The Name of the Game is Death by Dan Marlowe

Author:Dan Marlowe [Marlowe, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-06-08T02:08:48+00:00

VII

The next night I was making the second of my tavern stops when the limping redhead made a mistake. He didn't know it was a mistake, because he didn't know I'd seen him in Mobile. I'd just climbed out of the Ford, ready to go inside for a beer I didn't want, when he cruised by in a black sedan at eight miles an hour. I got a good look at him.

The redhead didn't turn to look at me. He just drove past. The sedan turned the next corner, pulled into the curb, and stopped. I could tell by the quick glow and then the extinguishing of the taillights. I knew the redhead was tailing me as plainly as if he'd written me a letter.

I went inside and had the beer. I talked a little baseball to the bartender and gave some thought to the redhead. He was a luxury I couldn't afford. That decision left only two things to be settled: finding out if he'd already reported back to Manny Sebastian where he'd followed me, and how I was going to get rid of him.

I said goodnight to the bartender and went outside to the Ford. I pulled away from the tavern and turned the same corner the black sedan had turned. There wasn't a car in sight, parked or moving. I circled the block twice, cursing myself for losing him, and then a pair of headlights settled in behind me. I don't know where the bastard came from, but he was good. It takes ingenuity to tail a man in a car without the victim's knowing it. This boy had it.

I took him back uptown, then cast on Main from the

traffic fight. A little privacy was necessary now. From the edge of town I settled down to a steady fifty miles an hour. I was in no hurry. Somewhere out in the boondocks I'd find a place to leave the redhead, permanently.

I found out in the first five miles how he'd followed me from Mobile without my getting wise. He was an artist with an automobile. He didn't just lock himself onto my taillight and leave me to wonder eventually about the lights that remained the same distance behind in my rear-view mirror. There was only a sliver of moon, but he rode some stretches with his lights out. He'd be almost bumper-to-bumper with me for short distances, and then I wouldn't see him for miles. Twice he passed me, once doing about eighty, only to pick me up again from behind. The first time he went past I wasted a look at his license plate. It was carefully, unreadably mud-spattered.

Twenty-five miles up the road I emerged from the woodsy darkness enveloping the highway into a sleepy-looking, wide-place-in-the-road intersection with a blinking yellow light. There were darkened storefronts and a lighted telephone booth just before the blinker. I turned right at the intersection, right at the next corner, and right at the next. I was out of the

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