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I
looked up from the New Jersey road-map spread on my knees. Below us
houses were scattered along the farther side of the valley.

I
said: “It looks too placid for Brooklynites. We can’t
stand a place where there aren’t crowds, and that goes double
for Brooklyn gangsters.”

“
They
must have reason to want to be where it’s placid.” She
drove on.

My
stomach muscles tightened. We were very close now. I folded the map
and opened the door of the glove compartment. Her copper-colored
alligator handbag, to match her jersey sweater, was in there. I
pulled the bag out a little way to shove the map under it.

The
car jolted to a halt. Molly leaned hard against my side, snatched the
handbag, and placed it on her left side, between her hip and the
door. Then she released the hand brake and shifted the rolling car
into high.

I
said: “So that’s where you keep your gun?”

“
You
can hardly expect me to wear a, holster.”

“
And
you don’t trust me near it,” I said. “You still
don’t trust me at all.”

She
brushed away hair which was blowing across her face. “We’ll
get along better if we don’t expect too much from each other.”

“
Suits
me,” I grunted. I would have enjoyed slapping her.

In
Badmont we found two blocks of bustling stores and filling stations.
Like all towns in an area of widely scattered population, it served
the people who lived far beyond the town limits. Molly pulled up in
front of a white stucco post office.

“
Well,
there’s Tilly Atchison,” a little old woman behind the
window grill told us in answer to our question. “Only his real
name in Tilford Atchison, though everybody calls him Tilly. Is that
who you’re looking for?”

“
What
does he do for a living?” I

She
pursed bloodless lips. “Lives on his daughter Louise, that’s
what Tilly Atchison does for a living. I’ve known him forty
years if I’ve known him a day, but he never as much as lifted a
finger to. . .”

Molly
said: “Is there anybody named Matilda?” She had taken out
a plastic compact the size of a coffee saucer and was dabbing powder
on her face.

The
woman stuck her face against the grill to get a full view of Molly.
Obviously she didn’t approve of attractive young women renewing
their faces in her post office. “This gentleman wants a Tilly,”
she told Molly severely.

“
Tilly
is short for Matilda,” Molly explained.

“
You
don’t say?” the postmistress mulled over the information.
“There’s Matilda Ames, but she lives over in York State.”

“
Yes?”

“
York
State,” the postmistress said firmly, putting a foreigner in
his place. “It’s just past the ridge. Folks who live on
the other side of the state line come to Badmont for their mail
because we’re the nearest post office. Matilda Ames doesn’t
come herself. I reckon she’s too fat to move much. She sends
her man Milton — I don’t know his other name —
never gets mail sent to him. He comes twice a week to pick up mail
for Matilda Ames and to buy food for the lunchroom and sometimes . .
.”

“
She
runs a lunchroom?” I asked.

“
Owns
it. Owns a used car place too.”

“
How
do we get there?”

Keep
on this road. Right inside York State. You can’t miss the
place.”

When
we were outside, Molly said: “It could be that old man, Tilford
Atchison, who hasn't any visible means of support, but let's try
Matilda Ames first. Especially as she runs a lunchroom and I'm
hungry.”

“
It
was clever of you to think of Tilly as Matilda.”

She
pulled open the car door and slid behind the wheel without
acknowledging the compliment. I noticed that she again placed her
handbag on her left side, out of my reach.

We
climbed “another mountain and saw a road marker which announced
that we were passing from New Jersey into New York. A couple of
hundred feet beyond there was a long two-story house covered with
gray asbestos' shingles. Two small signs hung over the double door.
One said, “EATS,” and the other said, “TOURISTS.”
At the side of the house two birch logs were set on either side of a
cinder driveway entrance. The posts were connected by an arched
wooden sign which said: “BEST USED CAR BARGAINS IN THE EAST.”

Molly
pulled up to the narrow parking area in front of the house. She
remained behind the wheel to retie her broad blue hair ribbon. I got
out and walked to the corner of the house and had a look at the used
car lot. The cars stood in rows of twenty or so, and then there was a
broad empty space, and then a big red barn at the foot of a hill.
Some of the cars were obviously jalopies, but from what I could see
at that distance most of them were A-1 buys.

“
Looking
for something?” a man asked.

He
had come out of a side door. He was a wizened man in blue denim
overalls several sizes too large for his gnarled frame. A corncob
pipe was clamped in a mouth so thin that he appeared to have no lips.
His chin fell away to almost nothing.

“
Just
stretching my legs,” I told him, and turned back to the car.

Molly
was removing a medium-sized airplane bag from the car trunk. As I
went up to her, she shut and locked the trunk.

“
What's
in that bag?” I asked.

“
You
can't expect a girl to go anywhere overnight without taking a bag
along.”

“
I
didn't see you pack it.”

“
I
packed it while you .were asleep and brought it down to my car when I
went for rolls.” She lifted the bag. “And if you don't
mind, don't speak to me as if you were my husband.”

I
said: “You had it all arranged while I was still asleep.
Sometimes you let me make up my own mind, but only when it agrees
with your plans.”

Abruptly
she turned on her smile and patted my cheek. I couldn't decide
whether to knock her hand away or purr. “You're sore about the,
gun, Adam.”

“
That's
only part of it,” I said. “You're just supposed to be
tagging along, but I have a feeling that it's the other way around.”

She
gave my cheek another appeasing pat and tucked a hand through my arm.
I remembered my manners and took the bag from her.

The
lunchroom must once have been the living room of a private home.
There was hardly enough space for a short counter, a wirelegged table
and four wire chairs. Behind the counter there was a single coffee
urn streaked with rust, a fly-specked mirror no bigger than a
bathroom mirror, a four-burner gas range, a short workbench which
needed scraping, a refrigerator that couldn't have served more than a
moderately sized family. And a fat woman.

Her
eyes swept over us and stopped at the bag I carried. “If you're
tourists, I'm all filled up.”

“
So
early?” I said.

“
What’s
the difference how early it is if I’ve no room?”

“
Well,
we can at least have lunch here.” Molly moved to the counter.

I
put down the bag and we sat on two of the five high stools. The only
sign of food was two anemic pies in a glass ' case. It was still
lunch hour, but the place was empty except for us, I could understand
that. Ordinarily I would have made a wide circuit to avoid eating
here.

“
You
can have apple pie and coffee,” the fat woman said.

“
Is
that all you have?” Molly asked.

“
Take
it or leave it.” She had a positive hatred of doing business.

“
We’ll
take it,” Molly said.

The
fat woman removed one of the pies from the case. She was built low to
the ground. Her face looked like a lump of dough thrown on a table.
Underneath her three or four chins she had a bosom which would crowd
a small room. You expected a woman like that to be slovenly, but she
wasn’t. Her gray-streaked hair was neatly gathered back. She
wore no apron. Her dress didn’t belong behind a lunchroom
counter; it was black crepe with long white beads around the collar,
and it looked prosperous.

Molly
lit a cigarette and pushed the pack over to me. “Are you
Tilly?” she asked conversationally.

The
fat woman turned from the urn with two steaming cups in her pudgy
hands. “So what?”

“
This
place was recommended to us in Badmont.”

The
pale eyes buried in fleshy sockets narrowed. “For eating?”

Molly
chuckled. “For sleeping. Somebody in Badmont told us that Tilly
had tourist accommodations.”

“
Well,
I’m all filled up.”

The
fat woman set the cups before us and served up two slabs of pie. The
best that could be said for the coffee was that it was hot; the pie
was mush between cardboard. I had no appetite, anyway. Here was a
woman named Tilly, but she wasn’t even in the same state as
Badmont. In fact, I was no longer sure that Larry had said Badmont. I
had a depressing feeling that I was getting nowhere slowly.

“
We’d
be willing to pay a little extra to be put up for the night,”
Molly was saying.

The
fat woman placed both hands on the counter and looked us over
carefully. “Why?” she said.

“
Because
we have to sleep somewhere.”

The
fat woman shook her head. “It’s too early. Before it gets
dark you can do plenty of traveling to wherever you’re going”

“
For
the same reason it’s too early in the day for a tourist house
to be filled,” Molly said. “That’s why I’m
hoping you can find room for us if we pay you well.”

“
I’m
all filled up.”

I
had let Molly carry the ball since we had entered, and she hadn’t
moved an inch. Now it was my turn. I said: “Raymond Teacher
told me to come here.”

On
my left I heard somebody stir. I looked over my shoulder. The wizened
man in blue denims stood sucking his corncob pipe in a doorway
leading into a hall.

He
removed his pipe from his lipless mouth.

“
Ray’s
dead.”

Knots
tightened in my stomach. I was here.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Tilly
fingered one of the long white beads on her collar. “Ray
Teacher is too dead to send anybody anywhere.”

“
Ray
is dead only since Monday.” I abandoned trying to get the
coffee down. “Of all the crummy luck, to get knocked off by a
car while crossing a street. He was a swell guy.”

The
wizened man in the hall doorway snickered. “I heard Ray Teacher
called lots of things, but nobody never called him a swell guy.”

First
mistake, the penalty of saying more than enough. I picked up the
pieces in a hurry. “I mean he was swell to me. I was flat
broke. He lent me some dough and told me he thought there was a job
for me and that next time he came up here he’d bring me along.”

“
What’s
your name?” Tilly asked.

I
was prepared for that one. “Thomas Rover.”

“
Never
heard of you.”

“
Lots
of people haven’t.”

“
Who’s
the girl?”

I
waited for Molly to take it. She continued to eat the pie as if it
had taste. I said: “My wife. Her name is Madge.” Molly’s
head lifted an inch and dipped an inch. She didn’t look at me.

Tilly
ran a thick forefinger across her mouth. On the finger there was a
vast floral-shaped monstrosity of white diamonds and rubies and
sapphires in a platinum setting. It was hardly what you would expect
a hash-slinger to wear behind the counter.

“
So
you saw Ray?” she said reflectively. “When?”

“
A
few days ago.”

“
What
day?”

The
trap yawned. Raymond Teacher might have been here on a day I
mentioned, and then she would know that all the rest was a lie too.

“
Monday,
wasn't it?” I said to Molly, giving myself a chance to
contradict her if it became necessary.

“
Monday
morning,” she told Tilly blandly. “It was Monday evening
that we heard he'd been run over. We dropped up to Ray's apartment in
the Bronx. We'd known him out west, but he wasn't ready to lend us
dough. Then Ray got an idea and asked Tom if he wanted to work for
George Moon and Tom said sure. That's when he let us have a hundred
bucks. He told us he'd get in touch with us in, few days. Then a few
hours later he was killed.”

Too
many details, I thought, and waited tensely. Details were necessary,
but dangerous when you had to take long guesses. We knew that Teacher
had lived, in the Bronx only because the newspaper story which had
told about the accident had said so. But maybe that was wrong, or he
hadn't a regular apartment there, or Tilly knew that he hadn't been
in the Bronx at all Monday morning.

Tilly
slid her ,pale eyes from Molly to me. “Did Ray leave with a
bag?”

“
I
wouldn't know,” I said. “We left before he did. What kind
of bag.''