Easy Death (20 page)

“Gonna get a gun.” Mort noted with surprise that he was talking out loud, still with his teeth clenched. “Get a gun and kill ’im.”

“You listen to me.” She got her arms tight around his reedy body, held him as hard as she could, and kept walking him through the snow, one eye out for a streetcar, a taxi cab, maybe a black-and-white…no, they’d ask too many questions. Just keep him moving and, “Listen to me, Mort. You are not killing nobody. Nobody, you hear me?”

“The money. We needed it and he just—just
took
it!”

“Your kids are not going to wake up Christmas morning and their daddy in jail for murder. You hear me, Mort? I am not going to let that happen. Not to them and not to you. You understand me?”

He said nothing and she settled for it and kept walking him up the snowy sidewalk.
Never figured on anything like this
, she thought.
Hell, you find you a guy and stand up there and say “I do” and you never see it coming, nothing like this anyhow. Who’d figure little Helen the cheerleader to be carrying her husband up the street in the snow, and him all bloody and beat up like…like….

She held him even tighter. Felt tears welling up and refused to show them.

Kept walking.

They were just a block or so from home when his knees rub-bered and he went down, almost pulling her with him as he sat in the snow in a crumpled heap.

“Gawwwd…” It came from him like air out from a punctured football, leaving him all empty inside—beaten and empty. “Helen, I—I got to have something. Something warm. Inside, I got to have something…so cold….”

“We’re almost home, hon.” She reached down to pull him up, but it was like an armload of wet wash; he kept slipping, down into the snow. “C’mon, get up….”

“Can’t,” he managed, “gotta…Helen, get me something hot. Please, Helen…”

There was a diner across the street. Brightly lit and looked full of people stuck there by the snow. “Right over here, Hon,” she urged, “just get up and come on.”

“I can’t,” he said again, “I just can’t go in there looking like—” his voice trailed off once more. “Bring me something. Anything? So cold….”

She left him there and started across the street, her cheap rubber overshoes squeaking and squelching in the wet half-packed snow that buried sidewalk, pavement and curb.

Helen blinked a second in the bright lights inside the diner. It felt warm there, and she let herself enjoy it while her eyes adjusted.
Damn, it’s crowded in here!

She pushed toward the counter to order coffee to go. There was a man in front of her holding three checks. And a man in front of him, hugging four take-out bags, fumbling to get at his wallet under his overcoat. And a woman in front of him, carefully scanning the dessert case, her eyes going from the cherry pie to the coconut cake, to the rice pudding…now back to the cherry pie….

He needs me. Mort needs something hot. And he needs it now!

Helen fished into the pocket of her overcoat, ruffled her fingers past the half-stick of gum, the lipstick, the bobby pin, and through the few coins there, finally coming up with a worn Mercury dime. She stalked over to a middle-aged, well-dressed man reading the local paper overtop the meatloaf special. She plunked her dime down on the shiny-topped table, picked up his coffee, saucer and all, placed the saucer carefully over the mouth of the steaming cup and walked out, ignoring his goggle-eyed stare and the eyes of the other diners.

Got to get it to him. Hurry, now, he needs it bad.

Somehow she managed her way across the treacherous street.

But Mort was gone.

She looked down the street for a long moment, then back at the place in the snow where she’d left him. Found his tracks and followed them up the sidewalk about a half-block, then lost them when they crossed the street. She remembered him lying there, bloody, beer-soaked and shivering, and the words seemed to shape themselves in her mind:

I’ll find that lousy sunuvabitch I married and kill him myself.

December 20, 1951

6:20 PM

Eddie

Robbins led me down a mess of halls, all painted light green or skin-colored till we finally got to where a door said NO ADMITTANCE and he pulled out a mess of keys on a chain and found the one to unlock it. It was a white-looking place: shiny white walls, white-tile floors, white lights and sinks. I blinked for a minute and took it all in. Then as I started over to a sink, there was this loudspeaker in the room and it came out with some fuzzy noise. All I could make out was something sounded like, “…Robbins get in my office damn quick.”

He gave the loudspeaker kind of a surly look, pried a little box out of his pocket and shook some Sen-Sen flakes onto his pillow-soft hand.

“Have some?” He waved the little box my way.

“No thanks,” I said, “they taste too much like soap for me.”

“They do indeed.” He popped them in his mouth and looked at me over his glasses. “But the wages of gin is breath.”

The loudspeaker on the wall barked again and he almost jumped.

“The wheels of justice,” he pronounced, “generally grind much slower than this. You must have really stirred things up, Officer Drapp. Until later then…” And he waddled out and down the hall.

Which was fine with me. I went over to the sink and rooted around in the mirrored medicine cabinet overhead till I found some cold cream and a razor. Then I stripped to the waist, rubbed warm water over my chest and back and toweled off with one of the stark-white towels stacked to one side. While I did, I looked in the mirror at the big ugly bruises that Scranton guy left there with his hiking boots, and I’m here to say they was big and they was ugly. I felt around my rib cage and told myself I didn’t have nothing broken very much. Good enough. And whatever was in that pain medicine was picking me up some.

I lathered cold cream on my face and shaved close, not so much because I needed it but because I wanted to look sharp. Then I rooted around in a bank of lockers till I found a white shirt that almost fit me. I put it on, tucked it in straight, then brushed off my blue uniform pants with a towel and went to shine my boots with cold cream.

That’s when I saw the hole there. In my boot, where Scranton had shot it.

I wondered how easy it was to notice, whether I could pass it off or something, but I could see quick that was no good. I looked around some more till I found a decent-looking pair of shoes someone had set to dry by a radiator. They were kind of loose, but good enough when I stuffed toilet paper in them.

I knotted my black uniform necktie back on, checking myself in the mirror.

I looked sharp. And ready to get that money back. The only thing stopping me now was about a dozen cops and one reporter hanging around the place.

I hunted around till I found a trench coat that fit good and a hat a little too big for me but it’d do. I stuffed some more toilet paper in the rim till it stayed up, then buttoned up the coat and looked in a mirror again.

What I saw looked enough like a plain-clothes cop to scare me. I took the badge off my police coat and pinned it inside my wallet then tucked it in the left-hand pocket of the trench coat. In my right-hand pocket I put the gun from my holster. Then I gathered up what was left from my cop clothes and shoved them down a big trash can under a pile of wet paper towels.

One last stop to wipe down anyplace where I might have left fingerprints, and then I marched out of there just like I knew what I was doing.

Out in the lobby, I stopped at a cigarette machine, put in a nickel and got myself a pack of Luckies. Peeled open the top and tapped one out as I walked over to a row of shiny wood-and-glass phone booths. Went inside one and dropped a dime in the slot. I had just enough time to light up and get in a good deep drag off it before I heard Brother Sweetie on the other end.

“Bud Sweeney’s Used Cars,” he rasped.

“Hiya, Brother,” I said.

“It’s Mister Sweeney to guys what owes me, and that’s you mister, and where the hell are you anyhow?”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said, “not too much anyway. I’m at the public phones at Bootheville General Hospital.”

“Hospital? What the hell you hanging around the hospital for?”

I liked how he showed concern. “We got bothered,” I said.

“Wha’dya, kill somebody?”

“Not so’s it shows,” I said. “Walter got banged up some. I got to get him out of the hospital here before we get back to you.”

“The hell with him.” Even over the phone I could see the look on his face. It wasn’t pretty. “Where’s my goods?”

“It’s a work in progress,” I said.

“The hell’s that mean?”

“Just something I heard a lady say today,” I said. “It means we ain’t done yet and maybe never will be. But if we make it, me and Walter are gonna need someone to meet us someplace with a big car or a small truck. Something big enough to carry all those bags. And it better be something I can recognize. You still got that ice truck in the garage?”

“I got it.”

“Well get somebody to drive it out to…” I thought a minute. “You know Dell’s Truck Stop between Bootheville and the Piketon bypass?”

“Yeah?”

“Have them meet me there. In the ice truck. And tell whoever you send I don’t know what I’ll be driving. Could be a cop car, so don’t panic, do they see one pull right up to them.”

“Where the hell am I going to find someone to drive out to Dell’s on a night like this?”

“Use your personality,” I said. “Or come yourself.”

“What’s the matter, I don’t look busy here this close to Christmas?”

“Look, you want it or don’t you?”

“Don’t ask. Just get it there.”

“And you just get that truck out to Dell’s. Turn on the charm do you have to, but get it there.”

“So I turn on the charm.”

“See you after a while,” I said, “and Merry Christmas.”

I missed his answer as I hung up the phone.

Out in the lobby some of the cops had started to wonder what they were doing here, and the smart ones had figured they were better off in a warm dry hospital than outside on a night like this, so they were trying hard to look like they was busy at something important. As I passed through, I heard someone with stripes ask, “Where the hell’s that deputy from Piketon?” but I paid him no mind.

Back in the part of the hospital where they do the operating there was a little place where they kept things organized; just a wide spot in the hallway with some hanging files and a wood table with a phone on it. Across from that there was a door with a cop standing outside it and a look on his face said
I’m guarding something
, which I figured meant the money was close by. I walked up to him and saw he was a Bootheville cop, so I kept going like I was about to walk right through him but when I got close I pulled the wallet out of my pocket and flashed the badge at him real quick.

“Officer Drapp,” I introduced myself, “Willisburg Police.”

Only he didn’t pick up on it. He just nodded behind him and said, “He’s in there—” and right then the door opens “—oh here he is now.”

And out through that door comes a short, broad-shouldered guy wearing a Willisburg Police uniform and a mean look, and they both fit him pretty good.

And right next to him the big guard from the armored car—the one that I shot his brother.

December 20, 1951

7:00 PM

Eddie

The cop who was at the door smiled at me and said real helpful-like, “This here’s Officer Drapp!” But Drapp just said, “Busy now,” and brushed right past me to the phone on the table, which left me standing there staring at the guard from the armored car.

And him staring at me.

Everything I had, I put it in my eyes. Didn’t show nothing on my face, just looked right back at him. And while I was at it, I slid my right hand in my coat pocket and let him see the outline of the gun there.

He recognized me all right. That was the first thing I saw on his big red face. Next thing I saw was that he didn’t believe it, just couldn’t get his mind around how I could be standing here in a building full of cops, staring him down. His eyes locked on mine, but I could see another part of him was checking to see was he still here on planet Earth or was he maybe just having a nightmare—and hoping he’d wake up from it quick.

And I kept staring straight on, my eyes walking right over him.

Behind me, Drapp was talking on the phone. He’d got the hospital switchboard operator to connect him with a cop shop and the way he was talking, it was to someone he knew.

“Bernie, put this out to the streetcars and roadblocks, then call the county with it, then Highway Patrol, then the local departments out fifty miles. And then the radio stations. Got that? I said first the county, then the patrol…yeah, then the local departments and then the radio. Ready? We’re looking for an ambulance. White with a red cross. No, that’s all I got—” He shot a look at the armored-car guard, the kind of look you give your kid when he brings home a bad grade card. It didn’t do much good, since the guard was still looking goggled-eyed at me. “Only got a description on one of them,” Drapp went on, “male, white, short, blonde and dressed like a doctor…. Well, I guess that means he’s wearing white…. No, that’s all we got.” He looked at the guard again. “No, that’s all we got. No, that’s—hey, when I say
that’s all we got
what does that convey to you? Okay. Anything doing out there? I didn’t think so. No, I’ll get back if there’s anything. Yeah, Merry Christmas.”

All the time he was talking I just kept my eyes on that guard, staring at him like he was the one should be worried, not me.

And he was worried. Could be it was hearing Drapp put out the description I’d fed him, which didn’t look a bit like me, and it kind of made him out a liar. But there was something else on his mind, and I could see it coming up in his eyes while he tried to figure this out: here he’d been robbed by a guy who looked like a cop, and now here was the same guy looking right at him in a room full of other guys dressed like cops. He was figuring maybe the whole stick-up was a cop show. Maybe he was surrounded by the men that robbed him. Maybe….