Big Hungry: A Novel

by John Clausen

  Old Roland Ackerman always told his son that anything he did should be able to pass the “Smell Test.” “You’re a smart kid, Harley,” he used to say. “If something don’t smell right, don’t do it…that covers everything from stealing to cheap hamburger. If it doesn’t smell right, don’t have anything to do with it. Once you got that in your head, you don’t have to wonder what to do. It’ll make life a lot easier.”

  In the last few years, Harlen thought, he’d pretty much abandoned the Smell Test. He’d done a lot of things with his money that his old dad would not have approved. He had always told himself that the results of his actions made the things he’d done okay in the end. Jobs were created. Lots of people had made money because of his drive and ambition...not the least of which was Harlen Ackerman. If some people got pinched in the process, that was just the way of the world. “Can’t make an omelet if you’re afraid to break a few eggs.” During his dream he’d had that very same omelet thought and looked quickly at Grandma Bamma who seemed to be able to field his unspoken thoughts.

  She had simply smiled at him. “I like an omelet myself once in a while,” she said. Harlen looked away. When he glanced back in her direction, she had vanished. He’d settled back in his pillow, closed his eyes, and drifted back into a deep sleep. The next thing he’d been aware of was Rita sitting in his room waiting for him to wake up.

  Now, recalling his dream and his conversation with Grandma Bamma, he felt an urgent need to set things right.

  “She was right, Rita, I need to change the way I’ve been doing things. Can you get Odell over here this afternoon?”

  Chapter 34

  Harlen met with Odell Scrum in his hospital room. He was recovering quickly, the doctor said, and was probably up to doing business as long as it took place while he was horizontal in his bed.

  “I’m scrapping the Big Hungry Project, Odell. I know that’s gonna be rough on you, but that’s the way it is.”

  “You’re damned right it’s going to be rough,” Odell said, after a moment of stunned silence. “Not everybody has a few million bucks laying around doing nothing. I’ve put a lot of my own money into this project…this is a hell of a note, you pulling out like this.”

  Harlen frowned at his attorney. “That’s right…and not every lawyer has a free-spending farm boy like me as a client, too. Am I going to have to find a new firm for my work…or can we get past this?”

  The thought of losing Harlen and his fortune brought Odell out of his sulk. “I’m still your attorney, Harlen…but I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t tell you that this is a bad mistake you’re making. What prompted the decision?”

  “Guess I developed a conscience while I was out. This project don’t pass the Smell Test…and that’s the end of it.”

  Odell didn’t have a clue what the Smell Test was, but he figured he’d pushed his luck far enough with Harlen. His old client’s newly found conscience wasn’t making him any less formidable or any less dangerous. Scrum briefly considered having Harlen declared incompetent, but he knew that Rita Ackerman wouldn’t be any easier to bamboozle than her husband. Plus, he’d seen Harlen in action when somebody tried to force him to do something he didn’t want to do. Scrum did not want to be on the receiving end of an Ackerman vendetta.

  “All right, Harlen…what do you want me to do?”

  The two men spent the next couple hours discussing how to abandon the project in the most efficient and least dangerous way. Scrum was relieved when Harlen offered to reimburse some of the lawyer’s soon-to-be lost investment.

  After the meeting, Scrum left the hospital and climbed into his pickup truck. He wondered briefly what it must be like for a man like Harlen Ackerman to suddenly develop integrity and a sense of right and wrong. He viewed it the way some men might wonder what it would be like to get prostate cancer…he figured a man could survive a set-back like that, but it would be damned inconvenient for a while. His own personal Smell Test was “if you smell money, go for it.”

  Scrum was confident that Harlen Ackerman would return to his pirate-like ways once the trauma of being shot had worn off. Then it would be business as usual. With this happy thought, he put the massive truck in gear and headed for his office. He would have to go through the motions of winding down the project, but he intended to do it as slowly as possible while he waited for Harlen to come to his senses. Also, he had plenty to do as he covered his own tracks in the Senator Cameron affair.

  “What a fucking moron,” Scrum said aloud as he thought about the mess the senator had created with his hare-brained kidnapping scheme and subsequent flight from justice. Who knew where the dumb bastard had gone? Scrum only hoped that it was some place without an extradition treaty.

  As the dour-faced attorney entertained these thoughts, another legal drama was unfolding at the jail.

  Deputy Sheriff Eugene Hornsby was sitting at his desk, looking at a letter that had arrived in an official-looking brown kraft envelope from the crime lab in Bismarck.

  “I don’t fucking believe it,” Hornsby said to no one in particular as he dropped the letter into a desk drawer. He got up from his desk and walked over to the jail, which still housed Ben Mooney.

  “Looks like you can go home, Ben. Your good name has been cleared.”

  Mooney opened one eye and said, “Can I stay ‘til after lunch? I’d like some more of Gary’s lo mein.”

  Mooney had been eating like a threshing crew ever since his arrival at the jail. Further, he’d hardly moved from the cot. He had a rare talent for doing nothing, for waiting for something to happen. Hornsby figured it had something to do with being a psychopath. Mooney reminded him of a big lizard he’d seen in a documentary about some island in the South Pacific. No movement could be detected as it waited by the trail and then the lizard would strike with nearly supersonic speed when its unsuspecting prey showed up.

  “Okay,” he told Mooney. “One more meal on the county and then back to your own cooking. It’s the least I can do after dragging you down here.”

  “Wasn’t that bad, Gene. Three hot meals and a cot. Maybe I should get arrested more often.”

  Hornsby brought lunch for Mooney and himself from the Tulleyville Grill. The lo mein actually was particularly good. The deputy made a mental note to find a less tasty source of jailhouse meals, something more in keeping with punishment and hardship. Most of the guys that he arrested ate way better in jail than they did out on their own.

  After lunch, Hornsby turned his guest loose and apologized for having inconvenienced Mooney.

  “Don’t worry about it, Gene. Do I get that 30/30 back any time soon?”

  “As soon as I take care of a couple loose ends,” Hornsby said. “I’ll bring it out to you when I’m done with it.”

  Mooney left the sheriff’s office and went directly to Nolen’s Bar where he was greeted by stunned silence and covert glances. He knocked back two draft beers, glared around the room just for fun, and then left to begin walking home. Hornsby had offered him a ride, but Mooney felt like a little exercise after his brief but leisurely incarceration.

  Furman watched from the bar as Mooney marched out of town. He admired the man’s purposeful stride and his strong physical presence…something Furman had never had as a living person. He was thinking about visiting Mooney’s cabin some day when he sensed that he had company. The Cowboy Angel was sitting across from him in the booth.

  “Good news, Furman,” the angel said. “Everything’s straightened out. We can go now.”

  Furman felt a small burst of anxiety.

  “Have to be right now?” he asked. “Still got a couple things I need to do.”

  The angel smiled. “Enjoying yourself? I get that a lot. Bet you didn’t know being dead would be so much fun.”

  “Just a couple days…something I need to get done. It’s important.”

  “I don’t know…looks like you and your friend Jonas have been getting into quite a bit of mischief. Guess another day or so wou
ldn’t hurt, though. I got enough to keep me busy. But after that, it’s time.”

  Furman thought fleetingly about the floater that nobody had found yet. He was amused at how people were asking Jonas where to find lost objects ever since the two of them had solved the kidnapping. Of course, no one knew or would have believed that Jonas was getting help from beyond the grave.

  “Don’t get too carried away with that floater project,” the Cowboy Angel said, even though Furman had not mentioned his plans. “People in your position tend to get a little too involved sometimes. It’s important to remember that hardly anything associated with live human beings is really important.”

  “Dead woman floating on the river,” Furman said incredulously. “That’s not important to you?”

  “Nope. But then I’m kind of in the business. Know what I mean? Try to look at it as if all the living people you know are kids in preschool. Nobody expects them to really learn anything important except how to play nice with each other. But everything the kid does will seem very important to him. See? Suppose you’re a little guy going to school and you slam your hand in the door of your mother’s station wagon. You’re going to scream like a smashed cat, probably drool a little, and generally raise a huge ruckus. That smashed hand will be the most important thing in your world. But the teacher and your mother both know that you’ll eventually get over it and move on…next year, you’re in first grade and something else happens and becomes the most important thing in the world. Fact is, though, those things are not really all that important. Same thing applies in life. Say you’re going along living your life and all of a sudden the doctor tells you that you have a huge tumor in your lungs and you only have six months to live. At that moment, nothing else matters to you…just like the kid with the smashed hand. But really, it just means you will be leaving a little earlier than you expected. People say, ‘What kind of a God would let a little child get leukemia?’ The answer is that God didn’t let it happen. It just happened. When that doctor tells you about your lung tumor, it’s a death sentence…but is it really all that important? Not really, it isn’t…not when you see how things work. Now…I will tell you that the way you react to that kind of news can be important…in terms of your soul. I know you’ve been obsessed with death for most of your life. Doesn’t really matter. You’re doing fine as a dead guy…even having a good time. So now, tell me…does human death look all that urgent to you right now? Of course it doesn’t. Now you can see that it’s just another step in a process than never ends. You have a lot of graduations ahead of you…and I promise you every one of them will be as interesting and fun as this one.”

  Chapter 35

  Gene Hornsby was tidying up the little jail cell when his brother barged into the office. He was in a state of high excitement, hair flying, eyes popping, and spit flying from his mouth when he spoke

  “You okay, Gene? I seen him down the road…we can still catch him if we hurry!”

  “Catch who?” Gene asked, continuing with his housekeeping.

  “Mooney! Jesus, Gene, you didn’t notice he escaped?”

  “I noticed that he was gone…let him go about a half hour ago. I expect he’s headed home. Offered him a ride, but he said he’d rather walk. Odd kind of guy, huh?”

  Droop did a little dance of frustration.

  “How come you let him out, Gene. Plain as day he’s the one that done the shooting.”

  “Maybe he was just eating too much. The man has an appetite and that’s the truth. Hey, give me your pocket knife for a minute.”

  Droop handed over his knife, a wicked-looking folding hunter’s knife, which Gene dropped into a metal tray on his desk.

  “Got anything else in those pockets, Droop? Let me see.”

  Droop dropped all the contents of his pockets into the tray alongside the knife. “What the fuck you doin’, Gene? Takin’ up a collection for Mooney’s restaurant bill?”

  “No,” the deputy said, gripping Droop’s upper arm firmly and pushing him into the cell. “I’m arresting you for the attempted murder of Harlen Ackerman and for trying to shoot your own brother, you miserable piece of shit.”

  As Droop howled and scolded from the cell, the deputy read him his rights. When Gene got to the part about appointing a lawyer if Droop couldn’t afford one, the prisoner stopped in mid-sentence and said, “I want Odell Scrum!”

  “Odell’s pretty busy right about now…plus I don’t think he’d give you a bucket of cold piss if you were on fire. I think you’re going to have to do with whoever the judge appoints. I’m calling the district attorney right now.”

  “You got nothin’ on me, Gene. What kind of an asshole would arrest his own brother? You can’t prove a thing, ‘cause I didn’t do it. Your buddy Ben Mooney did it and you know it!”

  “I got plenty on you, you dumb shit. In fact, you’re about as stupid as any criminal I’ve ever busted. I’m ashamed to share parents with a dufus like you.”

  Gene was careful not to tell his brother what his evidence was. In fact, the lab report showed Droop’s fingerprints on all the spent shells Gene had found at the scene. Apparently, Droop had wiped down the rifle before sneaking it back to Mooney’s cabin…but he had overlooked the cartridges. It was typical of Droop’s half-assed way of doing things, Gene thought…but he was mostly interested in finding out why his brother had shot Harlen. And why take those shots at his own brother?

  Chapter 36

  Word spread quickly that Gene Hornsby had released Ben Mooney and arrested his own brother for the Harlen Ackerman shooting. The crowd at Nolen’s Bar was incredulous, first because no one thought Droop had the chops to attempt murder and second because they were used to the idea of Ben Mooney being a psychopathic killer. After much beer-fueled debate, it was finally concluded that Droop probably had done it. The most convincing evidence was that the shooter had, indeed, failed to kill his victim, something they all agreed would not have been the case if Mooney had been the triggerman.

  Of course, this engendered yet more boozy ruminations. Why, for Pete’s sake, did a guy like Droop take a shot at a man like Ackerman? What did he have to gain? Somebody in the crowd suggested that Droop had been paid to do it, some third party who had something to gain by Ackerman’s death. Jimmy Nolen put an end to that line of thinking. “Who the fuck would hire Droop to do anything?” he asked the assembled thinkers. They had to agree that such a scenario was unlikely in the extreme.

  Someone else suggested that maybe the River Rats had done the shootings or had somehow influenced Droop to do the crime. This argument also deteriorated when Darrell Johnson piped up, “Those guys know Droop as well as anybody around here. Geez, you think they’d be stupid enough to trust him?” A member of the Rats’ upper management, Johnson wanted to deflect suspicion from his group. They had by then decided to back off on the “Dam the River and Die” slogan until the shootings were solved or were less in the public eye.

  Gene Hornsby was, of course, considering these questions himself, although without benefit of cold beer and drunken colleagues to advise him.

  Sitting at his desk, Hornsby ran the available information through his brain. One thing that stuck was the advice he’d received from Ben Mooney. Look for somebody close to Harlen and see who would benefit financially from Ackerman’s death. He had certainly been thinking along those lines since the beginning of the investigation. Unfortunately, he hadn’t come up with anything brilliant yet. Mostly he’d been waiting for somebody from the state police to show up and take it off his hands. He felt that he had way more on his plate than he could handle. There was the senator’s kidnapping scandal and subsequent flight, the shooting and the near shooting, and, of course, there was Pooch Eye’s dead woman…who, it appeared might just be real. Totaled up, they represented more actual police work than he’d ever had to do on this job. The more he thought about it, the more he longed for the old days of putting together cultivators and twisting bolts at the John Deere dealership.

  �
�Who in the hell would want Harlen Ackerman dead?” he asked aloud.

  “I have a whole list, sheriff,” a voice answered.

  Startled in his chair, Hornsby looked up and saw Jerry Guthrie and Claire Norgard standing in his office doorway.

  “How long you been here?” he asked Guthrie.

  “Just long enough to hear your question. Glad to see you’re thinking like a real cop. Got any good suspects?”

  “Is this off the record? ‘Cause if it isn’t, I’m not telling you anything.”

  “Okay, then. Off the record it is. Claire and I have something you might find interesting.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you then. I don’t have a clue. State police will be here soon and I’ll be more than happy to have them take over. I hate this job today. Town’s full of rumors and bullshit, the jail is full of my dumbass brother. Even I don’t think he did it. But what can I do? His fingerprints were all over the spent shells. Couldn’t just let him wander around. But I’d be completely shocked if the fool actually did it. Hell, I’m amazed he can even tie his shoes.”