man in the cowboy hat had apparently been paying little attention to us. The girl glanced up now as I went past. I had an impression she was scarcely eighteen, but she looked as if she’d spent twice that long in a furious and dedicated flight from any form of innocence. Her left leg was stretched out under the edge of the table with her skirt hiked up, and the man was grinning slyly as he wrote something on her naked thigh with her lipstick. She met my eyes and shrugged.
I stepped into the booth, and the instant I closed the door I knew I’d found it. The fan came on with an uneven whirring sound caused by the faulty bearing. I thought swiftly. From the lunch-room in there he could even have seen her drive in when she returned from town; that was the reason he’d called almost immediately. But the maid had said he’d called twice before while she was out. Well, that meant those were from somewhere else and that he was moving round. The chances were a thousand to one against his being one of the three out there now.
I went through the motions of making a call, and as I left the booth I shot a glance at the literary cowboy. He could have been anywhere between twenty-eight and forty, with a smooth, chubby face like that of an overgrown baby, and the beginnings of a paunch. The shirt, I noted now, wasn’t blue, as I’d thought—at least, not all over. It was light gray in front, with pearl buttons, and flaps on the breast pockets, and was stained in two or three places in front as if he’d spilled food on it. His eyes were china-blue and made you think of a baby’s, apart from the quality of yokel shrewdness and sly humor you could see in them as he patted the dark girl on the leg and invited her to read whatever it was he’d written on it. He was probably known as a card.
I went back to my beer. From sheer force of habit I sized up Rupe and his friend, but they were as unlikely as the humorist. Rupe was thin, swarthy, and mean-looking, the one you’d always expect to find at the bottom of it any time there was trouble reported in a bar, but he appeared normal enough otherwise. The other was a big man with thinning red-hair and a rugged slab of a face that could probably be tough but wasn’t vicious or depraved. He wore oil-stained khaki, and had black-rimmed fingernails as if he were a mechanic.
Asking any questions was futile. It had been way over two hours to begin with, and the air of coldness and suspicion the place was saturated with told me I’d get no answers anyway. I pushed back the beer and started to get up.
“I thought you said you was a stranger around here.” It was Rupe. I scooped up my change. “That’s right.”
“You must know somebody. You just made a phone call.”
“So I did.”
“Without looking up the number.”
“You don’t mind?” I asked.
“Where you staying here?”
I turned and looked at him coldly. “Across the street. Why?”
“I thought so.”
Ollie put down the glass he was polishing. “You leaving?” he asked me.
“I’d started to,” I said.
“Maybe you’d better.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Simple economics, friend. He’s a regular customer.”
“Okay,” I said. “But if he’s that valuable, maybe you’d better keep him tied up till I get out.”
Rupe started to slide off his stool, and the big redhead eyed me speculatively. “Knock it off,” Ollie said quietly to the two of them, and then jerked his head at me. I don’t want to have to call the cops.”
“Right,” I said. I dropped the change in my pocket, and went out through the lunch-room. The whole thing was petty and stupid, but I had a feeling it was only a hint of what was submerged here, like the surface uneasiness of water where the big tide-rips ran deep and powerful far below, or the sullen smoldering of a fire that was only waiting to break out. I wondered why the feeling against her was so bitter. They seemed convinced she was involved in the murder of her husband; but if there were any evidence in that direction, why hadn’t she been arrested and tried?
I crossed the highway in the leaden heat of late afternoon, and again was struck by the bleak aspect of the motel grounds as they would