“Got some good news and some bad news,” the sheriff began. “It’s one of those occurrences that’s plumb difficult to explain to y’all, but I’ll lay it out there and we can talk more as time progresses.”
I sat on the platform on one of the chairs reserved for staff. From behind him, I could see a red hue creeping up the back of his neck. The sheriff was working on something powerful, perhaps even more powerful than he was letting on. He cleared his throat.
“The good news is that we took in a heap of cash today for our church’s building program. The money was set in an envelope and put in its usual hiding spot for safekeeping before it could be brought to the bank on Monday.” He cleared his throat again. “But the bad news is that when Mert went to count it again, the money wasn’t there.”
A ripple of talk buzzed around the congregation.
“Only six folks know about this hiding spot—the five on the deacon board and our church secretary. All those folks, the ones who are in town anyway, I’ve questioned. And all don’t know where the money is. So … for the time being we’re treating this as a theft.”
Another swell of murmur rose.
The sheriff held up his hand for silence. “I know we’re all disappointed and even angry, but until the money’s located, there ain’t anything more that can be done. If anybody knows anything, come talk to me or Deputy Roy. That’s all for now. Church is dismissed.”
Well, it was a strange evening after that, it rightly was. I shook hands near the door, but there was a strange odor in the room, like the church stunk of death. All Mert could do was look at the floor. Poor, righteous woman. I bet she felt responsible. Wasn’t her fault the money was gone.
Folks stayed longer than usual that evening, talking, arguing, laying down theories as to where the money went, vowing that justice would be levied against the thief. By the time everybody was finished and I swept up and closed the building, the outside night was darker than an inkwell. A cloud had formed in the sky and joined with others. No stars were out, and the moonrise was showing only a tiny sliver far in the eastern sky.
All was dark toward the parsonage. Deadly quiet too. I never left lights on, and the gravel of the church parking lot crunched under my feet as I walked toward my home. My shoes clattered as I walked up the steps and I moved to open the front door. It was already swinging on its hinges. Maybe I left it open. I stopped and stood on the steps, listening close for sounds.
“Anyone there?” I called.
Crickets chirped in the night air. A breeze blew from across the field. The breeze was colder than I expected, and far in the distance a coyote howled.
I reached around the edge of the doorframe, keeping myself as close out of shooting distance as I dared, found the light switch, and turned on the porch light. It provided enough illumination for me to walk forward another two steps, locate the chain dangling from the lightbulb in the middle of the living room ceiling, and give it a quick tug. Streams of white light burst into all corners of the room.
“Watch out. I bite,” said a voice. My pupils dilated in a wink and I looked upon the figure. I didn’t need to. I’d recognize that voice of shadows anywhere. He was leaning back on one of my hard-backed chairs and had his boots on my dining room table. A rifle rested across his lap. I stared at the man hard, swallowed, then found my voice. I could only choke out four words. They were enough to start a conversation, one I knew was a long time coming.
“What do you want?” I said.
There came a pause while the man raised his rifle to eye level and pointed it my direction. He was taking his time, taunting me with the power he held from assuming I was unarmed. He was right. I held no weapon. He laughed and said, “I believe you owe me some money, Rowdy Slater.”
It was Crazy Ake.
Part 2
SEVENTEEN
When a man levels a rifle at your face, it complicates matters greatly if you’re honor-bound to that man, like I was to Crazy Ake.
See, on my first day of prison, so many months ago now, the fella behind me in the chow line shoved me to one side. Although I had not yet learned all the unspoken codes of prison life, I had the good sense to see I was among roughs—men who valued instinct and aggression—and if I didn’t shove this fella back, then I would be branded a coward. All manner of aggravations would befall me the rest of the time I was locked up, and that would never do.
The fella and I got straight into it, hammer and tongs, but what I didn’t know was that he was only a scout—the soldier walking ahead of the company to test the action and see what’s what. In two hits he was already on the floor, crawling away from me as fast as he could, which is when the rest of the gang took their cue and piled on me. A dozen fellas started beating me, all hard-fisted prison thugs, and I walloped the first five before the rest of the squad pinned me to the floor and their leader pulled a knife.
Their leader was a huge alligator of a man, the one they called Big Red. He was the toughest, most belligerent brute in prison, and he was making a preemptive strike, I learned later. See, when another big-framed fella walks into prison, a man such as myself, then it’s natural that Big Red would feel threatened. Right away the convict in charge needs to exert his supremacy. If he doesn’t, then he’s equally branded a coward. Plus, he’s forever walking around on pins and needles, waiting for an up-and-comer such as me to make my move and take control.
So there was Big Red with his knife held to my throat below my left earlobe. He was aiming to slice straight across to the right and take my head off. The guards weren’t looking. They didn’t care. And I reckoned I was as good as dead when along came Sergeant Akan Fordmire, a man about twenty-six years old, who broke a chair over the back of Big Red’s skull.
Crazy Ake, for that was the sergeant’s nickname, served as a mortar man during the war. He was a thick-necked Kansas native with bushy sideburns and tattoos on his arms who was sent to prison for stealing supplies from battalion headquarters. Later, when I asked Crazy Ake about why he saved my throat from Big Red’s knife, he put one of his green-painted arms over his face and giggled an eerie laugh. It took nearly a week to pry forth the fuller story.
His saving my life boiled down to cash. Big Red owed Crazy Ake money, or at least that’s the way Crazy Ake saw it. Around prison, if Big Red wanted a new toothbrush, a nail clipper, or a dirty magazine, he wasn’t in the habit of paying straight out for it. He got one of his minions to trade around for him. But the minion flaked and didn’t pay this time, so Crazy Ake was stuck still being owed. When Big Red’s back was turned with the knife at my throat, Crazy Ake spotted a prime opportunity to announce to the whole prison that nobody better not mess with a man’s money, particularly if that man was Crazy Ake.
Big Red was sent to the prison hospital with the back of his head gushing blood and then—fortunate for everyone—was transferred to another lockup out of state. Crazy Ake was slapped with a week in solitary and then, much to my astonishment, he traded around so he could become my cellmate.
He was starting to collect on the debt I owed him, I gathered soon enough. He was shorter than me and not as muscular, but more wily, I’ll say that much. More shrewd. With Big Red out of the way, Crazy Ake became the new man in charge. As an ex-mortar man he knew how to organize a team, and within a week he had the first tier of brutes under his control. Those brutes controlled the next ranks, and they the next, and all of them put together soon controlled the prison population. Within another two weeks, Crazy Ake bought the guards, at least some of them. And within one short month, a rumor went around that he even bought the warden. There was no way to confirm this. But one afternoon a warm apple pie showed up in our jail cell. No note. No explanation. Just all the sticky goodness Crazy Ake could eat.
Now, in prison a fella’s locked away in his cell for twenty-three hours each day. Sure, you get your meals in the mess hall and you’re allowed to mill about in the yard for an hour, but nothing ever tastes of freedom. There’s always the guard towe
rs to remind you where you are, the razor wire to hold you in, the shouts of profanity that echo off the concrete walls. Surrounding your soul is a depth of deception and trickery you ain’t used to on the outside—it’s always another man doing another man in. The walls talk to you after a while, and simply put: you hate your life.
Well, Crazy Ake told jokes to ease our misery—long, nonsensical stories that sometimes had a point but usually didn’t. He frothed at the mouth and paced wild-eyed in our cell, but he could get a fella to laughing, he could. And he was a charmer in a deceptive sort of way. I confess that with all that time on our hands I was drawn to his high-jinks stories, if only for the entertainment.
I never actually worked for Crazy Ake myself, and I’m not exactly sure why. He never asked me outright for favors and I never offered. In retrospect, I think, he was biding his time until he could collect on the debt I owed him once and for all. My cellmate had not a bit of a heart for goodness, he was rotten to the core, and over the next months together I watched him operate around prison and saw him stop at nothing to get what he wanted most: a fat fistful of dollars earned the easy way.
That’s what he proposed we take for ourselves after we both got out of the joint. He’d been in longer than me and was released two months before I was. On the day I got out, I was given a change of clothes and a twenty dollar bill, was driven to the bus station by a guard and told to get lost. Crazy Ake was already waiting for me in the shadows. He told me to forget the bus ticket; he had an old truck he was driving. Then he took me to lunch and picked up the check and afterward when we were lumbering down the highway he said he had a plan for getting rich, although he couldn’t pull it off alone.
Debt or no debt, I said no to his proposition at first. I wasn’t a criminal, not really. Much to my relief, he simply gave me his address at a boardinghouse in Memphis and told me to think about it. But as soon as he let me off at the next town I threw the address away. I didn’t want nothing to do with the man.
That’s when I started drifting. I hitchhiked from one town to the next, always looking for work, always mindful of my responsibility to my daughter. But one month turned into another and my belly got emptier and emptier. By the time I finally reached my home state of Texas, dropped in on the Chicorys, and discovered the full extent of danger I’d placed Sunny in, then I knew I had a real crisis on my hands. In my desperation I bet the high card to Rance Chicory, lost, and knew I was sunk.
That’s when Crazy Ake caught up with me again—when I was at my lowest. I reckon that’s the way evil often works. The morning after losing to Rance Chicory, I was eating from a garbage can at the back of the Cool Hand Tavern in Rancho Springs. Crazy Ake rumbled up in his truck, opened the door with a smile on his face, and said, “Get in, Rowdy. Your luck is about to change.”
I couldn’t tell you how he tracked me down. Maybe he followed me around the whole time. Sure, his was a foolish plan, even though it sounded rational to a man as deep in his misery as I. Crazy Ake never outright said it, but he hinted around at my being honor-bound to him for saving my life, particularly when I started to waver.
“Old Rowdy boy, well, if it wasn’t for me, then that knife of Big Red’s sure had your name on it—didn’t it?” he said, just before we reached the bank in Cut Eye.
“Yeah,” was all I’d said.
Crazy Ake handed me a rifle. It wasn’t even loaded. We set the old truck’s hand brake and jigged out the side while the motor was still running, shrugged off the rain while throwing sacks over our heads, and bustled straight up the middle with our rifles aimed forward.
Shoot, I never would have hurt nobody innocent. Never in a million years. I just needed money real bad.
Real, real bad.
Like every man does if he’s spent time in the clink and nobody will give him a job once he gets out.
Like every man does if his four-year-old daughter boards with a devil who’s only biding time before he makes her start working in the worst way for him.
“So where’s my cash?” Crazy Ake’s rifle was still aimed at my head.
“Nearby,” I said.
“Get it then.”
“Well, it ain’t in the parsonage, if that’s what you mean.” I tried to laugh but my words came out choppy and nervous. All I could think to do was keep him talking. “If you put down that M1, we’ll catch up. I’ll get the cash for you soon.”
“Get it for me now.” His trigger finger twitched.
“That’ll take some doing. Law was hot on me after we jumped off that bridge. It’s stashed a bit aways from here.”
Crazy Ake grinned. He set his rifle on his lap and ran one hand up and around his sideburns, scratching. “Rowdy, I tell ya, a man of your devilment is an object of wonder. What a team we make! What a team! The idea of posing as a preacher.” He cackled heartily. “That’s something only a man of great cunning could pull off, I tell you what.”
I took a step closer toward him. He set his other hand back on the rifle and shot me a cold stare.
“Relax,” I said. “I’m only going to make some coffee. Thought you might want some.”
“Coffee? Since when you drink coffee?”
“No whiskey in a parsonage.” I raised an eyebrow.
He laughed again. I glanced at the rifle. It was still solid in his hands.
“Rowdy, here’s what I propose.” Crazy Ake slid his boots off my table and let the front legs of the chair clump to the floor. “It doesn’t surprise me that our cash is well hid. That was a smart thing for a fella to do, and I would’ve done the same myself. So let’s do this. Now that you know I’m back in town, I’ll leave for a day or so. When I’m gone, you dig up the money. I’ll come back and we’ll square up. How’s that sound?”
I stared him in the eyes. He was being smart, not kind, and I knew it, but what could I do—tell him I’d decided to follow Jesus then taken the money back to the sheriff’s office? There’d be a bullet between my eyes faster than I could say skedaddle. I took another step toward the kitchen and asked, “Out of curiosity, how’d you track me down?”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t hard. Came back into Cut Eye last week, stopped by the Sugar House, shut my mouth, and listened.” Crazy Ake shifted in the chair. “The place was real quiet. Hardly no men around, but some yahoo was talking about sawing timber with a reverend every Saturday. ‘Mighty big fella, too,’ the yahoo said. ‘He could saw timber all day.’ So that got me to thinking. I hung around town awhile more, then saw you driving up the highway one afternoon in that DUKW.” He laughed loud. “You own that outright, or did you steal that too?” The rifle was ever near both of his hands. He was telling stories now, but he wasn’t off guard. Not in the least.
“It came with the job,” I said.
“Well, I see that’s not all the job came with.” Crazy Ake’s eyebrows flew up to his forehead. “Who’s that pretty young gal I saw you jogging with earlier today down Lost Truck Road? I bet she came hard to bargain for.” He cackled a full thirty seconds.
“That’s the sheriff’s daughter.” I wanted to include some truth in what I was telling him, lest he’d done more homework, so I eyed him closely then added, “She worked as the minister before me. She’s been showing me the ropes.”
“I bet she has.”
“Nah, it’s not like that. I’m not with her.”
“That’s not how I saw it.” He wiped froth from his mouth with the back of one hand. “But what does it matter. Look—here’s how this is going to go down. I’ll give you a full forty-eight hours to get the money. Tuesday night we’ll meet again and get squared. Seventy-thirty split, like we agreed. And don’t think you’re gonna run anywhere in the meantime. I know you wouldn’t do that to a friend anyway, but if I can track you here, then there ain’t no place safe for you to hide.”
Crazy Ake stood to leave, still loosely aiming the rifle toward me. He circled around me and walked backward toward the door, ever keeping me in his line of sight.
“Time�
��s ticking, Rowdy.” He winked. “And I want mine in small bills.”
EIGHTEEN
I was in a jam. A real hamstrung jam.
I contemplated sleeping in the DUKW that night, but it was all open air, so that would never do. Instead, I stayed inside and locked the front door of the parsonage, and I never locked my doors. Not sure why that would do me any good even. A bullet could come straight through those walls if Crazy Ake wanted it to. I contemplated digging a foxhole and sleeping out in that, but without a weapon, even a foxhole wouldn’t do me much good. There was nowhere safe from that man.
All night long I paced and figured, paced and figured. Sleep fled from my eyes. There was nothing I could do to get out of this mess, no matter how I saw it. I sure couldn’t come up with the cash, that was for certain. Crazy Ake didn’t know the exact amount of what we’d snagged, but by the size of the sack I carried out the door, he knew his take was going to be in the thousands. Where would I ever borrow that kind of cash?
I couldn’t go to the sheriff and tell him the story to get justice on my side. If I did, then that was the same as admitting my guilt to robbing the bank. Halligan would be obliged to throw me in jail for a long time to come. Sunny would never get free from the Chicorys. The state would pounce on the sheriff for costing the taxpayers money. He’d lose votes come next election, and Oris Floyd would run the town. Lots of folks would be in a mess then.
I couldn’t run nor hide, not that I even wanted to. Just like Crazy Ake said, he’d find me no matter wherever I went.
It was a heap of trouble even to buy a rifle and defend myself. All my money went to pay off Rance Chicory. Maybe I could get a cash advance from Emma at the mercantile, but even then, what was I supposed to say when I bought the rifle? That I was taking up hunting? With me eating at the café, there was no need for extra food. That I’d been a sharpshooter during the war and wanted to practice my skills lest they wither? Nobody wanted to hear about war exploits these days. Maybe I could buy a gun in the next town, but even if I could pull that off, I wasn’t sure how much good it would do anyway with the cards stacked in Crazy Ake’s favor, especially the element of surprise. If I came out on the good side of a shootout with Crazy Ake, it’d likely land me back in the slammer, or worse—the law would see it as murder unless I could explain the fuller story behind why I was shooting at him. I was sunk. A man without a plan.
Feast for Thieves Page 14
