by Ed Gorman
I set the shovel down. I started to bend over to raise the box from the hole when Barney said, "Tom."
I turned around.
Barney stood in the door of the barn.
"What're you doing in here?" I said.
And then a second silhouette stepped up behind Barney. "He didn't have any choice. Neither of you little girls have any choice now."
"Aw, shit," I said. "Aw, shit."
"Get in there," Cushing said to Barney and pushed him into the barn.
"Michaelson cruised by and saw me, I guess. He musta gone and got Cushing," Barney said.
The three of us stood around the hole in the middle of the barn. Wind slammed the hay doors against the barn.
Cushing stepped into the light, such as it was, the flashlight lying on its side on the ground. He wore a nice new overcoat. He always looked spiffy. He also had a gun in his gloved hand.
"Get that box up from there," he said. "And hurry up."
"Why?"
He kicked me. There was no warning, there was no threat. He just kicked me. Right in the mouth, and so hard that my mouth filled up immediately with hot, thick blood.
"Leave him alone!" Barney said.
"You get down there and help him," Cushing said, and shoved Barney down next to me.
I didn't want to get kicked again, so I got to work. I worked fast and I worked good and in less than five minutes, I had the long, square box sitting up on the ground. There was a padlock on it the size of a catcher's mitt.
Cushing threw me a key. "Open it up, girls."
We got it open. Inside was the bag filled with cash.
"Take it out of there."
We took it out.
"Set it on the ground."
We set it on the ground.
"This time when I hide it, you little girls'll never find it. Believe me. Now stand up."
We stood up.
"Next time I see you little girls around here, you're really gonna get hurt. You understand me?"
I couldn't talk real well. I just sort of nodded. Barney just sort of nodded, too.
All I could think of was how much I hated Cushing, how smug and violent he was, and how he'd killed Roy when Roy had no chance of defending himself—
And that was when I remembered the lighter, Roy's lighter, in my pocket.
"Now you two little girls get the hell out of here and never set foot on my property again."
He waved his gun at us.
We got.
My ankle hurt and my mouth hurt and my head hurt. I felt angry and humiliated and terrified.
We went maybe a quarter mile and I said, and it wasn't any too easy for me to speak, "I'm going back, Barney."
"Huh?"
"Back into his house."
"For what?"
I told him.
"You're crazy, Tom."
"Maybe so but I'm goin' back."
I turned around and started back in the darkness toward the house. Cushing wouldn't have had time to hide it yet.
A minute or two later Barney was right alongside of me.
"I know you'd be pissed if I didn't go along."
He was right.
Cushing's police car was parked along the side of his house. The kitchen light was on. I could see him, more shadow than substance, moving around in there.
We went to the back of the house and got on the latticework and went up real quiet. It wasn't difficult at all, not even with my ankle in the condition it was.
We got in his bedroom and then stood very still. All I could hear was our ragged breathing; all I could smell was our sweat.
I remembered right where it was, what drawer it was in, and where he kept the bullets, too.
Barney stood by the door watching and listening while I got Cushing's extra gun and loaded it up. My brother, Gerald, had taught me how to shoot, even if I didn't want to kill animals, which he said I'd "grow out of someday." Then I grabbed the small yellow can of Zippo lighter fluid, which Cushing kept in the drawer below.
When I got the gun all loaded up we crept down the hallway and then crept down the stairs and then crept across the darkened living room and crept out to the kitchen.
Cushing's back was to us. In the bright light, he sat at the table.
He poured Old Grandad straight from the bottle into a small water glass. His gun was on the table. So was the bag of money.
"You make one move, Cushing, and I'm going to blow your fucking head off. You understand me?"
I thought I sounded pretty good for a guy with a mouthful of blood.
I moved into the kitchen fast, so that he could see that I held a gun on him.
Barney came in right behind me.
"Well," Cushing said, smirking, "if it isn't my two little girlfriends."
"Get the money, Barney, and put it over in the sink."
Mention of the money ended Cushing's smirk.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
He started to get up from his chair but I eased the hammer back on the pistol.
"I'm not real good with firearms, Cushing. I might just blow your head off by accident."
He saw the wisdom of that.
Barney took the sack over to the big white sink. He unzipped the top of the sack and started filling the sink with small bundles of cash.
"What the hell're you two doing?" Cushing said.
"Douse it, Barney," I said.
Barney took the can of Zippo lighter fluid I'd given him and squirted clear fluid all over the money.
"You crazy bastard," Cushing said to me, now that he'd figured out what we were going to do.
From my pocket I took Roy's lighter and held it up for Cushing to see.
And then I set the money on fire.
It went up in this huge whoof of flame and smoke.
Cushing jumped up and tried to get past me at the money.
But he was already too late. Barney had done a good job of soaking all the bills.
"You stupid little bastard," he said.
And that's when he made his lunge for his gun and that's when I shot him.
He screamed and dropped immediately to the floor, his gun falling away from his grasp.
I'd shot him somewhere in the shoulder, apparently in a place that was pretty painful judging by the way he kept rolling around and moaning.
"You little prick," he said when he saw me walk around the table and stand over him. "All that money—wasted."
"We better call somebody," Barney said.
I nodded, looked down with great disgust at Cushing and then remembered what Barney had said the other night—about feeling sorry for him.
And I did, too, just then because his face was different now—instead of rage and arrogance, there was this terrible sorrow.
I thought of the hawk that day, and how the hunters had brought him down.
"You had it coming, Cushing. You killed Roy."
I started to walk back to where Barney stood in the kitchen doorway, setting the gun down on the counter on my way.
I started to go call the chief but then Barney saw something behind me and shouted, "Watch out, Tom! He's got his gun!"
Cushing had inched his fingers to his gun and had tightened his hand around it.
I looked over to the gun I'd just set on the counter. And realized that I'd never be able to reach it before Cushing killed us.
"The chief's gonna know about you, Cushing," I said. "He's gonna know you killed us and know you killed Roy, too."
And then something pretty strange happened. Cushing tried to pull himself to an upright position, the way Roy had right before he died . . . and when he did this, just for a second, he looked just like Roy. And even a little bit like Mitch.
And then something even stranger happened.
Cushing raised his gun and started to point it straight at my heart but then stopped and pointed it right at—
He was—
putting it—
tight against his—
forehead�
��
and pulling the—
trigger and—
And I heard Barney scream. And then I heard myself scream, too, and I heard the boom of the weapon discharging and heard the splat and splatter of his brains splash against the bottom of the wall like dishwater being emptied—
Then there was just this silence.
I'd only heard this silence one other time, those moments right after I realized Roy was dead and I was trying to call him back from eternity, shouting down this long dark endless corridor—
"God," Barney said. "God."
Because there really wasn't anything else to say. There really wasn't.
Here Roy hadn't had nerve enough to kill himself and was killed by Cushing who, in the end, did have nerve enough—
I tried not to think of how Cushing's folks had both been killed when Cushing was only ten. I didn't want to be like Barney. I didn't want to feel sorry for people I should hate. . . .
V
Well, it took several long weeks to learn what the county attorney had in mind, but finally he told Clarence that he wasn't going to press any charges after all, and that given how it had all ended, we'd probably learned our lessons, Barney and I.
We were celebrities of sorts at school again. The new girl even asked if she could interview me for the school paper. Of course when I asked her if she'd like to stop at Hamblin's some time for a soda, she said, (very politely) No Thank You.
In the spring, Barney's mom did finally divorce George, and then Barney and all of his family except George moved to Pennsylvania. For the first two months, he wrote every other week. Then I didn't hear much from him anymore until, eight years later, he was killed in fighting in Vietnam. His wife, a very nice woman named Diedre, called to tell me how much I'd meant to him and to say that she hoped we'd meet some day. Four years after that, Clarence died of liver cancer. Mom went to move in with Debbie, whose husband was a professor at the state university where Debbie was a junior. The professor had left his wife and two daughters for Debbie and Mom wasn't exactly what you called thrilled about it all.
I was the only one to stay in Somerton. I became Clarence's business partner in the haberdashery and when he died, I took over completely. I have one son who was born with spina bifida and another son who, I am happy to say, was born in perfect health. My wife, Myrna, is the sweetest, most gentle person I have ever known.
About every five or six years, whenever there's turnover at the local paper, some twenty-four-year-old reporter comes over to the store and says he'd like to talk to me about the Roy Danton incident. The folks of Somerton never seem to tire of hearing about it. I always agree. My sons, who always like to hear about it, too, would give me hell if I didn't.
On those occasions when I go to the cemetery to speak with my dead father and my dead friend Barney, I sometimes stop and look at the grave of Stephen B. Cushing. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because I've never quite been able to forget how Barney felt sorry for him—and how I, too, felt sorry for him right there at the very end—this man I so despised.
I see his desperate eyes right there at the last—and hear the lone gunshot. . . .
It's a lot less trouble sometimes, when you just plain and simple hate somebody.
I still go for walks along the tracks sometimes, out where the warehouse is now a small manufacturing plant, and I think of that long-ago summer and it is like a dream somehow—lived out by somebody who was not exactly me, not the me in the mirror today anyway. . . .
And I think of Roy, too, of course. But it's funny, you know. A few years ago I saw an old Robert Mitchum picture on the tube . . . and the truth is, Roy hadn't looked a damn thing like him. Not a damn thing like him at all. . . .
TURN AWAY
On Thursday she was there again. (This was on a soap opera he'd picked up by accident looking for a western movie to watch since he was all caught up on his work.) Parnell had seen her Monday but not Tuesday then not Wednesday either. But Thursday she was there again. He didn't know her name, hell it didn't matter, she was just this maybe twenty-two twenty-three-year-old who looked a lot like a nurse from Enid, Oklahoma, he'd dated a couple of times (Les Elgart had been playing on the Loop) six seven months after returning from WWII.
Now this young look-alike was on a soap opera and he was watching.
A frigging soap opera.
He was getting all dazzled up by her, just as he had on Monday, when the knock came sharp and three times, almost like a code.
He wasn't wearing the slippers he'd gotten recently at Kmart so he had to find them, and he was drinking straight from a quart of Hamms so he had to put it down. When you were the manager of an apartment building, even one as marginal as the Alma, you had to go to the door with at least a little "decorousness," the word Sgt. Meister, his boss, had always used back in Parnell's cop days.
It was 11:23 a.m. and most of the Alma's tenants were at work. Except for the ADC mothers who had plenty of work of their own kind what with some of the assholes down at social services (Parnell had once gone down there with the Jamaican woman in 201 and threatened to punch out the little bastard who was holding up her check), not to mention the sheer simple burden of knowing the sweet innocent little child you loved was someday going to end up just as blown-out and bitter and useless as yourself.
He went to the door, shuffling in his new slippers which he'd bought two sizes too big because of his bunions.
The guy who stood there was no resident of the Alma. Not with his razor-cut black hair and his three-piece banker's suit and the kind of melancholy in his pale blue eyes that was almost sweet and not at all violent. He had a fancy mustache spoiled by the fact that his pink lips were a woman's.
"Mr. Parnell?"
Parnell nodded.
The man, who was maybe thirty-five, put out a hand. Parnell took it, all the while thinking of the soap opera behind him and the girl who looked like the one from Enid, Oklahoma. (Occasionally he bought whack-off magazines but the girls either looked too easy or too arrogant so he always had to close his eyes anyway and think of somebody he'd known in the past.) He wanted to see her, fuck this guy. Saturday he would be sixty-one and about all he had to look forward to was a phone call from his kid up the Oregon coast. His kid, who, God rest her soul, was his mother's son and not Parnell's, always ran a stopwatch while they talked so as to save on the phone bill. Hi Dad Happy Birthday and It's Been Really Nice Talking To You. I-Love-You-Bye.
"What can I do for you?" Parnell said. Then as he stood there watching the traffic go up and down Cortland Boulevard in baking July sunlight, Parnell realized that the guy was somehow familiar to him.
The guy said, "You know my father."
"Jesus H. Christ—"
"—Bud Garrett—"
"—Bud. I'll be goddamned." He'd already shaken the kid's hand and he couldn't do that again so he kind of patted him on the shoulder and said, "Come on in."
"I'm Richard Garrett."
"I'm glad to meet you, Richard."
He took the guy inside. Richard looked around at the odds and ends of furniture that didn't match and at all the pictures of dead people and immediately put a smile on his face as if he just couldn't remember when he'd been so enchanted with a place before, which meant of course that he saw the place for the dump Parnell knew it to be.
"How about a beer?" Parnell said, hoping he had something besides the generic stuff he'd bought at the 7-Eleven a few months ago.
"I'm fine, thanks."
Richard sat on the edge of the couch with the air of somebody waiting for his flight to be announced. He was all ready to jump up. He kept his eyes downcast and he kept fiddling with his wedding ring. Parnell watched him. Sometimes it turned out that way. Richard's old man had been on the force with Parnell. They'd been best friends. Garrett Sr. was a big man, six-three and fleshy but strong, a brawler and occasionally a mean one when the hootch didn't settle in him quite right. But his son. . . . Sometimes it turned out that way. He was manly enough,
Parnell supposed, but there was an air of being trapped in himself, of petulance, that put Parnell off.
Three or four minutes of silence went by. The soap opera ended with Parnell getting another glance of the young lady. Then a "CBS Newsbreak" came on. Then some commercials. Richard didn't seem to notice that neither of them had said anything for a long time. Sunlight made bars through the venetian blinds. The refrigerator thrummed. Upstairs but distantly a kid bawled.
Parnell didn't realize it at first, not until Richard sniffed, that Bud Garrett's son was either crying or doing something damn close to it.
"Hey, Richard, what's the problem?" Parnell said, making sure to keep his voice soft.
"My, my Dad."
"Is something wrong?"
"Yes."
"What?"
Richard looked up with his pale blue eyes. "He's dying."
"Jesus."
Richard cleared his throat. "It's how he's dying that's so bad."
"Cancer?"
Richard said, "Yes. Liver. He's dying by inches."
"Shit."
Richard nodded. Then he fell once more into his own thoughts. Parnell let him stay there a while, thinking about Bud Garrett. Bud had left the force on a whim that all the cops said would fail. He started a rent-a-car business with a small inheritance he'd come into. That was twenty years ago. Now Bud Garrett lived up in Woodland Hills and drove the big Mercedes and went to Europe once a year. Bud and Parnell had tried to remain friends but beer and champagne didn't mix. When the Mrs. had died Bud had sent a lavish display of flowers to the funeral and a note that Parnell knew to be sincere but they hadn't had any real contact in years.
"Shit," Parnell said again.
Richard looked up, shaking his head as if trying to escape the aftereffects of drugs. "I want to hire you."
"Hire me? As what?"
"You're a personal investigator aren't you?"
"Not anymore. I mean I kept my ticket—it doesn't cost that much to renew it—but hell I haven't had a job in five years." He waved a beefy hand around the apartment. "I manage these apartments."
From inside his blue pin-striped suit Richard took a sleek wallet. He quickly counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills and put them on the blond coffee table next to the stack of Luke Short paperbacks. "I really want you to help me."
