Easy Death

by Daniel Boyd

  The tracks were getting easier to read.

  Not that there was much to look at. Me and the getaway car were about the only things on this stretch of farm road between Willisburg and Boothe National Park, and the print of chains on those tires was hard to miss, the way they bit the snow like that.

  Or maybe those tracks bit so deep from the extra traction of carrying a half-million dollars in the trunk. That wouldn’t hurt any either.

  I shifted on the seat, trying to get the big flap-holster on my right hip to sit easy on the worn bench seat. No use. Police uniforms are made for wear, not for comfort—same as this truck, I guess, so I might as well get used to it. There’d be more uniforms coming along behind me just any time now, so I’d do best to keep my mind on the road.

  And the snow.

  And those tracks.

  I liked how they were getting sharper and clearer; that meant I was getting closer. Maybe not what you’d call catching up yet, but not falling behind any either. What with the lead he had, and all the fuss I ran into getting hold of this truck, I guess I was doing all right. Barring any accidents—his or mine—I was set to catch up with him in an hour or so.

  And if I didn’t, that wouldn’t matter much because I knew where he was headed.

  I tried to make myself relax some, not waste precious energy grabbing the wheel so tight, settle back and listen to Bing, who never got excited about anything in his life. Through the static he wrapped things up:

  …and may allll yourrrr

  Christmas-essss

  Beeee white.

  Chapter 3

  Ninety Minutes Before the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  7:30 AM

  Logan and Chuck

  The Pierce brothers, Logan and Chuck, walked out the door beneath the sign with the picture of a Greek warrior and the words

  AJAX ARMORED CAR

  - Safe - Secure - Dependable -

  Logan blinked twice at the snow dusting the parking lot, shivered a little in the cold wind and nestled the company shotgun next to the folded newspaper under his arm. He pulled a toothpick from between his wide, white teeth with his free hand, pitched it into the snow and climbed into the back of the armored car, starched uniform straining across his wide shoulders and broad back. He kicked a little snow off his boots as he entered.

  Inside the green-painted steel interior, he clipped the shotgun into the holder by the door, switched on the overhead light and turned on the war-surplus two-way radio riveted to the wall. Then, always feeling kind of uneasy about sealing himself in, he pulled the heavy door closed and shot home the bolt.

  The sound of Chuck locking him in from outside came in quick reply.

  He cast a glance at the empty space that would shortly be filled with bags of money bound for Willisburg and points north, then settled onto the wooden bench against the front wall, stretching his long legs across the steel-reinforced floor.

  “Hey how ’bout some heat back here?” he hollered at the wall behind him.

  “Comin’ up, Log’.” The truck swayed—not much—as Chuck climbed up front and slid behind the wheel. Logan felt the rumble under his butt as the engine started and the radio up front gave out with

  All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,

  Two front teeth,

  Two front teeth,

  Gee if I could only have…

  “You ready for Christmas, Chuck?” Logan tucked his hands into his armpits and huddled for warmth as he spoke through the grate in the steel wall separating them.

  “It’s gettin’ here whether I’m ready or not, I guess.”

  Logan worked his fingers inside his fur-lined gloves. “Somebody’s getting ready for it; sounds like we got a big haul to Willisburg. Must be doing good business.”

  “That’s all they think about anymore, is business.” Up front, Chuck picked up a clipboard and began the ritual of marking squares on a mimeographed checklist as he spoke. “You remember Thanksgiving?” he called towards the back. “How Trudy had to leave before dessert just to get into Belkin’s and start decorating? Didn’t get home till near midnight, and next morning she’s up at seven-thirty so’s they can open the doors at nine ayem and not one minute later or old man Belkin might have conniptions.”

  “Well she did a real good job on that window. Looked real pretty this year. We took the kids to see it twice.”

  “I’d like to tell Belkin someday there’s more to Christmas than making money, and he can put that in his window and show it off.” Chuck hesitated over a square on his list. “Hey, you gonna check that radio?”

  Logan turned to the battered, olive-drab radio with the weathered stencil “U.S.A.” still visible, and watched the tubes glowing softly. Picked up the black microphone hooked to the side.

  “Jerry, this is Logan. Come in, Jerry. Over.”

  “Jerry here.” The transmission was from the building right next to them, but fainter than usual. “Read you a little weak, Logan. Over.”

  “You’re kind of weak here too, Jerry. Maybe there’s ice on the antenna. Over.”

  “Could be. This snow supposed to amount to anything? Over.”

  “Lemme ask the brains of the outfit. Hey Chuck,” he called through the partition, “we supposed to get much of this?”

  “Not supposed to get any at all.” In the cab Chuck stowed the checklist, then put the truck in gear. “I heard on the radio this morning just ahead of the Bob’s Bandwagon show, and they didn’t say nothing about no snow at all. Gonna get cold, though. Let’s roll.”

  “Chuck says the weatherman says we’re not getting any snow,” Logan relayed into the microphone. “Must be your imagination. Over.”

  “Looks like an inch or two of my imagination, then. And I don’t like the look of that sky in the west. You kids be careful now. Over.”

  “We’ll check back as we leave the bank. Over and out.”

  Logan switched off the radio and settled back for the ride. Up front, Chuck eased the armored truck out of the driveway and onto the main road through town.

  In the back it was starting to warm up a little. Logan relaxed and stared thoughtfully at the radio.

  “You think we’ll ever get shut of that war?” he asked.

  “What you mean, Korea?” Chuck snorted from the driver’s seat up front and called over his shoulder, “That ain’t no war.”

  “No I mean the real war, the one we was in.”

  “We’re shut of it now, ain’t we? Been more’n six years we been home.”

  “Yeah, we’re home,” Logan said. “But seems like we’re still there sometimes. Everything we use, it’s war surplus. We buy a house, we get it on the VA plan. Go to meetings at the VFW. Hell, anytime I start to do something, I think back to how we used to do it in the Navy. Look how I just talked to Jerry on the radio here, same way we did it in the Navy.”

  “And what’s wrong with that? Didn’t the Navy way always fix something or make it worse?”

  “Yeah, but…just seems sometimes like…we’re home, and it’s getting to be a long time ago…” Logan tried to make his point and found he’d lost it.

  “I guess I just can’t figure what you’re complaining on.” Chuck touched the brake and felt the truck slide gently and slightly sideways before it slowed, and he concentrated on driving, scarcely listening to Logan in the back.

  “…my boy Jimmy, he starts first grade next year,” Logan was saying, “and yeah, folks are gonna teach him about the war in school, but he’s not going to remember it. Not like we remember it.”

  “Well how could he? He wasn’t born then, was he?”

  “Well he can’t. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “And so?”

  “By the time he’s our age, that war and the Navy way of doing it, that’s just going to be his old man’s story. But it was our life. We’re never gonna be done with it, it feels like. But he’s going to pick up and go on and never remember all that stuff, not like we remember it. He�
��s not going to come on some problem or something and think back on what they told him to do in the war to figure it out.”

  “I guess not.” Chuck had given up trying to get the point. “So are you guys coming over for Christmas?”

  In the back, Logan thought back on Trudy’s cooking, and the recent Thanksgiving feast. Remembered the dry, blackened turkey, so tough it hurt his teeth to chew it, and the soupy, over-salted stuffing.

  “We’d like to,” he said, “but the kids want to go over to Maggie’s brother. They’ve got television, and they’re crazy about it.”

  “Yeah, Trudy wants to get us one, and I guess maybe we might after Christmas.”

  “I wouldn’t have one in the house. I know folks that got one and that’s all they do all night is sit in the front room and stare at the damn thing. Don’t much talk to each other no more at all. Just stare at the box.”

  “Some people, that might be an improvement.” Chuck maneuvered the heavy truck into the parking lot at the rear of the Bootheville Federal Bank and up near the marble steps, just slightly smaller and less imposing than the steps out front.

  “What kind of a family life is that?” Logan asked from the back. “If all you do is look at a box and don’t talk to each other?”

  “Not much of one.” Chuck stepped on the clutch, moved the gearshift to “N” and set the brake. “Let’s get out now and make a living.”

  * * *

  Behind the bank, Logan stood with the shotgun across his chest, blinking snow out of his eyes as Chuck and a junior teller hauled bulging bags three feet wide and four feet long out from the vault, then piled them in the truck.

  “Twelve bags.” Chuck signed the form, wiped snow from it and tore out the copy under the carbon paper to give to the teller while Logan locked himself back in the truck with the bags of money.

  “Someone’s getting a merry Christmas,” the teller said. He brushed snow from his hair and shivered.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Chuck said.

  * * *

  Logan turned on the two-way radio again and got it warmed up.

  “Jerry, this is Logan and Chuck. Over.”

  The answer sounded like it might have been in English, but that was all Logan could tell.

  “Hey, Chuck,” he called up front, “I can’t hardly understand Jerry at all.”

  “Reception’s always bad here back of the bank.” Chuck rolled down the window and called, “Hey, Fred!” to the departing back of the bank teller.

  Already at the top of the slippery steps and almost inside the door, Fred hesitated; he didn’t much care to stand outside any longer, not in this weather, and he briefly debated pretending he didn’t hear. Then he remembered it was almost Christmas and some childhood memory kicked in and told him Santa might be watching.

  He turned. “Yeah, Chuck?”

  “Call the office, would you? Tell ’em we’re en route to Willisburg?”

  “Your radio not working?” He thought uncomfortably of all that money inside the departing truck.

  “Reception’s bad back here,” Chuck said, “and I guess this weather’s not helping any. Would you call in for us?”

  A blast of cold air made up Fred’s mind. “Sure.” He waved. “And merry Christmas!”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Inside the truck, Logan switched off the radio and braced himself as they moved out. “We can check back in Willisburg, I guess.” He settled himself on the bench and propped a foot on a money bag.

  Up front, Chuck swore and tap-danced the brake as a car in front of them slid sideways. “Don’t nobody remember how to drive in snow anyhow?”

  “It’ll get easier once we get off the highway and onto the Willisburg Cut-off,” Logan said. “Nobody much uses that road anyhow, and a day like this…”

  Sometime later, as the truck crossed over the railroad tracks at the edge of town, headed for Willisburg and points north, the radio antenna that should have been screwed tight to the roof swayed, bounced, and finally dropped out of its bracket. Out this far, there was no one behind them to see it stab into the thick, wet snow and bury itself.

  Inside the truck, Logan talked of television, society, and the death of civilized conversation as they drove on into the deepening whiteness. Up front, Chuck ignored him, listening to the radio—

  Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus

  Right down Santa Claus Lane,

  Vixen and Blitzen and all his reindeer

  Pulling on the reins….

  Chapter 4

  Two Hours After the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  11:00 AM

  Officer Drapp

  The tire tracks from the getaway car took me straight where I knew they would: right through the main gate at Boothe National Park.

  The road here got sheltered from the wind by thick woods on each side, so I didn’t worry as much about snow drifts—not like I’d been bucking all the way up through that open farm country—but there looked to have been maybe another inch of snow in the last half-hour, and it wasn’t for easing up any.

  Boothe National Park covers about sixteen square miles of what is mostly woods, and this part here was what they call a scenic drive: easy slopes winding through the trees, and in nicer times it would have made a pretty sight I bet, but for pushing a clunky truck through deep snow, that road was just something else for me to cuss at, working the clutch in and out, down-shifting, brake-tapping and now and again just gunning the engine and feeling the wheels spin as that old beast crawled up those gentle inclines like Moses working a miracle.

  This was getting to be too much like work.

  Then all at once the woods thinned away and I pushed out onto open park grounds. Big playground and picnic benches, all covered in maybe two foot or more of snow, public toilets, signs I couldn’t read for the snow stuck on them…the tracks in front of me just plowed through all of it.

  And they went right past the visitor center.

  For a minute there, I almost kept going myself. Then I got a glimpse of something parked beside the building. Hard to be sure in all that snow, but it looked like a Jeep.

  That meant there was like to be someone inside, someone who’d maybe seen the car I was following and could tell about it. Also, it meant I might get a little help with this operation; that Jeep looked like a good bet for getting around in all this white slop. I put that up against whatever time I might lose going in there instead of following those tracks, and then I steered right, coaxing the truck through unbroken snow up to the building, close as I could get to the door.

  As I got out, I undid a couple buttons on my coat and unsnapped the flap on my holster so I could get a hand in there quick did I need to. No sense taking chances with a job like this. I switched off the engine, cutting off Perry Como right in the middle of a long, smooth note. No question about it, the man could carry a tune.

  Chapter 5

  Thirty-Five Minutes Before the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  8:25 AM

  Mort, Slimmy and Sweeney

  About a quarter-mile up the Willisburg Cut-off, just north of the main highway, Jack Mortimer took a deep breath of cold air and pulled again—and again—on his end of the long cross-cut saw, trying to make every ounce of his reedy body count for something. He felt the wind creep under his old felt hat and chill the thinning red hair underneath. Wet snow seeped through his cheap shoes. His hands stung and his back throbbed from the effort. He snorted, tried to swallow the snot that kept threatening to drip out his nose, and wished the snow wouldn’t blow in his face. Wished Slimmy, on the other end of the saw, would use that pot-bellied flab of his better, and pull harder and get this damn tree cut down faster. Wished he’d never have to do a job like this again….

  A few yards away, resting his bulk by the open door of his brand-new Hudson Hornet, feeling the warm air from the blowing heater turned up full blast, Bud Sweeney—sometimes called Brother Sweetie, but only very quietly and beh
ind his back—looked from where the men were working by the side road, out through the woods to the main highway just beyond, then back to the half-cut tree, and finally at Mort, cold-sweating as he pulled the saw-handle.

  “We all wish we weren’t here, Mort. Faster you get the job done, sooner none of us will have to be.” Sweeney’s heavy beard and sharp brown eyes gave him a look somewhere between a college dean and a professional wrestler on television. Now he shifted the butt of a mostly dead cigar across his mouth as he spoke, scarcely aware of its presence.

  Mort jumped a little as he pulled on the saw and wondered how Brother Sweetie always seemed to know what he was thinking. But instead of griping at him outright, he called over to Slimmy, “You just gonna ride your end all day?”

  “Doin’ as best I can,” Slimmy whined, hands sore from unaccustomed effort.

  Sweeney looked at the tree again, then back out at the road. Reluctantly, he left the side of the car, striding in thick rubber boots over to the tree. As the saw cut back and forth he studied the growing gash left in its wake.

  “Leave off a minute.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice. Slimmy let go his end and rubbed his hands for warmth while Mort pulled the blade back to him and out of the tree with a practiced, professional swing. Sweeney looked at the gash again, now more than three-quarters through the base of the trunk. He stuck out a leather-gloved hand and leaned his heavy body on the softwood above the cut.

  The tree groaned and swayed. Sweeney leaned harder and produced a heavy, cracking sound. He pulled back.

  “Good enough,” he said. “Let’s get in the car and rest up some.”

  Mort and Slimmy followed him eagerly across the road to the warm car and started to get in.

  “Wipe your damn feet.” Sweeney said it casually, over his shoulder, but both men stopped in their tracks and vigorously kicked the snow, sawdust and splinters off their shoes before they got carefully into the back seat.

  “Now if that damn truck ain’t late…” Sweeney passed a half-pint bottle of a reasonably priced whiskey back to the two men.