The Long Lavender Look Read Free

to put a hole in old Orville.
    I told Meyer to stay put. Just as the northbound sedan went by soon to overtake the truck, I used the noise and wind of passage to cover my sounds as I bounded up and ran north along the shoulder. I had kept my eyes squeezed tightly shut to protect my night vision. If anyone were in wait, I hoped they had not done the same. I dived over the slope just where the truck had been parked, caught myself short of the water. Nobody.
    Climbed back up onto the road. Got Meyer up onto the road. Made good time southward, made about three hundred yards, stopping three or four times to listen to see if the truck was easing back with the lights out.
    Found a reasonably open place on the west side of the road, across from the canal. Worked into the shadows, pushed through a thicket. Found open space under a big Australian pine. Both of us sat on the springy bed of brown needles, backs against the bole of the big tree. Overhead a mockingbird was sweetly, fluently warning all other mockingbirds to stay the hell away from his turf, his nest, his lady, and his kids.
    Meyer stopped breathing as audibly as before and said, "It is very unusual to be shot at on a lonely road. It is very unusual to have a girl run across a lonely road late at night. I would say we'd covered close to four miles from the point where Agnes sleeps. The truck came from that direction. Perfectly reasonable to assume some connection."
    "Don't upset me with logic."
    "A deal has a commercial implication. The marksman was cruising along looking for Orville and Hutch. He did not want to make a deal with both of them. He knew they were on foot, knew they were heading south. Our sizes must be a rough match. And it is not a pedestrian area."
    "And Hutch," I added, "was the taller, and the biggest threat, and I moved so fast he thought he'd shot me in the face. And, if he had a good, plausible, logical reason for killing Hutch, he wouldn't have asked Orville to stuff the body into the canal and stake it down."
    "And," said Meyer, "were I Orville, I would be a little queasy about making a date with that fellow."
    "Ready to go?"
    "We should, I guess, before the mosquitos remove the rest of the blood."
    "And when anything comes from any direction, we flatten out in the brush on this side of the road."
    "I think I will try to enjoy the walk, McGee."
    "But your schedule is way the hell off."
    So we walked. And were euphoric and silly in the jungly night. Being alive is like fine wine, when you have damned near drowned and nearly been shot in the face. Perhaps a change of angle of one degree at the muzzle would have put that slug through the bridge of my nose. So we swung along and told fatuous jokes and old lies and sometimes sang awhile.
    Two

Page 5
    AT THE first light of oncoming dawn, just when the trees were beginning to assume shape and identity, we came out at the intersection of Florida 112 and the Tamiami Trail. There was a big service station and garage across the main highway. The night lights were on. The sign over the office door said:
    MGR: AL STOREY
    Traffic was infrequent, and very fast. I was heartened to see a squat, muscular wrecker with big duals on the rear, and a derrick with a power hoist It was going to take muscle to pluck Miss Agnes out of the canal. The more muscle, the less damage to her.
    We looked the place over. Coke machine and a coin dispenser for candy bars and cheese crackers and such. I found a piece of wire and picked the lock on the men's room. We washed up. There' was no other building within sight. Management had thoughtfully provided a round cement table and benches off to one side, with a furled beach umbrella stuck down through the hole in the middle of the table.
    As half an orange sun appeared over the flat horizon, off in the direction of Miami, we sat at the table and ate our coin-slot breakfast and spread the contents of the wallets on the cement top to dry. Licenses and money. The mosquitoes had welted us