David A. Schwinghammer
Sitemap
My Blog
Contact Author
Message Board
Read
Reviews
Books
· Soldier's Gap
· Soldier's Gap
· Soldier's Gap
· Soldier's Gap
Short Stories
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 12
· Fisher of Men, Chapter 11
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 11
· Honest Thief, Tender Murderer, Chapter 11.
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 10
· Fisher of Men, Chapter 10
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 9
· Seminary Boy, a memoir
· Fisher of Men, Chapter Nine
· Soldier's Gap, Chapter Three
Articles
· The Jerk
· Bone-headed Supreme Court Decisions
· Republicans Work Hard at Creating Divisive Issues
· Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School, book review
· Auschwitz (Always Remember Your Name), book review
· Fahrenheit 2021-22
· Biden's Approval Rate Plummeting
· Mr. Trump, have you no sense of decency?
· Critical Race Theory
· Clueless Judge Compares AR-15's to Swiss Army Knives
Poetry
· Should I Take Ballet?
· Caboose
· The Girl Next Door
· Llama, Llama (dedicated to William Blake)
· The Terminal Booger
· Fashion
· Widow's Peak
· Myth
· Alumni Game
· Stradivarius
More poetry...
|
|
David A. Schwinghammer, click here
to update your web pages on AuthorsDen.
|
|
|
|
In a drunken state, Ned decides to take the money out of Mrs. Robideaux's safe
Chapter 10
Rover, What Thy Quest?
“I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.”
–Shakespeare, Othello, II, iii, 34
Ned woke to the sound of recorded bells summoning parishioners to the eight o’clock mass at St. Christopher’s. As he listened to the too-rhythmic sounds, vertical shadows played over his eyes, and he realized where he was.
The striped mattress, the faint urine smell coming from the toilet in the corner, and the nasty graffiti on the walls smothered his urge to pull the covers over his head. He tossed aside the itchy wool blanket, reached for his jeans, took his tin cup and rattled the bars.
“You just hold your horses,” Grandma growled as she opened the cell door. “It’s not like you haven’t been in here before.”
Fresh from her latest beauty appointment, the highlights in her hair a smidgeon bluer, the curls a bit springier, but her features were those of an ugly man in drag.
Like all good grandmothers, she had breakfast ready for him, and he sipped on a glass of orange juice and munched on a piece of buttered toast as he made his one permitted phone call from the vestibule of the sheriff’s office. He looked up at the hospital windows across the street. How long had it been since he’d been up there, holding the Indian’s hand, despite his aversion to hospitals, which made him feel as itchy as a Rubella patient? And how had the Indian shown his appreciation? The fucking Judas.
He picked up the phone, listened for the dial tone, and punched in a number.
“Ivers, Ivers, and Sloane,” a woman said.
“Is Zach Ivers there? Ned Tuttle here.”
“One moment,” she said. He heard elevator music. He waited so long he began to nod off.
“Hey, Ned. What’s up?” a chipper voice said.
“I’m in jail, Zach. Will “Flatfoot” Kneebone thinks I stole that Caterpillar that went missing.”
“Any evidence?”
“Well, you know there was a dog killed out there and I just coincidentally have a dog bite. Then there’s this receipt he found where they were hiding the Cat, which could have come from anyplace.”
“If that’s all he’s got, I’ll have you out of there before you can say seventy-five dollars.”
“That’s how much you’re gonna charge me?”
“For starters.” Ned had done a roofing job for Ivers and he remembered correctly the shyster still owed him; lawyers and doctors were the hardest to collect from.
True to his word, Ivers had him out of there before daily mass got out at St. Christopher’s, and Ned spent the afternoon at the Fishing Hole.
Presently, he was involved in a staring contest with Nathan Oja, one of the full-bloods Will had nabbed trying to break into Yeager’s. He just might have to fight his way out of here again.
Ned smiled and the boy got off his stool and moved on down to the end of the bar where Ned was sitting. “Want to shake for a brew?” Oja said.
The Indian smelled like wet bark, decaying leaves, and wood smoke. He wore a blue work shirt beneath an embroidered vest that would probably sell for around a hundred dollars in the right circles. His haircut was more of a mullet, than the Indian style Will wore. “Sure, why not?”
Ned rolled four sixes.
“Lucky shit!”
“Forget about it, I’ll buy. I want to pick your brain about something.”
The bleary-eyed defensive lineman brought them both a draft, then went back to watching some old movie on a small portable above the bar. “What’s on your mind?” Nathan said.
“Been looking for that Fort Snelling payroll, and I was wondering what your people had to say about it. You know, is it in the lake or hidden out there in the woods someplace?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Cause I bought you a drink, and I’m an all-around good guy, who voted to do away with the Chippewa mascot. Lake or woods?”
“The grandfathers say it’s in the lake.”
“What do you think?”
The boy reached in his jeans and came out with a handful of lint and a nineteenth century coin.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“Let’s say I wasn’t doing any scuba diving.”
“You find any more?”
“Nope. If I had, you would’ve been reading about me in the papers.”
“I have been reading about you in the papers.”
The boy stiffened, sat up straight. “Tryin’ to get smart with me?” he snarled.
“Nah, need somebody to slash a cop’s tires. I read where Will Kneebone busted you for breaking and entering at Yeagers, and I was wondering whether you still had a hard-on for him.”
“Kneebone’s a square shooter. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be in here drinking.”
“Just kidding. You still in school?”
All along the bar, wet spots had begun to accumulate, and it wasn’t because the lineman had been shirking his duty. The bartender found a bucket, and for the rest of their conversation, the plink of the water drops hitting the pail accompanied their words.
“Nope. Dropped out when I turned sixteen,” the Indian said.
“Me too.”
That seemed to break the ice, and the Indian signaled for the lineman to bring them another round.
They drank all afternoon, and Ned purposefully lost a couple of games of pool. They drank up most of Ned’s remaining flood money, but before Nathan passed out, Ned knew the general area where the Indian had found the old coin.
#
When Ned hit the cold air, he realized just exactly how drunk he really was, but having the kind of selective memory that politicians counted on from their constituents, he ignored the possibility of another snowbank-type incident and aimed for the graveyard, which he had to skirt in order to find the place Oja had told him about. He cursed when he realized he’d forgotten to get a shovel out of his pickup. He retraced his tracks, only to find Nathan Oja passed out in the front seat of his truck. He’d heard so many stories about drunks throwing up on themselves and choking on their own vomit that he couldn’t leave him in the truck, and Ned was too drunk to drive him back to the Rez. Hadn’t stopped him that time he’d gotten that DUI and he’d been even drunker that time. 2.75, according to the blood test, shoulda been unconscious. Ned got his cell phone out of his glove compartment and dialed the familiar number.
Will answered, sounding sleepy.
“Dis Benedict Kneebone?”
“You sound drunk. You’re not driving, are you?”
“Nope. Standing here outside The Fishing Hole in the drizzle, trying to save one of your people.”
“Who we talking about?”
“Nathan Oja, passed out in my pickup.” He hiccuped. Hiccup? pickup? Should be writing poetry for a living. “I didn’t invite him or nothin’. I was on my way out into the woods to find the Fort Snelling payroll when–-“
”Kind of drunk out for that, ain’t it? Stay there; I’ll be right over.”
“I figger this makes me and you ev–-“
Will hung up. Bastard. He’d have to hurry or he’d spend another night in the drunk tank. He shoved the cell phone in his back pocket, then stumbled off into the night and the increasing drizzle.
Not too far from the graveyard, he stepped in a hole and fell, banging his head hard against the sidewalk, seeing quivering yellow stars. But these stars were the real deal. The Big Dipster, the Little Dipster, visible through a hole in the clouds. He hadn’t noticed them since he was a boy. They moved in and out of focus.
He felt like he’d been piled on by the three hundred pounders on the fucking Viking defensive line; he was as wet as a muskrat and his nose was running; but he was already half way there, so he crawled off into the night, his knees wet and stinging from a nasty scrape.
Ned caught a whiff of rotten potatoes, the cemetery up ahead. A gust of wind took his hat; it did a loop-de-loop then disappeared into the darkness. He tried to use his coat as an umbrella, but the thing was about as waterproof as a spaghetti strainer, so he jammed his hands in his pockets and tried to shrink down into his collar. Dogs began to bark, the mongrel hotline that had kept him awake many a night as a kid. One of the mutts howled, the sound rivaling that of a soul doing hard time in purgatory. This was when he realized he’d forgotten the goddamn shovel again. That was that. He wasn’t meant to find the Fort Snelling treasure, tonight anyway. When he tried to move on, he slipped again and fell, damn near crowning himself against a gravestone. What a goddamn cowinkeedence! Andrea “Fucking” Robideaux. Born February 5, 1912. Let’s see, that would be left two, right five, going past the number once, than left to twelve. Or was it right, left, right? How much money would there be in that safe? God, it looked like at least fifty thousand, the same amount he could have expected from the sale of Baby if that goddamn cunt hadn’t-- Those were hundred dollar bills he’d seen on the floor when he’d caught Mrs. R. opening the safe. How long ago had that been? He couldn’t for the life of him remember. Would she have left for her visit with her daughter yet? He tried to count backwards, but his mind was too muddled; there’d been too many goddamn emotional traumalammas for him to think that clearly. Ten or twenty beers didn’t help either. If he had that money he could at least get the hell out of godforsaken Plunder Lake. Start over where nobody knew him. Ned stood, damn near fell flat on his face, but managed to latch onto Andre’s stone before he went down. “First human thing you’ve done in your fuckin’ life, you old--”
He staggered off toward Black Bird Cove, looking like a soldier on the beaches of Normandy, trying to dodge bullets and artillery shells as he zigzagged between the monuments.
#
It was late at night and Art Voigt was in his office listening to John Mad Bull’s asthmatic voice coming out of the speakers behind his desk. Mad Bull going on and on about the Great Flood and Winneboojoo, the Indian Adam, whose animal helpers muskrat and turtle had helped fashion a new world from the muck muskrat had dived for. The response to their interviews about fishing rights had been so positive that Voigt had given Mad Bull his own show. Besides, Mad Bull had come up with a sponsor willing to pay double the going advertising rates–-Plunder Lake Casino, of course.
Voigt tuned the Indian out, grasped the picture of his wife he kept on his desk. Lorna still looked pretty good, considering her age. Going on sixty. She’d dyed her hair a kind of blondish grey, which made her look a good ten years younger, that and the face lift. Too bad her personality didn’t go with her looks. She’d been nagging him of late to put his mother-in-law in a rest home, and when Lorna got something in her craw she never let up. Never. Once he’d gotten fed up and belted her around the bedroom. That stunt had cost him a European vacation. He couldn’t let it be known that he was a wife beater or he’d be finished in Plunder Lake.
But the woman’s constant browbeating was getting to be too much again. He actually liked his mother-in-law, and he couldn’t say that about a whole lot of people. He knew she didn’t think too much of him, but that was probably because he’d married Lorna, not exactly her favorite person.
He lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling. He had too much on his mind. The decibel level had been unendurable this afternoon during his Party Line show. Joe Six-pack wanted to know what was being done about the headless corpse in the woods. And if he wasn’t complaining about that, he was grousing about the attempt on Will Kneebone’s life and the drug problem at the high school. There was growing support for Sonny Tuttle’s mayoral candidacy. During the debate between Mrs. Vanderwaal and Tuttle, the topic of Sonny’s illicit affair with the Home Economics teacher would definitely be bridged.
Voigt checked the derringer he had strapped to his leg. He’d carried the thing ever since the beating he’d endured after a high-stakes card game at Breezy Point during which he’d been caught with an extra ace. Anybody ever laid a hand on him
again . . .
He’d cocked and uncocked the weapon five or six times in the last hour. Expecting Sheriff Tibbetts; the man might not appreciate what he had in mind for him.
As he was thinking about how he’d lure Tibbetts out into the woods, there was a knock on the door. His receptionist had long since gone home and he got up to let Tibbetts in.
Voigt fixed the sheriff a Johnny Walker scotch on the rocks, then made one for himself. They sat there sizing each other up.
Tibbetts was overweight with hairy arms protruding from his short-sleeved khaki uniform. The stupid shit wore the Ralph Kramden cap wherever he went, including at home. A tattoo artist had mowed some of the hair to make room for a hula girl on his right arm, and the broken nose made him look rather like Broderick Crawford of the old TV program, “Highway Patrol”, back when there were a few interesting programs on TV.
Tibbetts toyed with a can of Rooster long cut smokeless tobacco. Icy mint, according to the print on the circular cover. If he tried to chew that stuff in here, Voigt’d shoot him sure.
“You ever see those pictures the old Detroit Tigers center fielder who got mouth cancer from chewing tobacco? Looked like the inside of an asshole before he died.”
The sheriff shrugged. “Helps me relax.”
Voigt sipped his drink. Needed something to calm his nerves, but he winced, the smoky-tasting shit hitting his ulcer like a ball peen hammer. “What did you want to see me about?” Voigt finally said, when the pain subsided.
“That fuckin’ Indian has the goods on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jamie Zwald told me his mother gave Kneebone the money I paid him to off the Indian. I’m thinking he’s got fingerprints.”
John Mad Bull was signing off, emphasizing the fact that the animals did not serve in a subordinate role in the Anishinabe creation story.
Voigt crossed his leg, figured the derringer once more. Would two bullets be enough to stop the man? “You’re a damn fool,” he said.
“Me? What about your boy Cornelius?”
“Speaking of Cornelius, why don’t you give me his number? I want to make sure he’s all right.”
“I said I didn’t have it.”
“Just give me the goddamn number!”
A Bach fugue had replaced John Mad Bull. Voigt had received innumerable letters complimenting him on his late night classical programming.
“Cornelius is dead. Couldn’t take the chance–-“
All of the air went out of Voigt’s body and his guts felt as though they’d been tied in a knot. “My God! The deputy was one thing, but a poor defenseless old man . . .”
Tibbetts drained the last of his drink. “Why do you care so much about him?”
“Because he and I grew up together. I know it’s hard to believe, but I wasn’t always the most popular--“
”That’s not hard to believe.”
“Keep it up and I’ll–-. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be shoveling shit for a living.”
“Yeah and you’d be a third-rate Larry King--”
“How did you–-?”
“How did I go about disposing of Corny and his old lady? Out on the lake. Told them I wanted to show them something out there. Sunk the boat and rowed back in my skiff.”
“They drowned?”
“I didn’t see anybody come back up.”
“Let me get this straight. You killed two people and sank the boat on one of the most popular walleye lakes in Minnesota?
The least you could’ve done was–-“
”Shoot ‘em? Stab ‘em? I ain’t never killed anybody. One way’s as good as another.”
Voigt poured himself another drink, gulped it down. It ripped at his ulcer, like a Mike Tyson left hook, but he knew he deserved it. “What about that Schmidtgap kid? Thought you were lying about that.”
Tibbetts smiled. “What, you think I did it myself?”
“What did the kid do, hold out on you?”
“He was the chemist for the meth lab. Told those idiots I didn’t want the shit in my county.”
Voigt doused his cigar, lit another. “But that didn’t stop you from hiring his retarded friends to kill Kneebone. I could use your brain to grow lettuce.
“I think you ought to make yourself scarce. I have some money I could let you have if you need it. We could go get it now if you want. Kneebone won’t quit until he runs you to ground.”
“I was getting ready to do something about that.”
“No, leave well enough alone. The callers on Party Line are driving me crazy the way it is.”
“You’re worried I’ll implicate you?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“How much money we talkin’ about?”
“I got a hundred thousand buried where I used to live. In the woods. I meant to leave it for my ex-wife, when I passed but . . .”
“You got more than that!”
“It’s all tied up. I wouldn’t be able to touch it for a week, and by that time he could . . . he could . . .”
“A hundred thou ain’t gonna do it.”
Voigt cocked the derringer. “What did you do with your cut?”
“Same as you, mostly in real estate.”
“Couldn’t you get a bank loan?”
“No banker is gonna let me have what I’m worth as fast as I need it.”
“Let me work on it. They do pretty much what I tell ‘em at the German-American.”
“I won’t take any less than a million.”
Tibbetts opened the little blue can with the Rooster on it and deposited a wad of snuff between his cheek and gum.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? I said no chewing tobacco.”
“I’ll do as I damn well please. You treat me like your hired help and I’m not taking it any more.”
“You goddamn idiot! If you don’t spit that stuff out in the wastebasket . . .”
Voigt took a deep breath and aimed the derringer at Tibbetts’s heart, but the sheriff reached over and swatted it out of his hand before he could pull the trigger. The little gun ricocheted off the wall, making a sound like a cheap firecracker, and before Voigt knew what hit him, two hundred and fifty pounds of beef hurtled across his desk and began to pound away at his face, his nose breaking, his teeth loosening, Voigt’s chair overturning. He hit his head on the wall, rolled over and came to rest face down, with the derringer lodged between his stomach and the carpet.
Tibbetts stood over him, like Haystack Calhoun after he’d just drop-kicked Kenny Jay. “Get up now,” he said. “I’ll be giving the orders from now on.”
Voigt recovered the derringer, and as Tibbetts reached down to give him a hand up, he shot him in the forehead. The sheriff sank to his knees in slow motion, then toppled over onto his back, a hole the size of a quarter in his forehead. Voigt slowly exhaled, his heart thumping like a buck rabbit in a cabbage patch full of does. There was no blood. The sheriff’s eyes were open, two marbles floating in a vat of Jell-O, looking at Voigt as though he’d told an obscene joke.
Getting to his knees, Voigt reached over, his hands shaking uncontrollably, and closed the asshole’s eyes. He sat there for what must have been at least ten minutes, enough time for his pulse to stop racing, then he stood, grabbed Tibbetts under the armpits, and rolled him up in a rug. There was no blood. He’d expected blood. Wait! Could he make this look like a suicide? A bullet hole in the middle of his forehead? Awful weird angle. Why hadn’t he thought this thing through more carefully? If Tibbetts disappeared, Kneebone would think he made a run for it. He looked at his watch. A little after midnight. He hadn’t done any manual work since he’d been a young man, but he’d have to muster up the strength to work the cement mixer at the construction site. No, not there; there’d be added security since the Caterpillar theft. He had it. There was an old cistern on his ex-wife’s property, near where he’d buried the money. Eventually the body would start to stink, but it was next to a farmer’s field, and what with the fertilizer and the decaying vegetation . . . He’d used the cistern as a kind of reference for the map he’d made.
Static was coming from the speaker behind his desk. Dead air. What the hell was that announcer doing?
#
By the time Ned got to Blackbird Cove, he remembered there were shovels in the gardener’s utility shed, but he was so goddamn cold and wet that, once inside, he decided to take a few minutes to get warm and fell asleep sitting on a pile of burlap sacks.
It seemed like Ned always started dreaming as soon as his head hit the pillow. There was supposed to be a sort of preliminary period where the rational part of the brain shut down, but that was never the case with Ned. Even in school, he’d start dreaming when he fell asleep in math class and when jarred awake from a sharp poke in the ribs from Mrs. Yanta, he’d have to wipe the drool away with his sleeve and wonder what the hell the old bag was doing in his bedroom. Tonight was no different. Baby’s low growl reverberated throughout the woods as Ned shifted gears and jiggled levers. No need for a shovel when you were back in the saddle again, feeling like Paul Bunyan astride Baby the Blue Ox, gouging huge globs of muck and tree stumps up out of the earth like a kindergartner spooning Cheerios, uprooting hundred-year-old pines, snapping limbs like twigs.
Yes, sir, he’d unearth the Plunder Lake cache or he’d clear-cut the entire forest. But as Baby rumbled and snarled, Ned began to feel as though someone was staring at the back of his head. Kneebone’s Winneboojoo. Unsettling yellow eyes, accusatory eyes, and it was howling like a goddamn banshee. He and muskrat had built the New Earth on the back of turtle and would not approve of anyone defiling what they’d done. “For What?” they wailed. “Worthless silver, long since turned to rust?”
The dog hotline woke Ned, that and the fact that it was almost as cold and wet in the shed as it was outside. The dream was already fading, something about Baby and the place where Nathan Oja had said he’d found that coin. Ned shivered. What the hell, he still had the keys to the main house; he’d go inside and get warm, maybe borrow one of Andre’s old raincoats. Finding that treasure would be a piece of cake if he were properly dressed.
The back door window was broken. He couldn’t remember that happening. And before he got a chance to use the key, he noticed the door was open. Had the old woman forgotten to lock the place?
Once inside, he took off his shoes and moved to the entryway closet, where he remembered seeing some of Andre’s old clothes.
He found a camouflage parka, but no gloves. Maybe there’d be some in the kitchen. But first he’d get a drink; he was awfully parched. He got a beer out of the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table. The beer was really strong, tasted like malt liquor.
By the time he was half finished with the beer, he’d warmed considerably. It was actually too warm. Had she turned the furnace on?
He nodded off for a while and woke up when he almost fell out of the chair, not knowing where he was. According to the grandfather clock in the living room it was two a.m. He remembered falling in the graveyard and seeing what he was positive was the combination to Andre’s safe. He recalled the first two digits because his brother Henry had been born on February 5th, but what the fuck was the last one? Let’s see, Andre had been eighty something when he’d died. Eighty what, though?
Ned went to the fridge and got another beer. How low had he sunk? He couldn’t take that money from Mrs. R. Why not, though? Nobody else knew the cash was in there. The old lady would be gone for at least another week, and by the time she realized the money was gone, he’d be in Mexico, living high on the hog.
What the hell would he do in Mexico, though? Didn’t know the language. Didn’t know anybody who lived there. He’d be miserable.
Yeah, but he’d heard American money really went a long way down there. He could live on the beach, buy himself a boat. And Mexican women were incredibly sexy with nice butts, like Jennifer Lopez. Mrs. R. was a rich old lady, emphasis on the word “old”. Any day now she’d be confined to a rest home. And who’d get her money? That fucker Art Voigt, that’s who!
Ned rifled through the kitchen drawers, looking for a flashlight. Couldn’t find one, but there were candles. He struck a match, the sulfurous smell stinging his nose. On his way into the living room, he cut his foot on some glass, dropped the candle, and hopped around holding his foot. In the flicker of the guttering candle, he noticed the money.
Retrieving the candle, he tracked the bills to the safe. Right two. Left past the five once, then back to it. And just like that he remembered the last number. He turned right and stopped at twelve, the safe snapping open on the first try. Nothing in there except a bunch of papers. Someone had beat him to it. Ned sniffed. Something smelled like the rotten potatoes he’d smelled in the graveyard, only ten thousand times worse. He’d caught a whiff when he’d first come in, but he’d thought he must have rolled in some dog shit out there in the graveyard or something. No, this smelled like somebody was–-
Mrs. R.!
Ned tiptoed into the bedroom, trying to hold his breath, moved over to the bed. The smell was overpowering. He looked down at her, the chenille bedspread tucked up under her chin, her eyes awe-stricken--not so much frightened, more like a little girl who’d seen the Northern Lights for the first time.
He practically ran out of the bedroom, stopped just long enough to scoop the bills up off the floor. Three hundred dollars and some change. A heck of a lot of money to ignore. How much had been in that thing? Back in the kitchen, he put on his shoes, and sat there thinking.
Must have been the adrenalin rush; he was as sober as Perry Mason mulling over a possible scenario. The broken window? The money on the floor? Who else knew about the safe?
Peggy June. That fucking cunt had ripped the old woman off, probably the same day he’d told her about all that dough. Thing is, had she smothered Mrs. R. in the process? Or had it been an accident? No such thing if it occurs in the process of committing a felony.
Had to clean up after himself or he’d be spending the rest of his life in Stillwater. Thank god for parquet floors. He mopped up his blood, tucked the beer bottles in his back pockets and wiped down the fridge, the table top, and the door handles, then preceded himself out the door with the mop, which he took with him.
|
|
Web Site:
Mystery Writer
|
|
|
|
|
|
Love ya!
Jane
In the meantime, if this chapter is any indication, I'll be thinking of getting to it as soon as I can.
Ron