Bill Pronzini - Bindlestiff

“I know a cop when I see one.”

“Do cops offer to buy you a jug of wine?”

“He got you there, Woody,” the black guy said. He seemed to have relaxed a little. He asked me, “What you want with this Bradford?”

I told him the same thing I’d told the other tramps. Then I went over to where he sat and extended the clipping.

He took it, but he didn’t look at it. “The ten bucks first,” he said.

“Do I get straight answers?”

“We hoboes, man, not grifters. You get what you pay for.”

I let him have the money. He put it away in the pocket of his dirty gray shirt and then gave his attention to the photograph. “Which one’s Bradford?”

“The one on the far left.”

He studied the photo some more. When he was finished he passed it on to the white guy named Woody, who squinted at it myopically for about five seconds before he handed it to the third tramp.

I said, “Well? Do any of you know him?”

“Seen him around,” the black man said. “They call him ‘G-Man’-used to work for the gov’ment.”

I nodded. “Do you know if he’s still here?”

“No. Ain’t seen him since the reporters come around.”

“He’s the one got in the hassle with the streamliner,” Woody said. He glanced at the other white guy. “You remember, Flint. Kid that come off the freight from Sacramento.”

“Yeah,” Flint said. “Long-haired little bastard. I remember.”

I said, “What are ‘streamliners’?”

“Young dudes, mostly,” the black guy said, “not real tramps. They travel without a bedroll, only the clothes they got on they backs. Dopers, most of ‘em; this one was for sure. Runnin’ from something or somebody. Or just plain runnin’.”

“And Bradford had some trouble with one?”

“I seen it myself,” Woody said. “Just after them Frisco reporters left. This streamliner come off and tried to mooch some stew G-Man was cooking up.”

“What happened?”

“They had them a little push-and-shove. Then the streamliner, he pulled a knife. Couple of the other ‘boes run him off before he could do any cuttin’.”

“Was that all there was to it?”

“No,” Flint said. “Kid went over into the yards and come back a while later. I seen him.”

“I seen him too,” Woody said. “So did G-Man. Three of us was there together. G-Man had him some Cadillac and he didn’t mind sharing it.”

“‘Cadillac’?”

Woody grinned; what teeth he had were decayed stumps. But it was the black guy who answered my question. “Bottle of Thunderbird,” he said. “Cadillac of tramp wine.”

“Did anything happen when the streamliner showed up the second time?”

“He didn’t know we seen him,” Flint said. “He was headin’ for the road with a signal lantern in one hand and a tool kit in the other. Swiped ’em from one of the sheds.”

“Prob’ly on his way into town to try sellin’ the stuff for the price of dope,” the black tramp said. He shook his head. “Damn long-hairs give hoboes a bad name. Yard bulls hassle all of us because of ’em.”

“Just what I says to G-Man,” Woody agreed. “And he says something ought to be done about it and by God, he was goin’ to. I told him why don’t he mind his own business, but he wouldn’t listen. Reckon he was still thinkin’ about the streamliner tryin’ to cut him with that knife.”

“You mean he chased after the kid?”

Woody wagged his head. “Nope. Says he’s goin’ to report what the long-hair done; tell the yardmaster or one of the bulls. He went off into the yards. Left the Cadillac with Flint and me. Nice fella, G-Man.”

“What time was that?”

“I dunno. Three o’clock, maybe.”

“Did you see him again?”

“Nope.”

“How about the kid?”

“Nope.”

“Freight come through since then bound for Pasco?”

“Yesterday morning,” Flint said.

“So Bradford-G-Man-could have hopped it.”

“Could have, but he didn’t. Me and Woody and Toledo was all over there when she pulled in; we seen the tramps that got aboard. G-Man wasn’t one of ’em.”

“There been any other northbound freight?”

“Nope,” the black man, Toledo, said. “Next one’s due tomorrow morning.”

I considered that. Then I asked, “The streamliner happen to mention his name?”

“Not that I heard,” Flint said, and Woody wagged his head again.

“What did he look like?”

“Long hair like all of ’em got. Yellow. Scrawny little bugger; couldn’t of weighed more than a hundred and thirty stripped.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Levi’s. No shirt, just one of them sheepskin vests-”

In the distance there was the wailing blast of a locomotive’s air horn. The three old tramps stirred immediately and came to their feet as one. Toledo said to me, “That be the noon southbound out of Medford. She comin’ in to change crews.”

They started away from me toward the path that led up the gully wall. Trains were their lives, and with one coming in-and my ten dollars’ worth of information just about used up anyway-they had lost interest in me. Flint, the one with the arthritis, had trouble making it up the slope. Toledo hoisted him under one brawny arm, the way you’d pick up a child, and carried him to the top.

I went up after them. The Medford freight was just clattering into view from the west-a string of maybe thirty cars, most of them boxes and flats. The air horn shattered the hot morning stillness again.

The three hoboes headed into the yards, toward the siding the freight was shuttling onto. I followed them, but it wasn’t the freight I was interested in. The person I wanted to talk to now was Western Pacific’s day yardmaster.

I found the yardmaster in his office, in the trailer I had noticed earlier near the entrance to the yards. His name was Coleman and he was about sixty, lean and sinewy, wearing an orange hard hat even though he was sitting at his desk. I was honest with him about who I was and what I was doing there; he seemed willing to cooperate. The only problem was, he had nothing to tell me.

“No,” he said when he was done looking at the newspaper photograph, “I’ve never seen this man before.”

“But you were here around three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon?”

“I was. Out by the freight storage shed, as I recall, discussing a shipment of wheel flanges with a local businessman. Nobody who looked like this fellow Bradford came to see me.”

“Well, maybe he talked to one of the yard security men…”

Coleman shook his head. “If he had, it would have been reported to me. Theft is a serious offense around here and we damned well don’t put up with it. We did miss a signal lantern and a tool kit two days ago; the lock on one of the sheds was forced. But no one owned up to seeing the man who stole them or I’d sure know about it.” He paused. “Who did you say told you about this?”

“Three oldtimers who live over in the hobo jungle,” I said. “Woody, Flint, and Toledo.”

“Well, they’ve been around a long time and there’s not much goes on that they don’t know about. They’re as reliable as tramps can be.” Coleman shrugged. “Maybe Bradford changed his mind about reporting the theft. Hoboes don’t want to get involved, as a rule.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe he did.”

I left the trailer and went back across the yards and the open field to where I had parked my car. I didn’t know what to think now. If Bradford had changed his mind about reporting the streamliner, where had he gone instead? And why hadn’t he hopped the freight for Pasco, as the newspaper article said he’d planned to do?