Good Fences Make Good (A Dan Wilder Short Story) Page 3

Just this time they start with this wanting to see the guys like you, that pull jobs. Freeze off your market, Harris said. Around here, anyway.”

  Wilder shrugged.

  “There’s plenty of other places. They can do anything they like with you and their market here, but I don’t want any of them seeing me. I don’t work with scum like that. I don’t deal with them.”

  “I know, I know,” Drogo groaned, “but they want it that way. They want to know who’s got a grift going, what you look like. They want everything organized. Wilder, don’t you see? I had to go along. I’m here every day. I don’t just blow on out of town tonight like you. I got to deal with these people.”

  “I don’t,” Wilder said. “I deal with whoever I want to deal with.”

  Drogo’s shoulders slumped. He sighed and his eyes dropped. His head shook wearily from side to side.

  “All right, where is he?”

  Drogo stared at him, eyes wide. “Where’s who?”

  “This Harris. The big organizer.”

  Drogo blinked. Slowly he shook his head.

  “Wilder,” he whispered, “they’d cut you in pieces if you showed.”

  “Where is he?” Wilder asked again, staring up the hill at the late afternoon sunlight turning the clouds orange.

  A big semi roared past on the highway. He could see only the top half of the rig and the exhaust stack streaming thin gray fumes.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Drogo finally said. Wrinkles cut dark gullies across his wide forehead with the effort he was making to think. “It’s hard to say where Harris would be. With this rumble you started he could be any—”

  “Save the lecture, Drogo,” Wilder warned. “Where can I get my hands on Harris. Where does he live? Where’s his business, his operation?”

  Drogo turned in the passenger seat and pointed through the rear window of the Chrysler. “Harris lives on South Valley Drive, on that ridge, the other side of town. That’s where all the money people live.”

  “What’s the house number?” Wilder insisted. “Never mind the status part.”

  “One-seven-oh-seven. There’s a sign in front with his name on it, Harris.”

  “I know his name. Where does he work?”

  “Mainly he operates out of the big bowling alley, the Olympia, corner of Walnut and Melrose. You can find Melrose easy. It’s the big boulevard—”

  “I’ll find it,” Wilder interrupted. “Look at me, Drogo.”

  Startled, Drogo turned on the seat and stared down at the gun. He didn’t see what Wilder’s other hand was doing, but he felt it.

  One punch was enough. Drogo settled limply against the door.

  Reaching around him, Wilder opened the car door. Drogo tilted, fell out, slid loosely down the sun-yellowed weed-slope beside the road and came to a stop at the bottom of the roadside ditch.

  Pulling the car door shut, Wilder drove away.

  It wasn’t as dark as he would have liked when he ditched the Chrysler on Walnut Avenue and walked toward the Melrose Boulevard intersection. Under the last shade tree, he stopped and examined the Olympia bowling alley standing in the middle of its wide asphalt parking area on the adjacent corner. Off in the west, the sky was a long orange-red smear. The sun was setting behind roofs. Everything looked clear but blurred in the early evening light. Street lights went on. They didn’t throw much illumination. It wasn’t dark enough yet.

  Wilder went out from beneath the trees and along the sidewalk to the corner. A cool breeze that smelled like nighttime blew against his face. He stood on the corner, studying the bowling alley. A wide entrance with a concrete patio apron in front of it was one step up from the asphalt that surrounded the entire building. A long row of windows stretched along the front wall on the second floor.

  Crossing over, Wilder went inside through the front entrance. He saw that the row of windows faced out from a dining balcony which also overlooked about twenty alleys. Only two of them were busy this early in the evening. Three fat sweating men were using the alley opposite the front entrance. To the right, five kids were working the far alley next to the wall. Near the entrance was a long bar.

  The other way, on Wilder’s left, the niche that rented bowling shoes stuck out toward the alleys. He headed toward that, passed it, went around its far corner, and along behind the rows of seats behind each alley. He kept looking at the alleys, but he noticed a closed door in the wall as he strolled past it.

  Near the last alley at that end, he stopped, turned, started back, and stopped when he came to the door in the wall.

  Both the fat guys and the kids were busy with their bowling and the bartender couldn’t see him behind the out-thrust of the bowling shoe kiosk, so he tried the door. It was locked. He went around to the front of the kiosk and asked the girl who rented the shoes, “Is Mr. Harris around yet?”

  “I think he went home for supper,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  Wilder went back outside and strolled around the north side of the building to the back. Only a couple of cars were parked there. A concrete platform railed by silver-painted iron pipes was built out from the blank back wall of the building. A single window high up the white-painted wall showed a faint light

  Climbing the platform steps, he tried the door opening onto the platform. It didn’t open. He went back down the steps and tried the doors of one of the parked cars. Its doors were all locked. The doors of the second car weren’t. Wilder climbed in back.

  He watched the platform door for ten minutes before it opened. A dark-haired man stepped quickly out onto the platform, closed the door behind him, made sure it was locked, and came down the steps, pulling out some keys on the end of a chain. He headed toward the other car, glancing at the one Wilder was in. He took a second look, turned in his stride and came over, stooping to see who was inside.

  Wilder opened the back door. The man stopped, stared at him a moment, and started to back away. Getting out of the car, Wilder went over to him.

  The man reached behind his hip.

  “No,” Wilder said softly, taking out the .38.

  The man brought his hand back around front. He watched Wilder warily. He had startling light-blue eyes in a bronze tanned face.

  “You Harris?” Wilder asked him.

  “No.”

  “Who then?”

  “Al Belton.”

  “Is Harris inside?”

  Belton shook his head. “No, he isn’t.”

  “Let’s go in anyway,” Wilder said.

  “Listen, what the hell are you trying to . . .?”

  Wilder shoved him toward the concrete steps. “Let’s go inside,” he repeated.

  Belton started to say something else, but Wilder pushed him again harder. He tripped on the bottom step and had to grab the iron railing to keep from falling.

  “Stay that way,” Wilder ordered. He frisked Belton, found a long-barrelled .32 automatic in a tooled leather hip holster, took it, and stuck it inside his belt.

  “Mister,” Belton said through teeth that gleamed in his dark face, “you can still walk around but you’re dead. You won’t even see tomorrow.”

  Wilder stood over him and said quietly, “Maybe you won’t even see tonight.”

  For a moment, Belton stared up at him as if he hadn’t heard a word. Then something he saw in Wilder’s eyes brought a flicker of uncertainty to his own. He squinted, looking closer at Wilder, then he looked away.

  Wilder could hear the man’s breathing.

  “Look, man, you haven’t got a prayer,” Belton said. “This is our town.” His dark face swung up, his light eyes flashing angrily again. “Harris will see you get . . .”

  “No,” Wilder said evenly. “It’s my town. I took it away from you when you people tried shortstopping me. It’ll be your town again when I decide to give it back to you and that’ll be when I’m through with it, not before.”

  Belton started to say something. His voice was pitched higher than before, partly with rage
, partly with something else, something he didn’t like hearing in his own voice, something too close to panic.

  Wilder didn’t bother listening to it.

  “Shut the guff,” he growled. “Open this door. We’re going in.”

  Belton took a long time finding the right key in the bunch at the end of his chain. Inside, a flight of steps led upward along the rear wall of the building. At the top was a box-like vestibule with a single ceiling bulb and the window that faced out onto the two cars parked below.

  Belton worked even longer trying to find the key for the vestibule’s only door.

  “Snap it up,” Wilder told him.

  “I’m trying,” Belton replied.

  “You’re trying too hard,” Wilder said. “Relax.”

  Droplets of sweat were on Belton’s leather brown forehead. His hands were shaking.

  “What’s in there?” Wilder asked him, to calm him down a bit. “Just offices?”

  “Yes. Two rooms. Mr. Harris’s, and the office where the help work.”

  “How you coming with that key?”

  Belton didn’t say anything. He dropped the keys. They swung at the end of the chain. Reaching out, Belton put one hand against the wall beside the door to support himself. Wilder smiled.

  When Belton’s hand came away from the wall, Wilder could see the spot had smudges from being touched often.

  “Quit stalling,” he said, as if he hadn’t noticed anything.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Belton said softly, under his breath.

  Recovering the keys, he found the right one without any more trouble and used it on the door lock.

  Reaching out, Wilder took a fistful of Belton’s suitcoat in his left hand, up near the collar. He braced his left