More Better Deals

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Well, you need to have that and plenty of throwaway rags tomorrow night because that’s when we get him. And it will be messy. You hear me?”

  “I hear you, and I’ll get what’s needed.” She sounded as if suddenly she were out of breath.

  “You want to turn back, and frankly, I’m thinking you might want to, this is the time.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve dealt myself in.”

  “Then we’re set. Why don’t we do it tonight?”

  “You’ll need those rags and bleach. And I have to get my head right to do this. I’ve got everything set I know how to set, and now it’s my head I have to set. I’ll be ready tomorrow night. You call me when he goes off to drink.”

  “Ed, you sure about all this, doing it so we get away with it?”

  “I don’t know you can be sure about that kind of thing, but I’m thinking it through. I wouldn’t take a crack at this, I didn’t believe we had a chance to get away with it. Do the best with him tonight you can, and tomorrow we end this. And then there’s just you and me and the future, baby.”

  (30)

  I worried all night long and sometimes felt a little sick. I was going to beat a man to death with a crowbar. I knew how I would feel afterward—worse than with that Korean, and that was bad enough—but I was committed. I kept focusing on Nancy and the drive-in and that little pet cemetery. My American dream, drenched in blood and greed, but I didn’t care. I wanted what I wanted.

  Next day I went to work, and hardly anyone came to the lot, and those that did weren’t thinking about buying. They had just come to look. You get so you can tell right away.

  About an hour before I was supposed to get off, I was in the car-lot garage, putting air in the tires on a Ford, when Dave came waddling in.

  “Finish up the air in those tires, go on home, Ed. Day’s dead as Old Yeller.”

  “All right,” I said. I finished up airing the tires and drove home. I got the tarp wrapped up tight, making a reasonably small package, and slipped it inside the two plastic laundry bags, one bag pushed down inside the other, and then the tarp inside of that. I had the crowbar in the car already, along with some electrician tape, so I carried the bags with the tarp inside of them out to the car and put them in the trunk. I did it carefully, making sure no one was watching me.

  I went back upstairs and tried to watch some TV, waiting on Nancy’s call, and it came about eight.

  “He’s gone. Come now. I want to get this done.”

  I packed an extra pair of clothes in a grip and drove over to Nancy’s. There was that bumpy gravel trail that ran past the animal cemetery, and I used that and parked the Cadillac behind the garage. Frank pulled in the way he always did, the good path to the garage, he’d never see the Cadillac.

  When I got that done, I pulled the tarp and crowbar out of the trunk and got hold of the grip with the clothes in it and walked up to the back door of the house. I didn’t even have time to knock. Nancy opened it. She’d been watching for me.

  Inside, I dropped the tarp, crowbar, and grip, and she fell into my arms and I kissed her. The light in the kitchen was off, so it wasn’t until I was inside, in the bedroom and she had closed the blinds that she turned on the light and I saw her face.

  She was wearing a faded blue nightgown and was beat up worse than the night before. I felt guilty then for waiting, but it had been the right thing to do. I was worked up now, like I was going to charge a hill against a lot of Koreans.

  “Damn, girl.”

  “He knocked me plumb out, and I woke up in real pain. He was doing things to me he hadn’t done before…and, well, I bled.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Well, that shit ends tonight.”

  We pulled the tarp out of the bags and placed it over the bed to protect the mattress. The paint side was up and the paint had dried. I pushed the bags under the bed where I could reach them.

  I climbed on the bed and stood on it while I took the lightbulb out of the socket. I got down from there and put the bulb in the nightstand drawer That way, he came in, he wouldn’t see the tarp on the bed, and it would maybe give me some shadow cover when I came out of the closet with the crowbar.

  “I would make love to you, Ed, but I’m hurt all over.”

  “That’s all right. I’m not feeling all that romantic.”

  “I’m kind of excited.”

  “Thing like this, it won’t be pretty.”

  “I’m still ready.”

  I couldn’t see her face there in the dark, but I felt like I could feel the excitement coming off of her in warm waves. Truth was, I felt a little bit that way myself.

  “All right, then,” I said.

  (31)

  I checked out the closet and pushed some of the clothes on the rack to one side and made sure I could squeeze in there. I took the crowbar in there with me along with my grip with the spare clothes in it and pulled the door closed after I put some of the black electrician tape over the part of the door that stuck into the frame. I wanted to be able to push it open easy and not have the snicking sound of the lock and the doorjamb connection. I tried it a few times. It seemed fine.

  I opened up the closet and stepped out with the crowbar in my hand.

  “Is that heavy?” Nancy said.

  “Heavy enough.”

  “Should I fix coffee? I mean, I don’t know exactly what you do when you’re waiting to murder somebody.”

  “You got anything to eat? I haven’t eaten.” I had been so worked up about getting worked up to do what needed to be done, I had forgotten to eat. All of a sudden, I was starving.

  Nancy fixed me a sandwich with bologna and cheese and made coffee. When that was done, she turned out the light and we sat at the kitchen table.

  “Which door does he come in?”

  “Always this one. From the back into the kitchen, way you came.”

  “All right. And he goes straight to bed?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What’s ‘pretty much’ mean?”

  “Sometimes he goes to the bathroom to pee. Sometimes he likes to get the beating started right away.”

  “What I want you to be prepared for, is when I come out of that closet, you need to get out of the way, because I’m going to be swinging for the fence, and you don’t want to get in front of it. You got those beer cans I asked you to save?”

  “They’re in a black trash bag in the garage. He’ll park his car there. I left it open.”

  “I saw. I’m parked behind it.”

  “What else?”

  “Fishing gear?”

  “Tackle box and rods, they’re out there and ready to be put in his car. Anything else?”

  “I think beating him to death with a crowbar and taking him out to the creek and making his murder look like an accident is plenty for one night.”

  “Ed, I know how horrible this is, but he has to go. It’s not as if his life matters much.”

  “He have living parents?”

  “A mother in Tulsa, but he never sees her.”

  “Still, it might matter to her.”

  “I don’t want to think about that, that someone might miss him.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Let’s think about the insurance money, about how you and I can run the businesses better than Frank.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll think about, but what shall we talk about?”

  “Small talk seems out of place.”

  “It does. I think we should have another cup of coffee. We got a long night ahead of us.”

  (32)

  About two in the morning headlights swept across the backyard, moved down the gravel drive toward the open garage.

  I had drunk about five cups of coffee, and I was wide awake and my skin itched with caffeine. I couldn’t have gone to sleep short of death. Saw those lights, I wanted to change my mind, just get up and walk out the front door and hide somewhere, sneak around to my car later.

  But I di
dn’t.

  “What now?” Nancy said.

  “You know what now.”

  I went into the bedroom with her.

  She took off her robe. She had a slip on under it. She climbed onto the bed. “I’m so scared, Ed.”

  “So am I.” I lifted the blinds and looked out. I could see his car’s taillights in the garage. I faintly heard his car door slam, and then I saw a hulk of shadow, and then the hulk came out of the garage, and the little light over the garage doors shone down on him.

  He was damn big. Bigger than I’d expected, and his shoulders were wide and thick. He kind of wandered all over the place, went down on one knee once and managed to get himself up, which was like watching an erector set being constructed.

  Good. Him being drunk would work to my advantage.

  I watched until he was about halfway to the kitchen door, then I said, “Showtime, baby.”

  I got in the closet with the crowbar and gently closed the door. The closet seemed tighter than before, and I started sweating. There was a feeling in my ears like you get from altitude, and my mouth was dry and coppery-tasting. I was gripping the crowbar so tight, my hand started to hurt. I switched it to my other hand, then back again. I tried to take control of my breathing. My heart was beating fast enough, I thought it was going to break through my chest.

  I remembered that we hadn’t removed the bulb from the lamp, so if he turned that on, he’d see the tarp. Okay, I told myself, that won’t matter, because I’m going to be on him like skin cells in a couple of seconds.

  I heard the kitchen screen door open, then the door. The screen slammed and then the door slammed. Frank sounded like he carried his own china shop with him, the noise he made.

  “Nancy,” he called out, and then again, “Nancy.”

  Nancy said, “I’m in here, Frank.”

  “I think I need some more of what I had last night.” His voice was louder now.

  “I don’t want to, Frank.”

  “I didn’t ask what you wanted,” he said. His words were understandable but slurred. “I’m thinking I get a little of that back-door stuff again.”

  I gently pushed the door, cracked it open a little. I could see Nancy’s shape on the bed. She was on her knees in the center of it.

  Frank came into view, took off his hat and flung it, and started taking off his pants at the edge of the bed. He was having trouble, he was so drunk. Good Lord, he was big enough to hunt tigers with nothing but a bad attitude.

  I eased the closet door open wider, stepped out as Frank said, “What’s this thing on the bed?”

  That’s when I sort of skipped across the room and swung the crowbar.

  The swing was brutal. It made a little whistling sound when I swung it. The bar caught him in the back of the head with a smack like someone snapping a fresh cracker. He stumbled, and with his pants down around his ankles, he tripped and landed on the floor by the side of the bed.

  He threw one hand to the back of his head as he got up. He did it quick for a drunk. It was like the blow, instead of knocking him flat, had merely sobered him up. His pants were still around his ankles.

  That’s when I hit him again, but this time he was turning, and I caught him across the face. I felt a wet splash on my cheek, and something hard hit me there. Frank fell backward and his feet popped up with his pants still around them.

  Nancy had slipped off the bed and was on the opposite side of it, easing back toward the wall.

  Frank let out with what sounded like a wild-animal growl, sat up, and tried kicking his pants off his shoes but couldn’t manage it. I stepped in to hit him again, aiming for the top of his head, but he reached out and snatched the nightstand by the bed up. The lamp on it hit the floor and broke into pieces, and my blow hit the top of the nightstand he used to shield himself.

  I started swinging desperately, but all I could hit was that nightstand. With his pants around his ankles, he stood up, holding that nightstand. When he called out, it was loud. “What have you done, Nancy?”

  I tell you, he wasn’t drunk anymore. Not even in the least. He swung the nightstand at me the same time I was swinging the crowbar, and they came together and the nightstand came apart in some large splinters. The contact was so hard, it knocked me down.

  Lying on my back I looked up, and he leaned down to grab me, so me and my crowbar rolled under the bed, and I started crawling to the other side.

  I glanced back, saw that where his feet had been, there were only the pants. He had managed to work his way out of them. I felt pressure on the bed, the springs and mattress pushing down on me, but I crawled and came out on the other side just as he stepped off the bed, wearing shoes, boxers, and his shirt, the shirttails dangling. He grabbed Nancy by the throat. “You bitch,” he said.

  I caught him with the crowbar on the back of his right leg. He let go of Nancy, went down on his knees, and I swung with everything I had for his head. In that moment, the world slowed down, and it was as if I could see shadows moving in the room, a bit of light slipping through the blinds on the far wall. The crowbar whistled, but it seemed to me I was hung in time and that it would never get to its destination. Frank was turning, and that’s when I caught him high on the forehead and there was a sound much stronger than a broken fresh cracker. It was like someone had snapped off a rifle shot, the way it sounded. Frank’s head flew back and popped forward again. I had swung so hard that when I hit him, it knocked me down, but that big bastard was still on his knees.

  As I was trying to get up, he reached out and got me by the throat, and damn if he wasn’t slowly standing up and lifting me with him.

  I still had the crowbar and Nancy had grabbed him around his bare legs, was trying to bring him down, but she might as well have been trying to push over a redwood tree.

  I swung at him with the crowbar and got him along the side of the head, and that and my weight made him drop me.

  I hit on my back and then he fell on top of me. I started screaming, it was so crazy, and then I realized he wasn’t moving.

  I pushed out from under him, got up, and hit him in the head with the crowbar again. I imagined he was that gook in Korea, and I had the rifle butt, and it was him or me, which in both cases it was.

  Nancy crawled over the bed, leaned down, pulled the plastic bags from under it, crawled back, and gave them to me.

  I dropped the crowbar, fitted the bags over his head, got my knees in his back, clenched the bags tight behind his neck, and pulled.

  “Get that bulb, turn on the light.” I didn’t let loose of the twist in that bag, and I was pulling so hard I had lifted his head off the floor.

  In the meantime, Nancy was scrambling about for the lightbulb. “It’s broken,” she said. “It was in the nightstand drawer.”

  “Well, get the one out of the lamp, put it in.” I relaxed a little bit because Frank was no longer moving.

  The bulb in the lamp had survived, and she stood on the bed and screwed it in where we had removed the other. She hurried over to the wall and turned on the light.

  By now I had quit tugging and figured the air was out of him. He still wasn’t moving. I couldn’t feel a pulse. The room was bright and spinning a little.

  I struggled to my feet and sat on the edge of the bed, and Nancy came over and sat by me. I glanced around. There was blood on the tarp, but most of it was on the wall and the floor, and when I looked up, I saw the ceiling was spattered with it. I looked at Nancy. She had blood on her face, and I could feel the blood on mine.

  I said, “Listen. Go get those clean-up rags and the bleach.”

  She went and got them, and we went to work. It took a lot of time to wipe the walls, floor, and ceiling and make sure everything was bleached down.

  When we finished, she took my grip out of the closet and sat it on the floor. She wiped off her face, and I wiped off mine, then we took off our clothes.

  The idea was to shower, but we found ourselves clinging to each other, and then we were on the be
d, and we weren’t thinking about the tarp and the blood. We were thinking about savage satisfaction.

  (33)

  Getting his pants back on him was a struggle, and I had to take his shoes off to get them to pull up easier. Once I got the pants on him, I worked his shirttails into them, fastened his belt.

  Meanwhile, Nancy was putting his shoes back on, tying them.

  “All right, get his hat,” I said. “I’m going to get his car, drive it around. We can load him in it on the passenger side, and I’ll drive out to the bridge. You follow in your car. Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “I’ll go slow, but not too slow. We don’t want to look like we’re in a hurry, but I don’t want to be out there poking along so someone remembers me if they see me. This time of morning, not likely, I’m hoping. You follow a good pace back, not on my ass.”

  “Got it.”

  “I get out there, unlikely case someone is there, I’m going to just drive on, and you do the same, and we’ll figure from there, on down the road a piece. You still with me?”

  “I am.”

  “We get what we got to get done, we come back here and clean this place up again, just to be sure, make the bedroom look spotless. Then we want to air it out. Someone comes here, just to check, you know, and it could happen, we don’t want the place smelling like bleach, making someone curious, so we use enough of that to get the job done, then we get a bit of cleaner to deodorize, something with a smell. You know, strawberry, vanilla, some such. I didn’t think of that, but we get it tomorrow, we’ll probably be all right.”

  “You didn’t mention it, but I thought of it. I bought some stuff you can spray around.”

  “Good, you’re ahead of me. We don’t have what we need, we might have to buy it, but I think we can do it easy enough with what you got.” I knew I was talking nervous, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’ll take the tarp then and get rid of it. First, let’s get it off the bed, make sure we don’t get blood on the mattress.”

  “It’s okay, Ed. We’ve done good.”