Easy Death (17 page)

“I thought I told you about Chief Peanut back there.”

“Yes, and I listened politely but I didn’t actually believe you, you know.” She stopped real quick, like she wanted to make a noise or something to do with the hurt she was in. But then she just bit it back and kept talking. “And then when we found the car, it looked a bit like a police car and you didn’t seem at all surprised.”

“Couldn’t really see it that good.”

“Nor were you surprised at this man who is not a policeman being in the car. And you knew it was full of money. You got the idea of going down there and using those money bags as a shield—because you knew they’d be there.”

“Like I told you. I was following the getaway car.”

“Which looked a bit like a police car and here you are…” She stopped a second, like the talk was wearing her out. I sure hoped so. “…dressed as a policeman,” she finally finished it.

“I told you how all that happened,” I said, “and I’m dressed like a cop because I happen to be one: Officer Drapp, Willisburg Police.”

“I rather doubt it. But you confirmed my theory when you stood up.”

“Hunh?”

She had to take another breath before she went on. “When we were first fired upon and we took cover behind the car. When we weren’t certain who it might be up in the tower. Then you stood up and waved and let him see you. Because you thought it might be your partner up there.”

“Yeah, but he near killed me for it.” I worked on my driving and balanced her head on my leg. “Or did you forget that?”

“That’s when you knew it was my captain up there,” she said, “and that’s when I became certain that you were the robber. Or rather, you were one of the robbers. Is this other gentleman your partner?”

“When he comes to, I’ll ask him.” I chewed my lip and tried to think at what she said and move a truck full of sick, injured, and money all at the same time, and finally I came back with, “But I guess it’s like you said; it ain’t neither here or there.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Listen,” I said, “I’m Officer Drapp. Like I told you. But even was I wasn’t, what’s the difference?”

“The difference is rather obvious, don’t you think?”

“The difference is I’m the guy who pulled you out of the snow and took care of that bastard—excuse me—that Scranton guy that shot you open and then I got you in the truck here and I’m taking you to the hospital. Be I a cop or be I a robber, that’s me and this is what I’m doing. You maybe saved my life back there and now I’m saving yours, and I don’t figure you’re going to arrest me or nothing, so what does it make for shucks am I a cop or a robber?”

That stopped her a minute and I went on, “But I happen to be Officer Drapp and I wish you’d remember it, does anyone ask.”

“Cops and robbers,” she said it all dreamy-like, then she kind of looked up past me and her voice got funny and she said, “I’m going away now.”

Her eyes glazed up and the lids fluttered. Her whole body seemed to go limp as running water all at once, and she made kind of a funny sound. I’d heard it once before, and I hadn’t heard any sound like it since the war, one time when a non-com got shot and fell over and died right over top of me: it was the death rattle. The sound of air bubbling out the lungs one last time. The sound a body makes when the soul goes away wherever it’s going and leaves just an empty place where a person had been.

She gave out with that, and it was long and deep and lonesome sounding.

It got quiet in the truck. And awful still.

And then she gave the death rattle again.

And then it was quiet in the truck.

Till she come out with that godawful noise again and it came to me she was snoring.

December 20, 1951

4:00 PM

Helen

Helen Mortimer clutched at the old GI overcoat and tried to close it as much as she could with the zipper broken as she sloshed across the snow-packed street, grateful for the rubber boots—an early Christmas present from the nuns at Saint Francis. Another gust of freezing wind and snow slapped her in the face as she got to the curb, and she pulled the olive-green wool-lined cap down tighter across her dark hair. She knew the hat made her look stupid. She resented the need for going out looking like this at all, but—

She bucked the wind as far as the Top Hat Bar and Grill and pushed open the worn oak door, then stopped for a second just inside, luxuriating in the warm, beery heat as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

She scanned the room carefully.

He wasn’t here.

Nothing but that damn Christmas music:

…Oh what fun it is to ride

In a one-horse open sleigh—hey!

Jingle Bells
,

Jingle Bells….

Weary, weary from a lot more than just walking all over town through the snow on a day like this, she shambled over and leaned against the bar. The young-looking guy behind it served a martini to a well-dressed man, then smiled at her and came up to that end.

“Hiya, Helen.” His smile was just a little crooked, but in the dim light behind the bar no one could see it was from a series of scars running down one side of his face. “Get you something?”

She tried to smile back at him—Fred was a sweet guy, and it wasn’t his fault to come back from the war all banged up like he was—and then discovered she was just too tired to make the effort.

“You seen Mort?” she managed.

“Get you some coffee.” Fred looked straight into her eyes, easy and untroubled, and she knew he hadn’t seen Mort. She appreciated the coffee though, as he set the steaming cup on the bar and she warmed her hands on its sides.

“Now I think at it,” he said slowly, “I might have seen him coming from Brother Sweetie’s earlier today. He still wears that hat? The grey felt one?”

“I knew it.” The crumb of hope seemed to nourish Helen and she took a sip of the hot coffee. “I knew he was tied up with that stinking fat mick.”

“I don’t know from him and Sweeney, Helen.” Fred’s smile was patient, almost loving. On the wall behind him there was a picture of the Bootheville Warriors varsity football team from 1940, and he was in it, somewhere well towards the back. And in the front right side was a teenage girl in a cheerleader outfit who looked a little like Helen.

“All I’m saying,” he went on, “is I maybe saw Mort coming out of Brother Sweetie’s this morning when I was out shoveling the sidewalk the first time. That’s all.”

“Yeah, Mort went out this morning early and said he had a job. Figured it was with that lousy mick.”

“You ask Brother Sweetie?”

“Just now.”

“So?”

“So that crooked Irish wouldn’t talk straight if you paid him good money for it.” She drank a big gulp of the coffee. “But just because I know he’s lying doesn’t mean I can make him tell the truth.”

“Gee that’s tough.” Fred tried to look sympathetic, but not so much as to get pulled into anything that would put him up against Brother Sweetie. On careful consideration, he decided to steer the conversation elsewhere. “So what are you folks doing for Christmas?”

“I don’t know.” Helen finished the coffee, slowly, trying not let on it was all she’d had since breakfast. “It’s for the kids, Christmas.”

“That’s right.” Fred seemed glad to get the conversation back on safe ground and he wanted to anchor it there. “For the kids, that’s right.”

Helen thought about Mort’s promise to come home with money. Thought about how New Year’s they might have to move in with Mort’s dad. Or try to. She reached reluctantly into her pocket to pay for the coffee.

“On the house,” Fred waved her off. “I just happened to think, though…”

“Yeah?”

“I saw Howard over at the barbershop, he was just opening up.”

“And so?”

“And so this time of year he’s busy, everybody gets themselves spruced up for the holidays and all, and I remember I wondered how he come to be getting started so late, that’s all.”

“You figure he’s seen Mort?”

“I don’t know did he has or did he hasn’t. I’m just saying he was late opening up, and that means he’s been someplace around town—heck, all I know he visiting Santa Claus at Belkin’s there—but maybe he’s been around town today and he’s maybe seen Mort is all I’m thinking.”

The idea put new strength into Helen. She straightened up from the bar.

“I’ll try it,” she said. “Thanks a lot Fred.” And she meant it.

“Anything for you, Helen,” and he meant it too. “You know that. Merry Christmas if I don’t see you.”

But she was already out the door and the martini down at the other end needed attention.

* * *

Five minutes later and a block down the street, Helen looked in on Howard through the big glass window with the candy-cane stripes around it. Howard was paying careful attention as he shaved the back of a blonde man’s neck. He looked up at her, then quickly away.

Too quickly.

She went in the shop.

December 20, 1951

4:30 PM

Walter and Eddie

We were still a good ways outside Bootheville when Walter finally moved around some and looked down at Callie snoring on the seat. He squirmed his legs under her bent knees, closing his eyes and sighing at the pain of it, then slowly, carefully, used his sleeve to wipe snot off his upper lip. Looked down again at Callie.

“Damn,” he said, “don’t somebody want to shut up that noise?”

“How you feeling?” I asked.

“It hurts some.”

“Whereabouts and how?”

“My hands and feet mostly. Burns. And feels like you was standing on them.”

“They say that’s a good sign.” I didn’t know that for sure but it sounded reasonable, and it might make him feel better to think it.

“That’s what I heard too.” He pulled off his gloves with his teeth and held up his hands. I didn’t much like the color of them but he could wiggle his fingers a little and I took that as another good sign.

“We got time for a cigarette?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t want to get us into Bootheville before dark anyway.”

I found a wide place in the road that wasn’t drifted over with snow and pulled over to park. Then I thought of that lunch box I threw back behind the seat when I loaded everyone up, and I fished around for it. Inside there was a piece of salt pork and a slab of cornbread wrapped in wax paper, and a thermos. I opened it and sniffed.

“Coffee,” I said. “Here drink some. Not too much.”

He got the thermos between his hands and I could see him wince with the pain of holding it, but he slopped a little into his mouth. Then I took a drink. It wasn’t warm, but it was coffee and it felt good inside me and besides, right then I was about as hard to please as a hungry dog. I figured Walter couldn’t hold meat in his fingers so I held it up to his face and he bit some off.

“Chew it slow,” I said, “and chew it up good. We don’t want none of us choking.”

“That’s facts,” he said through the food. Then he just concentrated on getting it down and I took a bite off it myself while I broke him up a piece of cornbread and by then he was ready for me to feed it in his mouth.

That’s how we ate, and when we finished I lit up a cigarette and took a long, good pull on it before I stuck it in his mouth. He took in a deep lungful and we filled the cab with smoke. I cracked a window.

“How you feeling now?” I asked.

“Better.”

The look on his face when he tried moving around some told me different but no good arguing it with him, so I passed him back the cigarette for another deep drag. “Nothing like a smoke after a good meal.”

“And that was nothing like a good meal,” he finished. It wasn’t funny, but both of us laughed.

“Soon as we get back to Brother Sweetie,” I said, “we’ll get somebody to look at your hands and feet.”

Just that time Callie let out a snore that shook the windows on the truck. She swallowed something through her nose, tried to move, moaned with the hurt of it and started back in snoring again.

“What we going to do about her?” Walter asked me.

“Got to get her to a hospital,” I said. “That sunuvabitch that shot at you opened her up a good one.”

“I heard what she said.”

“What’s that?”

“What she said about how she knew you did the robbery. Likely knows I did too.”

“Yeah, I guess she figured it out.”

“So what we do about her?”

“Well, like I said, I was figuring to take her to Bootheville General and drop her in there and then get the hell out before anyone stops us too much.”

“You figure she ain’t gonna die?”

“Hope not.”

“You figure she’ll maybe come around and talk about us some?”

“Could be she will.”

“Give out what we look like?”

“Give a description of us?” I took a long drag on the cigarette and let it out slow. “I guess it’s likely she could.”

“Do she talk, Brother Sweetie might get mad over it. Over us leaving her alive.”

“Likely so, but nothing I can do about it.” It was getting dark. I put the truck in gear and swung back out onto the road. In all the time we were stopped there no one had passed us either way. The snow was smooth and unbroken clear over to the lights from Bootheville, just a couple miles off.

“Well, you think we should do something…you know, to keep her from talking?”

“I’ve thought at it,” I said, “and like I say, there’s just nothing I can do about it. I mean I can’t just shoot her down in cold blood. Not a woman.”

“Not even a woman ugly as her?”

“She sure ain’t a pretty sight, is she?”

“Pretty?” he snorted. “Hurts my eyes just to look her way.”

“Yeah, but she’s a woman—”

“Look like the Russians are coming, is what she looks like.”

“Yeah, I guess,”

She let out another snore on my lap.

“She make a blind man grateful.”

“Like I said, I just don’t figure I could shoot a woman,” I said, “not even one looks as scary as her. Not when I’m clear-headed, anyway. I mean, was I mad at her or something, yeah, sure, I could kill her was I mad at her, or did she take a shot at me or something. But not cold-blooded and deliberate. Can’t do it. Besides, she maybe saved my life back there.”