Robert Alter - Carny kill

"Bill," I replied. I showed him the little pea and covered it and made a right-over-left pass and he tapped the right shell with his finger. I didn't palm it because there was no profit in it. Anyhow, he had something on his mind and I didn't want to derail his train of thought.

"You want your orchid gift wrapped?" I asked him.

"Keep it for your bitch," he told me.

I was curious about what had brought him over to see me so I didn't get mad at that. Duff didn't look at me. He toyed with one of my walnut shells.

"I've been thinking, Thax, that you and I are a couple of saps."

"I'll go along with half of that," I said. "I've been thinking that one of us was."

He gave me the lovable old Duff dagger look.

"No, I'm serious. We've been at loggerheads when if we had any brains we'd be a team. You know what I mean?"

"Uh-huh, and it's a funny thing. I said the same thing to Ferris not so long ago."

"You did?"

"Uh-huh. A slapstick team. You slap a pie in my face and then I plaster your face."

"No, no, for godsake. I don't mean the cutthroat way we've always acted. I mean we should start putting our heads together. You know?"

"Like the two-headed calf in the illusion show."

He gave me an aggrieved but patient look and said, "Will you knock off the hilarity? I'm serious. And you know what I'm talking about. I figure together we could both do ourselves some good. Some real good."

"Well, Bill, everybody's opinion is worth something. Even a clock that's stopped is right twice a day. What is it that you want to share with me?"

"C'mon," he snapped. "You know as well as I do what the score is. There's a fortune in it"

"Um. I said that to a man last night and nearly got my head blown off." I started to rotate the walnut shells.

"The trouble with you, Bill, is you want to go fishing with my bait. You're seeing about a yard beyond Ferris' view- while I'm looking at the whole vista. No deal."

I raised my head and started a spiel.

"This way, ladies and gentlemen! The one cylinder ballbearing ride is about to start again. Three little tepees with a little white medidne ball. Step aside, mister, let the little lady with the pretty face see the white rabbit." I looked at Duff.

He gave me an icepick look and walked away.

The funny thing is that for the first time in the seven years I had known Duff, I felt sorry for him. A little. He, like most of us, had a hunger that could never be gratified in this life. But for a brief moment he had had a glimpse at the menu-just before I slammed the door in his face and hung out the Closed Indefinitely sign.

"The little lady's shriek of delight is a wail of woe in the gambler's ear," I said as I handed over a dime-a-dozen orchid to the girl with the pretty face.

The Viking horn moaned and the marks started their noisy, confused, semi-happy evacuation. There would probably be much misbehaving in the cars in the parking lot that night and you could risk a guess that there would be a few inevitable results in about nine months and maybe even a few venereal catastrophes a hell of a lot sooner.

But as far as I was concerned nothing had happened.

I went up to the treehouse to dig out my spare shirts and shorts and socks. The truth was, I felt a little sad about leaving Tarzan's hut. Maybe I was too much like those who wouldn't let youth slip by, like Peter Pan or Mike Ransome. Maybe I was doomed to bumble through life without ever realizing total maturity.

"Well," I thought, "it doesn't matter, does it? So I like to live in a tree house. What's so goddam wrong in that?"

I pulled out the Coke bottle carton which I kept my spare shirts and underwear in and I stared at it in the brilliant light of Terry Orme's Coleman lantern. And with an odd sense of unreality I felt the world turn back twenty-some years-back to the first time I read _Treasure Island_ and came to the part where Blind Pew put the piece of paper in Billy Bones' rum-palsied hand.

A little round piece of paper was pinned to my top shirt. It was black on one side and white on the other; words had been printed on the white side.

_One o'clock_.

_But what is the black spot, captain?_ Jim Hawkins had asked. _That's a summons, mate_, Billy Bones had answered.

And that's what this black spot was-a summons for me. Because the person who had planted it on my shirt knew me. Knew my immature sense of the dramatic. Knew I wouldn't call cop.

And he was right. Like John Silver I had to bullhead a bad deal out to the bitter end. I touched the plastic butted reassurance of the fortyfive under my jacket and grinned.

"Nobody," I thought, "ever got the best of Silver. Not even Ben Gunn."

I left the tree house and went down to the Admiral Benbow. The Hispaniola was moored for the night against Treasure Island. The stern windows were open and a blocky shaft of light was jabbing through them and making an orange puddle on the shallow water under the schooner's counter. Soft music throbbed over the dark manmade lake.

I got in a boat and rowed to the island.

The cabin door flew open and Mike Ransome stood in the flood of light grinning at me.

"Thax! I've been expecting you."

I held out the black spot to him and made another stab at quoting Silver.

"Look here. This ain't lucky. You've gone and cut a Bible. What fool has cut a Bible?"

Mike took the black spot and chuckled.

"It was Dick," he said, quoting loosely, "and he can get to prayers. He's seen his slice of luck, has Dick, and you may lay to that."

"Amen," I said.

Mike made a gesture inviting me in. Then he took a quick look behind me before he closed the door.

"Come alone, Thax? I rather thought you would."

"Sure. Just like you said the first time we met, Master Gunn-'Him that comes is to have a white thing in his hand and he's to come alone.' Remember?"

I took a casual turn around the cabin. The hi-fi was still purring soft mood music. There was a triangular wardrobe in the angle between the forward bulkhead and the starboard wall. It was faced with two louver doors and I got the impression that the righthand door shifted slightly as I walked by. I went to the stern and parked my prat on one of the open window frames, folded my arms and smiled at Mike.

He wagged the black spot at me. "It really was cut from a Bible, Thax. I always keep one around for laughs. I thought it was the perfect touch. You agree?"

"That's right. I couldn't resist it. You must be uncanny, Mike. You seem to know me like a book."

Mike looked delighted. "Care for a drink?"

"Uh-no thanks. That last one I had out here was murder. I mean that in the literal sense."

Mike chuckled and went over to the hi-fi and killed the music.

"You put something in that gin, didn't you?" I said.

He was enjoying himself immensely. He nearly danced over to the hotplate.

"I'm going to have some coffee. You? No? Well now, Thax-why would I want to put anything in your drink?"

"Because I bunked with Terry Orme, and because you wanted me blotto when you paid our tree house a visit that night."

Mike's eyes watched me brightly over the rim of his coffee cup.

"You can tell a story better than that, surely. You mustn't start in the middle, you know. That's using the narrativehook form and that's cheating."

I was agreeable. "All right, I'll back up to the beginning. You fell for May. Or maybe I should extend that and say you fell for May and her husband's money. But the husband was in the way. To eliminate him was no great problem. The rub was that as soon as he turned up murdered everybody would immediately point the finger at May-because of the money motive. So in your somewhat warped ingenious way you worked out a neat little scheme."