Hughes takes up the story. “But nothing’s moving these days. Since January, Ben Boyd’s been in Joliet State, doing his first year of ten.”
The young man winces. “So your best supply’s been cut off.”
“The only coney worth a bean,” Hughes corrects him. “What’s out there wouldn’t fool a nun.”
Silence; they all drink their rum.
“I’m truly sorry for your troubles, gentlemen,” says Morrissey, “but where do I come in?”
“Not just for our own sakes but for the sake of the whole profession,” says Hughes, “Boyd must be sprung.”
Morrissey lets out a small laugh. “Horse stealing or a touch of safe-cracking, and I’m your man, but—”
Mullen waves one finger to shut him up. “Big Jim has a plan. We’re going to spring Boyd, make our fortunes, and go down in history, all at the self-same time.”
“Is that a fact,” murmurs Morrissey.
“Are you in?” Hughes wants to know.
“Oh, come on, now, it’s only white to tell a fellow what he’ll be getting into first.”
The barman curls his lip. “You think I’m going to lay out our design and have you walk away and blab it all over Chicago?”
Morrissey spits to show what he thinks of blabbers. “I’d be considerable of an idiot to say I’m in till I hear the details, but my lips are sewn.”
“Go on,” Mullen tells Hughes, “he’s all right.”
Hughes shifts his chair a little closer to the table and tops up his glass. “What would you say is the perfect swag?”
Morrissey stares at him.
“Take a guess. The ideal booty.”
“Something worth a lot … that’s easy to take, and fits in your pocket,” hazards Morrissey.
Hughes shakes his sandy head. “If it’s worth a lot, and if you’re tumbled, you’ll do a lot of time.”
“But if it’s not worth much … why trouble?”
Mullen sniggers.
Hughes delivers the answer like Scripture: “The perfect swag is something worth nothing, that people will pay high for.”
Morrissey looks between the two men. “Is this some class of a confidence trick? Like, the mark thinks there’s a diamond in the empty box?”
“No,” says Hughes, stroking his beard, “no deception’s involved.”
“Think it through,” Mullen teases.
“I am doing.” Sulky now. “Something worth nothing … what, nothing at all, like water or dirt?”
Hughes raps the table. “You’re getting warm.”
“Which?”
“Dirt.”
“You’ve a mind to steal dirt?” Morrissey asks.
“A special kind of dirt.”
“A body of dirt, you might say.” Mullen grins as he slicks back his hair. “Dust to dust!”
“Oh, I get it.” Morrissey lets out a whistle, then lowers his voice. “You’re talking to a veteran body snatcher, as it just so happens. Back in Wisconsin I dug up a dozen or so, sold them to the medical school.”
“We heard that story,” Mullen tells him. “That’s why we figured you might want to make a stake with us.”
“But selling to doctors is not our game,” says Hughes with disdain. “You ever hear of the Trojan War?”
“I reckon.” Morrissey’s voice is uncertain. “This one fellow did for another fellow, and then he went one better on it, because he ransomed the corpse back to the fellow’s pa for its weight in gold.”
“Naw!”
“And the best thing is, the State of Illinois’s got no law against the stealing of a cadaver,” Mullen puts in. “It’s nobody’s property once it’s stopped breathing. The most we could be pulled for is the price of the coffin, and that can’t mean more than a year in jail.”
“But whose coffin?” asks Morrissey. “Just what body are we talking about?”
“No need for names,” says Hughes before Mullen’s got the first syllable out. “Come on out to the bar for a minute.”
“You jokers are just pulling my leg,” says Morrissey, pushing back his chair. “What, is he one of the regulars?”
Mullen shakes his head. “He took a bullet eleven years back.”
The Hub is filling up when they emerge: six men at the billiards table, another dozen hanging on the bar, getting impatient. Hughes lets his eyes flicker to the wall above the bottles. Morrissey follows his glance to the plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln.
November 6, the night before the election, the three men press through a Democratic torchlight parade to the station. They get on the nine o’clock train to Springfield, taking over an empty carriage. Mullen drops a clanking tool bag.
“Mind my foot,” objects Morrissey, pulling it out from under.
“Put it up in the compartment, Mullen,” says Hughes. “Are you drunk?”
“Just a little jollified, in honor of our venture,” Mullen tells him. “Accepted three Democrat shots and four Republican ones.”
“You’ve got to play fair,” agrees Morrissey, grinning.
“It’s a sad fact about our line of business that it requires a nomadic sort of existence, since laying low prevents registering to vote,” remarks Hughes, making himself comfortable by the window. “If it were otherwise I believe I’d give my ticket to Governor Hayes, seeing as he’s a war hero.”
Mullen snorts. “Uncle Sammy Tilden’s going to sweep in and clean house. High time we pulled our troops home and left the South to solve its own hell-fired problems.”
Hughes’s eyebrows soared. “The barman is a citizen of views,” he told Morrissey. “Most of them claptrap.”
“I reckon this election will be the closest thing that ever was, anyhow,” contributes Morrissey.
“Five bucks, says Tilden,” mutters Mullen.
Hughes bursts out laughing.
“What now?”
“Five bucks? What a small-timer you are, Mullen. By the time this job’s done, as well as getting Boyd out, we’ll each have bagged a sixth of two hundred thousand dollars!”
The figure seems to make the air in the carriage ripple.
“Yeah, but five’s all I’ve got in my pocket just at present,” says Mullen.
Morrissey’s smooth forehead is wrinkling. “A sixth of it? There’s four of us, counting Billy Brown …”
“Right, but Big Jim planned it with Nelson before ever we came in, so they’ve earned their cuts of the ransom.”
“I suppose,” says Morrissey. “Though we’re the ones risking life and limb.”
Mullen makes a chicken squawk and punches Morrissey in the arm. “We’re risking nothing, boy. On Election Night, with all creation in the streets, who’ll notice another wagon heading out of Springfield? It’s a perfect time for a daredevil trip. A damn elegant time.”
“You’re drunk,” Hughes observes again. “Bridget says if you turn up pie-eyed at the church, she’s going to walk away.”
“Who’s Bridget?” Morrissey wants to know.
“My dear and only widowed sister,” says Hughes.
“My fiancée,” Mullen corrects him with a wide grin. “Hey, with my share, I’ll be able to buy her such a mansion, she’ll thank me on bended knee.”
“You may be going to marry her,” mutters Hughes, “but you don’t know her.” He turns to Morrissey. “You still huffed about your share?”
“Naw, that’s all right.”
“There’s six men in this mob, so six is how it cuts. Nobody’s out to swindle you. Thirty-three thousand, son—that’ll take you the rest of your life to blow.”
Morrissey nods, summons a grin.
The engine lets out a long, hoarse whistle, and they fall silent. “I saw his funeral train pull into Chicago,” remarks Hughes.
“Whose?”
Hughes gives Morrissey an exasperated look. “Honest Abe’s, of course, eleven years back. The Lincoln Express, hung with black drapery and evergreens. It zigzagged all the way from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, going no faster th
an a boy could run. You never saw such a procession: all along the tracks were crowds standing to pay their respects, day and night.”
“Fancy that.”
“I even joined the line at the courthouse, saw his face.”
“How was he looking?” Mullen wants to know.
“Not his best. This was a full fortnight after the assassination,” Hughes points out.
“But hadn’t they—I mean—”
“Embalmed him? Of course they had: pickled like a cucumber.
They don’t let the famous rot. But his face was greenish.”
“How—how do you reckon he’ll be now?” murmurs Mullen. “Just bones?”
“Naw, I’d say still pickled. A mummy, near as like.”
“We haven’t got to take him out of his casket, do we?” asks Morrissey.
Hughes shrugs. “I hope not. But it’s lead inside cedar according to the custodian; sounds heavy.”
“Hughes and I did the full tour, to scout the place out,” Mullen explains.
“If it proves too much for us three and Billy Brown, we might have to pull him out and bag him.” Hughes shows them a burlap sack.
The other two stare at it. “I hope it’s long enough,” says Mullen. “Wasn’t he a giant of a man?”
“Six foot four inches in his socks,” says Morrissey.
“Six six, I heard.”
“We’ll double him over, then,” Hughes snaps.
Mullen sniffs. “We’d better take care of him, if he’s worth so much, that’s all I’m saying. They mightn’t like to pay full price if he’s in pieces.”
The men from Chicago get in at 6 a.m. A cloudy, cold Election Day. Springfield is chaos crossed with carnival. Jollification booths, party ribbons, posters warning of forged voting ballots, bets taken everywhere you look, muscular characters grabbing voters outside the polling booths to whisper in their ears …
Mullen, Hughes, and Morrissey split up to be unobtrusive, leaving the bag of tools with a bartender of Mullen’s acquaintance. They kill the hours somehow; Hughes gets a shoe mended. In the afternoon there’s a fight, and a negro voter gets his throat cut. As the day wears on, crowds swarm round the telegraph and newspaper offices, waiting for returns. Sam Tilden is thought to have it. Even this town—home to the Great Emancipator, the first Republican president—is said to have swung Democrat.
In their room at the St. Charles Hotel, Hughes squints at a map. “You know, I reckon it’s too far to go all the way to the Indiana Sand Hills in this cold snap, we might get stopped.”
Mullen’s arms are folded. “But Big Jim said—”
“I don’t know what he was thinking. You can’t tell me there’s nowhere to hide a body in the whole State of Illinois.”
Mullen unfolds a smaller map of Sangamon County. “See this bridge across the river, just a mile or two east of the cemetery? We could dump the coffin on the upside, it’ll sink to the bottom.”
“What if it floats?” Morrissey asks.
“Lead-lined,” Hughes reminds him.
The younger man flushes at his mistake. “All right, but what if the water’s too shallow?”
“Then we’ll dig a hole in the gravel bar under the shadow of the bridge.” Hughes nods over the map. “The roads will be frozen hard, our horse tracks won’t show. Where’s your friend Brown going to get this rig?”
“He said he’d nab one easy, from some drunken farmer.”
“Why can’t he hire one?”
“He doesn’t have the cash. Don’t worry, he’ll find us a good team.”
“Oh, and I had a notion,” says Mullen, producing a copy of that day’s Catholic Union and Times. He rips off the front page, then tears that along a messy diagonal.
“What are you playing at?” asks the older man.
“Got this tip from an interview with a kidnapper,” says Mullen. “We leave this half in the crypt, right? Then we hide the matching half somewhere safe—say, back in the Hub, inside that hollow bust of Lincoln. When Big Jim’s negotiating, he can use it to prove we truly are the ones who did the deed.”
Hughes nods, but soberly. “I don’t mind allowing I’ll be glad when this is all over, Boyd’s back at his bogus, and I can return to honest work.”
Morrissey sniggers. Hughes’s head shoots up. “I only meant—I never heard it called that before,” says the young man.
“You, sir, move in certain circles—horse thieves, burglars, and the like,” says Hughes, “and I in others.”
“What, ain’t counterfeiters crooked?”
“Only technically. We do no harm to our fellow man.”
“Oh, Jack, lay off your sham,” Mullen puts in.
“Money’s not real gold anymore,” Hughes insists. “It’s only a kind of paper that the government calls precious; it’s a trick in itself. Well, I say Boyd’s bad notes are just as good. Who am I robbing, tell me, if I buy a horse with a queer bill?”
“Well—”
“The man I pay can buy something else with it, if his luck holds. It all goes round.”
“Tell that to the Secret Service,” says Mullen with a broad grin. “He was arrested back in August, for shoving the coney,” he tells Morrissey.
Hughes sighs. “After a dozen years of being careful, never going out with more than one note on me …”
“Skipped bail, too. That’s how come he’s let his beard grow into such an ugly bush so he can hide behind it.”
“I was thinking,” says Hughes, “when it comes to freeing Boyd and getting our reward, why couldn’t we ask for the settlement of my own little case to be thrown in?”
Mullen shrugs. “You better take that up with Big Jim.”
“I might well. I could eat like all wrath,” says Hughes after a minute. “I’m going downstairs for a plate of oysters.” The others follow him out of the room, but he turns. “We can’t all go: three together could attract attention.”
“On a night like this,” scoffs Mullen, “you’d have to run bare-assed along Main Street to attract attention.”
“No, he’s right,” says Morrissey, “I’ll go eat elsewhere, check Brown’s got us a wagon. See you back here at half past eight.”
In the dark, the three of them walk along the streetcar tracks north of Springfield. Mullen is humming “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” He’s got an ax over one shoulder that he took from outside the tavern, on a whim. He pauses to adjust something in his armpit.
“You armed?” Morrissey asks him.
“Always. And it doesn’t take a great deal of provocation to make me shoot.”
“Mullen’s an all-fired desperado, all right,” says Hughes with a snort.
Morrissey hawks tobacco juice into a bush.
“So Brown will be at the cemetery by half past nine?” Hughes asks him.
“Yup, he’s borrowed a three-spring wagon and a rattling good pair of bays. He’ll tie them up in the woods, then come to the Monument and give the whistle.”
Oak Ridge Cemetery is ahead. They jump the fence and move round through the trees. One small light flickers. “That’s the custodian’s lodge,” murmurs Hughes.
At the top of the hill, on a small plateau, the Monument rears up in the patchy moonlight: an obelisk with statues of soldiers and horses swarming round its base. “Like something out of Old Egypt,” Morrissey marvels. “It must be two hundred feet high.”
“It’s a solid-looking pile, all right,” says Mullen.
“That bit that curves out the front is a little museum. The crypt is at the back,” says Hughes.
Their approach is up a steep ravine, bare except for a single oak. Hughes pauses to take out a small bull’s-eye lantern, rip the paper off, and light it. The wooden door has a simple lock; it doesn’t take Morrissey long to pick it. Inside is another door, iron this time, with a steel bolt secured by a padlock. Mullen pulls out a jimmy and fits the sections together. He works on the padlock for some minutes. “Damn thing’s too big for the staple.”
“
Try a steel saw,” advises Hughes.
“That’s just exactly what I was about to do.” But the metal resists his squealing blade. “Tarnation seize this good-for-nothing lock. I’m going to take the ax to it.”
“That won’t work.” After a few more minutes Hughes taps Morrissey on the shoulder, making him jump. “You and I should check the front, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“In case there’s a guard posted, or the custodian’s got a notion to sit up with his President. Old men can’t sleep.”
“Hey,” protests Mullen, “where’re you fellows going with the light?”
“Can’t you saw by starlight for a minute? You could hardly make a poorer fist of the job …”
Morrissey and Hughes go round to the front. The museum is quite dark. Hughes takes out a pistol. Morrissey slides open the shutter of the lantern, holds it against the outer bars and peers through the glass pane. “Nothing stirring.”
When they get back, Mullen’s saw has cut about a third of the way through the padlock. They lean against the wall and watch him. Suddenly the blade snaps. He hurls down the pieces. “This cock-sucking saw! I could cut steel better with a penknife.”
“Don’t blame the damn tools when it was you who chose them,” says Hughes. “Here, try with a file.”
Hughes hugs the bars to hold the padlock quite steady while Mullen goes to work with a three-cornered file.
“We can take turns if you get tuckered,” offers Morrissey.
“I’m not tuckered,” grunts Mullen. “Just you keep watch.”
“I believe I’ll take another tour around the Monument.”
Morrissey walks silently round the side of the building. At the door of the museum he reaches through the bars and taps three times on the glass. A long pause, and then the door opens a crack. “Chief?” he whispers.
“I’ll get him” comes the reply.
In a minute Chief Patrick Tyrrell puts his meaty-jawed head out, hisses, “What’s the delay?”
“They’re having trouble with the padlock.”
A sharp sigh. “We’d better hang on till they’ve got the tomb open; otherwise it’s only breaking and entering.”
“How many of you are in there?” asks Morrissey, peering through the gap.
“Five, plus the custodian and a reporter. We’ve got these ghouls dead to rights,” says Tyrrell, his voice gravelly with anticipation. “Tonight’s operation is going to break the back of counterfeiting in the United States.”
Astray: Stories Page 9
