Easy Death (7 page)

So I waited till she got in on her side, then let out the clutch and next thing we were barreling forward, to the end of the track she’d shoveled out for me.

Didn’t work. Not at all. We hit the end of the track and just stopped, all four wheels spinning in the snow.

“My.” She shot me a level stare, like I’d done something stupid, which I guess I had, kind of. But all she said was, “Aren’t
we
in a hurry!”

“Yeah, I guess we are,” I said.

She didn’t answer, and that was a smart move on her part. I slammed in the clutch, put it in reverse and backed to the other end of our track, waited till we hung up there, then shifted gear back into forward and we shot off again. This time we made it beyond her dug-out track a ways before we stopped. I lurched the wheels backwards into the snow, then forward, then back, then seriously forward and got us moving. Jeep-moving, I mean: bounce twice for every bump you hit. “Do you know the way to the watchtower?” she asked.

“No, but I’m young and willing to learn. Do I start to turn wrong just grab the wheel and jerk it.”

She laughed, and it made a dainty little sound, like she might have learned how to laugh like that in finishing school.

“You know my father did that to me once,” she said, “while he was teaching me how to drive.”

“Wha’d you do?”

“I simply let go of the wheel, crossed my arms and put my foot down on the accelerator.” She said it like it was a cherished memory. “Poor father,” she sighed, “I guess I put him through rather a lot.”

So she was a gal that liked to talk. Which was good, because there was something I wanted to get at: like maybe the look on her face when she started to say about this Captain Scranton, and how she didn’t answer when I tried to ask what the hell he was doing up in a watchtower on a day like this. But they didn’t seem like the kind of questions I could just ask head-on; I figured to get there slow and sideways.

“So what are you doing for Christmas?” I asked.

She looked surprised. Maybe she didn’t figure cops asked questions like that. “I have a cousin in California.” That soft, cultured voice of hers still sounded funny coming from someone her size and shape, but I was getting used to it. “He’s doing rather well for himself, and the family’s meeting at his place for Christmas. I’ll take the train the day after tomorrow. Or rather, that was my plan….”

“You worried about your Captain?”

She didn’t answer right away. And I could see now she didn’t give a hoot in hell about the man. Something else was eating at her about him, though. I told myself to take this slow.

“I got a cousin myself.” I squeezed the gas pedal just a touch as we went into a rise, trying to get just that extra push without making the wheels slip. It worked. The road straightened out and we rolled along in the almost-covered-up track of the car I’d followed all this way. And I kept talking:

“My cousin Handy, he’s got a diner in Presque Isle, and every Christmas he closes up and invites just the family in and that’s where do we have Christmas, in the diner there. Makes it nice, kind of different with the whole family there and the Christmas decorations up and everything.”

We came up on a curve, but I didn’t have to let the clutch in; just eased up on the gas and felt the four-wheel pull us gently around it till I could straighten out. The wipers couldn’t do much about all the snow hitting the windshield, but the heater was starting to help some and we couldn’t see our breath in the air anymore. The insides of those GI Jeeps can get hotter than the hinges of Hell, which would be pretty much what we’d need on a day like this one.

“Your cousin in California,” I went on, “he’s got a nice place?”

“He’s a senator.” She said
senahhtahhh
like she was yawning or something, “And people like to give him nice things. His wife even got a new coat last year.” She managed to put two syllables into
year
. “So I suppose it’s rather nice for them, but I’m afraid the holidays…well, an awful lot of persons in business seem to drop by.”

“He have kids?” I figured to keep at her till she really got to talking. “You bringing presents?”

“Two girls,” she said. “And I asked myself, well what can I possibly get little children with rich parents? And then it struck me: I bought a dog, a black-and-white spaniel, and I know what a terrible chore a dog can be, but I’ve got Checkers trained and house-broken, and I think she’ll be a wonderful companion for the girls, don’t you?”

“I guess I know what you mean.” I tried to steer her like I was steering the car: nothing real sudden, just gently now. “How about your Captain Scranton? He talking about any holiday plans?”

She turned up the radio. “Don’t you just love the Christmas music they play this time of yee-ahhh?”

Hark the herald angels si-ing

Glory toooo the new-born king,

Peace on Earth
,

And mercy mi-ild…

I some way kept myself from choking the steering wheel, un-clenched my teeth, took a deep breath and tried to get her talking again.

Callie Nixon

Callie turned up the music and tried not to let her mind go back there. Tried to listen to the inane prattle of that pasty-faced city cop.

It didn’t work.

She kept seeing it again, her first meeting with Captain Scranton, driving into Boothe National Park, into the glare of a clear sunrise, feeling the cool morning summer air on her face as she got out of her shiny black Studebaker station wagon and looked around. Her surprise at not finding her new boss in the ranger station.

Then hearing that awful noise.

Even now, riding in that cold jeep, just thinking of that sound still set her teeth on edge. The keening high-pitched drawn-out “
Ho-oo-nk! Hoo-ooo-onk!
” coming from behind the building. She found the back door and ran out to see the bloody feather-crushed Canada Goose trying to move with its legs and wings broken.

And the man smiling down at it.

Holding an axe.

He had a square, stocky football-player’s body and sandy blonde hair cut in a flat-top slicked back with Vitalis. His olive-drab ranger uniform had drops of blood on the trouser cuffs that hadn’t soaked in yet, shining bright red above his brown combat boots.

She took all that in, or tried to. Tried to understand that the man smiling as he watched the animal suffer was her new boss. Tried to realize what that meant.

But all she could say was,

“Lord, kill it!”

And she didn’t know if she was swearing or praying.

“They taste better if they suffer first.” He didn’t look at her; he couldn’t take his eyes off the flopping thing on the bloody ground. “When they struggle like that, it pumps the blood up,” he went on, still watching it. And still smiling. “And the slower they die, the better they taste.”

He ran his tongue across his lower lip, like he was already gorging on it.

Callie wasn’t even aware of moving. Never knew how she pulled the axe from his hand and swung the blade down across the goose-neck in one smooth, fast motion. By the time her head cleared she was already standing at attention, holding the axe upright like a soldier on parade and saying like a formal announcement,

“Ranger Calpurnia Nixon reporting for duty, sir!”

And that was how it started.

December 20, 1951

9:15 AM

Walter and Eddie

“…Like I said, a job like this, it’s like you was selling something,” the man in the police uniform said.

“You still reckon it like that?” Behind the wheel of the car that looked a little like a police car, the man in the red hunting coat turned his dark face to him, grinned quickly, then turned his attention back to the snow-covered road piercing the woods.

“Yeah, that’s the way I see it: you either go in shooting and kill everybody first thing,” Eddie said from the passenger side, “or else you got to sell these guys on the idea of getting robbed.”

Eddie thought about lighting a cigarette. Instead, he opened the cylinder of the Colt Special, flipped out the spent shell, and put it carefully in the pocket of his long blue police overcoat. He loaded a new cartridge in the empty chamber, snapped the cylinder shut and slipped the gun back in the flap holster. “I was a kid, I sold stuff door to door for money. I learned quick you got to size a guy up fast and talk to him like he talks to you; get to him personal, you know.”

“Okay.”

“Then you figure out what does this guy want, and whatever you’re selling, you tell him that’s it: it’s what he wants. And it’s the same thing on a job like this.”

“So you sell these guys on us robbing them?”

“You sell them on the idea of staying alive, is what you do.” Eddie shifted on the seat, trying to get the flap holster to hang comfortably off the right side.

“Well, I guess that one fella, he didn’t much want what you was selling.” Walter eased in the clutch on a curve, then let it out again and gained as much speed as he thought might be safe.

“I guess not.” Eddie shifted his butt again, and then gave it up. “Seen it in his eyes, him thinking if he didn’t try something and try it now, he wouldn’t get another chance. But I’m glad I didn’t kill him, kind of.”

“Well you sure know how to work a gun, and that’s facts.” Walter smiled. “Shot his ear clean off! Seen it go fly through the air an’—where’d you learn to make a shot like that?”

“You think that was a good shot?”

“That’s facts.”

“I was aiming at his shoulder.”

“His shoulder? You was? Well it was still awful slick; seen that ear of his go flying through the air like
that
—” Walter flapped one hand across the dashboard, then quickly back to the steering wheel. “You sure got the winning way about you!”

“Just glad I didn’t have to kill nobody.”

“And that’s something else. Way you talked back there about killing. Scared ’em like to death. Just about scared me too, come to that. You really ever kill somebody?”

Eddie thought for a minute. “I dunno, Walter. I really don’t know. Shot some Germans once, but I sure wasn’t going up to them right then to see did they die from it. Anyway, I’m glad we didn’t have to kill nobody. Brother Sweetie would’ve give us hell did we kill a man on this job.”

“And that’s facts,” Walter said. He took a deep breath and made himself concentrate on the road. The tire chains rattled and pounded through snow as the woods thinned out and turned into farm country. Beyond the woods, across the open fields, the snow was turning into drifts. Deep drifts.

“Can you handle this?” Eddie fished a cigarette from his pocket.

“Not much choice in the thing. Got to handle it. We get stuck out here and lose all this money, Brother Sweetie’d kill you slow and me slower.”

“Too true.” Eddie pulled a Zippo lighter from his pocket, held it to the end of the cigarette and set fire to it. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and let it out slowly through his mouth and nose, filling the inside of the car with a yellow-grey cloud. “Brother Sweetie’s one unpleasant sunuvabitch to work for, but he sure can organize a job like this.” He rolled down his window just a crack and saw the smoke cloud sucked quickly out.

“You think he really can open those bags?” Walter asked. “I hear tell you can’t cut ’em with a knife.”

“That stuff they’re made of, you couldn’t even shoot a bullet through it. He’ll likely need a torch to cut off the locks, but he’ll do it. That’s why he’s the brains of the outfit. Too bad he’s a sunuvabitch.”

“Yeah, that’s awful tough on him.” Walter looked quickly over at Eddie’s cigarette, then back at the road again. “Hey gimme a drag off that, will you?”

Eddie took the cigarette out of his mouth, put it between Walter’s lips and held it long enough for the other man to inhale. “Let me know do you want another.” He put it back in his own mouth and took another deep pull, letting the nicotine calm his nerves.

“Thanks.” Walter applied light pressure to the gas pedal as they crossed a snow drift, gently pushing the car onward. “And you’re right, it’s a damn shame about Brother Sweetie. I guess a man in his line, he’s got to be tough, but he don’t got to be no sunuvabitch. And he getting all this money. Just hope he don’t find out we had to leave a bag behind. How much you figure we got?”

“I’m thinking maybe seventy-five grand.”

“And you and me only taking home five, and we done all the work.”

“You figure that?”

“Well, I didn’t see Brother Sweetie out there holding no shotgun.”

“He don’t have to hold no shotgun.” Eddie took another deep lungful of smoke and spoke thoughtfully as he exhaled. “You got any idea how much he worked just to set this up? Got the dope on that truck, lined up the car and fixed it up to look like this…. Hell, he even had me to put chains on the tires this morning when he saw it was snowing. I tell you Brother Sweetie’s got brains, he has.”

“Well don’t
we
?” Walter slowed as they approached a bend, feeling the heavy car slide way too close to the drain-ditch on one side, then straighten out. He breathed a short sigh of relief. “You ain’t saying we didn’t use our brains none?”

“Walter, on a job like this, you and me, we’re just the moving men. Just the hired help, that’s us. Brother Sweetie wants someone smart enough to get the money and scared enough to give it to him, and we fit the bill just fine. That’s you and me.”

“You reckon? Worth no more’n dogs wages?”

“That’s about it. All we are is moving men and that’s all we ever will be. That’s why I’m getting out of this line of work.”

“You know,” Walter wrinkled his forehead in thought, “that’s most likely a smart thing, too.” He steadied the car against a windy broadside, thankful for the weight of the money over the back tires. “Getting out. It’s a smart thing and that’s facts.”

“Well nobody robs folks forever without they get caught doing it sooner or whenever. That stretch I did learned me that much. Do I go up again, well I’m fixed for life, and I don’t fancy spending out my years playing rock hockey in a striped jersey. That’s how come I figure just to take my pay and go my way.” He studied the shortening cigarette. “You want another drag before I pitch this?”