'All right,' Tug cut in, curdy. 'I don't like it, but all right. Same place in about an hour.'
The line went dead.
Dusty hung up the receiver, glanced at his father. The old man was slumped down into his chair, staring vacantly into nothingness. There was a stunned look on his face, a look of sickness that transcended sickness in his eyes. He was obviously unaware of the telephone conversation. It had meant nothing to him. Nothing, now, meant anything to him.
Dusty took a bill from his wallet, the first one his fingers touched, and flung it into his lap. A ten-spot, too damned much – anything was too damned much – but he had an idea that it wouldn't be much longer, now; with the props kicked out from under him, the old bastard might have sense enough to the. Meanwhile, it was worth any amount to crack the whip and see him cringe. To toss the bill at him as though it were a bone to a dog.
He waited a moment for the old man to speak – hoping for, wanting the opportunity to shut him up again. Then, as his father remained silent, he slammed out the door and headed for his rendezvous with Tug.
Things could be a lot worse, he thought. Yes, sir, they were not nearly as bad as they had seemed a while ago. He'd lost her, but at least she hadn't gone to Tug. She'd been working for herself, not Tug, and somehow that was not so hard to bear. He'd lost everything he wanted, but the loss had done something for him. It had pushed him to the point of losing, getting rid of, something he didn't want – someone who, he realized now, he had always hated. Yes, hated. Hated, hated, hated! Hated when he had touched her, the woman who was all woman. Hated – hated him – if he even came near her. Hated and wanted him to the. As he probably would the soon, now that he was completely stripped of reason to live.
And perhaps… perhaps she was not lost yet: the she reborn in Marcia Hillis. Perhaps, with the ten thousand dollars in reward money, he could find her and…
He turned off the highway, crossed over the railway tracks to the abandoned road on the other side. A car was parked just beyond the crest of the first hill. It was old and battered, but there was a look of sturdiness about it and the tires were new. The man behind the wheel was heavily bearded, dressed in faded overalls and jumper, and had an old straw work hat pulled low on his forehead. A sawed-off shotgun lay across his knees. He gestured with it impatiently as Dusty greeted him.
'So you wouldn't have known me. So forget it and start talking. What the hell did you have to see me about?'
EIGHTEEN
Tug cursed. He mopped his face with a blue bandanna handkerchief and went on cursing, pouring profanity through the polka-dot folds until he was strangling and breathless.
'Those bastards! Those stupid, blockheaded sons-of-bitches! Boy,! wish I hadn't already bumped 'em off! I'd like to do it all over again.'
'Then you intended to kill her all along,' Dusty said. 'All that stuff you told me' about how much she liked me and how you'd fix things up-'
'You kicking about it?' Tug turned on him fiercely. 'You let her screw you for your share of the dough, and you're kicking?'
'I just want to get things straight. If you'd told me the truth in the first place…'
'Well, now you got it straight. We'd snatched her, hadn't we? Yeah, 1 know what you thought, but sure it was a snatch. So naturally he had to be bumped off. And if those stupid jerks had had any sense-' Tug broke off, choking, ripped out another string of curses. I should have known better'n to trust 'em with a dame like that. I should have known they'd try to keep her around a while, take her for a few tumbles before they knocked her off.'
'But I don't understand. If she got away from them-'
'If? What the hell do you mean, if?'
'But why didn't they tell you?'
'Because they didn't know about it, goddammit! She made the break the night of the robbery, while we were all busy at the hotel. It had to 've happened, then. You can see that, can't you, for Christ's sake? If she'd got away before then, there wouldn't have been any hold-up. She'd have yelled to the coppers.'
Dusty frowned. He stared out through the grimy windshield at the sun-sparkled pavement. Back in the hillside underbrush a raincrow. cawed dryly. A gust of hot wind rolled over the abandoned fields, rattling the yellowed, waist-high weeds.
'She knew all about me,' Dusty said. 'She knew where the money was, that we hadn't settled on a way of splitting it up. So if she wasn't working with you-'
'Goddammit, does it look like she was? She didn't know nothing – it was just guesswork. She figured we couldn't decide on how to divvy the dough until afterwards. I wouldn't know when you'd be going back to work. I wouldn't know how soon I could get in touch with you and-'
'She couldn't have guessed everything,' Dusty said. 'She couldn't have guessed that the money would be in the checkroom. Someone told her, that and everything else.'
Tug shrugged irritably. 'What's the difference? You got screwed, dial's the main thing, so that means I take a screwing, too. To hell with her. What the hell difference does it make if-'
'I want to know,' Dusty insisted. 'I've got to know.'
Tug hesitated, shrugged again. 'All right. It don't make me look real pretty, but – I guess I don't, anyhow, huh? And it's got no connection with you. I've been playin' pretty rough, but I couldn't cross you if I-'
'Who was she?'
'Bascom's daughter. She was a dancer like I said; that part was on the level. Hillis was her stage name, and-'
'B-Bascom's – his-?'
'You want me to tell you or not? We ain't got all day. Every cop in town is looking for me. Yeah, his daughter. I slapped the truth out of her that morning. He'd had her check in there at the hotel. He'd done everything he could to make you quit and it hadn't worked, so she set you up for the push. She'd accuse you of attempted rape, see, tell you she'd file charges if she ever saw you again. If you got stubborn she'd actually call Bascom – her father, only you wouldn't know that – and the way things would be stacked against you, you'd have to quit. So… so dial's the way it was, kid. Me and the boys put the snatch on her. Bascom saw that I'd found out about him trying to cross me, and he figured she'd have a lot better chance of living if he got back on the track and stayed there. I kind of let him think that, see? He knew he was a goner himself, whatever happened, and all he could do now was-'
'Bascom,' Dusty said slowly. 'Why did he want me to quit? Why did he' do all that', try so hard to- to-' He broke off, staring at Tug. Tug's eyes shifted uncomfortably. 'Oh,' he said. Then, 'Well…'
Tug coughed and spat out the window. He shifted the shotgun slightly, mumbled something about, Christ, the goddamned heat.
'You were going to kill me,' Dusty said. 'Someone had to be killed and I was supposed to be it.'
'What the hell?' Tug said, gruffly. 'It was just business, kid, nothing personal, I really wanted it to be Bascom, right from the •beginning, but-'
'Yes. He made a better fall guy, didn't he? But why did it have to be him or me? What difference would it have made if I'd quit or got •fired and another bellboy had taken my place? You could still have gone right ahead and-'
'Huh-uh. It had to be someone that'd been there quite a while.
Someone who knew the ropes and who'd have had time to pal up with me. Nope, if Bascom had got rid of you there wouldn't have been any hold-up.. We'd have had to wait until the next racing season, and he knew I couldn't wait.'
Dusty nodded. He had no more questions. None, at least, that Tug could answer. She'd spent two days there at the house, talking to him, probing him, watching him. And perhaps she'd been drawn to him, as she'd said; perhaps she'd felt pretty much the same about him as he felt about her. But there'd been some doubts in her mind. She hadn't been sure of his guilt, whether he'd been a willing and knowing accomplice to her father's murder, but neither had she been unsure. So – well, there was the answer: the clue to the exact amount of her sureness and unsureness. She had left him here practically penniless, to face Tug empty-handed with a story which might not be believed. She had been sufficiently sure-unsure to put him on a spot where he might have been killed, or –
Or? Dusty's pulse quickened suddenly… Tug. She'd have had no doubts about his part in the murder. Tug
