Easy Death (23 page)

And that’s what struck me all at once sad about it: the quiet in that room. And the stillness. No sound but the oxygen machine shoving air in her lungs and pulling it back out again. Nothing else moving at all but that nurse, gliding around like somebody’s ghost.

I can’t really say how I felt then. I mean, here was this woman I’d seen moving around like it hurt her to stand still, and talking like it pained her to shut up, and that was just a couple hours ago, and now here she was.

So damn still.

So damn quiet.

Something about it, it bothered me more than I figured. Funny, me taking on like that. I wiped my eyes and flashed my badge at the nurse. “How’s Ranger Nixon doing?”

“Miss Callie?” she smiled at me. Nurses and cops just naturally get along, working nights and seeing blood like they do. “Doctor Woodrum said she’s out of danger.”

“Did they take the bullet out?”

“You must be really worried about her.” She smiled again, the standard smile they keep tucked away and bring out for anxious relatives. “They’re going to let her rest a little first. Doctor Woodrum will see to her in a couple of hours.”

“Woodrum hurt himself,” I said, “better call Doctor Robbins to do it.”

“Doctor Robbins?” Her face showed what she thought of that idea, and it wasn’t much.

“He’s what you’ve got,” I said. “Go get someone to page him.” She still looked funny about it, so I added, “He’ll surprise you.”

For just a split second I thought she was going to put up a fight about it, but then she kind of shrugged her shoulders and walked out to do like I said.

That was what I wanted. I wanted to say something to Callie before I got the hell out of there. Couldn’t figure what, though. And she likely wouldn’t hear it anyway.

“Callie,” I finally managed, “they say you’re going to be fine. You’re going to do just fine.”

And then it was like something from an old monster movie when that big left hand of hers come up from under the sheet and pulled the oxygen mask right off her face.

“Can’t you keep from lying to me?” she whispered.

“No lie,” I said, “Doc Robbins, he just told me the bullet’s where they can get it easy and, uh, they’ll get it out of you easy he said, and….”

“And you’re J. Edgar Hoover in disguise.” Her voice was weak, not firm and classy like I was used to hearing it. And it was like she couldn’t keep her eyes focused. She squinted at me.

“You’re not in uniform, Officer Drapp.”

“They promoted me to plain clothes,” I said. “Now you just rest.”

“I’ve got to—” She stopped to take a breath. “This is rather important, please. Can you listen?”

“All ears here.”

“I know you robbed that bank or armored car or whatever it was, so you must be rather a desperate character and all.” She stopped to breathe again. “But you brought me here so perhaps you could—” She stopped real sudden, like there wasn’t any air, and she brought that black rubber mask back up to her face and took some air from it, took it in deep.

“You just rest,” I said.

She pulled the oxygen mask back away from her face. “This is rather important,” she said again, so I guessed it must be rather important—to her anyway. “I’m Catholic,” she said, “I—that is, I quit believing in God back in college, all of us girls did, but aside from that I’ve always been a good Catholic, and I want a priest. I have a great deal to confess, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t need no priest,” I said, “Doctor Robbins says—”

“Will you for the love of Fred please just do it?”

“I will.” I put a hand on her shoulder to kind of quiet her. “But you got to rest.”

And she did it. Like all of a sudden everything went out of her and her head laid back on that pillow like a balloon runs out of air.

“Promise me?” She whispered it, all faint and far away.

I put the oxygen mask back on her face and snugged it up good. Listened to her breathing, long and deep.

“Have I ever lied to you?”

But she didn’t hear.

December 20, 1951

7:48 PM

Boxer Healey

In his room above Lola’s, Boxer Healey packed the last of his clean starched shirts carefully into the shiny-smooth natural rawhide Samsonite suitcase borrowed from Lola herself. Then he took his time rolling up neckties and tucking them neatly in the corners, telling himself he wasn’t afraid of Brother Sweetie.

….the day I couldn’t take that big pink blob is when I oughta just give up being a man and start crawling around him like everybody else in this no-account town….

He went to the closet one last time and picked out a good overcoat.

Still, there ain’t no good reason to stick here and let him make things hard for me. Not with the weather so good down in Memphis this time of year and trains pulling out every hour.

He laid his coat across the bed and snapped the lock closed on the suitcase.

And as he did he heard another click, from the door.

Thought I locked that—know I did….

For half of a split second he considered spinning around and swinging his left at whoever must be in the room behind him. He knew this room and its dimensions as well as he ever knew any boxing ring, and his chances of getting in a fast, unexpected punch were pretty good.

Nah
, he reasoned
, might just be Lola come to kiss me goodbye. I got time to turn around slow and act polite.

He turned and saw he was wrong.

Bud Sweeney was in the room, moving fast up to where Boxer was still turning around, off balance. Before he could move again, he felt Sweeney’s big left arm around his shoulders, pulling him close, and the snub-nose .38, the one Sweeney kept for social occasions, pressed against his chest, up high, just over his heart where a shot wouldn’t cause too much bleeding. He just had time to appreciate that Brother Sweetie always did plan things out far ahead when he heard the last thing in his life as Sweeney smiled at him and said,

“Merry Christmas, Boxer.”

December 20, 1951

7:50 PM

Eddie

I got back to the place in the hospital where I first came in, and there was Drapp and two deputies with two of those beds on wheels, and they was piled high with my ill-gotten gains.

“Before you go,” he said, “have you seen anything of that auxiliary officer from Piketon? The one that drove all this in?”

I wondered why he wondered. Hoped he hadn’t been figuring all this through.

“He’s back in the operating room with that ranger-lady,” I said. “She’s talking now.”

That turned his lights on.

“She is? What’s she saying?”

“Keeps fading in and out,” I said, “but from what I can gather, she got a lot of help from that guy….” Doc Robbins was just then rolling Walter out, right where I needed him, and beaming like a Boy Scout because he was all fixed up like I told him, with a coat on and his hands bandaged and his feet padded up in a big pair of rubber overshoes.

“Thank you so much, Doctor,” I said. “We can take it from here.”

“This is the guy that came in with the ranger-lady?” Drapp asked me.

Doc smiled, a little uncertain, “You’re sure he, uh—”

And then a voice came over a loudspeaker in the ceiling, “Doctor Robbins, please report to the Operating Room,” and repeated it to make sure there was no mistake. “Doctor Robbins, please report for surgery to the Operating Room.”

From the look on his face I guessed he hadn’t heard that in a while.

“Yeah,” I said to Drapp. “Hang on a sec—” I turned back to Robbins. “Before you go,” I said, “you got a priest or something hangs around here?”

“I, um, yes, Father Flaghtski is on call at all times…”

“Get him,” I said, “that ranger-lady wants to see him before you take the bullet out. Just in case.”

“I’m taking the bullet out?” He said it thoughtful, like he was trying to remember how far back it was the last time anyone asked him for anything important.

I stepped close and patted him on the shoulder, all friendly-like. Did he screw up operating on Callie I was going to come back, and him and me we’d have us a long talk about it, but no sense saying that now and getting him nervous, time like this. So I just said, “She wants that priest, Doctor. But you just make sure he won’t have to do any last rites or anything like that. Make sure of it.”

“I took bullets out in the war.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to himself, or to somebody no one could see, maybe. “I took so many bullets out of those men. Sometimes it seemed that was all I’d ever do again.”

“Then you ought to get it done right, and no problem.” Behind me, Drapp made an impatient noise.

“I shall need another drink.” Robbins’ eyes focused. “Just one. And just a small one.” He looked at me and then at Drapp. “Goodbye for now, gentlemen.”

He scooted off like a puppy that’s done good, and I could get my mind back to Drapp.

“So I figure we book this one on suspicion,” he said and looked down at Walter. “Just to keep him handy till we work this out. Can’t go too far wrong arresting one of them.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” I said. “We can always drop it later, or just vag him, do we need to. But we don’t want that armored-car guard—” I was careful to say
we
so Drapp wouldn’t think I was running this thing. Or trying to. “—that guy Pierce or whatever his name is—we don’t want him getting too close to this one till we get this sorted out. I don’t suppose you could keep him here any longer?”

Drapp grinned. “I told him we lost his statement,” he said, “and said he had to write it out again. And I said we needed his prints to process the bags. Should be good for another two hours.”

“Sharp work.” I could have patted him on the head. “Have you arranged transport?”

“Wait till you see!”

So he walked me outside, along with four cops carrying the money bags, and it was a sure-enough pre-war paddy wagon, like you see in the old-time movies: a big metal prison on wheels with a peep-hole out the back and running boards with handles for cops to hang on to when they come charging down the street. Just looking at it sent me a deep-down shiver, and all the while the music outside was playing,

For hate is strong

And mocks the song

Of peace on Earth
,

Good will to men

I helped Walter into the front seat while all the cops started throwing money bags into the back, then Drapp locked it up and handed me the key.

“You now have custody of the evidence,” he said. “Andy here can drive you to the station.”

Which is how come I to meet Andy.

He looked like the kind of guy that, was you doing something important, you’d want to put him someplace out of the way where he couldn’t stick his foot in it. He gave me a big happy grin and pumped my hand and then he climbed behind the wheel and got a load of Walter.

“What’s this?” he asked it so simple and innocent I wondered maybe he’d never seen a black man before. But I just told him it was an important witness and we had to take him to the station with us. And damn if he didn’t slap Walter across the shoulder and give him that same grin as he gave me and he said, “Well, welcome along for the ride, Smokey!”

The cops all got inside out of the cold—Drapp, he practically ran in to get to talk with Callie, he thought—so there we was, just me and Walter…and Andy.

Well, it had been a good show, but I didn’t figure to hang around and do any encores. I went over to the ranger truck, the one I drove us in on, and I fished around back behind the seat and came up with the shotgun. It was good and thawed out now, and I racked the chamber empty, snapped the trigger just to check it out, then loaded it up again, pushing shells into the magazine till it wouldn’t hold no more.

And then the back door to the hospital flew open and somebody charged out yelling, “Hold it! You guys don’t move!”

I leveled the shotgun.

It was the reporter. The one saw me when I first got here.

I moved closer to the ranger truck, where the shadows covered me a little, and hugged the shotgun close up to me, where I could step close and get off a shot quick, did I need to. And that reporter he just kept coming out the back of the hospital at us, and then I saw he was dragging something.

I stood a little easier. Not much, just a little.

“You guys forgot this bag—the one they left in the truck!”

And it was that last bag, the one that wouldn’t fit in the car this morning, ten hours back and a lifetime ago.

I was glad to see it, but this was still a touchy situation. I grunted, “In here,” and moved to the back of the paddy wagon where I quick opened the door and stood just a little in back of it.

Andy, god bless him, he jumped out of the driver’s seat, grabbed that bag and threw it in the back. “Don’t get too close,” he said, real important, “all this is evidence, here.”

“I don’t care if it’s Shinola,” the reporter snapped back at him. “You guys would have left it here and had to make another trip if I hadn’t stopped you.”

I’d already closed the door back shut by then, and I stood behind Andy, keeping that big hat mostly over my face, I hoped. And holding the shotgun ready.

“Well, you never should have picked it up to start with,” Andy was getting himself warmed up now. “A civilian’s got no business getting his hands all over the evidence like that.”

“Well, if some cops I know didn’t leave it sitting around to walk off with, maybe we citizens wouldn’t get our hands on it at all,” the reporter said, but I nudged Andy, still standing close behind him, keeping out of sight, and I grunted again:

“Let’s move out.”

He looked at the reporter like he was going to really set him down a peg, could he think of something clever, but that was pretty far beyond him. I think he was glad of the excuse to leave. Then that reporter he looks close at me through the shadows.

“Who’s this, anyway?”