The Line Is Dead | Page 3

place, Carver chalked up a bad guess. The house
was dark; the convertible was not in the garage.
Remembering, from Alma's chatter, the bars that she and Lowry and
his crowd had visited, he hightailed back to the Vieux Carre--the "Old
Square", that original French city once enclosed by parapets on three
sides, and guarded by the river on the fourth.
He looked in at the Original Absinthe House, and the Old Absinthe
House, both of which, appropriately, were on Bourbon Street.
Inquiry got him no word of Lowry or friends of Lowry. He had no
better luck at several of the less historical spots. But at the Slave
Exchange, operated by a solid citizen named Lamazou--who boasted
that he never forgot a face nor the recipe for a drink, however
complicated the latter or uninteresting the former--Carver got his break.
"I guarantee you, he was here!" the good man declared, happy to prove
that the Slave Exchange offered services beyond the modest claim that
here one got a better Sazerac than Old Man Sazerac himself ever mixed,
and a better Ramos Fizz than the original Ramos had ever dreamed of.
"He was here, and I tell you, he was sore."
"What about?" Carver wondered, innocently and cheerily.
Since the information had not been given in confidence, the proprietor
saw no good cause for making more of it than Lowry himself had.
"About the income tax," he answered. "The government is gypping him,
like everybody. Or it is the expert. So he is going home to fix it."
"I'm an expert," Carver declared. "And I bet I can help him plenty."
Apparently, Lowry was going nonchalant, demonstrating to Alma that
his tax problems were more important than women, she or any other.

Carver, good and fed-up, regardless of how honest Alma's intentions
undoubtedly were, found it more and more necessary to leave Lowry
with sufficient souvenirs of the evening so that his social inclinations
would lead him elsewhere. Carver's only mistake, as he saw it, had
been to proclaim his intentions to Alma. It would have been much
better to have said nothing, and let her guess, bit by bit, why Lowry no
longer called.
If Alma really had to meet people who were the key to better
employment, she could readily enough find a new face.
"A new face. . ." Carver savored the phrase, as, having overshot his
mark by two numbers, he left his parked car and set out afoot to
Lowry's place. "A nice new one for Lowry . . . just what that stinker
needs."
The house was old fashioned, one of the several survivors of the day
when Carrollton was a separate town. It was set well back, with
magnolias shading the front. The broad leaves of plantain stalks made a
secondary screen about the house.
There were lights. The front door was slightly ajar. This was strictly
custom-built; give him a taste of visitors who barge in without
knocking.
Carver went down the hall toward the light, which came from a
doorway. The room into which he stepped was in more of a litter than
his own, but the effect was entirely different.
The phone, yanked from its wall niche, lay in the midst of a scattering
of ashes and butts spilled from a smoking stand. Bourbon, broken
tumblers, a bottle of Seven-Up, and a cigarette container were blended
into a mess of papers swept from the work table, on which a typewriter
still sat. Blood splashed the plaster, as well as the floor, and the
overturned chairs.
Lowry lay there, a sodden and soggy heap. Whether this was a
blunt-instrument murder, or a knock-down fight in which the victor,

running amuck, had booted and trampled an unconscious opponent to
death, would require a closer inspection of the body than Carver
wanted to give it. What upset his stomach was that this which was
sprawled out before him was a horrible exaggeration of the decisive
cold-caulking he had come to dish out. His wrath kicked back and
sickened him. He would have run out--he had to fight the urge not
to--had it not been for his loud-mouthed tour of bars. And there was
even more: for, while this gruesome killing might not be connected
with him, Alma would inevitably have her own doubts, her suspicions,
so that human qualm would rise as a barrier between her and Carver.
He now had himself for a client. While this was a dish for the cops,
Carver had too big a stake to let him stand by, without trying to make a
clear cut and decisive case against the killer.
CHAPTER 2
CARVER latched the front door and went to the end of the hall to
unlatch the back.
He drew a shade, so that light from the