Back to New York, I guess. I've thought of something that needs looking into there.”
“But they're looking for you in New York. Touie, why leave at all? People know about you here because you're a stranger. If you remained here and found a job, as Jones, you'd soon be forgotten—I mean, wouldn't stand out. As you said, the New York police are looking for 'a' Negro. Once you became a part of the community here, you'd be safe. They certainly aren't looking for 'a' Negro in Bingston.”
The woman in the bakeshop knocked on the window.
“No dice. I phoned somebody in New York this morning; the police already know I'm the Negro. In time they're sure to contact Bingston, if they haven't already. Main reason I came here was to find the killer. All I've found was that Thomas was a mixed-up kid.”
“If the police know about you, then to go back to New York seems—“ She turned sharply and nodded at more knocking on the window. “When are you leaving?”
“Thought I'd go out to the farm and pick up my car, leave now.”
“Touie, at least wait until I come home at five-thirty. Let's talk about this. All right?”
“Okay.”
“Tim should be in soon, and I'll ask about his uncle, and Thomas' father. I have to run now. Not a customer in the store and she's wearing her knuckles out on the window. See you at the house in about an hour.” She went back into the shop.
I headed for the Davis house but I was too nervous to sit around. I turned off at the nearest side street, drove aimlessly. I'd better get rid of the Jaguar. Take it from the farm, so they wouldn't get into any jam, if I was caught, ditch it in some river or lake. Although it would break my heart to do that. In New York I could get a room in the coloured section of Brooklyn, or the Bronx—although I didn't have much money, in fact no money if I took a train back to New York. Maybe I could get a job, anything, that would keep me eating for a week or two, while I checked on the stooge, Kay's boss, and Thomas' girl in the cafeteria. Damn, if I could only sell the Jag, be enough dough to keep...
I passed a dirt road and a dirty white sign on a metal post that read: beech road. Backing up, I turned into the road. It seemed to be all woods until I passed a few new and neat-looking ranch houses, and after another couple hundred yards a weather-beaten shack with a new tarpaper roof, the remains of a fence. A coloured kid about twelve was sitting in the yard with his back to me. I stopped the Chevvy and walked back to the yard. Suddenly there was a coughing sound, exactly like a mortar shell going off. I looked around wildly, was so startled I nearly hit the ground.
The kid was watching a bright red rocket about a foot long hissing up through the air. It went a few hundred feet high, did a cockeyed somersault, then came spiraling down to the ground at the boy's feet.
“What's that?”
He jumped as he turned to stare at me, a solemn-faced youngster in a worn sweater and torn dungarees and patched shoes. “Whatcha think it is? It's a rocket.” He touched a small plastic stand. “This is my rocket launcher. Pip, isn't it?”
It was a crazy scene: the shack that probably hadn't changed since it was built before the Civil War, and the sleek little rocket.
He opened a paper bag, showed me some white powder. “I put a charge of this atomic fuel in the launcher, add water, and when the reaction reaches its prime I release the rocket. Came in the mail today. Cost me four bucks but— Hey, Mister, you live around here?”
“No. Does Mrs. Mamie Guy live on this road?”
“You bet. Keep going and you'll see a house on the other side of the road. Be lot of clothes hanging on the lines.” He lowered his voice. “You know my folks?”
“No.”
“Well, if you should meet them, don't say anything about this rocket. I worked extra hard and saved to buy it, but my Pop would whale me if he knew. Someday I'm going to build a big one, take me to the moon.”
“What's so special on the moon?”
He looked at me with disgust, then sat down with his back to me, said, “Blast off, Mister.”
I headed toward the car. In a minute there was the slight cough again and the rocket shot high into the air, flying in an arc. It came down several hundred feet away in the leaves of a tall young tree. The kid ran over and started throwing stones at it.
“Why don't you climb up after it?” I called out.
“It's Pop's new pear tree. May break and then I'd really get it. Mama's due home in half hour. I got to work fast.”
I walked over to him. The tree was about a dozen feet high, the trunk a few inches thick. I grabbed the trunk and shook it. The rocket fell to a lower branch. I shook it again but it didn't budge. “How much do you weigh?”
“Sixty-three pounds.”
“Think you can hold yourself straight if I lift you?”
“You bet.”
“Now hold yourself rigid, or you'll fall and break both our necks.” I squatted, grabbed him around the waist and took a deep breath—as if getting ready to jerk and press a bar-bell. I got the kid up to my chest, then held him up at arm's length. He reached up and pushed the rocket out of the branches. I dropped him to my chest, then to the ground.
“Gee, you're strong, Mister.”
“Launch that in a field the next time,” I said, brushing my coat, wiping the sweat from my face.
He followed me back to the car and as I drove off he asked, “What's your name?”
“Captain Video,” I called back and had to grin. Big deal: the murderer was captured knocking a rocket ship out of a pear tree.
The Guy house wasn't far down the road, and a copy of the other shack except it was bigger and in better condition. Clotheslines zigzagged all over the yard, with a few sheets swaying in the wind like sails.
A thin dark woman came to the door. Her hair was uncombed and her face sweaty. She could have been thirty, or forty-five, the work-worn look all over her. “My name is Jones. Mrs. Simpson told me you knew Porky Thomas,” I said, going into my pitch about being a true-crime writer.
“I have nothing to say. I told them television people once, I ain't got time to made mud fly. I don't believe in snooping into other people's lives.” She shut the door.
At least she didn't know I was staying at the Davises' or that I had a Jaguar. “Mrs. Guy, I'm not with any TV studio. I only want to ask a few questions.”
“Ask somebody who has time for loafing. I have work to do.”
“Can I talk to your husband?”
“That's up to him. He ain't home now.”
I stood there for a moment, lit my pipe. Walking back to the car I saw the rocket kid watching me. He said, “Aunt Mamie is cross on the days when she does her heavy washing. You want to talk to her real bad, Mister?”
“Yeah.”
He called out, “Aunt Mamie.” She came to the door a moment later. “What you want, Kenneth? You know I'm rushed today.”
“This is a nice man, Aunt Mamie. I was stuck up in a tree and he stopped his car to help me. Yes he did.”
She wiped her wet hands on her gray dress. “I'm wasting more time not talking to you. All right, come in, if you want.”
The kid winked at me. “Guess I'd best go home and hide my rocket good. So long, Mr. Video.”
The kitchen of the shack had several irons heating on the big coal stove, and smelled of damp starch. She pointed to a chair between two wicker baskets of clothes, said, “You can sit there. Only reason I'm talking to you is because you're coloured. That's the truth. I didn't even open the door to those TV people. Ought to mind their business, that's what. I hear Porky was killed.” Her voice was as thin as her body.
“That's what I want to ask about, Mrs. Guy.”
“You wasting my time. He used to deliver laundry for me, but that was a long time ago, when my Edward was born, and he's going on ten now. I ain't seen hide nor hair of Porky since then, and just as well.”
“Mrs. Simpson told me he stole some shirts from you, slapped your face.”
“That old talking
