Graves' Retreat

by Ed Gorman

  “Damn,” said Neely.

  “Maybe it’s a sign,” T.Z. said.

  “A sign?”

  “Yeah. You ever read the astrology section in the newspaper?”

  Neely’s jaw muscles started working. “Don’t talk for right now, all right, T.Z.?”

  Obviously knowing he’d been scolded, T.Z. shut up.

  This was the riskiest part, Neely knew.

  Maybe Early was smart enough to know that they were following him. Maybe somewhere in the shadows ahead he was waiting for them, gun drawn.

  “Come on," Neely said, and for the first time there was tension in his voice.

  They had to cross First Avenue. There was plenty of light for them to be seen in. Neely had his gun in his hand, shoved just inside the flap of his suit coat pocket. Neely had never been able to get through an entire robbery without his stomach going to hell. It started going to hell now. Pain crisscrossed his abdomen. Sharp pain. He imagined that somewhere in the murk half a block away, Black Jake Early waited for them. Weapon ready. Smiling.

  “Come on,” he said, trying to give them both courage.

  A wagon flew by, the driver drunk and singing with his girlfriend.

  Neely and T.Z. had to step back to avoid being struck.

  Neely was tense enough that he wanted to pull his gun and waste the young farm kid with the reins. See his head burst open like a melon dropped from a height.

  But then they got across the avenue and stood in the gloom. They were half a block away from the field where the rendezvous was supposed to take place. Black Jake Early was nowhere to be seen. You could smell the fishy hot river. You could smell the grasses that had begun to bum in a sun subtly tipping toward autumn. You could smell your own sweat.

  “There!” whispered Neely.

  Around the edge of a building that sat a hundred yards from the field stood Black Jake Early.

  Neely laughed softly. “He’s expecting us to come up along the river path.” If that had indeed been their plan, then Early would have been in a good position to pick them off one at a time. And it was logical for a man like Early to assume that his would-be killers would indeed have chosen the small copse of oak trees to hide in.

  Logical-but wrong.

  Neely pushed T.Z. ahead.

  They went up half a block through the alley and then cut across between two buildings. The night soaked them. Mosquitoes ripped at them.

  When they reached a large warehouse, they cut along its side then came out on a board sidewalk. They went east again.

  The area was mostly commercial. Small empty factories. Dark storage buildings. A dairy. Nobody worked the night before the Fourth.

  Behind the dairy, abutting the field, was where they’d seen Early.

  What they’d done was swing wide and come up from behind him. He’d be watching the field when they reached him-looking in the wrong direction.

  Neely took his gun out.

  This would all have to happen very quickly. If T.Z. even began to suspect what was really about to happen, he would bolt and run and then Neely would have to start looking for him, too. And there wouldn’t be time for that. Neely expected to be on his way to Mexico by daylight.

  “Ready?” Neely said.

  But all T.Z. said was “I should’ve seen Les. Talked to him. Tried to make him feel better.”

  Neely spat. “I asked if you were ready.”

  T.Z. shaking, said, “I’m ready.”

  They moved.

  Through patches of light, through patches of darkness. Over grass and over board sidewalk. Neely’s heart was wild in his chest.

  Black Jake Early was still edging out around the side of the building, watching the field when they got there.

  Neely didn’t wait to catch his breath. All he said was “Are you Mr. Early?”

  And when Early whirled around, Neely shot him twice in the face and once in the chest.

  Early hadn’t had time to scream or to protest in any way. His long arms went out, fanning the air like a vaudeville comedian doing a backward pratfall, and then he dropped over with the force of a tree being felled. When the back of his head struck the ground, there was a pop and you could tell the impact had burst his head open.

  All T.Z. could do was stand there, transfixed.

  Which is exactly what Neely had counted on.

  “He’s probably got some cash," Neely said, running over to the fallen Early.

  Neely dropped to a knee, jamming his hand into the man’s coat pocket, pulling out an expensive leather wallet. He pulled out a thick wad of greenbacks and stuffed them into his own pocket.

  He did all this without once taking his eyes off the gun that Early still had clutched in his useless hand.

  Neely glanced up at T.Z.

  T.Z. was still gone somewhere inside his own mind.

  Sighing, readying himself, Neely reached wide over the horizon of Early’s belly and yanked the gun from his hand.

  Quickly, and without pause, he turned back to T.Z.

  Only in that final moment did T. Z. Graves see what was really happening here.

  He opened his mouth and started to protest.

  Neely shot him directly in heart. He wanted him dead right away. He did not want T.Z. to suffer.

  After T.Z. had fallen, Neely went over and stood above him. T.Z.’s eyelids still flickered feverishly. Neely had seen cows dying of anthrax. Their eyelids had twitched similarly. It was a measure of their agony and delirium. Nobody should have to endure that. Neely shot him twice more in the chest. Almost at once T.Z. was still. Perfectly and finally still.

  “I’m sorry, T.Z.,” Neely said in a flat voice. “I’m sorry.”

  Then he took his own weapon and put it in T.Z.’s hand, knowing exactly how it would look to the law. That T.Z. had stalked the bounty hunter and ambushed him and that in a shootout, one man had killed the other.

  He stood up, chilled with his own sweat despite the heat. Gunshots would bring people within minutes.

  He had to get out of here.

  Fast.

  He looked back down at T.Z.

  And then felt something he never had known before: loneliness.

  He ran.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Les heard about it, forty-five minutes later, when one of the boarders came back from a night of tavern-hopping downtown.

  As usual on summer nights, the boarders were all down on the front porch, listening to Mr. Waterhouse.

  Les was upstairs on the bed.

  After leaving May, he’d come back to his home and surprised himself by falling into an immediate and deep sleep that lasted for most of four hours.

  Now, coming awake, he lay staring at the ceiling, wondering what time the robbery would take place and T.Z. and Neely would start for Mexico.

  He also wondered if Neely really would do his best to make it look like a real robbery and not something that Les had taken part in-

  Then the words from below started to float up through the night air that smelled of sun tea and mint leaves.

  “-found two bodies over by the icehouse. The police say this wanted man killed a bounty hunter, but that the bounty hunter managed to kill the wanted man, too. Say they found the man’s wanted poster in the bounty hunter’s pocket. Imagine that.”

  “My Lord.”

  They met the news as human beings often do with griefs over others-with a certain glee. Misery is wonderful as long as it’s somebody else’s. Les had often done the same thing himself and he did not blame these people for being what they had no choice but to be- human.

  He sat up urgently, as if he was about to go somewhere quickly.

  But he only sat there. Muttered words resembling a prayer parted his lips. He prayed for T.Z.’s soul, thinking of T.Z.’s nightmare of screaming, “Don’t close your eyes!” to their father.

  So now T.Z.’s eyes were closed finally, too…

  But his sorrow was not pure; there was some relief in it, too. There seemed to be
those human beings for whom existence was a wretched and unendurable condition… And certainly his brother had been one of them.

  Now, in the darkness, T.Z. would at last know peace.

  Then the image of Neely filled his mind.

  Neely.

  He had killed them both, of course.

  Now he would sneak into the bank, take the money, and flee to Mexico.

  After murdering his best friend.

  Les’s moments of reflection were banished by a real agitation. His right hand began to tremble and he came fully awake now.

  Neely-

  ***

  For the past day, Mr. Waterhouse’s story about the bank robber who had buried the bank money had stayed with him. Several times during the day, when he was not sure he wanted to turn the combination over to T.Z. or Neely, he’d started working on a plan to foil them. To take the money himself and bury it so that when they got into the bank, they would find the vault empty.

  But he’d given up on the plan because, no matter how he devised it, the result would have been the same-T.Z., bereft of money, would have fallen into the hands of Black Jake Early and been hanged.

  But now Les had none of those concerns.

  Now he could spring his trap for Neely alone and have the law waiting there when Neely tried to sneak in.

  He got up, dressed quickly and went downstairs.

  On the porch, Mr. Waterhouse said, “Did you hear about the shooting?”

  “Yes, yes I did,” Les said.

  His tone shocked everybody on the porch and a puzzled silence fell over them.

  Les Graves was clearly crying.

  He set off down into the darkness toward town.

  Neely walked among the revelers.

  He had not taken into account how many people would be wandering the streets of Cedar Rapids this night.

  He stopped in at various taverns and had beers-but only carefully sipping; he needed his full brain tonight-and listened as talk of the Fourth shifted gradually to the shootings over by the icehouse.

  Several times he walked past the bank. Stared at it. Twice he saw policemen caught up in the crowds nearby.

  Neely would have to wait until he was sure he could get in the back door without being seen.

  He found another tavern and had another beer. T.Z.’s face did not appear in his mind any oftener than once a minute…

  Les reached the bank twenty minutes later.

  He stood across the street, letting people bump into him, slap him on the back and wish him well at pitching tomorrow, and offer him declined beers-stood there making sure that he wanted to do what he seemed about to.

  So many things could go wrong. He had no doubt that Neely, seeing he’d been tricked, would kill him.

  But Les’s memories of his brother led him finally across the street and down the alley that ran along the west side of the structure and up to the back door and-

  ***

  Clinton Edmonds rolled over on his side and opened his eyes.

  Sighing, he reached for the water glass on the nightstand.

  As he was drinking, his wife said, “You can’t sleep?”

  “Oh, I got to sleep all right. It’s just that I can’t stay asleep.”

  His wife put a pleasantly warm hand on his back. “Things turned out pretty well today, don’t you think? You and Susan-you and Byron-”

  He shook his head, watched the way the shadows from trees chased each other across the wall, like silhouette animals frolicking. “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ve been thinking about us taking a long vacation.”

  For two decades his wife had been trying to get Clinton Edmonds to do just this. To give up his tight rein on the bank, to truly turn operating control over to somebody else. But Clinton, his promises to the contrary, had never agreed. Their vacations, always short-lived as a result, were hurtling train rides to New York, where they’d stay for three days, then hurtle right back, Clinton afraid that some disaster would strike his bank in his absence.

  Now he was saying they should go on a long vacation.

  “Where would we go?”

  “I was thinking of Europe.”

  She laughed. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Susan’s right. What she said about my background making me afraid of losing everything I have.”

  “You’re a well-respected man, Clinton.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “Well respected, maybe, but not well liked exactly.”

  She touched him again. “You can always work on that, Clinton.”

  He sighed. “Yes, I suppose I can.”

  "Now, why don’t you try to get back to sleep?”

  He shook his head. “Actually, I thought I’d get up and go for a walk.”

  “But where, at this time of night?”

  “Oh, downtown maybe.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to go to the bank, don’t you?”

  He smiled and patted her hand. “I want to put some things on Byron’s desk.”

  "What things?”

  “My appointments calendar, for one thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Monday, he’s going to start seeing most of the people I have to now.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “That way, I’ll have more time to plan our vacation.”

  ***

  Les got the rear door of the bank open at exactly 12:01 a.m.

  By 12:08 he had swung the vault door wide and taken his large leather satchel and stepped inside the big metal tomb and set to work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Within a few blocks of his estate, Clinton Edmonds found himself caught up in a flow of humanity that was apparently determined to revel till dawn.

  At first he took great Methodist exception to such a pagan spectacle. But gradually, buoyed on the floating summer laughter and oddly vulnerable aspect of the young men and women he saw, he realized that he had indeed become what Susan had said, “a proper prig.”

  So he began smiling and while he declined various offers of drinks from various offered jugs for sanitary reasons, he allowed himself to feel at least some small part of the celebration going on-the early fireworks bursting brilliant red-green-blue-yellow, against the silver disc of moon itself-the music of half a dozen nationalities and the dancers in native costumes in the streets.

  He felt a familiar pride as he moved down Third Avenue, proud he’d played a part in this town that was becoming a by-God city.

  He turned west, toward the bank.

  ***

  There were greenbacks and stocks and bonds and more greenbacks in the walk-in vault.

  Les yanked them from the dozens of small slots that honeycombed three walls.

  He was still crying.

  His loss of T.Z. rose as the shock of it wore off.

  All he could think of was Neely and how Neely had betrayed his brother.

  All he could think of was how Neely’s face would look when he found the vault empty-

  Because of his grief and his frenzy, Les did not hear the rear door of the bank swing squeakily open on its hinges, nor hear the sudden sharp rap of feet on the wooden floor, nor sense a presence in the vault doorway behind him.

  Only when his name was spoken sharply-“Les!”-did he turn around.

  There stood Clinton Edmonds himself. Holding a shotgun.

  The man looked as if somebody had just struck him. “I-I don’t believe this, Les. I-just don’t believe this.”

  Then Les realized what Clinton Edmonds was seeing.

  A trusted employee. The dead of night. The trusted employee throwing packet after packet of bank funds into a huge leather satchel.

  All Les could stammer was-“There’s going to be a robbery, Mr. Edmonds. All I was trying to do was get the money out of here before the robber came. I was going to get the police and-”

  “I don’t know about you,” a deep and beery mal
e voice said from somewhere behind Clinton Edmonds. “But that isn’t the kind of tale I’d be likely to believe.”

  From the shadows stepped Neely.

  He pulled the hammer back on his Navy Colt and then pushed the Colt hard against the temple of Clinton Edmonds.

  Then Neely took Edmonds’ shotgun and led the man over to a straight-backed chair. “If you move, old man, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

  Clinton Edmonds, appearing to have been completely overpowered in all ways, nodded with forlorn docility.

  Neely turned back to the vault.

  “You’ve made it easy for me,” he said to Les, nodding at the large leather satchel filled with money.

  “I wanted you to find the vault empty. I wanted to see your face,” Les said. “You killed him, Neely. You killed T.Z.”

  Neely’s voice lost its hardness. “It wasn’t easy for me, Les, and I don’t give a damn what you think otherwise. We’re just animals, unfortunately, and in the end all we can think of is our own bellies and our own skin.”

  “You were going to take him to Mexico. Dry him out.” Les’s rage was becoming uncontrollable. He had never wanted to kill a man before. But now he knew he could tear Neely apart with savage satisfaction. “You were going to take care of him.”

  “I’m sorry, Les. I genuinely am.”

  All Les wanted was the slightest opportunity to fling himself at Neely. He prayed for one.

  Neely turned back to Clinton Edmonds. “Get in there, old man.”

  But Clinton Edmonds seemed to have lost his ability to understand English. He stared uncomprehendingly at Neely.

  Neely crossed over to him and hit him with the butt end of his pistol squarely on the temple.

  Edmonds slumped in the chair immediately.

  Neely bent to pick him up and drag him to the vault.

  And Les saw his opportunity.

  With an anger that literally blinded him, he hurled himself out of the vault and onto Neely.

  Neely turned just in time to get a shot off, not the clean deadly shot he’d obviously wanted, but enough to tear a piece of flesh and muscle away from Les’s right bicep.