by LeMay, Jim
When the last of the truck had been sold, the men partied as hard as they had worked. In the late afternoon of the day their market stall emptied, they occupied their customary end of the main room of the Brass Ass, under the doleful gaze of the eponymous brass donkey on its shelf behind the bar. With the trucking season over and their pockets full of money, they looked forward to the upcoming season of leisure. (They always forgot how bored they grew after a few weeks, how they longed for the trucking season to start again.) Other scroungers came in, ordered drinks, slapped each other on the back, bullshitted, just as they did every year.
Big Mike McCutcheon came over to the table with his beer and pulled up a chair. The Johnson and McCutcheon gangs had been allies in the past; a couple of times they had even gone trucking together.
After exchanging gossip for awhile, McCutcheon said to Johnson, “Say, Frank, last night I run acrosst a kid that’d like t’ talk t’ y’ but, well, he’s scairt.”
Johnson snorted. “Scairt a me? I’m a pussycat.” He looked around to make sure the others appreciated his humor. Frank Johnson was anything but that.
“Well, y’ see, he’s one a Chadwick’s men. Name a Bennett.”
This was indeed surprising news. Why would someone from Chadwick’s gang want to talk with Johnson? The gang hadn’t discussed the confrontation with Chadwick’s men much with others. News like that was best kept quiet. But they had mentioned it to a few like McCutcheon who were as close to friends as scroungers made outside the gang. When another gang went bad, their allies deserved a warning. Despite their reticence about the incident, though, most gangs and people in related businesses would by now know there was bad blood between the two gangs even if they didn’t know details. News traveled quickly within their small but widespread community.
Johnson regarded McCutcheon through narrowed eyes. “What’s he wanta talk about?”
McCutcheon shrugged. “He wouldn’t say, ’cept that it had t’ do with Chadwick hisself. Said it was only for you to hear.”
“Might not hurt t’ hear him out, Frank,” said Mitch. Matt and others agreed. Information about their rival’s activities could prove valuable.
Johnson ran it over in his mind for a moment, then shrugged. “What the hell? I reckon it wouldn’t hurt none. Where is he?”
“He’s at the Rattrap Radisson,” said McCutcheon. That was their nickname for one of the two winter residences scroungers favored, Radcliffe Room and Board. The other, the Clapham Hotel, was called the Claphouse.
In the end Johnson sent Downing to the Radcliffe to invite Danny Bennett to join them at the Brass Ass. Bennett should feel more secure in a crowd of partying scroungers than in a less public place. Downing brought Bennett to a private meeting room at the rear of the ramshackle building. Whatever security the crowd in the main room might have afforded Bennett didn’t extend to this small room full of strangers, two of them big strangers. He saw four guys standing behind a rickety table in the room. The most imposing was a huge man with a shiny bald dome of a head and a thick brown beard who stood at least six-four, with massive arms crossed over a broad chest. The glaring man to his right, though not as tall and less heavily built, was still big and looked more threatening somehow. A short gnarled scowling man stood on the bald man’s left, and a thin man of average height stood next to him.
Bennett, a thin young man, was obviously intimidated by them. His face held the evidence of a fairly recent fight, yellow-purple stains of healing bruises and a couple of patches that probably covered cuts. One eye was still rather swollen and blood-shot.
The bald man suddenly grinned through his thick beard, grabbed Bennett’s hand, and pumped it with such strength he almost pulled the young man off his feet.
“You must be Danny Bennett,” he said. “I’m Boss Johnson. This here,” nodding to the right, “is Charley Dodd.” He also introduced Mitch and Matt. “Have a seat.”
Johnson indicated a chair on Bennett’s side of the table, and they all sat. Johnson’s demeanor turned serious. “Now, I hear y’ got somethin’ t’ tell me. ’Bout y’r boss, Chadwick.”
“He ain’t my boss no more,” said Bennett.
Johnson’s eyes narrowed. “Why ain’t he an’ why should I b’lieve y’?”
“For one thing, he did this t’ me.” Bennett pointed to his face. Then he told them about Chadwick’s sister, Gretchen, a young woman some ten years younger than her brother. Chadwick doted on her, kept her in near-isolation to protect her from life, and especially from the other members of his gang. Bennett had met her some time ago, and they’d fallen in love immediately. Though they had believed they held their trysts in absolute secrecy, Chadwick had finally caught them. In a rage he knocked Bennett down and warned him that he would kill him if he tried to see Gretchen again.
This didn’t deter the lovers though. They plotted to escape. Bennett acquired a small boat, provisioned it, and hid it in a small cove on a tributary of the Missouri River just outside Columbia. Their aim was to get to the Missouri and follow it down to Nellie’s Fair or even farther, maybe down the Mississippi, and begin their life together.
Somehow though, the canny Chadwick discovered their plans. He was waiting when they came to the boat in the night. Chadwick was alone; he probably didn’t want his men to know that his prohibition against any of them seeing his sister had been broken. He didn’t say a word, just started beating the younger man, coldly and methodically. Bennett’s attempt to defend himself was hopeless. He knew Chadwick intended to beat him to death with his bare hands.
Then a solid thunk, the sound of wood striking a human skull. Chadwick slumped to his knees and then onto his face without a sound. Gretchen stood there trembling, holding a fallen tree limb with both hands.
“Gretchen helped me up,” Bennett finished, “an’ into the boat. An’ here we are a week later. I reckon he ain’t figgered out where we are. He ain’t showed up yet.”
“A right touchin’ love story,” said Johnson, “What’s it got t’ do with me?”
Bennett leaned forward eagerly and spoke with pent-up passion, his intimidation forgotten. “Gretchen an’ me figgered t’ rest up here an’ head on down to the Mississippi. Go so far south he can’t never find us. But then I got t’ thinkin’. A trip like that’s gonna take some supplies an’ I ain’t got no money. An’ I wanta git even with that asshole, Lyle Chadwick. I know how t’ git money and git even at the same time, but I can’t do it alone.”
Johnson leaned back and crossed his arms. His eyes narrowed. “Whaddya got in mind?”
Bennett said that Chadwick’s gang had acquired a considerable treasure the previous summer. They returned to Kansas City to check a street formerly known for expensive boutiques that catered to the affluent. Chadwick had known about it when he lived there before the Last Days, though he certainly had not been among its clientele. A different type of truck interested him this trip instead of the practical tools and gadgets they normally sought. He was looking for a particular business, a jewelry store. Most of his men thought this a waste of time. Businesses like jewelry stores and pawnshops had been among the first places looted when society collapsed. Chadwick said, rather mysteriously, that he wasn’t looking for truck in the store itself. He was looking for information that would lead to riches elsewhere.
Chadwick remembered where the store was so they went directly to it. He didn’t bother looking through the store proper but headed directly to the office in the back. He extracted a sheet of paper from a glass-enclosed frame on the wall and waved it triumphantly before their eyes. It was the storeowner’s merchant’s license, which bore his home address. It was likely, Chadwick said, that when the owners of stores like this saw the end coming, they would no longer trust banks or the stock market. They would gather as much tangible wealth as possible and stockpile it in their homes.
He turned out to be right, though not in the case of this merchant. His home had been so thoroughly ransacked that any wealth he had secreted away
was long gone. But they checked many other merchants’ houses, locating their addresses in the same manner. In some they found safes impossible to open and some were as completely looted as the first.
Finally they were successful. They found a house that hadn’t been thoroughly searched because it had collapsed into a pile of rubble atop the basement. In a relatively intact corner of the basement they found what they sought, a mostly undamaged room with four footlockers filled with gold ingots. They couldn’t estimate the gold’s value, but each footlocker was too heavy for a single mule to carry.
When they returned to Columbia, Chadwick ordered the gold hidden in his basement and then sat apart a lot of the time, lost in thought. At last he announced to his men that he was formulating a plan, one for a use of the treasure that would make them all more rich and powerful than anybody in the Midwest, though he wouldn’t tell them about it until he had worked out the details.
Matt decided that made Chadwick a more powerful man than they had realized. Even Johnson could not have decided the disposition of the treasure without the input of his men.
It just so happened, Bennett said, that Chadwick and two of his chief henchmen planned to be away from Columbia for a few days beginning the day before Thanksgiving. Chadwick had arranged a meeting with Ben Hauptmann, the boss of a rival gang, at an undisclosed place away from Columbia. Bennett didn’t know the subject of the meeting, but he thought it had something to do with Chadwick’s as-yet-to-be-revealed plans for the gold. The remaining men would stay in Columbia, but most of them wouldn’t be in the big house that served as Chadwick’s home and the gang’s headquarters. Most had wives or girlfriends they stayed with during the offseason. Bennett’s plan was to join Johnson’s gang in a surprise raid on Chadwick’s house to liberate the gold from those of Chadwick’s men who remained to guard it. With his share Bennett would then take Gretchen south along the Mississippi.
“How many men we talkin’ ’bout in the house?” said Mitch.
“Not over a half dozen,” said Bennett.
“Why so few?” asked Mitch. “If I had what’s prob’ly the most valuable truck in Columbia settin’ in my house, I’d want it under damn heavy guard.”
“Nobody knows it’s there outside the gang.”
“An’ now us,” said Johnson, grinning through his thick beard.
But Mitch persisted. “An’ why wouldn’t the half dozen guys guardin’ the gold grab it an’ run?”
“’Cause he’s leavin’ his two right-hand men with it,” said Bennett. “Bo an’ Sam Thompson, his brother-in-laws. His wife was their sister. He not only trusts ’m, but they know the secret he’s workin’ on an’ they fully b’lieve in it. He’s completely sure the gold’s safe.”
Johnson told Bennett that he would chew the deal over with the men and let him know. There was, after all, plenty of time until Thanksgiving when Chadwick planned to leave. He dismissed Bennett and opened discussion of Bennett’s plan with the men, the night of carousing temporarily delayed. Matt, for a change, was among the first to speak. Most importantly, he said, the gang wasn’t well suited for something like this, Johnson’s, Dodd’s, and Downing’s military training notwithstanding. They were, after all, scroungers, businessmen, not brigands. Then he enumerated the risks involved. How trustworthy was the kid, Bennett? He probably wasn’t lying about the beating – his face bore the evidence of it – but his hatred of Chadwick could have led him, albeit unconsciously, to make the raid sound more foolproof than it was. Could they count on Chadwick and most of his men being away from the house over Thanksgiving? Was the gold still in their hole-up or had they, without Bennett’s knowledge, spent it or put it in a safer place, say the bank at Nellie’s Fair? (There was no bank at Columbia.)
“And what about retribution?” rumbled Lou. “We made Chadwick look bad once, but what we’re talking now is out and out theft. He won’t let us get away with this.”
Matt and Lou were backed strongly only by the perennial pessimist Doc. It was obvious that Johnson, supported as usual by Dodd and Downing, had made up his mind to go through with the robbery. The others, even Mitch, remained neutral at first but gradually began to side with Johnson as he countered Matt’s, Lou’s, and Doc’s concerns and played on the other men’s greed. Matt knew soon after the confab started that dissuading him was hopeless.
After a long discussion, Johnson stood up to bring it to an end. “Okay, boys, ever’body’s had their say. It’s time t’ decide. I say the kid’s tellin’ the truth. We know he didn’t beat hisself up like that. The fact that he’s willin’ t’ go ’long with us proves he ain’t lyin’. We’ll be careful before we bust into the house, make sure most of ’m is gone.”
“Chadwick knows Bennett knows ’bout the gold,” said Doc. “He’ll figger Bennett led us to it.”
“Mebbe so,” said Johnson, “but we’ll wear hoods so they don’t reckanize who the kid brought along. “Chadwick’s got this comin’, boys. He tried t’ rob us but wasn’t smart ’nough. We’re smart ’nough an’ tough ’nough, and he needs t’ be brought down a notch or two, oncet and for all. An’ we gotta think ’bout our future, how much longer we can keep this kinda life up. We’re all in our forties and fifties.
“For myself, I’m goin’ down there an’ relieve Chadwick a his gold. If there ain’t no meetin’ an’ Chadwick’s still in town, so much the better. I’ll take it whether he’s there or not. Any a you that wants t’ share the gold with me is welcome t’ come ’long. Anybody that stays here, though, ain’t gittin’ a share an’ better not bellyache ’bout it afterwards.
“In the meantime I built myself up a helluva thirst. Who’s havin’ another beer with me?”
* * * *
In the end the whole gang participated in the hold-up. It went exactly as it was supposed to, far more smoothly than Matt had expected. Afterwards Doc confided to Matt as he often did at such times, “We’re gonna pay for this’n. Big time.”
Little did he know how tragically prophetic that statement was to become.
They rented horses from the livery near Nellie’s Fair and rode to Columbia as fast as they could, stopping only for a few hours sleep or a bite of food when they had to. Bennett led them directly to Chadwick’s house. Only five men and Chadwick’s current lover, a terrified young woman barely out of her teens, occupied the house. Awakened in the middle of the night by ten armed men with faces hidden by hoods, they were taken completely by surprise. Seeing that they were overwhelmingly outnumbered, they immediately surrendered the gold.
The gang rode hurriedly out of town and didn’t stop until dawn when chances of pursuit seemed remote. After giving Bennett his share and sending him on his way, Johnson led the others to the hiding place he had chosen for the gold, a little farther away. Matt and some others had wanted to place it in a security vault at the Nellie’s Fair bank, as stable a financial institution as could be found nowadays, but Johnson didn’t trust the bank, arguing that that much wealth would too sorely tempt its officers. They weren’t supposed to examine their customers’ vaults, but who could guarantee they didn’t? Matt grudgingly admitted he had a point. Regulation of banks had stopped with the Last Days.
The men had agreed on the disposition of the booty before even leaving on their foray. Word of the hold-up was bound to get around in a few days. If the gold appeared on the street now, everyone would know exactly where it had come from. They decided to keep it hidden for a few years until the search for it and the thieves abated, then divide it and let each man do whatever he wished with his share. They began to think of the gold as their “stash”, security against future need.
That had been two years ago this coming Thanksgiving.
* * * *
The kids had questions.
“How’d they know it was you?” asked Kincaid. “Y’ said y’ wore hoods over y’r heads. Somebody musta ratted.”
“And why’d they wait so long t’ come git y’?” asked Leighton. “They oughta been on y’r ass soon
as they knowed it was you.”
“We don’t know for sure they attacked us because a the gold,” said Stony.
“But I can’t figger no other reason,” said Doc.
“I don’t see how they coulda found out,” said Mitch. “It wouldn’t a done nobody in the gang no good t’ rat. But if that’s why they ambushed us, they figgered it out somehow and it musta been pretty recent. Otherwise, like Red said, Chadwick would a been on us like stink on shit soon as he found out three years ago.”
“They definitely seem bent on gittin’ us all,” said Lou. “They didn’t leave after they stiffed Johnson and Dodd and Downing. They planned to wait till dawn and git the rest of us.”
They were silent for a time. Both the facts just raised, that Chadwick had found them out and that he seemed so determined to exterminate them, were more than unnerving.
Lou broke the silence. “One thing I don’t like thinking about: Johnson and Dodd and Downing laying out there being gnawed on by critters. There oughta be a way to take care of their bodies.”
“I been thinkin’ ’bout that, too,” said Mitch. “We owe Johnson a lot, prob’ly our lives, but we can’t help them now. Not till we know Chadwick’s whereabouts.”
“There wouldn’t be no danger in goin’ back there now,” offered Stony. “That’s the last place they’d look for us.”
“There wouldn’t be any danger in being there,” said Matt. “It’s getting there that’d be the risk. They could be any place between here and there looking for us.”
“Yeah,” said Doc. “For now we don’t have no idea where they are. But y’ know, maybe as soon as we do figger out how to git outta here, we oughta think ’bout scroungin’ in new parts. This country don’t seem so healthy no more.”