by Gil Brewer
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
REDHEADS DIE QUICKLY
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Originally published in Mystery Tales, April 1959.
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Published by Wildside Press LLC.
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
REDHEADS DIE QUICKLY
Caffery was tired. He was beat. There were a lot of ragged years strung out behind him, and they all amounted to nothing. There was only the one way left to make it, and he was worn out trying. It was a rough program; a caper that had frayed the last of his nerves, ruined what was left of his digestion, weakened his heart, and helped bring back the old migraine of his youthful mob days until sometimes he thought he would flip his curly auburn-wigged lid.
Only eight hundred thousand dollars was worth any kind of trouble. That, my friend, was a lot of moo. It was a lettuce patch worth fighting for.
Caffery had actually seen that $800,000 once. Right after the Palmdale bank job. Ritchie had shown it to him, bundled and stacked neatly in the snatch-bag, just before they split off for the getaway.
Caffery was the only one who got away.
Sometimes it made him sigh.
Sometimes he had to grab for a nitro pill quick, to help the angina, when he thought of how he’d blabbed his fool mouth to the law about Ritchie.
Ritchie was a bastard. He was the peterman with the gang; the hottest man with a safe Caffery had ever laid eyes on. He could juggle the soup like nobody. There wasn’t a safe made that could stand up against Ritchie’s tricks. When it came to making boom-boom with the tender juice, there was no man in the country who could even come close to Jim Ritchie. Caffery had seen him sitting around getting his kicks from popping matchboxes open, without blowing them apart. Safe doors opened like a closet, without a squeak. Ritchie claimed he could crack Pike’s Peak, if anybody paid him enough for a look inside.
Caffery would sigh, thinking of these things.
Ritchie was up in Raiford now, cooling for the long count; sentenced to life.
It served him right. He’d been too cocky. He’d been king and he let everybody know it. He’d ridden Caffery plenty, and Caffery had never liked that. He’d never been able to do anything about it, though—until now.
Ritchie’d had Helen, too. Lovely, warm, luscious Helen.
Caffery thought about all these things. He mused on the $800,000, because Jim Ritchie had ditched the take from the Palmdale job someplace before he fell.
Nobody’d ever found it.
This was Caffery’s job. Finding that loot.
It started like a tiny spark, and grew into an obsession. He lived for it, planned, schemed, and dreamed of it. He burned with it. He had to have that $800,000.
If he didn’t get it, he knew he was done. He was a bum. Nobody would trust him. He would never be able to work another job. He had to be bold and brave.
* * * *
“Can I watch the TV?”
Sitting there in the living room of his apartment, Caffery looked across the room. Helen was spread out on the couch in nothing-much of a black whatsit, looking as lovely as ever in every respect, because Caffery wanted it that way—looking fine, except for her eyes and the blank expression on her face. Her eyes had that glazed look, and when she spoke, you faintly heard the “duh—duh—duh—duh—” behind her words, like a punch-drunk fighter.
Caffery had done that to her.
“Shut up,” he said. “Let me think.”
She stared at him, faintly cringing, then trying to smile, but not smiling, either. She eased back on the couch, running her hands through the long red hair. Then she turned and stared at the mute TV set with the pitiful air of a patient hound.
Caffery didn’t look it, but he was too old and shaky to pull a job of any kind. Nerves kept him going on this thing—nerves, and the dream.
If he didn’t make it this time, it would never get made. Not for him. He had to make it. Then he would take a vacation. For the rest of his life. Miami, maybe—just sit there under a palm tree with a long cool one and watch the babes waggle by.
He would sigh, thinking of that.
Maybe with plenty of rest he’d even be able to do something other than just sit there and watch.
Helen spoke softly, fearfully, from the couch.
“Please—may we watch TV?”
“Shut your yap,” Caffery said. “I’m trying to think. Go fix your nails, or something.”
She stared at him, and there was no emotion in her face, except perhaps the faint shade of fear someplace in the glazed eyes. Helen didn’t even know her own name anymore. It never mattered what was on television. It was the flash of light and dark, the figures and the faces, the otherworldly sound of human voices—not what they said, or did—that held her transfixed. On occasion Caffery had to tell her to close her mouth. She would obediently close it.
Well, he’d had some dough stashed away, back then. So the first part of his plan had been pat. Find Helen and go to work on her. If anybody knew where Ritchie’d laid away that long green, Helen was the girl.
So Caffery had taken some time out and checked himself off in the mirror. It was pretty sickening. Even to a strong-stomached soul like himself. He was a mess. He was wrinkled and gray and nearly bald, and shot to hell from the nerves. To top that, Helen would know him.
Well, one thing he had if he had anything, shot or not—he had flair. And he could con them.
He unpacked the money on hand, took a trip to a place and bought himself a new face. Not too changed. Just a bit of wrinkle-erasing, and so on; check the downward curve of the mouth, slice off that wattle, milk the bags under the eyes, flare the nostrils a bit—stuff like that. And, of course, new hair.
They furnished him with a curly auburn wig, guaranteed not to slip or fall off.
He was so taken with his new self that he decided to remain Caffery. Brave the thing straight through. A real jaunty air returned to his stride. He bought expensive clothes, rented a startling apartment, purchased a Cadillac convertible.
* * * *
Money was low. But he still had enough for the big game. He had already located Helen in the city; all he had to do was go to work.
He followed her, cased her quarters, and finally surprised her in her apartment at night; never taking a chance. He got inside—then quickly locked the door when he realized what he was up against.
She knew him straight off. And hate was in her eyes.
“Caffery,” she said. “You dirty scum, what a brassy nerve, coming here to see me! Get out!”
“Don’t misunderstand, honey.”
“What’d you do to yourself?” she said. “You look dead and buried—you wearing some kind of mask?”
This did not touch his vanity. It simply changed the order of things. He couldn’t make time with her, that was obvious.
“You’re living well,” he said, looking her over carefully, recognizing the fact that she was, if anything, more lovely and desirable than ever. “Ritchie keeping you in cookies?”
All she could say was, “What a nerve!”
This didn’t tell him much. But he did learn that she was being true to Ritchie, waiting for him to come back to her—like some nostalgic dream that could never be, like Little Sheba.
Then she laid into him about how the rest of the guys had been killed by the cops and how when they picked Caffery up, he had warbled like a ticklish parakeet—told them where they could find Ritchie.
“I did three years,” he said. “What more can you ask? If you’d had done to you what those coppers did to me, you’d have spilled your guts, honey.”
“My Ritchie’s doing life. And he says he’ll get you, Caffery. Don’t let that sli
p out from under the curly blanket you’re wearing on your head.”
He softly cleared his throat. “I thought perhaps you and I could reach an understanding. I see we can’t.”
“You’re so right, Frankenstein.”
She didn’t realize how close she had come to the truth of what was to come into her life.
He laid it straight. “Do you know where Ritchie stashed that eight hundred grand?”
She didn’t even smile. “Get out of here, you!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He had honestly figured she knew where the money was.
Caffery had a way with women. A way at once curious, and strangely his own. He used his hands—for the most part, that is.
“No,” Helen said, recognizing something just before it began happening to her. “No, Caffery—don’t!”
She even started to scream, but she never did. After that first encounter with Caffery’s methods, she never seemed to want to scream.
An hour or so later, he helped Helen pack her things, and they left her apartment house together. She hadn’t told him much, yet. There was time for that. She was docile as a goldfish in tepid water. She clung to his arm with what seemed to be endearment, but actually so she wouldn’t fall on her face. They rode sedately away in his convertible—to his place. Her eyes already reflected horror and a tinge of the glazed look, but that was all you’d notice.
* * * *
Caffery sold the Cadillac the next day to conserve funds, and bought a second-hand Ford and, through a connection, some sodium-pentothal.
He learned that she still loved Ritchie. That Ritchie did keep her supplied with money. That Ritchie loved her and hoped some day to break out of Raiford. He began to know that Ritchie was feeding her a lot of stale chicken, because he knew Ritchie was a sick man up at Raiford now, and that his days were numbered. Outside contacts had supplied this information.
Caffery read everything else from Helen’s stream of gobbledygook under the needle. Ritchie kited letters to her, beyond the monthly prison allotment; sold her a flagrant yarn of love. He told her he wanted her to wait for him, knowing he would never be free. He worshipped her. Actually, she was his pin-up queen on his cell wall, a dream, nothing else. Picture of a man drowning, thought Caffery.
Helen believed Ritchie.
After that, Caffery tossed away the needle and worked things in his own fashion—using his hands again. It was only a short time before Helen presented a blank, puzzled expression to just about any inquiry. It was sometimes extremely difficult for Caffery to get through to her at all. That she didn’t know her own name, or where she was—or that she could no longer remember anything, was of no consequence.
* * * *
Caffery was angry. But he didn’t allow himself the pleasure of flipping, because his strained nerves couldn’t stand it.
He kept Helen around. She was useful. After all, Helen was a beautiful-appearing girl. He’d been very careful not to alter this fact. Luscious and mutely accommodating to Caffery’s every whim, strange as these whims sometimes were.
Inwardly, Caffery was dying in a kind of flaming bonfire of futility, intense hate and frustration. The urge to complete this job was overwhelming.
Helen did not know where the money was.
Nobody knew. Except James Ritchie. Ritchie was dying of the con in the prison hospital. In a little while he would be dead, and that $800,000 would be nothing but a tragic memory, just like all the other piles that had been stashed and lost forever.
It was driving Caffery mad.
The only thing left was to talk with Ritchie, make him see some sense, get him to tell where the loot was hidden. Now, how in hell could that be worked? It was the only way out—and it was a blind alley.
Miami. The palm trees. The waggling behinds.
Maybe a thoughtful dip into real-estate, just to help wile away the hours.
If he didn’t make it—nothing. A big zero for Caffery. Down the chute. A bum. A nothing. With a zombie on his hands, to boot.
Desperation clutched him.
“How’d you like to take a little trip?” he said to Helen lying over there on the couch. “Go up and see Jim Ritchie, have a talk with him?”
“Jim Risshy? Who is Jim Risshy?”
“An old friend,” Caffery said. “He lives in a big house, up-state.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t want to talk with him. Not knowing him, and all.”
“Oh.”
“You could wait in the car. Isn’t that nice?”
He would often talk to her like this. It was like talking to himself.
She nodded vacantly, sat up on the couch and looked at him. It was as if she were walking slowly through deep fogs. Seeing her on the street, you might wonder why a gorgeous redhead like that was hitting the hard stuff. “Could we watch TV, now? Huh?”
“Oh, knock it off, will you!”
She nodded at him and lay down again.
“I would just like to watch TV,” she said.
He didn’t bother to reply. Then it struck him. He knew suddenly what he could do. It had been crazy to think of visiting Ritchie. Maybe he was losing his mind, thinking about all this, living with Helen, like he was.
There was a better way, and it was sure fire. Or as close to it as a man could get under the circumstances.
Ritchie’s letters had been coming through to Helen regularly on prison stationery. Caffery received them and read them. Ritchie was concerned because he hadn’t heard from her in over a month. Caffery detected a lot from those letters; the man was in really bad shape.
He wrote a letter to Ritchie, and had Helen copy it. This was a chore. She couldn’t seem to focus her mind for very long.
“I would just like to—” she said.
“Yeah, I know—but watch out you don’t spill the ink, baby. Okay?”
Dearest, darling, Jim—
I have not been writing you like always because I am terribly worried but now I shall have to explain, my love. I am hardly able to write I’m crying so hard. (Here Caffery deftly sprinkled a few drops of gin, smudging the ink.) I just haven’t known what to do, darling, my Jimmy, for two weeks now after I met accidentally in the street a policeman who told me all the horrible news, you are dying and I am crazy in my heart for you, not knowing how to help you, or anything. He told me you are dying in the prison hospital. My Jimmy, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you? I would come to you, even though you said never to come, but I want to remember you as you always were. Please tell me what to do, and don’t try to fool me, because I know. I love you, and will always. When you die, I will die, also—I will commit suicide, Jimmy, thinking of you and what we had. There is nothing left for me. My money is all gone, anyway, and all I have is my love for you, so please write me—
Your Helen.
Caffery knew that Ritchie, being a prisoner, with imaginative time on his hands, would read between the lines and act. Ritchie always would act.
He mailed the letter and immediately began chewing his nails to the quick. He waited through a week, two weeks, for the reply. There was the chance Ritchie would die. There was the chance he would remain tough to the end, and never speak. There was the chance Caffery would have to write another letter, blatantly asking for the money—from Helen, of course. But she had asked before, when Ritchie was first sent up. He had told her not to get anxious.
The letter didn’t come and didn’t come…
* * * *
On Tuesday morning, half crazed, Caffery picked up the newspaper and discovered the minute item on page ten. He almost missed seeing it. When he read it, he wept, a broken, shaken man. These were not tears of sorrow.
James Ritchie, convict Number 6254198, had died in the prison hospital ward at Raiford, the previous night. Even the governor had been present at the deathbed, pleading with Ritchie to tell where the $800,000 was hidden. The secret “died with him,” the newspaper said.
Caffery got drunk.
> He was well into his second water glass full of gin, when the mail came.
There was a letter from Ritchie to Helen.
Caffery swallowed three nitroglycerin pills and opened the letter.
Honey…
This one will be short and sweet, because there’s nothing much left to say. You are right. I’m a goner. There is no hope at all. I’ve tried to keep it from you, because I thought it best. I can just barely write, I am that cat-sick weak. I am finished, done for. I always had high hopes of making it out of here, and being with you again, baby. It isn’t going to tear that way. Now, I know how babes are, but I want you to listen. I trust you. I love you and this is good-by, so I got a plan for you. But I tell you, baby, if you cross me I will know wherever I am at—I’ll come back and haunt the living hell out of you, remember that! You know from the past times that I always keep my word. Baby, I am going to explain to you where the money from that Palmdale bank job is located, and it is yours—under one condition. You don’t touch it until you find somebody you love and marry him. I know this sounds crappy, baby, but I got to trust you—and I tell you again—if you pick up that dough without you are in love with some nice guy who loves you, and married with him, then it’s curtains for you. Black ones. I will get you and get you good, because no dame, and I mean No Dame is going to pull a sneak on old Ritchie and get away with it! So take warning! It’s yours, and I want you to be happy with it—when you find the right guy to help you be happy with it. It couldn’t be me no more. Go to Circle Creek on the Gainesville road, off of U.S. 19. Drive for exactly five miles past the town, and you’ll spot a old rundown farmhouse. It’s still there, I got ways of knowing. Walk straight out back of the farmhouse through the cane brake, and on to the cypress woods. It’s wet, so wear your golashes. There’s a little knoll up there, and you’ll spot a old well, baby, covered with wood. The dough’s in that well, and it’s yours. Have fun, kid. It’s dry and wrapped in oilcloth. They didn’t pick me up till the next day, after that yellow squealer Caffery told them where I was at. I had fixed it so we’d have it, see? Nobody else but us—ha-ha!—no split, no nothing. Just you and me. I love you. Don’t cross me, baby.