Random Killer by Hugh Pentecost

place for you if Alvin Parker hadn’t insisted.”
    I was suddenly conscious of the air. We don’t get to breath anything like it in my part of the world. Chandler took a corner like you wouldn’t believe. We were climbing. It was a beautiful night, full moon, a million stars. On a straightaway Chandler gave me a sidelong glance.
    “I’m not sure I’m exactly happy about your being here, Mr. Haskell,” he said.
    “Opening up old wounds?”
    “It’s not good for business,” he said.
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve got some people to talk to. Your guests won’t know I’m alive. Of course, you’re one of the people I need to talk to. Do you know why it’s opened up again?”
    “Mr. Parker told me. It’s crazy, you know.”
    “I know. Which side were you on two years ago?”
    “Side?”
    “The prosecution or the defense?”
    “Man, you’re involved with running a hotel, I understand,” Chandler said. “You know you don’t take sides. The customer is always right. ‘Yes, sir! You’re absolutely right!’ And just the reverse to the next one.”
    “But which side were you really on?” I persisted.
    He seemed to push down on the gas pedal. We were doing eighty, going uphill and around curves. Indianapolis lost a great competitor in this cowboy.
    “There are things that sometimes make you feel two ways,” he said. He fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. I wished he’d keep both hands on the wheel. I held my lighter for him. He laughed. “Fingertip control,” he said. And the sonofabitch took everything off the wheel but one finger. Then he stopped playing games and went back to my question. “Hal Carpenter was not my favorite man,” he said. “He made trouble for me, but he also attracted special customers I couldn’t afford to lose. He was brilliant on skis, and just as brilliant as a teacher. Lot of the big male stars in Hollywood came here on account of him and what he could teach them about the sport. Those were the customers I couldn’t afford to lose. They came, and they sent their friends—because of Hal. Women? That was another story.”
    “Oh?”
    “He attracted them, like a moth to a night-light. There was talk about his technique. He liked to play rough. Some women enjoy that. Some of them ran away screaming after a taste of it. It was those who gave me trouble.” Chandler was suddenly gripping the wheel as if he was driving a truck, his mouth a thin, straight line under the red beard.
    “So when it happened you figured he’d got what was coming to him?”
    Chandler nodded. “And that spelled woman to me,” he said. “The picture-wire deal was the way a woman might have gone about it, I thought. Carpenter could have taken on Muhammad Ali in his prime and done pretty well. He wouldn’t have let an angry man get behind him. So, Sharon Dain was there with him, he’d been beating the hell out of her for a couple of weeks. She may have liked it at first. Maybe she still liked it, and he was about to give her the gate. But it had to be her.”
    “The cops had no doubts.”
    “None. Neither did I. Do I. But—well, I gave a hundred bucks to Mr. Parker’s defense committee.”
    “To stay on his good side?”
    “Not exactly. I felt Sharon had been driven to it and was entitled to help.” Chandler’s laugh was mirthless. “She’d solved a problem for me. I was just about at the end of my rope with Carpenter.”
    “What is she like—Sharon Dain?”
    We had reached a high spot on the winding road we were traveling. Below us was a deep valley, silver in the moonlight. Across the valley, at about the same height we were at on this side, were what looked like a thousand lights.
    Chandler gestured. “High Crest,” he said.
    “Looks like a city!” I said.
    “Small town,” he said.
    It was going to be like a roller-coaster ride, down into the valley and then up again. My stomach did a roller-coaster flip-flop as we started down. Chandler seemed to increase