End of the Road (3 page)

The morning drags on with nothing new. Even
the news in the paper is the same old thing. Stories about the war
in Europe where they don’t really tell you anything take up the
first five pages. The next two about the Pacific. Again, heavily
censored. Even the big city of Chicago is quiet.

“
Where are you
going?”

“
Out to lunch, doll.” I
spin and give a weak smile. “Pick you up anything?”

“
No. I’ll only be here
another couple of hours.”

“
Not stayin’ the whole
day?”

“
No. I have a doctor’s
visit, remember?”

She looks down at her desk and I can see her
shy side, and it is beautiful. I’m fairly certain the rabbit is
going to die for this visit. Pity.

My lunch takes longer than I expect as
O’Malley’s is open early. My favorite bar stool near the heater
leans just to the right, which is good because when I drink, I lean
to the left. It’s a perfect balance. As I swing the front door open
those long legs are coming down the hall at me. I smile and she
smiles back.

“
I’ll be in at the usual
time tomorrow.” She rests her hand on my arm to steady me, leans in
and gives me a gentle peck on the cheek. “Try and stay out of
trouble till then, please?” Her smile warms me more than the
bourbon I have waiting back in my desk drawer. “Need help back to
your desk?”

I nod politely and smile as her hand brushes
my shoulder. She’s out the door quickly, her red hair disappearing
behind the frosted glass. The hallway light is barely enough to
reflect off the paint. The shallow globes above haven’t been
cleaned in years. I stagger toward my door at the end of the hall
and stop, looking at the glass framed into the dark oak door. I can
barely read the words etched into its surface, but I don’t need to.
I know what it says. Twenty years of my name scratched into that
door and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. Bobby Hale,
Private Investigator, schlep!

I awake as a bright moon beams through my
grimy window adding its light to my dim office. I look down and see
my Luckies staring back at me. The craving hits and hits hard.
Alcohol goes hand in hand with smokes. It’s a funny thing. One
feeds off the other. It’s a vicious circle. I rub my eyes with my
fists then reach down and tap a slim out and it quickly finds my
lips. The moon’s light now brightens the pale smoke as its brother
did twelve hours ago. My throat is still raw from the whiskey at
O’Malley’s. I guess a hair of the dog is what’s needed.

I hear a low thud, the sort of sound one
notices when all else is quiet. Its vibration carries down the hall
and into my office. I know that noise; the bottom of the front door
sticking against the floor as it opens. That’s not something I
normally hear this late at night.

The thought of a smooth shot of bourbon
quickly slips from my mind. I lean back in my chair scanning for
the holster taped beneath the right side of the desk. It’s empty,
my .38 nowhere to be found. I blink and am immediately as sober as
I’ve been all day. I squirm as an uneasiness settles over me. This
doesn’t feel right. I rifle through the drawers, pulling them in
and out as fast as I can. It’s gotta’ be here somewhere. Nothin’.
The blue haze of smoke parts as my door creaks open slowly and I
hear the telltale sound of a gun’s hammer locking in place.

“
Good evening, Mr. Hale.” I
look up at the sound of the voice, its owner silhouetted against
the dull light of the hallway. “Nice to see you again.”

“
Do I know you?” I lean
back in my chair hearing the spring squeak. It does little to mask
my heart pounding in my chest. I can feel the beads of sweat
building on my forehead.

“
You should, Mr. Hale. You
should.” The tall figure slips in closing the door halfway behind
him.

“
Can’t say that I do.” I
lean back in the chair trying to seem relaxed. “I do recognize your
friend there. Colt, I believe is his name.”

“
Very funny Mr. Hale. You
always had a keen sense of humor.”

“
Care to meet mine?” I lean
forward grabbing the near-empty bottle still on the desk from the
morning. “Mr. Beam.” I hoist the bottle and shrug, setting it back
down. I sure would hate to lose the last drink to this mook. “Care
for a swig?”

“
Thank you, no.”

“
Suit yourself. I prefer to
drink alone anyway.” I reach for the top drawer and immediately see
the Colt raised a little higher in my direction. I nod, pulling the
drawer out and setting it on the desk. “Just my favorite glass for
two fingers.” I lift the glass out, placing it next to the bottle
and slide the drawer back into its hole.

“
You don’t remember me?
Really?”

I hear the snide attitude in his remark as I
shake my head no and he lowers his enforcer. My jitters remain but
begin to subside at the thought of a shot sliding into my gut. I
swirl the glass and watch my brown friend coat the sides. I peer
over the edge and study his face. Something about him is familiar;
something from the past.

“
You cost me a lot of money
five years ago Mr. Hale.”

“
How’s that?” I lay the
glass down on the desk without it kissing my lips. I’ve got to keep
a level head as my options look to be few.

“
Do you remember a two-bit
hood named Jacques Bourget?”

“
Name rings a bell. It’s
been some time though.” My mind begins to race as I try to think of
some way out of this. “Somewhere near the river he met his maker.
Yes, from a bridge. A nasty fall.”

“
Yes, nasty
indeed.”

“
What’s that got to do with
me?”

“
Jacques Bourget was my
brother, Mr. Hale. And you killed him.”

“
I did what?” His words not
only caught my attention, they almost sober me up. “I wasn’t
anywhere near him.”

“
Perhaps not, but you
killed him as sure as I’m gonna’ kill you here tonight.”

“
Just how did I kill your
brother, seeing as I wasn’t even there?”

“
Your cop friend, Randy
DeLarose knows. He was there. He killed my brother.”

“
What the hell does that
have to do with me?”

“
You gave that weasel the
goods on Jacques.” His voice gets angrier and he raises his colt
again, pressing it toward me. “Jacques found a way into the bank on
Canal Street. He worked for weeks burrowing to just beneath the
floor.”

“
And as I remember he
almost got away with it.”

“
He did get away with it
Mr. Hale. He got away with over fifty-thousand dollars. It was
perfect. Didn’t you ever wonder why he never made it to court, Mr.
Hale? It was DeLarose what tossed him in the drink, right after
Jacques gave up where he hid the money.”

I look down the hall just as the door begins
to open, the streetlight flooding into the building. I see a
familiar shapely figure shake her coat and begin her sultry walk
down the dim hallway. I feel the lump in my throat grow as Mr.
Lucky here slides down beside the bureau and backs into the
darkened corner. His eyes narrow as he lowers his voice.

“
Get rid of her or yours
won’t be the only head with a hole in it tonight.”

I begin to rise slowly but he waves me back
down with the gun. I get the point. I gotta get her out of here.
She stops just at the edge of the door and peaks in.

“
Still here,
Bobby?”

“
Just cleaning up a few
last minute details.” I clear my throat as I lean back in the
chair. “What are you doing here? How’d the visit go?

“
I won’t know anything for
a few days.” She sounds dejected, her tone not her normal self.
“I’ll just be a minute.”

I hear her rummaging around in the outer
office. It is the longest minute of my entire life as my new friend
just stands in the corner with his colt trained on my head. My
insides still shaking I fire up another Lucky as another light blue
cloud finds the moonlight.

“
Don’t stay too late,
Bobby,” I hear her say as those long legs slide down the hallway.
If I’m lucky I’ll see those gams again tomorrow. If not, well, I
hope things don’t go that way.

“
Very good, Mr. Hale.
There’s no need for three to die tonight.”

“
Three? Who’s the other
unlucky stiff?”

“
Why, your good friend
detective Delarose of course.” He steps back into the dim light
showing his muscle. “Haven’t you wondered why I chose tonight to
visit you?”

“
That had crossed my
mind.”

“
You see, our good friend
the detective met the fishes tonight and I have my money back. In a
fitting tribute I tucked a single dollar into his pocket before he
had his swim. I stashed the rest in my car and I’ll be leaving the
city in a few minutes.”

“
Then why off me, pally?
You’ve got what you always wanted.”

“
Just to end things on a
proper note, Mr. Hale. I do like things tidy, you know.”

The colt rises before me in the dim light of
a cold moonlit night. I stare down the barrel, shaking like never
before as a peculiar thought crosses my mind. I have always been
told you never hear the one that sends you to your maker. A click
and a muffled pop echoes as the door explodes filling my lap with
shards of frosted glass. My eyes wide with fright, my vision locked
on, nothing.

I blink, wondering if this is what heaven
feels like. I feel a heightened chill across my skin when the pale
light of the hallway filters into the blue, smoke-filled room as a
small puddle grows between my legs. I see my heaven-sent angel
through the haze standing before me, her hands wrapped around my
.38. Her soft red hair leans into the office through the missing
glass in the door staring at the bloody lump on the floor in front
of my desk.

“My, my, Bobby. Such nasty friends you
have.” She saunters in and lowers her hands onto the glass-filled
desk. “I’ll be leaving now, with the fifty-gees.” She lays the .38
on the desk and turns, “You coming?”

The End

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Chapter 3

Clay

By Russell Blake

Curtis spit onto the red dirt as he watched
the horizon for tell-tale dust clouds, allowing his eyes to wander
to where he’d left his mark with saliva, the moisture already being
sucked into the thirsty ground, hungry and demanding as it had
always been, for as long as he’d been alive on it. It was a dirt
that coated everything, became a part of a man, stained his
fingernails and gritted between his teeth until at some point a
body didn’t know where the dirt stopped and the person began. Dirt
that was unforgiving, as were the denizens of this arid
badland.

His father had raised him to understand that
he was of the dirt, and would return to it, and that his time
walking on it was temporary, stolen from a cosmos that would allow
him just enough to learn the harsh lessons it taught before it
reclaimed him, just as it had taken everyone before him, and would
take all who came after.

A scorching wind blew across the plain as he
squinted at the point where the sky became the earth, wavy and
distorted from the never-ending heat that was his constant
companion. They were coming. He knew it as surely as he knew the
sound of his own breathing. It wasn’t a matter of if.

Footsteps shuffled behind him, and a
tentative voice, small in the vast expanse, tugged at his
sanity.

“
You need to
eat.”

“
Been eating all my life.
Missing a few bites won’t hurt me much.”

“
I brought you some
water.”

“
Thanks. I told you to get
going, and take the boy with you. What are you still doing
here?”

“
I…I don’t want to
go.”

“
Plenty of folks don’t want
to do what they have to.” Curtis sighed, watched the wet patch
drying like a magic trick, right before his eyes. “It wasn’t a
suggestion, Meg. You need to leave. Now. Pack up, and head south,
to your sister’s place. It’ll be safe there. Go out the back way,
by the well.”

“
Curtis–”

“
Time for talking’s
done.”

“
You don’t have to do this.
Come with us.”

“
Never been much good at
turning tail, Meg,” he said, running a calloused hand over the two
day growth that darkened his chin. “Go on. While there’s still
time.”

He felt fingers on his shoulders, as light
as a butterfly flitting across his sun-bleached shirt, and then he
heard her turn, felt her leaving as though something had sucked his
soul out of him. But he didn’t look back. He couldn’t allow himself
to. There were some things that made a man softer, better even, but
those things had no place out here.

Not today.

When he’d first seen them, riding in
too-tall trucks, arrogant exhausts matching their drunken whooping
as they barreled past him, he’d been mending the fences so the dogs
wouldn’t get out and cause trouble, or worse yet, get hit by the
occasional rancher tearing down the nameless rutted dirt trail that
led south, into a desert that offered nothing but suffering. His
property stretched as far as he could see in both directions, and
the road ran alongside it, tracing its boundary with mechanical
precision. It had been there as long as he’d been alive, and as
long as his father before him, and his father before that. The
road. As permanent as anything in his world, as immutable and
unchanging as the plain itself.