Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet (31 page)

“Now I knew I might have only one shot at this. I had to make her count.

“Careful as could be, I reeled her in, cast her out, in and out, her cut-up back chumming the water good n’ red. The way she was kicking and screaming and bleeding, we weren’t waiting long before Big George swum along …

“And he was real interested.

“Little Abby played her part to a tee. I was almost sorry I couldn’t let her go when we got done. ‘Cept I knew she’d only tattletale to the law. And well, there really wasn’t much left of her. I let Big George take her feet at the ankles—just a nibble—give him a taste for the bait—then I started reeling her slowly to shore.

“Big George followed the bait like a mule being led by a carrot on a stick. When at last I finally landed him, I damn near lost my nerve. The
size
of him, Smitty!

“As he crawled ashore and came towards her—big ole grin, piece of her feet snagged in his teeth like a chunk of gristle—Little Abby’s heart just plumb gave out. A mercy, y’ask me. Big George was busy wolfing down the rest of her when I dropped a sheet of tarp over his head, soaked in chloroform. You blindfold a gator, it takes about all the fight right out of him. Between that and the chloroform, I could chain his jaws shut, hogtie his legs and his tail, and then rustle him back to the bar. And
that
was no walk in the picnic, lemme tell you!”

He chuckled at the memory.

Then he looked at me with concern.

“You alright there, Smitty? Lookin’ a little green there, son. You wanna refill?”

He poured me another glass. I didn’t trust my shaking hands not to spill every drop. I left the glass where it was on the table.

“Over the years,” Croker said, “I must’ve fed Big George every living thing ever walked or crawled—but there ain’t
nothing
he likes more than gator bait.”

I startled as another flash of lightning flared through the bar.

Managing to dredge up my voice, I started saying: “Horace—”

But he cut in with, “You call me ‘Horace’ again, you’ll be shitting teeth.”

He said it genially enough, but the words rocked me like a slap.

“Why are you telling me this?” I said. “What’s going on here?”

He fished in his pocket for a fresh cigar and tossed it down on the table.

“Congratulations,” he said.

I watched the cigar roll lazily towards me. “I … I don’t understand.”

Croker nodded. “Neither did I,” he said, “when ole Doc Culpepper told me Grace was knocked up … Smoke up, Smitty. You’re gonna be a daddy.”

Panic seized me. I glanced at the door and told myself to run. My legs refused to move. For a moment, I thought Croker must have slipped a Mickey Finn in my hooch. But no, I was just frozen in fear. Like a rat mesmerized by a snake.

Then Croker called out, “Bring my whore out here, boys!”

Rusty and Lyle emerged from the office, lugging what looked like a bloody scarecrow between them. I gasped, “Grace—” Her hair was a matted scarlet mane. A thick rope of blood dangled from her chin. Her lips were split. One of her eyes was swollen shut; the other eye was getting there. She must’ve seen how she looked in my expression, because she hacked out a wretched sob.

They delivered Grace to Croker. Rusty’s arm was slung around her waist so she wouldn’t collapse. Judging by his leering grin, he was copping a good feel while he could. In his other hand he was clutching a revolver. Lyle’s pistol was tucked in the front of his waistband. I hadn’t seen Lyle since I stole his job. He was unshaven, bleary-eyed, reeking like a hog; he’d clearly fallen on hard times and looked like he’d been making ends meet as a carny geek. He shouldered past me to the piano and reclaimed his stool with a satisfied sigh. “Ahhhh, it’s good to be back,” he said. “I always knew you was a wrong’un.”

“Lyle,” Croker warned him. “You start in on that I-told-you-so shit, you’ll be joining him.” Lyle grumbled to himself and started pecking out an off-key Funeral Waltz on the piano. Croker winced at the noise Lyle made. “I’m almost gonna miss you, Smitty.”

I took a deep breath. “You know what I’m gonna miss, Croker?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Fucking your wife in your own bed.”

Quick as another lightning flash, there was a knife in Croker’s hand, a Bowie with a blade the size of a machete. I flinched in my chair—my tough guy act vanishing—as he stabbed the knife down into the table. The hilt quivered to a stop. “You think you can provoke me into killin’ you quick, you’re wrong.”

He rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “But I’ll make you a deal, Smitty … You cut that bait out of my whore’s belly and feed it to Big George and I’ll have my boys shoot you; you don’t, I’ll hang you from the deck rail and let him eat you from the toes on up.” He shrugged extravagantly. “Can’t say fairer than that, now can I?”

Behind him, Grace said: “Horace, please—”

“Whore!” Croker roared. “You’ll shut your hole if you know what’s good for you!”

I stared at the knife on the table before me.

Glanced up at Grace—couldn’t hold her gaze—dropped my eyes to her belly.

She wasn’t showing … Would that make it any easier?

I tore my eyes away, horrified. Christ, had I even considered it?

I found myself looking at the knife again.

“No …” Grace whimpered, seeing what I meant to do before I did.

Croker watched me with ghoulish curiosity. As he puffed his cigar, the coal burned red like the eyes of the devil who would greet me in hell if I did what I was thinking. “That’s it,” he coaxed me, “ you just cut that bait on outta there …”

I choked down a cry of shame.

“I’m sorry, Grace …”

My trembling hand reached towards the knife.

“Hold her steady now, boys,” Croker said to Rusty and Lyle. “She’s liable to buck some.” He greedily sucked his cigar, the coal glowing red-hot.

My fingers brushed the hilt of the knife—and then I jerked my hand to the side and snatched up my glass and flung the hooch into Croker’s face. The coal of his cigar ignited the liquor with a violent woof and he screamed as his head burst into flames. Lurching up from his chair, beating at the flames but seeming only to fan them, Croker staggered back into Rusty and Grace. Rusty stumbled off-balance. Grace grabbed his gun hand and started wrestling him for the revolver.

As they fought for the gun, I wrenched the knife from the table and whirled towards Lyle, slashing the blade across his throat, blood erupting from the wound in a scarlet spray. I kicked him back against the piano and the sound he made when he crashed against the keys was the best he’d ever got from the instrument. The gun fell from his waistband and skittered across the floor.

As I scrambled across the room to help Grace, I saw Croker—screaming and beating at the flames, dripping fire in his wake—crash to his knees at the foot of the bar. He grabbed a spittoon and slopped the contents over his head, anointing himself in slobbery brown spit and dousing the flames. A great cloud of smoke billowed from his cindered skull. He slumped facedown to the floor.

Then a bullet whizzed inches above my head and I turned back towards Grace and Rusty. As they fought for the gun, they looked like winos ballroom dancing.

Rusty fired off wild shots that fizzed through the room. Bullets shattered bottles. Liquor flooded to the floor and ignited in the flames that Croker had dripped in his wake. The rain pissing down through the ceiling might well have been gasoline, the speed with which the fire took hold.

Clutching Rusty’s gun hand, Grace raked his wrist with her nails. Rusty howled in pain as she bent back his wrist. He fired his last shot reflexively and his face was shorn away in a brilliant spray of blood and skull and teeth and brains that splattered the ceiling. The faceless man crumpled to the floor at her feet.

I dragged Grace into my arms. Not knowing where to kiss her without causing her more pain, I just held her against me as the room burned around us. I stroked her hair and whispered in her ear that never once had I truly considered cutting the child—our child—from her belly. I prayed she believed my lies.

She raised her head from my chest. “The money?”

“It can wait,” I said.

Maybe not for long—the bar was burning fast—but it would have to.

Croker was still alive.

He was crawling through the smoke and fiery ash towards Lyle’s gun. I let him lay a paw on the pistol before I stepped on his hand. I ground my heel and his knuckles crunched like gravel and he gave a wheezing cry. I wrenched the gun from his broken fingers and gave it to Grace. Then I kicked Croker onto his back.

His head was a smoldering chunk of barbecued meat, his ears melted nubs, his nose seared flat to his face, carved with slits I guessed were nostrils. His skull was blistered and cracked and tufted with patches of singed hair. His cigar stub was fused to his bottom lip. I guessed he didn’t mind that. He was never without a damn stogie in his mouth anyway. The lids of his left eye had melted together like a fleshy pirate patch; his other eye glared at me hatefully. “I’ll see you in hell,” he said. Not very original, but it clearly pained him to say even that much. The flames must have burned down his gullet as he was screaming; his voice sounded as cooked as his face looked.

I nodded at him. “You be sure to save a seat for me.”

Then I grabbed him by the ankles, meaning to drag him outside onto the deck. His wooden leg tore away from his thigh, and I stumbled and fell, landing heavily on my ass, clutching the limb with a look of surprise. Croker gave a bark of throaty laughter. I had to admit it was pretty damn funny. I started laughing too. Even Grace had an uneasy smile on her face. Soon we were all roaring with laughter.

Croker was still cackling—a laughter tinged with madness—even as I clubbed him with his own wooden leg, and the straps and buckles scourged his face and lacerated his hands like a cat-flail; even as I herded him outside, and he crabbed across the deck to the rail; even as I tossed his wooden leg down into the pond and Big George shattered it to sawdust with a snap of his jaws.

Then the laughter stopped and the tears started.

“Please, Smitty—I’m begging you, son—not like this.”

I dragged him to his feet—his foot—leaned him back against the deck rail.

And then I gave him a good hard shove.

Croker tumbled back over the rail. The last thing I saw before I turned away was Big George rising from the pond with his maw open wide to catch his old friend. Croker had been wrong; there
was
something Big George liked more than ‘gator bait’ after all.

The bar was an inferno.

So much for the perfect murder. We’d have to take what money we could and hope it was enough to bury us somewhere Croker’s gangster pals wouldn’t find us and buried us for real.

Beating back the flames with a wet tablecloth, I charged the office door with my shoulder, knocking it down off its hinges. I stumbled inside the room, catching my balance against Croker’s Hot Seat. The floorboards wobbled beneath me and I remembered what Grace had told me about the trapdoor. It had seemed like something from a bad pulp book, but I wasn’t taking any chances now; I scuttled off the ratty rug the chair was nailed to. Then, shouting to be heard above the roaring flames, I called to Grace to fetch a bag for the money. I tore that hateful painting off the wall and flung it aside and there was the safe. Praying Croker hadn’t changed the combination—the man was arrogant enough, I didn’t think he would have—I dialed it into the safe, the lock yielded with a clang, I dragged the heavy steel door open, and there was the money. All of it. And more. Croker clearly hadn’t put his faith in banks.

I laughed and called to Grace, “Better make that two bags—”

And then a chain of firecrackers
pop-pop-popped
behind me. The breath was punched from my lungs and I pitched forwards with a grunt of pain. I glanced down to see the front of my shirt blooming with blood. My knees buckled and I clutched the open door of the safe before my legs collapsed beneath me. I turned and saw the smoking gun in Grace’s hand. Lyle’s gun. The gun I had given her.

Then my sweaty grip slid away from the safe door and I keeled towards Croker’s desk and collapsed down into the recliner. Sucking for air in agonizing gasps, I tore open my shirt and tried in vain to staunch the wounds. Blood gushed through my missing fingers. My hands fell away and dropped to my lap.

My eyelids grew heavy, my head started drooping; I could feel the big sleep coming. In my weakening state, I could only watch as Grace emptied the bundles of cash from the safe and stacked them neatly inside a leather Gladstone bag. Barely able to breathe, let alone talk, I tried willing Grace to look at me, but she wouldn’t. She was all business—just like her mentor, Chauncey Clyde must have taught her. She clasped the bag shut and then turned to leave the office and me for dead. I gutted down the pain, and managed to croak: “Grace …”

She paused at the door, turning around and looking at me with all the warmth of someone checking their shoe for dog dirt, and as we looked in each other’s eyes, I’d never known an understanding like it.

“The baby?” I said, knowing the answer already.

She came towards me, resting the bag on the Hot Seat and smiling at me like
I
was the baby. She placed her hand on her belly. “Who says it’s yours?”

I gave a grudging snort of admiration; blood spattered my chin.

She’d played me better than I ever played the piano.

As she turned to leave, with the last of my strength I reached down and hauled back the lever under Croker’s desk—just where she’d said it was—and Grace dropped through the trapdoor with a falling dream-gasp, and landed with a splash in the pond.

For a moment, I wondered if Big George had lost his appetite.

Then the screaming started.

I sank back into the recliner, watching as tongues of fire began licking inside the office, devouring the painting I’d flung to the floor, and the bag of money Grace had left behind. As I watched the banknotes burn to cinders that swirled in fiery motes about the room, I wondered what would kill me first, the bullets or the flames; or maybe Big George would clamber up through the trapdoor and finish the job? It didn’t matter. Where I was going there’d be plenty of everything: fire, teeth and pain. And who cared? Me and Grace and Croker and Big George … There could be nothing worse waiting for us all in hell.