The Collected Ed Gorman Volume 2 - Moving Coffin

by Ed Gorman

  His own little domicile was bursting with all of these blessings, too. He’d made an awful lot of money with his book and most of it was still in the bank. He was a sensible man.

  He drove ten miles an hour through the streets of the housing development. You had to be ever alert for kids dashing in front of your car, on foot or bicycle.

  His own house was on a corner lot. A sunny yellow house to match his sunny yellow convertible. They’d lived here five months now. Tommy was just starting to adjust to school, and Mary was just starting to make some coffee-klatch-type friends. Both of them were shy. He’d been forced to give up his shyness the day he went to work for the Washington Courier in 1939. He’d avoided being drafted because of a trick knee, the result of a basketball injury.

  He’d been at the library. The town wasn’t big enough to have branches. You had to drive down to the main library. He was working on a new book, a novel this time, a suspense thriller set in Washington about the housing shortage during the war and how a Nazi spy and an American spy (unknown to each other at first) came to stay in the same boarding house. His publisher loved it. They both agreed that it would be published under a pseudonym. People still remembered the name Dick Reynolds (his real name) all too well. There would be no author photo or any biographical information in the book.

  Effie ran around in merry circles as he walked from the carport to the side door of the house. She was a Border collie with a face so sweet, she forced you to smile no matter what kind of mood you were in. She perched up on her hind legs as he’d trained her, and he gave her a kiss on the head.

  The first thing he noticed as he stood among all the shiny new appliances in the kitchen was the silence. Tommy should be home by now. Which meant the television should be on and western movie gunfire and cattle stampedes should be making noise in the living room.

  He’d tried to train himself not to surmise the worst. Many times, there were perfectly ordinary reasons for things seeming strange.

  He started walking toward the east part of the house. The living room was empty. He followed the carpeted hallway to the bathroom and peeked in. Tommy’s buff blue school shirt hung from the shower door. It had obviously just been washed. But there were dark spatters on the front of it. Stover had no doubt what the spatters were.

  Voices. Soft, muffled. Tommy’s room.

  He paused at the door before knocking. Crying. Tommy was crying.

  “I’m so sorry, honey,” Mary said.

  “It’s just like every other place we’ve lived,” Tommy said. “They find out who Dad is and—”

  He knocked. Opened the door. Tommy’s walls were covered with photos of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Captain Midnight. His bureau and desk also held other hero treasures, including a small statue of Superman and a framed, autographed photo of Batman. Tommy had expressed the vague disbelief that Batman himself had signed it.

  “Hey, slugger,” he said, knowing how foolish he sounded, not knowing what else to say. “How you doing?”

  They both watched him with pity filling their eyes, and that’s what he couldn’t take. They should feel sorry for themselves, not for him. But they did. Because they loved him. And knowing how his past crushed them time and time again, he felt ashamed and helpless.

  “They found out,” Mary said softly.

  “I got in a fight,” Tommy said.

  He went to his son and set him on his lap. Sitting there on Tommy’s bed, he knew that the days of holding Tommy like this were fading fast. Tommy was getting to be a big kid. He’d easily exceed his father’s five-eleven by the time he stopped growing.

  “Did you get hurt?”

  “Bloody nose. But I gave him a black eye.”

  “God, Tommy—”

  A paralysis always came over him at this point. There was nothing to do or say to help those he loved. Many times he’d suggested that they split up, that Mary and Tommy move somewhere else and start again. And he was serious. But they always said no. They were a family, Mary said. Families didn’t split up. Not loving families.

  “Maybe it won’t get so bad this time,” Mary said. “Maybe these are nicer people than we’ve run into before.”

  But all three of them knew better than that. Once people found out that their real name was Stover, and Frank Stover was the husband and father—

  Frank Stover.

  If only he hadn’t been working late that night eight years ago…

  Hurry, now. Nearly eleven o’clock. Mary’s always nervous when he gets home so late. The war news takes a toll on everybody. Makes them edgy.

  The city room behind him for the night. The madness of typewriters and telegraphs and telephones and reporters shouting for copyboys.

  The night steamy-hot. Nearly ninety degrees. A citywide blackout earlier in the evening. Air raid sirens shrieking. A bomber’s moon as Edward R. Murrow so aptly described a full moon. Could it actually happen here? Could Nazi bombers actually get here?

  The real threat, as he sees it, is sabotage. Terrorism. Assassination. That, both the Germans and the Japanese are capable of. To hear J. Edgar tell it, their spies and minions are everywhere.

  The night smells of cigarette smoke, heat, and deep July.

  He is halfway down the parking lot when he hears something to his right. There. In the shadows between two parked cars. Something—

  By stopping, squinting, he makes out two figures. Men. They’re fighting. Drunks? A mugging in progress? A jealous husband beating up his wife’s lover?

  Common sense says to stay out of it. Common sense says, if you want to get involved, Frank old boy, walk around to the front of the building and grab one of the security men who guard the front door, snoops and fanatics and crackpots having made the newspaper offices a target lately. Common sense says best of all, get in your nice little car and drive home to your nice little family and leave these two, whoever they are, way the hell alone.

  But Stover doesn’t take time to use common sense.

  He gives in to his reporter’s curiosity.

  He turns toward the two men and says, “Hey, stop that!”

  One man is now getting the best of the other. Has him propped up against the side of the car door and is pounding him in his stomach and face.

  “Hey!” Stover shouts again.

  And then the blaze and bark of a handgun.

  Out of nowhere. Cry and moan of man against the car. Slumping suddenly.

  Man with the gun—eyes glowing a filthy white beneath the wing of his wide Fedora—turning and firing on Stover. Not meaning to hit him, just clearing a path for his escape.

  Another shot. This one close enough for Stover to feel its heat. He retreats to the far side of the nearest car. Huddles down.

  Man jumps into a coupé and bursts away, headlights alive now, toward the front of the parking lot. Mud covering his license plate. No hope of reading the numbers.

  Stover bolts from his hiding place. Runs to the wounded man.

  Hard to see him. And what he can see is pretty nondescript. Inexpensive gray suit now blood-soaked. Long, solemn face. Balding. Fortyish, maybe. Breath coming in explosions that are partly sobs.

  Then up at the front of the lot—gunfire. Easy enough to picture. The guard on the front door hears the gunplay back here. Tries to stop the escaping man. Then they shoot it out. A scream. The shooter or the guard?

  “Why did he shoot you?” Stover says.

  The reporter in him has taken over completely. He should be muttering meaningless assurances. You’ll be fine. A doc is on the way. Instead, a hard-ass, he wants the story.

  “Was gonna tell somebody at your paper what I found out. That’s where I was headed.” The man gasps out each word, convulses every thirty seconds or so. Is dying fast.

  “And he didn’t want you to tell us?”

  The man nods and says, “Shoe. Right one.”

  Man fouls himself then. Looks plaintively up at Stover. “Oh. God, the smell. I’m sorry.”

  Guy is dy
ing and he’s apologizing.

  Sirens. Three or four black-and-white Ford fastback cop cars converging all at once…but before the men in blue can quite reach Stover and the dying man, Stover whips off the man’s right black loafer. A ticket stub of some kind falls out.

  Then the man convulses so violently that he cracks his head against the running board.

  Just as the man is taking his last breath, the cops appear, guns and flashlights busy on the steamy night air.

  Stover slides the ticket stub into the pocket of his suit jacket…

  Mary decided it would be better if they all ate in the living room on TV trays. And let Tommy have one of those TV dinners that neither of them could gag down. And let him watch Hopalong Cassidy, even though they find Hoppy interminable.

  They both kept checking out Tommy’s face. Looking for signs. Was he going to get through this one all right?

  Tommy laughed whenever Hop’s sidekick did something funny. Andy Clyde, the actor’s name. An old sourdough type. Nothing graced the ears like Tommy’s laughter.

  Around 7:30, deciding the worst of the evening had been gotten through, planning to put Tommy lovingly to bed and then decide how they’re going to handle the school situation, the phone rang.

  Stover was half-expecting the call. Not that he knew who was calling. But that was the pattern. The sudden exposure—people in a given town finding out who Frank Stover really was—and then the incidents began.

  Starting with the phone call.

  “We don’t want you in our town,” the voice said. Middle-aged woman. Angry. They always were. “You’re a disgrace. My husband said to tell you that you’d better move before something happens to you or your family.”

  “Tell him next time to call me himself. If he has the guts.”

  Slammed the phone down. He’d taken it in the spare bedroom he used as his office. The door closed. That way neither Tommy nor Mary had heard.

  In bed, after Tommy was asleep in the next room, Mary said, “It was one of those calls, wasn’t it?”

  “Huh?”

  “C’mon, Frank. You hurried down the hall to your office. You must’ve sensed what it was. Then when you came back you hardly said a word all night. You were brooding.”

  He sighed. “Yeah. One of those calls.”

  “We’ll have to move.”

  “No!” he said, so angrily he scared her. He swung his legs out of bed. Grappled with his package of Lucky Strikes. Got one lit finally. Exhaled a stream of smoke that was a lovely blue in the moonlight through the window. “We’re not moving. We’re going to stay here. No more running.”

  “Is that fair to Bobby?”

  “Is it fair to teach him to run every time somebody confronts him? He’ll never learn to stick up for himself if we don’t stick up for ourselves.” He turned around, facing her. “I told the truth, Mary. That’s what this is all about. I told the truth. A lot of people said it wasn’t the truth, but they knew better. They just couldn’t handle it, that was the problem. I mean, I don’t hate the guy. He was a remarkable man. But we have to admit what he did. And maybe he was right to do it. I never said it wasn’t. That’s not for me to judge. All I was doing was presenting the facts, Mary. And letting other people decide.”

  She reached across the dark gulf between them and took his hand. Her tenderness always calmed him down immediately. “Maybe you’re right, Frank. About setting an example for Tommy. Maybe it’s not good to always run away.”

  “He needs to be strong to survive this world, Mary. He’ll never get strong if we keep moving every time—”

  “Put the cigarette out and c’mere. I don’t know about you, but I need a hug.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, I guess I do, too.”

  The dead guy’s name turned out to be Todd Whitman. The killer— who also killed the security guard—was never apprehended, though eventually Stover came to devise a theory as to whom the killer had been working for.

  Todd Whitman’s ticket stub belonged to a savings bank. Safe-deposit box. Stover had decided to pursue the story himself rather than bring in the police at this point. He knew the risks he was taking. But if he turned up a strong story—and instinct told him something serious and major was going on here—he could get the raise he needed to take care of his family better. The mortgage payment on their very small house had left them virtually penniless halfway through every month.

  Turns out Whitman had worked for the government as a decoder. He was pretty far down the ladder. But he’d bowled once a week with a decoder who worked with the director of the entire department. And one night, when both Whitman and this man had had one too many beers, the man told him about a message he’d decoded between two foreign spies.

  Their reaction was Stover’s reaction. Disbelief. It had been rumored, of course, but none but the fanatics gave it any kind of credence. The two decoders even speculated that maybe it was a plant on the part of this foreign power to stir up trouble in the United States government.

  Whitman didn’t really think about it after that night, not in any serious way. Then his bowling friend was found with his throat cut in the alley of a bar. The police wrote it off as a mugging. He’d clearly been robbed. Whitman wondered if the murder had anything to do with the story his friend had told him—but no. That was crazy thinking.

  Then his friend’s assistant was drowned. Good swimmer. Clear day. No alcohol. Drowned. Inexplicable.

  And Whitman knew. The decoded message was true. And anybody who knew about it was being eliminated. And by the American government.

  Six nights later, Whitman was killed in the parking lot of the Washington Courier. But not before writing down everything he knew and stashing it in the safe-deposit box.

  Stover knew, too, especially after he’d checked everything he could in Whitman’s terse letter, that he’d been planning to hand it over to one of the paper’s reporters.

  The trouble was, what was Stover going to do with it? It was clear that the government wanted the story kept secret. They’d already murdered at least three people.

  Stover was understandably scared.

  The principal was a portly man named LaPierre, Donald K. LaPierre. He wore a blue gabardine suit, a yellow bow tie, a white shirt, and a pair of gleaming white store-boughts that clicked every once in a while when he confronted a consonant. His office was large, tidy, and smelled of sweet floor wax.

  He didn’t work very hard at hiding his disdain for Stover. “It would have been better if you’d told us who you really were.”

  “And you would have done what, exactly, to protect Tommy?”

  “We could have taken precautions.”

  “And which precautions would those have been?”

  LaPierre waved a dismissive hand. He spent his days with grade-schoolers. He was not used to being questioned. “Honesty is always the best policy.”

  In turn, Stover didn’t work very hard at hiding his disdain for LaPierre. Or his sarcasm. “Sounds like something I should memorize.”

  “So now what, Mr. Stover?”

  “That’s what I want you to tell me. I pay taxes. I’m a citizen. My son deserves to be safe in his school.”

  “I agree. Or shall we say, I would normally agree.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at Stover a long minute. “Do you have any idea how much most people despise you?”

  His candor jarred Stover. “I think so.”

  “When you called me at home this morning and asked for this meeting, my wife started talking as if I was going to meet Satan himself.”

  The words hurt. Stover didn’t have to be reminded of how much the average American loathed him. Hatred, scorn, even humorous radio skits about him. Humorous if you weren’t Frank Stover.

  “I guess you didn’t know how much people loved him? He was like God to them.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “And you took that away. There are so few people to really admire and cherish these days. That’s important to a society, Mr. Stover
.”

  “I agree.”

  “But we’ll never look at him the same way. Not ever.” LaPierre paused. “Because of what you did. If you’d cared for this country at all, you never would’ve let your secret out, Mr. Stover.”

  Stover’s depression was starting to turn into cold anger. “So you’re saying you can’t help my son?”

  LaPierre leaned forward, planting his folded hands on his desk. “What can I do, Mr. Stover? He’s the son of the most hated man in America. Even if I could protect him from fists and name-calling, he’d still be a pariah. Just as you and your wife are pariahs, Mr. Stover. I couldn’t change the hearts and minds of the students. And that’s really what you’re asking me to do. Is it fair for them to take their hatred out on your son and your wife? No, of course it isn’t. But it’s human nature. And it’s not going to change. I can’t change it, anyways. I’m just a small-town grade school principal. I don’t have any wisdom on something like this.” Another pause. “If you really love your son, Mr. Stover, I’d take him out of this school as soon as you can. In fact, I wouldn’t even let him come back here to pick up his things. We’ll mail them to you if you like. Though if I were you—and this really is friendly advice—I’d leave this town as soon as you can. Pack up and get out. Before something terrible happens.”

  And exactly what did you do in the face of an admonition like that? You did what Frank Stover did. You lifted yourself out of the chair, you walked to the door, and you left Principal LaPierre’s office forever.

  Enemies.

  Any man so beloved had enemies. Stover couldn’t go to the man’s friends—it was the man’s friends who were having all these people killed and were doing everything they could to keep the secret a secret—so he went to the man’s enemies.

  They treated him like the prodigal son come home at last.