Easy Death

by Daniel Boyd

  “I don’t know.” Helen finished the coffee, slowly, trying not let on it was all she’d had since breakfast. “It’s for the kids, Christmas.”

  “That’s right.” Fred seemed glad to get the conversation back on safe ground and he wanted to anchor it there. “For the kids, that’s right.”

  Helen thought about Mort’s promise to come home with money. Thought about how New Year’s they might have to move in with Mort’s dad. Or try to. She reached reluctantly into her pocket to pay for the coffee.

  “On the house,” Fred waved her off. “I just happened to think, though…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I saw Howard over at the barbershop, he was just opening up.”

  “And so?”

  “And so this time of year he’s busy, everybody gets themselves spruced up for the holidays and all, and I remember I wondered how he come to be getting started so late, that’s all.”

  “You figure he’s seen Mort?”

  “I don’t know did he has or did he hasn’t. I’m just saying he was late opening up, and that means he’s been someplace around town—heck, all I know he visiting Santa Claus at Belkin’s there—but maybe he’s been around town today and he’s maybe seen Mort is all I’m thinking.”

  The idea put new strength into Helen. She straightened up from the bar.

  “I’ll try it,” she said. “Thanks a lot Fred.” And she meant it.

  “Anything for you, Helen,” and he meant it too. “You know that. Merry Christmas if I don’t see you.”

  But she was already out the door and the martini down at the other end needed attention.

  * * *

  Five minutes later and a block down the street, Helen looked in on Howard through the big glass window with the candy-cane stripes around it. Howard was paying careful attention as he shaved the back of a blonde man’s neck. He looked up at her, then quickly away.

  Too quickly.

  She went in the shop.

  Chapter 36

  Seven Hours and Thirty Minutes After the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  4:30 PM

  Walter and Eddie

  We were still a good ways outside Bootheville when Walter finally moved around some and looked down at Callie snoring on the seat. He squirmed his legs under her bent knees, closing his eyes and sighing at the pain of it, then slowly, carefully, used his sleeve to wipe snot off his upper lip. Looked down again at Callie.

  “Damn,” he said, “don’t somebody want to shut up that noise?”

  “How you feeling?” I asked.

  “It hurts some.”

  “Whereabouts and how?”

  “My hands and feet mostly. Burns. And feels like you was standing on them.”

  “They say that’s a good sign.” I didn’t know that for sure but it sounded reasonable, and it might make him feel better to think it.

  “That’s what I heard too.” He pulled off his gloves with his teeth and held up his hands. I didn’t much like the color of them but he could wiggle his fingers a little and I took that as another good sign.

  “We got time for a cigarette?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t want to get us into Bootheville before dark anyway.”

  I found a wide place in the road that wasn’t drifted over with snow and pulled over to park. Then I thought of that lunch box I threw back behind the seat when I loaded everyone up, and I fished around for it. Inside there was a piece of salt pork and a slab of cornbread wrapped in wax paper, and a thermos. I opened it and sniffed.

  “Coffee,” I said. “Here drink some. Not too much.”

  He got the thermos between his hands and I could see him wince with the pain of holding it, but he slopped a little into his mouth. Then I took a drink. It wasn’t warm, but it was coffee and it felt good inside me and besides, right then I was about as hard to please as a hungry dog. I figured Walter couldn’t hold meat in his fingers so I held it up to his face and he bit some off.

  “Chew it slow,” I said, “and chew it up good. We don’t want none of us choking.”

  “That’s facts,” he said through the food. Then he just concentrated on getting it down and I took a bite off it myself while I broke him up a piece of cornbread and by then he was ready for me to feed it in his mouth.

  That’s how we ate, and when we finished I lit up a cigarette and took a long, good pull on it before I stuck it in his mouth. He took in a deep lungful and we filled the cab with smoke. I cracked a window.

  “How you feeling now?” I asked.

  “Better.”

  The look on his face when he tried moving around some told me different but no good arguing it with him, so I passed him back the cigarette for another deep drag. “Nothing like a smoke after a good meal.”

  “And that was nothing like a good meal,” he finished. It wasn’t funny, but both of us laughed.

  “Soon as we get back to Brother Sweetie,” I said, “we’ll get somebody to look at your hands and feet.”

  Just that time Callie let out a snore that shook the windows on the truck. She swallowed something through her nose, tried to move, moaned with the hurt of it and started back in snoring again.

  “What we going to do about her?” Walter asked me.

  “Got to get her to a hospital,” I said. “That sunuvabitch that shot at you opened her up a good one.”

  “I heard what she said.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What she said about how she knew you did the robbery. Likely knows I did too.”

  “Yeah, I guess she figured it out.”

  “So what we do about her?”

  “Well, like I said, I was figuring to take her to Bootheville General and drop her in there and then get the hell out before anyone stops us too much.”

  “You figure she ain’t gonna die?”

  “Hope not.”

  “You figure she’ll maybe come around and talk about us some?”

  “Could be she will.”

  “Give out what we look like?”

  “Give a description of us?” I took a long drag on the cigarette and let it out slow. “I guess it’s likely she could.”

  “Do she talk, Brother Sweetie might get mad over it. Over us leaving her alive.”

  “Likely so, but nothing I can do about it.” It was getting dark. I put the truck in gear and swung back out onto the road. In all the time we were stopped there no one had passed us either way. The snow was smooth and unbroken clear over to the lights from Bootheville, just a couple miles off.

  “Well, you think we should do something…you know, to keep her from talking?”

  “I’ve thought at it,” I said, “and like I say, there’s just nothing I can do about it. I mean I can’t just shoot her down in cold blood. Not a woman.”

  “Not even a woman ugly as her?”

  “She sure ain’t a pretty sight, is she?”

  “Pretty?” he snorted. “Hurts my eyes just to look her way.”

  “Yeah, but she’s a woman—”

  “Look like the Russians are coming, is what she looks like.”

  “Yeah, I guess,”

  She let out another snore on my lap.

  “She make a blind man grateful.”

  “Like I said, I just don’t figure I could shoot a woman,” I said, “not even one looks as scary as her. Not when I’m clear-headed, anyway. I mean, was I mad at her or something, yeah, sure, I could kill her was I mad at her, or did she take a shot at me or something. But not cold-blooded and deliberate. Can’t do it. Besides, she maybe saved my life back there.”

  “She did that?”

  “Yeah, she come up to that guy that shot at you and put him off killing me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, and she give me the idea how to pull you up out of that car. So I figure, her being a woman and us maybe owing her something for helping out like she done…. Nope, I just can’t kill her.”

  “I guess not.”

  I’d started
seeing tracks in the snow and next thing we were driving past houses on our way into the city. A lot of them had those colored lights out for Christmas, strung up on the porch and around the windows. Now and then a car would crawl up the road at us and we even saw a snowplow limping along like a tired boxer waiting for the bell.

  “Do you want to kill her, I won’t stop you,” I said. “I can’t do it myself, Walter, but I ain’t going to fight you for her.”

  He looked at her a long couple seconds. Listened to that ungodly noise she was making. Then, “My hands ain’t well enough to shoot a gun I guess.”

  “We could put her out the car do you want to,” I said, “I mean, like I told you, I can’t do it myself. But does she bother you, I’ll drive on out of the city and let you put her out and likely she’ll freeze to death before anyone finds her.”

  “I guess not.”

  “You sure?”

  “You gonna make me say it, ain’t you?”

  “Say what?”

  “I guess I can’t kill no woman neither. Even one as looks like that. And like you say, she maybe did us a good turn back there.”

  “So I guess we take her into the hospital?”

  “It’s getting dark enough, we should get it done easy and nobody seeing us too much.”

  “That’s good,” I said, “because we’re just almost there now.”

  It was a couple short blocks through the downtown, all decked out in red and green bells, candy canes and silver tinsel, and the store windows all full of toys and nice clothes, flashing colored lights and what-all. I turned a corner to come up on the back of the hospital where they bring in the emergency cases.

  And right there was every cop car in the world, just sitting there.

  Chapter 37

  Eight Hours and Thirty Minutes After the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  5:30 PM

  Walter and Eddie

  Well, hell.

  Okay so it wasn’t every cop car in the world; there was maybe only a half-dozen or so, from a couple different cities, the Sheriff’s Office and the Highway Patrol—and no one in them that I could see. They were parked around an oversized tow-truck, and hanging off the back of that truck there was a big square boxy-looking thing that looked like an armored car in the gathering dark.

  So they hadn’t let any grass grow underfoot, that was sure, but they weren’t exactly coming up behind us either. I just hadn’t figured the cops to be throwing their party here at Bootheville General Hospital. Why the hell weren’t they in Willisburg?

  Then I remembered that guard I shot. They’d naturally want to get him to a hospital and likely his brother too, to get what details they could out of them while they got looked at. So they’d come to the closest hospital same as I had, and that landed us all here in Bootheville and Merry Christmas, everybody.

  I eased the truck in past the cop cars and up to a big glass double-door where I hoped there’d be an orderly standing, but no such luck.

  “Wait here.” I eased my leg out from under Callie’s head and she stopped her snoring long enough to moan up some, like a baby doll does when you lay it down. In the light from outside I could see Walter was gritting his teeth, wincing with the hurt from his hands and feet and trying not to show it too much. “Right back,” I said to him. “Anybody comes out, make like you’re hurt real bad.”

  “Won’t be hard,” he said.

  Outside in the parking lot there was some kind of speaker thing turned on and playing

  To save us all

  From Satan’s power

  When we were gone astray,

  Ohhhh tidings of co-om-fort and joy…

  I walked through snow that had been plowed and salted and covered with ashes till it was just ankle-deep slush up to the emergency-room doors. They were those glass doors, the new kind like they had in stores, where you step on a rubber mat and the door swings open and hits you in the face. On the other side, about fifty feet down a hall, I could see a guy in a white uniform, likely an orderly or something—and most likely he was the guy I needed to get that Callie woman out of the truck and off my hands. But he was talking to somebody.

  I stopped just short of stepping on the mat and took a good look at who he was talking to—I didn’t want to go interrupting some cop and keep him from going about his duties. No sir, not me. The guy was wearing a trench coat and a battered hat with a wide, drooping brim, and I figured him for a plain-clothes detective at first. Then I saw he was short and skinny and wearing glasses thick as boot heels, so most likely he wasn’t a cop at all, and I figured to chance it.

  I stepped on the mat and the door swung open and they both turned to see what it was.

  “Emergency out here.” I said it loud, but not shouting. “Stretcher case!”

  The guy in white said, “Stretcher case?” and the one in the trench coat said, “I’ll help you.”

  Before he walked over he picked up a hefty camera with a flash on it big as an electric fan and slung it around his neck and as he came out the door I saw he had something pinned on his coat that said PRESS, and I know I said it before but it bears repeating:

  Well, hell.

  They both came out that door carrying a canvas stretcher, and while I wondered what to do next I opened up the passenger side of the truck and Walter fell out and landed in the dirty snow at their feet. He moaned as the guy in white tried to help him up, and I wondered was he was faking it like I told him or was he really bad hurt, trying to stand on his frozen feet. His knees started to buckle and I moved in to prop him up against the side of the truck—and to kind of block them from seeing all those money bags piled up in the bed. But I guess the hurt was too bad, and he was sure too heavy for me to hold, so he just sat down in the snow again.

  The orderly took a look at him in the light from overhead. “Hey, we don’t treat them here.” And the reporter got a look on his face like he’d lost interest. That was fine with me as we weren’t planning to stick here anyway.

  “Not him,” I said, “in the truck.”

  “The hell,” the orderly said. He looked in the truck and saw the big bulky lump stretched along the seat. “What happened to this guy?”

  “Not sure,” I said, “she said she got shot.”

  “It’s a woman?” The reporter woke up again, like he could see a story coming on. “Let’s get her inside.”

  The orderly set one end of his stretcher against the edge of the seat and I held the far end while they got Callie’s feet up on it and started easing her out, gently, along the axis of her body, pulling by the hem of her heavy coat to keep it from hanging up.

  When they had her almost out on the stretcher the reporter looked my way. “What’s your name, Officer? Where’d you find her? What happened?”

  I almost said I was Officer Drapp, since I was getting used to it by now, but then I figured that him being a reporter he might have covered that murder of Gonzago case, and if he did, he’d know Drapp personal, so I said,

  “Jack Tull. I’m Captain of the Citizen’s Auxiliary, Piketon Police.”

  “Piketon?” I could see his opinion of me drop a notch when I said I wasn’t a real cop, but just a jack-leg deputy from a tooner-ville town like Piketon. Meantime, they got Callie all the way out onto the stretcher and I tried to casually hand my end off to him but he went on, “Piketon in on this too?”

  “Not really.” I sort of nudged my end over to him again but he didn’t take me up on it. “Chief wanted us to set up roadblocks as a precaution in case they came our way. That woman there, she drove up on me in this truck, driving crazy all over and I flagged her down and then I saw she was shot. Then I saw this feller inside near froze-up, but she was too bad hurt to tell me anything, they both was bad hurt like this and just almost passed out, so I radioed in and the chief said to get in the truck and take her here because with these roads the way they are they sure couldn’t get a medic out to us, so I did like he said and I guess I’m here now.”

 
He lost interest in me about halfway through all that and started blowing on his hands in the cold, which is what I was hoping. I made to hand him my end of the stretcher again, but the orderly said, “Let’s get her inside.”

  “I’ll just get a shot of the truck, be right in,” the reporter said.

  Dammit.

  And next thing I was carrying my end of that heavy stretcher—jeez, that woman weighed a ton!—into the hospital, down one hallway then another, past a bunch of cops hanging around, and the orderly decided he’d be helpful to the cops, so while we were rolling Callie onto a bed with wheels on it he called out, “This woman’s been shot,” and they all perked up good and came over.

  Well, dammit again.

  Time to ease away, get back out there, get Walter back in the truck and get us lost. I would have done it, too, but things just kept getting better and better. Right then the reporter runs in and yells to the cops standing around,

  “Hey! Outside! It’s the money from the robbery!”

  Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  There was a big rush for the back door, and me with my cop clothes I blended right in with the blue crowd and we all came out the door and around the truck. The reporter stayed inside; likely wanted to be the first to talk to the daring young lady who rescued all that money. I thought about what he’d do when they pulled back that hood Callie was wearing and he got a look at her, but that was somewhere off the back of my mind. Main thing I was thinking about was what the hell was I going to do now?

  We got outside to the truck, and there was about six or eight of us I guess. I took a long breath when I saw Walter had crawled away and he was sitting up against a wall in a shadow by a vent blowing warm air. Don’t know how he got himself there—couldn’t have been easy work, not for a man with frozen hands and feet, but he’d done it and that made things a little less awful.

  Which ain’t saying much.

  Me and all these cops crowded around the back of that truck while the music out there played,

  …the horse knows the way

  to carry the sleigh

  O’er the white and drifting sno-oww,