World, Chase Me Down

by Andrew Hilleman

  When we finally arrived back at the cottage, I fed our horse a double helping of oats and gave her a bucket of water. I draped a giant monkey fur cape around her body—the same one Billy had thrown over Eddie Junior’s head when we abducted him—and rubbed her down to warm her skin.

  “You’ve got grit,” I said to her while she fed on the oats. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll say you got grit in spades. What a fine horse.”

  Come sunrise, with little more than two hours of sleep, we hitched our buggy to the pony and marched Eddie down the stairs. He was still blindfolded in the old baby shirt, his hands cuffed. Billy fried us some bologna in a skillet, flipping it like flapjacks, and boiled a pot of rye coffee. All three of us ate in silence. Young Eddie was grateful for the food. He masticated the bologna in a frenzy without a utensil. Unable to move all night, he’d pissed his trousers.

  The smell was unmistakable.

  After the quick breakfast, we set him up in the wagon between us and removed the shirt from his eyes just long enough to toss a coat over his head. Bristles of daylight spread over the plain. Poor Silversmith was as worn down as an overworked mule and seemed to mope with every movement. Within the hour, we’d driven to the far north side of the city along a lonesome stretch of the Missouri River.

  I stepped off the rig and looked out at the sluggish water, frozen in some spots and running free in others. Could smell the river in the gelid air. Billy and I both tied on bandanas to hide our faces. Billy took the coat off Eddie’s head, unlocked his manacles, and told him to step down. The kid hesitated.

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “Your papa came through. We’re turning you loose.”

  Eddie blinked his eyes as if he’d never seen creation. A blind man healed. He was wobbly on his feet as he got off the wagon seat. I thought he might run away. Instead he walked right up next to me and stood rubbing his head.

  I stared at the water. “Do you know where you are, kid?”

  Eddie looked around. He looked at me, my face covered with the bandana.

  “You got your bearings about you?” I asked again.

  Eddie pointed. “That’s the Missouri right there.”

  “Across the way is Iowa. If you head back south, you’ll get to the city in about two hours on foot. Think you can manage that?”

  “I think so. Give me another cigarette, would you?”

  I gave him three. “For the long walk.”

  Eddie lit one and started off toward home. “So long, fellows,” he said.

  I looked behind me. I wanted to shake the young man’s hand. He had the nerve of a man twice his age. Seeing him go was nearly a sad affair. No need to get gushy.

  “So long, kid,” I said.

  XVI

  THE BASEMENT FLOOR of Sal Abbott’s grocery was packed dirt, and the walls were painted cinder blocks. Tom Dennison came to the bottom of the stairs in his Palm Beach suit and wool topcoat, with smoke wheeling off his cigar. He took a pair of dress gloves from his pocket and fit them over his hands.

  The two whiskered gangsters who killed old man Abbott and knocked me senseless were digging a hole in the dirt floor in the back of the cellar. They’d drug Sal’s body down the steps and left him lying face down by their growing pile of dirt. Both of their jackets were off and their shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. They took turns making the hole with a grain shovel they’d taken off one of the walls upstairs. While one labored with his feet in what was to become Sal’s grave, the man I’d thumped in the head and throat stood smoking and spitting. He couldn’t quit rubbing his neck and had a rough time breathing. He wheezed like an asthmatic and was wobbly on his feet.

  The cellar was barely tall enough to walk through without stooping. A pair of barn lanterns lit up the room as dimly as a cathedral during a vigil.

  Billy and I sat in chairs in the center of the cellar with our hands bound behind our backs and potato sacks over our heads.

  I had been unconscious for some time, and when I woke I couldn’t see anything through the sack material. My mouth was full of blood. I tongued the cavity in my gums where two of my bottom teeth were missing. Billy was in his striped pajamas, having been hustled out of one of the beds at The Berryman Club, where he’d just finished making it with a whore named Lulu or Tulip or Lily—the namesake of some kind of flower or another. He’d been sucking down a warm beer and commenting on the calming effect of the Japanese comet fish in the tiny glass globe on her nightstand when a pair of masked strong-arms with oily revolvers broke into the room. They grabbed him up, threw a potato sack over his head, and tossed him in the back of their wagon for a ride over to the south-side grocery where he now sat beside me with a urine stain on his crotch.

  For a long moment Dennison considered the setup and gnawed on his cigar before he finally drew up a third chair and sat down.

  “Take those bags off their heads,” he said to one of his henchmen, who went over and yanked off our potato sacks.

  My eyes blinked wildly as they adjusted to the light and the surroundings of the cellar: Billy tied up next to me, Dennison sitting before us in a split-bottom chair, the goons digging the hole in the back of the basement by Sal’s corpse. The old man had been tossed on the ground as if he was nothing more than a piece of luggage. I nearly started to cry but held back my tears as I looked up at Dennison and said nothing.

  “Mr. Dennison?” Billy said. “Thank God. Hey, Tom, you know me. Tell your boys that you know me. We’re old pals. If this is about the whores, I’ll stop. I swear to God, I’ll stop.”

  “I’ll be with you in a minute, Bill, but first I want to have a word with Pat here,” Dennison said and unfolded a sheet of paper from his breast pocket. He held it up in the air for me to see. It was the contract I signed with Mr. Nesselhous about the payments on our butcher shop. I sat stoic, spit a clot of blood.

  “Evening, Pat, how’s your week been?”

  “You’ve come to kill me,” I said calmly.

  “Balderdash. Like Billy here said, we’re all of us old pals. You, me, your sister Sallie. I just wanted to have a little heart-to-heart.”

  “The murderer’s a comedian,” I said.

  Dennison smiled. “A murderer, you say? And a comedian, too? Hell, the only thing that’s funny is the way you young fellows repay favors these days. It’s not enough that you’re living in a new house and running your very own business paid for by my dime, but you got to have your morals to go along with it and now the name-calling, too?”

  “You killed old man Abbott,” I said and looked again at Sal’s body. The two goons had dug the hole about three feet deep. They must’ve thought that was a sufficient depth for a makeshift grave as they pulled the corpse into the hole by the legs and began to fill it back up with dirt. The first man used the shovel while the other brought over one of the barn lanterns and set it down on the ground next to Dennison’s chair.

  “That was unfortunate,” Dennison said with some measure of agreement. “And believe you me, I’ll be having a long talk with my boys about it after I’m done with our little chat.”

  The goon who’d carried over the lantern dropped a cigarette on the ground and squashed it out with his shoe. Dennison looked him up and down. His left eye was puffy and nearly closed shut from my first swing, which had sent him falling backwards into the stack of fruit cans. The lump on the side of his head would need to be lanced before it went away.

  “Looks like you gave this one quite the polt,” Dennison said to me.

  The goon with the busted head patted at the knot in his temple that’d swollen up as juicy as a hunk of fruit. He opened his mouth to speak, which looked about as painful as anything he’d attempted in his whole life. His muffled voice made it sound like he was talking through a muzzle. He couldn’t pronounce but a syllable at a time. “Kid’s a bull. Hits harder than all creation.”

  Dennison said, “He could have your jo
b if he’d learn to make better use of his talents.”

  “You’re a bastard,” I said. “And your thugs are cowards.”

  Dennison turned back to look at his man shoveling the dirt. “Cowards? I’m told that old Sal was armed.”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, he wasn’t? My men said he had a shotgun and was threatening to use it.”

  I said, “He was eighty years old and near blind in both eyes, and you know it. Man could barely see well enough to make change from his till. Armed or not, he couldn’t have hit a bull’s ass if he tied off the end of that shotgun to its tail with a piece of string.”

  Dennison laughed, but not out of humor. “God, love you, Patrick. Tied up to a chair with your teeth smashed in and still as chatty as a dinner guest.”

  I spit more blood. “And you’re still making fun before the man’s even in the ground.”

  Dennison clucked his tongue. “Well, you’re the one who ran into his store when you knew trouble was a-following. I’d say that makes you just as responsible as me.”

  “If you wanted to talk with me, why did you need to run me off the streets anyhow? You know where I live and you know where I work and I’m not running away.”

  “Because I want you to listen. And you haven’t been listening for a good long while now,” Dennison said and leaned back in his chair. He handed his cigar to his goon and hollered up the basement steps as if calling out for an absent waiter. “Hey, Ed? Ed, come on down here and say your piece to these boys.”

  Heavy footfalls sounded from the floor above. The wooden ceiling creaked under the weight of the man moving about in the grocery. Then the footsteps came down the aching steps. Edward Cudahy, with his chins shaking above his collar, made his way into the cellar with no lack of effort. He carried a peg lamp in a candle socket, holding it by its drip pan.

  He surveyed the scene. “Sakes alive, what has this come to?”

  “What was needed,” Dennison said.

  “This is too far.”

  “Things got a little out of hand, I’ll admit.”

  Cudahy looked at the man filling the grave. An arm and a foot were sticking out of the dirt. “Who’s that got killed?”

  “Some nobody grocer,” Dennison said without a shred of pity.

  Cudahy couldn’t stop shaking his head. “All of this over a piddly little butcher shop?”

  “No, Ed. Over principle.”

  “Principle?” I said. I could barely hold my head up. “Some men never have any.”

  Cudahy said, “I want you to explain something to me, Pat.”

  I stared down at my shoe tops. “I’m not saying another word. You already went and made your mind up about things, so I won’t give you the satisfaction.”

  “You want this resolved, don’t you?” Dennison asked me.

  “You only gave me a few months before you started trying to shut me down. It takes time to get a business off and running. You ought to know that better than anyone.”

  “A few months?” Cudahy said. “That’s how far behind you are on your payments.”

  “It’s over, Pat,” Dennison added. “Time to face facts. Either way you leave this cellar, dead or alive, that shop is no longer yours.”

  Billy squirmed in his chair, working his shoulders as if trying to free his hands. One of Dennison’s goons stepped forward and pistol-whipped him across the face. Billy let out a whimper. A quick line of blood dribbled down from his eyebrow.

  “Sit still,” the goon said and spit a long string of tobacco juice on his face.

  “Alright, that’s quite enough. Man’s not going anywhere. Can’t you see he already pissed himself?” Dennison snapped. He stood, untied Billy’s hands, and handed him the folded square of a handkerchief from his pocket.

  Billy wiped the blood and spit from his face. “What’s this all about?”

  “I already told you once to hush up, or do you want another smack?” Dennison said and sat back down. He nodded to one of his men who, in turn, shuffled over behind Billy’s chair. Redirecting his attention to me, Dennison continued, “This is the last thing I wanted. But you broke faith with me. We had an agreement. But what good are agreements if you cast the terms to the four winds and turn down a perfectly good offer to break even when you know you’ll never do anything but keep on losing money? My money.”

  “I thought you were a businessman,” I said. “I never agreed to work for a gangster.”

  Dennison craned his head around the room to look at his men with a smile, amused by the word. “There you go again with the name-calling. Gangster? You mean like a hoodlum?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.”

  “No, I beg your pardon, but I surely don’t. A gangster is somebody who brings society down. A gangster is somebody who uses violence because they don’t know no other way.”

  “What would you call this?” I asked.

  “A powwow,” Cudahy said.

  Dennison hunched forward in his chair until I lifted my head.

  He said, “A gangster is somebody who goes looking for commotion. For trouble. That ain’t me. No, sir. I’m for peace and order. A gangster? All he wants is to disturb the peace. But a man, even the most peaceable man, he knows there can’t be peace so long as he’s getting kicked by his pals. And no man who calls himself a man can stand there and take a kicking and not do anything about it. You, Pat, you’re more a gangster than anybody in this room. And you surely ain’t no man.”

  “Tom, whatever’s been done, we can repair it,” Billy said.

  Dennison snagged his handkerchief out of Billy’s hand. “I thought I told you twice now to shut your trap. Boy, I got one of you who don’t listen and the other who crosses the fella who pulled him out of his no-avenue stockyard job and put him all the way up in his own shop, no questions asked. Now, what kind of sense does that make?”

  Billy sat there silently, afraid to speak again.

  “Crossed you?” I said. “I haven’t crossed you in any way.”

  “You haven’t been able to pay me in three months. You might as well have pickpocketed me on the corner,” Dennison said.

  “I’m only trying to do what’s right,” I said and looked again at Dennison. “What’s good. You say I’m not a man. But what is a man if he doesn’t stand by his principles?”

  Dennison bolted out of his chair and slapped it across the room. “Principles, you say? What, you got principles now of all sudden? That’s news to me. I’d say your principles changed mightily once you got what you wanted. And what did you want? You wanted what every man wants. A good job with good pay, a home for his wife and kids, a high place in society. And I gave it to you. Gave it to you better and faster than you could ever get it on your own. And you took it. Yessiree. You took it, and you stood there and shook my hand knowing it was that hand that gave it to you. And now that you’ve gone and got yourself tied up to a chair and facing your losses, you want to talk principles? Well, let me tell you something, Paddy. Principles are all well and good if they are unwavering principles. But that ain’t what you got. What you got is an elastic conscience,” Dennison said as he paced the cellar, his hands flying about in the air until he calmed himself.

  He took in a deep breath, crammed his hands back into his pant pockets and continued with more reserve, “And you say you’re a man. You ain’t no man, and there are all kinds of men. A man might be any other breed of filth so long as he’s not a double-crosser. But that’s exactly what you are. And then you have the nerve to sit there and call me a gangster?”

  Dennison went to the other side of the cellar and picked up the chair he’d launched across the room. He set it back down and was about to take a seat again when, instead, he drew his gold-plated pistol from his shoulder holster. He cocked it with a gloved hand and pressed it hard against my forehead. I winced and closed my eyes. One of Denni
son’s goons grabbed Billy by the shoulders and held him down in his chair. He tilted Billy’s head back as the second man came up and forced his pistol barrel into Billy’s neck.

  “Mr. Dennison, please,” Billy begged, “please, this ain’t the way. I didn’t have nothing to do with this. I’m just an employee. Whatever Pat did, he did of his own accord. I ain’t got no say over the books or nothing.”

  “Of his own accord?” Dennison repeated the words. “Wasn’t you the one who told me you wanted to go into business with him right down the middle? A fifty-fifty split, you wanted? But now that you got the steel on your skin, all of this has nothing to do with you?”

  “I’m not afraid of death,” I said, my eyes still closed.

  “I’m sure you ain’t. If you were, you’d be apologizing like Peter after the third cock crowed,” Dennison said and momentarily took his gun off my forehead. “But at least you’re finally sticking to something, late though it is. But what about your doting wife and your pretty little baby girl?”

  “I got a wife and kids, too,” Billy pleaded.

  “Lord have mercy, Billy, you ain’t got neither,” I said. “You’d say just about anything to miss the bullet, wouldn’t you?”

  Dennison sighed. “You know kid, with all your yattering I’m more inclined to put you on the slab.”