The Autumn Dead jd-5

by Edward Gorman

  He came moving awkwardly out of the woods on his clubfoot. He wore one of those disposable plastic raincoats you can buy for a dollar. On his head was a Cubs baseball cap and in his hand was a baby blue suitcase covered with travel stickers.

  Halfway to the boulder, he tripped on something and started to fall, arms pushing out to make the fall easier, but then he righted himself and continued on.

  He had no trouble making the exchange. He took the black briefcase down and opened it up and looked inside. I thought I saw him smile but I couldn't be sure. Then he closed the black briefcase and set it on the ground next to him and he took the baby-blue suitcase and set it up on the rock, and then he turned and started away.

  And that's when I moved.

  "Stop!" I said.

  Terrified, he started moving away. I called, "I've got a thirty-eight sighted right on your back. One more step and you're dead. You understand me?"

  That was all it took, that was all it ever took with somebody like him.

  I walked across the soggy ground. The rain was relentless. When I reached the boulder, I grabbed the baby-blue suitcase. For a moment, it felt strange in my hand-so many people wanted this, it held the secret to so much. Then I hefted it and walked over to him.

  I put the.38 right against his forehead and pulled off the safety.

  "What the hell you going to do?" Chuck Lane said.

  "I want to kill you."

  "Jesus, Dwyer. Please. Please."

  "She was your own goddamn sister."

  "Dwyer, listen."

  "Your own goddamn sister." I was getting crazy. I really did want to kill him.

  "Whenever she needed money, Dwyer, she'd tap them. I was just going to tap them once myself. The same thing. No different from her." He was gibbering.

  "Why would they pay her?"

  "Because of something that happened."

  "How'd you get the suitcase?"

  "I went over to that spade's condo. No sweat." He sounded proud of himself.

  "Why is Forester willing to pay for it?"

  "You really don't know?" His spaniel eyes looked perplexed.

  He had just started to speak when I heard a car come roaring down the muddy road, and before I could even turn around to confirm that it was Forester's Mercedes, the shotgun started firing.

  In front of me, Lane's left shoulder exploded into blood and shattered bone. But what was amazing was his gaze. Perfect and complete bafflement, as if this was something he could not fathom. He stared at the large red hole where his shoulder had been and then glanced up at me as if I could explain it.

  I pushed him behind the boulder as the Mercedes started its circle. All they had to do was keep circling, firing from a moving car, cutting us both down.

  They started on their first pass. I dropped to one knee, grabbed one wrist, steadied the gun and myself, and let go.

  I got Dave Haskins, who had been leaning out the back window with a shotgun, right in the face.

  For a moment, the car veered toward the trees, lights spraying over the sodden black night. All I could hear was screaming-the sounds Haskins made as he was dying, the sounds Forester and Price made at the terrible prospect of his dying.

  Chuck Lane was in a pile against the boulder, unconscious. He smelled now of blood and vomit and his own feces. I reached into his belt and found a.45. I jammed it into my pocket.

  The Mercedes started to back up.

  I shot out both rear tires. The back end of the car sank abruptly lower.

  Inside the car you could still hear Haskins screaming. That and the rain were the only sounds. After thirty seconds or so, Forester cut the headlights. I heard Price say, "Shut up, Dave! Shut up, Dave!" I had to agree with him, the dying sounds were getting unbearable. I wished I'd hit him cleaner. Then I heard the crunch: something heavy against bone. Price had shut him up, apparently crushing what was left of his skull.

  Then there was just the sound of the rain and the occasional low moan of Chuck Lane.

  A few minutes later the sound of the far back door opening impressed itself on the gloom even above the noise of the rain.

  I didn't know which of them it was but it was obvious what they were going to do.

  I got Lane by the collar and dragged him to the other side of the boulder.

  Then the firing started again. It was impressive. The bullets kept coming for three or four minutes without stop and all the time the only thing I could do was hunch down and say prayers because I was so afraid. I could barely swallow and my stomach was burning all the way up my windpipe. He had an automatic rifle, maybe more than one of them. I did not want to die. I thought of Donna's advice about involving Edelman. I should have.

  "They're going to get us, aren't they?"

  Lane was awake again, and crying.

  "Shut up," I said.

  "You're scared, just like me."

  "Shut up," I said again.

  The gunfire had abated. I tried to listen through the rain. The leaves betrayed him and so did a furtive glimpse of moonlight.

  Larry Price was circling to the east of the boulder, fanning out wide, setting himself up for some easy target practice. I shot him once in the face and twice in the chest.

  He made no sound other than falling into the leaves. A moist, final sound.

  Forester called out, "Larry? Larry?" He was still in the car, sticking his head through the window.

  "He's dead," I shouted back.

  He had an automatic weapon too. He opened up with it and he kept up with it for two full minutes. Next to me, coming awake, Chuck started to scream. Then I started screaming, too. I was tired of being afraid of dying. I thought of the old number about the man who was so afraid to die, he committed suicide. Only I wasn't going to give Forester that satisfaction.

  I put my final two bullets into the gas tank of the Mercedes and watched it go up.

  It was impressive against the night-for a moment it was hot and bright as a July noon-and you almost couldn't hear him scream and then you couldn't hear him at all, there was just the beautiful white noise of the explosion itself.

  I was watching it all when I felt something bump the back of my head, and I knew that Chuck Lane was even more of a loser than I'd imagined.

  "I always carry a spare, man. I'm not a dummy."

  "Right, Chuck. You're not a dummy."

  "I don't give a shit what you think of me, Dwyer."

  He kept punching the gun into my head. It hurt. From inside my jacket I took the shiv. I eased it into my hand. Ready.

  "You killed her, your own sister, man," I said.

  "Bullshit. I didn't kill her. No way. I stiffed that crazy broad, Evelyn, because if she went to the cops, then the whole blackmail number would be ruined. But not my sister, man. Whatever else, she was blood."

  He jammed the gun into my head again. His breath was coming in heaves that were almost sobs. "You're gonna help me to my car, man."

  "Sure, Chuck."

  "You're gonna help me or I'm gonna kill you."

  All it took was ducking a little to the right. He got a shot off but it went wild. Just what you'd expect from a sad, desperate man like Chuck Lane.

  I got him up clean, just under the sternum, and I put it all the way in and I twisted it twice, liking the sound of his surprise, and the sound of death.

  "Jesus," he said.

  And then I saw his face and I had to look away.

  "Jesus," he said again. But he wasn't cursing. He was praying.

  "You gotta help me, Dwyer," he said.

  "There's nothing I can do, Chuck." I still couldn't look at him. All I could do was shake my head.

  He started to cry and then he started to vomit and then he started to scream and then he just went silent. Like that, silence.

  I knelt there, my back to him, soaked now, listening to the night, the rattle of rain against the trees, a factory whistle announcing a change in shifts.

  The fire that had been the Mercedes was burning lower.


  I got up then and walked around and stared at each one of them.

  In the distance I could hear sirens.

  I went back to doomed Chuck Lane, the screw-up. He was still piled up against the boulder. His eyes were open. I got down on my haunches and closed them for him and then I put my hand on his shoulder and said a prayer, a long one, and it was only partly for the men who'd died here tonight. A lot of it was for me, a whole lot of it, and what might be happening to me, the way I hadn't minded taking off Haskins' face, the way the shiv felt right and good jamming up inside Chuck Lane.

  The sirens got closer.

  Chapter 32

  "So they raped her?" Edelman asked me two hours later.

  We sat in Malley's. Dolly Parton was on the jukebox. The pool balls were clacking. The rain ran like mercury down the front window. It just wasn't going to stop.

  "Forester and Haskins and Price and Sonny Howard," I said. "She hung around them because she was trying to move up the social ladder, get out of the Highlands any way she could, and so she went to their parties and dated Forester sometimes and dated Price others. And then one night they all got drunk and they took her up to Pierce Point and they showed her what poor girls were really worth."

  By the end I was making fists.

  "You don't sound real sorry they're dead," Edelman said softly.

  "I'm trying real hard," I said and without irony. "But I don't know if I'm going to make it."

  He nodded to my shell. "How about another one?"

  "How about six more?"

  "Six more is fine by me."

  So we started our way through six more, having shots brought along. "What the hell," Edelman said. "I always secretly wanted to be blue collar anyway." So he knocked back the bourbon and made a terrible face and said, "That was great."

  "Right."

  He sipped at his beer. "So this Evelyn thought that Karen Lane killed her cousin Sonny?"

  "Right."

  "Did she?"

  "No. After the rape, Sonny started hanging around Karen, and he fell in love with her. He was very guilty about being involved in her rape. So guilty that Forester and the other two were afraid he was going to go to the police and confess. They were the ones who pushed him off Pierce Point. They killed him."

  "You ready for another?"

  "You're going to?"

  "Why not?"

  "I'm sure glad you got the other boys to spell you tonight."

  "Let them clean things up for once. I usually get the shit detail, anyway." He signaled to Malley for another round.

  I thought of what Pierce Point must look like by now. Ten emergency vehicles, red-and-blue lights startling in the gloom, the, dead bodies.

  He knocked this one back too, except he coughed. "Christ," he said. Then he smiled. "Being blue collar isn't as easy as it looks."

  "Wait till you have to get up some morning and go punch in at some factory. Staring at stiffs sounds like fun all of a sudden."

  He took a handful of peanuts from the red plastic bowl in front of him and said, "So she blackmailed them?"

  "She and her brother. Over the years. Never for a lot, a few thousand here, a few thousand there. Then her brother got greedy."

  "'He took the suitcase. From Doctor Evans?"

  "Right."

  He paused. "You going to let me see it?"

  "I don't think so."

  He sighed. Put his hand on my shoulder. "Its evidence."

  I put my head down and thought about what I'd found in the suitcase. The story for one thing, the story she told Gary Roberts she wanted him to "touch up" for her, the story that laid it all out. Terrible writing. Confession-magazine stuff crossed with the worst sort of Holly Golightly daydreams. But it told it all-the rape, the blackmail, the brother she'd helped drag through life.

  But it wasn't the story I'd remember.

  It was the clothes. In the Highlands there was a tradition, brought over from the old country, and officially frowned on by the priests, of being buried with any limbs of yours that you might have had amputated during your life. I knew of an old Highlands Irishman who kept the bones of his cancer-riddled leg for forty years till he died, then he instructed his son to throw it into the casket with him.

  What Karen Lane had done was not unlike that.

  She'd kept the clothes she'd worn the night of the rape. All these long years later the blood soaks were almost black and the torn cotton material faded. She'd even kept her underpants. They'd been in shreds. I'd never know now if she wanted them as evidence or if she wanted to be buried with them, the way some Highlanders would want to be. I'd never know now what to think of her. She would always remain just on the outer edge of understanding, unknowable.

  "I better go call my old lady," Edelman said.

  I laughed.

  "Just wanted to see if you were paying attention."

  "Wait till I tell your wife you referred to her as your 'old lady.'"

  "I'm just talking the same way everybody else here does." I noticed he swayed slightly walking to the pay phone. I went back to my beer. I stared at all the stuff Malley sold behind the counter, combs, razor blades, breath spray, aspirin, potato chips, decongestants. He was turning the place into a 7-Eleven. Then I noticed his new hand-painted sign listing the prices for his most popular drinks, including 7 and 7s, wine coolers, pink ladies, and shell-and-shot. ("I get tired of being a frigging human menu," Malley always said.)

  Then Edelman came back. "I told her I called her my 'old lady.'"

  "She laugh?"

  "Nope."

  "You got problems, my friend."

  "I told her you said it first."

  "Thanks a lot."

  He had some more beer and said, "One more thing bothers me."

  "What?"

  "Why did Karen hire you to get the suitcase?"

  "Because she wanted to stop her brother from really putting the big arm on Forester and the other two. She planned to leave for Brazil next year and she wanted to put the last huge shot on them herself."

  "Why Brazil?"

  "It's where Holly went."

  "Who's Holly?"

  "Somebody who never existed, or shouldn't have, anyway."

  "You're getting drunk," he said, wiggling a finger at me.

  I smiled."So's your old lady."

  I spent the night at Donna's. We had popcorn and then we had underwear inspection and then we watched an "Early Bird" movie called Curse of the Vampire, which was actually sort of scary, and then it was dawn and we slept, one of those rare times when she let me sleep touching her (she likes me to have my side of the bed and her to have hers), and then we woke up because she had to go in to the office early and so I sat in bed while she took a shower and kind of scratched myself in various places and picked at myself in others and all the time something kept bothering me, really bothering me, but I couldn't think of what it was. And then I remembered Malley's sign from last night, the one listing all the drinks and prices, the one including pink ladies, and then I recalled what Karen Lane had said right before she died; "One of the pink ladies brought me my drink." And then I remembered something else, too, so I got up and found the phone book and looked up the name of the woman who'd been checking off names at the reunion dance that night, and we had a few words of this and that and then I asked her my question and she said, "Boy, that's a weird one," but she answered it nonetheless and I said thank you and hung up fast.

  Donna was still in the shower as I washed my face and brushed my teeth.

  She peeked out through the curtain and said, "God, Dwyer, you're going someplace without taking a shower?"

  "I figure the world can take it if I can."

  "Seriously, Dwyer, you look real intense."

  I sighed. "Yeah. I guess I am."

  "You going to tell me?"

  "Tonight. Over dinner."

  She started to yell at me but she was naked and in the shower and there wasn't much she could do.

  I went down and
got in my Toyota.

  Chapter 33

  It was a watercolor day, china blue sky, plump white clouds, grass greener than grass had any right to be.

  I pulled in the drive and, got out of the car and saw she was in back. There was laundry hanging on the line.

  "Gosh, hi, Jack," she said.

  "Hi.

  "You probably came back for another whiff, didn't you?" She laughed. "You're getting addicted."

  And I probably was. The laundry in the soft wind smelled fine and clean and made me want to be a little boy with my whole life ahead of me.

  She said, "Gary was very relieved when he got home the night before. He said that everything was all right between you two." She wore a clean man's work shirt and jeans and her hair was pulled back in a soft chignon. She was everything I liked about working-class women.

  "Everything's fine," I said.

  She watched me and I watched her back. We both knew what I was going to say. I looked at her brown eyes and remembered that in her First Communion photograph her hair had been done in perfect little ringlets. She was female in a way as soft and seductive as the smell of fresh laundry, in just that exact way, and I wanted to hold her as I'd held her the night before, when her son had walked in on us.

  She started putting clothespins on a pink blouse. She had one clothespin in her fingers and one clothespin between her teeth.

  "You not going to hang your pink waitress uniform?"

  She stared at me. She took the clothespin from her mouth. "You figured it out." She sounded betrayed.

  "Shit," I said. The waitresses that night had worn blue. Karen Lane had mentioned a "pink lady," meaning a waitress in pink. Susan sneaking in to poison her drink.

  She said, "You know the funny thing?"

  "What?"

  "I still liked her." She smiled, and precisely that moment her eyes went silver-blue with tears. "I probably even loved her."' She put her hands out to me and I took them and felt the dampness and the roughness of laundry soap and then I slid my fingers further up to where the skin was soft and the down blond and the bones fragile as a poem.