down his glass. He had the sharp, meddlesome eyes of a trouble-maker. “Maybe he didn’t,” he said. “But he could still have been a friend of the family.”
The bartender glanced at him, but said nothing. The other man merely went on drinking his beer. The ugliness of it hung there for a moment in the silence of the room, but it was something they didn’t even notice any more. They were used to it.
“I ain’t sayin’ he wasn’t,” Jake protested. “All I’m sayin’ is that they ain’t never been able to prove he knew either one of ‘em.”
Then what the hell was he doing up here?” the other demanded. “Why was he registered over there in that motel three times in two months? He wasn’t on business, because they never found nobody in town he come to see. Besides, you don’t reckon he’d be crazy enough to try to sell Miami real estate around here, do you?”
“How the hell do I know?” Jake asked. “A man crazy enough to try to gun Calhoun might do anything.”
“Nuts. You know as well as I do what he was up here for. He was a ladies’ man, a regular stud. He was a no-good with a big front and a line of baloney, and some woman was supportin’ him half the time.”
It was a charming little place, I thought sourly. She stood trial for murder every day—over here, and in all the other bars in town, and every time she pushed a basket down the aisles of the supermarket. I wondered why she didn’t sell out and leave. Pride, maybe. There was a lot of it in her face.
Then I reminded myself that it was none of my business anyway. I didn’t know anything about her; maybe she had killed her husband. Murder had been committed by people who couldn’t even tell a lie without blushing. But for the sordid reasons they were hinting at? It didn’t seem likely.
“And ain’t she from Miami?” the other went on. The way he said it, you gathered being from Miami was an indictment itself.
“Dammit, Rupe,” Jake said with sullen defiance, “stop tryin’ to make it look like I was talking for her. Or for Strader. All I’m sayin’ is there’s a lot of difference between knowing something and provin’ it.”
“Proof!” Rupe said contemptuously. “That’s a lot of bull. They got all the proof they need. Why do you reckon Strader went to all that trouble to try to make it look like an accident?”
I glanced up. That was deadly. And it reminded me of something that had been bothering me and that I’d intended to ask if I ever had the chance.
“Was that the reason for the two cars?” I asked Jake.
I had been momentarily forgotten in their argument, but now abrupt silence dropped over the place, and the chill you could feel had nothing to do with the air-conditioning. Jake gulped the rest of his beer and stood up. “Well, I’d better be hittin’ the road,” he said. “Thanks, mister.” He went out. The others stared at me for a minute, and then returned to their own conversation.
I ordered another beer. Ollie uncapped it and set it before me. He appeared to be the most intelligent and least unfriendly of the lot. “Why two cars?” I asked.
He mopped the bar, looked at me appraisingly, and started to say something, but Rupe beat him to it. The shiny black eyes swung around to me, and he asked, “Who are you?”
“My name’s Chatham,” I said shortly.
“I don’t mean that, mister. What have you got to do with this.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”
“You seem to be pretty interested, for it to be none of your put-in.”
“I’m just studying the native customs,” I said. “Where I grew up, people accused of murder were tried in court, not in barrooms.”
“You’re new around here?”
“I’m even luckier than that,” I said. “I’m just passing through.”
“How come you’re riding a taxi? Just to pump Jake?”
I was suddenly fed up with him. “Shove it,” I said.
His eyes filled with quick malice and he made as if to get off the stool. The bartender glanced at him and he settled back. His friend, a much bigger man, studied me with dislike in his eyes, apparently trying to make up his mind whether to buy a piece of it or not. Nothing happened, and in a moment it was past.
I fished a dime from my pocket and went back to the telephone. The dark girl and the