The Best American Mystery Stories 3

by Edited by James Ellroy

  “No. Not as long as it’s all working. They’re both too clever for that.”

  “What about us?” whispered Billie.

  “Yeah.” A breath made his chest rise and fall. “Any way you look at it, what about us.”

  On the first day of July the thermometer said it was 92 degrees in the shade. Doyle was gone; Harry was stoned. After his morning run and workout, Billie stretched Gene out on their bed, rubbed him down, lay beside him like every morning. They napped. Something woke Gene before the ticking alarm clock. The window glowed like molten white gold. He shielded his eyes and shuffled to the edge of the fluttering curtains.

  Out there. By the barn. Doyle closing the trunk of his Ford and carrying a shovel back into the barn where maybe it hadn’t been hanging that morning.

  That night, Gene told Billie: “Tomorrow I need you to go to town. With Doyle. If Harry comes, even better, but you’ve got to get Doyle away from here and keep him away for at least half a day. Say it’s for supplies or whatever, but you’ve got to get me free of him.” She nodded in the darkness, and he hated them both for the creeping fear.

  The next day, the second day of July, two days before the fight, he watched as Billie drove away from the farm toward Shelby. With Doyle. Doyle alone.

  Gene ran to the barn, found Harry slumped on a stool. Harry sat in that manure oven, his shirt sleeves buttoned tight on his wrists, flies crawling untroubled on that face where the eyes clung to open above a slack-jawed smile. Gene said: “What kind of man are you?”

  “Wasted,” answered Harry.

  “Can you still lie and do it good enough to save your sister?”

  Harry stared at ghosts standing witness. Licked his lips, told Gene: “I’m the kind of guy who says whatever and then believes it’s true. Believing a lie helps sell it. So you’re telling me that for once in my stupid life, what I gotta do is just be myself? Even I can’t screw that up.”

  Can’t do it like Billie, thought Gene as he saddled the black horse while lecturing her brother: “If Doyle beats me back, tell him I took the horse to ride out my crazies. Sell him that. If I get back first, we got to get this horse in his stall like he never left it. “

  As he galloped away, Gene didn’t look back at the man slumped in the barn door.

  Way he figured it with Billie’s talk about the Pythagorean theorem, from the barn on the ranch south of Shelby to the farmhouse east of that town was just under fourteen miles. But that was one way, and across fenced rolling prairie and farmland where somebody might see him.

  Somebody, but not Doyle. He’d be busy. In town. With Billie.

  Gene boot-heeled the horse’s flanks. Not for nothing. Not all this for nothing.

  Misted indigo humps of the three Sweet Grass Hills rode a horizon of blue sky. Fields of wheat Gene and the horse charged through were losing green to gold, baking to an early harvest in the ninety-five-degree heat. The horse reeked of wet sweat. Would Doyle’s nose pick up that scent rubbed on a man? When he got back. With Billie. A circling hawk watched Gene cut the first of many barbed-wire fences. I’m just like an old-timer now, he thought as he rode through the savaged fence. What was it like for them? Fields of horse-belly-high buffalo grass instead of sodbuster-ruined scrub and wheat planted for starving Boston urchins. What was it like for Billie’s people who rode this endless open with a hundred million buffalo ? Gene heeled his horse.

  He spotted the farmhouse. Nobody else had seen him, though he’d seen a wagon ferrying a Hutterite family in their religion’s strange black pants, homemade checkered shirts, and plain faces. They’d ignored a frantic horseman who galloped past them, cutting fences before they were even out of sight. They’d tell no one outside their colony what they’d seen: nothing outside their community of God mattered.

  Gene sat in the saddle on the heaving horse. Watched the farmhouse for ten minutes. Saw nothing move. He made the horse trot forward.

  “Hello?” he called. No answer. He reined in the horse by a garage window. Gene peered inside: dusty sunlight showed him a coupe with Alberta license plates. And only two seats.

  Took him one loop around the farmhouse to spot what he hadn’t found at Woon’s ranch. Behind a shed was a freshly shoveled solo hole in the earth, six feet long and four feet deep, its dirt pile waiting beside that gaping maw.

  Call me a lucky man, thought Gene. Not many people get to see this.

  Doyle, you lazy bastard. Four feet isn’t deep enough for even one in this coyote country.

  From the saddle, he nudged open the shed door and saw three sacks of quicklime.

  Gene pulled the door shut, then jerked the reins and kicked the frothing horse home.

  In a gully a mile from the Woon barn, the horse staggering beneath him, Gene glanced over the ridge toward the highway: two cars turned off that main road toward the ranch.

  “Go!” he kicked his boot heels. The exhausted black beast stumbled through the rocky gully circling Woon’s ranch. If Gene rode low and kept the horse’s head down, maybe no one driving up in a car would spot him. He risked a scouting peek over the sage-brushed ridge.

  Saw Doyle’s Ford and the toad Taylor’s Cadillac closing in on the ranch.

  From the barn ran Harry, stumbling into the path of the cars so they had to stop, had to not get to the ranch as he waved his arms and ranted like a man poisoned with monsters.

  “Hya!” Gene charged the horse through the gully, around the back of the ranch, up out of its shelter, and into the barn as car engines whined closer. Gene rode the white-foamed black horse into the open stall, flipped off the saddle and almost ripped the teeth out of the wheezing horse’s mouth as he stripped off the bridle, let it fall to the stall floor as car engines stopped. Gene raced toward the mass of sunlight filling the barn door —

  Out, charging toward the two cars emptying of Doyle and Taylor and caught-a-ride Harry. And Billie. Gene yelled: “Where the hell have you been!”

  “In town!” called Billie. Her face told him the truth: “Just in town.”

  Gene whirled to Taylor: “Why the hell are you here?”

  “The town dispatched me to brief you on their plans.” The toad smiled. “And I’ll tell you ours. All that sweat: you’ve been working out. Good. But rest now. Hot out here. Let’s go inside.”

  Gene snapped: “The barn?”

  “I’m no animal,” said Taylor, and led everyone into the house. Sitting in the Woon living room, Gene told Taylor: “Sounds like we ain’t going to have a fight. The radio says the chartered trains from back East have all canceled. No money, no fight, nothing for us to steal. Dempsey’s boss Jack Kearns says —”

  The toad lunged across the room to scream at the sitting boxer: “The fight is happening! Don’t you say that! The fight is happening and we’re . . . we’re . . .”

  “You’re wound tight,” said Gene. “Just as tight as one of the real boosters.”

  “Worry about you!” Taylor’s hands shook. “You got to fight fifteen rounds and still be workable! Don’t worry about Kearns! The fight’s going to happen! They’re meeting in a bank right now getting seed money! People will show up with cash they owe for tickets! And the chartered trains! They’re going to run full speed from St. Paul and Chicago and fifty dollars ringside! They’re bringing all that money so we can take it! Nobody’s going to keep it from us!”

  Gene shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  Saw Doyle staring at the trembling toad.

  “Yes,” said Taylor. “Yes I am. And this is how it works.

  “Under that wooden arena are four rough dressing rooms, one for each fighter. And a collection room for all money coming through the gate. By the sixth round of the Main Event, accountants figure ninety percent of the gate cash will be in. To get it to the bank, they’ll send a posse in the seventh round. Kearns will make Dempsey take it that long so people get their money’s worth. Everybody knows Dempsey can put Gibbons away, so they will all be glued to the ring for the first rounds, for the quick knockou
t. Guards will be on the gates leading down into the dressing rooms and collection area. But inside there’ll only be fighters, their trainers, a couple counting room clerks — and all that cash.

  “You’ve got to take Eric the full fifteen rounds so you’ll have an excuse to still be inside when the Dempsey fight starts. Change fast. Pillowcase masks and gloves go inside with you. Soon as the crowd roars with the bell starting Round One, you three run to the counting room, muscle inside, tie up the clerks, grab the cash, walk out with everything stuffed in your gear bags. Billie picks you up out front during the fifth round while the posse is still at the bank. You’re gone before anybody knows anything is wrong.”

  “No killing,” said Gene.

  “I’m not a necktie fool,” said Doyle. “We got handcuffs and tape strips for the clerks. Shouldn’t be more than two of them. I’ll be gun man, you truss them up, Harry scoops up cash.”

  “You know the rest of the plan,” said Taylor.

  “Yes,” said Gene, “I do.”

  “So,” said the banker to Gene as he stood to leave: “How you gonna do in the fight?”

  “Swell.”

  “Glory,” said Doyle. “Ain’t it great.”

  That night Gene and Billie made love for the last time before the fight.

  “We have to beat everybody,” Gene whispered to her. “Even Harry, and we have to clue him in as much as we dare. We have to do the holdup. Not let anybody die. Get to the car. Then take over Doyle, wrap him up. Drive out east to Texas John’s, dump the whole true thing on him, and convince him ours was the only way. If we turn in the cash plus the guy who shot him and stole it, we got a chance. Maybe Doyle will rat on Taylor, too, buy himself a deal. The men Harry owes won’t go after you two: you’re not worth it to be roped in as accessories. I’ll do time if I have to. No matter what, you’ll be free.”

  “You mean from all this. “

  “From all that you want free of.”

  “It’s a terrible plan.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  Heaven moved aside and let the noon sun boil down on a bull’s-eye boxing ring that Fourth of July, 1923, a black-roped canvas square centered in the heart of an octagonal sloping wooden arena on a sallow dust prairie. Gene wore those bloodied black gloves, blue satin shorts, and his second skin shoes. For a long count he existed alone in the hollow, dry breeze, floating in slow motion, bouncing on the balls of his feet, jabbing air that was as thick as invisible molasses. He lived in the belly of a blazing whiteness. He heard his rasping breaths, his cannon heartbeat. Then gravity’s roar rocketed him back to a box of glory in Shelby, Montana, to Doyle and Harry wearing corner-men’s white shirts and bow ties and sweating at their post, and Gene knew everything had gone terribly wrong.

  “Nobody’s here!” he yelled to Doyle. “Look out at the stands! Like three rows of people! Maybe three hundred at most! Empty bleacher seats stretching all the way up to the sky!”

  Toad Taylor bobbed outside the ring beneath their corner, a ridiculous straw skimmer knocked off-center above his crimson face as he shook both hands in the air and hissed at them: “They’re coming! The charter trains! Don’t believe them when they say they didn’t go! We stopped the rumors about no fight! We did! So they have to go! They have to be here! Plus the crowds outside! Thousands of them! You’re just the throwaway! The time filler! The real people will be here! They’ll bring the big money! They have to! They must! This is the heavyweight championship of the world!”

  But not for Gene.

  Or for Eric Harmon, younger, taller, heavier muscled, and abruptly materialized in the opposite corner. The sheen on Eric looked like the boy had oiled himself, but Gene knew it was sweat: Eric would not cheat. Eric’s eyes were bullets. As their gloves fell away from the referee’s handshake, Gene felt Eric drop benevolence he’d cradled for a lifetime.

  Then rang that bell.

  A whirling fury charged across the ring to Gene, gloves hooking and jabbing and feinting fast, so fast, trees falling on his raised arms as Gene backpedaled, saw flashes of sky and flesh flung his way. Eric connected with a right hook Gene blocked with his shoulder. Gene spun —

  Hit the canvas and bounded up before the referee could count two. The bell rang.

  “He’s killing you out there!” screamed Doyle in the corner as he sponged Gene’s face.

  “He’s trying.”

  “The fight’s gotta last!” Doyle glared into Gene’s face. “Decide how you want to die.”

  Ding!

  Gene took the ring and meant it. Eric rained blows at him. Gene slipped a punch and fired his jab back along the younger man’s arm in a blow that shook Eric’s face. But Gene pulled the last two punches of his combination. Eric didn’t care. Round Two, Three, Four, Five. Eric matched each ticking second of the clock with a punch, a move, a charge.

  Round Six Eric bloodied Gene’s mouth. Not much. A trickle of salty wet inside his cheek. The bell rang. Gene went to his corner. If Doyle or Harry said anything, he heard them not. He swallowed. When the bell rang, a new beast pranced out to meet Eric.

  All fights have a rhythm, a jazz that is the two combatants and the fight itself, a music that shimmers beyond the sum of its parts into a set with its own time and place and fury. Often individual elements of a fight so dominate that the jazz is muted or lost to naked eyes and souls. But even then, the jazz is there. The true boxer senses that jazz in his bones, a feeling he can’t create alone but one that he can slip into, and through it, become it. And command.

  Round Seven came the jazz, and the jazz was Gene. Eric’s punches hit him and hurt, damaged and didn’t matter. Gene’s jabs slammed into the bigger man on time, in rhythm. Gene’s mind cut a deal with the jazz to play long enough to keep the set alive as Gene’s gloves smacked the meat of a young man. Here the ribs. There a hook to the face. Left-left-square up right bam! Over and over again. Round Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eric fought with everything he had and more, but in this music that was his sound, his damning sound: Eric was a fighter fighting. Gene was a boxer. Force against finesse. Strength against science. Work against art. Eric had a heart full of prayers but the angels’ chorus was jazz.

  Round Eleven. Blood ran from Eric’s ears and nose. He threw off the referee. Come on! his gloves beckoned Gene. Come on! Round Twelve. Thirteen. Gene danced him into a clinch.

  “You can have it!” whispered Gene. “I’ll take a dive in the fifteenth! Don’t make me do this!”

  Eric pushed off him and wildly swung-missed. Spit out his mouthpiece. Through broken teeth yelled: “Hell wi’ you! I’m real!”

  The low punch Eric threw might have hit home in Round One, but now Gene slid back and let it fan. Without thought, Gene’s right counter slammed his opponent’s jaw. Eric hit the canvas so hard Gene bounced. Stay down! Gene willed. Eric staggered up on the seven count.

  Round Fourteen. Eric stood in the center of the ring like a heavy bag absorbing punch after punch from Gene, who for a fury blind minute couldn’t stop. Then he backed away, only bobbed back in close when it looked like the referee would call it.

  Fifteen. Final round. Strings down from the sky plucked Eric off his corner stool and puppeted him toward Gene. Blood and sweat trickled down both of Eric’s arms to drip on the canvas. His guard didn’t rise above his belt. Gene tapped his face twice. Eric staggered back —

  A roar from the soles of his shoes tore through the state. Eric charged, his arms swinging slow wild haymakers like a baby, his eyes drowned by gore streaming from his splattered forehead as he yelled: “W’re are ‘ou? ‘Hre ‘ou? Fight me! Fight me!”

  No one should lose like that. Gene snapped up a perfect guard, danced in. As softly as he dared, Gene hooked a right into the staggering man’s cheek and felled him to the canvas.

  The referee stood there, not bothering to count ten. The last bell rang.

  Gene knew the referee raised his hand. Knew Harry gave him water, wiped him down. Knew the mayor bounded into the ring an
d hung a gold-painted brass medal around his neck. Men carried Eric out of the ring. Gene saw his chest move and knew that boy’s hands still clung to life inside bloodied boxing gloves. And as Gene staggered between the ropes Doyle held and saw an arena overflowing with empty seats, he knew that now began his real fight.

  Momentum pulled him to the arena corridor. As they walked past the stands, Gene saw a man pass a Mason jar to the only other two people sitting in the row. Gene knew the Mason jar didn’t hold the concession stand’s lemonade. Going down the corridor’s ramp, Gene and his crew met a squad of trainers and corner-men coming up with night-haired Jack Dempsey.

  Dempsey hit Gene with eyes that were black ice and saw everything about him, the sheen of sweat, the glint of brass around his neck, the blood splattered on Gene’s chest. I’m taller than him, thought Gene as they drew close. That flicker of arrogance whispered to Dempsey. His gaze jabbed Gene’s soul and Gene knew: never had a day that good, never will.