The Long Lavender Look by John D. MacDonald

hard way. I picked a little unmarked road that was supposed to take us right on over to the direct route. But with the roads torn up, everything looked different. After about three miles I knew I had the wrong road. So I kept going, hoping the damned thing would come out on the road we wanted. But it wandered all over hell and gone and finally came out onto 112
    about fifteen miles north of the Cypress City cutoff. By then it was obviously shorter and quicker Page 20

    to come down 112 and take the Trail over to Route 27, then cut over to the Parkway on 820."
    "And Hyzer keeps thinking about how you and Meyer match the description."
    "What description, dammit?"
    "Remember four years ago the way some people hit the money truck with all the racetrack cash aboard?"
    "Just outside Miami? Vaguely I've forgotten the gimmick."
    "It was beautiful," Lerinie said. "Absolutely beautiful. The three clowns who had truck duty stuck to the same routine every time they made the racetrack run. They would get there empty and park in back of a drive-in, and all three would go in, eat, kill some time until the big parking areas emptied and the people in the money room had time to weigh, band, sack, and tally the cash. Then they would go get it, and make a fifty-minute run back to the barn. It was after a very big handle that they were hit. They woke up on a little shell road way back in some undeveloped acreage. The locks had been drilled and the truck and radio disabled. They were too groggy to walk for help right away. They were separated and questioned. And examined. Same story. Each had become very very sleepy about fifteen minutes after they had loaded the money and left the track. Heavy dose of some form of barbiturate. Traces still left in the bloodstream. The driver had pulled over and stopped, thinking he would just take a nice little nap like the guard sitting there beside him, snoring. The police turned up a few people who had seen a big brute of a wrecker put a hook on the armored truck, lift the front end, and trundle it off. They traced it back to the drive-in, a very small place with normally two people working during the daytime, a man in the kitchen and a girl working the counter. At night they'd have a second girl car-hopping. This was the pickup after the big Sunday afternoon race card, with the take including the Friday night and Saturday night meets. The men said the girl on the counter was new. A blonde. They had kidded around with her. By that time they had already had another report which dovetailed. A girl and three men had hit that drive-in a half hour before the money-truck people walked in. They had taped up the waitress and the chef and stashed them in a supply closet. The man had been too frightened and hysterical to pick up anything useful. The girl gave a full report of what she had noticed and remembered. One man was your size, Trav.
    One description fits Meyer. The third was average height, but very broad and thick in the shoulders and neck. She thought there might be a fourth man on watch outside the rear entrance, but she wasn't certain. She said the girl was young."
    "You know a lot about it, Lennie."
    "I had a client they were trying to set up for that truck job. And now, all of a sudden, better than three years later, I've got two more."
    "This Frank Baither was in on it, then?"
    "Sheriff Hyzer didn't exactly break down and tell me all his problems, pal. We established a relationship of mutual respect. There have been generations of Baithers in this county, some very solid and some very unpredictable, but all of them tough and quick, and a few of them tough, quick, and smart. Like Frank. Lived alone in the old family place along that route. He'd be gone for weeks or months. Tax bills and utility bills and so on went to the Cypress Bank and Trust.
    He kept money in a special account and the bills were paid out of it. No visible means of support. When he'd move back in, he'd usually have a houseguest. Some