by Daniel Boyd
She took all that in, or tried to. Tried to understand that the man smiling as he watched the animal suffer was her new boss. Tried to realize what that meant.
But all she could say was,
“Lord, kill it!”
And she didn’t know if she was swearing or praying.
“They taste better if they suffer first.” He didn’t look at her; he couldn’t take his eyes off the flopping thing on the bloody ground. “When they struggle like that, it pumps the blood up,” he went on, still watching it. And still smiling. “And the slower they die, the better they taste.”
He ran his tongue across his lower lip, like he was already gorging on it.
Callie wasn’t even aware of moving. Never knew how she pulled the axe from his hand and swung the blade down across the goose-neck in one smooth, fast motion. By the time her head cleared she was already standing at attention, holding the axe upright like a soldier on parade and saying like a formal announcement,
“Ranger Calpurnia Nixon reporting for duty, sir!”
And that was how it started.
Chapter 14
The Getaway
December 20, 1951
9:15 AM
Walter and Eddie
“…Like I said, a job like this, it’s like you was selling something,” the man in the police uniform said.
“You still reckon it like that?” Behind the wheel of the car that looked a little like a police car, the man in the red hunting coat turned his dark face to him, grinned quickly, then turned his attention back to the snow-covered road piercing the woods.
“Yeah, that’s the way I see it: you either go in shooting and kill everybody first thing,” Eddie said from the passenger side, “or else you got to sell these guys on the idea of getting robbed.”
Eddie thought about lighting a cigarette. Instead, he opened the cylinder of the Colt Special, flipped out the spent shell, and put it carefully in the pocket of his long blue police overcoat. He loaded a new cartridge in the empty chamber, snapped the cylinder shut and slipped the gun back in the flap holster. “I was a kid, I sold stuff door to door for money. I learned quick you got to size a guy up fast and talk to him like he talks to you; get to him personal, you know.”
“Okay.”
“Then you figure out what does this guy want, and whatever you’re selling, you tell him that’s it: it’s what he wants. And it’s the same thing on a job like this.”
“So you sell these guys on us robbing them?”
“You sell them on the idea of staying alive, is what you do.” Eddie shifted on the seat, trying to get the flap holster to hang comfortably off the right side.
“Well, I guess that one fella, he didn’t much want what you was selling.” Walter eased in the clutch on a curve, then let it out again and gained as much speed as he thought might be safe.
“I guess not.” Eddie shifted his butt again, and then gave it up. “Seen it in his eyes, him thinking if he didn’t try something and try it now, he wouldn’t get another chance. But I’m glad I didn’t kill him, kind of.”
“Well you sure know how to work a gun, and that’s facts.” Walter smiled. “Shot his ear clean off! Seen it go fly through the air an’—where’d you learn to make a shot like that?”
“You think that was a good shot?”
“That’s facts.”
“I was aiming at his shoulder.”
“His shoulder? You was? Well it was still awful slick; seen that ear of his go flying through the air like that—” Walter flapped one hand across the dashboard, then quickly back to the steering wheel. “You sure got the winning way about you!”
“Just glad I didn’t have to kill nobody.”
“And that’s something else. Way you talked back there about killing. Scared ’em like to death. Just about scared me too, come to that. You really ever kill somebody?”
Eddie thought for a minute. “I dunno, Walter. I really don’t know. Shot some Germans once, but I sure wasn’t going up to them right then to see did they die from it. Anyway, I’m glad we didn’t have to kill nobody. Brother Sweetie would’ve give us hell did we kill a man on this job.”
“And that’s facts,” Walter said. He took a deep breath and made himself concentrate on the road. The tire chains rattled and pounded through snow as the woods thinned out and turned into farm country. Beyond the woods, across the open fields, the snow was turning into drifts. Deep drifts.
“Can you handle this?” Eddie fished a cigarette from his pocket.
“Not much choice in the thing. Got to handle it. We get stuck out here and lose all this money, Brother Sweetie’d kill you slow and me slower.”
“Too true.” Eddie pulled a Zippo lighter from his pocket, held it to the end of the cigarette and set fire to it. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and let it out slowly through his mouth and nose, filling the inside of the car with a yellow-grey cloud. “Brother Sweetie’s one unpleasant sunuvabitch to work for, but he sure can organize a job like this.” He rolled down his window just a crack and saw the smoke cloud sucked quickly out.
“You think he really can open those bags?” Walter asked. “I hear tell you can’t cut ’em with a knife.”
“That stuff they’re made of, you couldn’t even shoot a bullet through it. He’ll likely need a torch to cut off the locks, but he’ll do it. That’s why he’s the brains of the outfit. Too bad he’s a sunuvabitch.”
“Yeah, that’s awful tough on him.” Walter looked quickly over at Eddie’s cigarette, then back at the road again. “Hey gimme a drag off that, will you?”
Eddie took the cigarette out of his mouth, put it between Walter’s lips and held it long enough for the other man to inhale. “Let me know do you want another.” He put it back in his own mouth and took another deep pull, letting the nicotine calm his nerves.
“Thanks.” Walter applied light pressure to the gas pedal as they crossed a snow drift, gently pushing the car onward. “And you’re right, it’s a damn shame about Brother Sweetie. I guess a man in his line, he’s got to be tough, but he don’t got to be no sunuvabitch. And he getting all this money. Just hope he don’t find out we had to leave a bag behind. How much you figure we got?”
“I’m thinking maybe seventy-five grand.”
“And you and me only taking home five, and we done all the work.”
“You figure that?”
“Well, I didn’t see Brother Sweetie out there holding no shotgun.”
“He don’t have to hold no shotgun.” Eddie took another deep lungful of smoke and spoke thoughtfully as he exhaled. “You got any idea how much he worked just to set this up? Got the dope on that truck, lined up the car and fixed it up to look like this…. Hell, he even had me to put chains on the tires this morning when he saw it was snowing. I tell you Brother Sweetie’s got brains, he has.”
“Well don’t we?” Walter slowed as they approached a bend, feeling the heavy car slide way too close to the drain-ditch on one side, then straighten out. He breathed a short sigh of relief. “You ain’t saying we didn’t use our brains none?”
“Walter, on a job like this, you and me, we’re just the moving men. Just the hired help, that’s us. Brother Sweetie wants someone smart enough to get the money and scared enough to give it to him, and we fit the bill just fine. That’s you and me.”
“You reckon? Worth no more’n dogs wages?”
“That’s about it. All we are is moving men and that’s all we ever will be. That’s why I’m getting out of this line of work.”
“You know,” Walter wrinkled his forehead in thought, “that’s most likely a smart thing, too.” He steadied the car against a windy broadside, thankful for the weight of the money over the back tires. “Getting out. It’s a smart thing and that’s facts.”
“Well nobody robs folks forever without they get caught doing it sooner or whenever. That stretch I did learned me that much. Do I go up again, well I’m fixed for life, and I don’t fancy spending out my years play
ing rock hockey in a striped jersey. That’s how come I figure just to take my pay and go my way.” He studied the shortening cigarette. “You want another drag before I pitch this?”
“Thanks but no.” Walter shook his head. “So what you gonna do?”
“Guy I know, he’s got a gas station on a sweet little corner just outside Akron. Needs a partner, a mechanic partner, I mean, and I figure to buy in with him. Akron’s a good town for fixing cars.”
“You gonna make a living fixing cars?”
“Yup. You can make good living at it too, when you run your own place, I mean. That’s how come I to know Brother Sweetie, working on those heaps he cuts up and sells out, but I don’t figure to spend my life working for him. And Akron, it’s one fine town for fixing cars.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure is.” Eddie took a last gasp on the cigarette, hot to his lips now, and reluctantly stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray. He rolled up his window. “They make tires there, you know. And they got bad winters, which is good for a mechanic’s trade.”
“Well you can fix cars, Eddie, and no doubt about it. Never knew somebody to cure up a car like you.”
“It’s about the only thing I learned in the Army was fixing cars.” Eddie reflexively felt in his pocket for another cigarette, but decided against it. Regretfully. “I just been looking for someplace I could work for myself. Not work for wages. This job comes off like it should, I’ll do it, too.”
“Makes sense and that’s facts.” Walter looked like he had something on his mind, but before he could speak, Eddie asked him,
“So what are you doing for Christmas?”
“Going to visit my brother’s wife. Down south a ways. My brother, he’s dead, a little time back. She got a house full of kids will be glad to get some new clothes and maybe a toy or something.”
“You going to play Santy Claus with the kids?”
“Ain’t going to spend it all show-boatin’.” The road curved and Walter eased his left foot gently down on the clutch. As he did, the shotgun on the floor at his feet slid forward. “Hey move that thing, will ya?”
Eddie bent forward. “Nothing wrong with playing Santa Claus.” He picked up the shotgun by the barrel, and, keeping the muzzle carefully pointed away, jammed it between the bags in the back. “Just don’t go blowing all your money, that’s all.”
“Well, Jesus said to help the poor and be nice to little kids, didn’t he?”
“Yeah but I ain’t heard him talking it up lately.”
“How about you?” Walter let the clutch out again. “What’s your Christmas?”
“I don’t know. Family, I guess.”
“You mean Brother Sweetie?”
“Hell no. That miserable low-down sunuvabitch ain’t kin to nobody.” Eddie spat on the floor. “I got family upstate, I can do Christmas together with them.”
“Should be nice.”
“It will be, do I get there,” He looked out at swirling white all around them and wiped the window with a blue-sleeved forearm. “We don’t freeze to death out here and get buried in snow, it ought to be nice.”
Behind the wheel, Walter tried to concentrate on his driving and not worry too much over what else he had on his mind.
Chapter 15
Three Hours and Thirty Minutes After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
12:30 PM
Mort and Healey
In the room back of Lola’s, Mort ran a hand through his thin red hair, looked down at his cards, then separated two from the hand and set them on the table.
“Gimme two?” he said.
Across the table, Boxer Healey peeled two cards from the deck, his gnarled, big-knuckled hands amazingly deft at it, and flicked them across the table with bent-up fingers.
“Gimme one.” The man on Mort’s right laid a card on the table without much enthusiasm and picked up another with equal disinterest.
“I’ll keep these.” Howard from the barbershop held his cards close and kept checking again and again to make sure they hadn’t changed. Healey looked at his face and decided there should be a rule against doing that, just to keep the game from getting too predictable.
He looked back at Mort. “What you gonna do?” His jet-black face creased open in a carefully staged smile below his broken nose, a smile made up especially to show off the single gold tooth shining out from a bed of ivory-white.
Why’s he smiling? Mort looked nervously to his left at Howard from the barbershop, then at the heavyset grey-haired stranger on his right. Then down at the loose pile of five-dollar bills on the table. Is this my pot? Does he really mean me to take it?
“You need to think it over, Mort?” Healey’s voice, which never showed anything he didn’t want it to show, sounded a little impatient. “Because if you want to take a walk or something and turn it over in your mind, well, me and the boys here, we’ll watch your money for you. Won’t we guys?”
The others laughed dutifully.
Mort felt himself redden. “I call,” he said.
The grey-haired man on his right showed his cards. “Three fives.”
Howard from the barbershop laid his hand down. “I guess that beats a pair of tens.”
Across the table, Healey folded his cards. “I got nothing.” He stretched the long, powerful arms that got him his name, and leaned back, displaying the soft belly that had ended his career so spectacularly five years ago against Archie “Mongoose” Moore in the Arena.
Mort stared in disbelief and laid down his cards. “Four nines.”
“Yeah?” the grey-haired stranger tried to sound surprised. “Thought I had that one.”
Mort pulled the bills to him like he was doing it in a dream and rifled them with his fingers. Fifty bucks… Damn, if Magruder hires me on, I’ll be bringing this home every week. Think of that? Me bringing home fifty every week to… He counted again. Eleven of them! I’m even five bucks up! Why now I can buy—
“You done us good that time,” Howard said. “Four nines! I never knew you could take on Boxer that way, Mort!”
“He done us for sure,” Boxer nodded, his pride hurt. “Can’t believe I let old Mort do me out of a pot like that.”
Mort tried to read the black man’s eyes, knowing he wouldn’t see anything Boxer didn’t mean him to see. Here’s where he gets mad and tells me to get out. He glanced at his watch. Damn, past noon. I gotta get out and get busy—
“Tell you what.” Boxer relaxed and fine-tuned his smile. “Why’nchu just put fifty of that in your pocket and we play another hand with that loose five you came in here with?”
Mort looked over at him, really confused now.
“Ted,” Boxer said. He nodded at the grey-haired man, but kept his eyes on Mort, nailing him down in his seat. “Tell Lola fix us some sandwiches and draw a couple beers. Might as well relax and get sociable now while I try to get a little piece of me back off old Mort here. Whattaya say there, high-roller? Just another couple hands? Just enough till I win that five off you?”
Mort hesitated.
Chapter 16
Ninety Minutes After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
11:30 AM
Slimmy
Slimmy sat in the warm station wagon, watching the landscape around him get whiter and whiter, listening to
…that glorrriouss so-ong of old,
From an-gels benn-ding near to earth,
To touch their haaaaarps of gold,
Peace onnnnn the Earrth….
He took another sip from his flask.
Damn, he thought. Ain’t they never getting here?
He flipped around the dial on the radio with clumsy, fumbling fingers, looking for news. Any news. But all he could find was
…Two turtle doves,
Three French hens,
And a parrrtridddge….
He turned it down and took another drink. A longer one this time.
Hell, they probably botched it all to Kingdom Com
e, he reflected. Leaving me out here to sit and rot. That’d probably tickle Brother Sweetie plumb to sweet mother of Jesus, leave me out here to sit and rot. Work me all day and then just put me out in the snow to sit and rot….
He looked at the bottle and noted morosely that only about a quarter of it remained. Well, how the hell’d that happen? Damn near gone. Out here to sit and rot and now the booze, it’s damn near gone. Where are those bastards, anyhow?
He took another drink, then tilted the bottle and looked at the tiny bit puddling sadly in one corner. One thing, he thought, those bastards show up, they’re gonna have to drive. Can’t work me all morning and put me out here to sit and rot and then expect me to drive, too. I can’t be the brains of this outfit and doing all the work, too. Nossir, they show up, I’m just going to say, “You gentlemen will have to drive, because I’ve been put out here to sit and—”
A sound came from just behind him at the driver’s window, a tapping. It wasn’t loud, but the sudden, sharp sound of it made Slimmy lurch and drop the bottle in his lap. He looked at the trickle of liquor soaking into his pants, and it made him sad, somehow.
The tapping came again. It was like something hard and metallic on the window, just behind him. Oh yeah, he thought, must be them…
He opened the door and the weight of it or the wind or someone pulling from outside overbalanced him and sent him sliding out and into the snow. The sudden cold got his attention but it didn’t sober him up. He peered up, confused, at the man who had tapped on his window.
The man wore a blue uniform and a hard look, and they both fit him pretty well. Slimmy had never seen his face before, but he was all too familiar with the look on it.
“May I see your license, sir?” the cop asked him.
Chapter 17
Three Hours and Twenty-Five Minutes After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
12:25 PM