Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

I ran out of time to think about it. The sound of the vehicle that had followed me was louder now. I stood up just as it rounded the bend.

The sight of the blue pickup didn’t surprise me. Now that I thought about it, I remembered seeing it several times since I had visited Ralph Barrett’s trucking yard. I should have picked it up sooner, but I hadn’t been expecting a tail.

It came to a stop and two men got out. They were two of the ones that Barrett had been talking to as I left the trucking yard. They wore jeans and tee shirts, and their bare arms bulged with muscle. Long-billed caps shaded their faces from the brilliant sun.

They stopped about ten yards away from me. The one on the left said, “Say, boy, looks like you found what you was huntin’.”

“Mighty nice of you,” the other one said, “ ’cause we was huntin’ the same thing.”

“Let’s just gather all this stuff up and go see Mr. Barrett, all right, boy?”

They took a step closer. I knew that I could have taken either one of them on equal terms, but there would be nothing equal about this fight. Barrett wanted what Wheeler had taken from him, and these men would stop at nothing to get what Barrett wanted.

The only thing I had going for me was the gun lying in the sand. They couldn’t have known it was there, and if was out of their sight. I had to move before they got any closer.

Holding the book tightly in my left hand, I launched myself into a dive over Wheeler’s body. The men yelled and split up, coming around both sides of the old Chevy.

I snatched up the gun and rolled across the sand, coming up in a crouch as the first man rounded the front of the car. I brought the gun up and his eyes widened, but he didn’t slow down.

I wished I had had time to make sure the barrel wasn’t plugged with sand. I knew what could happen if it was.

But sometimes you have to take a chance. I pulled the trigger.

The gun cracked and the heavy caliber slug plowed into the man’s shoulder. He stopped like he had run into a wall and then flipped backwards. His scream cut through the quiet desert air.

The other man stopped in his tracks as I swung the gun toward him. He gulped and cried, “Wait a minute! Don’t shoot! None of this was my idea. I just work for Barrett. He’s the one told us to follow you!”

“And he told you to recover everything that Wheeler had taken from the office, too, didn’t he?” I snapped.

“That’s what he said. He told us to follow you, and if you found Wheeler, we was to bring the two of you straight back to him. Honest, we didn’t know Wheeler was dead!”

I believed him. I was beginning to get an inkling now of what was really behind Barrett’s rage, and it wasn’t the kids.

I motioned with the gun. “Get over to the pickup. I want you to take that distributor and rotor of. Now!”

I watched him with one eye and checked out the other man at the same time. He had passed out from the shock of being shot, but it looked like the bullet had passed through cleanly. The bleeding was already beginning to slow down.

When the second man had the truck disabled, I had him do the same thing to Wheeler’s car. Then I said, “You’d better drag your friend over into the shade. You’re going to have to wait out here for awhile.”

“You’re not goin’ to leave us here?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll let the sheriff know where you are. It won’t be long before he’s out here.”

He was pulling the wounded man into the shade cast by the pickup as I started back down the trail. The little book was in my pocket, and the gun was on the seat beside me.

I bounced down the rough road, taking it faster than my shock absorbers liked, but I was in a hurry. I wanted to get to Cartwright with this as fast as I could.

When I got back to Dunes, I stopped at the one phone booth and called the sheriff’s office. Cartwright wasn’t in, but I told the dispatcher who I was and asked that Cartwright meet me at the Wheeler trailer as soon as he could.

Jackie and Cindy were playing in the little yard when I drove up. They each had a toy car, and they were making highways in the sand. Jackie was using his left hand, as his right seemed to be sore. It was still swollen.

They both smiled at me as I walked over to them. Cindy said, “Jackie was telling me about the Man in the Moon. Do you want to hear?”

I knelt beside them and dug in the sand with a finger. It had been a hell of a long time since I had done that. I said, “Sure. Go ahead, Jackie.”

“Well...” He concentrated, making sure that he was telling it the way he wanted to. “Daddy always said that the Man in the Moon was bad and that he came to take little boys and girls away when they acted bad. I think he was trying to scare us, so that we would behave.

“But it doesn’t seem fair that the Man in the Moon only takes little boys and girls. I think he should take bad grownups, too. Doesn’t that seem right, Mr. Markham?”

“Sounds right to me, Jackie. Was your daddy a bad grownup?”