One Endless Hour

    

    

    
I had a new face, a new name, and I had buried the past. Most of it, anyway. In unmarked graves. They had all been double-crossing bastards.

    
Now I needed a new deal-something I could handle alone. Like a nice, quiet town…

    
But somebody had other plans for me.

    
Suddenly it was too late to back out- and too early to die…

    Authentic Marlowe. Like his previous bestsellers, "Beautifully tough-minded, tensely plotted, vigorous, first-rate storytelling." -
The New York Times Book Review.

    

    

    
Bitemeok
(grand book owner & heroic scan provider) &
P.
(OCR, formatting & proofing) edition.

    

    

    

    A NARROW WAGON ROAD BRANCHED OFF IN THE HEADlights a half mile in on the dirt road heading east from Florida's west coast. I turned the Ford into the weed-overgrown trail. "Not that way!" Lucille Grimes said sharply.

    I paid no attention. After a hundred yards I stopped, pulled up the brakes, and cut the motor and lights. Then I slipped an arm around the blonde. She wriggled impatiently, thinking I had romance on my mind. I'd done it to keep her from fleeing if she suspected anything.

    She was sure that her boyfriend, Deputy Sheriff Blaze Franklin, was so close behind us that he'd arrive any moment and kill me. She didn't know that I'd disabled Franklin's police cruiser and left him miles back on U.S. 19.

    After a moment she lowered her head onto my shoulder, awaiting the appearance of the rear guard. Under the trees it was full dark. Much too dark to see her expression. I wished I could. It would have been interesting. Lucille Grimes, the blond postmistress of Hudson, Florida, was as good as dead as far as I was concerned. It was just a question of when and how. In a way it was too bad. She was a really talented bitch.

    Right that second she gave me another demonstration of it. The silence in the woods must have got to her, because she grabbed for the horn ring on the steering wheel. The horn blatted twice. She was reaching for the light switch when I caught her arm. She sat there all tensed up, waiting for Blaze Franklin to appear out of the darkness and finish me off.

    I could sense the shriveling of her self-confidence when nothing happened. "You beginning to get the idea he's not coming?" I needled her. "Blaze isn't splitting with you, Lucille. He's splitting with me. Your boyfriend's sold you out. I'm supposed to bury you twenty yards off this dirt road."

    It shook her to her round heels, but she was too smart to swallow it whole. "He'll come," she said huskily, trying to look over her shoulder.

    "Where is he, then? Get smart, woman. It's lucky for you I like you. Get on the ball now and steer me to the money. I'll take care of Franklin for you."

    She was silent. There was only one thing she could think. Even if Franklin hadn't sold her out, he'd flubbed his end of the deal. She had to protect herself. Her steel-trap mind should have been telling her she was in a perfect position to play it cool down to the finish line. Then she could choose up sides with the winner.

    I couldn't understand why she hesitated.

    "We-Blaze never found the money," she said at last. Her voice quavered. "Only a few hundred on-on the man." She drew a long breath. "If only I'd never mentioned to Blaze the big, odd-looking man who mailed such queer…" Her voice died away.

    So that was why Franklin wanted me alive. For a while. He hoped I knew where the cache was. The funny thing was that I did. Now.

    I tightened my grip on the blonde's arm. "Franklin killed my partner before he found out where the money was?"

    "He-yes," she whispered.

    I started up the Ford. "Tell me where Bunny was staying, Lucille." She didn't say anything. I turned my head to look at her. Her face was an indistinct pale oval. "Tell me," I warned.

    She told me. She had trouble getting out the words. I didn't like the sound of her voice or her directions. I took hold of her again and jerked her toward me. While she tried to pull away, I crossed my hand over my chest and drew my holstered Smith and Wesson.38 special. The blonde's features crumpled in fear.

    I took her wrist, reversed the gun, and slashed her soft inner arm with the gunsight. She cried out in pain and shock as the blood welled. "Better change your story," I told her. "Because if there's nothing where you're sending me, that's what happens to your face until my arm gets tired."

    She changed her story.

    I backed onto the road and drove along it to another that bisected it. Following Lucille's new directions, I turned right. We seemed to be heading into the middle of nowhere. I was on the point of asking her to change her story again when she motioned at a small cabin off to one side. I'd have missed it if I'd been alone. I pulled into the brush and got out of the Ford. I took the ear keys so she couldn't zoom off and leave me stranded.

    I reached back in and took a flashlight from the glove compartment. I circled the cabin cautiously,.38 in one hand, flashlight in the other. There were no phone wires. In the rear, a mound of cut branches loomed up in the light. I pulled off a few. Beneath the tangled brush sat Bunny's blue Dodge. This time Lucille hadn't lied to me.

    I went back to the car. I had to take hold of Lucille's arm to get her out of it. I took a chisel and maul from the trunk, herded the foot-dragging blonde up to the cabin door ahead of me, and smashed the lock. Dry heat rolled over me as the door opened. It had a musty, long-closed odor. Lucille was still hanging back, and I kept a good hold on her arm. I couldn't understand her reluctance to enter the cabin.

    Inside, I closed and bolted the door. The bolt was rusty and I had to manhandle it. I lit a match and peered about the place. A skillet was on the two-burner stove, and Bunny's clothes hung neatly on hangers in an alcove. There was a candle in a bottle on a small table, and I touched the burning match to the wick. Soft light filled the room.

    There were two more doors, both locked. Two swings of the maul disposed of the first lock. There was nothing inside the room at all. I demolished the second lock, then beamed the flash around the room's shadowy interior.

    I'd found Bunny.

    He was face down on the rough pine flooring. His wrists were handcuffed to shiny new ringbolts in the floor. The ringbolts were at right angles to his head. Fresh pine sawdust was visible where the holes had been drilled.

    Dry as the air in the place was, there was a persistent smell. Bunny had been in the cuffs for a long time. With his chest flat on the floor and his arms spread-eagled, not even his great strength could achieve leverage. He had thrown himself onto his right side in a final contortion. The bone of his left kneecap glistened at me out of raw-looking meat, trousers and flesh long since abraded away in his ceaseless struggle with the splintered flooring. His upper left arm was mincemeat where he'd gnawed at himself.

    Bunny had lain in the cuffs until he died.

    Which kills first, hunger or thirst?

    I couldn't remember.

    I couldn't think.

    The game had dealt my partner a rough hand. Looking into Franklin's gun, Bunny had temporized, feeling he'd find a spot to turn it around. He hadn't counted on the cuffs. He'd gone into them, but he hadn't cracked. He'd told Franklin nothing. Right up to the end he must have hoped I'd get there in time. A hell of a lot of good I'd been to him, two thousand miles away getting a cop's bullet out of my shoulder so I could travel.

    How do you break the will of a stubborn man? You starve him. You starve him until he's out of his mind with hunger, heat, and thirst, when he'll lead you to anything he has.

    If he's not too far out of his mind.

    With the hunger, the thirst, and the maddening heat, Blaze Franklin had returned to the cabin one day and found a mindless animal in the ringbolts. An animal who would never lead him to anything.

    I stooped to examine the head, cruelly battered from endless, raving contact with the floor. There had been no merciful bullet.

    Blaze Franklin had left him to die.

    Blaze Franklin and Lucille Grimes had left him to die.

    I knew now why the blonde had been so afraid to come into the cabin. She'd known exactly what I was going to find. I straightened up, drew the.38 again, and walked into the other room. Lucille was struggling with the rusty bolt in the front door, trying frantically to withdraw it. I peeled her away from the door and slammed her against the wall.

    "Blaze did it!" she screamed when she saw my face. "Blaze did it! I wanted to let him go-"

    I shot her in the throat, three times.

    "Tell your story in hell, if you can get anyone to listen," I rasped. She collapsed in a heap and thrashed on the floor, blood pulsing between the fingers of both hands clasped to her neck. "If they can patch up your lying voice."

    I stepped over her.

    I had work to do.

    I went outside into the clean darkness. First I looked up at the stars to orient myself. I knew where the cache would be. For a hideout in the country, Bunny and I always followed a pattern. From the front door of the cabin I stepped out due north as accurately as I could reckon it. I knew the sack wouldn't be more than thirty or forty feet from the cabin well.

    In daylight it would have been a cinch. Even in the dark and in the thick brush it wasn't too hard. My feet told me when I hit softer earth. Bunny had planted something green over the sack. I ripped up the bush, pulled the chisel that was the only tool I had from my pocket, and tore into the loose ground. A foot below the surface I ran into the sack.

    By the light of the flash I made certain that the bulk of the Phoenix swag was still in the canvas container. Then I reburied it, stamping down the earth around the replaced bush. There was no sense in lugging the sack around with me. I'd be back for it after I brought Blaze Franklin out here and roped him to Bunny's body to die the same way Bunny had.

    I went back inside for a last look around. Lucille was unconscious, bubbles of blood oozing instead of jetting with each shallow, ragged breath. She wouldn't last long. Not long enough, actually. She was lucky. If I hadn't been so angry that I hadn't stopped to think, I could have figured a different end for her. A slower end. She was just as guilty as Franklin.

    And where would Deputy Sheriff Blaze Franklin be now? After the motor froze up in his police cruiser from the sugar I'd dumped into his gas tank, he'd have to make his way back to my motel, the Lazy Susan, and hope that I returned there. That's where Blaze Franklin would be, and he'd get his wish about my return in a way he never expected.

    I went down the path to the Ford and got out of there.

    

    

    I drove straight to the Dixie Pig, Hazel's place. I wanted Franklin, but I had another errand first. En route, I shook a box of bullets loose in my jacket pocket. I drove with my left hand and reloaded with my right. I've spent a lot of hours practicing reloading one-handed.

    At the Dixie Pig, I scouted the back parking lot in case Franklin had outguessed me. There was no two-tone police cruiser on the parking lot. I parked alongside Hazel's car and went in the back door. She was behind the bar, her six-foot figure towering above the half-dozen seated customers.

    Her face lighted up when she saw me, but I thought her expression looked strained. She held up the hinged flap at the far end of the bar. She was wearing her usual Levi's, cowboy boots, and short vest that emphasized her big breasts and the smooth skin of her bare arms. She was far and away the most woman I'd ever had. And the best.

    I followed her along the duckboards and out through the hanging curtain in the center of the backbar. The room behind the curtain was set up as a lounge, with a couch and a couple of chairs, a Primus stove, and a coffeepot. "Get a bag packed," I said to her. "I'll be back for you in half an hour."

    Her large hand caught mine and squeezed it hard. "Listen to me, Chet. Please." Her voice was low. "Franklin has everyone in the county looking for you. There's half a dozen of them waiting in the motel yard. They never dreamed you'd come back here."

    So. End of the line for Chet Arnold in Hudson, Florida. And I couldn't get to Blaze Franklin. I couldn't? The hell I couldn't. I held out my hand to Hazel. "Forget what I said about a bag. Give me your car keys."