“Did you know it was Lowry when you picked us up?”
“Not until I used the light. Then, when we got to Ben’s I saw him get out of his car and go in just ahead of you — then I was sure. I took Lowry up to his pa’s after you went in.”
The kid drove me to the next town south. I forget the name. I got a break on a train — I only had to wait about ten minutes.
Red 71
Shane pressed the button beneath the neat red 71. Then he leaned close against the building and tilted his head a little and looked up at the thick yellow-black sky. Rain swept in great uneven and diagonal sheets across the dark street, churned the dark puddle at his feet. The street-light at the corner swung, creaked in the wind.
Light came suddenly through a slit in the door, the door was opened. Shane went into a narrow heavily carpeted hallway. He took off his dark soft hat, shook it back and forth, handed it to the man who had opened the door.
He said: “Hi, Nick. How is it?”
Nick said: “It is very bad weather — and business is very bad.”
Nick was short, very broad. It was not fat broadness, but muscled, powerful. His shoulders sloped heavily to long curving arms, big white hands. His neck was thick and white and his face was broad and so white that his long black hair looked like a cap. He hung Shane’s hat on one of a long row of numbered pegs, helped him with his coat, hung it beside the hat.
He stared at Shane reproachfully. “He has been waiting for you a long time,” he said.