by Daniel Boyd
I guess he was trying to get me mad again, maybe as mad as he was. Well, I knew better than that.
“I ain’t got the stupids is what I ain’t got,” I said. “No call for me to go up there when we’re both of us coming back down, now is there?”
“Well, I sure’s hell ain’t coming out, you yellow chickenshit cop!”
“Suit yourself,” I said, “but I got me a gas can—the one you took down to burn out that car down there till you saw it was full of money. I got that gas can and I set it right under here and real quick now I’m going to get tired of this and build me a fire under your butt. And then I’m going to just head back down and let you burn—like how you was going to do the guy in that car.”
No answer. “I ain’t counting to three or nothing.” I pointed the shotgun at the trapdoor. “Just you get used to the notion this ain’t your party now; it’s my party and I’m going to get tired of waiting real sudden and set fire to you. You don’t want that, you’d best do like I said.”
No answer.
I fished under my coat to get the lighter out of my pocket. Then,
“Okay y’all stinking yellow copper. I’m coming out.”
“You come out too fast I’ll take your face off with this shotgun.” I figured he’d seen me tote it up the slope here. “So better you just open that door slow and drop out your rifle and sidearm.”
The door opened. Slow. The barrel of his hunting rifle dropped into view. Should have told him butt-first, I thought, but—
I cradled the shotgun in one arm, reached up quick left-handed and jerked down on the barrel of that rifle, hard and fast. It held back for a second, then came loose and clattered down the steps and off the tower.
“Y’all happy now, copper?” The voice from over my head, harsh and shrill and stupid. “I’m coming out!”
“Toss out your sidearm first.”
“I ain’t got any,” he said. “I say I’m unarmed, you stinking chicken copper. You going to shoot me unarmed?”
Well, I was going to shoot him sure enough, I knew that much anyhow. This wasn’t the kind of situation where I could take any prisoners, even did I feel like it, which I didn’t much. And maybe he didn’t have a handgun and maybe Santa Claus was coming to town, but I wasn’t making bets on either one of them. I snugged my finger closer around the trigger of that shotgun and waited.
A big ugly hiking boot showed through the trapdoor, coming out slow. Then another. I set back the gas can to give him room and to get back out of the way for when he tried to kick me. His green-khaki legs came out, and then the bottom of his coat, and finally he was almost all the way out. I got a quick look at a big square body, like you see on somebody if he’s grown up playing football or something, and his face—I only saw it just real quick, but it had that bloated-up dead-and-wrinkled kind of look like a man that’s handled more booze than Jack Daniels. His hands were still up out of sight, maybe holding onto something up there so he wouldn’t slip, maybe raised in surrender—but most likely holding a handgun.
And this was no place for momma’s little boy to go taking chances; time to blow his belly out his backside. I braced myself against the step, tucked the shotgun in close and squeezed the trigger.
It didn’t work.
The shotgun had froze up on me and I was holding three feet of useless steel.
And looking up the muzzle of his Army .45.
I tossed the shotgun up at him just as he fired. It bounced off the step underneath him and bounced back and hit me in the face and I hardly even felt it, I was scrambling back so fast. I heard the sharp, nasty snap! of his .45 going off not six feet away, but I didn’t feel anything except the dull thud of that cold shotgun across my frozen face, so maybe he missed me. I didn’t know. Didn’t have time to think at it. I was just moving fast as I could, jumping backward, slipping, falling down the stairs.
I backstepped-slid-fell down eight steps to the landing, twisted my body around so I wouldn’t slide off the edge, angled to the flight underneath, twisted-slid-fell down that flight and likewise the one below that. Two shots hit something overhead, but I had no way of knowing did they get close to me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I figured if I could get enough steps between us I might have a split-second to jerk the .38 out of my right sleeve and maybe another split second to take a shot back up at him. Those didn’t seem like good odds, but they were the best I was going to get today, and with my head hitting those steps thud-thud-thud I didn’t have time to think of anything better. So I twist-slid down the next set of steps, grabbed a rail to turn my body, and—
And it was covered with ice.
I felt myself slide out to the edge of the landing about the same time my fingers slipped off the rail. And then I was just flying loose. Nothing underneath me but cold cold air and I was spinning through empty space, just like when I was a kid, dreaming I could fly.
Chapter 31
Five Hours and Twenty Minutes After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
2:20 PM
Officer Drapp
Next thing I knew, I was dead.
It sure felt dead, anyway. Everything around me was cold and white and I wasn’t breathing and there wasn’t any air in my lungs. Seemed like I’d stopped falling, though. I couldn’t move my arms or legs, but I rolled my eyes and saw nothing but white all around.
Yeah, I must be dead.
Sure was cold here.
But for some reason my lungs were screaming for air. And when I tried to breathe, it was like somebody had a foot on my chest, pressing down. I bucked up and down best I could, and opened my mouth and managed to inflate my lungs again. The air was so cold it hurt, but I made myself take three or four more deep breaths.
So I figured I wasn’t dead. It made sense; where I was headed in the next world, it sure wasn’t going to be cold.
I tried moving my arms and legs again and now I could feel they were surrounded by snow. I was on my back looking up, and I couldn’t roll over, but I could bend my knees and elbows some. I started punching and kicking, and after a time of that I had a little room to wiggle around and then a little more room and finally I could twist over on my hands and knees and start crawling out of the five-foot-deep snow drift I’d fallen into.
I reasoned out that I’d slipped maybe halfway down those steps before I fell off the tower and then dropped maybe forty-fifty feet and landed in that shoulder-high drift next to the snow fence. That’s as near as I could figure how come I to be still alive, anyhow. Did all this figuring while I was kicking and crawling my way out to where the snow was only a foot or so high, and about the time I got clear, I started wondering whatever happened to the guy up in the tower.
And just about then his boot connected with my face.
That answered that question.
Now me, I was brought up not to kick a man when he’s down, but that’s just me. This guy, I guess his old man never taught him that. It must have struck him funny even, because he laughed when he did it.
Cold as I was, that laugh sent a whole ’nother shiver right up my back; the deep-down crazy sound of a man about to do something awful and do it up right and have fun while he’s at it—a whole lot of fun.
I tried to shake off the ringing in my ears and do something about the cold fear I was feeling, and just then I got another kick, this one deep in my left side.
I was so padded up with my police jacket and heavy overcoat, I barely felt it. But I rolled with it, over on my back into the deep snow and yelled like he’d broke a rib or something.
“Whose party now, copper?”
He come clomping through the snow at me. I looked up at him, and was there any doubt in my mind I was dealing with a man gone mean-crazy, I lost it right then. That look of pure simple pleasure in his face told me everything about the situation, and it wasn’t good news, not at all.
I saw him pull back his leg for another one, and I tried to roll with that one too, but I couldn’t do much about it on my
back in the snow. I managed to get over back onto my hands and knees, though, and slam my right fist down into the packed snow underneath me.
Another kick. I tried to put some distance between us—but not too much; I figured he still had that .45 and I didn’t want him to use it any more than he had already. No, I figured to just keep him happy with kicking me around for a while.
“Don’t you want to know,” I said, though it was hard talking through cold air and a kicked-in body, “about the money?”
I guess not. He stepped over, his boots crashing down through the snow, and gave me another kick.
“Don’t you want to know,” he asked all breathless and shrill, “how slow you’re going to die?”
Well, nossir, I didn’t care to learn much about that at all. But nothing I could do about it, lying on my back there in the snow. He reached down somewhere I couldn’t see and came up holding the three-gallon gas can. And I mean he was holding it up to make sure I saw it real good.
“Going to burn me out with this, were you?” He wasn’t asking like he wanted an answer. While I kept moving around like a squashed bug, trying to get back over on my hands and knees, he hefted the gas can, unscrewed the cap and went on talking.
“…come all the way out here in your cop car full of money trying to frame me up for stealing it and that bitch with you for a witness. All the time just setting me up with that damn shoeshine boy driving your stinking cop car?”
It come to me then just how crazy he was; here he’d come across a car full of money—I mean from up there he just saw it was a police car coming, and maybe figured someone was coming to get him or like that, but then he took his shot at it and went down and saw it was full of money bags—and still the thought going through his head when he saw all that dough was that it meant everyone was out to get him.
He got a good grip on the can, getting ready to dump it out on me and then he laughed again, like it struck him funny all over. “Did that boy know I was going to shoot him dead?”
We both heard the voice behind him at the same time.
“You missed him, you know.” It was weak and out of breath and strained with hurting, but it still sounded all high class and refined, like that movie actress that I can’t think of her name.
She went on, “I’m afraid you’re simply not that good a shot, Captain.”
Chapter 32
Five Hours and Thirty-Two Minutes After the Robbery
December 20, 1951
2:32 PM
Officer Drapp
That Scranton guy, he turned and looked. Me, I rolled over and got up on my hands and knees. Callie was standing in the snow, not twenty feet away from us. Or maybe I don’t mean to say she was standing; the way she was on her feet she looked like a boatload of sailors trying to dance the ballet in a hurricane. She had one hand pressed up at her side, like to ease the pain or stop the bleeding, and the other was swinging around for balance and when she stopped moving it looked like the only thing holding her up was the snow up to her knees.
I pounded my right fist into the snow again while she said in a voice like she was serving tea, “And as you don’t seem much good with it, perhaps you’d best simply throw down your gun and let the officer arrest you.”
Well the plan had my vote, but I guess he didn’t much want to do that. Scranton just got a meaner look on his big, beefy face and I pounded my right fist in the snow again and he said, all quiet and sincere, “You’re going to wish you were dead a long time before I finish with you.” The quietness made him sound even crazier, if you know what I mean.
He hugged the gas can in one arm, set his legs in a shooter’s stance and leveled his gun at her like he wanted to do this up right; maybe shoot her in someplace real special.
Only he never got to because I pounded my fist into the snow one more time and that finally shook the gun loose that I’d shoved up my sleeve. It slid down into my hand and I swung up and snapped off a shot.
Scranton’s right leg jerked up sudden and got a big red spot on it, right at the knee, then kicked up in front of him like he was back on his college football field. His left leg slipped out from under him and his gun arm swung wide and fired off at no place special, and then he was on his back in the snow and the gas can spilling all over him.
Good shot.
I got up off my knees and steadied myself just in time to see him sit up and look around for me. We both brought our guns up about the same time, and I was just enough ahead of him to make it count.
Or maybe not. He got off one round and I got off two, aiming for the center of mass, like they showed me in the Army, but I was shooting like a deacon in a whorehouse; one shot went into his right shoulder and the other clear missed him. Meantime, I saw his .45 spit at me and I heard something whistle past my ear with a sound like to turn my insides to water.
But that was the last shot he ever fired because right after he shot my one good round went into his shoulder there. His gun arm went all rubbery, the .45 flew out of his hand and buried itself in snow, and he hit the ground on his back again, nice and hard.
I just stood there on my knees a few seconds, watching to see did he try to get back up, but he didn’t look to be doing it any time soon, so I turned to look at Callie.
Couldn’t find her.
Just didn’t see her anywhere around. I got up on my feet and then I could see she’d fallen and the snow was so deep all around I couldn’t see her till I was standing up.
She was lying in the snow. Real still.
I got over to her and first thing I saw was the fog from her breathing, so I figured she was all right, or at least not much worse hurt than when I left her.
I was wrong.
Soon as I got close I could see a dark spot on her coat where that wound must have bled clear through the heavy fabric, and her face was nearly as white as the snow around her. Must have cost her a lot of pain and blood to get over here through all that. I wondered how she could have done it when by rights she should have been froze to death or pretty close to it. But all I could figure to say was, “You all right?”
“I’ve been better.” She opened her eyes. “Did you get him?”
“Got him good enough to make a difference.” I opened her coat and she was past shivering in the cold. So far past she never even noticed it.
It looked ugly.
Her left side, down under the chest, it was red and wet and still bleeding. Not pumping blood, which was a good sign not to see, but bleeding plenty fast enough.
“That was a damn fool thing you did, coming over here,” I said.
“It’s my job,” she said simply. “You said there was a civilian. Down in that car,” She stopped and took a breath. “It’s my job to protect visitors to this park.”
“Well, it ain’t your job to bleed to death.” I unbuckled the belt from her pants and slipped it out, then undid the heavy scarf from around her neck. “How the hell’d you keep from freezing to death out there?”
“It’s simply my job,” she said again, like it was important to her, and I guess it was. “When I heard him shooting at you, I reasoned he might be preoccupied, so I got under the Jeep.” She stopped to breathe again. “Not an easy trip. But warmer there,” she managed.
“Well it was still a damnfool thing to do, pardon my French.” I folded the scarf and put it against the wound, then looped her belt around it and pulled it tight. She made a little sound when I fastened the buckle to hold it. Not a pretty sound, either. “I mean yeah, you likely saved my life, coming up when you did, and—” My nose was running, from the cold or something, and I blew it on my coat sleeve. “I guess I’m glad you did it but you had no call to go killing yourself that way over the likes of me.”
“I’m not dead,” she said, “and I won’t be if you go about this properly.”
“Think I got the bleeding stopped,” I said. “Now I got to get you over to the truck there. It might hurt some.”
“I can move myself.”
&n
bsp; “You try getting up and I’ll knock you flat again and if you don’t think I can do it, you just start.” I tried to sound mean enough to stop her just by talking. “You go dying now, and who’s gonna clean up all the mess around here? Now lie down and let me do this proper.”
I put her arms down at her sides, zipped her coat up, then grabbed her by the hood and started dragging her through the snow. And I’m here to tell you it wasn’t no picnic. Nossir. That woman was a lot of beef to be moving around. I had to grab onto her hood like a bible at a tent meeting, and lean way over, use all my weight to get her moving through the snow.
Got it done, though.
I hauled her to the truck under the tower there. It was closer than the Jeep and no one had put a bullet through the windshield, so I figured to use it getting out of here. And besides, I was going to need a truck for what had to be done. On the way there, I looked over at Scranton; I didn’t figure him to have bled to death yet, but he wasn’t moving any either.
Fine.
We reached the truck and I got in and it started up easy, which was a relief. I cranked the heat up as far as I could and put the blower on High. There was an olive-drab metal lunch box on the seat and I threw it in the back before I got out again and bent down to Callie there in the snow. “How you doing now?”
“A bit dizzy, I’m afraid.” She sounded tired, too. “Can you help me into the truck?’
“I can help you some,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”
Damn, that woman was heavy. Not soft-and-fat heavy, but solid heavy, like a big tree or a live cow or something. She helped some once we got her legs under her, and I got her in the truck okay, but I was winded and sweaty by the time it was done, and she kept making these little sounds, like she was trying not to scream with the pain of doing it.
“Much nicer.” She laid down across the truck seat and sounded kind of dreamy-like. I pushed her farther in, so her head was raised up a little on the driver-side door. “Thank you so much.”