The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of by Joseph Hansen

day I started. Lester was lost to her by then. Broke his heart. He cried and begged me to take him back.”
    “What about school?” Dave asked.
    “By then she wouldn’t look at him. Nothing so cruel as little children. I thought he’d die. But after while it looked as if he’d forgotten her. Black, you get used to people treating you one way here and another way there. They don’t mean anything by it. I taught him that. I thought it was over. His report cards were good. He had some little friends. He didn’t brood anymore.”
    “She brooded,” Dave said. “Where was Jerry in all this?”
    “With his daddy. Always with his daddy,” she said. “I don’t know how he’s going to live without his daddy.”
    Dave looked at his watch again. He went to the raffia basket and took out the magazines. He put on glasses. “He doesn’t know about that ransom note even now. Why not?”
    “Anita was making a fool of her daddy,” Ophelia Green said. “He didn’t want the boy to see him made a fool of.”
    “Still a boy, is he?” Dave said. They’d used a razor blade to clip out the words. The “$25,000” had been a cake-baking prize offer, “ SAFE ” was a paper-diaper claim. “And that’s what Mrs. Orton told you? That Ben Orton thought the letter was only a hoax? A malicious joke?”
    “Oh, he was angry. He was after them. No telling what he’d have done. She came to clear them out of here, if this was where they were hiding. Wanted them to go to Mexico and stay there till he got over how angry he was. But she didn’t have any money. He never let her have any.”
    “It wouldn’t have helped Lester.” Dave put the glasses away. “He had to report to his parole officer.”
    “Nothing can help Lester,” Ophelia Green said darkly. “He’ll go back to jail, like you said. Long years. And for what? For her. And she doesn’t give a snap of her fingers for him.” The stained eyes looked forlornly at Dave. “He’s got good sense. Alone, he’d never step out of line. He knows the price. For blacks it’s always twice as high. But for her—if she say do it, he does it.”
    “They were here, weren’t they?” Dave said.
    “I guess so. Lester had his key. And his bed”—she broke off and looked at the window where pepper-tree shadows stitched dark lace on the white—“I guess they were in his bed. Looked like it. But they were gone, time I got home.” Her eyes pleaded up at Dave. “Chief Orton could have been wrong.” The hope in her voice was frail. “Somebody else could have sent that letter.”
    Dave laid the magazine in her lap. She touched the clipped places, studied them in the poor light. “Yes,” she said, “all right.” And there were tears on her face when she turned it up to him this time. “But it wasn’t meant. It was just a—a game was all it was. Children. A game.”
    “That everybody lost,” Dave said.
    At the geranium gate, he heard the whirring noise again. From across the road? The land fell off there, and among ragged weeds crumbling foundation brick showed red where another house had once stood. Crossing, he glanced up the road. No sign of the lavender Montego. But at the nearest bend a Ford van was parked. He’d seen it somewhere this morning. Then, when he’d left Richard Nowell’s half an hour ago, hadn’t it been among the other cars parked at the top of the road? Frowning to himself, he crunched rubble underfoot between the foundation bricks. But the whirring had stopped. There was a shed that had been left standing when the house had come down. He edged among the bristly stalks of heavy-headed sunflowers. The padlock on the shed door had rusted and fallen loose but something held the door. He peered through weathered siding. There were lumpy shapes within but nothing that moved. He walked around to the back of the shed and squinted in again. He didn’t learn anything. He turned. Below, a barranca was thick with creepers—wild cucumber, honeysuckle,