The Stranger City Caper Read online

  I couldn’t place the song.

  It was a dreamily sweet little ditty yet there was infinite melancholy in it.

  I came to a grassy park across the street from the hotel and I dropped my suitcase and sat on a bench.

  I poured a pint of pebbles out of each shoe and a quart of dust out of each sock.

  I wiggled my toes in the soft green grass.

  During the time it required to smoke a pair of squashed Camels a dilapidated pickup truck struggled by and a couple of youngsters got ice cream cones at the grocery store.

  The kid with the strawberry cone had freckles.

  The vintage vehicle returned with its haunting tune.

  The pristine notes spanned an ocean of time and tumult.

  I watched the little blue car do a U-turn in the dusty street and stop under the sign that said SHURFF.

  The old man killed the engine and the music died away.

  I tried to recall a school-days poem.

  Something about a barrel organ in lilac time.

  I stuffed my socks into a pocket and slipped into my shoes and crossed the street.

  I was the oldest man on earth.

  13

  …the Bible is a book what said just about everything was a sin…when the collection plates started coming back empty the churches read the Bible again…they suddenly discovered that just about everything was perfeckly permissible…makes a man stop and wonder don’t it?…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  The interior of the Stranger City Hotel was dim and damp.

  It would have blown an antique collector’s mind.

  The balding carpeting featured little flying cupids.

  Thick sun-ravaged red velvet draperies cascaded over the windows.

  Time-yellowed wallpaper depicted a Bavarian boar hunt in which the hounds looked exactly like the boars.

  There was a morris chair and a sagging davenport with cracked leather and a great many inhospitable highbacked rocking chairs.

  There were a half-dozen chipped mahogany tables and a Victrola and floor lamps with long-tasseled shades and several fat brass spittoons.

  I walked to the desk.

  The desk clerk was a fidgety little perspiring guy.

  Behind his thick-lensed spectacles his amber eyes gleamed like harbor lights.

  I didn’t have to catch his attention.

  He had watched me like a hungry hawk.

  I said Chance Purdue.

  The desk clerk nodded and handed me a huge key.

  It looked like it would have unlocked the private vault of King Nebuchadnezzar.

  I signed the register and studied the faded reproduction of “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight” hanging lopsidedly on the back wall of the office.

  I said I haven’t seen one like that in a long time.

  The desk clerk pointed to a painting that decorated one side of his alcove.

  He said there’s one I bet you ain’t never seen.

  He said that’s by Horatio Brayfuss and it’s a original.

  I didn’t know who Horatio Brayfuss was but the painting was just about as original as they come.

  It was crudely done and it didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  It showed a tall man clad in black crouched menacingly in a frontier-type saloon.

  His smoking revolvers weren’t a great deal larger than 105mm howitzers.

  At his feet sprawled several villainous-looking characters.

  To have remarked that they were dead would have been the understatement of the century.

  Their eyeballs were rolled up into their heads and torrents of blood gushed through the sawdust of the barroom floor.

  There was a halo hovering just above the crown of the tall man’s black hat.

  It was faint but clearly discernible.

  The desk clerk’s amber eyes searched my face.

  He said that’s The Stranger.

  He said The Stranger killed a dozen guys to save this town.

  He gestured with his thumb through a door to my left.

  He said it happened right there in the lounge.

  He said hey you can talk about your heroes but I’ll take The Stranger any old time.

  He said God rest his soul.

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

  I shrugged.

  I said I notice that Stranger City has a musical squad car.

  The desk clerk said yeah the shurff makes a buck or two with that barrel organ.

  He said ice cream socials and the like.

  He said it runs off a compressor and he got the whole shooting match wired to the ignition.

  He said can’t you just see the old bastard chasing a bunch of crooks with his goddam barrel organ blasting out that honky-tonk tune?

  I shrugged.

  I said what’s its name?

  The desk clerk frowned.

  He said even the shurff don’t know.

  He said did the shurff arrest you yet?

  I said no will he?

  The desk clerk said oh sure he’ll get you on suspicion of some goddam thing or other.

  He said you’ll have to post bond.

  He said bond is usually a fifth of whiskey but you look like a pint case to me.

  He said couple days ago the shurff arrested a preacher on suspicion of being a smuggler.

  I said smuggling what?

  The desk clerk said Bibles into public schools.

  I said good God that’s a serious charge these days.

  The desk clerk said hey they lynched a preacher over in Jericho Ridge.

  I shrugged.

  I said well a town without a lynching is no town at all.

  The desk clerk said that’s exactly what the boys figgered.

  He said they boiled it down to where it was either the preacher or the taxidermist.

  He said they lynched the preacher on account of they needed the taxidermist to stuff him.

  He said they got that preacher smack-dab in the middle of the religious section in the Jericho Ridge library.

  He said frocked coat and all.

  I shrugged.

  I said well look what I really had in mind was locating a man named Rube Mountainstill who’s the manager of your new ball team.

  The desk clerk said that’s Mountainstill over in the morris chair.

  He said he hiked in here yesterday after the Double Eagle Line bus broke down.

  He said the shurff arrested him soon as he seen him.

  He said suspicion of being a Martian secret agent.

  I grinned.

  I said I’ll bet Mountainstill was sore.

  The desk clerk said no he just throwed up his hands and come clean.

  He said he admitted his real name was Gorm and he owned up to being over three million years old.

  He said they talked for better than a hour.

  He said before they got done the shurff give Mountainstill a half-gallon of Old Anchor Chain.

  He said mighty fine six-month-old stuff.

  14

  …oncet I knowed a man what studied trigonometry till he found out nobody could speak it…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  Rube Mountainstill was a long lean leathery man with a full head of silvery hair.

  He was at the high-tide of his sixties and he had soft brown understanding eyes and a slim high-bridge nose and a thin-lipped mouth and a jaw that said sorry but that’s the way it is.

  He was a dead ringer for that uncle you didn’t meet until you were over thirty.

  He was munching the tattered stub of a dead cigar and reading a paperback copy of The Decline and Fall of Just About Everything.

  I said Mr. Mountainstill I’m Chance Purdue from Chicago.

  Rube looked up.

  He said last feller what called me mister picked my pocket.

  He straightened in the morris chair and tossed his book into a wastebasket.

  He said I never read such optimistic sugarcoated drivel in all
my born days.

  His voice was gentle but his handshake was like a vise.

  He said you’re Chericola’s guy.

  I shrugged.

  I said just for a few days.

  Rube glanced at a huge horse-faced man who slept open-mouthed on the davenport.

  He said I’d introduce you to Moose Edwards but he’d just forget who you are anyway.

  I said Rube do you own a very large black German shepherd dog?

  Rube said well let’s just say we is associates.

  He said just who owns who ain’t been established yet.

  I said what do you call him?

  Rube said oh any number of things.

  He said Count Frazzlewitz usually but it depends on what he happens to be up to.

  I said well right about now he happens to be up to chewing a front leg off of that morris chair.

  Rube sighed.

  He said well son in a town like this a body just got to amuse hisself best way he can.

  He said if my teeth was better I’d be working on a back leg.

  Rube stood up.

  He was stooped but he stood tall in his loose-fitting brown suit.

  I said I just got in here yesterday.

  I said what are you in a position to tell me?

  Rube said I am in a position to tell you there are a great many places I would much rather be.

  He said among these are Sodom and Gomorrah and Jasper Texas.

  He led the way into the lounge.

  It was a sparsely furnished long low room of age-darkened wood.

  There was a regulator clock on one wall and on another was a rough wooden sign that said THE STRANGER 12—BAD GUYS 1.

  Over the cash register I saw a painting of a blonde smiling man.

  He wore a white hat above which floated a tiny golden halo.

  Rube and I sat on wobbly wooden stools and we ordered bourbon and water.

  The bartender was a short burly man with a beet-red face and glittering gray eyes.

  He said are you gentlemen going to the fifteenth annual Stranger City Baseball Ball on Sunday night?

  Rube said Sunday night?

  I said fifteenth?

  The bartender said yep and next year will be our sixteenth.

  Rube said trigonometry always throwed me.

  I said but this is the first year you’ve had a ball team.

  The bartender said we been holding baseball balls just in case we ever got one.

  I said I see.

  Rube said I don’t.

  He said keep talking and maybe it will come to me.

  I pointed to the painting above the old NCR 410.

  I said who’s that?

  The bartender said that’s The Stranger.

  He said Horatio Brayfuss painted that.

  I said how many Strangers were there?

  The bartender said one was all we needed.

  I said but this Stranger is wearing a white hat and the one in the office is wearing a black hat.

  The bartender said well Horatio Brayfuss is the only one what seen him and Brayfuss painted both pictures and there just ain’t nobody argues with Horatio Brayfuss.

  Rube ordered another round and his voice dropped to super-secret level.

  He said say when you was coming down here did you happen to come acrost a gray-haired woman what is about five foot tall and goes maybe a hunnert pounds providing she is carrying a set of Funkin Wagner’s encyclopedias?

  I shrugged.

  I said Rube there must be lots of women like that.

  Rube shook his head.

  Emphatically.

  He said oh no there ain’t.

  He said this woman got violet eyes and she speaks Chinese with a Polish accent and on her left arm she got a tattoo what says Tillie Loves Rube.

  I shrugged.

  I said tell me about the tattoo.

  Rube said well it’s blue and red and it got crossed American flags and there is this great big hairy bird sitting betwixt the flagpoles and in his beak he got this banner what says Tillie Loves Rube.

  He said it cost Tillie twenny dollars back in the thirties and it got to be worth a fortune now.

  He said damn pity she can’t sell it.

  I shrugged.

  I said Rube I haven’t seen her.

  Rube grinned.

  He said well by golly maybe I got it done.

  He said maybe I have escaped from Tillie Zilch.

  He drained his glass and waved for refills.

  He said thirty-nine years.

  His voice trailed off to a whisper and he brushed away a tear.

  He said it took me thirty-nine years.

  15

  …finding a woman in your hotel room is like finding a nine hunnert dollar bill in your wallet…all of a sudden you got yourself one helluva good chance to get in a whole heap of trouble…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  Room 204 was stuffy.

  I left the door open and raised both windows.

  The curtains swelled in the late afternoon breeze and the sweetness of lilacs floated into the room.

  I sat on the bed and looked around.

  At one time the walls might have been blue.

  They also might have been green.

  Now the paint was blistered and peeling and they resembled miniature battlefields.

  There was a hole in the bedspread.

  There was a hole in the throw rug.

  I lifted one end of it and found a hole in the carpeting.

  There was a gash in the shade of the lamp on the splintered nightstand.

  The Gideon Bible was dog-eared.

  I opened it to its yellow silk marker and saw that Genesis 23:4 had been snipped out.

  I placed a cracked ashtray beside me and lit a wilted Camel.

  I dropped the paper match into the ashtray and watched it curl grayly.

  Like a man’s dreams.

  I heard a car door slam.

  I walked to the window and saw a supercharged silvergray Porsche parked in front of the hotel.

  Its flowing lines were in violent disagreement with the straight up and down feel of Stranger City.

  A tall gaunt white-haired man sat on the park bench I had occupied earlier.

  He was very old.

  He wore an ill-fitting dark blue suit with an opencollared tan shirt and his buckthorn cane rested between his legs.

  The lilac fragrance was stronger now.

  Much stronger.

  Too goddam strong.

  I spun around.

  The most beautiful brunette on the face of Planet Earth stood very close to me.

  Her dark wavy hair cascaded to her shoulders.

  Her liquid brown eyes sparkled.

  Her full lips smiled a wonderfully warm smile.

  She said hello Purdue.

  I shrugged.

  I said hello Brandy.

  Brandy shook her head in vexed fashion.

  Like you do when you can’t find your car keys.

  She said Purdue I had made up my mind that I’d never see you again.

  She said but when the opportunity presented itself I just couldn’t stand my ground.

  She said you understand.

  I shrugged.

  I said how did you work it?

  Brandy said Chericola came to my agency and offered me a perfectly legitimate job.

  She said I realized that I could tie it in with something else and I accepted on the condition that you be included.

  She said it’s that simple.

  I said does Chericola know you busted up his December operation?

  Brandy winked at me.

  She said no that’s privileged information.

  She said Chericola likes me because I hate Communism.

  I said how’s your agency doing?

  Brandy said far better than I expected.

  She said any more questions?

  I shrugged.

  I said just one.

 
; I said have you ever gotten around to wearing half-slips?

  Brandy turned and closed the door.

  She hooked the night chain.

  She slipped into my arms.

  Her lilac perfume was heady and her soft perfect lips were eager and her liquid brown eyes were turbulent.

  She said find out for yourself Purdue.

  Brandy Alexander still wasn’t wearing half-slips.

  16

  …oncet I knowed a man what joined the CIA and blowed up the White House…that Communist Infiltration Association don’t mess around…

  Monroe D. Underwood

  It was early evening and we shared the cracked ashtray.

  Brandy’s cigarette glowed ruby in the dim little room.

  She said do you miss Betsy?

  I said sure but not like I did a few hours ago.

  Brandy said Purdue you should have been a diplomat.

  She kissed me gently.

  She said do you know how wonderful this is?

  I shrugged.

  I said I think I’m beginning to get the idea.

  Brandy said since last December I’ve done nothing but dream.

  I said about what?

  Brandy said about last December of course.

  I said what’s the score down here?

  Brandy said your end of the deal is a snap.

  She said no cloak-and-dagger malarkey.

  She said just work up some sort of comprehensive report on the baseball team and its gate potential.

  I said what will you be doing?

  Brandy said I’ll be using the baseball thing as a cover while I work on a matter for the CIA.

  I said does Chericola know you’ll be going two ways?

  Brandy said what Chericola doesn’t know won’t hurt him a bit.

  I said I thought you had quit the CIA.

  Brandy said Purdue nobody quits the CIA.

  She said not completely.

  She said there’s always that old alma mater loyalty.

  She said gosh we have operatives that get around on canes.

  I said after getting worked over in an alley?

  Brandy said after getting old wise guy.

  She said I have to run over to Raccoon Rapids this evening but I’ll have time to trim your sails again.

  I said forget it.

  I said my main mast is down.

  Brandy said I’ll fix it.