Spare Change (32 page)

Sam rewound the conversation
with his father and played it through his head, over and over again. He
attached weight and meaning to every word, to every phrase, even to the few
pauses and stammers; then he separated the syllables and listened to hear what
hadn’t been said—all of this in an effort to sort out the truth. 

There had been trouble
before—the woman from Laughton, the dancer from Virginia Beach, the red-headed
cocktail waitress—all of them swore Scooter had taken advantage of them and he
swore he’d done no such thing. Sam, blinded by an eagerness to please, had
always accepted Scooter’s version of the story. So, dressed in his patrolman’s
uniform, he’d visited each of the women and handed over an envelope of money;
authoritatively suggesting that they leave town. 

Sam stopped for a red light
and wearily lowered his head down onto the steering wheel, “Stupid,” he sighed,
“just plain stupid.” If he sat there and thought about it for a moment longer,
common sense might have told him to turn around and head home; but as it
happened, a heating oil truck pulled behind him and the driver began beeping
his horn the instant the light switched over to green.         

Despite memories of the
past, Cobb blood ran through Sam’s veins and by the time he arrived in
Wyattsville he had once again convinced himself of his father’s innocence. So
what if Pop is a bit hot-headed, Sam reasoned, that’s not a crime.  He may be
guilty of indiscretion, but murder—never!

After Olivia realized she’d
been mistaken about the light in Detective Mahoney’s eyes, she decided a new
level of diligence would be required for watching over Ethan Allen. She
informed the boy that she would be driving him to school in the morning and
back home in the afternoon; and that she or one of the neighbors had to be
sitting in the playground whenever he was there. “From now on,” she said,
“You’re limited to a one-block radius for this errand-running business and
you’ll have to check in after each trip.” When Ethan Allen complained he was
being treated like a child, Olivia apologized. “I’m only doing this for your
own good,” she sighed, and hugged him to her breast.

“But, jeez,” he moaned and
wriggled loose.

Of course, Ethan was still
free to roam the hallways of the Wyattsville Arms apartment building, which he
did. He played catch with Dog for biggest part of the first afternoon then he
batted a brand new Spaulding from wall to wall for a while. After that, he
practiced turning summersaults and tried walking on his hands, but before long
he was bored. He then came up with the idea of running errands within the
building and started ringing one door bell after the other. “Need somebody to
fetch your laundry from the basement?” he asked Emma Kline who had a faulty hip
and was forever complaining about it.

“I surely do,” she answered,
and gave him ten cents for his trouble. 

After that he branched out
to hauling things back and forth from the storage room and emptying garbage
pails down the incinerator chute. He was in the midst of delivering a broccoli
and cheese casserole from Sara Parker to Mister Bailey who lived three doors
down from Olivia, when he heard the voice.

“Hey, kid!” Sam Cobb, still
wearing his uniform, yelled. 

The casserole jumped out of
Ethan’s hands and smashed to the floor with a noise which could be heard
throughout the building. “Grandma!” he screamed in a panicky cry of
desperation; then he went flying down the hallway.

This was not at all what Sam
had expected. “Wait up,” he yelled, “I just want a word with you.”
Instinctively, he took off chasing the boy but by then several of the
Wyattsville Arms residents had opened their door; one of them was Olivia. 

She’d been expecting trouble;
a nagging feeling had settled into her chest the moment she suspected the light
in Jack Mahoney’s eyes had been a mistake, which is why Ethan Allen’s baseball
bat was standing alongside the front door. Olivia grabbed it and charged into
the hallway swinging. Ethan Allen, still screaming her name, darted through the
open door just as Olivia whacked Sam Cobb in the knee. As Sam tumbled to the
floor,  Olivia scrambled back inside the apartment and double-locked the door.

By then Mister Bailey had
telephoned for the police. 

Sam Cobb was lying on the
floor with a broken kneecap when the Wyattsville patrol car arrived minutes
later. Were it merely Olivia’s word against that of a fellow officer in
uniform, the two policemen may have shown favor toward Sam, but with a broken
casserole dish splattered across the floor and nine neighbors pointing a finger
at Cobb, they had little choice but to haul him off to the Wyattsville Police
Station.

“But, I’m on assignment,”
Sam protested as they helped him to his feet and down to the squad car. “I’m
investigating an eyewitness report on the Doyle murder case,” he told them,
“Eastern Shore Precinct, go ahead, check it out.” Without a doubt, that was the
worst thing he could have said, because Sergeant Gomez, who was the duty
officer that evening, immediately put in a call to Captain Rogers.

“Cobb?” the Captain said,
“he’s off that case, Detective Mahoney’s working it.” 

Jack Mahoney was at home
having his dinner when he got the call.  “Holy shit!” he moaned, when told of
the situation. Jack reluctantly confirmed that Sam, although he had originally been
assigned to the case, no longer had reason to be involved. 

“Well then,” Gomez said,
“have you any idea why he’s here?”

There was a lengthy moment
of hesitation before Jack said, “I believe he’s got a personal connection to
the lead suspect in the case.”

“Oh? And, that is?”

“His father. The kid Sam
allegedly went after is an eye witness who claims Scooter Cobb, Sam’s pop, is
responsible for a murder. Now, that’s not what the kid originally said, and
we’re still waiting for lab reports, so we don’t know if the story’s legit.”

Fifteen minutes later, Sam
Cobb was booked on charges of assault and attempting to intimidate a witness in
a capital crime. He was placed in a nine foot square cell and locked down for
the night.

Mahoney replaced the
telephone receiver and returned to the dinner table but he didn’t eat another
bite. In all the years he’d been a detective, this was the first time he’d ever
had to turn on one of his own. Jack could easily enough believe Scooter Cobb capable
of the crime in question; he was a bad-tempered man with a reputation for
trouble. But, Sam? Sam had his share of faults—he was arrogant, aggressive,
even belligerent when he didn’t get the assignments he thought he deserved—but
how likely was it he’d try to cover up a murder? Sam Cobb? A man who had his
heart set on making detective?

Ethan Allen

I
figured I was good as dead with Sam Cobb coming after
me. When I took off screaming, a bunch of folks poked their heads out the door;
but, nobody did nothing except Grandma Olivia.

Let me tell you, it was a
sight when she came out swinging that baseball bat! I’d never of figured a
person her size could beat back a Cobb. ‘Course, she got the drop on him cause he
wasn’t expecting such a thing. Next time, you can bet your sweet ass he’ll be
ready for her.

Grandma says now that the
police has got Scooter’s boy in jail, he ain’t gonna be hurting nobody. She
says I got nothing more to worry about.

But me…well, I say she
don’t know those Cobbs! Them is the meanest men on earth and if you ain’t
looking to get pulverized, you’d best be prepared.

Taking No Chances

A
fter the Wyattsville Police had carted Sam Cobb off,
Olivia’s nerves took hold; she shivered and trembled as if there was an
earthquake happening inside of her. Icy cold beads of perspiration rose up on
her forehead and her knees buckled under. “No wonder,” Clara clucked, “given
what you’ve just gone through! It’s a miracle you didn’t pass out cold!” Clara
brewed a pot of chamomile tea, saying it was just the thing to help a person
relax. Barbara Conklin, because of the incident when she’d backed her husband’s
car into a telephone pole, knew tea alone was too weak a remedy for a severe
case of nerves, so she added two shots of brandy to the cup. Fred McGinty, who
swore by the super-strength sleeping pills in his medicine cabinet, dashed back
to his apartment, brought back two and plunked them into Olivia’s tea.

“What she needs,” he told
the others, “is a good night’s rest. What she needs is to put the entire
episode behind her.”

Before she’d finished even
half the tea, Olivia began to yawn then she toddled off to the bedroom claiming
she’d stretch out across the bed for a few minutes to rest herself. When the
sound of snores echoed through to the living room, the neighbors left telling
Ethan Allen to be sure to double-bolt the door behind them.

“Okay,” the boy answered,
although that was not at all what he intended.

By midnight the building was
so quiet that a passerby would believe every resident tucked beneath the covers
and sound asleep; which they were, except for one small boy. While the rest of
the residents slept, he was tiptoeing down the back stairs. Ethan Allen knew
what he needed and he knew just where to find it.

Three of them were in Mister
Porter’s storage bin. He’d seen them there, less than a week ago, squeezed in
between a carton of books and a broken coat tree; but of course, there was no
knowing whether or not they were in working order. Pushing the thought of such
a disastrous possibility from his head, Ethan Allen shimmied across the
partition holding Seth Porter’s belongings back from those of Bessie Morgan. He
landed with a hard thud, waited a handful of minutes to make sure the sound had
gone undetected, then pulled a flashlight from his pocket and switched it on.
At first it appeared the guns were gone, vanished from sight, but such wasn’t
the case for once he pushed aside a carton of sweaters which had recently been
added to the mix, there they were, standing like a trio of soldiers lined up
for battle—two Browning shotguns, one a single barrel, the other a side by side
double, and a Winchester rifle.    

Ethan Allen took hold of the
Winchester—any one of the three might have suited his need, but a rifle was
something special. A rifle was way more powerful than a shotgun and ten million
times more accurate than the scattergun he’d used to shoot groundhogs. A rifle
could hit square in the heart of what a person was aiming at and kill it dead.
The Winchester was a gun that meant business. He released the lever action and
pushed down—the chamber was empty.

If Seth Porter had a
perfectly good Winchester he had to have bullets, Ethan reasoned as he began
rummaging through carton after carton of the man’s belonging. He removed the
books one by one, then took the time to flip open each cover and check for a
supply of cartridges that might be hidden in a nest of hollowed out pages. When
the books failed to produce anything, he began searching through boxes of
games, after that it was cartons of kitchenware and numerous valises filled
with clothing; time after time he bypassed a lone carton marked,
Melissa’s
things,
dubiously shaking his head as he moved on to another carton with a
more promising name. He rummaged through a barrel marked
Camping
,
then
tore into a box  marked
Sporting goods
, but neither contained cartridges
to fit the Winchester, in fact, they contained no cartridges at all. 

As a last resort, he opened
the carton of Melissa’s things; with a yellowed wedding gown right on top, it
started out pretty much as expected. He pulled the gown from the box and set it
aside. By now Ethan Allen was feeling pretty discouraged, having a Winchester
with no bullets wouldn’t be much help—it could maybe scare the poop out of some
knucklehead, but the Cobbs weren’t knuckleheads and they didn’t scare easy; matter
of fact, they didn’t scare at all! He hauled out a swatch of lace that had
fallen from the gown then a music box which tinkled a few notes and stopped.

Maybe, Ethan thought, he’d
be better off disappearing, but if the Cobbs couldn’t catch hold of him, they
might take it out on Olivia, seeing as how she was his grandma. No, he decided,
he’d not run. “No more,” he grumbled as he thought back to how he’d trembled like
a scared rabbit as he watched Scooter beat his daddy to death. On sleepless
nights he could still hear his daddy’s screams. No, he decided, this time there
wasn’t gonna be any running off, he was gonna stay and fight. He dug his way
through a number of other dresses, a book of poetry and a bald-headed doll
baby, then found what he’d been searching for, well, not exactly what he’d been
searching for, but close enough. At the very bottom of Melissa’s things was a
full box of twenty gauge shotgun shells—way too big for the Winchester, but
they’d fit the double barreled Browning.  The shotgun wasn’t Ethan’s first
choice, because with several strips of black tape circling the butt end of the
stock, it seemed somewhat worse for the wear, but a worn out shotgun with
shells was a lot better than an empty Winchester.

He set the rifle back in
place and took hold of the double-barreled Browning. Shoving the lever to the
right, he cracked the gun open and checked the breech—it also was empty. Ethan
removed two shells from the box, loaded them into position and then put the
remainder in his pocket.