Night My Friend (26 page)

“Some. I have to drive into town. Want to come along?”

“Sure.” I piled into the car next to him, pleased at the horrified expression glimpsed on Aunt Mary’s face as we pulled out of the drive. That was worth the whole three days to me. That, and the exhilarating feeling of sitting next to him as we bumped over the dirt roads at a speed my father would never attempt.

The town was sleepy on a Sunday afternoon, and the dust raised by our arrival seemed to hang unmoving in the muggy air. “I think it’s going to rain,” Uncle Charlie observed, though there wasn’t yet a cloud in the sky.

We parked before the old hotel, and I waited while Uncle Charlie chatted a bit with the balding desk clerk. They seemed to be talking about something to drink, about moonshine, and after a time the desk clerk accepted a folded bill from Uncle Charlie and disappeared into the office. When he returned he carried a brown paper bag. My uncle thanked him and we left.

“Is it moonshine?” I asked when we were back in the car, full of the thrill of illicit excitement.

He opened the bag and showed me a mason jar full of an almost colorless liquid. “It’s moonshine, boy.”

“Is your own stuff all gone?”

“No, I just wanted to see how easy I could buy some of this. Come on, we’ll go back now.”

“Was Uncle Ben making moonshine?”

He chuckled at that. “Your Uncle Ben wouldn’t even take a drink except on Christmas and his birthday.”

I had so many questions to ask that I finally decided to just keep quiet. Back at the farm, Sheriff Yates had reappeared, chewing on a damp cigar that seemed somehow out of place. The crowd had dwindled a bit, except for a group of close and near relatives that clustered about the undertaker making plans for the following morning’s funeral procession. Who was coming, who was driving, who was riding with whom. The ritual for the dead.

In the evening, when it became obvious that no other mourners would journey up the hill to pay their respects, Sheriff Yates called everyone inside. I was not included, but it was easy to take up a position outside the open sitting room window, where the night breeze ruffled the old lace curtains with irregular persistence.

“All right,” Sheriff Yates began, clearing his throat and glancing about the room. “Is everybody here?”

Everybody was there. My mother and father, Aunt Mary, Uncle Charlie, Thelma Brook with her pad and pencil, and a couple of others. The only one missing seemed to be Mike Simpson from the next farm. I wondered about that, since he’d been the one who found the body.

“Get on with it,” Uncle Charlie said, leaning against the wall.

“Well, I’ve already talked to some of you about this thing, and about the reasons why I think Ben was murdered. He wasn’t plowing—there was no reason for his tractor to be where it was, especially at that time of night. And the presence of that big rock was just too much of a coincidence for me to swallow. I discovered something else yesterday—the old sugar shack at the rear of Ben’s property had been converted into a still. Somebody was making moonshine back there.”

I heard my mother gasp at the news, and Aunt Mary started to say something, but Sheriff Yates hurried on. “There were two possibilities, of course. Either Ben was making the stuff, or someone else was. I think you’ll all agree that it’s not the sort of thing a man like Ben would do. Besides, everyone knows he never goes back that way except in the spring. It would be easy for someone else to set up the still and work it without being discovered. Easy, that is, for someone who lived nearby and knew Ben’s comings and goings. Someone who could be discovered on Ben’s land without arousing undue suspicion.”

It was Thelma Brook who spoke the name that must have been on all their lips. “Mike Simpson!”

Sheriff Yates nodded. “Mike Simpson. He could sneak over from his farm any time and get back to the sugar shack. Only I guess Ben must have discovered it at last and threatened to expose him. So Mike Simpson killed Ben and made it look like an accident.”

“I can’t believe it,” Aunt Mary whispered.

“There was one piece of evidence that convinced me his story of finding the body was a lie,” Sheriff Yates went on. “He said he was attracted by the sound of the tractor’s motor, and that he turned it off after finding the body. But the tractor couldn’t be moved because it was out of gas. He couldn’t have heard the motor, because there was no gas in the tank to run it!”

There was a mumble of assent at that. “Maybe we’d better ask him some questions about that still,” my father said.

The sheriff seemed to agree. “His lights are on. I’m going over now and confront him with the evidence. If he won’t come back and answer some questions, I’m going to arrest him on suspicion.”

I watched the sheriff’s lean figure move through the dark toward the farmhouse some hundred yards away. The others were waiting inside, and I was surprised to see Uncle Charlie suddenly appear at my side. “Damn it, boy,” he muttered.

“What’s the matter, Uncle Charlie?”

“I’ve been a fool, that’s what’s the matter. Stay here!”

But of course I didn’t. I sprinted after him across the yard, seeing at once that he was following the sheriff toward the lights of Mike Simpson’s farmhouse. Suddenly they were the only lights in a night of darkness, and there was something terribly urgent about reaching them.

But Sheriff Yates was there first, just inside the doorway, and as Uncle Charlie hurled himself up the porch steps the dull crack of a single shot split the quiet of the night. I reached the doorway an instant behind Uncle Charlie, just as the sheriff whirled around from Mike Simpson’s crumpled body to cover us with his revolver.

“You damned murderer!” my uncle shouted. “A second sooner and I’d have stopped your devilish scheme!”

Sheriff Yates was sweating, but the gun in his hand was steady as a rock. “He was resisting arrest. I had to kill him.”

“Resisting arrest without a weapon? You didn’t have time to plant one on him.”

“Why would I want to kill him?” the sheriff asked.

“Because he was your partner in that illegal still, and you saw this as a good chance to get him out of the way. A perfect crime—the victim shot by the sheriff while resisting arrest for murder.”

“He was a murderer. He killed Ben.”

But my uncle only shook his head. “Nobody killed Ben. He fell off the tractor accidentally, just like everybody thought. With all your flowery theories, everybody missed the most obvious explanation. He was out in the field with the tractor after supper simply because he was trying to move that very rock on which he fell. I suppose he wanted to clear it out for the next day’s plowing, but somehow he lost his footing and hit his head on it. A simple accident and nothing more, until you heard of it and decided to twist it into a killing so you could murder Mike Simpson.”

“What about the empty gas tank on the tractor?”

“A foolish thing, really. David here even saw you letting out the gasoline Friday, but of course he didn’t realize what you were doing. It became a clue only to an illogical mind like your own, Yates. You wanted to prove that Simpson couldn’t have heard the motor running—but if Simpson was really the killer he’d hardly have made up the story. And he certainly wouldn’t have gone so far as to say he turned off the motor. He could have easily explained the empty tank by saying he left it running. No, he told the truth. You were the one who emptied the tank onto the ground to try and disprove his story.”

The gun came up an inch. “You think they’ll believe you?”

“They’ll believe that the still couldn’t have existed without your knowledge. When I—a stranger in town—could walk up to the hotel desk clerk and buy a jar of moonshine with no questions asked, the thing is pretty much out in the open. You must have known it, and you certainly knew about the still in the sugar shack.”

“Who says so? I just followed you two back there yesterday.”

“You walked into that dim shack and immediately reached under a table for a lantern none of us could see. You knew it was there because you’d been working the still with Simpson.”

From somewhere in the night there was a shout. It sounded like my father, and I prayed they’d come soon to investigate the shot they must have heard.

Sheriff Yates must have had the same thought. “That’s enough talk,” he said. “You’re both goin’ to have to die too. I’ll say Simpson shot you both.”

“With your gun? Don’t be a fool!”

“I’m no fool. Simpson was, to think he could double-cross me on the take. I’m not goin’ to prison for killing that swine.”

I think he would have shot us then. His eyes were suddenly hard and cold and decided, and I knew I was looking at death. Then, faster than my eye could follow, Uncle Charlie’s hand moved. One instant it was empty and then there was the silver flash of a knife blade. Sheriff Yates stumbled backward, startled, and I saw that the weapon had found its mark in his throat.

“They killed each other,” Uncle Charlie told the others later, while I stood silently in the corner. “Mike Simpson must have hurled his knife a second before the sheriff fired.”

Thelma Brook’s pencil was busy. “The sheriff died a brave man,” she said, already composing the lead for her front-page story. Nobody disputed her, least of all Uncle Charlie.

My father wondered vaguely how Mike Simpson had ever obtained a knife that was made in Trinidad, but nobody wanted to ask too many questions. Uncle Charlie went away after the funeral, back to his job in New Orleans, and things began to settle into their familiar patterns.

I guess I was the only one in town who knew just what happened that night, but nobody ever asked me.

A
UGSHEIM THAT AUTUMN WAS
still a place only beginning to recover from the destructions of war. Coming in low on the airport approach, Emerson gazed out over the ruins and remembered how it had been. He remembered his first sight of the city, flare-lit at midnight as he streaked in over it in the lead bomber. He remembered especially the blaze from the fire bombs, destroying everything in its path. Circling that night and heading back for home, over the burning city, he never imagined he’d see it again, never imagined he’d want to return there to the wounded land whose scars he’d caused.

He didn’t want to return now, but he had a job to do. A dirty job.

“November is a bad month anywhere,” the girl said.

“Especially in Germany. Drizzle and fog and mist.” Emerson lit an American cigarette and settled back in his chair.

“You’ve been here before?”

“To Augsheim? Only once, from the air. But I’ve seen Berlin and Munich. And Bonn, of course.”

She was young and almost beautiful and her name was Mona Kirst. They’d met by careful prearrangement in a back street bar that catered to prostitutes.

“Augsheim used to be beautiful,” she said, “before the war. I remember when I was only a child how I used to play in the park. Now it’s only a mud hole, without flowers or even grass.”

“It’ll come back,” he assured her. Then, glancing at his watch, he said, “Hadn’t we better…?”

“Yes.” She finished her drink and rose to leave. Emerson followed. It was the most natural thing in the world in the place, at that time. Nobody even looked up.

Mona Kirst lived on the third floor of a sagging apartment house overlooking the mud hole she’d mentioned. Further down the block the steel skeleton of a new building was rising—the first visible sign of the phoenix which would come from this fire. “You were lucky,” he remarked, following her up the stairs. “Not many buildings survived.”

“Were any of us lucky? Really?”

They passed an old woman on the stairs, and a British soldier who seemed embarrassed. Both of them looked away as they passed. Then Mona unlocked the door at the top of the landing and they entered a dingy, dank room with a double bed and a battered kitchen set as its only furniture.

There was a man stretched out on the bed, fully clothed. His name was Visor, and Emerson had journeyed four thousand miles to meet him.

“Ah! You must be Emerson!” He rose to shake hands. “Do you have a word from Washington?”

Emerson had always thought passwords were foolish, but he said it anyway.
“The Sphinx is drowsy, her wings are furled.”

Visor nodded.
“Her ear is heavy, she broods on the world.”
He motioned Emerson to sit on the bed. “A fitting quotation for someone with your name. How much did they tell you of the mission?”

Emerson looked at the girl. “What about her?”

Visor shrugged. He was a big man, and he did it well. “She was necessary for the meeting. In this neighborhood, no one pays any attention to a prostitute’s customers. Not even if there are two at a time.”

“I mean, can she be trusted?”

“She is my sister,” Visor replied.

Emerson stared at the two of them, not knowing whether to believe it. Finally Visor motioned her into the bathroom. Emerson nodded to show his approval and started talking. “I was sent because of Eagle. That’s all I know.”

The big man nodded. He was close to fifty, more likely the girl’s father than her brother. But it was obvious he’d been in the business a long time, and when he spoke he chose his words carefully. “As you may know, Eagle is the code name for an American army colonel. His name is Roger China, and he must be dead within forty-eight hours.”

“All right.”

“Washington tells me you’re a good man, a killer. Have you ever worked in this area before?”

Emerson gazed out the window at the mud hole. “Yes. Once.”

“Have you ever killed a fellow countryman before?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps I should tell you something about Colonel China. Since the beginning of the occupation, he has looted German art treasures valued at something like two million dollars. The proceeds from this looting have gone to set up a neo-Nazi movement of highly dangerous potential. Unfortunately, and ironically, his fame as a war hero and his influence in Congress made his removal and court-martial extremely difficult. For urgent reasons of national security which even I do not fully understand, the verdict of Washington is that Colonel China must be removed.”