Short Money

by Pete Hautman

  Ollie snorted. “Negatory. Let me tell you something, Mr. Anderson. I don’t need your business. You can come and pick up your cape and antlers anytime you want. And let me tell you something else. I’ve seen a lot of dead animals, and if you brought this puppy in the day you shot it, then you must’ve shot yourself an elk that was already deader’n Elvis may-his-ass-rest-in-peace Presley.”

  Chief Orlan Johnson was faced with a dilemma. It was mid-afternoon, and he was already half drunk. Maybe more than half. What he wanted to do was go home, hit the recliner, and zone out, watch a football game or something. Problem was, Hill would kill him if he came home loaded again in the middle of the day. Probably come after him with the same frying pan she’d used on little Joe Crow. Way he saw it, he had two choices. He could start drinking coffee, get himself something to eat, and maybe get sober enough to fool Hill by, say, six or seven in the evening—in which case she’d be all over him for missing supper anyways. Or he could just keep on drinking and go home around five, plenty of time for supper, and let her ream his ass for being drunk.

  Johnson fired up an El Producto, stared down at the bloody stain on the floor, and prodded the situation with his mind.

  His radio buzzed. Maybe it would be Fleener or Nelson, calling to tell him that they’d caught the murderer or something.

  “Yeah?”

  “That you, Orlan?”

  “George?”

  “Yeah. Hey, I hear somebody shot old Berdette.”

  “Somebody shot him, all right. A guy in a Mercedes.”

  “No kidding. Listen … Orlan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know that Dr. Bellweather with the pink Jaguar?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, the good news is, Shawn’s back home now. But I’ve still got to talk to that doctor. You tell your boys, okay? This is real important now, Orlan. Anybody sees him, you let me know right away, okay?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “You sure you got that now?”

  “I ain’t stupid.” Johnson turned off his handset. More orders from his brother-in-law. What the hell. He returned the full force of his mind to his previous dilemma. The solution was simple—either way, she was going to bust his balls. It would be a lot easier on both of them if he got himself shit-faced drunk for the occasion.

  After breaking nine drill bits and pumping several ounces of perspiration onto his yellow suede rodeo shirt, Bellweather finally got enough holes drilled in the safe to knock the lock out with a hammer and chisel. Compared to liposuction, safecracking was a bitch. He looked through the ragged two-inch-diameter hole, expecting the worst, and was rewarded by the sight of a wad of banknotes. Yes! He congratulated himself on buying all these great tools and on pulling off the heist of a lifetime. His lifetime anyway.

  Using the chisel, he tried to pry the safe door open. Nothing. He put the safe on the floor, wedged the chisel into the hole, and stomped on it. The shaft of the chisel snapped, producing a nasty gouge on his ankle. His face contorted with pain and anger, he kicked the safe, producing an explosion of pain in his big toe. Bellweather howled, but the safe remained impassively closed. He sat down on the floor, took off his shoe, and examined his throbbing, swelling digit. After a bit of painful prodding, he determined that he was suffering from a medical condition commonly referred to as a stubbed toe. He replaced his sock and shoe and renewed his attack on the safe, this time using a long-nosed pliers to reach in and extract the safe’s contents a jawful at a time. The first wad of bills to come out were hundreds, three of them. Working quickly, Bellweather yanked out bill after bill, keeping a rough count in his head as the pile of torn and crumpled bills formed a gray-green pile on the workshop floor. He quickly reached ten thousand, then twenty thousand. Most of the bills were hundreds, with a few twenties and fifties mixed in. No jewelry, bearer bonds, or other large-denomination negotiables appeared, but the banknotes kept coming. He continued to dig. The rough edges of the hole he had broken in the safe abraded his hands, but he kept at it, sitting on the floor, holding the safe under one arm, shaking it to redistribute the loose bills and bring them within range of the pliers’ snapping jaws. There was something else in there, a book of some sort. After twenty minutes, he managed to fold it with the pliers, then pull it through the hole. A notebook. He held up the safe, shook it. Nothing.

  Thirty thousand, give or take. That was all. He picked up the safe and threw it as hard as he could. It bounced on the concrete floor and tumbled to rest against the base of his never-used table saw.

  He opened the notebook and read a scrawled entry: When she’s in there cooking, you got to keep your eye on the goddamn spoon.

  What did that mean? He looked at a few more pages. Ravings. He began to gather and stack the wrinkled bills. It would get him out of town, at least. He could catch his flight down to Costa Rica, get himself set up sucking fat for Guttmann. It would be work for hire. He’d have to talk Guttmann into putting up some pesos or whatever the hell it was they used for money down there—buying the equipment and renting him office space—but it would beat doing a few years in federal prison. He stacked the cash into four small bundles, amazed and a little disappointed by how little space thirty thousand dollars occupied.

  A chime from upstairs—the doorbell—sent his heart into a spasm. Bellweather froze, listening intently. The doorbell chimed again. He grabbed two of the piles of money and tried to stuff them into the pockets of his Ralph Lauren dungarees. Too tight. He pulled up his left pant leg, crammed half the money into his cowboy boot, tugged the pant leg back down, filled his other boot with the other half of the money, picked up the MAC-10, hands shaking. Could he get up the stairs, through the kitchen, and out to the garage?

  The sound of footsteps on the first floor stopped him. He took a position at the bottom of the steps, the MAC at his hip, its short barrel pointing up the stairwell, his feet sweating in each fifteen-thousand-dollar boot.

  Crow’s operating theory was based on a series of assumptions, any one of which might have been untrue. First, Bellweather, in possession of the locked safe, would wish to open it as soon as possible. Second, Bellweather would not want to share the contents of the safe with anyone, and in any case would have a difficult time finding a professional safecracker to assist him. Third, he would be willing to risk returning to his house, which contained, as Crow recalled, a well-equipped shop in the basement. And fourth, he was still there.

  Crow had little confidence in this slapdash theory, but having no idea where else to look, he drove over to Bellweather’s house. As he sat in his car, staring at the single set of tire tracks leading into the closed garage, he thought he might be onto something. The tire tracks were fresh, and Crow suspected that the pink Jag was sitting in there, with melting snow dripping on the heated garage floor. He pulled the jeep up to the garage door so that whatever was inside would be trapped there, then he high-stepped along the unshoveled walk to the front door, which still bore the seizure notice from the IRS.

  He pressed the doorbell, waited, pressed the bell again.

  Another twenty seconds passed. Bellweather would not be answering the door. Crow trudged across the front lawn to the window that had been broken. Someone had nailed a piece of plywood over it. He found the tire iron under a pile of beer cans in the back of Harley’s jeep, used it to pry the plywood away from the window, climbed into another silent, empty house.

  I’m doing too much of this, he thought. Walking into other people’s homes.

  He wished he hadn’t left his gun in the glove compartment of his Rabbit.

  He called out, “Hello?” and listened. The house had a hollow sound, an empty hiss. He stood motionless. Nothing. If Bellweather was here, he wasn’t responding. He peeked into Bellweather’s office, walked down the hallway, opened the door to the garage. As he had expected, the Jaguar was there.

  He paused and listened again. No sounds of alertness, stealth, or panic. Nevertheless, he was convinced that he was not alone
. The door leading into the basement stood slightly ajar. Crow considered his options. The smart thing to do, he thought, would be to sit and wait. He took a breath, let it out soundlessly, crossed his arms, and watched the basement door.

  Several minutes passed. He began to wonder whether Bellweather was, in fact, present. Perhaps he had been there and gone, maybe taking a cab to the airport or getting a ride from his brother. Crow took a step, reconsidered, then picked up a chair and, standing to the side, used it to ease the basement door open.

  The door exploded. A storm of wood splinters, a series of rapid, ear-hammering explosions. Crow threw himself back and landed hard, whacking both elbows on the kitchen tiles. The hammering noise erupted again, and a second line of ragged holes appeared in the shattered door, knocking it all the way open. Crow scuttled backward, his ass sliding across the floor, getting his body well away from the line of fire. He heard a click, the rattle of steel on steel—the sound of a second clip being slammed into place—heard footsteps climbing the stairs, the thumping of his heart over the ringing in his ears. Searching for a weapon, he scanned the kitchen. A copper sauté pan, hanging from a rack above the stove. He launched himself across the room, grabbed the pan, and twisted back toward the basement, hurling it as hard as he could at the open doorway just as Bellweather appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Bellweather ducked, the pan sailed over his head and clattered down the stairs, but the tip of his right boot caught on the lip of the top step and he went down, his face hitting one of his two-hundred-year-old Spanish floor tiles. The MAC-10 flew from his grip, skidding noisily across the floor. Almost immediately he was on his hands and knees, scrabbling toward the MAC. Crow grabbed him by one foot and jerked him back. Nose spouting blood, Bellweather spun and kicked at Crow’s wrist. Crow released his grip, stepped over the panicked doctor, scooped up the gun.

  Bellweather rose to his knees. For a moment, Crow thought he might renew his attack, but the doctor suddenly deflated, his hands flapping weakly, his eyes losing focus. He moaned and sank into a pile, his nose pumping blood over his crushed lips, down his chin, onto his canary-yellow shirt. His encounter with the floor tile had left his face in poor condition. He groaned and spat out a piece of tooth, lifted his hands to his face. His eyes focused, searched, landed on Crow. “Joe?” he said, his voice muddy and perplexed. He tried to sit up straight. “My God. What did you do to me? What do I look like? My head hurts.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Crow said. “It’s the latest thing.”

  “What?”

  “You’re bleeding all over your nice yellow shirt.”

  Bellweather lowered his eyes to his stained shirt. “Oh. Do you think you could get me a tissue or something?” He put his hands on each side of his nose and pressed his nostrils together as if praying. He separated his palms, keeping his nostrils pressed together with his fingers, and, lifting his chin, said in a distorted voice, “What are you doing here?”

  Crow pulled a roll of paper towels from its dispenser and tossed it down to Bellweather, who had to reach out with both hands to catch it. A string of gelatinous blood fell from his nose onto his shirt. He clamped a wad of paper to his face and scraped at the bloodied suede with the rest of the roll.

  “Three hundred fifty dollars at Cedric’s.” He shrugged sadly. “You scared me. I thought you were Ricky Murphy.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I think my nose is broken.”

  “Too bad.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just got a call from your friend George.”

  “Oh?”

  “He would like to talk to you.”

  “I suppose he’s upset about his boy.”

  “I think he’s more concerned with what happened to his mother.”

  Bellweather tried to purse his damaged lips, winced.

  “He’s also looking for his pig.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Crow gestured with the MAC. “Let’s go, then. Maybe George can explain it to you.”

  Bellweather pulled the paper toweling away from his nose, examined it. “I’d rather not.” He looked up at Crow. “They’ll kill me, you know.” He touched his nose gingerly. “Do you think it’s broken?”

  “Not yet.” It was true that Bellweather wouldn’t survive another encounter with the Murphys. And it might not save Getter anyway.

  “Why are you doing this?” Bellweather asked. “Is George paying you? I can pay you more.”

  “You still haven’t paid me for the nights I worked,” Crow pointed out. In fact, throughout this affair, he had yet to receive a dime from anyone, and so far he had lost a cat, a car, a wife, and almost his sobriety.

  “I was planning to send you a check, Joe.”

  “Right.”

  “Look, Joe, I know this has been hard on you. I got you into it, and I want to make it right. What can I do?”

  Crow considered. “Some back pay would be nice.” He deserved something.

  Bellweather nodded eagerly. “What do I owe you?”

  Crow ticked off the items in his mind. There was the money owed him for his services as a bodyguard. The cost of replacing his Volkswagen. The value of time spent recovering from various beatings. Punitive fees for being forced to deal with particularly unpleasant individuals. It added up quickly.

  “How about an even ten thousand,” he said. It seemed fair. A nice round number.

  Bellweather didn’t agree. “I don’t have that kind of money,” he said. “I’m having a little problem with the IRS, as you may have heard.”

  “Didn’t you get George’s safe open?”

  “What safe?”

  Crow motioned with the MAC. “Let’s go.”

  Bellweather didn’t move.

  “What was in the safe?” Crow asked.

  “Not much. A few thousand dollars. Enough for me to get out of the country and start over.”

  “Where is it?”

  Bellweather took a deep breath. “Look, it’s all I’ve got. You take it, you might as well just shoot me. I need it. What I got from George is less than what he owes me. Really. All I want is what’s mine. You let me go, I’ll be out of your life forever.”

  Crow listened. He didn’t want to be hauling the doctor all the way across the state, listening to him whine. He didn’t want to commit murder by delivering him to the Murphys. He had no illusions about Bellweather’s worth as a human being, but he didn’t think he could kill him.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Bellweather said. “Let me go, and you can have the Jag. I’ll sign the title over to you.”

  “What would I want with a pink Jaguar?”

  “I paid over sixty thousand for it, with all the work I had done. I can’t take it with me. You might as well have it. Would that be fair?”

  “Where are you planning to go?”

  A hopeful look crossed Bellweather’s face. “South,” he said. “You’ll never see me again.”

  Crow liked the idea of never seeing Bellweather again. He also liked the idea of owning a Jaguar, especially now that his Rabbit was out of commission.

  “Let’s have a look at that title,” he said.

  The title to the Jaguar was in his bedroom. Crow followed him up the carpeted stairs and into the master bedroom.

  “Look what they did,” said Bellweather, pointing at the hand-carved, bullet-riddled ebony headboard. “I paid twenty-five thousand dollars for that bed. It used to belong to Teddy Roosevelt. That’s one of his safaris.” An attaché case and a packed overnight bag were waiting on the mattress, ready to go. Bellweather opened the attaché case, riffled through the papers, came out with a green document. “All I have to do is sign it, and the car’s yours.”

  “So sign it.”

  “I sign it and you’ll let me go, right? We have a deal?”

  Crow hesitated, then nodded. He’d made his point with Bellweather. He wanted out.

  “You’ll have to drive me to
the airport,” Bellweather said.

  “Take a cab.”

  Bellweather shook his head sadly. “Joe, I really don’t understand why you’re giving me such a hard time.”

  “Maybe because I don’t like what you were doing with that kid.”

  “Shawn? I don’t know what you’re talking about. What did he say? It’s not true.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it.” The problem was, Shawn hadn’t really come out and said that the doctor had molested him. In fact, he had more or less denied it. “Look, sign over the title and I’ll give you a lift. Okay?”

  Bellweather signed, handed the title to Crow.

  “Let’s get going,” Crow said. “Before I change my mind.”

  Bellweather reached for the overnight bag, hesitated.

  “I have to change my shirt,” he said.

  “So change.”

  Bellweather stripped the stained yellow shirt from his soft body. He opened his closet and selected a pale-pink version of the same shirt.

  “What do you think?”

  “Very nice,” said Crow. “Now let’s go.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “So go.”

  Bellweather went into the adjoining bathroom, closed the door. Crow thought, could he really let this sleazy little child-molesting surgeon leave town? It didn’t seem fair. The thought of Bellweather roaming free gave him a queasy feeling. Maybe he should simply hand the doctor over to the police. The IRS had seized his property, so the cops must want him for something. Crow frowned, staring at the bathroom door. That wasn’t necessarily true. Bellweather’s offenses of record were probably civil, not criminal. In any case, a deal was a deal.

  Crow shifted his eyes to Bellweather’s black nylon overnight bag. He unzipped the bag. It was packed full of clothing. Summer shirts, shorts, sandals, socks, underwear. What did he expect to find? Pictures of naked children?

  He shifted the MAC-10 in his hand, heard the toilet flush, then the sound of Bellweather washing his hands. A new idea took form in his mind, and as he had no time to evaluate and rationalize, he simply acted. Folding the wire stock of the small machine gun, he inserted it between Bellweather’s khaki shorts and a Hawaiian-print silk shirt, then zipped the nylon bag shut.