The Collected Ed Gorman Volume 2 - Moving Coffin

by Ed Gorman

  “You’re thinking like executive material already, Bob. Already.”

  We stood up and shook hands in a solemn and sort of corny way and then I turned to go and Ralph said, “No, sir, if there’s one man I don’t have to worry about, it’s Bob.”

  I nodded and turned toward the door and started walking quickly. I had one more appointment to keep before getting back to work. I had to pick up some burglary tools.

  “You know how to use these things?”

  “That’s about all I did, when I was in the joint. Lift weights and practice with burglary tools.”

  The tools were in a leatherette shaving kit that sat between us in the front seat of the taxi. The rain made the interior smell of cigarette smoke and dampness and perfume and aftershave and a few other odors I didn’t especially want to identify.

  Delia had picked me up after work. She gave me a careful, appraising look. She was scruffy and cute in a lost-kitten way. Delia was a bottle blonde with quick, intelligent brown eyes and a smile that a dentist needed to do some work on.

  She heeled the horn with her hand and spat a few naughty words and then said, “I hate bus drivers.”

  Delia drove her taxi with great psychotic glee. She seemed to be under the impression that the founding fathers of our little Mid-western city had given her exclusive right-of-way on all streets and avenues twenty-four hours a day.

  As she continued driving me back to work, she said, “I followed him, the way you wanted me to.”

  “I appreciate it. I’d get a car but—”

  “Terms of your parole. Tell me about it. Last time Kip was out, he had the same thing.” She tamped a cigarette from her pack of Camel filters. I gave her a light from the Ronson lighter my wife Sara had given me for our fifth anniversary. I didn’t smoke anymore but I always carried the lighter as a reminder of her.

  Kip was her husband, whom I’d met in prison. When I’d told him what I planned to do, he said, “My wife’ll help you, kid, long as you keep your hands to yourself. She’s true-blue.”

  She was too. I’d seen any number of guys come on to her, and she’d always raised her hand as if she were about to send them the Finger, then suddenly she’d point to the wedding ring on her left hand.

  She also knew a hell of a lot about burglary and burglary tools.

  “All right, you got the tools down pat, but how about security devices?” she said.

  “Kip told me a lot about them.”

  “He’s my man, Bob, and I’d never say anything bad about him, but Kip doesn’t know squat about security devices. Once you figure out where you want to break in, you let me know. I’ll scope it out for you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “My pleasure.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. Or I was silent, at any rate. Delia frequently took umbrage at the way drivers chose to drive and pedestrians chose to walk. There was a war going on and Delia was determined to win it.

  As I looked out the window at the pedestrians hurrying to escape the rain, I thought of when I spent most of my time down here, in the loop area. The girls I’d taken to movies; the friends I’d hung out in record shops with; the small park where I sat and dreamed of a fine shiny adulthood that would see me with all the girls and all the friends and all the records a man could ever want. Well, that wasn’t to be. For one thing, shopping malls squatted on three different edges of the city like invading armies and abducted all the retail business from down-town—and for another, women don’t especially like to hear that you’ve spent your last few years rooming with guys named Lefty, the Skull, and Killer.

  “So you’ll be around at eight tonight?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s when he leaves the office?”

  “Last three nights, he has.”

  “Hard working man,” I said.

  “You sure you want to do this, Bob? Thing like this goes wrong a lot of the time, and then you end up back in—”

  “I’m sure I want to do it, Delia. Real sure. Nothing else’s worked out for me. She told me something once, about MacDonald; and this shrink business may be just what I’m looking for.”

  Delia shook her head. “You ask me, it’s the shrinks who’re crazy.”

  “Could be.”

  “Last time Kip was out, they always made him go see this shrink and I always had to go with him, like I was his mom or something. The shrink was crazier than both of us put together. For one thing, he kept givin’ me sexy eyes, you know what I mean? He even suggested that maybe I should come back alone sometime and see him.”

  “Sounds like a nice guy.”

  “Like I said, you ask me, shrinks’re the ones who’re nuts.”

  She pulled up to the curb of my ancient brick apartment house. Back in the thirties, when it was new, the upwardly mobile of their time had probably stood in line to get in here. Now the people who mowed the lawns and scrubbed the toilets of the upwardly mobile lived here.

  “Maybe you can take a nap before I pick you up. Probably do you good.”

  “I don’t think I should nap now. Too edgy.”

  She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re one of the good ones, Bob. I just hope everything goes good for you tonight.”

  “Thanks, Delia.”

  I was wrong about not being able to take a nap. I went inside and took off the Stanley Blacker sport coat and slacks combination I’d worn today, and then went into the tiny bedroom and lay on the soft bed for ten minutes watching the lightning tear holes in the sky. Sometimes when the lightning struck, it lit up the framed photograph on my nightstand, giving Sara the same glow she’d had in life. I tried not to think about her, or how much I’d loved her, or how pointless her death had been. For seven years now I’d been trying to avenge her, but without any success at all. I had spent three work afternoons the last couple of weeks—the time off that so displeased my boss—trying to put together a few different plans. But none of them worked.

  I slept. In the dream, I was back in prison, as I was most nights when I dreamt. But this time my cellmate was Ralph DeConcini, my parole officer, and he kept claiming that he couldn’t get our TV set turned off. It was set on a religious channel and the minister was down on his knees, sobbing. He needed more money quick or his ministry would die. Then Ralph himself started crying and said, “The poor bastard.”

  Thunder awoke me, the thunder of some murderous prehistoric era, rolling down the time lines like the voice of some angry god we no longer believe in. The angry god rattled a lot of windows that night.

  When I swung my legs off the bed and put my face in my hands, I had to smile. God, imagine if I did get caught breaking into the shrink’s office tonight, and if I were sent back to prison, and if my cell-mate were Ralph DeConcini.

  Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.

  “There are two types, basically,” Delia said a couple of hours later, explaining to me the kind of security devices I’d likely find on a small office in a duplex like the shrink’s. “The most modern kind is called a digital keypad system, which only people who know a lot about computers can defeat—you know hackers, creeps like that.”

  “And the other kind?”

  We were nearing a suburban area of small, elegant shops and big, elegant aspirations. Perrier probably flowed from the taps. The night shone like a black diamond, the rain-washed streets throwing back the glow of traffic lights and neon signs. There was a curious beauty in this sort of bleakness. Wind whipped the still naked April trees and made the human heart—at least this human heart—pine for the warmth and glow of a fireplace and the solace of a good book. Or a nice lady, even better.

  “Well, there are three other kinds, actually, but the first two aren’t used much anymore. And anyway, if you run into them, you’ll probably set off the alarm, first thing you do.”

  “Great.”

  “He probably uses something with an infrared motion detector.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s very good
at triggering alarms too, but there’s a simple way to defeat it if you know what you’re doing.”

  She then went on to explain that on the back door, cleverly hidden, would be a detector that noted any activity and would then pass this information along to the alarm system. This all sounded pretty discouraging, but then, being good old Delia, she explained how I could trick the detector…

  Vertical wood siding gave the duplex a rustic look. It sat isolated and imperious on the shelf of a pine hill. Delia drove past, went halfway around the block, and then took the slanting gravel alley up to the duplex, cutting her headlights as she did so.

  Delia was not only cute, she knew what she was doing.

  “The one on the left,” she said.

  “You sure you want to wait for me? There’s no sense in you getting involved.”

  “Hey, I help out all of my old man’s friends. It’s just my nature.”

  I smiled at her. “I appreciate it.”

  “Just remember what I told you about that beam. That could screw up everything. If there’s any trouble out here, I’ll honk—once if there’s trouble, twice if it’s all clear.”

  “I’ll remember. And thanks again, Delia.”

  “Good luck, Bob.”

  I nodded, picked up the bag of tools and opened the door, wind and rain sprinkling across my face. Then I went to try my luck again at the somewhat difficult art of burglary. Difficult for me, anyway.

  The last time I’d tried something like this, I’d ended up in prison for four and a half years.

  The detector setup was just as Delia had described it. Took me a few minutes to do what Delia had instructed me to do, but then I was inside, beyond the door my tools had helped open with little trouble, and standing in a darkness that smelled of slightly burned coffee and sweet furniture polish. In the pale light from outside, the waiting room could best be described as trendy-on-a-budget—a lot of dark, angular furnishings that looked awfully fragile. To the right of the receptionist’s desk were three four-drawer filing cabinets, on top of which rested a half-dozen framed family portraits.

  I started with the filing cabinets. I learned where the good Dr. Wyman bought his paper towels wholesale; the fact that he was thirty days in arrears on his account at Bonanza Office Supply; and that he paid $65 a month to his late-night answering service.

  Not exactly what I was looking for. A few moments later, I stood inside his personal domain, which was filled with just as much cheap flashy furniture and just as many framed family photos as the waiting room. There was a modern glass desk and spindly chair. And the inevitable Freudian couch complete with an ashtray on one arm and a box of Kleenex—but from the arrangement of the leather armchairs, I suspected that this was where most of his business was done.

  For a long minute I just stood there, imagining all the people who had been in here, all their woes and griefs—the faithless husband; the wife who felt her life was too confining; the teenager already far gone into drugs; the successful young man trying to make sense of the fact that he was dying of AIDS.

  Not exactly a job I’d want.

  I set to work, occasionally glancing up the hill to where Delia’s cab sat, a dark figure against a darker night. By now the rain was little more than a mist. The good doctor hid his patients’ records in two filing cabinets tucked far back into a walk-in closet. I had to wind my way through a couple of raincoats and trod on a pair of rubbers that felt squishy as I passed over them.

  Each cabinet was locked, but not very earnestly.

  The good old burglary tools came in very handy.

  I put the tiny flashlight into the corner of my mouth like a cigar and proceeded to riffle through the patient files.

  I tried not to notice the personal information of anybody whose name didn’t concern me. I figured I owed those folks at least that much discretion. There was only one name that concerned me.

  Delia honked.

  I closed the cabinet drawer I’d been looking through. I clicked off my flashlight.

  I hadn’t realized it till now, but I was coated with chill sweat; I wasn’t a natural-born thief. Burglary took both a physical and a mental toll on me.

  I didn’t know what else to do but stand there, breath coming in short hot gasps, fingers trembling slightly. Prison images filled my mind. Was I headed back there? At the thought, my stomach felt tight, sick.

  I don’t know how much time passed—enough, anyway, for me to go through a jury trial and a sentence hearing and to be assigned both a cellblock and a cell.

  I even heard the prison loudspeaker barking for “Lights out” on a steamy August night when you lay drowning in your own sweat.

  A horn. Once. Twice. Delia.

  All clear.

  I went back to work.

  I found the correct section—the M’s—but I didn’t find his name. A terrible thought: maybe he knew this shrink socially. Maybe they played golf together and he simply stopped in to see him sometimes and wasn’t a patient at all.

  I went through the next filing cabinet on the unlikely hope that somewhere else I’d find another M section.

  I didn’t find another M section.

  There was no other M section.

  I went back to the first filing cabinet, took several deep breaths, and forced myself to calm down.

  He had to have a file in here somewhere. Had to.

  I rolled the top drawer out on its oily wheels and started riffling through the tops of various file folders.

  At last I came to one marked: NEW CLIENTS.

  I took this one out, stuck the flashlight into the corner of my mouth and started looking through the material.

  Whoever did the filing was a wee bit behind. Some of the “new” clients had visitation sheets that stretched back seven, and occasionally, eight months.

  That’s where I found him.

  He’d been coming here seven months.

  Tempting as it was, I didn’t read the eight or nine sheets of scrawled notes that the good doctor had made about him.

  There wasn’t time.

  I took the notes and went out to the front office and flipped on the Xerox machine.

  The damned thing made a lot of noise in an empty office duplex like this one. Crisp electric fire outlined the lid of the copying machine. I hurried. My stomach was starting to act up again, probably in anticipation of prison food.

  I made the copies, returned the originals to the file, closed up the cabinet, walked back over the squishy rubbers on the closet floor, and then went back to the front door and began to make my way out.

  I crouched down so as not to set off the invisible beam. Less than a minute later I dropped myself into Delia’s front seat and let her put a cigarette in my mouth.

  It tasted a whole lot better than the flashlight had.

  “I think it’s great how much you loved her.”

  “Yeah. I suppose it is.”

  “Even after everything she did and all.”

  “That part I try not to think about.”

  “But we all do crazy things. That doesn’t mean she was bad.”

  “That’s how I look at it, Delia. That she just made a mistake, was all. Just one little mistake.”

  She was taking me home after we’d had a few cups of coffee, during which she explained that she’d honked when a teenage couple had pulled up the driveway, looking for a place to make out. Everything had gone well.

  “You still think about her a lot, huh?”

  “Yeah, I do, Delia.”

  “You get ready to meet a nice lady, you call me.”

  “Oh?”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, Bob. Not me. I’m true-blue. It ain’t easy all the time, with Kip in the joint and everything, but I do all right. I was thinkin’ about my cousin.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Betsy. Wait till you see her in a bikini.”

  “Nice, huh?”

  “Nice? Boy would I love to have her chest.”

  “Maybe when t
his’s all over,” I said.

  “Probably better you wait for a while anyway. She’s tryin’ to break it off with this Angie guy, he’s this biker, and the guy she tried to date, Angie smashed out all the windows in the guy’s car.”

  “Guy ever call her again?”

  “You kiddin’? But she didn’t care anyway. She found the guy was married, can you believe it? She sneaks around and gets Angie all riled up, and then the bastard is married.”

  You didn’t need country western radio stations when Delia was around.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think I’ll wait a little while on Betsy.”

  “I can tell you’re a little worried about Angie, and I don’t blame you. But he’ll be back in detox another two, three months, the way I figure, so you ‘n’ Betsy will have clear sailin’.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  My apartment house took shape inside deep, windblown shadows.

  Tonight, when she pulled the cab over, I gave her a little kiss on the cheek and said, “I really appreciate all the help, Delia.”

  She nodded to the papers I had rolled up and stuck inside my blue windbreaker.

  “I just hope you have somethin’ in there you can use.”

  “So do I.”

  To caf or not to caf. That was the question.

  Given all the pages I wanted to read through tonight, real caf coffee was probably what I needed to be alert. There were a lot of pages and I was tired from a long day’s work at the store and I didn’t want to miss some subtle message buried in the middle of the material I’d stolen from Dr. Wyman.

  On the other hand, if I wrapped up early, I might find myself with caffeine jitters staring at a long, hard night of bad memories and those little flare-ups of useless anger that make dawn seem even more distant.

  So I stood dumb, in all senses of that word, a jar of instant decaf in my left hand, a jar of instant caf in the other, weighing them as if they were jars of gold. Finally I decided to live a life of danger, and I filled the teakettle with water and set the kettle on the hot plate, which was about the only modern convenience in my wan little sleeping room, and then I spooned two heaping teaspoonsful of manly caf into a slightly cracked coffee cup.