Killing Floor

It was still and quiet. She had a stereo, a few records and tapes, more sweet and melodic than the howl and buzz that I call music. I got more coffee from her kitchen. Went out back. There was a small yard out there, a neat coarse lawn and some recent evergreen planting. Shredded bark to smother weeds and rough timber edging against the planted areas. I stood in the sun and sipped the coffee.

Then I ducked back inside and tried Hubble’s number again. No reply. I showered and dressed. Roscoe had a small shower stall, the head set low, feminine soaps in the dish. I found a towel in a closet and a comb on a vanity. No razor. I put my clothes on and rinsed out the coffee mug. Tried Hubble’s number again from the kitchen phone. I let it ring for a long time. Nobody home. I figured I’d get a ride up there from Roscoe after lunch. This thing wasn’t going to wait forever. I relocked the back door and went out the front.

It was about ten thirty. A mile and a quarter up to Eno’s place. A gentle half hour stroll in the sun. It was already very hot. Well into the eighties. Glorious fall weather in the South. I walked the quarter mile to Main Street up a gently winding rise. Everything was beautifully manicured. There were towering magnolia trees everywhere and late blossom in the shrubs.

I turned at the convenience store and strolled up Main Street. The sidewalks had been swept. I could see crews of gardeners in the little park areas. They were setting up sprinklers and barrowing stuff out of smart green trucks marked “Kliner Foundation” in gold. A couple of guys were painting the picket fence. I waved in at the two old barbers in their shop. They were leaning up inside their doorway, like they were waiting for customers. They waved back and I strolled on.

Eno’s came into sight. The polished aluminum siding gleamed in the sun. Roscoe’s Chevrolet was in the lot. Standing next to it on the gravel was the black pickup I’d seen the day before outside the coffee shop. I reached the diner and pushed in through the door. I had been prodded out through it on Friday with Stevenson’s shotgun pointed at my gut. I had been in handcuffs. I wondered if the diner people would remember me. I figured they probably would. Margrave was a very quiet place. Not a whole lot of strangers passing through.

Roscoe was in a booth, the same one I’d used on Friday. She was back in uniform and she looked like the sexiest thing on earth. I stepped over to her. She smiled a tender smile up at me and I bent to kiss her mouth. She slid over the vinyl to the window. There were two cups of coffee on the table. I passed hers across.

The driver from the black pickup was sitting at the lunch counter. The Kliner boy, the pale woman’s stepson. He’d spun the stool and his back was against the counter. He was sitting legs apart, elbows back, head up, eyes blazing, staring at me again. I turned my back on him and kissed Roscoe again.

“Is this going to ruin your authority?” I asked her. “To be seen kissing a vagrant who got arrested in here on Friday?”

“Probably,” she said. “But who cares?”

So I kissed her again. The Kliner kid was watching. I could feel it on the back of my neck. I turned to look back at him. He held my gaze for a second, then he slid off his stool and left. Stopped in the doorway and glared at me one last time. Then he hustled over to his pickup and took off. I heard the roar of the motor and then the diner was quiet. It was more or less empty, just like on Friday. A couple of old guys and a couple of waitresses. They were the same women as on Friday. Both blond, one taller and heavier than the other. Waitress uniforms. The shorter one wore eyeglasses. Not really alike, but similar. Like sisters or cousins. The same genes in there somewhere. Small town, miles from anywhere.

“I made a decision,” I said. “I have to find out what happened with Joe. So I just want to apologize in advance in case that gets in the way, OK?”

Roscoe shrugged and smiled a tender smile. Looked concerned for me.

“It won’t get in the way,” she said. “No reason why it should.”

I sipped my coffee. It was good coffee. I remembered that from Friday.

“We got an ID on the second body,” she said. “His prints matched with an arrest two years ago in Florida. His name was Sherman Stoller. That name mean anything at all to you?”

I shook my head.

“Never heard of him,” I said.

Then her beeper started going. It was a little black pager thing clipped to her belt. I hadn’t seen it before. Maybe she was only required to use it during working hours. It was beeping away. She reached around and clicked it off.

“Damn,” she said. “I’ve got to call in. Sorry. I’ll use the phone in the car.”

I slid out of the booth and stepped back to let her by.

“Order me some food, OK?” she said. “I’ll have whatever you have.”

“OK,” I said. “Which one is our waitress?”

“The one with the glasses,” she said.

She walked out of the diner. I was aware of her leaning into her car, using the phone. Then she was gesturing to me from the parking lot. Miming urgency. Miming that she had to get back. Miming that I should stay put. She jumped into the car and took off, south. I waved vaguely after her, not really looking, because I was staring at the waitresses instead. I had almost stopped breathing. I needed Hubble. And Roscoe had just told me Hubble was dead.

11

I STARED BLANKLY OVER AT THE TWO BLOND WAITRESSES. One was perhaps three inches taller than the other. Perhaps fifteen pounds heavier. A couple of years older. The smaller woman looked petite in comparison. Better looking. She had longer, lighter hair. Nicer eyes behind the glasses. As a pair, the waitresses were similar in a superficial kind of a way. But not alike. There were a million differences between them. No way were they hard to distinguish one from the other.

I’d asked Roscoe which was our waitress. And how had she answered? She hadn’t said the smaller one, or the one with the long hair, or the blonder one, or the slimmer one, or the prettier one or the younger one. She’d said the one with glasses. One was wearing glasses, the other wasn’t. Ours was the one with glasses. Wearing glasses was the major difference between them. It overrode all the other differences. The other differences were matters of degree. Taller, heavier, longer, shorter, smaller, prettier, darker, younger. The glasses were not a matter of degree. One woman wore them, the other didn’t. An absolute difference. No confusion. Our waitress was the one with glasses.

That’s what Spivey had seen on Friday night. Spivey had come into the reception bunker a little after ten o’clock. With a shotgun and a clipboard in his big red farmer’s hands. He had asked which one of us was Hubble. I remembered his high voice in the stillness of the bunker. There was no reason for his question. Why the hell should Spivey care which one of us was which? He didn’t need to know. But he’d asked. Hubble had raised his hand. Spivey had looked him over with his little snake eyes. He had seen that Hubble was smaller, shorter, lighter, sandier, balder, younger than me. But what was the major difference he had hung on to? Hubble wore glasses. I didn’t. The little gold rims. An absolute difference. Spivey had said to himself that night: Hubble’s the one with glasses.

But by the next morning I was the one with glasses, not Hubble. Because Hubble’s gold rims had been smashed up by the Red Boys outside our cell. First thing in the morning. The little gold rims were gone. I had taken some shades from one of them as a trophy. Taken them and forgotten about them. I’d leaned up against the sink in that bathroom inspecting my tender forehead in the steel mirror. I’d felt those shades in my pocket. I’d pulled them out and put them on. They weren’t dark because they were supposed to react to sunlight. They looked like ordinary glasses. I’d been standing there with them on when the Aryans came trawling into the bathroom. Spivey had just told them: find the new boys and kill the one with glasses. They’d tried hard. They’d tried very hard to kill Paul Hubble.