But he needed a second exit. It could have been done in a number of ways; he took advantage of regional resources. It was white lightning country and the backhill bootleggers were numerous, their stills concealed everywhere in the piney woods. He’d spent part of every day in the pines along the county road, watching their comings and goings—mostly by night. There was one mountain-dew outfit that ran three tankers in and out: a ’57 Oldsmobile, a ’64 Chevy and a ’59 Ford Fairlane. The still was a mile and a half back off the county road and he hadn’t tried going up the driveway; they’d have it under surveillance twenty-four hours a day if not booby-trapped. But he’d had a look at the operation from the high country through 8x Zeiss glasses; it was about a four mile cross-country walk from his clapboard. They had at least three back-road exits that he could see from his vantage point; some of them probably went many miles before they gave out onto a main road somewhere. But the local law was indifferent and maybe the district federal office was in the moonshiners’ pockets; at any rate the tankers had been using the front driveway in and out for as long as Kendig had been keeping tabs on them.

It would do; and the time for it was tonight.

At four in the afternoon he took page 243 out of the typewriter and hid the manuscript and drove down to the village. He bought groceries enough to last a solitary man two weeks. He bought a Vise-Grip wrench and then he put everything in the car and waited by the telephone booth until two minutes before five and dialed the New York number direct.

– 13 –

BOTH TELEPHONE BOOTHS had OUT OF ORDER placards on them. Ross motioned Ives into the first one at 4:55 and stepped into the adjoining booth. “Operator?”

“Yes sir. I’m all ready to institute your trace as soon as we get a ring on that line.”

“Fine.” Then he turned on the tape recorder and waited.

Ives obeyed instructions: he let it ring four times and then picked it up. Ross picked up simultaneously, watching Ives through the double glass.

“Hello?”

“Deposit eighty-five cents, please.”

The money bonged distantly; then Ives spoke: “Kendig?”

“Did our publishers go the price, Mr. Ives?”

“Yes. I’m happy to say I’ve got a sweet batch of contracts for you. In fact I even managed to—”

“Never mind, I’m in a hurry. Just answer my questions yes or no. Did those people from Washington get back to you again?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell them the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Have all the publishers received the fifty-one pages? No sidetracked manuscripts?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Are they listening in on this call right now?”

“Yes.”

Ross gritted his teeth.

Then he heard Kendig laugh. “That’s fine, Mr. Ives. I’ll be in touch again.”

Click.

Ross tapped the cradle. “Operator? Operator?”

“Yes sir. We couldn’t trace the individual phone I’m afraid—there wasn’t time. But we’ve got the area code and we might have the town for you in a few minutes.”

“What’s the area code? Where was it?”

“Georgia, sir.”

Ross grinned. It was all fitting together now.

– 14 –

HE SLIPPED THE pump attendant ten dollars before the pump started running; the man grinned conspiratorially, topped Kendig’s tank and filled the five-gallon jerrycan in the trunk. When Kendig drove out of the station the kid was watching him go; the kid would remember him well enough and that was part of his intention.

He drove half an hour up the asphalt; he stopped the car about a quarter mile short of the bootleggers’ gate and hid the five-gallon can of gasoline in the trees. Then he drove on past the moonshinery to his own overgrown driveway; unhooked the trip-wire, drove in, reset the wire, drove up to the house and lugged the groceries inside.

He diced a steak and cut up a pepper and an onion and a banana, threaded the pieces on skewers he fashioned of wire coat-hangers and marinated the kebab in a sauce he compounded of half a dozen ingredients; he boiled up some brown rice and then fried it while the kebab was broiling. He made a salad of spinach greens and sliced tomato and segments of mandarin orange. The only thing he didn’t include was wine; he’d need a clear head tonight.

He put on Levi’s and crepe-soled boots and a flannel work shirt. Over that he put a thick woven sweater and then his dark windbreaker; he needed padding and a smooth outer covering—he expected to get dragged on the gravel and he didn’t want to lacerate his back. He put the Vise-Grip in his hip pocket and then spent ten minutes putting everything he’d need into the false-bottomed suitcase. When he tossed Carla Fleming’s compact into the case he was ready. He put the suitcase in the barn and arranged the kerosene lamps where they needed to be; he didn’t light them. He measured off the cleared floor space and made sure the barn door could be closed without obstruction. He left it wide open.

Then he walked down into the pines to make sure no tree had fallen across the pioneer road he’d spent two evenings cutting into the forest.

It was crude and not very long; it ran from the edge of his yard down a slope studded with second-growth pines and the remains of a fire that had gutted a few acres ten or twelve year ago. It had been the line of easiest resistance and he’d only had to cut down saplings; he’d sheared the stumps as close to the ground as he’d been able and then it, appeared to leave sufficient clearance to get a car through, although it was going to be a tight squeeze in two or three places.

Down in the bigger trees he’d had to hairpin it back and forth. Fortunately they were heavy old pines and there hadn’t been much undergrowth to clear out; he’d blazed the trunks to give himself a guide because otherwise in the dark he’d likely make a wrong turning and get boxed in. It ended in the woods about twenty yards short of the county road and about a third of a mile south of the intersection of his driveway. There was only roadside brush and a few spindly young evergreens between the end of his pioneer track and the county road; gun a car out of there and it would crash right through breaking the bush, clearing its own path to the paved road. In the meantime he’d left that section untouched. You could conceal a Patton tank in there and nobody would see it from the road.

It felt all right, exploring it on foot; he couldn’t take the chance of testing it with the old Pontiac because he’d designed it as a one-way escape route and it was unlikely the Pontiac or any other car could drive back up it. It was too steep, the pine needles too slick.

He was as ready as he was going to be; and it was past eight o’clock. It was time to go.

In three-quarter moonlight he had his look down across the slopes. The house was big but deliberately decrepit from the outside; the outbuildings looked tumbledown but most likely they were in splendid shape from the inside. The yard was cluttered with eight or nine ruined cars of which at least three were far more lively than they looked.

He watched the ’59 Ford move out at nine o’clock but he didn’t stir. The ’64 Chevy took the Ford’s place in the barn. They’d be filling its bootleg tank with eighty gallons of hundred-proof corn. He spotted one man with a rifle on the porch of the main house, another one up in what looked like a kids’ treehouse on the edge of the yard. Probably there were two or three others scattered around on watch. He didn’t go down any closer.

At nine-fifty the Chevy rolled out of the barn and went down out of Kendig’s sight into the trees. He gave it a ten-minute start and then he walked circuitously down the hillsides to the county road and went along the edge of the trees to the moonshiners’ gate.