Dead Heat with the Reaper

by William E. Wallace

  “Yeah, man,” Bob said. “You need something, let us know. You got a lot of friends around here, man. Hell, you’re one of the few people I even like in this damned neighborhood.”

  To Frank’s surprise, the two stoop boys insisted on shaking his hand. As they parted, Lenny pulled out a napkin from the burger joint up San Pablo and blew his nose into it, then stuck it back in his jeans.

  “You take care of yourself, you hear?” he said, as he gave Frank another pat on the shoulder.

  Trask smiled and nodded, then walked toward the tavern.

  ***

  Inside Pete’s, Trask put some Creedence and Rolling Stones on the box, breaking a Jackson to give him enough money for a long music session. The first of the old-timers to appear was Sam Jorgensen.

  “I’m going to kill that fucking Gonzales,” Frank said as Jorgensen took a seat.

  “Why?” Sam asked.

  “He’s been crepe-hanging me all over the damned neighborhood. I just got stopped by a couple of knuckleheads who sit out on the step next door every day. They acted like I was about to croak. They were feeling so damned sorry for me I felt like crying myself!”

  Jorgensen smiled. “So does it surprise you that a bunch of people like you, you dumb bastard? Wake up and smell the bacon. You may be a sarcastic sonofabitch, but you got a shit-pot full of friends.”

  Trask snorted. “I just better not see any premature obituary notices in the paper, Sam. I’m not ready to go yet.”

  “How you feeling today?”

  “Tired. I was up most of the night taking Natalie and Lucy to the hospital. Why do you ask?”

  “You look tired, is all.”

  “Don’t you start babying me now, okay?” Frank said. “For Christ’s sake, I’m not some delicate piece of china that’s about to break. I’m planning to live my life the way I always have until it’s through. I don’t want people acting like I’m their damn invalid aunt or something.”

  Jorgensen held up his hands. “All right. But you’re asking me to act like nothing has happened when it damn well has. You’re just about my best friend in the world. I hate the idea of you not being in it anymore.”

  Trask was touched. He stretched his right hand out across the table and Jorgensen clasped it. Trask wrapped his left hand over their grip. “Look, man, I feel the same way about you, but this is just a part of life, okay? This shit happens. Get used to it.”

  Jorgensen smiled, but Trask could see tears well in his eyes. “I don’t think I’m going to get used to it, buddy,” he said, quietly.

  “Well, then,” Frank said gruffly, clearing his throat. “If you’re going to sit around thinking about me dying, help me figure out what to do in my final days. I got a little bit of money saved up. I’m trying to figure out how to spend it.”

  He had decided he would be vague about the size of his bankroll until he decided what to do with it. The possibility that his long-time friends would all start hoping to finagle their share, remote as it was, disgusted him. He wanted to remember them the way they were before he had a big bankroll and no time to spend it.

  “What do you have in mind?” Jorgensen said, wiping his eyes hurriedly and blowing his nose.

  “I don’t really know,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. I started out with the idea maybe I should take a trip. You know: see Europe or something.”

  “You ever been out of the country besides ’Nam?” asked Jorgensen, who’d been in the 101st Airborne himself.

  “Nope. Uncle Sam gave me a free trip to the Jolly Green Jungle and that’s it.”

  Jorgensen thought about it. “Where do you most want to go?”

  “Problem is, I don’t really want to go anywhere.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not going to know anybody when I get there,” Frank replied, spreading his hands. “Everybody I know is here. I see you guys just about every day and you’re the closest thing to a family I’ve got.”

  It was true. Since Gladys had died, Frank was the sole remaining member of the Trask bloodline. He didn’t have another relative in the world—at least, not that he knew of.

  “You’d meet new friends.”

  “I go someplace, everybody who sees me is going to know I’m an old fart from the U-S-of-A,” he said. “Who’s going to want to waste their time talking to some old American retiree? They’d probably think if they struck up a conversation, I’d spend the whole time bitching about taxes and how much money the government wastes. Either that or they’re gonna start giving me shit about all the damn wars we’re in.

  “Nope,” Trask said with assurance, shaking his head. “I don’t think travel is going to ring my bell.”

  “Well, why don’t you buy yourself something, then?” Jorgensen said. “How about a fancy new car?”

  Trask laughed. It was a dry bark like the kind made by one of the sea lions at that pier in San Francisco.

  “That’s a great idea except for one thing.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “I don’t have a license.”

  Jorgensen stared at him. “You got to be shitting me.”

  “It’s true. I got busted a third time for driving drunk a few years ago and that was all she wrote. Permanent revocation. They wouldn’t let me behind the wheel if I got put in charge of the Highway Patrol.”

  “I guess a car’s out, then,” Jorgenson said. “How about some new duds?”

  Trask crossed his arms on his chest. “That was my second great idea. But where would I wear them? I never go anywhere. Just my apartment, that mom and pop the Arabs run across the street or this dive. Besides, I would just start to get them broken in about the time that I croaked. No sense in buying some nice outfits for St. Vincent de Paul; I’d be better off giving them the money directly and letting them buy what they need.”

  Jorgensen had no answer for that.

  Trask sighed again. “I dunno,” he said. “I just can’t figure out what to do with this cash.”

  Sam brightened. “Hey, that St. Vincent de Paul idea isn’t a bad one. Why don’t you give the money to charity?”

  Trask considered this. The notion had already occurred to him.

  “That has possibilities, but I’d have to think about it. I don’t want to piss it away on some outfit that will spend it all on salaries and perks for the bosses. I understand a lot of charity organizations roll that way. I’d want my money used to help people, not fatten up bureaucrats.”

  “Whatever, man,” Sam told him with a smile. “I think you have the right idea, though.”

  Trask cocked an eye at him. “Yeah? How’s that?” he asked.

  Jorgensen spread his hands. “If you use your money in a way that makes you happy, that’s one thing you’ll never regret.”

  ***

  Bill and Ferdie came in soon afterward. Trask gave Ferd a hard time about letting it out that he was dying and Gonzales apologized, saying he’d asked the stoop twins not to run their mouths about it. Then the three of them spent an hour or so chatting before Frank, still groggy after his late night trip to the hospital with Natalie and Lucy, decided he needed to get more sleep. He stopped for some gumbo and soft crusted French bread from the soul food joint and when he returned to the Carlson, a city paramedic wagon was out in front, lights flashing. It pulled away from the curb with its siren beginning to wail as he climbed the front steps.

  Mrs. Hung was at the entrance, wringing her hands.

  “What’s up, Mrs. Hung?” he asked as he watched the vehicle speed off. “Is somebody sick?”

  “Somebody injured, Missah Trask,” she said with concern, making the “R’ in his last name so it sounded like an “L.”

  “Who got hurt?” he said, the hair on the back of his neck beginning to stand on end.

  “Mizz Natarie,” the landlady said. “She hurt bad. Real bad.”

  “Natalie? What happened to Natalie?”

  Mrs. Hung shrugged, her expression one of deep concern. “Mr. Cr
iff tell paramedic she fall down stairs. But her husband a bad man, very bad. I think he beat her up again.”

  Her words made Trask feel like throwing up.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He was yelling in their apartment,” she said. “He call out your name. Then their door slam. Mrs. Compton find her on second floor landing when she come back from grocery store.”

  Trask ground his teeth. He stopped himself when he realized Mrs. Hung was looking at him strangely because she could hear it. It was a good thing Lucy was in the hospital. He hated to think what Hatfield might have done to the child.

  “Mrs. Hung, why don’t you evict that bastard? If he keeps this up, he’s going to kill her.”

  She sighed. “I throw him out, what happen to her and the baby? She afraid to leave him. They all just go someplace else where he do the same thing again. What good that do? At least here, some of us look after her a little.”

  She looked at Trask with resignation. “It not her fault he a big asshole.”

  Trask couldn’t help but smile. Mrs. Hung might not be the most expert English speaker in the apartment house, but she was quite adept at using obscenity.

  “Well, something has to be done,” he said. “Sooner or later he’s going to hurt her so badly the docs won’t be able to fix her up. And then little Lucy will be at his mercy.”

  Trask trudged up the stairs to his flat. As he did, he remembered the two dirtbags that had murdered his sister: worthless scum that hadn’t given a minute’s thought to gunning down a woman old enough to be their mother. They were exactly like Natalie’s rotten husband. The only real difference was, the person he kept edging closer to killing wasn’t some stranger—it was his own wife.

  There was just no two ways about it: some people were so rotten the world would be a better place without them.

  Then, on the third floor landing, about a yard away from the stairs, he spotted a large dark stain almost in the center of the worn runner. Trask bent down to look at it. He touched it tentatively with his finger and found that it was still damp.

  And red.

  He realized it was what was left of a pool of Natalie’s blood. She had been injured before she ever got to the stairs.

  Trask stood, grinding his teeth again, clenching his fists at his sides. Now he knew exactly what he was going to do with the big wad of money in the credit union.

  But he would get to that later. He had something else to take care of, first.

  ***

  Trask waited until a little before 9 p.m. By then it was dark outside and the people who lived in the Carlson were mostly settled in their apartments. He opened his door quietly and checked the hallway. Nobody was moving around downstairs and the corridor was empty.

  Moving quietly to the balustrade on the landing, he put his hand on the rail, testing it for give. It moved back and forth easily. The rail appeared to be glued to the individual balusters, probably with a pin at the top of each post that fit into a socket on the underside of the rail. That didn’t matter; it was the newels at each end of the landing that supported the rail, not the balusters, which were mostly for show. What made the railing so dangerous was that it was barely secured at the anchor post nearest to the stairway to the second floor. The post was the only thing keeping it from collapsing when someone pushed it.

  Trask moved to the newel. With both hands, he gave the rail a sharp tug where it connected and felt the lower end of the post pull away from the flooring. The pin holding it in place was rotten and it broke off with a dusty crunch, like a piece of dry toast being snapped in two. Trask shook the rail—it now swung more than a foot either way without resistance. He gently moved the rail back to its original position. When he let go, the entire balustrade quivered like jelly.

  He looked at his hands and realized they were shaking, too.

  Outside the Hatfield flat he steeled himself for a moment before giving the door three raps. After a minute it opened and Cliff Hatfield appeared, barefoot, wearing chinos and one of those sleeveless undershirts the kids call a “wife beater.”

  That’s appropriate, Trask thought, sizing up the younger man. A wife beater for a wife beater. Fucking perfect.

  Frank smelled the liquor as soon as Hatfield opened the door. He clearly had been drinking for some time, and judging from his bloodshot eyes, he’d been pounding the booze down at a rapid clip.

  Hatfield seemed wobbly and steadied himself by leaning against the door jamb with one shoulder as he glared at Frank with unconcealed loathing.

  Ferd was right about Cliff being Frank’s height. But he outweighed Trask by a good thirty pounds and was close to 40 years younger. The younger man’s face showed no trace of guilt, remorse, or regret.

  You fucking psychopath.

  “What is it, old man?” Hatfield said. “Make it snappy, huh? I was just getting ready to go visit my wife at the hospital. What do you want?”

  Frank looked at him with contempt. “I’ll bet you were,” he said. “That’s why you’re all dressed up in your Sunday clothes. Don’t worry, sonny boy. I won’t take much of your precious time. I just wanted to stop by so I could get a good look at the face of a chickenshit bastard who enjoys hitting women, that’s all.”

  For a moment, Hatfield looked confused—he couldn’t believe the old man was talking to him with such fearless contempt.

  “You’re as yellow as baby shit, Hatfield,” Trask added. “A real school bus. Scumbags like you are the best argument in the world for abortion. I take your wife to the hospital because your baby girl is sick and you go ballistic on her because another man did her a favor. Were you afraid she was going to run off with me, pissant? She should, you know. At least I have a set of balls.”

  Frank clocked the anger swelling in Hatfield’s face. He wasn’t quite there yet, though.

  “Why don’t you take a swing at a man for a change, you shitbird?” Trask said quietly. “Or are you too gutless to hit someone your own sex?”

  Hatfield’s blood rage was climbing quickly now. He had almost reached the point of homicidal fury.

  “I thought so,” Trask said, sneering at him with disgust. “No cojones. You make a fucking earthworm look like a sackful of balls, you spineless piece of shit.”

  Hatfield had reached the red zone. He cocked his fist and lunged forward with a curse. As he did, Frank, who could still move astonishingly fast for a senior citizen, took a half step to Hatfield’s right and used both hands to give him a hard shove toward the balustrade. Cliff hit the rail with his stomach and grabbed it in desperation, trying to keep from going over.

  If the rail had been properly anchored, he might have succeeded. Instead, the entire balustrade swung loose and arced into the stairwell; Cliff, his hands locked on the railing, went with it, leaving a howl of sudden terror hanging behind him.

  With his heart pounding, Frank looked over the empty space where the balustrade had been. Hatfield was sprawled four stories below in a supine position, his body embedded in the tiny tiles that covered the lobby floor.

  For some reason, Frank couldn’t see the younger man’s head and he wondered for a moment whether it had been torn off during the fall. Then he realized that the impact had splattered most of it across the floor above Cliff’s shoulders.

  Frank went back inside his apartment, directly to the toilet, knelt as if he was going to say a prayer and threw up everything he’d eaten that day.

  ***

  Trask got lost twice at Highland the next afternoon but a nurse who was going off-duty took pity on the old geezer with the vase full of flowers in one hand and the little suitcase in the other and guided him to Natalie’s room.

  When he entered he found Natalie sitting up in bed, holding Lucy. She was smiling slightly, despite the cast on one arm and new bruises on her mouth and jaw. When she saw Frank, her smile widened.

  “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said with a grin as he set the flowers on the table beside her and put the sui
tcase next to his feet. “How are both of you doing?”

  “She’s well enough to go home,” she said. “But they aren’t going to release me until they finish looking at the X-rays of my leg.”

  “Your leg?” Frank said, his tone making it a question.

  “It got twisted when Cliff... when I fell down the stairs,” she said, biting her lip. “They want to make sure that it isn’t broken. I suppose... I guess Cliff will have to take her,” she added, a cloud of worry crossing her face.

  Frank swallowed. “Didn’t anybody tell you?”

  She looked puzzled. “Tell me what?”

  “It’s your husband. I thought somebody from the police would have stopped by already to let you know. Cliff... Well, Cliff had an accident. You know that loose rail on the third floor landing I warned you about?”

  She stared at Frank without speaking. He could tell from her expression she knew exactly what had happened.

  “Apparently nobody warned Cliff,” he continued. “It collapsed on him last night and he fell all the way to the lobby. He broke his neck in the fall. Fractured his skull, too. The paramedics got there a few minutes after he fell, but there was nothing they could do. I’m afraid he was already gone, Natalie.”

  She leaned back into the pillows with her eyes closed. Tears rolled down her cheek.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo,” Frank said.

  “I am too, Mr. Trask,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

  Frank swallowed again. “Natalie, I found blood on the carpet on the third floor landing,” he said, fumbling for the words. “You were bleeding before you fell down the stairs. Cliff hit you, didn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “And you didn’t just fall, did you?” he asked.

  Her lips formed the word “No,” but her answer was too quiet to hear.

  “Cliff threw you down those stairs, didn’t he? That black eye you have; did he do that?”

  Her answer was a sob that shook her entire body. She didn’t need to add anything.

  Frank said nothing for a moment.

  “Why did you stay with him when he hurt you so many times?” he asked finally.

  With her tears still streaming down her face, she gave him a soft smile, as if remembering something nice someone had done for her many years ago.