Warm Hands, Cold Heart

by Ray FitzGerald

  “I suppose you’re here with my money,” Hank snorted. His lips parted just enough to show the tip of a gold tooth. He relaxed like a man with few problems and fewer debts. Edgar’s eyes lowered to the floor.

  “No,” he said. “I need an extension and some more money.”

  “More –“Hank stopped short. The walls shook from his laughter. Edgar closed his eyes to block the look on the face across from him.

  “You can’t afford what you owe me now and you want more?”

  Edgar unclenched his teeth and asked again – nicely. Hank responded similarly.

  “No dice,” he said. “Now, about the money you owe me. I’d hate for something to happen to that pretty daughter of yours. What would it be like for that bald wife of yours to bury her only child?”

  Edgar looked up and saw all of the gold tooth and the scar that ran along Hank’s cheek from a bottle fight as a teenager. Hank winked one iron-black eye at him real slow.

  Something snapped inside of Edgar. His muscles tightened and everything went red. The next two minutes were a blur. When he came to, Edgar was holding the pistol in one hand and a stack of cash in the other. Hank was spilled on the floor behind the desk. A hole in his chest poured red fluid faster than his hand could push it back in. Hank gurgled and wheezed and stared at his previously immaculate shirt. He tried to speak, but nothing came out but bubbles that took the place of words. He died with a twisted grin and pale skin.

  Edgar panicked, but had sense enough to grab the remaining cash. He slipped out of the room, back into the bar, and onto the street without encountering another person. He was back at the studio with three minutes to spare.

  He went though his shift with the pulse of a sleepwalking grandmother. Shaky hands cradled the stacks of bills stuffed in his jacket pockets. When he arrived home, Kaycee was in the kitchen making dinner. Their daughter was in the living room watching cartoons. Both greeted him at the door with ferocious hugs. Edgar kept his hands hidden, sure not to drop the secret under his zipped coat.

  He used a free hand to pat his daughter on the head and kiss his wife on the cheek before excusing himself to the bathroom. Behind the locked door, he removed the money from his jacket and spread it along the counter under the medicine cabinet. He looked at the stacks of cash, then into the mirror. His face was ragged and in need of a shave.

  It took ten minutes to count the money. It was more than he’d ever seen in one place. In the end, it totaled thirty-two thousand dollars. He put it between two towels under the sink and went back into the kitchen.

  The money was the miracle Edgar needed. Over the next two months the bills disappeared, Kaycee’s condition improved, and no word of Hank’s murder was reported in the papers. Gangsters don’t get obituaries. None of that helped Edgar’s mental state.

  He couldn’t sleep. He barely ate. When he did go out, he didn’t talk. One night, after dinner, he and Kaycee had their first argument in years.

  That’s when Edgar decided to go to church. He called to find out confession times and drove to the large stone building on a Wednesday before work. Seated in an ancient-smelling pew, he watched two older men and a younger woman take their turns in the box. He went over the script in his head. It had been many years since he’d confessed his sins.

  The young woman emerged from the booth and smiled with eyes that showed renewed faith in the world. It was Edgar’s turn. His knees shook and his palms leaked sweat as he opened the wicker door to the dark, cramped confessional. He closed it behind him, kneeled in front of that partition, and felt the world melt away.

  “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

  He wasn’t sure how long the silence lasted, but it felt like years. The priest continued the proceeding with a gentle nudge.

  “Continue, my son.”

  Edgar put his brain back together like an impossible puzzle.

  “I – I killed someone,” he said. “At least I think I killed someone.”

  The priest sighed and released a small moan. “Who did you kill?”

  Edgar panicked. He considered making a name up, but knew you couldn’t lie to a priest. They weren’t allowed to go to the cops, right? Wasn’t there an oath or something they had to take? All of the sudden, he questioned his decision to come there. He thought about running out of the booth and peeling out of the parking lot, but knew he’d already been seen. It was now or never.

  “Hank Rollins.”

  He started to explain his actions, but knew there was no excuse for what he did. He folded his hands towards his knees, closed his eyes, and waited for his penance. This was going to take more than five Hail Mary’s and an Our Father.

  What he didn’t expect was for the screen that separated priest from sinner to slide open. In the darkness, Edgar spotted a fully robed priest covered in blood and slumped in the corner of the booth. The next thing he saw was the wicked face of Eddie Jordan staring at him from the good end of a nickel-plated .45 revolver.

  “You’re not forgiven,” he said as he pulled the trigger.

  When he didn’t show up for work that day, the station ran a “Best of Edgar Johnson Show” episode.

  seven

  Bound by Hate

  by Ray FitzGerald

  The figure moving across the soggy pasture moved better than an old man should. He was familiar with every bump and divot on the land and didn’t need an umbrella, although the skies had cried most of the night. The clothes that hung on his frail frame were dark with dampness when he reached the large oak tree by his front door. The house was warm and dry and everything he wasn’t.

  Three towels waited for him in the foyer. Each worked wonders on drying his thinning skin. As he dabbed his arms and neck with the warm cloth, he talked aloud to no one particular.

  “Who would do such a thing?” he said. “The world is going to hell.”

  Hearing the voice, Pablo the butler scurried into the hall with a warm cup of coffee and two more towels.

  “Were three enough?” Pablo asked. “I assumed you’d like a drink.”

  “You know what happens when you assume?” the man snarled.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Plimpton,” Pablo said. “I’m sorry.”

  Plimpton dropped the towels on the marbled floor and headed for his library. Pablo followed behind and scooped the damp rags up in one motion.

  “Oh,” Plimpton added as he marched up the stairs without looking back. “Call Murray. Tell him the detective he sent is laid out in a puddle by the stable. They need to come claim him before he drowns. I won’t have any death on my property.”

  “Yes, Mr. Plimpton.”

  Plimpton spent evenings in his library since his wife died. In those seven years, he invested all of his heart in his book collection. The only thing he loved more were his race horses – all four of them. None so much as his newest purchase, “Bound by Desire.” He was a cinch to win the Derby, Plimpton would say.

  Pablo wasn’t always Mr. Plimpton’s butler. Until he was twenty, he worked as a mechanic in Mexico. Plimpton found Pablo on a trip to purchase a different horse, “Lucky Liberty.” Two weeks earlier, Pablo’s wife left him, along with their two children, for a wealthier man. In a rage, he quit his job and spent the contents of his pockets on tequila. Each day, he worked his way down to the worm, which he swore mocked him as he drank. Plimpton needed a hand getting the horse home. Pablo needed to escape.

  After the horse was delivered, Plimpton invited Pablo to move into the guest house out back. The seventeen room fortress was only occupied by Plimpton and his twenty-seven year old daughter. He wasn’t getting any younger and Pablo’s skills would come in handy. Karen, Plimpton’s daughter, hated the thought of a “filthy foreigner” moving onto her property. She tried to talk her father out of the idea, but once his mind is made up, it’s settled. He’d always been that way. She threatened to leave. He called her bluff.

  “Where will you go?” he laughed. “You. With no job, no money, and no discernable skills.”


  She left. Then she came back. Then she left again. That continued for the next several years. Presently, she’s back in the house after six months spent “finding herself” in Europe. She brought a man home with her, Edward. Plimpton wouldn’t allow the unwed couple to live in his house, so Edward was given a room with Pablo in the guest house. The whole imperfect setup was starting to work – until Plimpton found the note.

  This whole mess started on a Saturday morning. While taking his walk to the stables, Plimpton found the lock unlatched. With a yell, he threw the doors open and took a head count. One, two, three. The large dent in the hay of Bound by Desire’s stall was warm, but empty. In the horse’s place was a note scrawled in hard penciled handwriting that looked like it belonged to a child. “$3,000 or the horse dies. Leave it in the stall. No cops. We are serious.”

  Plimpton’s first instinct was rage. His next was to blame Pablo. The incompetent idiot obviously hadn’t locked the barn when he made his rounds cleaning the stalls the night before. If anything happened to Bound by Desire, the fool would suffer.

  The house was mostly empty when he returned with the note crumpled in a fist. Karen and Edward were out for an early Saturday brunch. Pablo was in the rear field, repairing the leaky roof above his room in the guest house. He heard Plimpton yelling from two hundred yards away and came running.

  Sweat dripped from his brow when he entered the home. Plimpton paced the foyer, leaving dirty footprints behind every step. His face was the color of hate, his hair a disheveled mess.

  “YOU!” Plimpton yelled at the butler. “This is all your fault. Where is he? Where is Bound by Desire?”

  Pablo’s eyes were the size of dinner plates. He raised his arms and showed the palms of his hands, as if the horse could somehow be in his grasp. His jaw dropped and a few garbled words fell out.

  “Mr. Plimpton... I don’t... What are you talking about? The horse is in the barn where he-”

  “No he’s not,” Plimpton didn’t let him finish. He rarely did. “You left it unlatched last night and someone got in and stole my horse. Maybe it was you. You’ve always been jealous of me.”

  “No!” Pablo started to yell, but caught himself. “I’d never do that to you Mr. Plimpton. You gave me a home when nobody -” he stopped short. Smoke rose from the back of Plimpton’s neck.

  “When nobody wanted you,” the old man yelled loud enough to shake the walls. “And that was my mistake. I should have listened to Karen and left you in Mexico. You can go back there for all I care. Leave. Leave now.”

  Water built up in Pablo’s eyes. His knees were weak. The dark skin on his face hung like wet laundry on thick bones. He said, “I can’t. I’ve nowhere to go.”

  Plimpton’s eyes shrunk into narrow slits. His cheeks puffed like a squirrel preparing for winter.

  He stared hard at the butler looking pitiful in the doorway and wanted to laugh. His words were a hiss of hatred. “I don’t give a damn.”

  Plimpton charged up the steps to his library and sealed himself in the room with a slam of the large wooden door. He waited there, fuming, until he heard Pablo leave the house.

  It wasn’t long after he heard Pablo leave that the sound of the door opening again jarred Plimpton from his thoughts. Karen and Edward had returned. The sound of footsteps climbing the stairs were followed with a knock on the door.

  “Go away,” Plimpton blasted.

  “I won’t,” said Karen’s small voice through the door. “I’m coming in.”

  She didn’t wait for her father’s refusal. The knob clicked and the wooden slab slid carefully over carpeting as thick as a two-dollar pork chop. Sinatra was playing on the record player and Karen didn’t ask permission when she removed the needle from the platter.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Pablo is packing his things. He said you fired him.”

  The red came back into Plimpton’s face. The heat in the room grew by three degrees just off his anger.

  “You’re damned right I fired him,” he said, throwing the crumpled note at his daughter’s feet. “He stole Bound by Desire. He’s fleecing me for my money and my horse. I have the right mind to call up Murray at the precinct and have him locked up. In fact I think I’ll do just that -”

  Karen interrupted his plan. She was looking at the note and shaking her head. “Father, please,” she pleaded in a low, calming tone. “You know Pablo didn’t do this. There’s no way he could.”

  Plimpton hurled a few cuss words into the open air.

  “Pablo is illiterate,” she continued. “You know this. He couldn’t have written this note. He can’t even write his own name.”

  “Then he had someone write it for him.”

  “Who? He doesn’t know anyone. He never leaves the house. And where would he put a horse if he’d taken it from you?”

  Plimpton’s eyes lowered. His words were sharp, but poorly formed. He tripped over his own thoughts. Karen didn’t wait for him to piece together an excuse in his head.

  “Then it’s settled,” she said. “Pablo stays.”

  Plimpton threw a few more curse words at his daughter. Back on his feet, his eyes bulged. He looked ready to spit nails and leather at his daughter.

  “Don’t argue, father,” she said. “I’ve already told him to unpack. Besides, you’ll be hungry soon. Who’s going to make your lunch?”

  “If that filthy bastard wants to work here, he’ll sleep in the barn. He isn’t allowed to rest for one moment in my home. Let him take Bound by Desire’s stall. Tell him, he might be allowed back in when my horse is returned.”

  Karen made a clicking sound with her teeth that sounded like nickels hitting hard wood. “Really, father,” she said. “It’s just a horse.”

  Plimpton picked up a vase that he’d overpaid for many years earlier at an antique store. The priceless hunk of porcelain fit snugly in his hand when he cocked his arm back like Warren Spahn ready to throw a fastball. Karen ducked out of the room just before the vase crashed into the wood behind her. Her father’s yelling carried down the steps and onto the front porch.

  Pablo made lunch as quietly as he could. Plimpton remained in the library, but not totally removed from the outside world. The telephone he had installed in the room was working overtime as the old man worked his way up the chain of command at the police station. His call eventually landed on the desk of chief James Murray.

  The chief is a gravelly voiced man, who sounded like he’d swallowed too many marbles as a kid. His tone was gruff and his patience short. He said a lot without saying much.

  Plimpton’s pitch was simple - send a few men over to investigate without making it an official record.

  The way he saw it, if word got into the papers, it’d give more bright boys the idea to make an easy target out of his horses. A few men investigating - without actually putting it on paper, should more than suffice for a job like this. If they catch the thieves and get his horse back, a tidy contribution to the policeman’s ball would come their way, with a little extra for Murray’s personal account. Not one to dicker on details, Murray promised a detective would be over that evening - off the record, of course.

  Edward brought lunch up to the library. He and Karen knew it was too soon to put the old man and Pablo in the same room alone. Karen’s beau wasn’t too fond of the idea of being the patsy waiter, but he relented when Karen started to pout. He was a sucker for that sort of thing.

  The door to the library absorbed three of Edward’s knocks, and two more just like it. There was no response from inside the room. The sound of the record player tickled the floor under the door and gave the room just enough personality to convince Edward to try the handle. It turned and clicked. He drew in a deep breath and felt both lungs expand as the door opened slowly. Light from the room jumped out and threw yellow triangles all over the dark hallway. A maroon chair faced the window, away from the door. All Edward could see from his vantage point was the top of Plimpton’s balding head reflecting in the day’s
glory.

  He waited until the song on the record player stopped. Nerves rattled around in his throat and he was about to speak up when Plimpton beat him to it.

  “What the hell do you want?” The old man’s voice was low and calm - nothing like what Edward expected.

  “I’m sorry to bother, sir,” Edward started. “But I have your lunch here.”

  “You eat it,” Plimpton replied. The tone was a little louder and more sincere. “That sonofabitch probably spiked the food with arsenic.”

  Edward cleared his voice and tried to be as sympathetic as he could. It wasn’t a trait typically instilled in the English, but he was learning to fake it as he spent more time in America. “Come now,” he said. “We both know Pablo wouldn’t do that. The man adores you and feels simply dreadful about what happened.”

  “Then tell him to bring my horse back.”

  “He would if he could. He has no more information than you do, though.”

  Edward remained in the doorway. Plimpton didn’t budge from his seat. The needle on the record player skipped and hopped over the label, making a fuzzy sound in the room.

  “Leave the food on the table.”

  Edward did as he was told. That’s the first rule of residing in the Plimpton household. He closed the door gently and stood in the darkened hallway. Not long after, Sinatra’s voice entered the air again. It was joined by the sounds of silverware tapping on porcelain plates.

  Edward made his way down the marble staircase and past Karen, who waited at the foot of the steps still pouting. He didn’t speak to her as walked out the front door and to his room in the guest house.