The Big Bite Read online

  I didn’t know whether I’d ever be able to speak again. My throat felt as if I had a logging chain doubled around it with a tractor pulling on each end. I wheezed as I staggered into the living-room and stood looking down at Purvis. He lay on his back with his eyes open, staring blankly up at the ceiling. His left forearm was broken, bent grotesquely across the rug as if he had another elbow inside the dark blue sleeve. He’d shoved it up instinctively, in that last thousandth of a second he was alive, trying to ward off the blow, and the impact had been so terrible it had broken it and then had enough power left over to make that kind of a mess of his head. I looked around to see what he had been hit with. There was nothing. The big guy must have brought it with him and then taken it away.

  The whole thing had happened so suddenly I was having a little trouble catching up. The only thing I was sure of was that I had to get out of there, and fast. I was still groggy from that judo manhandling Purvis had given me, but this didn’t look like the safest place in the world to lie around and recover. Somebody else might come up. I’d have a sweet time explaining what I was doing here alone in the apartment with a man who was spilling the contents of his head onto a threadbare rug. “I was just sitting in the kitchen having a beer, officer. Sure, I heard this guy kill him, but I didn’t think anything about it; you know how it is, just figured it was some friend of his . . .” Cut it out, I thought. Get the hell out of here.

  I walked softly to the door and had sense enough to take my handkerchief in my hand as I turned the knob. I looked out. The corridor was deserted. Slipping out, I transferred the handkerchief to the outer knob, turned it, and silently closed the door. I put the handkerchief back in my pocket and went down the stairs. The hallway on the second floor was empty. I could hear snatches of a television program and someone laughing. Then I was out in the street, weak and shaking a little as I turned the corner and went on. Nobody had seen me. But what about that taxi driver? I thought uneasily. He’d remember bringing me here. He’d recall he picked me up at the bus station. But, hell, he’d never actually looked at me. He couldn’t describe me, except to say that I was pretty big. It didn’t mean anything.

  I started walking. It was a block before I met anyone, and then it was a colored girl who went on past without looking at me. When she was gone and I was alone again I felt my throat and tried to say something. I made a croaking noise. I cleared it painfully and tried again. “Mrs. Cannon,” I said hoarsely. It sounded like gravel being forced through a pipe. “Rich bitch. Testing. Rich bitch.” My voice cleared up slightly, but I wondered if I wasn’t still a little punchy.

  When I was out of the area, a good ten blocks away, I ducked into a dimly lit bar where a jukebox was wailing and ordered a bottle of beer. Sitting on a stool between a big blonde who was yakking six thousand feet to the mile to her escort and a pint-sized redhead who was crocked to the eyeballs and singing something under her breath, I sipped the beer and tried to sort it, out. If that taxi driver remembered me, or if the police happened to think of looking into Purvis’s long-distance calls, I was in a bad spot. I hadn’t been seen leaving the building, but maybe the other guy had. We were about the same size, and the cops could probably make out with whichever of us they caught first. But assume I never was even connected with it? What next? Where did I go from here? Purvis was dead; I’d never find out anything from him now. Was I going to have to give it up, just because some big ox had knocked his roof in?

  Who was the big joker, anyway? Purvis had obviously gone into the shakedown racket on a full-time basis, so maybe the guy was one of his victims or intended victims—but in that case, why hadn’t Purvis recognized him? Wouldn’t he know him? He obviously hadn’t, because he’d been sucked out of position by that wheeze about investigating complaints of something lousing up television reception in the neighborhood. He hadn’t been expecting trouble, because if he had the guy wouldn’t have been able to hit him with a handful of rice. I knew that from what had happened to me. He could move faster than any human being I’d ever seen in my life. But maybe that big guy was a little fast too. He’d probably had the pipe or loaded club up his sleeve. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to tangle with him in a dark alley. He was about my size, and if he could match speed with Purvis— I stopped.

  I’d had to say it twice before it soaked in. I got it now, and it all matched perfectly. I was in business, if I didn’t let him get behind me with that piece of pipe.

  4

  I called a cab and went on into town and caught the next bus to Galveston. It was a little after midnight when I got back to my room in the hotel. I stripped off my sweat-soaked clothing, took a shower, and lay down on the bed with a cigarette.

  There were a lot of angles to figure, and it was going to be dangerous as hell. Assuming I was right so far, he had already killed two men; there was no reason to believe he’d be bashful about running up his score if he suspected I was moving in on him. Of course, I had an idea now of what he looked like, which cut his chances of being able to catch me off guard as he had Purvis and brain me with that club, but I still had to sleep sometime, and there was nothing in the by-laws said he couldn’t switch to a gun if he wanted. Once I knew his name and was sure I had the right man I knew how to tie his hands so he couldn’t do anything to me, but until I did I was wide open for the same kind of pay-off Purvis had got. And I had to go back there to be sure.

  It was odd Purvis hadn’t recognized him; he was the first to grasp the fact Mrs. Cannon must have a boy friend and that he should be a big man somewhere around my size, but still he’d goofed off and let the big joker walk right in on him. That indicated the guy had been keeping himself as well covered as she had. Purvis must have been up there several times, snooping around trying to find out who he was, and all he’d accomplished was to set himself up like a duck in a shooting gallery. There were a couple of factors in my favor, however. The first, of course, was that I had seen him once, even if only from the back. And the second was that he might come out a little more into the open now that—as far as he knew—the only person left who suspected him was dead. The police had written the thing off as a traffic fatality, so he had nothing to fear from them. Purvis had been the only killjoy spoiling his fun, and now that Purvis had been eliminated he could relax. Unless—

  I lit another cigarette off the old one and thought about that. He’d had his eye on Purvis, obviously. So maybe he knew Purvis had been to see me. There wouldn’t be much doubt as to what we’d talked about, and when I showed up around there a couple of days later there’d be even less. My name would go right onto his list. Dangerous? Dangerous was hardly the word.

  Bat sweat. Since when was I this impressed by a thug with a piece of pipe? Let him scare me off? This was big. This was once-in-a-lifetime stuff. So maybe I could just tell the police about it and they’d give me a cigar and a parking ticket, and I could go to work selling aluminum pots to housewives. I could be a big shot like my old man and live in a stinking dark apartment over a dry-cleaning shop, lying in bed with a bottle of muscatel while the termites ate the frilling place out from under him a two-by-four at a time and the crazy short-order cook in the next apartment chased cockroaches up the walls with a cleaver. Sure. Be a big operator like that just because some meatball drives a Cadillac up your leg trying to kill his wife and her boy friend and you don’t like to send them a bill. This is Whore Harlan! The boy who can see a loose buck farther than most people can see the Washington Monument? Turn the knob, children; you must have the wrong channel.

  Of course, the whole thing could still be only a pipe dream, just a bunch of coincidences strung together. The big guy who killed Purvis might be a visiting brother from some other lodge altogether; Purvis probably had more than one iron in the fire. But it looked good this way, no matter how you shook it up; there were too many interlocking pieces that matched.

  Cannon was doing about sixty-five. At best, all he had was a brief glimpse of the silhouette of some big guy in his headlights a
nd then an even briefer glimpse of somebody else apparently trying to hide from the lights by crouching down in the seat. To make up his mind that fast, provided he did crash me deliberately, he must have had a preconceived idea of who those people were. The chances were he was actually looking for them. I knew Mrs. Cannon was out there by the lake; so maybe the big guy was out there too. She had been waiting beside the swamp road for somebody in a car, because when she saw me coming she stepped out into the road for an instant, and then realized her mistake and stepped back. It was still only twilight and I didn’t have my lights on, so she could see the car all right. Therefore, the car she was waiting for could have looked something like mine. She couldn’t have been expecting Cannon, because his was a gray Cadillac sedan. So suppose it was a convertible with the top down. That tied in with the theory Cannon had smashed me deliberately; I was the same size as this big joker and presumably even our cars were similar.

  Say they were both out there. To get back to town they had to come right past where we had crashed. They stopped and investigated when they saw Cannon’s car. He was in it, unconscious or helpless. He’d wanted to kill them, apparently; maybe the feeling was mutual. At any rate, they’d never have a better opportunity. Nobody would ever suspect. And nobody had, except Purvis. He kept getting in their hair, sniffing around, so they stepped on him too. They’d also step on me in a minute if they suspected me, but I should have seen enough of the game by this time to know how it was played. Swing first and never turn your back on anybody.

  So far, I didn’t have any actual proof of this, except that I knew Mrs. Cannon had been out there at the lake and I’d been in the next room when Purvis was killed, but I didn’t need too much in the way of evidence. The threat was enough if I backed it up with some real pressure, and I was beginning to have an idea about that.

  I crushed out the cigarette and lay back on the pillow, it was a little while before I got to sleep because the thought of that taxi driver began to nag me again. A lot depended on how much publicity there was when Purvis’s body was found. If he came forward, a little heads-up police work would put the finger on me without too much trouble. They’d know he picked me up at the bus station, and the approximate time. Check that against bus arrivals and Galveston wouldn’t be too difficult to arrive at. A record of his telephone calls would show he had talked to somebody down here twice in the past two days, to somebody in this hotel. From then on a kid could do it. Of course, I hadn’t killed Purvis and I was pretty sure I could tell then where to find the guy who had if they started leaning on me too hard, but it would be a damned expensive speech if I did have to tell them.

  When I awoke the next morning my throat still felt as if a horse had stepped on it. That judo, I thought, they could keep it. Just give me good, clean, bone-crunching professional football where you could tell by looking at a guy about how hard he’d be able to hit you. I thought of Purvis before I got out of bed, but there was no particular feeling about him one way or another aside from the fact I’d just as soon forget what his head had looked like if it was all right with everybody. It was something about the combination of dark blood and gray hair. He was an odd-ball, all right. I wondered what he would have done with the money if he’d got it. Probably spent the rest of his life following a ballet troupe around like a baseball filbert following the Giants. He must have been dreaming of that one big score for years, and then when he was near enough to put out his hand and touch it he wound up looking like something somebody had stepped on.

  I turned Purvis off like closing a tap and rolled out of bed. There was a lot to be done to get the show on the road, and if I didn’t want my head pushed in, it had to be planned and executed with a hell of a lot of precision. I shaved, took a hurried shower, and went down to the coffee shop for breakfast, picking up a Houston Post on the way. There was nothing in it about Purvis’s murder. I hadn’t expected there would be, this soon. This edition probably went to press about the time he was killed. It wouldn’t break before the afternoon papers at the earliest, and maybe not until tomorrow morning. Hell, it might be days before anybody found him. The longer the better, I thought; let that hackie forget the address.

  I stopped at the cashier’s desk on the way back up to the room and asked them to get my bill ready, saying there would be one more long-distance call they’d have to get the charges on. It was to George Gray in Fort Worth. I was lucky and caught him just as he was coming into his office in the oilwell supply outfit he and his father owned.

  “Who is calling?” his secretary asked.

  “John Harlan,” I said.

  He came on. “Hey, you big ape, why haven’t you been to see us? Where are you?”

  “Galveston,” I said, “right at the moment.”

  “Well, look—” He hesitated slightly. “I mean, I read about it in the papers. It’s a rotten shame. What are you planning to do, John?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I said. “But that’s what I called about—”

  “Well, come on up and let’s talk it over. I think we can use you. We need another salesman, and you worked in the fields a couple of summers, long enough to know something about the business. That is, unless you figure on trying it again next year.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m washed up for good. That next year stuff is newspaper talk. I haven’t settled on anything yet, and want to get off by myself for a couple of weeks and sort it out a little. I thought I’d go back and finish that fishing trip, provided nobody’s using the cabin.”

  “Say, that’s fine. You’re as welcome as the flowers in May, boy. Nobody up there at all, and the way it looks now I won’t be able to get away till duck season. Have yourself a trip, and keep what I told you in mind. You got a key to the place?”

  “No,” I replied. “I mailed it back to you. Or rather, one of the nurses did, while I was in the hospital.”

  “Sure. I remember now. Well, get a hacksaw and saw the lock off. You can buy a new one and send me the keys when you leave. No. Wait— That’d mean I’d have to replace all the duplicates I’ve got scattered around among my friends. Why don’t I just mail you a key?”

  “That’s what I was going to suggest,” I said. “Mail it up there to Wayles, care of General Delivery. I can pick it up when I get in town.”

  “I’ll get it off today. Jesus, I wish I was going with you. Catch a four-pounder for me. Guess all your duffle and tackle is still up there, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I hope you have better luck this time than you did the other. That was rugged.”

  “It’s the breaks,” I said. I stared at the cigarette burning in the ash tray. “By the way, did you ever meet this Cannon? The drunk that clobbered me?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I did, once. Why?”

  ”Just wondering,” I said. “I thought somebody said he had a camp out there too.”

  “He did. However, that wasn’t where I met him. Just happened to run into him clear over in Mississippi one time, hunting quail. Struck me as something of a creep; I didn’t care much for him.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “A lush, for one thing. Wonder he didn’t kill himself long before he did. And he had a highly specialized sense of humor; the things he’d do for kicks. Liked to shoot birds to watch ‘em blow up, or something.”

  “Quail?”

  “Not quail. Sparrows, cardinals, anything that was handy. You ever seen a cardinal shot from twenty feet with the full-choke side of a twelve-gauge double?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But it sounds like something that would have to grow on you.”

  We yakked a minute or two about old times in school. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about Mrs. Cannon, but decided against it. I was supposed to be merely going fishing; there was no use starting anyone wondering. When I had hung up I took an inventory of the money situation. I’d cashed a draft in New Orleans, and still had a little over nine hundred dollars in travele
r’s checks. That would have to do. I could get by with making a down payment on a car. I had sold the Buick after it was repaired following the wreck, and deposited the money along with the insurance company settlement in the bank in Oklahoma City, but it would take too long to cash another draft now. I was in a hurry. I packed the two bags and checked out and caught the next bus to Houston.

  It was a little after eleven when I arrived. I left the bags in two lockers in the station and went out. White sunlight blasted into the streets and traffic fumes and the stink of diesel buses hung heavy in the air. Early editions of the afternoon papers were on the street now. I bought one and ducked into an air-conditioned coffee shop to order a hamburger and a glass of iced tea. There was no mention of Purvis. I went through the paper from front to back, hurrying up one column and down the next, scanning the leads. Somebody had been run over by a loaded ten-ton truck. A man was dead of knife wounds in a brawl out near the turning basin. The body of a young girl had been found in some weeds on a vacant lot. All of a city’s twenty-four-hour output of violence had been run down and checked out and put into print, but Purvis was still waiting. I thought of him lying there in the hot living-room with his head smashed open like a dropped piggy-bank and the blood dried now and black, with all the poised and graceful ballet girls looking down at his body from the walls. I shrugged irritably and pushed the hamburger away. It was tasteless. So Purvis had leaned out too far after the brass ring and fallen off. They wouldn’t get me. By the time they realized I was moving in on them they’d already be in the cage and all I had to do was drop the lid on them.

  Maybe, I thought uneasily. Then I brushed it aside, There was too much to do and I was itching to get started. Turning hurriedly to the back of the paper, I took a quick look at the used car ads. The nearest lot was only a few blocks away. I walked. The place was overflowing with cars; salesmen climbed into my arms and made little cooing sounds in my ears, but the tune changed after I’d picked out a ‘54 Olds and we started to make out the papers for financing. The out-of-state address was bad, and so was the fact I didn’t have a job at the moment, here or anywhere else. I cursed, thinking of the delay in cashing a draft. It would take another whole day, anyway. All the bright salesmen cried a little and assured me if things were different they would like nothing better than to adopt me and let me dribble leopard-upholstered Cadillacs through my fingers all day and lie naked among Lincoln Capris all night, but you knew how those nasty bastards in the finance companies were.