The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Chapter Five

Murder Spa

By the time McGavock hit the sidewalk the air was breathless — sultry. There was the electric threat of a summer storm about to break loose. In the southwest sky, above the hillcrests, smoky thunderheads were gathering in a diaphanous haze. Even the hound dogs had vanished from the rutted road. The few mules left at hitching posts, their ears flat against their necks, stood stark and fearful in anticipation of the coming squall. McGavock didn’t like it. Rain would bring an early nightfall and he was playing against darkness.

Lawyer Maldron lurked in the doorway of his office. The detective had the sensation that he’d been waiting there a long time for McGavock to pass.

He was a different lad from the one that McGavock had quarreled with last night. Somehow, in twenty-four hours, the attorney’s cruel ego had withered almost to the vanishing point. “Good evening, sir.” He was downright servile. “Could I speak with you a second?”

McGavock asked sarcastically: “What’s the matter with the horseshoe-nail ring? Don’t tell me you’ve given up window rapping?”

Maldron forced a cavernous laugh. “I don’t rap for my friends, it’s not polite.” He threw a loop in his lower lip, screwed up his face. “That note on my blotter. You wrote it, didn’t you? It was a joke?”

“I wrote it,” McGavock said genially. “But it wasn’t a joke.”

Maldron was hugely pleased. “You admit it? Would you mind informing the sheriff? He’s been after me—”

McGavock jeered. “Amnesia has come over me. I don’t have the slightest idea what we’re talking about.” He asked sharply: “In the old days, back when Fern Springs was doing a rush business, how did the out-of-county guests get there? It’s a long walk for gentlefolk.”

Maldron was perplexed at the question. “They didn’t walk, of course. Most of the guests were from right here in Bartonville. Those from out of the county came by train. There was a junction about eight miles from the resort. A surrey was sent out for them. Is that what you mean?”

“That’s what I mean.” McGavock turned up his coat collar. A sudden spray of raindrops, a premature warning of the storm on the way, whipped down the sidewalk in a swirl of tiny silver crowns.

The sheriff was not in his office at the courthouse. A turnkey greeted McGavock warmly. “Steve’s done got Buck.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m a-sayin’ Stevie’s done picked up Buck. He won’t talk, though. Stevie says, should you drop in, for you to go back and make a try at him.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s at the end of the cell block.”

McGavock said speculatively: “O.K. I’ll see what I can do.”

Buck was the phoney Asie Tenniman, the mountain boy with the plaid shirt and brass-studded belt. He was stretched full length on his bunk, reading a Sunday school paper. Every few minutes he’d take a glass jar of snuff from his pocket and rub a pinch of the powder into his gums. He looked at McGavock with glassy eyes, as though the detective were an unpleasant figment of his imagination. “You might’s well leave me be. I hain’t got nary a thing to say.”

McGavock became chummy. “What you reading, Buck?”

“This-here paper was here when I come in. I’m a-whilin’ away the time till Hal Maldron gits over to see me. You fellers’ll be sorry then. I’m fixin’ to sue y’all—”

The detective listened amiably. “But you haven’t answered my question. What are you reading? It looks like a Sunday school paper.”

The mountain boy said smugly: “That’s what it is. It’s a Bible paper. I’m reading a piece about how a lady preacher lived forty year amongst the Eskimos and spread the word of—”

McGavock took a little red leather book from his inside pocket. He leafed through it with great concentration, selected a page, tore it from the book and flipped it through the bars of the cell to the floor. “When you finish up the lady preacher you might start on that. It’s a copy of the state arson laws.”

“Arson laws?”

“That’s right. You threw Bennett and me off the trail while somebody rushed out and torched the old hotel. You’re as guilty as the man that held the match. I’ve just been in consultation with Mrs. Bennett and she says it’s the pen for the lot of you.”

The mountain boy was thoughtful. “I’ll make you a swap. I’ll tell you what I know — if you’ll promise to have Maldron scorch over and git me out of this.”

“I’m not in a position to make such a trade. This is worse than arson — it’s murder!”

The corridor and the cell block were growing dark. The boy looked out the small window at the smudgy clouds heaping themselves around the hilltops. “I think I been foxed,” he said woodenly. “This-here was supposed to be a prank. I’m shootin’ me a game of nine ball down to the Shamrock when Gussie says I’m wanted on the phone. It’s a funny voice. It sounds like a woman tryin’ to talk like a man — or maybe a man tryin’ to talk like a woman, it’s hard to place. Anyways, this voice says for me to go to Bennett and tell him about the fire — like I did. I was to go to Bennett’s tonight at ten o’clock and Mrs. Bennett herself was to pay me ten bucks. I don’t know anythin’ about any murder and till the sheriff picked me up I didn’t know that Fern Springs had really been burned. I’m a good boy. I’m deacon back in the settlement where I come from. I tithe, I eschew the ways of evil, like it sayeth—”