Flash and Bang

by J. Alan Hartman

  Rosie cleared her throat. “What would that involve, exactly?”

  “It would involve the payment of a thousand dollars a month,” he said. “To Charles here.”

  She could feel the beginnings of hot tears in her eyes, but made herself blink them away. A protection racket, of all things. Extortion. Part of her couldn’t believe it was really happening.

  Oh, Tom, she thought. I wish you were here with me.

  “Do I have a choice?” she asked.

  “Charles, what do you think? Does she have a choice?”

  The tall man responded by moving his finger slightly, and the vase tipped off the edge of the shelf. This time Rosie looked at it, watched it fall. Watched it break. What would Nancy think, Rosie wondered, if she came back at this moment, found the door locked and the CLOSED sign up, looked through the glass, and saw what was happening? What would she do? Bang on the door? Unlock it and barge in? Faint? Nancy was the kind of person who wigged out if she saw a spider, or got a paper cut. Rosie thanked God she wasn’t here.

  “The first payment,” Davis informed her, “is due today.”

  She looked up at him. “Today?”

  “In cash, if you don’t mind.”

  Rosie swallowed, breathing hard. “Does anyone ever refuse?”

  Davis frowned as if trying to recall. “Three people, so far.” He held up fingers and ticked each of them off: “Old man Renfroe, down the street, wound up with a broken leg. Told everyone he fell down the stairs in his apartment. The Chinese gentleman who owns the cleaners half a mile east must’ve left the gas on one night—his place blew up and burned to the ground. And the pop in the mom-and-pop grocery three doors down stepped in front of a car on the way home from their store late one afternoon. A sad thing, that. He was only fifty or so. His wife is now a client.”

  Rosie felt her stomach roiling, felt cold sweat break out on her forehead. Stay calm, she thought. Somewhere to the south, a whole string of firecrackers went off at once, making her jump. They sounded like the rattle of a machine gun.

  “What about the police?” she said. “Weren’t they suspicious?”

  “Why should they be? They were accidents. No accusations were made. No accusations will ever be made. Even if someone does, and is brave or foolish enough to testify, nothing’ll come of it. I run a legitimate business a mile away. Davis Building Supply. Besides”—Davis shrugged—“I have connections.”

  “With the cops, you mean?”

  “With whomever I need to keep operating. Call them ‘silent partners.’”

  She paused, trying to think. “Who’s your boss? I’d like to speak to him.”

  Davis moved a step closer. “I’m the boss, Ms. Cartwright. I answer to no one. Charles here is my only employee. He handles payments.”

  “Does Charles handle what happens when payments aren’t made?”

  Another smile. “We subcontract for that kind of work. But when we have to”—he pulled back one side of his blazer to reveal a shoulder holster—“we can do that ourselves, too.”

  Without being told, the taller man leaned a bit farther back, exposing the grip of a pistol tucked into his waistband.

  “A day like today, for example,” Davis said, nodding toward the door and the occasional sounds of celebration. “Nobody’d pay any attention to a gunshot or two.”

  A long silence passed. Rosie stared at Davis and the two men stared at Rosie. Outside, the rest of the world went on its merry way, unknowing and uncaring about the drama playing out inside Notions Eleven. From the corner of her eye she saw a middle-aged woman pause in front of the door, apparently read the sign, and continue down the sidewalk.

  “I don’t have a thousand dollars,” Rosie said.

  Davis’s smile faded. “Look and see.”

  “Look where? You think Nancy keeps that kind of money in the cash register?”

  “I think she keeps it in a safe. That’s what most businesses around here do.”

  “We don’t have a safe.”

  “Yes you do.” Davis’s gaze flicked down to the countertop and back again. “Until recently this was a flower shop, and the guy who owned it had a vault underneath the counter, right where you’re sitting. It was built-in and anchored, so it’s still there.”

  “Why are you so sure we would use it?”

  “Why would you not use it?” he asked.

  A sudden but logical question occurred to her. “How do you know all this?” Rosie asked. “How could you know it?”

  “Because the florist shop was one of our customers.”

  “That’s impossible. Nancy said she knew the owner. He would’ve told her about you, before selling the place to her.”

  Davis shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t have.”

  Rosie realized that was the truth. Men like these would be a threat not only to those who lived and worked here, but also to those who had moved on. They wouldn’t forget. And Nancy wasn’t the most savvy businesswoman in the world anyway. In fact she was a bit of a scatterbrain, and even more so since her divorce. Why else had Rosie and Tom Cartwright offered to help her with almost half the money to buy the shop?

  “Go ahead, Ms. Cartwright. Check the safe. Make the payment. Or would you rather we wait until your daughter gets back from lunch?” Davis tilted his head and regarded her a moment. “We can do that, you know. I would so enjoy meeting her.”

  Rosie felt her mouth go dry. Her mind was spinning.

  He was right. Do whatever it takes, whatever you have to do, she told herself—but don’t allow Nancy to be a part of all this.

  With a deep sigh Rosie stooped forward from her seat, reached below the counter, spun the combination of the vault, and opened its steel door. She could hear herself breathing, could feel her hand trembling. Still bent over, she looked up at Davis.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said. “If I don’t pay you, here and now…you’ll kill me?”

  He looked shocked. “Certainly not.”

  “You won’t?”

  “Of course not. You said you were part owner.” Davis leaned toward her, smiled, and said, softly but distinctly, “We’ll kill your daughter.”

  She looked at Charles and saw that he was grinning also. Secretly, she was glad they were. It helped her make up her mind.

  Rosie sat up and raised her hand above the counter—but it wasn’t holding a thousand dollars. It was holding the gun she’d stored on the shelf beside the safe, her late husband’s .38 revolver.

  She shot Davis once, in the middle of the forehead, and even before he hit the floor she shifted left and shot Charles too. He was farther away but he was bigger so she aimed for the center of his chest and fired three times.

  She sat there for several seconds, ears ringing, then calmly set her gun down beside her knitting, removed a handkerchief from her purse, and walked around the counter. Both men were stone dead, lying on their backs with arms flung wide, as if terminally tired of shopping. A pungent, smoky smell lingered in the air. Careful not to kneel in the spreading pools of blood, she used her handkerchief to remove Davis’s pistol and place it in his outstretched hand. She did the same thing with Charles’s gun, a big black automatic.

  Then Rosie tiptoed her way back to the counter and called 9-1-1. She directed the police to come to the rear alley entrance—she didn’t want to disturb the fingerprints Charles would have left on the front door’s lock and the OPEN/CLOSED sign—and then called Nancy’s cell phone to tell her the same thing. When that was done she hung up, tucked the handkerchief back into her purse, marched to the back of the shop to unlock the alley door, and returned to the counter to sit down on her stool and wait for the cavalry.

  She felt more at ease than she thought she would be. Her heartbeat was back to an almost-normal rate, and her hands weren’t shaking quite so badly. Would the police believe her story? She didn’t know. But she felt she’d have plenty of support from the neighboring businesses that had been fleeced over the years. And she knew what her hu
sband Tom would have said: You did the right thing, Rosie.

  She took a slow sip from her coffee cup—the one with the words WORLD’S BEST GRANDMA written on the side—and checked the time again on her gold wristwatch.

  The one with the words ROSE CARTWRIGHT, 25 YEARS, NYPD engraved on the back.

  Don’t Be Cruel

  JoAnne Lucas

  Fresno, California

  Tuesday, June 5, 1957

  Homicide Detective Frank Ransom slowed his Ford at the restaurant’s driveway. He played with the idea that the scene ahead was a wide-angle camera shot of the parking lot. It took in the rose and aqua neon on the roof of the diner down to two black-and-white cruisers adding more color with their revolving cherries, and panned over to a gray sedan like his parked nearby in the background. Boy, howdy, put it all in glorious Technicolor, maybe with Vista Vision and zoom in for a close-up of the opened front door. Enter the story through its portal. Even has Stereophonic Sound, he mused, as the same kind of bebop music his kids liked bullied its way outside. Hold, and cut. Great production shot. Needed a few dragsters parked nearby, maybe James Dean slouching against the wall. Damned shame what happened to him. Three films and he’s gone.

  Ransom doused his imaginary movie and finished driving into the lot, parking on the far side of a patrol car and the unmarked police sedan. He donned his seersucker jacket and summer fedora, and picked up a notebook and sketch pad as he nodded at the man getting out of the other sedan. Unusual for Greely to beat him to the call. He noted that the young detective just missed leading man’s status. Had the height and breadth like Victor Mature, but also a bad haircut, narrow mouth, wrong nose for the face, and ears that stuck out. No, Detective David Greely could never be a heartthrob in Hollywood. Good thing he decided to be one of Fresno’s finest instead.

  A light wind played Red Rover with papers Frank had left on his dash, and he lunged to grab them as they fluttered their way out of his window and across Greely’s car hood. “Ha! Got you, you little rascals. Breeze sure feels good after the scorcher we had today, doesn’t it?”

  Greely agreed. “I heard the call and was a few blocks over. Came by to see if you could use some help—maybe direct the uniforms out here.”

  “’Preciate it. Downtown’s short-handed tonight, so we’re in for a wait. Send in the doc and photo and prints right away, but make the morgue’s boys cool their heels.” He saw the wind was blowing the younger man’s hair. Humph, needs a haircut.

  Litter scurried for attention across the asphalt and the neon zizzed. The patrol car’s motor pinged and he felt the heat radiating off its hood. Ransom took a deep breath. This is where it all stops being a movie scenario. In spite of his resolve, a voice in his head shouted, roll ’em! as he continued through the open doorway.

  The strong scent of a thousand fries and burgers served over the years taunted his nose and sent an urgent call to his stomach, unhappy that he’d skipped dinner. He pacified it by popping a peppermint Lifesaver in his mouth and continued to survey the area. No one in the diner but the grill cook with a mug of coffee and a police officer leaning against the soda counter. Ransom observed the juke was just starting to play H-16 as he passed. He could see the victim’s legs from the foyer and quickly moved around the register counter to view the corpse on the floor.

  Well, hello, Marilyn Monroe! He leaned closer. No—not a Marilyn, bigger girl, more like a Jayne Mansfield. Must be 5′8″. Bet she was trouble. Bet she liked playing with fire. Finally got some guy too angry. Manually strangled. Passionate, intimate kind of death, don’t see many of them, thank God. Hard way to die. What did she do to drive a man to such a deed? He cast an eye over her tight-fitting waitress uniform with its pink and white checked waist apron, down to her feet. Huh! Nylons and white flats. No big ugly, comfortable bucks and bobby sox for our Jayne. Figures.

  Ransom regarded a splay of quarters on the floor, most had red enamel disfiguring them. It looked like they had been in the small pottery bowl that lay shattered nearby. He pulled out his book and quickly sketched the crime scene, the short hallway beyond, and the rest of the diner. Black-and-white photos would come his way later. Right now he could do without the constant flashes and chatter of the cameraman and expended bulbs littering the place. He noted time, distances, and colors on each drawing.

  Somewhere he realized the song had finished and a new record was due to play. Thank Hannah, that last one seemed to go on forever. But, no—this sounded like the same one. He eyed the lighted tabs on the machine. Huh! H-16 again.

  “That’s ole Elvis the Pelvis.”

  Ransom looked over at the speaker. Grill cook, white tee shirt, dungarees, food-splattered apron. Late forties, maybe fifty, skinny, 5′5″, pasty complexion. “You the one phoned in the murder?”

  “Yeah. Name’s Louis Kelly.” He coughed the hard smokers’ hack.

  “See who did it, Louis?”

  “Call me Kelly. Nah, took a break in the alley. When I came back in that song was playin’ and nobody was here.”

  “Same song?”

  He nodded. “It’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’ Tell ya the truth, I like Elvis, but I’m gettin’ sick of that song.”

  “So, this same song’s been playing, what eight, ten times?”

  “I guess.”

  “Think it’s stuck?”

  “Shouldn’t be, juke got serviced today.”

  Ransom beckoned to the cop. “Officer—?”

  “Collins, sir.”

  “Collins, good. Try and remember how many times you’ve heard this song since you’ve been here and the next time it starts over, time it. Also time what it takes to end and start again. Then call dispatch and get when the call came in. See if the dispatcher remembers hearing the music. Figure when the dispatcher called you and when you arrived. Don’t let doc or the evidence guys touch that jukebox unless I’m here.” He just might get lucky and pinpoint a close time of the murder. Now if he could make Kelly open up more.

  “Ah, Kelly—”

  “You mind if we go out back? I’m not allowed to smoke in the kitchen. Health rules. And it don’t feel right smokin’ here with Barbara dead ’n all.”

  “Sure, we’ll go out back.”

  They walked through the kitchen, past the huge refrigerator and stocked shelves, and out the screen door.

  “Grab a crate and set yourself down,” Kelly said. “Smoke?”

  “No thanks.”

  Kelly lit a Lucky while Ransom sketched the alley. He drew the wooden crates and cardboard boxes neatly stacked against the building, the refuse overflowing three dented galvanized cans, the number of fresh butts littering the ground around Kelly’s overturned crate.

  “So, Kelly, you Navy?” He indicated the cook’s forearm tattoos.

  “Yeah, did the duty for Uncle Sam during the war.” Kelly stretched his arms forward for Ransom to see better. “Learned to cook on the Missouri.”

  “Proud ship.”

  The cook smiled.

  “Looks like you had yourself a smoke fest here tonight.”

  Kelly scuffed at the butts. “Guess I did at that.” He looked a little sheepish. “I clean ’em up after my last break of the night.”

  “You smoke this much all the time?”

  “Well, it being Tuesday and all, not much business. I’d finished my orders, so I turned off the grill and came out for some solitude—jus’ listenin’ to the stories of the night.”

  Ransom wished he hadn’t turned down that cigarette, and reached for another Lifesaver. “Uh-huh. What kind of stories do you hear?”

  “Well, sir, I can tell the difference between an ambulance and a fire truck and a cop car pretty much by how fast they’s travelin’. And I can hear when a car comes and leaves here. Make a bet with myself ’bout what make it is and who’s inside.”

  “That right?”

  “Yeah. Teenagers always come in with their music blaring, wanting to share. If it’s a family, I listen to how many doors open and shut. And a l
oner will always order quicker than the others. Helps me figure how soon I need to get back inside and fire up the grill. Gets hot in there with it goin’ all the time, y’know?”

  Ransom allowed how that would be the case. “What happened tonight?”

  “I cooked up my last burger for a regular—no mayo, double pickles and fries—’bout eight ten. Barbara was in a mood, fairly slapped the order on his table and sat back behind the register to file her nails. Figured this a good time for a smoke. She’s a mean one when she gets goin’. Almost finished my first butt when I heard that hard case on a motorcycle drive in. A real punk, that one. Thinks he’s the Marlon Brando of Fresno. Calls hisself Duke. Always lookin’ for a free burger, and I din’t feel like obligin’ him tonight. Often him and Barbara would have them a heavy make-out session in that little hallway. I thought screw it, and had me ’nother ciggie. Heard the biker leave. He really laid down some rubber.”

  “You think he killed her and got scared?”

  “Nah, he’s got girls all over town. If anyone was mad, it was Barbara. Her shift din’t end ’til ten and she couldn’t go with him. No more cars came, none left. Heard some dishes break and figured I really din’t need to be involved in that mess. By then I was thinkin’ ’bout doing a third smoke when Elvis came on. That ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ song. So I leaned back and enjoyed myself.” He coughed hard, hawked, and spat. “Nasty habit. Someday I’ll quit.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Speaking of Brando, you see him in Teahouse of the August Moon yet? Had to keep remindin’ myself it was really him. Never seen him in such a part before.”

  “Know what you mean. Sure wasn’t On the Waterfront or Streetcar. I think he just enjoyed doing the role and it spilled out all over the audience.”

  “Yeah, that’s it exactly.” They sat in companionable silence, Ransom busy with a new drawing and Kelly lost in his thoughts.