The 26th Letter

by Larry Flewin

  Much to my surprise, I’d passed on those particular offers. For what it was worth even I had a scruple. Hopefully they were as welcoming to their cellmates, but I don't recall the cells downtown being much more comfortable than an outhouse. I still didn’t know what she wanted but I wasn’t about to let her go again. I yanked open the compartment door and roared in, hoping I could surprise her for once, and maybe make getting answers a little easier. Nothing like a little fear from god to make those pouty lips start singing.

  She looked up at me like I was the porter bringing her coffee. Pretty damn cool, I thought. My next thought was not my own but the barrel of somebody else's. The owner was some monster in a cheap suit standing behind the door. He calmly closed it for me, grabbed the back of my collar, and stuck his favourite toy in my right ear. He didn't say a word, but the next words I did hear sent a chill down my spine.

  "Aaahhh, Anthony, how good of you to join us. We were just talking about you, weren't we, my dear."

  That ice water voice was the one song in this musical that I hadn't hoped to hear just yet. I already owed him for headlights and bodywork and didn't want to it. There wasn’t much chance of me muscling my way out of this, so I was going to have to rely on my vocal skills. I'm lucky if I can remember which foot goes in which shoe so any kind of conversation was going to be long shot. My old gran used to say we're born dead already, it's only a matter of when and how. I was really hoping that it wasn't now.

  He sat with his back to an outside window, drawing deep on a very large cigar. He hadn't changed much since our last face to face. As always, the suit was new and the shoes were shined, and he had that same menacing air about him. And it wasn't the cigar smoke.

  They were his trademark, those stogies, a signature style that came hand made in a nifty wooden box from Cuba. Havana Reales. The mark of a true gentleman, he told me once, in between punches. Something a lout like you wouldn’t understand. Gutter born you are and in a gutter you will die, he said, as yet another fist came my way. I smiled hard at the compliment, trying not to make my face any worse than it already was.

  A quick and efficient pat down, and I was naked as a jay bird in front of the last guy on earth I wanted to see or hear from today. "He's clean boss,” said the suit, handing over both my pieces. The thirty-eight I could afford to lose but the piece under my left arm was a different story, a bad one.

  It was his, a little souvenir I'd picked up from an earlier time, its return wasn't going to make things any easier. Why was I wearing it and not my forty-five only my mind knew, and it was too busy trying to figure a way keep us alive.

  "Ahhh", Michael said, smiling knowingly, "I wondered where this had got to. So good of you to return it to me. I trust it served you well." He slipped it quietly back into the holster that had been waiting so long for its return.

  "Shoots straight, and it's easy to clean, but the ammo is hard to come by. But you already know that,” I quipped.

  "Indeed, but I manage to import a sufficient quantity. A pity I haven't been able to use it lately. You' re a gun collector of sorts, are you not? Do you know what this is?"

  "Seven point six two millimetre automatic. Tokarev TT,” I recited, like it was a chapter from the bible. Those Soviet bully boys make them, but not for the general public. So, where does a good Ukrainian boy like you get an expensive toy like that. Thought you liked twenty-twos.”

  "Now now, there’s no need for insults in front of such lovely company. Yes, it is Russian, and it shoots very well, don’t you think? So much more elegant than that brutish thing you use, and so much more accurate. Karl there keeps it spotless for me, don't you Karl."

  Karl agreed with the last statement by shoving his favourite toy a little deeper into my ear.

  "Where it comes from is of no concern of yours. Just be happy you gave it back to me before I missed it and decided to come looking for it."

  "Don't lose any sleep on my account. You know where to find me.”

  He took another long pull on his stogie and chuckled quietly while he exhaled. "I am glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humour, after all this time. I think that’s what I’ve missed about you the most. Forgive me for not offering you a place to sit, but as you can see, we are many and the seats are few."

  "Don't get up on my account."

  "I wouldn't dream of it”, he said, smiling wickedly. “We have other, rather more important, issues to discuss you and I.”

  I groaned inwardly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It had been almost a year since we'd last met, and the circumstances then hadn't been entirely favourable for me either. No time for hellos or goodbyes, just duck the lead being thrown around and send some back. He was as good a shot as I was, which didn't mean much. We both couldn't hit the broad side of a barn that day. Still, we had tried our best to kill each other and when it had ended, he'd gone his way and I'd gone mine. Until now.

  "You're looking well, all things considered. And I see your taste in clothing is impeccable as always. Now then, allow me to introduce my associate, Miss Bolesna.” He waved his cigar in her direction, and I found myself staring down into those big brown eyes again. I looked hard at her, trying to read her, she smiled at me ever so innocently in return. And blew me a smoke-filled kiss.

  "I understand you have taken up a new career. That's very commendable. A man like you needs to keep busy, otherwise who knows what trouble he might get into. And after our last encounter, I thought that would have been more than enough incentive. Obviously it was not. I would have thought manual labour beneath you, a smart guy like you. Especially when he decides to create work for himself where none existed before." His voice took on a harder edge.

  " I was not pleased to have my automobile treated with such disrespect. It will not happen again." The smoke continued to fill the room. "You appear to be falling back into your old habits, my friend. Especially the one where you keep turning up in the most unexpected, and unwanted, places. You must learn to stop doing that. Karl will show you how."

  He dismissed me with a wave of his Reale. She smiled wickedly, and recrossed her legs. Karl said nothing but pinned my arms behind my back and hustled me out of Michael’s presence.

  As we tangoed down the corridor, I felt my pants get a little lighter. Karl had lifted my wallet.

  "Hey."

  "Shut up."

  We reached the vestibule at the end of the car and stumbled out onto the gangway between the cars. We stood on steel plates, as close as lovers, in a space that roared and rolled like the ocean. It was the perfect place to put his fists to use, but Karl had other ideas. He held me tight with one fist, and yanked a door open with the other, giving me a good look at a sunny prairie afternoon. He showed me the error of my ways by tossing me off the train.

  What brought me back to the land of the living was the absolute fire of an ache tearing through my skull and racing mercilessly up and down my spine. It took some doing but I eventually managed the standing position. I dusted off what was left of my dignity and combed the gravel out of my hair.

  A few staggered steps and I was standing on the rails, the highest point of land between here and anywhere else. There was no use trying to get my bearings, there was nothing to see, and a whole lot of it. Just your standard prairie, stretching out into the late afternoon about as far as it could. Except for the stars, the rail line, and about a million miles of sagebrush, I was all by my lonesome.

  I sat on a rail and puffed through a couple of smokes. I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere, nor did I figure the cavalry was on its way, I wasn’t that lucky. On the other hand, neither was Michael. He couldn’t know why I was on the train, just that I was, until his boys back at the station clocked in. Then he’d find out he’d thrown the prize from his crack jack box away. It was still in my pocket, nestled close to my smokes, which is maybe why Karl hadn’t found it.

  I got the distinct impression that I was into this thing farther than I
was supposed to be. Or maybe I was and didn’t know it. The paper remained unremarkable no matter which way I looked at it. The fading sunlight revealed no secret messages or anything else that might have suggested why it was so important to so many people. So, on your feet doughboy, ditch that smoke, and get your rear in gear, we got a long way to go. And didn’t I know it.

  The sunset glowed like a campfire, all rosy red and inviting. It might have been a comforting sight to a Boy Scout or a Cowboy, for me it was just pick ‘em up and put ‘em down, and don’t stop. I hadn’t forgotten what it was like, we were all of us scared, cold, and miserable. A heavy pack, a rusty rifle, and no thoughts beyond getting under cover before the sun came up, my only company random bullets and rats. Dark memories of another life.

  It was a long hike to nowhere, me stumbling every two seconds, making whatever hurt most hurt even more. I made friends with every gopher hole, pothole, and rock in creation, and then a barbed wire fence said hello. Once over that I picked out a pinpoint of light off in the distance. How far I couldn't tell, but the odds were that it was a farm. A night in the straw wouldn't hurt me, and they might have some decent smokes. I would have killed for one right about now, that and some good homemade hooch.

  The pinpoint finally became a yard light, standard issue on a prairie farm. A damn great light on top of a pole that lit up the yard like the midday sun. It kept the foxes out of the henhouse, the wolves from the door, and pointed the way to the outhouse. Handy things that even us city slickers could appreciate.

  The light lit up enough of the farm for me to check it out from a distance. No sense risking a load of double-ought buck instead of a friendly hello. I crawled up to an old tractor hiding in the weeds and took cover behind the rear wheels.

  The whole area was overgrown, the farmhouse was dark, and the manure pile just to the left of the tractor didn't smell. So, when does something stink when it doesn’t? This did. And it was quiet, real quiet. No clucking, no mooing, no farm dog yapping at the moon or trying to rip my legs off. It had been a while but even I knew this wasn't how it was supposed to be. I stayed put and took a harder look around.

  The farmhouse was on the far side of the light, not a hope of getting close to it without been seen by a blind man, so the barn drew the short straw. It was off to the right a short distance, and outside the circle, an easy approach. Curiously, the barn was not only still standing but seemed to be in really good shape, almost like it was new. I could feel the roughness of the wood and the smell of fresh paint way before I got anywhere near it.

  Crawling isn't the most dignified way to get anywhere, but when you're tired and thirsty, and all beat up, it's the only way to travel. And as for my dignity, you can't bruise what you don't have. A few feet into my trip and the dirt changed its feel completely. It became very hard and felt kinda rough. My hands told me what I couldn't see. Tire tracks. Very recent, and very deep, and heading in the same direction I was, the barn. There were signs of life in the old place after all.

  I followed the trail a little more carefully now. Something very big and very heavy with deep treaded tires using the place. As a garage maybe, grain storage, hideout. And then there was that smell, for a place all but abandoned it sure stank like the cavalry had been through. I felt my way along the barn walls very carefully, my nose going like a bloodhound. It wasn't long before I heard the murmur of voices through the rough planking. Several of them. They seemed to be coming from high overhead, up in the hayloft.

  I stopped moving so I could hear without being heard, but that didn’t help. They weren’t loud enough and I was too far away. All I could do was puzzle over the unusual aroma until a new noise grabbed my attention. Only a murmur at first, it slowly grew louder and into something more recognisable. When you've driven enough of them, you get to appreciate that special symphony of big pistons and gears in low gear. A five-ton truck.

  There were no bouncing lights to tell which direction it was coming from, but the noise was slowing making it’s towards me. I was pretty sure now this was a shine operation. The isolated location, the new barn walls, the smell, the truck, even with prohibition over, there was still a lot of money to be made cooking mash. Not everybody had survived the crash with a bank account, and not everybody had given up their stills when booze had started flowing again.

  I didn't think it had anything to do with Michael, this was too low brow for him. His operations were all in town, usually in warehouses or hidden away in garages, ignored by coppers paid to look the other way. There was enough rot downtown to mask even the strongest scent.

  The noise of the engine drowned out any more talk, but the yard light clearly showed two bodies in the cab, to go along with a couple more inside. Big, ugly looking mugs in overalls and cloth caps. They might have worked on a farm at one point, and maybe even this one, but right now they were working and that’s probably all they cared about.

  They dropped her into idle about a foot from the side of the barn and waited. No horn, no lights, just patience and the smell of exhaust. She was a big five-ton Ford with a large steel oval tank on the back. Mike's Milk, Delivered Daily it said on the side. Milk, in this dump? Bossy must have invented a new way to cream my coffee if this was where she was working. But it wasn’t coffee I was interested in. My ticket home had just arrived.

  It wasn't long before the wall parted inwards to let the big tires in. As she rumbled in, I slipped in behind her and crawled under some hay in the corner. The doors closed, the engine died and the two climbed out of the cab and onto the top of the tank. One of them opened a hatch on the top while the other beat on the ceiling with his fist. A bright shaft of light lit up the top of the truck and through it passed a hose down into the open hatch.

  I watched and waited patiently while the boys drew down another tank full for the fast crowd. Yeah, it was a dark time for some, but for others the party had never ended. They lived the good life just as hard as they could, as fast and as loose with their cash and their lives as their brethren in Chicago and Detroit. This sleepy little town had a nightlife and a half, you just had to know where to look, and who to pay to get in.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the process reversed itself and the lights when out. And in more than one way. Mug number one didn’t see or hear the straw rising behind him. I yanked him off the step well and floored him with a hard right cross. Then it was into the cab, and a hard shove to send the other one off into the darkness and what I hoped was a hard landing. And I found the keys right where I'd prayed they would be.

  A quick turn of the ignition and she was purring like a kitten. A quick slam slam of gears and she was set in reverse. I stood on the brake, and the accelerator, to gain some speed for what I had in mind. With the door only a short distance away, I was going to have to bull my way out. Where to from there I didn't know, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

  There isn't much room to manoeuvre in a barn, and Fords were notorious for their slow acceleration. Which means when I let her go I shot straight back and hit the door and that was it. And if that wasn’t enough the guy I had shoved into the night was back on his feet and yelling upstairs for the others to get the hell down here and help out. Somebody was stealing from the crooks.

  I slammed the gears into forward and jammed both the gas and brakes up tight against the floorboards. The tires were digging their own graves, and the engine was screaming to beat hell when I let her go for the second time. We shot forward at full throttle this time, ramming the far wall enough to scratch the paint. There was an explosion of lumber, nails and straw and the next thing I knew I was out into the starry night.

  I snapped a quick look around even as I brought the old girl into a tight turn to the right and dropped in her into second gear. The tire tracks I didn't have to find, she seemed to know her way around. We were already in the ruts and pulling away before I turned on the headlights. I didn't hear any voices behind me, and I didn't hear any other engines tuning up, but th
at didn't mean I wasn't going to have company for the ride home. Nobody hijacks a thousand gallons of high octane and expects to get a teary-eyed farewell.

  I cranked the wheel over, gave her some gas and kept on going. She seemed to like that idea, and when she hit a gravel road, made like it was Barney Oldfield behind the wheel. She handled like a pig, accelerated like one, and bounced around like a belly dancers’ navel, but we were on our way home. The hard part was going to be keeping it that way.

  Hadn't had a ride this rough since the big one. Our supply trucks had been like this. Big, ugly bastards that were hard to steer and even harder to start when they stalled. While the Brits had used horses for much of their supply trains, the rest of us had wrestled with these monsters. They were easier to train and didn't need hay, but you still had to treat them with respect. Especially when you were near the front. Moving targets were harder to hit.

  I wasn't about to be left behind or taken prisoner, so the drill was floor it, keep the wheel straight and keep your head down. I checked the side mirror to see what the previous owners were up to. From outta nowhere two sets of headlights appeared hot on my trail and closing fast.

  The right-side mirror disintegrated. I could hear a lotta pings, as lead creased steel, and deeper thumps where wood splintered. The old girl and I roared up to what appeared to be a main road crossing front of us. There was no time to ask directions or check the stars for a direction, it was paved and we took it. I hung a right, gunned her, and roared off into the night with trouble in hot pursuit.

  I sure wasn't going to outrun them, but the harder surface would buy me a few more seconds and a few more yards. Time enough to figure out how the hell to make this work. A quick glance in the surviving mirror, and I could see more bouncing headlights behind me. Where the hell they had come from I didn't know, but it wouldn't take long for them to catch up to me. And they wouldn't be in too forgiving a mood when they did.