Easy Death (10 page)

“Okay, lift!”

They threw their shoulders into it, lifted for all they were worth.

The front of the car came up level with the roadway. “Up higher…”

Walter put the tree over his shoulder and strained. The bumper moved higher, almost clear of the snow.

“Now over!”

They levered toward the road, and the car moved almost out of the ditch.

Then the tree broke.

Walter looked at it.

“Find us another.” He panted as more snow blew into his face.

Eddie looked at the broken tree, sighed and followed Walter into the woods.

* * *

“Damn, that was a lot like work.” Walter steered the car through a straight stretch of snow-drifted road, listening to the tire chains clank against the icy roadway.

“Pretty close.” Eddie lit another cigarette, drew in a deep lungful, then passed it over to Walter and held it to his lips. “How’s she driving?”

“Don’t feel like we bent a rod or nothing.” Walter inhaled deeply off the cigarette and adjusted his hands on the steering wheel.

Eddie brought the cigarette back and took another lungful of smoke. “Where’d you learn to move a car out of a ditch like that?”

“Back home,” Walter said. “I grew up out in the middle of no place. And I’m here to tell you it was damn smack spang right in the middle of no place, too. Or maybe you’d get to the middle of no place and us folks we lived in the next holler back of there. Nearest store with a phone and electric was two miles to walk there, and nobody ’round us had money to buy nothing nohow.”

“So you had to do for yourself?”

“We done for ourself and then some. Getting cars out from a mud-wallow was just one little part of it.”

“No wonder you up and went to the city.”

“Yeah.” Walter made a short laugh-sound. “But if I’d have knowed about this snow, I mighta just stayed back down there in the mud-wallows.”

“I’m starting to see the wisdom there.” Eddie stared out at the sheet of white coldness all around them as the car moved fitfully through the soggy mess. “But I’m real happy-glad you got that trick of getting a car out of a ditch. I’ve towed my share of cars out of plenty ditches myself, but I always had a truck or something to do it with.”

“You used to pull cars out from ditches?” Walter asked.

“Not me personal, not if I could help it. Jeeps mostly. And trucks of course. It’s what I did in the war.” Eddie took another deep drag off the cigarette. “I got trucks, Jeeps and wheels out of ditches for the 101st Airborne and fixed whatever those guys had brains enough not to break beyond fixing.” He looked out the window. The woods had given way to another farmer’s field, and the snow drifts ran deeper where wind crossed the road.

“I told you I worked in the motor pool,” he went on. “Got that job because I figured fixing engines was safer than shooting Germans. Only it seemed like was there a ditch, a crater, a creek or a canyon fifty miles in any direction from this man’s army, some GI he’d drive right into it. Where I was, mostly there was a truck handy someplace or even a tank to pull it out. Or maybe five or six GIs with strong backs and a nasty noncom, so we could make it up as we went along. And one thing they had plenty handy in that man’s war was GIs and nasty noncoms.”

“You was in the motor pool all through the war, then?”

“Yup. Seemed pretty soft and pretty safe till one winter morning when they got all us guys in the motor pool up out of bed, handed us rifles and marched a bunch of us out to some place near Bastogne. Some non-com put a bunch of us behind a wall at a burned-out house and said I was in charge and we was to stay there. And next thing was, every German in the world come running up the hill at us. Wasn’t so nice then.”

“You talking about the Battle of the Bulge? You was in that?”

“Didn’t mean to be.” Eddie passed the cigarette over to Walter and held it for him again, then took a last puff himself. “We figured we had ’em—the Germans, I mean—we figured we had ’em beat by then and soon as the snow cleared we’d march across the Rhine and into Berlin. No one was much thinking they’d hit us back in the middle of winter like that.”

“I remember my brother reading me about that in the papers,” Walter said, “Battle of the Bulge. And you was there.”

“Not like I planned on it or nothing.” Eddie stubbed the cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray, watching the empty fields crawl past outside. “I hadn’t shot a rifle since boot camp. Hell, I’d of turned and got out of there, only it was safer to squat down and shoot.”

“You stopped the Germans?”

“We slowed them up some I guess, us grease monkeys and typists there behind that wall. It gets into you some way and you keep shooting. Go crazy maybe and just keep shooting. Anyhow the line held in our sector and I got stuck there in a trench for days and nights no end, firing whatever I got my hands on. Didn’t like it much.”

“Damn.” Walter almost smiled. “I got me a war hero for a partner.”

“You’ll have you a war hero for a cellmate do they catch up to us.”

“You figure they behind us? Or ahead of us?”

“I figure like this,” Eddie said. “Did everything break our way, they haven’t even found the truck yet.”

“Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just something my brother read to me once,” Walter said. “My brother, the one that’s dead, he used to read us poems, and some I remember: ‘Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.’ ”

“He got that right.” Eddie looked thoughtful. “But even did they find that truck, and they got the story on us, they’re still some ways behind.”

“Not in front? You thinking about roadblocks?”

“They can’t get any roadblocks anywhere in front of us, weather like this. And I don’t think they’ll figure us to cut through the park. Brother Sweeetie’s bright idea. Anyone sets up roadblocks they won’t be there.”

“That’s likely.”

“Yeah, but did they get behind us, they could be moving up. Hard to miss tire tracks come through the snow like this, and they might have a Jeep or something to make better time. And that hour we spent in the ditch didn’t help us none.”

“I’m damn sorry about that.”

“Not your fault.” Eddie looked out his window. “But one thing sure: we get caught, Brother Sweetie ain’t going to blame some deer.”

“Yeah, we lose this money, we gonna look awful short next to him.”

“He’ll nail our ass to the wall, is what he’ll do.”

Walter thought a minute. “But if maybe they’re behind us, I know a way to stop them.” At a patch of road by a culvert the snow had drifted away to just a couple inches deep, and he eased in the clutch and let the car roll to a stop.

“Farmhouse out there.” He nodded toward a vague shape through the blowing snow. “And like as not they got them a truck parked in a barn someplace.”

“Like as not,” Eddie said. “What you thinking?”

“I’m gonna get out here and steal me a truck. Should be easy enough, and the big wheels on a heavy truck will get me through over roads like this.”

“Yeah they will, but I still don’t know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking you drive this car on ahead and I get me that truck and follow you behind. Don’t wait for me or nothing. We ain’t got the kind of time you should wait for me. Just let me out here and you drive and keep going to the meeting place. And I’ll be someways behind you in the truck. That way, you get stuck or go off the road again, I come up behind and we load the money in the truck and keep going. And here’s the other part: if someone
is
following us, and he come up behind me, I can make like I’m in an accident and block the road.”

“So I get through to the rendezvous?”

“That’s the idea. It comes down to it, I’ll just play like I’m dumb. Things get tight, I can take off on foot. Even if they catch me, all they got me on is stealing a truck.”

“Walter, you got brains, you have.”

“Thank you, Eddie.”

“Only it ain’t going to work.”

“You figure not?”

“I figure is there anyone in that farmhouse, and likely there is, I figure they see you coming through the snow and heading to that truck, well, some farmer’s going to come out with his shotgun, and next spring he’ll point out your head hanging over his fireplace.”

“I can handle any farmer.”

“But you don’t got to,” Eddie said. “I can steal the truck easy.”

“You figure so?”

“I figure I’m dressed like a cop,” Eddie said, “And does any farmer come out with his shotgun, most likely I can talk my way around it. And a farmer’s not gonna be so quick to shoot a cop as a—” He swallowed the word he was about to say.

“Could be.”

“Gotta be.” Eddie put a hand on the door handle. “So we do it just like you said, only you drive off and I come up behind in that truck. Got it?”

“Eddie,” Walter said slowly, “you’re a good man to be with on a job like this.”

“You say so.” Eddie opened the door. And gasped as the sharp, cold wind bit into his face. “But I’m working awful hard for a living these days.” He got out fast, like a swimmer plunging into cold water.

“Just keep going,” he shouted into the car, “I’ll either come up behind you or block the trail.”

“Good luck, buddy.”

“Ain’t no such thing on a job like this.” Eddie slammed the door shut and began wading through knee-deep snow toward the farmhouse.

And the truck.

December 20, 1951

12:45 PM

Officer Drapp

And there I was, pushing that Jeep through all the snow in the world and trying to figure out how to tell that ranger-lady how I come to be driving a farm truck up to her station earlier on.

“I’m trying to figure out how to tell it,” I said. “You ever met Chief Hannon?”

“Is that your boss?” she inquired politely, “Chief Hannon? You work for him?”

“For him or against him,” I said. “And I’m trying to think how to tell about him, the kind of guy he is. You don’t know him, he’s hard to tell about. You ever meet the man?”

“I don’t believe I’ve had that privilege, no.”

“Well then it’s hard to tell about him. Lemme see…. You ever buy a bag of peanuts?”

“I’m sure I have.” I saw her raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t dainty.

“Well on every bag of peanuts there’s this picture of a guy and he’s Mr. Peanut. You know who I mean?”

“You mean the peanut?”

“Yeah, he’s a peanut, yeah, but he’s not just any peanut, he’s
Mister Peanut
, you know? He’s six foot tall and he’s some snazzy dresser and he comes strutting down the street with his top hat and that looking-glass in his eye, swinging a cane, and it’s like he’s the greatest peanut in the world, king of the peanuts or something; he’s not your ordinary peanut: he’s Mister Peanut to you—you know how I mean?”

“He’s Mister Peanut, yes?”

“That’s it. And Chief Hannon, he’s Mister Ass—uh—Mister Armpit.”

“I’d swear you were about to say something off-color.” But it got a laugh out of her. Sounded something like a cross between a little silver bell tinkling in the rain and the noise a mule makes when you kick it, but I was glad I got it because it meant she was relaxing, and you get more answers from them when they’re off guard.

Up ahead, what used to be the tire tracks I was following were now just marks in the snow, but they were still easy to read. And when I took my eyes off the road for half a split second I could just see the top of the fire tower—where this Captain Scranton guy was supposed to be for some reason on a day like this—through the bare branches of the trees and the blowing white mess up above.

“The thing is this,” I said. “When something big comes over like this, Chief Hannon he wants everybody to do like he says, and just that: nothing else but what he says. I guess maybe was I running things maybe I’d want that too. But Chief Hannon he doesn’t want you figuring nothing out on your own. If he didn’t think of it, well it’s not a good idea. And say you try to come up with something just yourself, he can’t have it, see?”

“I think so; I think I’ve worked for men like that.” She said
men
like it was a dirty word, but I guess she’d got a fair amount of trouble working with men—or trying to work with them. Me, I been a man most of my life. I started out as a little kid, like everybody else, but I been a man most of my life now, and I worked and lived with men in the Army—it was pretty much all men in the Army back then—and I never had a high opinion of us myself, so I could see why she said it like that.

“So when this armored car doesn’t show up on time, word comes out from Chief Hannon, he says do a roadblock at the edge of town there, then start working out, looking for the truck. And I’m the roadblock and that’s way out, just a couple miles maybe from the park here, only when I get out here I get word on the radio there’s a farmhouse not far from me, and the farmer says some guy there tried to steal his truck and he caught him doing it and he’s holding him at the end of a shotgun.”

“My goodness!”

“Yeah, that’s just what I said—something like that anyway.” I took the Jeep around a curve in the trail past the trees to a clearing and almost all of the fire tower came into view at the top of a rise, like some big tall metal-monster-giant standing up and facing into the snow. I shifted the Jeep into a lower gear and steadied the wheel to move up that rise as I talked.

“So I get on the radio and I tell the chief I ought to go check this out because it might be it’s got something to do with our missing armored car full of money. But he says I should just sit there on the roadblock and wait for someone to come along because that farmhouse it’s outside the city and he don’t want to bother with it.”

“But you thought you should?”

“Yeah, and I did more than think it. I drove over there and took a look and dam—uh—darned but this guy the farmer caught, he looks like one of our robbers.”

“You knew what they looked like?”

“Yeah, by then they found the armored car and got us a description, and this guy was one of them, but I could see tracks in the snow where the other one had drove off with the money.”