Easy Death

by Daniel Boyd

  That’s all it took. Drapp got this look on his face like a fish snapping his jaw shut.

  “I think we can do it.” He waved over the cop who’d been standing outside the door and said he should ask that guy from the armored car there real nice to step back in the room he’d been in and just relax for a few minutes. And that’s how I got rid of that guard and the extra cop.

  So it was just me and Drapp there in the hallway.

  “We appreciate your help.” I tried to say it like there was the whole FBI, Harry Truman and the United States Government standing behind me. “Of course,” I added quick-like, “we’re actually just trying to help out here. You folks are running the show; the Office just sent me down to process the money.”

  Local cops don’t hear much from the feds, and when they do, it’s usually talking down to them like a bunch of hillbillies. And now here was me, a real Federal Man, telling Drapp he was running things and asking could I help. And he ate it up with a spoon. A big spoon, too,

  “Process the money?” he asked.

  “Oh yes,” I said, “we need to get everything to the nearest local police station for inventory and crime analysis. I don’t suppose you could arrange transport, could you?”

  Chapter 42

  Ten Hours After the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  7:00 PM

  Brother Sweetie

  Bud Sweeney hung up the phone, swearing softly at the deepening snow, at Eddie, Walter, everyone he’d ever trusted with a job in his life, and the human race in general. He looked out in the lot. Just a young couple, the ones who’d been in here twice before, circling around a ten-year-old Nash, opening the doors and checking the tires, then testing the bumper, then opening the doors again….

  Sweeney hustled his bulky mass outside. “Closing up folks.” He took the door handle right out of the young man’s hand, locked it and then slammed it shut. “Come back again, though.”

  “We were just wondering—” the man started.

  “Not tonight,” Sweeney said. “That was my mother just called, dying in the hospital and she wants a hot-water bottle. Understand it?” He started walking away even as he said it. The young man started to argue, saw the purposeful stride in the big man’s body and decided to take their dreams elsewhere.

  Sweeney never noticed. He was back inside the office, switching off the lights in the parking lot and flipping a switch behind him to kill the music, thinking about how he had to get the truck out to Dell’s and wondering about Slimmy and if he was still waiting out there on Highway 12.

  Right on cue, the phone rang again.

  “Mister Sweeney?”

  It was Sarge on the other end.

  “Whaddaya got, Sarge, I’m kind of busy.”

  “I got Slimmy here, is what I got. He’s kind of drunk. Even for Slimmy he’s kind of drunk. And he’s talking.”

  “Talking?” Sweeney’s hand tightened around the phone receiver. “Talking about what?”

  “I’m being real careful not to listen,” Sarge said. Then, “I’m being real careful not to hear anything.”

  “How long’s he been there?”

  “That’s funny too; some cop dropped him off here about one.”

  “A cop dropped him off?”

  “Yeah, just let him out outside and then took off. I mean he took off fast as he could in this mess, the cop did. And then Slimmy comes in and he was already kind of drunk so I give him a sandwich, and he has a few beers, then a few more and now—well he’s getting kind of loud.”

  Sweeney calculated. If Slimmy had blabbed anything to the cop, he wouldn’t have just dropped him off there drunk. And Sarge said the cop took off in a hurry, right around one, which would be when they’d started looking for the Ajax truck. “Anybody else there?”

  “A night like this? The only one else here is Joe and I told him to stay in the kitchen.”

  “Good work.”

  “Well, I owe you.”

  “Come June we’ll see about fixing you up with that air conditioning thing you been talking about,” Sweeney said. “Right now, I want you to slip him one—Slimmy, I mean—I want you to slip him one, and when he passes out you set him outside for me.”

  “Outside?” Sarge’s voice got a little high and thin.

  “Do I mumble?”

  “This weather?”

  “We got a bad line or something?”

  “No, I hear ya. Just….” Sarge didn’t want to go on and Sweeney didn’t pick up the thought. They both just let it hang there between them on the telephone line.

  “I’ll be there when I can. May be a while. Probably better if you and Joe just close up and go on home.”

  “We were thinking on just sleeping here tonight, it’s so bad out and all….”

  “Sleep in the outhouse if you want to,” Sweeney said patiently, “or at the Ritz. I don’t really care where you are, just don’t be there outside when I pick up Slimmy. Understand it?”

  “Got it.”

  “I was hoping you had.”

  “Well….” Sarge wanted to end the conversation, but he felt that was Sweeney’s call. “If I don’t see you, Merry Christ—”

  Sweeney hung up. He picked up a ring of keys from his desk drawer, right next to the snub-nose Colt .38 he kept there for social occasions, considered packing the .38 but decided against it. The day I need a rod to settle anything like Slimmy…

  He walked out into the garage. Yeah, the ice truck was there, and ready to run. He looked up at the big black-and-white clock on the wall. After seven, way after. Nearer seven-thirty. And he had to get out to Dell’s. And then clear the other side of the county over to Sarge’s. Damn. Damn the weather.

  There just wasn’t enough time.

  He heard something from back out in the office, and from a lifetime of experience knew it was something someone didn’t want him to hear. Softly, surprisingly quiet for a man his size, he eased back to the doorway looking into his office.

  Mort was standing there, bent over Sweeney’s desk drawer, and holding the snub-nose Colt.

  Chapter 43

  Ten Hours and Thirty Minutes After the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  7:30 PM

  Eddie

  I couldn’t give Drapp too much time. Did he get a chance to think it out, a smart guy like him, he’d start asking more questions, and they’d be hard ones, too. So while he was lining up how to move out that money, I was heading back to where I stowed Walter.

  And running up to more trouble.

  As I come down the hall to that room where I left Walter, I heard voices. Or one voice, really, high-pitched and sharp, and it didn’t sound real happy. Inside I saw Walter, still sitting there looking three-fourths gone to Canaan, and Doc Robbins standing to one side, acting real sorry about all this. And leaning over Walter there’s a tall guy in a clean, starched white coat, asking how comes he to be there anyway.

  “Why didn’t they send you to the clinic?” The doctor—the clean doctor, I mean, he was asking it, not Doc Robbins—he stepped around those water tubs where Walter was soaking his bare feet, leaned down to put a thumb under his left eyebrow—none too gentle, either—and pried his eye open. “Come on, boy, I can tell you’re not passed out. You can’t fool a white man with that—”

  That’s when Robbins saw me come in. He took in my new outfit and blinked, and for a minute I thought maybe he wouldn’t recognize me, but then up he pipes, “Uh—perhaps, uh, Officer Drapp here can explain it better than I could?” He gave me what they call a meaningful glance and said a little louder, “This is Doctor Woodrum, Officer Drapp.”

  The other doctor turned to me. Then back to Robbins. “Robbins you idiot, this isn’t Officer Drapp.” He turned back to me. “You’re not Officer Drapp,”

  “If you say so,” I smiled at him, “I won’t argue it with you. But this man’s getting treated. Here. In your hospital.”

  “We don’t treat them here.” Woodrum sounded like ano
ther one of these guys that just loves the sound of himself giving orders. “That’s our policy.”

  “Looks to me like you’re treating him now.” I looked at Walter. He was slowly, quietly pulling his hands out of the buckets of warm water. “Hell, you’ve treated him already.”

  Woodrum never took his eyes off me. Never saw Walter lift his feet from the water buckets in front of the wheelchair he was sitting in and put them gently down on a towel on the floor in front of him. Woodrum just looked at me closer. “Officer, I want your correct name and badge number. I won’t have this attitude!”

  “I won’t charge much for it,” I said.

  Because while Woodrum was talking, Walter sitting there behind him, he reached down on the floor and slipped his hand into one of his empty shoes and then he stood up. I could see him wince with the pain of moving, but he did it, and then he tapped Woodrum on the shoulder, real gentle.

  Woodrum got a look on his face like he wasn’t used to getting interrupted when he was laying down the law at somebody, and then he turned around and saw Walter standing behind him. I didn’t see the look on his face then, but his shoulders twitched in surprise as he faced Walter for about a second and a half.

  “I hate to hit a man from behind,” Walter said.

  Then he swung the fist inside that heavy shoe of his and caught Woodrum right upside the head.

  Woodrum, he fell sideways toward the cabinets, and he went to crumpling up while he got there. I watched him land, and he hit like in a movie I saw once where a plane crashed across the deck of an aircraft carrier—just all over the place like that. I looked over at Doc Robbins, and he was looking across the room to where his boss-doctor was lying there now like a pile of clean white laundry over in the corner.

  Walter can swing a good one, does he want to.

  Right now though, he just collapsed back to sit-down, near crying with the pain in his hands and feet. I turned to Robbins.

  “You saw it,” I said, “your Doctor Woodrum there slipped in the water and came down on his head. Didn’t he?”

  Robbins, from what I’d seen of him, I figured he was a man liked to talk. But he just kind of stood there looking at me, at Walter and then over at the pile of doctor in the corner.

  Well, I didn’t have time to use up a lot of words on him. I stepped up close to him and shot him the same look I gave that armored-car guard. “Give me your wallet,” I said.

  He blinked. I thought to slap him upside his fat face, but then I figured to hold off on that if I could.

  “Give me your wallet,” I said again, and I said it different this time. A lot different. Still nothing from Robbins but an empty stare, like he figured he’d wake up just any time now and things would make sense again. I just put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed some—real friendly, but I put a little hurt in it.

  “Give me your wallet.” It was the last time I was going to say it. And it was the last time I had to, because he finally woke up and dug in his back pocket and come up with an old brown leather thing with most all the skin wore off it.

  I took it from him as he was bringing it around, just jerked it out of his hand and went through it fast. Come up with his driver’s license.

  “You still live over on Quincy?” I asked him.

  “Uh—” he couldn’t get the question at first. Then, “Yes. I live overtop Jake’s place.” He said it fast, but not too fast, and I was glad of that because it showed me he wasn’t lying. Probably.

  “Kind of noisy there, ain’t it?” I asked.

  “Well—I guess.” He couldn’t figure out where any of this was headed to, and the look on his face it was a little like a picture I saw once of Alice in Wonderland, all wide-eyed and what-the-hell. “But it’s, um, convenient.”

  “Good,” I said, “I like that you live someplace convenient. It’s real good for you.” I squeezed the license back in his wallet and stuck it back in his pocket. “Just remember I know where it’s at.”

  He figured it out. And it woke him up.

  “Now this man,” I pointed down to Walter, “he’s an important witness and he’s your patient, and you got to get him ready to travel. Understand?”

  “Perfectly,” he said, “this man is my patient and—”

  “And he’s got to be ready to move out. And soon.” I stood close and spoke soft, and I put my hand back on Robbins’ shoulder, just to kind of remind him. “So you’re going to get him ready to go. He’s going to need bandages, those thick kind, on his hands and feet. Put his coat back on him first. And maybe slip him some more of those pills for the pain. And find some rubbers, some galoshes or something, to go on over his feet after you bandage them up. You listening?”

  “Absolutely. I’m to bandage him and—”

  “You put his coat on him first, that way you don’t get trouble from the hand bandages. Then once you get his feet wrapped—what do you do then?”

  “Then I find a pair of overshoes big enough to put on over the bandages.”

  “Right as sunshine.” I gave him a smile, sort of. “Then you put him in that wheelchair and you take him out back to where that glass door is by the parking lot where all the cop cars are parked. And you wait there with him—wait inside there where it’s nice and warm, understand—and I’ll be there right along. You still with me?”

  “Completely.” And he was, he was really with me now. Something about the situation it struck him funny and exciting, like he’d got past trying to make sense of things and now he was just kind of going along for the nice ride and kind of tickled to think of his boss getting clocked out by a black man.

  Made me glad I hadn’t hit him.

  “This man is my patient,” he said it again, like he meant it, “and I shall have him ready for travel in ten minutes or less. Is there anything further, Officer?”

  Yeah, I thought, go through the phone book and find me a cheap lawyer for when this whole thing falls apart. But I just said, “I’ll see you around back.”

  I headed out. One more stop to make before I met up with Drapp and collected the money.

  Chapter 44

  Ten Hours and Thirty-Five Minutes After the Robbery

  December 20, 1951

  7:35 PM

  Brother Sweetie and Mort

  “Boxer kept playing?” Sweeney was trying to get the story straight. “He played cards some more after you won the fifty? Didn’t act mad and kick you out?”

  “Played cards and lost. And then he robbed me. Just took it all, took everything I won.” Like with Helen, Mort couldn’t get it across to Sweeney. He couldn’t put it into words, about being treated like nothing, and how Boxer never even used his fists. “I got to kill him,” he said simply, raising the .38 for emphasis. “And you better not try to stop me.”

  Sweeney thought for a moment about reaching over, taking the gun from Mort’s sweaty hand and clouting him over the head with it. Then changed his mind as an idea began to form. “Wouldn’t think of stopping you,” he said. “Wouldn’t even think of trying. You kill Boxer or he kills you, it ain’t no skin off my ass either way.”

  “Okay then.”

  “But I got a better idea.”

  “Don’t try to stop me.”

  “Hell, go ahead. I was just thinking it might be a good thing to get your money back off him first before you go killing anybody. Might be a good thing for the wife and kids to have some spending dough, what with you getting your butt thrown in the clink for murder and all.”

  Another voice came from the doorway behind Mort. “Don’t go dragging me and the kids into it, you lousy mick.”

  Mort spun around. Helen was in the doorway, sagging, out of breath and mad like he’d never seen her before: quiet-mad, not yelling or hitting, just real quiet. And real mad. Mort spun back to cover Sweeney again, but Sweeney was nowhere near him, just standing easy on the other side of the room.

  “Well howdy, ma’am,” he said, and smiled at Helen, “I hope you’ll pardon my crude language. Didn’t realiz
e a lady was present here.”

  “Put it in a can,” she said. “Just put that kind of sweet talk in a can and set it on the shelf. I told Mort he shouldn’t go and get himself mixed up with a cheap crook like you, and now look what—”

  “Helen I never—” Mort started.

  “Yeah, this morning you said you wasn’t going to do anything against the law, you said. Just going to do a little job for Brother Sweetie here and get fifty bucks. And I told you not to get mixed up with a lousy crook like him and now look: he’s got you getting yourself robbed and ready to go kill somebody.”

  Mort started to answer but Sweeney jumped in.

  “And I was just telling Mort I’d give him his money back and get Boxer to apologize, without killing nobody. No need to go killing anyone at Christmas is there?”

  “Apology ain’t enough,” Mort insisted, “and money ain’t enough, either. Not after how he treated me.”

  “Wait a minute,” Helen said. She brushed past her husband and up to Sweeney, ignoring the gun, her eyes still hard, but now starting to soften with interest. “You’ll get our money back?”

  “Hell, I’ll give it to you now. Out of my own pocket.”

  “Watch that language in front of Helen.” Mort waved the gun that was beginning to seem increasingly irrelevant, even to him.

  “I do beg your pardon, ma’am, but a man like me consorts sometimes with low company, and I grow careless in my speech.” He turned back to Mort. “You want to go kill Boxer, that’s your business. Understand it? Go ahead, blow his black head off, and while you’re there tell him I wish him Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. All I’m saying is I can get you that four hundred back—double it if you say so—and I’ll get Boxer Healey to go down on his knees and apologize to you in front of everybody. And he’ll do it sincere, too. And when he sees you in the street from now on, he’ll tip his hat. And call you Mister.”

  “He will?”

  “I’ll see he does. And I’ll give you your money right now tonight.”