They would consider him, as the wording went, armed and dangerous. They would send more than one wrinkle- faced old man to apprehend him, if they were after him for what had happened in Washington.
He obeyed the old man’s hand, and pulled to a stop at the kerb, wondering what it could be all about. There might be some sort of border checkpoint where he was supposed to stop and hadn’t, or some such thing. He would have to wait and see, find out what the old man wanted. If worst came to worst, the derringer was reloaded and in his coat pocket.
The police car nosed in at an angle in front of him, its rear jutting out into the traffic lane in the approved method, to keep him from driving suddenly off as soon as the old man got out of his car. Menlo rolled down the window on his side, and waited.
The old man came back towards him, walking with an odd bowlegged rolling gait, as though it was a horse he’d just climbed down from instead of an automobile. He was wearing black boots and dark-blue breeches several sizes too large, which sported a yellow stripe up each seam. His dark-blue uniform coat looked like the jackets worn by Army officers in the First World War. A light-blue shirt, with a dark-blue tie, and a tan cowboy hat completed him. A broad black belt, studded with shiny cartridges, encircled his pudgy waist. A heavy black holster sat on his right hip.
He came over and stood glaring in at Menlo. “You in a hurry, bud?”
Menlo blinked. Police at home were always polite and courteous on the surface, whatever happened afterwards. He didn’t know what to say. He just stared at the angry old man.
The old man said, “The posted speed limit in this village, in case you was in too much of a hurry to read the sign back there at the city line, happens to be twenty miles an hour. I just clocked you at thirty-two miles per hour, on our main street. I don’t see no fire nowhere.”
Menlo understood only half of it, and then half he didn’t believe. “Twentymiles an hour?” He’d been going through cities and towns with thirty-mile-an-hour speed limits and occasionally twenty-five all day long.
“That’s what the sign said, bud,” the old man said.
“I saw no sign,” Menlo protested.
“It’s there. Let’s have your licence and registration.”
Impossible. He had neither.
The whole situation was ludicrous; all his high spirits and pleasant anticipations drained out of him. The United States was no different from Klastrava; no different from any other nation in the world. Mighty undertakings were blocked by petty bureaucratic insignificancies.
“Snap it up, bud. I ain’t got all day.”
There was no driver’s licence in his pocket, no automobile registration. He had only two things there: a wad of money, and the derringer. He thought quickly, trying to decide which to use.
The money. The money first. If that failed, then the derringer.
Menlo reached into his pocket, peeled one bill free, and handed it to the old man. The old man looked at it, frowned suddenly like a thundercloud. “What’s this?”
It was a fifty-dollar bill.
“My licence and registration,” Menlo replied. He smiled tentatively.
The old man squinted, studying the bill, and then Menlo’s face. He peered into the back seat, then looked the car over, front to back. “Now, what in hell have we got hold of here?” Then, with a surprisingly fast motion, his right hand snapped back, flipped open the holster flap, and dragged out an old .38-calibre Colt Police Positive Special. He took a quick step back away from the Pontiac. “Now you get on outa there, bud. You move slow and easy.”
Menlo’s hand started to inch towards the derringer, but the old man’s trigger finger was white-knuckled with strain. The barrel of the pistol aimed at Menlo’s head seemed as big as the entrance to a railroad tunnel. Meekly, cursing himself for a fool, Menlo clambered out of the Pontiac.
The old man said, “Fat one, ain’t you? Turn around. Lean up against your car with your hands over your head.”
Menlo did as he was told, knowing the posture the old man wanted. It was standard procedure the world around. Leaning forward off balance, the hands higher than the head, supporting the weight of the body. The position of the suspect when the police officer wants to search him for weapons. Which meant that now the derringer was to be taken from him.
How long would it be before this wretched old man took it into his head to open the two suitcases on the back seat?
And all this for driving thirty-two miles an hour on an empty street.
The old man was muttering, “I thought you was one for the judge, but now I ain’t so sure. Might just be there’s a poster out on you.”
The old man began to pat him, searching him. The first thing he came to was the wallet in Menlo’s hip pocket. He removed it, and stepped back. Menlo heard him whistle softly when he opened it; it contained money, nearly a thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties.
“Well, well, well,” the old man said. “What do you know about that?” There was a pause and then a different tone. “Now, what the hell is this?”
Menlo wondered too. It hadn’t, whatever it was, sounded like something the old man was pleased over. Menlo wondered where the people were. The sun was shining brightly, and this was the main street. Two cars had already gone by since he’d been stopped, both angling wide around them without stopping. But no crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. He couldn’t understand it. He didn’t know that in a speed-trap town, motorists often get angry at policemen and policewomen usually retaliate with a little extra humiliation such as a frisking, that in any such town, no matter how dreary, the sight of a policeman frisking a tourist is old stuff.
The old man kept mumbling to himself, and then all at once he shouted. “A Commie! A goddamn Commie!”
