Free The Name of the Game is Death by Dan Marlowe

solidly that night.
    The next morning was my fifth day since leaving Phoenix. I made another early start and left Highway 90 about thirty miles beyond Seminole, at Milton. On 90-A I hustled along through Galliver, Crestview, DcFuniak Springs, Marianna, Chatahoochee, Talahassee, and Monticello. I was on the homestretch now.
    At Capps I turned south on US 19. I picked out two swift-running rivers fifty miles apart, and I threw the old Smith & Wesson into the first one and the old Woodsman into the second.
    I saw a sign at the side of the highway late that afternoon. It said Town Limits, Hudson, Florida. I drove
    through the main square and found a motel called the Lazy Susan on the south side of town. I'd covered 362 miles since morning. I registered, showered, ate at the motel, went into the lobby and worked my way through a month-old copy of Time, then went to bed early. I wanted to start fresh in the morning.
    I had breakfast in town at a place called the Log Cabin. The building looked like stucco over logs. It was early, but the place was busy. The breakfasters were blue-collar, a factory crowd. There wasn't much conversation, even from the good-looking young waitress who wore an engagement ring but no wedding band.
    I walked around the square afterward. I'd estimated the town at six or eight thousand the day before. That morning I upped it a little. The store windows looked clean, and the displayed merchandise looked fresh. There were no empty stores near the main intersection. The merchants must at least be making the rent money.
    I walked past the bank with its protective iron grille drawn. It was an old building, bristling in its external impression of maximum security. Like the kind of two-dollar watch that used to be called a bulldog.
    I bought a local paper at the drugstore, carried it to the little park in the square, and sat down on a bench in the early morning sunlight. The park faced the shabby-looking town hall and the post office. I looked at the post office a couple of times. To be diverted, registered mail almost had to be tampered with by post office personnel. Although of course Bunny's packaged money meant for me might not have been registered when it was intercepted.
    The newspaper was a weekly. I read every line of it, including the classified ads. It's a habit of mine. Tips are where you find them. For years, I've had a subscription under one of my names to Banking, the Journal of the American Hanking Association. There's a column in it called " The Country Banker," and two of the best tips I'd ever had came right out of that column. Banking used to publish pictures of newly remodeled bank interiors, but
    they've mostly cut that out. It must have occurred to
    someone that they were being too helpful.
    I trail the classified section carefully. If there was a tree surgeon in Hudson, Florida, he wasn't using the local paper to attract customers. I folded up the paper and walked back to where I'd parked the Ford.
    Main Street in Hudson ran east-west from the traffic light in the square, not north-south on 19. I drove east on Main. When the stores thinned out, I slowed down. The first homes were small, with tiny yards or none at all. No work for a tree surgeon there.
    A mile beyond the built-up section of town the area south of Main Street became a swamp. I recalled seeing it listed on a map as Thirty Mile Swamp. From its looks it was no kitchen-garden swamp, either, but a fibrous jungle of cypress and mangrove in brackish-looking water, the trees drearily festooned with Spanish moss. A hand-painted sign beside a shack said "Airboat for Hire."
    I turned around and started back. Near the edge of town again I turned north and began crisscrossing side streets. Gradually I worked into higher ground and an unproved residential section. I turned finally into a block-long street with only three houses on it. Big houses. Estates. I slowed down again. This was what I needed: property that required upkeep and people