Hopscotch Read online

  Q. You didn’t notice whether he hung around watching to make sure you actually sailed on the ship, did you?

  A. No. I told you, I never saw him after we shook hands on the pier there. Look, how many times are we going to go over this?

  Q. Well sometimes it helps to go over things several times, Mr. Liddell. Each time you tell it you remember something else you hadn’t remember the previous time. I mean like him staying up in his room typing after you went to bed, that sort of thing. Now suppose we just do it one more time. Let’s take it from the night you met Butler in the bar in Trenton, okay?

  Ross yawned helplessly and reached for the Styrofoam coffee cup. Cutter switched the tape deck off. “You don’t find anything helpful there?”

  “What’s the use of finding out where he bought his typing paper or what motel they stayed in? He’s long gone, he won’t be back to those places. It was weeks ago.”

  “You’re missing something then,” Cutter said. “Look, I’m not being smug, I’m not trying to show off my muscles. But you’ve got to pay a little attention. Now stop yawning in my face and sit up and let’s talk about it.”

  Ross shoved himself upright in the chair and sucked at the dregs of the coffee. “I can’t handle time zones too well. I’m going to a little bit of a zombie for a day or two—I can’t help it, jet planes do that to me.”

  “You want more coffee?”

  “I’m waterlogged already. No thanks.”

  Cutter said, “He bought a hundred sheets of twenty-pound Southworth Bond paper and a pad of carbon paper.”

  Ross shook his head. “You write a book, you need paper. What does it prove? It doesn’t tell us where he is.”

  “It may.”

  “You’re miles ahead of me, then.”

  “It’s a little bit more expensive than most. You buy it by the ream it runs seven or eight dollars for five hundred sheets.”

  “So?”

  “One thing about Kendig—he’s meticulous, he’s orderly. If he started writing this book on South-worth paper he’ll probably finish it on Southworth paper. Now he bought a hundred sheets and he bought carbon paper. That’s enough to write fifty originals and make fifty carbons. Not enough to finish that book of his, is it. Not unless he had more of the stuff in his luggage. But if he had more of it why make a special stop just to buy it in Norfolk?”

  Ross began to see. His eyes widened a little.

  “He was low on paper,” Cutter said, “so he bought a packet in Norfolk. But it wasn’t enough to finish the book. So he’s got to buy paper again.”

  Ross made a face. “I get what you mean now. But how many places are there in this country that sell typing paper?”

  “We can rule out places that don’t sell South-worth, can’t we. So we start with Southworth. We find out who wholesales for them. We go through the wholesalers, find out which stores they supply with bond paper.”

  “That’s still got to be thousands of stores.”

  “All right. It’s a lot of phone calls. But that kind of mindless legwork—that’s what the FBI has a talent for.”

  – 12 –

  HE WAS KEYED up and rather enjoying it. They ought to be getting close by now. Kendig had dropped enough clues for them but if they’d allowed their brains to rust on the assumption that their computers would take care of everything then they wouldn’t be within a thousand miles of him. But he didn’t think Joe Cutter had it in him to succumb that way. They’d be a while yet because they wouldn’t take the easy straightforward course even if one was available. Byzantium was in their blood: they would twist and contort, they would set snares within mazes. But they would be along.

  For seven years, off and on, he had worked with Cutter and played poker with him. It was possible that no one knew anyone as well as he knew a regular poker opponent. The intimacy of his relationship with Cutter had been something far closer than family and perhaps closer than husband and wife: they knew each other’s shadings, excellences, vulnerabilities—and differences.

  Cutter was not so coldly mechanical as he pretended to be but nevertheless Cutter was logical in the procedures of his intellect: a percentage player. You could bluff him out of a good hand if he decided the pot odds weren’t good enough; you could rely on him not to play a wild hunch; he bluffed often enough but he did it with calculation. Kendig relied more on instincts and talents and he had the advantage of flexibility but Cutter had qualities of relentless thoroughness. His ruthlessness included the ability to act with purposeful unpredictability; you couldn’t count on him to plod along a prearranged path with his nose to the ground—Cutter was high-voltage; he had the spark to jump across gaps.

  He could show up any time now.

  Kendig made his preparations in the evenings after each day’s typing hours. He had bought two identical suitcases in Birmingham and he cut one of them apart and used it to make a false bottom inside the other. Manuscript and part of his cash would go into the hiding place; the rest of the cash remained in wallet and canvas money belt.

  He had a tripwire along the rutted driveway up from the road; if man or car approached it would break a thread and the old cowbell would fall to the porch.

  But he needed a second exit. It could have been done in a number of ways; he took advantage of regional resources. It was white lightning country and the backhill bootleggers were numerous, their stills concealed everywhere in the piney woods. He’d spent part of every day in the pines along the county road, watching their comings and goings—mostly by night. There was one mountain-dew outfit that ran three tankers in and out: a ’57 Oldsmobile, a ’64 Chevy and a ’59 Ford Fairlane. The still was a mile and a half back off the county road and he hadn’t tried going up the driveway; they’d have it under surveillance twenty-four hours a day if not booby-trapped. But he’d had a look at the operation from the high country through 8x Zeiss glasses; it was about a four mile cross-country walk from his clapboard. They had at least three back-road exits that he could see from his vantage point; some of them probably went many miles before they gave out onto a main road somewhere. But the local law was indifferent and maybe the district federal office was in the moonshiners’ pockets; at any rate the tankers had been using the front driveway in and out for as long as Kendig had been keeping tabs on them.

  It would do; and the time for it was tonight.

  At four in the afternoon he took page 243 out of the typewriter and hid the manuscript and drove down to the village. He bought groceries enough to last a solitary man two weeks. He bought a Vise-Grip wrench and then he put everything in the car and waited by the telephone booth until two minutes before five and dialed the New York number direct.

  – 13 –

  BOTH TELEPHONE BOOTHS had OUT OF ORDER placards on them. Ross motioned Ives into the first one at 4:55 and stepped into the adjoining booth. “Operator?”

  “Yes sir. I’m all ready to institute your trace as soon as we get a ring on that line.”

  “Fine.” Then he turned on the tape recorder and waited.

  Ives obeyed instructions: he let it ring four times and then picked it up. Ross picked up simultaneously, watching Ives through the double glass.

  “Hello?”

  “Deposit eighty-five cents, please.”

  The money bonged distantly; then Ives spoke: “Kendig?”

  “Did our publishers go the price, Mr. Ives?”

  “Yes. I’m happy to say I’ve got a sweet batch of contracts for you. In fact I even managed to—”

  “Never mind, I’m in a hurry. Just answer my questions yes or no. Did those people from Washington get back to you again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell them the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have all the publishers received the fifty-one pages? No sidetracked manuscripts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Are they listening in on this call right now?”

  “Yes.”

  Ross gritted his teeth.

>   Then he heard Kendig laugh. “That’s fine, Mr. Ives. I’ll be in touch again.”

  Click.

  Ross tapped the cradle. “Operator? Operator?”

  “Yes sir. We couldn’t trace the individual phone I’m afraid—there wasn’t time. But we’ve got the area code and we might have the town for you in a few minutes.”

  “What’s the area code? Where was it?”

  “Georgia, sir.”

  Ross grinned. It was all fitting together now.

  – 14 –

  HE SLIPPED THE pump attendant ten dollars before the pump started running; the man grinned conspiratorially, topped Kendig’s tank and filled the five-gallon jerrycan in the trunk. When Kendig drove out of the station the kid was watching him go; the kid would remember him well enough and that was part of his intention.

  He drove half an hour up the asphalt; he stopped the car about a quarter mile short of the bootleggers’ gate and hid the five-gallon can of gasoline in the trees. Then he drove on past the moonshinery to his own overgrown driveway; unhooked the trip-wire, drove in, reset the wire, drove up to the house and lugged the groceries inside.

  He diced a steak and cut up a pepper and an onion and a banana, threaded the pieces on skewers he fashioned of wire coat-hangers and marinated the kebab in a sauce he compounded of half a dozen ingredients; he boiled up some brown rice and then fried it while the kebab was broiling. He made a salad of spinach greens and sliced tomato and segments of mandarin orange. The only thing he didn’t include was wine; he’d need a clear head tonight.

  He put on Levi’s and crepe-soled boots and a flannel work shirt. Over that he put a thick woven sweater and then his dark windbreaker; he needed padding and a smooth outer covering—he expected to get dragged on the gravel and he didn’t want to lacerate his back. He put the Vise-Grip in his hip pocket and then spent ten minutes putting everything he’d need into the false-bottomed suitcase. When he tossed Carla Fleming’s compact into the case he was ready. He put the suitcase in the barn and arranged the kerosene lamps where they needed to be; he didn’t light them. He measured off the cleared floor space and made sure the barn door could be closed without obstruction. He left it wide open.

  Then he walked down into the pines to make sure no tree had fallen across the pioneer road he’d spent two evenings cutting into the forest.

  It was crude and not very long; it ran from the edge of his yard down a slope studded with second-growth pines and the remains of a fire that had gutted a few acres ten or twelve year ago. It had been the line of easiest resistance and he’d only had to cut down saplings; he’d sheared the stumps as close to the ground as he’d been able and then it, appeared to leave sufficient clearance to get a car through, although it was going to be a tight squeeze in two or three places.

  Down in the bigger trees he’d had to hairpin it back and forth. Fortunately they were heavy old pines and there hadn’t been much undergrowth to clear out; he’d blazed the trunks to give himself a guide because otherwise in the dark he’d likely make a wrong turning and get boxed in. It ended in the woods about twenty yards short of the county road and about a third of a mile south of the intersection of his driveway. There was only roadside brush and a few spindly young evergreens between the end of his pioneer track and the county road; gun a car out of there and it would crash right through breaking the bush, clearing its own path to the paved road. In the meantime he’d left that section untouched. You could conceal a Patton tank in there and nobody would see it from the road.

  It felt all right, exploring it on foot; he couldn’t take the chance of testing it with the old Pontiac because he’d designed it as a one-way escape route and it was unlikely the Pontiac or any other car could drive back up it. It was too steep, the pine needles too slick.

  He was as ready as he was going to be; and it was past eight o’clock. It was time to go.

  In three-quarter moonlight he had his look down across the slopes. The house was big but deliberately decrepit from the outside; the outbuildings looked tumbledown but most likely they were in splendid shape from the inside. The yard was cluttered with eight or nine ruined cars of which at least three were far more lively than they looked.

  He watched the ’59 Ford move out at nine o’clock but he didn’t stir. The ’64 Chevy took the Ford’s place in the barn. They’d be filling its bootleg tank with eighty gallons of hundred-proof corn. He spotted one man with a rifle on the porch of the main house, another one up in what looked like a kids’ treehouse on the edge of the yard. Probably there were two or three others scattered around on watch. He didn’t go down any closer.

  At nine-fifty the Chevy rolled out of the barn and went down out of Kendig’s sight into the trees. He gave it a ten-minute start and then he walked circuitously down the hillsides to the county road and went along the edge of the trees to the moonshiners’ gate.

  It was a wooden cattle-gate sprung on a diagonal board, secured with heavy padlock and chain. The barbwire fence ran along to either side, six strands, five feet high. It wouldn’t keep a determined prowler out but it would deter casual hikers. These were forest people; for security they relied not on fences but on their eyes and ears and instincts.

  When the tanker cars drove in or out they had to go through a routine procedure: stop the car, get out, unlock the padlock, swing the gate wide open, get back in the car, drive through, stop again, get out, close the gate and fasten the padlock, get back in the car and drive on.

  He climbed over the gate and posted himself prone in the shadows along the driveway just inside the gateway; it was a point parallel to where the rear of the car would be when it stopped.

  They tended to run them out at forty-five-minute intervals; they were roughly on schedule tonight. He’d been in hiding a little short of ten minutes when he heard the Oldsmobile crunching down the gravel of the hill track. He gathered his muscles, tense as a runner in the starting chocks.

  Stabbing headlight beams swayed wildly through the treetops and lanced downward; the car came over the last crest and made the bend and rolled forward without hurry. Kendig stayed put in the shrubbery and the front of the car went past within five feet of his nose. He was in motion before the car stopped.

  He had the Vise-Grips in his right hand; he rolled behind the car, got a left-handed grip on the bumper and dragged himself sliding under the back of the car.

  The driver’s door opened. The car moved a little on its springs; he heard footsteps. He felt for the target with his left hand, running his fingers rapidly across the bottom of the gas tank; he found the hexagonal nut and squeezed the Vise-Grips onto it and heaved.

  It was an awkward position, lying on his back with his arm cramped across his chest; he thought he might not get enough torque: the nut was probbably a little rusted, likely it hadn’t been unscrewed in years and it was covered with road grit, an uneven surface for the wrench. He heard the bottom of the gate scrape across its arc, the tinkle of the dangling chain. He locked both hands on the Vise-Grips and heaved again.

  When it gave there was a rusty metallic groan. He froze.

  The gate stopped and he heard the driver’s footsteps approaching. But they were neither furtive nor determined; the driver hadn’t heard. Kendig turned the nut. The car swayed with the driver’s weight; the door clicked, shut to half-latch. Kendig reached up with his left hand and locked his fist on the outer cylinder of the shock absorber and tensed his biceps.

  The engine gunned, the car dragged him forward, gravel ripping the back of his windbreaker. A stone hit his shoulderblade; he almost cried out, almost lost his grip but he hung on. His forehead glanced off the bottom of the gas tank; he’d have a lump there in the morning. Then the car kept moving and dragging him and for an awful moment he was afraid the driver wasn’t going to stop but then the ride ended and Kendig jackknifed his legs so his feet wouldn’t show.

  The driver got out. Kendig rotated the Vise-Grips and now it turned easily; he unsnapped the wrench and turned the nut
counterclockwise swiftly with finger pressure. When gasoline began to trickle down his wrist he pushed up against the nut, holding it shut, turning it another full turn to make sure it was free of its threads; he held it that way while he heard the padlock snap shut and the driver’s boots crunch their way back to the car.

  The door slammed. The Olds dropped into gear. He straightened his legs out and dropped his head back onto the ground. The car began to move, the tank inches above his nose; he held the drainplug in place as long as he could but then the car was away from him and he just stayed put, lying on his back; gasoline gushed over his extended arm, an overpowering stink of it, soaking his arm and his hair and his shoulder. He lay perfectly still and watched the inverted image of the taillights moving away down the county road.

  He let it drive all the way out of sight before he got to his feet and wiped some of the stinking stuff off his face with his handkerchief. Then he started trotting after the car.

  He gave it not more than a quarter mile before the high-powered V-8 would use up the fuel in its carburetor and fuel line; sure enough he was just reaching the bend when he heard it cough and die. It freewheeled a bit and he heard it stop. He cut into the woods and walked quickly on the pine-needle carpet, dropping the vital drainplug carefully into his pocket.

  When he came in sight of the Olds the driver had the hood up and was playing a flashlight on the engine. Kendig moved down toward the edge of the road, picked up the five-gallon can of gasoline he’d cached there and waited in the trees, not moving, stinking of gasoline.