Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  "So what do you want to show me?" he asked.

  "Nothing," Giftholz said.

  "Huh?"

  "Really I would ask you a question."

  "What question?"

  "If you speak German."

  "German? You putting me on?"

  "Putting you on?"

  For some reason Mitchell was beginning to feel short of breath. "Listen," he said, "what do you want to know a thing like that for?"

  "It is because of my name. If you were to speak German, you see, you would understand what it means in English translation."

  Short of breath and a little dizzy, too. He blinked a couple of times and ran a hand over his face. "What do I care what your damned name means?"

  "You should care, Mr. Mitchell," Giftholz said. "It means 'poison wood.'"

  "Poison—?" Mitchell's mouth dropped open, and the toothpick fell out of it and fluttered to the floor. He stared at it stupidly for a second.

  Poison wood.

  Then he stopped feeling dizzy and short of breath; he stopped feeling anything. He didn't even feel the floor when he fell over and hit it with his face.

  Giftholz stood looking down at the body. Too bad, he thought sadly. Ah, but then, Mr. Mitchell had been a strolch, a hoodlum; such men were not to be mourned. And as he had said himself in his curious idiom, it was a dog-eat-dog world today. Everything cost so much; everything was so difficult for a man of honesty. One truly did have to make ends meet any way one could.

  He bent and felt for a pulse. But of course there was none. The poison paralyzed the muscles of the heart and brought certain death within minutes. It also became neutralized in the body after a short period of time, leaving no toxic traces.

  Giftholz picked up the special toothpick from the floor, carried it over to the garbage pail. After which he returned and took Mr. Mitchell's wallet and put it away inside his apron.

  One had to make ends meet any way one could. Such a perfect phrase that was. But there was another of Mr. Mitchell's many phases which still puzzled him. The same old grind. It was not the same old grind; it had not been the same old grind for some time.

  No doubt Mr. Mitchell meant something else, Giftholz decided.

  And then he began to drag the body toward the large, gleaming sausage grinder in the far corner.

  HIS NAME WAS LEGION

  His name was Legion.

  No, sir, I mean that literal—Jimmy Legion, that was his name. He knew about the biblical connection, though. Used to say, "My name is Legion," like he was Christ Himself quoting Scripture.

  Religious man? No, sir! Furthest thing from it. Jimmy Legion was a liar, a blasphemer, a thief, a fornicator, and just about anything else you can name. A pure hellion—a devil's son if ever there was one. Some folks in Wayville said that after he ran off with Amanda Sykes that September of 1931, he sure must have crossed afoul of the law and come to a violent end. But nobody rightly knew for sure. Not about him, nor about Amanda Sykes either.

  He came to Wayville in early summer of that year, 1931. Came in out of nowhere in a fancy new Ford car, seemed to have plenty of money in his pockets; claimed he was a magazine writer. Wayville wasn't much in those days—just a small farm town with a population of around five hundred. Hardly the kind of place you'd expect a man like Legion to gravitate to. Unless he was hiding out from the law right then, which is the way some folks figured it—but only after he was gone. While he lived in Wayville he was a charmer.

  First day I laid eyes on him, I was riding out from town with saddlebags and a pack all loaded up with small hardware—

  Yes, that's right—saddlebags. I was only nineteen that summer, and my family was too poor to afford an automobile. But my father gave me a horse of my own when I was sixteen—a fine light-colored gelding that I called Silverboy—and after I graduated from high school I went to work for Mr. Hazlitt at Wayville Hardware.

  Depression had hit everybody pretty hard in our area, and not many small farmers could afford the gasoline for truck trips into town every time they needed something. Small merchants like Mr. Hazlitt couldn't afford it either. So what I did for him, I used Silverboy to deliver small things like farm tools and plumbing supplies and carpentry items. Rode him most of the time, hitched him to a wagon once in a while when the load was too large to carry on horseback. Mr. Hazlitt called me Ben Boone the Pony Express Deliveryman, and I liked that fine. I was full of spirit and adventure back then.

  Anyhow, this afternoon I'm talking about I was riding Silverboy out to the Baker farm when I heard a roar on the road behind me. Then a car shot by so fast and so close that Silverboy spooked and spilled both of us down a ten-foot embankment.

  Wasn't either of us hurt, but we could have been—we could have been killed. I only got a glimpse of the car, but it was enough for me to identify it when I got back to Wayville. I went hunting for the owner and found him straightaway inside Chancellor's Cafe.

  First thing he said to me was, "My name is Legion."

  Well, we had words. Or rather, I had the words; he just stood there and grinned at me, all wise and superior, like a professor talking to a bumpkin. Handsome brute he was, few years older than me, with slicked-down hair and big brown eyes and teeth so white they glistened like mica rocks in the sun.

  He shamed me, is what he did, in front of a dozen of my friends and neighbors. Said what happened on the road was my fault, and why didn't I go somewhere and curry my horse, he had better things to do than argue road right-of-ways.

  Every time I saw him after that he'd make some remark to me. Polite, but with brimstone in it—I guess you know what I mean. I tried to fight him once, but he wouldn't fight. Just stood grinning at me like the first time, hands down at his sides, daring me. I couldn't hit him that way, when he wouldn't defend himself. I wanted to, but I was raised better than that.

  If me and some of the other young fellows disliked him, most of the girls took to him like flies to honey. All they saw were his smile and his big brown eyes and his city charm. And his lies about being a magazine writer.

  Just about every day I'd see him with a different girl, some I'd dated myself on occasion, such as Bobbie Jones and Dulcea Wade. Oh, he was smooth and evil, all right. He ruined more than one of those girls, no doubt of that. Got Dulcea Wade pregnant, for one, although none of us found out about it until after he ran off with Amanda Sykes.

  Falsehoods and fornication were only two of his sins. Like I said before, he was guilty of much more than that. Including plain thievery.

  He wasn't in town more than a month before folks started missing things. Small amounts of cash money, valuables of one kind or another. Mrs. Cooley, who owned the boardinghouse where Legion took a room, lost a solid gold ring her late husband gave her. But she never suspected Legion, and hardly anybody else did either until it was too late.

  All this went on for close to three months—the lying and the fornicating and the stealing. It couldn't have lasted much longer than that without the truth coming out, and I guess Legion knew that best of all. It was a Friday in late September that he and Amanda Sykes disappeared together. And when folks did learn the truth about him, all they could say was good riddance to him and her both—the Sykeses among them, because they were decent, God-fearing people.

  I reckon I was one of the last to see either of them. Fact is, in a way I was responsible for them leaving as sudden as they did.

  At about two o'clock that Friday afternoon I left Mr. Hazlitt's store with a scythe and some other tools George Pickett needed on his farm, and rode out the north road. It was a burning hot day, no wind at all—I remember that clear. When I was two miles outside Wayville, and about two more from the Pickett farm, I took Silverboy over to a stream that meandered through a stand of cottonwoods. He was blowing pretty hard because of the heat, and I wanted to give him a cool drink. Give myself a cool drink too.

  But no sooner did I rein him up to the stream than I spied two people lying together in the tall grass. And I mean "
lying together" in the biblical sense—no need to explain further. It was Legion and Amanda Sykes.

  Well, they were so involved in their sinning that they didn't notice me until I was right up to them. Before I could turn Silverboy and set him running, Legion jumped up and grabbed hold of me and dragged me down to the ground. He cursed me like a crazy man; I never saw anybody that wild and possessed before or since.

  "I'll teach you to spy on me, Ben Boone!" he shouted, and he hit me a full right-hand wallop on the face. Knocked me down in the grass and bloodied my nose, bloodied it so bad I couldn't stop the flow until a long while later.

  Then he jumped on me and pounded me two more blows until I was half-senseless. And after that he reached in my pocket and took my wallet— stole my wallet and all the money I had.

  Amanda Sykes just sat there covering herself with her dress and watching. She never said a word the whole time.

  It wasn't a minute later they were gone. I saw them get into this Ford that was hidden in the cottonwoods nearby and roar away. I couldn't have stopped them with a rifle, weak as I was.

  When my strength finally came back I washed the blood off me as best I could, and rode Silverboy straight back to Wayville to report to the local constable. He called in the state police and they put out a warrant for the arrest of Legion and Amanda Sykes, but nothing came of it. Police didn't find them; nobody ever heard of them again.

  Yes, sir, I know the story doesn't seem to have much point right now. But it will in just a minute. I wanted you to hear it first the way I told it back in 1931—the way I been telling it over and over in my own mind ever since then so I could keep on living with myself.

  A good part of its lies, you see. Lies worse than Jimmy Legion's.

  That's why I asked you to come, Reverend. Doctors here at the hospital tell me my heart's about ready to give out. They don't figure I'll last the week. I can't die with sin on my soul. Time's long past due for me to make peace with myself and with God.

  The lies? Mostly what happened on that last afternoon, after I came riding up to the stream on my way to the Pickett farm. About Legion attacking me and bloodying me and stealing my wallet. About him and Amanda Sykes running off together. About not telling of the sinkhole near the stream that was big enough and deep enough to swallow anything smaller than a house.

  Those things, and the names of two of the three of us that were there.

  No, I didn't mean him. Everything I told you about him is the truth as far as I know it, including his name.

  His name was Legion.

  But Amanda's name wasn't Sykes. Not anymore it wasn't, not for five months prior to that day.

  Her name was Amanda Boone.

  Yes, Reverend, that's right—she was my wife. I'd dated those other girls, but I'd long courted Amanda; we eloped over the state line before Legion arrived and got married by a justice of the peace. We did it that way because her folks and mine were dead-set against either of us marrying so young—not that they knew we were at such a stage. We kept that part of our relationship a secret too, I guess because it was an adventure for the both of us, at least in the beginning.

  My name? Yes, it's really Ben Boone. Yet it wasn't on that afternoon. The one who chanced on Legion and Amanda out there by the stream, who caught them sinning and listened to them laugh all shameless and say they were running off together . . . he wasn't Ben Boone at all.

  His name, Reverend, that one who sat grim on his pale horse with Fanner Pickett's long, new-honed scythe in one hand . . .

  His name was Death.

  THE DISPATCHING OF GEORGE FERRIS

  Mrs. Beresford and Mrs. Lenhart were sitting together in the parlor, knitting and discussing recipes for fruit cobbler, when Mr. Pascotti came hurrying in. "There's big news," he said. "Mr. Ferris is dead."

  A gleam came into Mrs. Beresford's eyes. She looked at Mrs. Lenhart, noted a similar gleam, and said to Mr. Pascotti, "You did say dead, didn't you?"

  "Dead. Murdered."

  "Murdered? Are you sure?"

  "Well," Mr. Pascotti said, "he's lying on the floor of his room all over blood, with a big knife sticking in his chest. What else would you call it?"

  "Oh, yes," Mrs. Lenhart agreed. "Definitely murder."

  Mrs. Beresford laid down her knitting and folded her hands across her shelf-like bosom. "How did you happen to find him, Mr. Pascotti?"

  "By accident. I was on my way down to the john—"

  "Lavatory," Mrs. Lenhart said.

  "—and I noticed his door was open. He never leaves his door open, not when he's here and not when he's not here. So I'm a good neighbor. I peeked inside to see if something was wrong, and there he was, all over blood."

  Mrs. Beresford did some reflecting. George Ferris had been a resident of their rooming house for six months, during which time he had managed to create havoc in what had formerly been a peaceful and pleasant environment. She and the other residents had complained to the landlord, but the landlord lived elsewhere and chose not to give credence to what he termed "petty differences among neighbors." He also seemed to like Mr. Ferris, with whom he had had minor business dealings before Ferris' retirement and who he considered to possess a sparkling sense of humor. This flaw in his judgment of human nature made him a minority of one, but in this case the minority's opinion was law.

  The problem with Mr. Ferris was that he had been a practical joker. Not just an occasional practical joker; oh, no. A constant, unending, remorseless practical joker. A Practical Joker with capitals and in italics. Sugar in the salt shaker; ground black pepper in the tea. Softboiled eggs substituted for hardboiled eggs. Kitchen cleanser substituted for denture powder. Four white rats let loose in the dining room during supper. Photographs of naked ladies pasted inside old Mr. Tipton's Natural History magazine. Whoopee cushions, water glasses that dribbled, fuzzy spiders and rubber-legged centipedes all over the walls and furniture. These and a hundred other indignities—a deluge, an avalanche of witless and childish pranks.

  Was it any wonder, Mrs. Beresford thought, that somebody had finally done him in? No, it was not. The dispatching of George Ferris, the joker, was in fact an act of great mercy.

  "Who could have done it?" Mrs. Lenhart asked after a time.

  "Anybody who lives here," Mr. Pascotti said. "Anybody who ever spent ten minutes with that lunatic."

  "You don't suppose it was an intruder?"

  "Who would want to intrude in this place? No, my guess is it was one of us."

  "You don't mean one of us?"

  "What, you or Mrs. Beresford? Nice widow ladies like you? The thought never crossed my mind, believe me."

  "Why, thank you, Mr. Pascotti."

  "For what?"

  "The compliment. You said we were nice widow ladies."

  Mr. Pascotti, who had been a bachelor for nearly seven decades, looked somewhat uncomfortable. "You don't have to worry—the police won't suspect you, either. They'd have to be crazy. Policemen today are funny, but they're not crazy."

  "They might suspect you, though," Mrs. Beresford said.

  "Me? That's ridiculous. All I did was find him on my way to the john—"

  "Lavatory," Mrs. Lenhart said.

  "All I did was find him. I didn't make him all over blood."

  "But they might think you did," Mrs. Beresford said.

  "Not a chance. Ferris was ten years younger than me and I've got arthritis so bad I can't even knock loud on a door. So how could I stick a big knife in his chest?"

  Mrs. Lenhart adjusted the drape of her shawl. "You know, I really can't imagine anybody here doing such a thing. Can you, Irma?"

  "As a matter of fact," Mrs. Beresford said, "I can. We all have hidden strengths and capacities, but we don't realize it until we're driven to the point of having to use them."

  "That's very profound."

  "Sure it is," Mr. Pascotti said. "It's also true."

  "Oh, I'm sure it is. But I still prefer to think it was an intruder who sent Mr. Ferris on t
o his reward, whatever that may be."

  Mr. Pascotti gestured toward the parlor windows and the sunshine streaming in through them. "It's broad daylight," he said. "Do intruders intrude in broad daylight?"

  "Sometimes they do," Mrs. Lenhart said. "Remember last year, when the police questioned everybody about strangers in the neighborhood? There was a series of daylight burglaries right over on Hawthorn Boulevard."

  "So it could have been an intruder, I'll admit it. We'll tell the police that's what we think. Why should any of us have to suffer for making that lunatic dead?"

  "Isn't it time we did?" Mrs. Beresford asked.

  "Did? Did what?"

  "Tell the police what we think. After we tell them Mr. Ferris is lying up in his room with a knife in his chest."

  "You're right," Mr. Pascotti said, "it is time. Past time. A warm day like this, things happen to dead bodies after a while."

  He turned and started over to the telephone. But before he got to it there was a sudden eruption of noise from out in the front hallway. At first it sounded to Mrs. Beresford like a series of odd snorts, wheezes, coughs, and gasps. When all these sounds coalesced into a recognizable bellow, however, she realized that what she was hearing was wild laughter.

  Then George Ferris walked into the room.

  He was wearing an old sweatshirt and a pair of old dungarees, both of which were, as Mr. Pascotti had said, all over blood. In his left hand he carried a wicked-looking and also very bloody knife. His chubby face was contorted into an expression of mirth bordering on ecstasy and he was laughing so hard that tears flowed down both cheeks.

  Mrs. Beresford stared at him with her mouth open. So did Mrs. Lenhart and Mr. Pascotti. Ferris looked back at each of them and what he saw sent him into even greater convulsions.