At the indicated door, Ray knocked and waited for an invitation. Getting it promptly in a guttural voice, he stepped into deep pile and surveyed three faces. In point of differences, there might have been one face less. That is two of them were identical. They were heavy, swollen, with flesh like dough with too much yeast in it that encroached on eyes and gave to mouths a tucked, parsimonious quality. The brothers Schultz, Jake and Theo, who had, with characteristic economy, split an egg between them. They owned the place.
The third face was a study in contrast. Though its structure was almost exactly opposite that of the twins’, it achieved an equal ugliness. Long, gaunt and yellow, with a sour, twisted mouth. Sheriff Caleb Kirk. Prince Caleb, they called him. A county power. He’d bought, in his day, enough votes to elect a president.
Ray leaned against the door, palming the knob behind him, and smiled lazily. “Well, well. The sheriff himself. Glad to see you, Kirk. Finding you here will save me a trip to the county seat. It’s too damn hot for driving today.”
Kirk’s lips twisted. His eyes were flat and lusterless. “Detective Ray Butler. Personal bodyguard to the mayor. To Dixie Cannon himself. Word’s around that you’re a comer, Ray. Cops don’t usually work up so fast.”
Half of the twins, Jake or Theo at even money and take your pick, wiped an oily face with a wad of damp cloth and blew out a wet breath. He lowered his bulk into a chair behind a desk, tugging at the tie that tortured his bulging neck. “It’s too damned early. Too early for this heat.”
“You never know when the heat’ll come on.” Ray divided a pleasant look between the Schultz brothers, his brown face perfectly smooth and non-committal. “No heat in here, though. No reason at all for you boys to be sweating. The conditioning system must have set you back something. You’ve got a nice place.”
The other half of the twins lumbered to a liquor cabinet with a gelatin-like quivering of fat hips. “You like a drink, maybe, Ray boy? Real good stuff?”
“No, thanks. I had a Collins in the bar.”
“This is good. Old stuff. Stuff like this you don’t get at the bar.”
“The Collins was good enough.”
Caleb Kirk’s long, bony body jerked violently, as if the stringy muscles had contracted in a sudden seizure. “To hell with this folderol. You didn’t come here on any goddamned social call, Butler. What you got on your mind?”
Ray released the knob behind him and took a couple of steps into the room. His eyes drifted casually over the sheriffs sour, yellow face. “Like I told the boy up front, I’ve brought word from Dixie Cannon. It’s business for the twins. You their agent, sheriff?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay. Dixie said to remind you there was an election some time back. You remember?”
“Sure. Dixie got elected, like always. So?”
“It’s not his own election Dixie’s thinking about. It’s the vote out here in the county. In case you’ve forgotten that part of it, this area voted for annexation. It’s inside the city limits now.” Ray pivoted in a quarter turn to include the twins impartially in a deliberate inspection. “Dixie’s a patient man, boys, but now he’s getting a little annoyed. He waited for you to contact him, and you didn’t do it. That wasn’t polite. Not polite at all.”
Kirk’s voice intruded, rasping, grating on the nerves like sand underfoot. “What the hell you getting at, Butler? Cut the fancy talk and lay it on the line.”
Ray didn’t even bother to look at him. He lifted his eyes above the heads of the sweating twins and let them wander lazily along the line of junction where wall met ceiling. His voice descended to a deadly softness.
“Sure, sheriff. I’ll lay it on the line. The line’s the one where the city ends and the county begins. And you’re on the other side. Out in the county. Prince Caleb of the brush. Like I mentioned, this is a nice place. A place like this must separate the suckers from plenty. Just like you’re separating the twins from plenty. You’ve been collecting ice for years, and up to now it was all right, because you had jurisdiction. Now the line’s changed, and it’s different. You’ve got no more jurisdiction. Dixie Cannon’s got it.”
Kirk moved in on the flank. Ray could feel the heat of his breath on his neck. The sour odor of it offended his nostrils.
“To hell with the line. To hell with Dixie Cannon. You tell the fat little bastard that Prince Caleb Kirk isn’t moving out for any lousy city politico. Not any whatever.”
Ray moved swiftly and smoothly, like a machine, driving his bent arm back like a piston. The elbow buried itself in the soft area above the diaphragm where Kirk’s ribs converged. Spinning with the motion, Ray chopped into the base of Kirk’s neck with the hard edge of his right hand. That made everything easy. Catching the sagging body, he lifted the sheriff’s yellow face up into a savage, cadenced chopping that produced, in seconds, a red pulp. The job done methodically, he let the body collapse and turned to the twins.
“Dixie Cannon’s a big man,” he said. “It’s not right for a bush-league bastard to talk about Dixie like that. If I overlooked it, after a while no one would have any respect for Dixie at all. You boys ready to listen?”
The brothers Schultz were motionless mountains of frozen meat. After a few seconds, the one behind the desk lifted his hands and spread them carefully on the desk’s surface. His head jerked.
“You’re talking, boy. We’re listening.”
“Good. I told Dixie you’d be reasonable. You can always depend on the Schultz boys to play it cool, I told him. It’s as simple as this: Dixie wants the ice.
