The Captive by Robert Stallman Read Free Book Online

very well, don't you Mister Golden?"
    Barry said nothing and gave it up until they had skidded to a stop in the parking lot of a bar called the Rustic Inn. Inside it was gloomy, with only the bartender behind the bar clearly in the light. As they stumbled to a booth, he began to see a few other people. It was probably no more than four-thirty in the afternoon, and they were the only people in a booth.
    When Bill had downed half of the drink the bartender had brought, he seemed ready. His square face with the straight black brows across the sunken eyes looked at Barry steadily for a moment, and then he smiled slyly.
    "I bet you specialize in marks like my wife."
    "I don't know what you mean."
    "You're a con man, Mister Golden. I'm not your  innocent hayseed that can't see a swindle under his own nose. You know what I do for a living now?"
    "I can't imagine," Barry said, not really meaning to sound insulting.
    "I chase deadbeats." And when the other looked  obviously blank, "I collect bad debts from skippers, bums." He paused and smiled his sly smile again. "And drunks."
    "And what is my racket? How am I going to get money out of you?"
    "Not me," he said, finishing the drink in one long gulp. "My wife."
    "Are you always so suspicious of strangers?"
    "I don't like people that come into my house and start makin' googoo eyes at my wife. Yeah." He banged his hand on the table, waved two fingers at the bartender.
    "This is ridiculous, Mr. Hegel," Barry said. "I'm here trying to find out about my poor brother's little boy - who was here, even though it was a year ago - and it looks like I've stepped into the middle of your marital problems." He studied the husband, wondering if he would break, if he would throw a punch, or perhaps pull a knife when they went out the door. He did not seem dangerous to anyone but himself, his eyes sunken in dimness, his mouth with a small quiver at the left corner. And it was not time yet to talk seriously, even if Bill had been able to. The bartender brought a double shot and set it carefully on the table,  standing at Barry's elbow as if waiting for some sign from Bill Hegel.
    "Hey, Vernon," Bill said, pulling the glass over squarely in front of him and turning it slowly with two fingers. "Do you think this guy looks a little like John Dillinger?"
    The bartender stepped back a pace to look at Barry, smiled and shook his head. "Hair's the wrong color, and he ain't got the upper lip for it."
    "Well, he's a crook anyway," Bill said. "Same as Baby Face Nelson, or Machine Gun Kelly or Dillinger."
    "Dillinger never killed nobody," the bartender said. "He wasn't no hood like those other guys. You ought to know that, Mr. Hegel." He looked at Bill with a patronizing air, perhaps recognizing a degree of drunkenness that Barry as a stranger could not see. Bill might have been drinking all afternoon, Barry thought, looking more closely at the set of his head and the unsteady hand that raised the double shot and poured it in one great gulp down his throat. Barry  shuddered at the spasm in the other man's face as the whiskey went down.
    "Mr. Hegel," the bartender said softly. "You always want me to let you know when it's gettin' late. Well, it's about five." He stood for a minute watching the man whose head was down now, his whole body shaking as with a chill. Then he saw another customer motioning to him, and he shrugged and walked back over behind the bar.
    "Misfits in the new order will be eliminated," Bill said. His face seemed to be sagging away from his eyes as he glared across at his enemy. Barry said nothing, wondering what he was quoting. It sounded like a quote.
    His big, trembling hand reached across the table and  fastened on Barry's. It was a cold, sweaty hand, and it tried clumsily to squeeze the other man's fingers together.
    "I'd like to take," he said in a grating whisper, "and tie you on the nearest railroad track." He grinned, and Barry saw froth in the corners of his mouth. "And listen to