Free Gone South by Robert R. McCammon Page B

plannin’ on it.” Flint finished off his lemon juice, his face impassive. Then he turned his back on the other men and walked out to the bar to cash in his chips. His stride was as slow and deliberate as smoke drifting. While Nick was counting the money, Junior was escorted to the street by Ambrose, Vincent, and Royce. “You’ll get yours, Mr. Lucky!” was Junior’s parting shot before the door closed.
    “He flies off the handle sometimes, but he’s okay.” Nick laid the crisp green winnings in Flint’s pale palm. “Better not walk around with that kinda cash in this neighborhood.”
    “Thank you.” He gave Nick a twenty. “For the advice.” He started walking toward the door, his hand finding the car keys in his pocket, and over the zydeco music on the jukebox he heard the telephone ring.
    “Okay, hold on a minute. Hey, your name Murtaugh?” Nick called.
    Flint stopped at the door, dying sunlight flaring through the fly-specked windows. “Yes.”
    “It’s for you.”
    “Murtaugh,” Flint said into the phone.
    “You seen the TV in the last half hour?” It was a husky, ear-hurting voice: Smoates, calling from the shop.
    “No. I’ve been busy.”
    “Well, wrap up your bidness and get on over here. Ten minutes.” Click, and Smoates was gone.
    Even as six o’clock moved past and the blue shadows lengthened, the heat was suffocating. Flint could smell the lemon juice in his perspiration as he strode along the sidewalk. When Smoates said ten minutes, he meant eight. It had to be another job, of course. Flint had just brought a skin back for Smoates this morning and collected his commission — forty percent — on four thousand dollars. Smoates, who was the kind of man who had an ear on every corner and in every back room, had told him about the Thursday afternoon poker game at Leopold’s, and with some time to kill before going back to his motel Flint had eased himself into what had turned out to be child’s play. If he had any passion, it was for the snap of cards being shuffled, the clack of spinning roulette wheels, the soft thump of dice tumbling across sweet green felt; it was for the smells of smoky rooms where stacks of chips rose and fell, where cold sweat collected under the collar and an ace made the heartbeat quicken. Today’s winnings had been small change, but a game was a game and Flint’s thirst for risk had been temporarily quenched.
    He reached his ride: a black 1978 Cadillac Eldorado that had seen three or four used car lots. The car had a broken right front headlight, the rear bumper was secured with burlap twine, the passenger door was crumpled in, and the southern sun had cracked and jigsawed the old black paint. The interior smelled of mildew and the chassis moaned over potholes like a funeral bell. Flint’s appetite for gambling didn’t always leave him a winner; the horses, greyhounds, and the casinos of Vegas took his money with a frequency that would have terrified an ordinary man. Flint Murtaugh, however, could by no stretch of the imagination be called ordinary.
    He slipped his key into the door’s lock. As it clicked open, he heard another noise — a metallic snap — very close behind him, and he realized quite suddenly that he would have to pay for his inattention.
    “Easy, Mr. Lucky.”
    Flint felt the switchblade’s tip press at his right kidney. He let the breath hiss from between his teeth. “You’re makin’ a real big mistake.”
    “Do tell. Let’s walk. Turn in that alley up there.”
    Flint obeyed. There weren’t many people on the sidewalk, and Junior kept close. “Keep walkin’,” Junior said as Flint turned into the alley. Ahead, in the shadows between buildings, was a chain-link fence and beyond it a parking garage. “Stop,” Junior said. “Turn around and look at me.”
    Flint did, his back to the fence. Junior stood between him and the street, the knife low at his side. It was a mean-looking switchblade, and Junior held it as if he had