The Stranger City Caper Read online

  Old Dad Underwood said what color?

  Wallace said black.

  Old Dad Underwood said you colored ’em wrong.

  He said they is blue.

  I said on with the story.

  Wallace said well he kilt twelve guys with twelve shots.

  Old Dad Underwood said didn’t nobody notice if he was riding a white horse?

  Wallace said didn’t nobody notice much of anything.

  He said he was a stranger.

  He said that’s why they call it Stranger City.

  He said you can figger that out can’t you?

  Old Dad Underwood said what did they call it before they called it Stranger City?

  Wallace said Lilacville.

  He said they had a whole mess of them yellow flowers all over.

  Old Dad Underwood said lilacs ain’t yellow.

  Wallace said well they was yellow when I got through.

  Old Dad Underwood said I like Lilacville better.

  Wallace put his hands on his hips.

  He said just how many drinks you had?

  Old Dad Underwood said I never count drinks.

  He said I work it with percentages.

  He said like just now I am maybe sixty-two percent through give or take a few nightcaps.

  Wallace said well maybe you would be sixty-two percent through if you was over at Spud’s place but in Wallace’s tavern you are one hunnert percent through and there ain’t gonna be no nightcaps.

  I said good God will you finish the story?

  Wallace said this here stranger got kilt in the shoot-out but he saved Stranger City and nobody never found out who he was.

  Old Dad Underwood said Jesus Christ.

  Wallace shook his head.

  He said he didn’t have no beard.

  6

  …Halley’s comet is something what is a million years old and comes around scaring people half to death…exactly like my mother-in-law…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  Betsy brought me an ice-cold bottle of Old Washensachs.

  She sat close beside me on the couch.

  She said honey weren’t you working for a Reginald Zizzenfrass recently?

  I shrugged.

  I said more or less.

  I said it all depends on how you look at it.

  Betsy said the late news mentioned that an Ophelia Zizzenfrass shot a Reginald Zizzenfrass in the foot.

  I shrugged.

  I said there are probably a hundred million Reginald Zizzenfrasses.

  Betsy said tell me about your Stranger City job.

  She said in the first place I’ve never even heard of Stranger City.

  I said why a long time ago Stranger City was real big news.

  Betsy said so was Halley’s comet.

  I said well my client bought a minor league baseball team down there.

  Betsy said why did he go to Stranger City?

  She said he could have bought one right here in Chicago.

  I said they’re scheduled to practice on Saturday and Sunday and open their season on Monday.

  I said all I have to do is look the situation over and send my client a report.

  Betsy said how long will it take?

  I said I’ll leave Friday morning and get back next week.

  Betsy said it sounds okay and that may be precisely what’s wrong with it.

  She stared at the floor.

  When she looked up there were tears in her big pale blue eyes.

  She said lover I’m going to miss you.

  I shrugged.

  I took Cool Lips Chericola’s advance one-thousand-dollar bill from my pocket.

  I inserted it in Betsy’s gorgeous cleavage.

  I said there’s a couple more where that one came from.

  I said it’ll be the first damn dollar I’ve earned since I blew the Williams case.

  Betsy said Chance I haven’t been hounding you for money.

  She said I keep calling you because I miss your company.

  I said I know that.

  I said it’s just that a guy has to get out and scare up a buck every so often.

  Betsy said scaring up a buck is perfectly okay.

  She said but you scared up a doe at the Reggis Arms.

  I said aw come on Betsy don’t you know me better than that?

  Betsy said huh-uh.

  She squeezed my leg.

  She said just what am I supposed to do for this one-thousand-dollar bill?

  I shrugged.

  I said anything that strikes your fancy.

  Betsy said you know what strikes my fancy.

  I said are you talking about the same thing that always strikes your fancy?

  Betsy said Chance do you honestly believe I’m a sex maniac?

  I shrugged.

  I said aren’t you?

  Betsy smiled sweetly.

  She was the most beautiful blonde on the face of Planet Earth.

  She said sweetheart you’d better believe it.

  She said but how did you know?

  I said I’m a detective.

  Betsy stood and took my hand.

  She said come with me.

  She said I have a red-hot case that requires your immediate attention.

  7

  …religion is just like a venereal disease…you catch it and then you give it to somebody else and you have a fine time in both cases…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  Friday started out all wrong.

  The alarm went off.

  Then Betsy drove me to the Happy Trails bus depot at Randolph and State.

  In typical Betsy Purdue fashion.

  With her foot in the carburetor.

  I said slow down.

  In typical Chance Purdue fashion.

  With my heart in my mouth.

  Betsy said Chance we aren’t in a funeral procession you know.

  I said no but we’ll be in one on Monday if you don’t slow down.

  Betsy said do you want to drive?

  I said Betsy for Christ’s sake shut up and watch out for that goddam big truck.

  Betsy said I see it I see it.

  I said well my God you ought to see it.

  I said we’re only two feet behind it.

  Betsy said oh that goddam big truck.

  She said I thought you meant the goddam big truck that’s only two feet behind us.

  Somewhere between a cold sweat and Randolph Street Betsy gave me a stern lecture on the dangers of sleeping with strange women in strange towns.

  She mentioned gonorrhea and syphilis.

  She brought up the horrors of Medusa’s Revenge.

  I said I never heard of Medusa’s Revenge.

  Betsy shuddered.

  She said oh let’s not even talk about it.

  I said okay.

  8

  …oncet I knowed a whorehouse madam what went straight to hell…she cheated on her church tithe…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  It was seven-thirty when I stumbled up to the ticket window.

  The clerk said yes sir?

  I said round-trip to Stranger City.

  The clerk said you could still change your mind.

  He said Heppner Oregon is a nice town.

  He said why not Laurel Mississippi?

  I said why not Stranger City like I asked for in the first place?

  The clerk said because you’ll be riding the Double Eagle Line.

  I said is the Double Eagle Line the best way to get there?

  The clerk said it ain’t the best way but it’s the only way.

  He handed me a big piece of cardboard that looked like it had been clipped from a milk carton.

  I looked it over.

  I said this is a one-way ticket.

  The clerk said the Double Eagle Line don’t sell no round-trip tickets.

  I said why is that?

  The clerk said you’ll find out why is that.

  I said how long to get there?
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  The clerk said five to ten hours if everything goes right.

  He said gate three you daredevil.

  I grabbed my suitcase and barged out of gate three.

  When I saw what was out there I damn near barged back into the terminal.

  My bus was an ancient black Reo.

  It was idling and it shook like it had malaria.

  Great threatening bluish-white exhaust puffs spurted from the belly of the relic.

  The fabric of the huge tires was visible and rubber remnants hung in limp strips like from a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  The right-hand side of the apparition bore a giant painting of two birds in flight.

  The lead bird clutched a dozen ecstatically smiling travelers.

  I noted that the male passengers in the picture wore raccoon coats.

  The second bird carried several pieces of luggage most of which resembled pirate chests.

  I got a C-shaped Camel going and walked to the front of the bus.

  I gulped tobacco smoke and carbon monoxide in equal quantities.

  I saw no destination sign.

  Through the cobwebbed windshield I watched the driver rise to turn a little crank.

  White print flashed unreadably by until the numbers 87-1 were frozen in place.

  I shrugged.

  I crossed my fingers and swung aboard.

  The driver was a skinny kid with watery blue eyes and a straggly yellow moustache.

  He wore a World War I aviator’s helmet complete with goggles and long white scarf.

  He caught me staring at his medal.

  He said Blue Max.

  I nodded.

  Matter-of-factly I hoped.

  I said tell me about the numbers on the front of this scrap pile.

  The driver tightened his chin strap and adjusted his goggles.

  He said them’s the odds.

  He said I was sort of hoping they might be the number of the bus.

  The driver said don’t be silly.

  He said this is the only bus we got.

  I sat behind a fat old lady with bright orange hair.

  She was wrestling a quart bottle of pills.

  I reached over and helped her open it.

  She gave me a ghastly smile.

  She said dearie have you ridden the Double Eagle Line before?

  I said no ma’am I think I would have remembered.

  She said here dearie have some tranquilizers.

  She gave me a handful.

  They were ornery-looking little green bastards.

  The driver looked back and gave us a thumbs-up sign.

  We blasted out of the depot in a vast cloud of steam and smoke.

  At the first traffic light a priest opened a window and jumped.

  He called for his suitcase and I threw it to him.

  He smiled his gratitude and made some motions with his hands.

  I said it was nice of him to give us a blessing.

  The fat old lady said dearie I’m Seventh Day Adventist but I know the last rites when I see ’em.

  We ripped the stop sign from a school bus and we ran a gasoline tanker into a ditch and we put a squad car through a sign board.

  I almost wished Betsy was driving.

  We hit the expressway and the driver flogged his steaming steed to the outside and really got down to business.

  The threadbare tires sizzled like frying bacon.

  Telephone poles zipped past like fence pickets.

  The fat old lady was mumbling something.

  I caught the words cleft for me.

  We dusted off a Corvette and an ambulance.

  I noticed that the fat old lady’s hair was snow white.

  I tapped her gently on the shoulder.

  I said beg pardon ma’am but your hair has turned white.

  The fat old lady said I know it dearie my wig just flew off.

  I said I’m sorry that priest bailed out.

  I said he might have been useful.

  The fat old lady said not really dearie.

  She said I wouldn’t have had time to confess all my sins.

  She said I got to change buses in Putnam.

  I said my gosh ma’am Putnam is two hundred miles from here.

  The fat old lady said dearie I run a whorehouse in Kane Corners.

  9

  …my mother-in-law spent five days in the Smithsonian Institute…took her four days to convince them she wasn’t some kind of spaceship…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  The Double Eagle Line anachronism took a sharp bend on two wheels.

  It ran onto the shoulder long enough to wipe out a row of mailboxes.

  It straightened out and plunged down a long shady hill like a four-wheeled avalanche.

  I had the Blue Max business all figured out.

  This maniac thought he was Baron Richthofen.

  By God maybe he was.

  The reincarnation theory had gained respectable support over the years.

  At the bottom of the incline the Reo’s engine sputtered into silence.

  We coasted blissfully for a mile before groaning to a stop.

  The driver hollered Stranger City.

  I took my suitcase and went up front.

  We were parked by a stand of white birches.

  I looked in all directions.

  I said where the hell is Stranger City?

  The driver pointed through the fractured windshield.

  He said take the first fork to the left and you’re almost there.

  I said just a minute Baron my ticket says Stranger City.

  The driver spread his hands palms up.

  He said sorry mister the bus is busted.

  I said what’s the trouble?

  The driver said could be either the water pump or the transmission.

  I said look Junior you just crank this heap up and take me to Stranger City.

  The driver said impossible.

  He said I got to make repairs.

  He said we might be here for hours.

  I said they ought to stick this monstrosity in the goddam Smithsonian Institution.

  The driver shook his head.

  He said the Smithsonian won’t take it back.

  I used a four-letter word and got off.

  I hiked a quarter-mile to the fork and made the turn.

  A moment later the bus buzzed down the main pike like a teed-off hornet.

  I saw that there was no painting of birds on its lefthand side.

  Just a huge black Maltese cross.

  10

  …if all the zeroes was stacked up in one place you’d sure have one hell of a pile of nothing…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  The dusty road wandered aimlessly through thistle and barbed bushes and gnarled trees.

  The sky was cobalt blue and the afternoon sun was merciless and you could have hacked the silence with a cleaver.

  I took off my sports coat and stuffed it through my suitcase handle.

  I unbuttoned my collar and started walking.

  I thought of Blind Johnny Jackson the old black singer on Adams Street and his “Dusty Road Blues.”

  The saddest baddest low-down blues this poor boy ever knowed was them blues he got on a dusty road.

  Or something like that.

  Well look out Stranger City.

  Out of the dust here comes Chance Purdue private detective par excellence.

  The man whose life looks like a White Sox box score.

  Zeroes.

  Except in the errors column.

  And Betsy.

  There was Betsy.

  Betsy was no zero.

  I missed her.

  11

  …oncet I knowed a feller what said he was most anxious to assume responsibility…last I heard of him he had hisself a widow and her six kids and her eighty-five thousand dollar mortgage…reckon that ought to hold him for a while…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  The dusty road appr
oached Stranger City cautiously.

  It employed any number of last-minute zigs and zags.

  An obvious delaying action that I understood.

  Responsibility lay ahead.

  Now it slipped unobtrusively into the little town from the north.

  Or what seemed like the north.

  An hour of tracing its moody meanderings had left me directionless.

  Suddenly it became Stranger Avenue.

  It remained unpaved and rutted and dusty but for five halfhearted blocks it was Stranger City’s principal thoroughfare.

  It ran almost straight as it conformed reluctantly to its brief role of importance.

  Then it chucked all obligations to become gloriously free.

  Again it was a road for a boy with a straw hat and a cane fishing pole.

  It wound its happily erratic way into the blue distance.

  I watched it depart with a vague sadness.

  We had been friends for a time.

  12

  …you show me a park-bench philosopher and I’ll show you a man what got splinters in his ass…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  Stranger City must have been the lilac capital of Illinois.

  It was drenched in the scent.

  The population might have approached two thousand if you counted stray dogs and the goat tethered in the first yard I passed.

  It had an eight-lane bowling house and a single-pump gas station and a grocery store with a placard in its window.

  DOCTOR JAKE BURNHAM ENTRANCE IN REAR.

  I saw a tiny red-brick schoolhouse and a couple of restaurants and a diner painted purple.

  There was a small bank and a library and a ramshackle frame hotel and a shanty the size of a double-garage that had an overhanging sign saying SHURFF.

  Out of the shanty came an old bandy-legged man who wore a white Stetson and a plaid shirt.

  The cuffs of his khaki pants were stuffed into short black western-style boots.

  He walked with a jauntiness that belied his age.

  He piled into a mint-condition blue Model A Ford with a silver star on its door.

  The rumble seat had been slightly modified to accommodate a boxlike object shielded from weather by a gaudy red and yellow canopy.

  The old man started the engine and the strains of a barrel organ drifted from the rear of the automobile as it purred away into the golden afternoon.