Pardon My Body by Dale Bogard Page B

hit the road instead. It was a long time since I had let the Buick out on the open highway and I had time to think all the way. I thought plenty, and at the end of it I wasn’t much nearer. But I was seven hundred miles nearer the place where every clue in this case seemed to lead. I was moving into the most wide-open city in all the United States with nothing but a four-year-old car and an even older Luger pistol to get me out of trouble if things broke the wrong way.
    A mile outside the limits they have a big red-on-white sign telling you this is Falls City, but they needn’t have bothered because this is where High River Rock shoots twin cascades of foam over a black granite shoulder into a thirty-foot drop.
    This is a nicely laid-out city. The suburban lawnsare trim, the houses look as though somebody washed them regularly, and the shopping center has a lively, high-stepping air. I drove slowly down the main stem. Nobody fired any guns and I didn’t hear any police sirens. Maybe the place had sobered up.
    I followed the traffic into Fourteenth Street at the first intersection. It was barely dusk but halfway down the street a beer parlor had a sign flashing on and off. I killed the motor and braked to a standstill outside the swing doors.
    The evening was early, but it wasn’t too early for the customers. Half a dozen guys sat on high stools at the long polished bar and there were twice as many dotted round the little room at green-topped tables. A girl sat by herself at a table near the bar on my right. A girl with red hair and a face that had been beautiful until she was twenty-six—which would be all of a decade ago. She wore sea-green whipcord over a cream silk shirt. She was drinking gin and she didn’t bother me.
    The guy behind the bar was short and fat and had an oiled forelock. He also wore a narrow celluloid collar on a shirt with red horizontal stripes and his false teeth looked like highly-polished china. He asked me the routine question with his eyes, which were the palest blue.
    â€œBeer—and I’ll take a chaser on the side,” I told him.
    He slid the drinks across and I took the rye first. It was pretty good rye. I don’t know why I downed it so quick, except that I was beer-thirsty.
    Everybody had drinks so the barkeep stood opposite me polishing glasses. He did it as though he liked nothing better. It was his life’s work and he was solid for it.
    I said, “I am looking for someone who remembers a lawyer who used to practise here. His name was Arthur Schultz.”
    The barkeep’s face showed about as much expression as a peon’s at siesta time.
    â€œYeah,” he said, “should I know him?”
    â€œNot unless you were around twenty-odd years back.”
    â€œI came here twelve years ago from St. Louis, so I wouldn’t,” he said. The Missouri accent wasn’t heavy.
    â€œCould be you may have heard the name, though,” I said.
    â€œCould be but it ain’t,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
    â€œThink nothing of it,” I said.
    â€œThanks, brother, I won’t. Maybe some of the boys’d know if…”
    He broke off to set some drinks up for a balding middle-aged man in a faded gabardine suit which hadcost him plenty at one time. I suddenly became aware of somebody at my side. I knew without looking that it was the girl with the red hair.
    She said in a low voice, “Like to join me in a drink?”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I started, but she cut me short with a hard little laugh.
    â€œIt’s all right, mister—this isn’t a make the other way round. I heard what you said…” She lowered her voice a shade more—“About looking for someone who knew Arthur Schultz.”
    I picked up my drink and moved over to the little side table. A waiter brought another beer and some more gin.
    She sat there for a moment in silence. When she looked directly at me I was