Tales of River City

by Frank Zafiro

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You and me did the job,” Jake said. “So we split it even between the two of us.”

  Char jammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop right in the middle of the street. Jake slid forward and slammed into the back of my seat and I bounced off the dashboard.

  I scrambled upright and looked frantically up and down the road. It was empty this time of night, but a cop car could come along any second. They wouldn’t think anything of a car cruising along at two-fifteen in the morning, but one stopped in the middle of the roadway was another matter.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jake demanded.

  Char climbed up onto her seat and glared directly at him. “You and Kenny did the job all by yourself? So who the fuck drove the car, huh? You got Casper the motherfucking Ghost as a wheel man or something?”

  “Shut up, you wanna-be-black white bitch,” Jake told her.

  Char’s face turned red with fury. “My great-grandmother was black, you racist son of a bitch! My family is descended from Harriet Tubman!”

  “You got the tub part right,” Jake snapped. “Now get this car—”

  Char clocked him with her hefty right hand. The shot was on the corner of his jaw, right on the knockout button. He flew back in the seat and didn’t move.

  We both stared at him and then at each other.

  “Get his gun,” Char told me.

  I clambered over the seat and took his automatic. When I returned to the front seat, Char turned her attention back to the roadway and started driving again.

  “What are we gonna do?” I asked her. “When he wakes up, he’s going to be hella pissed.”

  “Motherfucker called me fat,” she said, not hearing me. “Just ‘cause I’m a real woman and not one of those skinny anorexic bitches on TV.”

  “Char—”

  She turned to me. “You think I’m fat?”

  I looked her in the face, but my eyes flicked down to her right hand where it rested on the steering wheel. “No, baby. You’re full-bodied. You’re beautiful.”

  Her features softened and a smile rose on her cheeks. “You my baby,” she crooned at me.

  “What’re we gonna do?” I asked her again.

  Her smile faded and her face took on a pinched look while she thought. “Where’d he get the guns?” she asked me.

  I shrugged. “I dunno. He rented them from some Italian guy. Don or Dom or something.”

  “Does he know you?”

  “Jake?”

  “No, this Italian guy. Does he know you?”

  I shook my head. “Jake would never introduce me to him.”

  “So if the guns don’t get returned, he won’t be able to look no further than Jake?”

  “Not returned? Char, this guy’s connected. I know that sounds strange for this town, but—”

  “That’s not strange at all,” she said. “Gangstas are everywhere.”

  We drove in silence for a few moments. I wondered how we were going to calm Jake down when he woke up. “How hard did you hit him?” I asked her.

  “Hard as I could.”

  That was pretty hard, I figured. Jake was still slumped in the back seat, his face pressed against the door and his mouth hanging open.

  “You better cover him, sugah,” she said. “If he wakes up before we get where we’re going, you’re gonna want to have gun on his ass.”

  “Where are we going?”

  She didn’t answer. I waited a few more seconds to see if maybe she was just thinking about a good answer. When none came, I raised my revolver over the top of the back seat and pointed it at his chest. Little white strands of fake Santa beard whipped in the wind that blew through my open window.

  Char didn’t speed, but she drove directly to her destination without any missed turns or detours. We hit some ice on the way up Cedar Street to the top of Five Mile Hill, but she held the car steady. Once on top of the hill, she drove to Palmer Court. Seven houses lined the cul-de-sac in various stages of completion. The closest one had everything but a driveway and a shingled roof. The furthest one was nothing more than a skeletal frame sketched with lumber.

  “Nobody lives up here,” I said.

  Then I realized what she was planning.

  Char parked next to one of the houses in the middle of the block and turned off the car. She looked over at me. “You gotta go inside, baby. Tell me if the basement floor is still dirt or if it’s already concreted in. Okay?”

  I stared at her.

  “You understand?” she asked me.

  I nodded. “But Char…”

  “But what, baby?”

  I motioned toward Jake with the pistol. “We can’t kill him over a hundred and eighteen bucks.”

  “You did a robbery over that much,” she said. “That’ll get you a dime in Walla Walla.”

  “But killing a guy…they hang you for that.”

  “He’s draggin’ us down,” she insisted.

  “So we’ll go our own way.”

  “And have him dropping our names every time he gets pinched?” She shook her head. “No thanks.”

  “Char—”

  But the look on her face was immovable. Besides, he’d called her fat and called into question her noble ancestry and those were two sins she would never forgive in a man.

  I handed her the pistol and got out of the car. The air seemed cleaner up here in the ritzy neighborhood, almost like the rich people were getting a better quality of Christmas right down to their weather. My nostrils stuck together with every breath as I hustled into the partially constructed house.

  The first one had a concrete basement floor, but the second one was still dirt. At Char’s direction, I flipped Jake over my shoulder and carried him into that basement like a soldier rescuing a fallen comrade. She followed with a flashlight. Once inside the house, she cast around for some tools to dig with and found a shovel next to the back door.

  “You start,” she said, “and I’ll finish.”

  I dug.

  Even though it was cold, I had a pretty good sweat going after only a few minutes. The ground was surprisingly soft and I made good progress. Char kept moving the flashlight back and forth between me digging and Jake. He lay propped up against a framed staircase, his body slack.

  With every shovel-full of dirt that I tossed, I imagined what it might be like for Jake to wake up to darkness, then light, then darkness, and always the unmistakable sound of a shovel biting into the earth and scooping.

  Once the hole was big enough, Char told me to toss Jake down into it. I paused again.

  “Char,” I said. “You sure about this?”

  “You scared, baby?”

  I was, and with her, I wasn’t afraid to admit it. “This is way beyond a stick-up job.”

  “What if one of those jobs went wrong?” she asked me. “You’ve got your piece on the guy and he makes a grab for it. What would you do?”

  “Shoot him.”

  “Same motherfuckin’ thing here,” she said.

  But it wasn’t.

  I thought about tackling her and getting the gun away until I could talk some sense into her. I thought about how Jake and I played cards and how he always shared his bottle.

  “I dunno…”

  “Look, baby,” Char said. “Let’s just finish this shit, okay? We’ll get rid of this asshole once and for all. Then we’ll get back in the car, we’ll go through the drive-through at Jack in the Box and get some food. Then we can go home. You can put on that Santa hat that you hid under the front seat and I will rock your world.”

  She reached out and stroked my crotch with the flashlight.

  I felt some stirring in my groin at her words and her touch. One thing about Char—she may have been a big girl, but she could definitely rock my world.

  “C’mon, sugah,” she said, her voice breathy. “Be my little Santa baby.”

  I gave in. “Okay.”

  A strange smile came across her l
ips. She moved her flashlight onto Jake’s body.

  His open eyes stared up at both of us.

  I started and Char yelped. The flashlight beam jumped in the air, then came back down onto Jake, who was already in motion. He slammed into me and we both fell backward into the small pit I’d dug. I landed hard on my back The air in my lungs whooshed out. I struggled to find breath. The pungent smell of wet earth filled my nose.

  Jake grunted and threw two short punches into the side of my head, but there wasn’t enough room for him to pull his fist back far enough to put any power behind the blows. I drew my knees and elbows in, tucked my chin to my chest and tried to push him away.

  He punched me again, a glancing blow that ricocheted off my forehead and into the dirt.

  Light flooded the shallow grave.

  There was a loud crack and a flash from a gun muzzle.

  Another crack and another flash, then a third.

  With each gunshot, I felt the concussion of the bullet as it blasted into Jake’s back. He shuddered and moaned and went slack. The weight of his body collapsed on top of me. Warm wetness spilled onto my middle.

  With an effort, I slipped out from underneath him and stood up. The burning odor of gun smoke hung over us. When Char held the flashlight on me, tendrils of smoke slowly dissipated in the yellowing light.

  “Jesus,” I rasped. “You shot him.”

  “He was killing you,” Char said.

  I coughed once, wetly.

  “I was going to kill him anyway,” Char said. “So what’s it matter?”

  Another cough rose in my chest, this one a gurgling, rattling sound. Jake’s blood was still spreading across my middle and dripping from my belt buckle onto his still body. Nausea washed over me.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I told Char.

  “You’re just scared,” Char said. “And hungry, too. Get out of there and we’ll head home. We’ll stop and get some burgers and you can wear the Santa hat and—”

  Dark walls rushed in from both sides of my vision and I fell to a knee. Nausea gave way to weakness. A dull throb started in my belly.

  “Baby?”

  There was a tickle of pain in my chest and my breath rattled. I spat onto the ground next to Jake’s leg. In the wavering light from Char’s flashlight, I saw that I’d spit blood.

  “Fuck,” I gurgled.

  My hands groped at my chest. Warm blood flowed over my fingers.

  The dark walls narrowed further. I felt drunk.

  Then I fell face first into the ground. Dirt went up my nose.

  “No, no, no!” Char shrieked.

  I tried to speak but couldn’t. The rays of light from the flashlight took on a deeper yellow tint as the batteries waned. I lay still, warm wetness spreading beneath me and biting cold air above me. Then I was just too tired, so I closed my eyes.

  For a while, I listened to Char’s sobbing. I thought that might be the last sound I heard. But then there was a shuffle of movement above me. I forced my eyes open. The dying beams of the flashlight jiggled, danced, and finally steadied. I heard the stabbing sound of a metal spade driving into loose earth, followed by the thud of heavy dirt all around me.

  On top of me.

  Char snuffled and sobbed while she worked. I thought of her beautiful lips and her meaty thighs and of the hundred and eighteen bucks in the car. I thought of the Santa hat under the seat.

  Darkness closed in as dirt piled on top of me and blood pulsed out of me. Char’s sobs grew fainter.

  You start, she’d said, and I’ll finish.

  “Merry Christmas, baby,” I tried to say, but no sound came out.

  And then I let go.

  Finch and Elias

  The phone rang.

  Joseph Finch wanted to ignore it, but his wife Nadene stirred in bed next to him. On the second ring, she kicked his leg, so he answered it.

  “Finch,” he croaked. The clock read 5:50 a.m.

  “Finchie.” Elias’s voice sounded about three minutes more awake than his own. “Lieutenant Crawford called and we’re catching.”

  Finch snapped on the lamp next to his bed. His wife groaned and covered her head with a pillow. He ignored her and picked up a pen. “Go ahead.”

  He listened while Elias told him the address, scrawling it on the small notepad he kept on the nightstand. “Got it. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Then you’ll be waiting for me.”

  “What else is new?”

  “Funny. Anyway, patrol is sitting on the crime scene. Oh, and Finchie?”

  “What?”

  “The Crawfish said it was a two-fer.”

  Finch thought about that on the drive to the crime scene. Sometimes a two-fer meant when one bad guy shot another and then got arrested and convicted for the homicide. The first bad guy dead, the second in prison, the good guys get a two-for-one deal. A two-fer. But that would imply they had a suspect already. If that were the case, Elias would have said so.

  No, Finch decided, Elias probably meant a double homicide.

  Finch rubbed his eyes, turned onto Cedar and drove up the hill to the Five Mile Prairie. He was putting far too much mental energy into figuring out Elias’s phraseology patterns. Once he reached the top of the hill, he drove until he found Palmer Street. A few blocks later, he turned onto Palmer Court. The cul-de-sac was lined with new houses at different stages of construction. None were finished.

  The officer on scene stood next to the wheel well of his patrol car, warming his hands on the rising engine heat. The cold had rolled in the day after Christmas and threatened to hang on through the new year.

  Finch parked behind the patrol car. He made sure his mini-Maglite functioned before he stepped out into the cold.

  He introduced himself to the patrolman. “Joe Finch.”

  The officer shook his hand. “Jack Willow,” he said, and motioned toward the nearest house. “Sergeant Shen is inside.”

  Finch raised his eyebrow. “The Sarge is guarding the crime scene?”

  Willow shrugged. “Not really. McClaren is there, too. I think Shen wanted to talk to him about something.”

  Finch tipped his head toward the pickup truck parked several car-lengths away. A shadowy figure sat in the driver’s seat. The cherry coal of a cigarette tip glowed every few seconds.

  “That’s Rick Anderson,” Willow told Finch. “He’s the general contractor in charge of all the houses getting built on the entire cul-de-sac. He called it in.”

  “What’s he doing working on a Saturday?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Don’t let him leave.”

  Willow gave Finch a look that said, “No kidding.”

  Finch continued. “When Detective Elias gets here, send him straight in. Same with Forensics. Do you know who’s coming with the van?”

  Willow shook his head.

  “You start a crime scene log?”

  “Yep.” Willow pointed to the dash of his police car. A clipboard was visible through the windshield.

  Finch glanced at his watch. “Put me as entering at zero-six-seventeen.”

  He turned and trudged toward the half-built house.

  At the front door, he clicked on his flashlight and stepped inside. Framed walls lined the interior of the house, giving it a skeletal look.

  “We’re down here,” came a voice he recognized. He followed it down the stairs and into the unfinished basement. As he descended the stairs, he saw a cone of light shining upward from a patrolman’s Maglite. Sergeant Miyamoto Shen had his flashlight thrust into the holder that dangled from his belt, but he’d left the light on. The result illuminated the area as well as any lamp.

  “Sarge,” Finch greeted him.

  Shen shook his hand and nodded toward the large black officer next to him. “This is Romeo McClaren.”

  Finch shook McClaren’s hand and turned back to the sergeant.

  “Who all has been down here?”

  “Anderson, the guy who called it in
. Then Willow and McClaren, then me. And now you.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  Shen raised his eyebrows. “You mean bodies?”

  Finch nodded. So it was definitely that kind of two-fer.

  Shen removed his flashlight and shined it toward the corner. The floor of the basement was all dirt and the area that Shen illuminated had been recently disturbed. A hole about one foot deep dipped into the earth. Dirty blue jeans and white linen reflected back the light.

  “Who dug that?”

  “Anderson.”

  “Why’s he working on a Saturday?”

  Shen shrugged. “I didn’t ask. But he told these two that he was checking all his sites when he noticed some of his tools were missing. He found the shovel, but noticed fresh digging. He dug down and found the bodies and then he called us.”

  Finch frowned. “He kept digging after he found the first one?”

  “It took him a little while to realize what he’d found. By the time he figured it out, he’d uncovered enough so that when we arrived, I could see the second body underneath the top guy’s legs.”

  Footsteps sounded upstairs and a light washed across the threshold.

  “Down here,” Shen called.

  Elias trotted down the stairs, his light bobbing.

  “So?”

  Finch snapped on his mini-Mag and shined it toward the shallow grave.

  “And?”

  Finch filled him in on what he knew so far.

  Elias smirked. “He kept digging?”

  “We’ll ask him about it.”

  “Let’s see what we’ve got, then.”

  Moving slowly and shining their lights on the ground, Finch and Elias made their way toward the shallow grave.

  Elias swept his light across the plethora of footprints in the soft earth. “Looks like a parade came through here,” he muttered.

  “Try not to step on any footprints.”

  “This ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy.”

  “You ride like it.”

  Elias rewarded him with a face full of sixteen thousand candlepower worth of light.

  Finch closed his eyes against the glare and muttered about Elias’s questionable parentage.