Smugglers Notch

by Joseph Koenig

  Conklin heard someone say, “Either you do this yourself, or we dump you on your head. Which one’s it going to be?”

  Again Stark vanished, and then Conklin saw his feet between the bars. His arms were wedged against the window frame. Walker hacked at them one at a time and then the trusty was falling with a shout so loud that Conklin flattened himself against the roof. He counted to twenty before raising his head, but saw no one looking back from the yard. Beside him, checking for broken bones, was Jefferson Stark.

  “Am I alive?” the trusty asked him.

  “Uh-uh,” Conklin said. “You died and went to heaven.”

  It was Munson’s turn. He climbed onto the sill and dropped without hesitating and landed on his feet. Walker followed, holding his breath, coming down hard, rolling to the edge of the roof where Munson stopped him with his legs. Walker stood up and dusted himself off with one hand. In the other was a prayer book. “Here,” he said to Conklin, “I brought something for you to read.”

  Conklin batted playfully at the volume. It dropped into the yard and the four of them dove for the pebbles.

  “Are you trying to get everyone shot on purpose?” Munson asked. “Or is this so easy you want to make it more challenging?”

  “It was an accident,” Conklin said.

  “If you don’t watch out, you could have another for your very own.”

  “Shut up,” Stark said to the burglar. “He’s going to get us off this roof.”

  “Not for a while,” Conklin said, subdued. “One of the cons in the work detail must’ve seen the book. He’s coming by.”

  They watched as an inmate wearing a vest criss-crossed with reflective tape dragged a broom into the shadow of the dome, glancing up at the chapel and back toward his crew and then stuffing the prayer book in his shirt. “Guys here’d steal anything,” Conklin said. “Rip off candy from a—”

  “The hell with him,” Munson said. “Do you know a way off of here, or don’t you?”

  “Like I said, we go behind the dome and …” Conklin unfolded the map, and Walker held his cigarette lighter over it. “And then across the A block roof to the wall above the main visitors’ entrance. There should be … there’s a drain pipe there that runs down to the street.”

  “And guards in the tower waiting for anyone dumb enough to try.”

  “Maybe they’ll be there tomorrow,” Conklin said, sure of himself again. “And definitely on Thursday, when everybody’ll be geared up for the big crash-out. But tonight Graham’s lucky if he has enough screws around to keep from talking to himself, let alone put a full shift in the towers.”

  The work crew gathered its implements and went back into the cellblocks, and then Conklin began walking the men around the dome. “The beauty of it,” he said, “is the screws don’t check around the visitors’ entrance even when there’s a full complement on duty. Who’d try a break there?”

  They came around the dome, and Conklin held up suddenly, ran his hand along a ledge he seemed surprised to find.

  “What are we stopping for?”

  “The cellblock, it’s higher than the map … than I thought it was. Somebody give me a boost.”

  Walker made a sling of his hands and catapulted Conklin onto the roof. “What do you see?”

  Conklin got to his knees and peered along the top of the cellblock. “Clear sailing all the way.” He took Stark’s wrist and helped him up, but when he offered his hand again Munson spurned it and vaulted onto the roof unassisted. “I forgot,” Conklin said without sarcasm. “You’re a pro.”

  As Conklin and Stark reached down for Walker, Munson crept along the roof. “Shit,” he said, “there’s no place to take cover, not even a shadow.”

  “No screws watching either,” Conklin said.

  They kept to the center of the roof, where someone standing in the yard would be unable to see them. Duck-walking, it took ten minutes to move the two hundred feet from the dome to the perimeter wall, plowing through slushy snow.

  “The promised land,” Walker said, raising his head. “I can smell it.”

  A three-foot gap separated the end of the cellblock from the wall, and Conklin jumped it easily. Stark’s knees buckled as he looked down into a shaft piled deep with refuse. Shutting his eyes, he froze.

  “You don’t move fast,” Walker said to him, “I’m going to tip you over and run across your back.”

  Conklin took the trusty’s hand and, with Walker pushing, dragged him onto the wall. First Walker and then Munson leaped for the railing of the catwalk that normally was patrolled by guards carrying Uzi machine guns. Conklin, peering over the side at the visitors’ entrance directly below, suddenly stood and began running.

  “Get down,” Munson shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Looking for the drainpipe. It’s supposed to be here.”

  Munson sprinted after him and brought him down with an ankle tackle, then crawled with him to the edge of the wall. “There it is,” the burglar said.

  “Where?”

  “In the street.” Munson spit the words. He pointed to a section of rusted pipe that had fallen from the top of the wall, leaving the bottom fifteen feet still attached.

  “Well, I never promised it would be that easy,” Conklin said.

  “Fucking idiot.” Munson crawled back to the others. “Walker, Stark, let me have your shirts.”

  “You crazy?” Walker said. “It’s cold.”

  “It’ll be damn colder spending what’s left of your life on this roof. The drain’s no good the way it is. I’m going to try and hook up a rope.” He laughed without using his mouth. “Like Holmes told the warden we would …”

  “He is crazy,” Stark said.

  “Give it anyway.” Munson hurried out of his own shirt, but the others toyed with their buttons until Conklin handed over his faded chambray and the burglar knotted the sleeves in his. Then Stark and Walker stripped down to their T-shirts and Munson fashioned a cloth chain six feet long and cast it off the wall.

  “It reach the pipe?” Walker asked.

  “Almost.” Munson looped the end that had been his shirt around the railing and gave the other to Walker. “Put your weight against it, see if it’ll hold.”

  Walker wrapped the rope around his waist and pulled. “Good enough,” he reported.

  Munson inspected each of the knots again, then slid the rope above the drainpipe and dropped over the side. “See you on the ground,” he said.

  The others crowded the rail like two-dollar punters as the burglar shinnied down. He maneuvered to the spout, caught it with his feet and lowered himself cautiously, landing in a puddle capped with a veneer of dirty ice. From the shadow of the wall he watched Conklin descend hand over hand as easily as he had and transfer to the drainpipe, pausing only to secure his grip.

  “You’re in the wrong line of work,” he said when Conklin was beside him. “You ever think of taking up an honest trade, burgling?”

  Stark was still bent over the rail, his colorless knuckles fused with the cold metal. “You go next,” he said to Walker.

  “Uh-uh. No stragglers. We leave you behind, got to saw your tongue off first.”

  Stark took a deep breath and held it. Slowly, like a man emerging from a narcotic haze, or seeking one, he released his hand and tugged hard at the rope, searching for a reprieve in a weak knot. Sadly, he dipped under the railing and sat on the wall.

  “Get going, damn you,” Munson barked.

  Stark didn’t move until he felt Walker’s heel against his back. “Your choice,” the weight lifter said, adding pressure.

  Stark forced himself over the side. Wind swirling along the face of the wall swept him away from the drainpipe and he kicked futilely, not quitting even as the pendulum swung back. He crashed against the aluminum column and latched on, slid down gracefully.

  Walker, right behind, was reaching for the pipe when the revving of sirens shattered the night and the wall was washed in unfocused light. On the
street a motor roared to life, growing louder as it warmed.

  “Hurry, Archie,” Conklin said.

  Walker squeezed the spout tight enough to pinch it shut. As he clambered down, the center section groaned and then twisted away from the wall and he shook loose and crashed to the street.

  Conklin was first at his side. “Jesus, you pulled the lousy thing down with you. You okay?”

  Walker nodded. He tried to get up, but fell back on his haunches. “My hip …”

  Conklin wrapped the weight lifter’s arm over his shoulder and Stark took the other. They walked him to the gutter, where Munson crouched against the curb as if his feet were in starting blocks.

  “You said there’d be a car,” the burglar shouted over the siren’s hysterical wail. “What does your great plan call for now?”

  He glared at Conklin in the spasmodic light bouncing off the wall. The idiot, the fucking idiot, was giggling, laughing in his face. Munson forced himself to turn away. He would be happy to make good on his threat to cut Conklin’s throat if it wasn’t more urgent to find a way to save his own neck, give up without getting himself shot like the rest of them. He was heading toward the visitors’ entrance with his hands already at his shoulders when machine-gun fire chased him back to the curb. A van rolled out of the dark and a boy in a Red Sox windbreaker and condescending smirk slid open the side doors. “What took you so long?” he asked. “I been waiting here all night, it seems like.”

  “Just drive, Mel,” Conklin said as everyone piled in. “You don’t shut your hole, I’ll knock your teeth out, I swear.”

  11

  THEY SPED THROUGH STREETS of government cottages, an elementary school walled like a practice penitentiary. Beyond the schoolyard stubby hills swelled under the pavement and Munson cranked down his window and bathed in sweet air.

  “What do you think of the plan now?” Conklin asked.

  “They kill us in the truck, we’re just as dead as if it happened on the wall,” Munson said. “I’ll reserve judgment.”

  “Shit, you’re no fun.”

  “Where we heading?” Stark asked.

  “Massachusetts.”

  “Good thing,” Stark said. “Jenny, that’s my second ex’s sister, is expecting me in Boston, Tuesday. If I don’t show, Graham’ll have to put me in segregation, I’ll be in such deep crap.”

  Only Conklin laughed. “Archie, you got plans for the immediate future?”

  “A couple scores to settle. After that, if I can float it, about a ten-day drunk.”

  “Munson, what about you, what’ve you got lined up?”

  The burglar stuck his head outside, tilted his face into the breeze.

  “Answer the man, why don’t you?” Stark said.

  “Yeah,” Walker echoed, “we’re all curious what a miserable soul like you does on the outside besides break in people’s houses at night and scare the shit out of them.”

  “I’m going up to Quebec and lose myself,” the burglar said so low the others scarcely could hear him. “Try a regular job.”

  “I’ll bet,” Stark said, grinning. “What do you even know about Canada, besides they got a shortage of second-story men?”

  “I know it’s plenty damn far from Massachusetts, which is the first place they’ll look for us. We’re better off going north.”

  “So you can sneak into Canada?” Walker said.

  “So we all can.”

  “It’s a bullshit idea. …” Walker paused, debating whether he had made his point, and what it was supposed to be. “What have we got in Canada?” He looked to Conklin for support. “Don’t tell me you’re in it for the clean living, too.”

  “No,” Conklin said. “The pussy. If we can make it to Boston, I know a—”

  Sirens shrill with self-importance ended debate. Red lights sizzled against the blacktop like a fuse, and Mel’s foot faltered and sought out the brake. A convoy of state, Shaftsbury, and Bennington County police cars erupted in the oncoming lane and the van dipped onto the shoulder submissively as the cruisers continued toward the prison, gathering speed. In back, Walker cheered.

  “If we can,” Munson was saying. “There’s a million cops between here and Boston and all of them on the alert for four men without shirts. I say north.”

  “Vermont’s open country clean to the border,” Stark said. “Not one decent city to lose ourselves in.”

  “It’s why no one’d think of—”

  “Sounds like you’re outvoted,” Walker said.

  Munson swung around in his seat. “Walker, you’d eat the nuts out of Conklin’s shit. He was your punk in three tier, we all know it. You don’t have a vote.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Conklin snapped, the anger forced, as if it were demanded of him.

  “You heard me.”

  “Ah, you’re cuckoo.” He caught his brother’s eyes in the mirror, held them there. “Anyhow, we’re going to Massachusetts. Got it, Mel?”

  They took 7A past woodsheds hung with ancient band saws, sleighs left to rot in muddy fields as planters for yellow weeds. At Shaftsbury, where a limestone shelf thrust out of the shoulder, an elderly couple filled a string of bleach jugs with spring water from a pipe in a rock and labored back to their pickup truck like Chinese peasants. Farther south, small gas stations that once had been train depots stood abandoned again beside rusted tracks. As the van emerged from a Boston & Maine underpass, the moon lit a silver obelisk that seemed higher than the nearest mountain.

  “The fuck’s that?” Stark asked.

  “The Bennington Battle Monument,” Munson said. “You’ll be out of the state in twenty minutes.”

  Mel switched on the radio, toyed with the dial.

  “Seeing if we made the news?” his brother asked.

  “Nope, looking for some music. They got shitty stations here, know it?”

  “Shut that thing off, Mel, I’m telling you.”

  Walker felt soreness under his arm and discovered reddish streaks down the side of his T-shirt. “We can’t go into Massachusetts like this, we’re not dressed for it. We need shirts.” When no one took up his cause, he said, “All of us do.”

  “We need more than that,” Munson said. “Jackets, and pants that don’t yell for attention like this prison issue we’ve got on now. And food, pretty soon.” He leaned across the hump between the seats. “How much money do you have?” he asked Mel.

  “Few bucks. It’s all I could scrape up.”

  “That’s great. Add money to the list.”

  “You’re forgetting something else,” Conklin said. “Goes right on top.”

  “I am?”

  “Pussy.”

  Munson, having rehearsed his surrender at the prison, made it. “Okay, that too.”

  “You heard him.” Conklin looked at the mirror until he saw his brother nod. “I wouldn’t want to do anything without Mr. Munson’s permission.” He pulled himself onto the engine hump and rubbed a clear spot of his own in the windshield. “Take a right here,” he said at the intersection with Route 9 in downtown Bennington.

  “I thought you wanted to go south.”

  “Don’t think, Mel. Do it.”

  The van turned west onto a business street built around a bank with an outdoor vault alarm over the door. Munson wondered if it might not be an antique and wished he had the chance to go up against it. The staid block yielded to a strip of car lots and fast food restaurants darkened by the holiday, but a convenience store on the edge of the city lived up to a neon promise that it never closed.

  Conklin ordered his brother into the lot. “You bring the—”

  “In the glove compartment.”

  Conklin hit the dashboard with the heel of his hand, and an old .32, the grip wrapped in rubber bands, tumbled into Munson’s lap. Conklin snatched it up and buffed the cylinder on his pants. “It loaded?”

  “What do you think?” Mel said.

  Conklin stepped over Walker. He opened the side door and paused with one leg
out. “You guys never did give me your shirt sizes.” He stuffed the gun in his pants. “Keep the engine running, I won’t be long.”

  He walked around the lone car on the lot. A trash receptacle overflowing with food wrappers and bottles stood outside glass doors that chimed as he entered. A blond girl with a self-conscious smile and braces on her bottom teeth looked up from a romance novel and said hello. To Conklin she appeared to be about fourteen years old, fourteen and good enough to die for.

  He went up the aisles and filled his arms with food—three loaves of bread, packaged meat, cheese, mustard and pickles—dumped it on the counter and hurried back for more. The girl turned the page, watching him, wanting to laugh but trying not to show the braces. So he wouldn’t see her staring dumbly, she said, “Are you having an Easter picnic tonight?”

  Conklin left potato chips and four sixpacks beside the cash register and went to the soda cooler. “You could say that.”

  “The only thing you forgot are napkins.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “We’re running a special on the Marcals, two boxes for—”

  “I better stock up.” The girl pointed him into the next aisle and he emptied the shelf, brought eight packages to the counter and dropped them on top of everything else.

  “Wow, this is huge,” she said. “Why didn’t you go to the Grand Union?”

  “I was driving by and saw you through the window and you looked so lonely and all that I—”

  The girl squinted toward a ruler on the door, the half-feet delineated in different colors, that the manager had instructed her to use if she had to describe a troublemaker for the police.

  Conklin followed her gaze. “Anyway, I’m not from around here. I didn’t know where to find a supermarket and this is the first place I saw.”

  She decided that he was five-foot-nine and just a pest, with a face nothing would ever get her to remember. She punched more numbers into the register that didn’t hum or seem to do anything.

  “How much?” Conklin asked when she was done.

  “Eighty-one twenty-seven. It’s got to be a record. No one runs up an eighty-one-dollar order.”