The Diamond Bikini (16 page)

I didn’t know what a lot of the big words meant, but it sure looked as if everybody was interested in her.

Uncle Sagamore took the paper out of the sheriff’s hand and studied it. “Well sir,” he says, “that there’s a right nice picture of her, ain’t it, Shurf?”

The sheriff took another deep breath. He rubbed both hands up over his face and then down again, and this time the log jam of words inside him got straightened out and he began talking. It wasn’t loud, or anything. He talked real calm and low, like a man that was trying to hold his breath at the same time he was saying words. It was more like a whisper.

“Sagamore Noonan,” he says, “if there was any way the moral law would let me, I’d pull a gun right here an’ kill you. I’d shoot you, an’ then I’d go running up the road laughing like a hyena, an’ they’d let me go. They wouldn’t do a thing to me. At the very worse they’d just lace me up in a straitjacket or put me in a padded cell, an’ I’d have all the rest of my life with nothing to do but just stand there with my head stuck out through the bars and laugh about never being the sheriff again of a county that had you in it.”

“Listen,” he says, still whispering. “They got all the highway patrol cars in this end of the state out there on that road south of town, tryin’ to untangle the snarl. It’ll be two o’clock this afternoon before they can get any traffic across it. That’s just the highway. From here out to the highway, there’s four solid miles of abandoned cars jammed bumper to bumper in the road. They just got out and left ‘em, and took the keys. You can’t get round ‘em, and you can’t move ‘em without a wrecker—or twenty wreckers. And we can’t even get the wreckers to ‘em until they get that highway open.

“I walked in here from two miles this side of town. That’s the only way you can get in here, or out. The woods is swarming with newspaper reporters and photographers and radio news people that tried to make it on foot and got lost.”

He took another deep breath, and went on, “There’s whole towns as far as fifty miles from here that ain’t got a man left in ‘em. The stores are closed. The buses have stopped running. Construction jobs are deserted. Whole communities is empty except for women and the women is raving. I got relays of girls answering the phone, tryin’ to tell people there ain’t been any reward offered for that girl. Ain’t none of ‘em been able to stick it out more’n two hours. They can’t stand the language.

“And now that you’ve turned this place into a honky tonk, I never will get ‘em out of here until we find that there girl and show ‘em she’s been found. They wouldn’t leave, even if they could get there cars out.”

Uncle Sagamore pursed his lips like he was going to spit, only he didn’t, and he rubbed his chin real thoughtful. “Well, Shurf,” he says. “That’s what we’re all tryin’ to do, find that there girl. Why don’t we just all pitch in together an’ look for her? We been waitin’ all day for you to get down here on the job an’ do somethin’ about tryin’ to locate her.”

“You—you—” the sheriff says. He was beginning to fizz and sputter again.

“Why, shucks,” Uncle Sagamore went on. “I don’t see nothin’ for us to do, but keep on looking. You got lots of help. An’ it don’t seem to me like you’d want to start raisin’ no stink about the reward. You want to have all them people goin’ around sayin’ mebbe that shurf don’t even care whether that there girl’s found or not? Why, they might get real violent.”

The sheriff lunged out and caught the leashes of the other three hounds. “Give me them dogs,” he snarled at the man. “Let’s go.” Then he looked around at me. “Billy, you come along and show us where you hid in them ferns.”

The dogs barked. They had a real deep, rumbling sort of bark. They lunged on the leashes and almost pulled the sheriff off his feet again.

“Damn it—” he says.

And just then there was another voice behind us. We whirled around and Baby Collins was standing in the door of the trailer, leaning against the door frame with a cigarette in her hand. She was wearing a wrap-around sort of thing made out of some lacy black stuff you could see right through, with one bare leg slanting a little out of the front of it.

“Hi, honey,” she says to the sheriff. “Why don’t you tie up your dogs and come in out of the sun? We’ll open a box of cornflakes.”

The sheriff got a little darker red in the face, and Uncle Sagamore says to Baby Collins, “I’d like to make you acquainted with the shurf. He’s a real busy man, though.”

“Oh,” she says. “That’s too bad. But I’m glad to meet you, sheriff. Drop in and see us any time you’re out this way, and bring your scrabble board.”

She smiled at all of us and went back to the trailer.

The big hounds was lunging on the leashes again, about to pull the sheriff over, and there was so much uproar when he finally was able to talk again you couldn’t tell whether it was Uncle Sagamore he was cussing or the dogs. Sig Freed got mixed up in it too. He’d bark at the hounds and then run around in a circle and jump up on me, just to be sure I was still there to back him up in case they got mad. Any one of ‘em could have swallowed him with one bite.

We started off down past the house, but all of a sudden the sheriff stopped. “Oh, hell,” he says. “We got to have something of hers for the dawgs to get the scent.”

“That’s right,” the other man says. It was the first time he’d even opened his mouth. I guess he was a new deputy. He was a kind of sandy-haired man with a long neck and weak blue eyes.

The sheriff waved an arm. “Run up there to that trailer they was livin’ in and see if you can find a pair of her shoes, or some clothes. The trailer’s off there somewhere in that mess of cars.”

“Hey wait,” I says. “I just remember Uncle Sagamore had had some clothes of hers last night. “Uncle Sagamore had—”

The whole thing happened so fast then it was like something blowing up in your face. I think Sig Freed was starting to leap up on me again, or was already in the air, but anyway Pop lunged and grabbed me and hoisted me up, and at the same time he cried, “Did you see that? That dam’ dawg tried to bite Billy—”

“He did?” Uncle Sagamore says. He made a lunge at Sig Freed and waved his hat at him. “Git. Shoo! Scat, you goddam dawg!”

Everybody was excited and yelling. The sheriff says, “What the hell?” I tried to tell Pop that Sig Freed wasn’t trying to bite, that he was just playing, but his hand was over my mouth the way he was holding me, and then he was running towards the house with me on his shoulder, yelling, “We better see if he broke the skin. Might have hydrophoby.”

He was cussing Sig Freed so loud all the time he was running I couldn’t get him to understand that I was all right, even if he hadn’t had my face pressed against his shoulder so I couldn’t talk clear. He ran up on the porch and went into the bedroom, and put me down on the bed.

“Here,” he says, all excited, pulling up my pants leg. “Let me see where it was! Doggone that dawg! I knowed all the time you couldn’t trust him.”

“Pop,” I says, “for the love of Pete, I been trying to tell you. He didn’t bite me. He didn’t even try. He was just playing.”

He stared at me with his mouth open. “Oh,” he says. He took out his handkerchief then and mopped his face. “Whew! Sure give me a scare, anyway. You’re sure you’re all right!”

“Of course,” I says. I got up off the bed.

“I could have swore he nipped at you,” Pop says, like he still could believe it.

“We better get back,” I says. “The sheriff wants me to go with him to start the dogs on the trail.”

“Sure,” he says. “They’re gone now to see if they can find something of hers for the scent.”

“That was what I was going to tell him, when you grabbed me,” I says. “Uncle Sagamore had some of her clothes.”

“Oh,” Pop says. He frowned kind of thoughtful. “I don’t know whether I’d tell him that or not. Course, I suppose it’d be all right—No, I expect we’d better not.”

“Well?” I asked. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well,” he says, “she’s lost, you see, and Dr Severance has been shot, so in a way everything in that trailer has been impounded by the Gov’ment and nobody’s supposed to touch anything until the estate has been settled. It’s kind of legal stuff you wouldn’t understand very well. Of course, it’s all right for the shurf to go in there, but not us. Uncle Sagamore put the stuff back, of course, when he didn’t find her, but it might be a good idea not to say anything about it.”

“Oh,” I says. “Well, I won’t mention it.”

We went back out. Uncle Sagamore and the sheriff had come down close to the front yard and was waiting. The smell from the tubs was pretty bad there, and the sheriff was fanning the air with his hat. In a minute the other deputy came back. He had that pair of gold sandals of Miss Harrington’s—I mean Miss Caroline’s.

Me and the sheriff and the deputy started down below the lake with them holding on to the dogs’ leashes. When we got around on the lower side of it in the timber there was men everywhere, still looking.

“I don’t know how the hell a dawg could foller nothin’ in this trampled-up mess,” the sheriff says, real bitter. “Help! Hah! We’ll be the rest of the fall roundin’ up the lost hunters, after we locate her.”

We went on up through the woods until we was across from the place where we swum, and I showed the sheriff where we climbed out of the water while they was shooting at us. From there it was only a little way through the timber to the little gully with the ferns growing around it. For a wonder, there wasn’t anybody else around, and the ferns hadn’t been trampled on. You could still see the broken one where we had hid.

“You see?” I says. “Right there.”

“Good,” the sheriff says. “I’m glad somebody around this place is a decent, intelligent, common, ordinary, co-operatin’ human being. You’re all right, Billy.”

Being back here on the spot reminded me of how we’d listened to the other gangsters going by in the leaves while we was hid. I told the sheriff about it. “So there must have been three of them,” I said. “Maybe the other one’s still down there, or else he got away.”

He shook his head. “No. He didn’t get away. We found the car out there on the road last night and nabbed him when he showed up. So far he ain’t said a word, so we don’t know whether he got her or not, but the fact you say you heard him makes your story check out.”

“You—you reckon he shot her, Sheriff?” I asked.

He frowned, kind of thoughtful. “No. I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure she’s still alive.”

“It sure looks like they’d have found her by this time,” I says.

“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t it?”

We went over to where the deputy was holding the dogs, and the sheriff let each one of them smell the pair of sandals. They whined a little and looked real interested. Then the sheriff put the sandals inside his shirt and let the dogs over close to where we had laid in the ferns. They whined some more and pulled hard to get over to it. They went
snuff! snuff! snuff!
with their noses close to the ground, and when the sheriff and the deputy unstrapped the leashes they went swarming all over the gully, eager and excited as anything, and then one of them let out this big booming bark and started down the hill swinging back and forth with his nose close to the ground and his ears flapping. The others followed him.

“They got it!” the sheriff yelled. “They got the scent.”

They disappeared downhill in the trees. We could hear their baying and tell which way they was going, so we ran along after them. The sheriff was pretty lame from that long walk out from town, so he had a hard time keeping up. In a minute we caught sight of them again, crossing a little open space. Four other men was chasing after them then. They was pointing and yelling.

“Hey, Joe,” one of them shouted. “Come on. Them dawgs is on the trail. They’ll lead us to her.”

Two more men came charging out of the bushes and took out after the rest. More kept coming. Every time we’d catch sight of the dogs there’d be a bigger crowd after them. We began to drop behind, but we could tell by the trampling and crashing through the brush ahead that there was a whole army of them up ahead of us trying to keep up with the dogs. The uproar got further and further away, going down towards the bottom.

The sheriff had to stop and rest. He sat down on a stump and pulled out the big red handkerchief to mop his face. He sighed and shook his head. “You just don’t know what it can do to you,” he says to the deputy, real bitter and discouraged. “I mean, waking up in the dead of night with the cold sweat on you, wondering what the hell he’ll do next. And the awful part of it is even after you’ve found out, you ain’t going to be able to pin it on him. All you can do is go around and sort of pick up the pieces. He ain’t done a lick of work in forty years that I know of; he’s got plenty of time to plan these things so he’s two moves ahead of you all the time.

“Now you take this one. He knows perfectly well I can’t order that carnival out of here—even if it could get out, which it can’t because the road’s clogged with abandoned cars—which he also knew would happen. He knows I can’t order it out and break up this thing because it’s got a permit to operate in this county. So while the whole damn state’s in a uproar over a naked cooch dancer that probably ain’t even down here, he’s drawin’ a fat rake-off from the hamburgers and dancing girls and wheels-of-fortune and the floozies, beside selling moonshine to ‘em at New York prices and charging them a dollar to park their cars into a solid snarl.

“And now, you mark my words, before it’s over there’ll be something else, too—like maybe a big mudhole suddenly developing in the road and when they do get the road clear everybody will get stuck and have to be pulled out at two dollars a head.”

“Sheriff,” I says, “you mean you still don’t think Miss Caroline was with me?”

He took off his hat and mopped his head again. “I don’t really know what I think any more, Billy,” he says. “I do believe you’re telling the truth, in spite of your handicap of being a member of the Noonan family. I believe she was with you, but where she is now I wouldn’t even try to guess. Do you hear them dawgs?”

“Yes,” I says. “Sounds like they’re pretty far over there.”

He nodded. “They’re about two miles away, and still going across the bottom. That girl was barefooted, and she couldn’t have walked three hundred yards, but before the day’s over you’re going to find out the dawgs has followed her trail somewhere around eighteen to twenty miles, back and forth across this bottom. There’ll be three or four thousand men following ‘em, and every time they double back up past the carnival a fresh bunch of tired ones will drop off the rest and pay a dollar to watch the belly dancers, and eat hamburgers that’ll get smaller and smaller and have more and more oatmeal in them and will be selling for a dollar and a half by sundown. I been through all this before. Not this particular one, mind you, but with the same Sagamore Noonan touches.”

I kind of liked the sheriff, but it seemed to me like he was too excitable and he did too much griping about Uncle Sagamore. I couldn’t see anything wrong with him trying to get as many people as he could down here to look for Miss Caroline. I was worried about her, and I didn’t think we ought to be just sitting here when she still hadn’t been found.

“Hadn’t we better start after the dogs again?” I says. “They’re still barking like they’re on the trail, and they’ll have to catch up with her sooner or later.”

“You don’t have to follow bloodhounds that close,” he says. “You just listen to see which way they’re going. I think they’re beginning to swing now, so they’ll be back up this way before long. My guess is they’ll go through the edge of that cornfield up there behind the house.”

Well, we waited. And sure enough, it wasn’t but about half an hour before we could hear them and the whole army of men that was following them go crashing through the underbrush and timber about a furlong off to the right of us. We went over there just in time to get a glimpse of the dogs, and then we was running along in a swarm of men. The dogs went up the hill and then, by golly, it was just like the sheriff had said. They cut along the edge of the cornfield, down back of the barn, and then headed out across the bottom again.

The sheriff looked furious, but him and the deputy started back down that way. Several hundred of the men didn’t, though. They broke away and started up through the cars in the cornfield, headed for the carnival and the hot-dog stand. I was hungry too, so I called Sig Freed and we went along behind them.

There was a terrific crowd up by the stand now, and you couldn’t hardly get near the carnival. The loudspeakers was blaring and the five girls was dancing on the stage. All the other tents had big swarms around them too. Everywhere you looked there was men.

Murph and his two men was so tired they could hardly move. Murph handed me a hamburger when I finally got up close to the counter. Sure enough, the meat in it was a lot smaller than the one I’d got at noon.

“That ‘ll-be-one-dollar-fifty-no-they-haven’t-found-her,” he says.

“Pop’ll pay you,” I told him.

He looked at me. “Oh,” he says. “I’m getting punchy, kid. I didn’t even recognize you.”

I didn’t see Pop and Uncle Sagamore anywhere, but there was so many men around it would be hard to see them. I tried to watch the girls dancing, but everywhere I stood there was a bunch of tall men in front of me craning to see, theirselves, and anyway they went back inside the tent in a few minutes and the people started buying tickets for the inside show. I tried to get one too, and told the man Pop would pay him.

“Kid,” he says, “come back in fifteen years with a dollar, and I’ll let you in. It’s a promise.” He looked tired too, and his voice was hoarse.

I started to turn away, and then he tossed me fifty cents. “Here, kid,” he says. “Go over to the shooting gallery and shoot a round.”

I finally managed to squeeze my way in there, and I shot fifty cents worth at the little targets travelling across the back of the gallery on a moving belt. I didn’t hit much. When the money was gone I started looking for Pop and Uncle Sagamore. They didn’t seem to be up here anywhere, so I went down to the house. The smell from the tubs hit me in the front yard, as bad as ever, or worse, and that reminded me we never had bottled up any more of the juice to send to the government to have analyzed. Well, maybe, we’d get around to it when Miss Caroline was found and all this uproar died down.