It's Up to Charlie Hardin – eARC (17 page)

CHAPTER 17:

THE HAUNTED BANK

The Ice House had grown as the town grew. Before Charlie’s time it had been a tiny office that clung to a windowless insulated shed crammed with nothing but blocks of ice; big blocks, little blocks, fill-your-car’s-trunk sized blocks. The place reeked pleasantly with the smoky perfume of cork insulation. Buyers who could not yet afford a newfangled electric refrigerator during the 1920s hauled blocks of ice home to their oldfangled iceboxes, metal-lined wooden chests where perishables were cooled.

Then, as war approached and income rose in the late 1930s, more refrigerator owners bought less ice. The storekeeper, an old Danish immigrant, began to sell a wider range of goods as well. The tiny office grew like a farm shack, bit by bit, and managed to compete against regular grocery stores by staying open until late, stocking small amounts of everything from hardware to fireworks and aspirin.

Charlie’s earliest half-forgotten experiences included fumbling open the latch of the cork-lined Hardin icebox at age three to steal a gob of butter whenever he could toddle to the kitchen unwatched and plunge his fat little fist into the stuff for licking. By now the family icebox was long gone. He could not have explained why he loved shopping—and inhaling—in the Ice House, with its corky musk that would linger as long as the building stood.

The old Dane storekeeper was not mutt-friendly, and Charlie knew it. Repeating “Sit!” the necessary three times that said he really,
really
meant it, Charlie pressed Lint’s rump down on the Ice House’s concrete porch for good measure and followed Aaron to the soft-drink cooler that squatted on the porch just outside the office. No one else was inside but the proprietor. Lint stayed in place, but stared back down the street muttering canine curses to himself. Aaron pulled a Hires root beer from the ice-filled cooler and entered the shop, then began to scan the shelf of candy bars with a barely audible hello to the owner. Charlie, keeping his pretense of not-shopping-with-the-other-kid, stepped inside the shop holding a bottle of Delaware Punch before he heard shoes scuffing on cement and heard Lint’s rising growl.

A glance through small panes of the single window told Charlie that the runner in overalls now stood wavering on the cement porch, glaring down wild-eyed as he aimed kicks at something Charlie had never seen and scarcely imagined. It was an enraged Lint protecting the doorway, ears flattened, eyes slitted nearly shut, neck ruff standing on end as he dodged kicks; he bared his teeth at a stranger in ferocity that could not be misunderstood, and the message was plain:
“This far but no farther, for I am not
this
man’s best friend.”

With something between a snarl and a bark Lint dodged another kick while backing away a few inches. Charlie had no idea who the kicker was. He darted back to the doorway, horrified, with a cry of, “No, Lint! Hey, wait, he’s my dog,” making a dangerous mistake by dropping to his knees to hug the furious terrier. Many another dog in a mood sweeter than Lint’s might have bitten anyone, even his own lord and master, who fell over him at such a moment.

Lint was not one of those dogs. Since leaving the gray bungalow, he had done everything but grab a piece of chalk in his teeth and draw little doggy diagrams to tell the boys they had alerted someone who was up to no good. His nose had told him when this man, while inside that house, had identified himself, without intending to, the way dogs do on purpose against a fireplug, and that same signature was on these overalls. A faint groan from inside the bungalow had given Lint’s ears a detail that human ears could not decode, and this man’s wheezing had made that groan, and Lint had heard the same wheeze following the boys from afar, all the way to this spot. Though Charlie might know many things that were beyond his dog, in this matter Lint was the expert. He flinched as Charlie grabbed him, but he did not bite.

Aaron, surrendering his bottle of root beer to be opened while holding a candy bar, was about to ask the owner if he still carried those tiny one-cent packs of Yan Kee Boy firecrackers under the counter. In Aaron’s other hand was his travesty of a twenty-dollar bill, and the old Dane’s first glance at it told him that this would be absolutely, positively No Sale.

When Charlie hurtled outside shouting, the commotion unnerved Aaron so much he dropped his candy bar and spun on his heel, bursting outside with the bill forgotten but still in his hand.

The Dane had ruled his tiny kingdom for longer than Charlie’s years and knew perfectly well who these two kids were. Not by name, but by their familiarity. They sold him discarded bottles for honest pocket money; they argued and joked together while they shared candies; and they had never tried to shoplift so much as a blob of Fleer’s bubble gum. Now, to see one of them offer an obviously bogus bill of high value astonished him beyond words. He assumed the dog belonged with the boys, and ordinarily any dog in combat with a customer would be met with his broom. But through the window he recognized the man in overalls—one who apparently cut his hair with a lawnmower and combed it with a leaf-rake—as the one who occasionally bought a bag of Bull Durham tobacco for cigarettes and whose breath could stun bees in flight. In the Dane’s mature opinion, the dog was the better customer. With a wordless shout, he rushed to the doorway.

Cade Bridger did not like dogs, because dogs did not like Cade Bridger. After running a few blocks in half-drunken panic without knowing what he intended to do when he arrived, Bridger did not like anyone of any species, least of all the terrier squinting at him as he reached the porch. When the dog growled, Bridger aimed a mighty kick to clear his way to the open door forgetting that a drunken sot needs both feet firmly beneath him. He would never quite understand how he managed the next few seconds.

One of the boys appeared on the porch hovering on all-fours over the dog, shouting something, and abruptly a bad joke of a twenty-dollar bill fluttered from the boy’s hand to the cement, and then it was in Bridger’s hand as he squatted to snatch it in the doorway. Lurching to his feet, he confronted the second boy, who faced him so near Bridger could have embraced him, but the kid threw up a hand to ward him off—and that hand held the other counterfeit bill!

In an eyeblink of time, blotto as he was, Bridger snatched that second accusing bill with a shout of, “Gimmethatthing!” and reeled away with a bill in each hand, missing the step from the porch to sprawl headlong on the sidewalk while the terrier began to bark furiously. Bridger couldn’t be certain his recovery of those bills had been noticed by the portly old fellow who appeared bellowing in the doorway, but he was certain he had no further business at the little store today; for that matter, maybe not ever again. With this scrap of good sense rattling around in his skull by itself, Bridger lurched to his feet again intending to get out of sight as soon as humanly, drunkenly possible.

But alcohol works pretty much the same awful magic tricks on all men, including Bridger. Just five minutes before this he had been guzzling his favorite poison, and it takes a few minutes for alcohol to worm its way from a man’s stomach to his brain, which meant that with every moment Bridger was soused worse than he was the moment before. An amateur of alcohol, with this much of it in him, might have blundered into a hedge or pitched over to break his head on the sidewalk. But this was a man with years of experience in his condition, practically a specialist at it. Somehow Bridger managed to stagger upright.

The soonest way out of sight was to get behind the Ice House, and he made it in five bumbling steps, but he could hear a lot of loud commentary, including the dog who seemed to have a lot to say and not much of it approving. A few paces behind the little building lay a brush-covered slope leading to the creek with its trees and meadows, and tribes of boys had worn a path so clear not even a dolt like Bridger could miss it, though he was seeing double by now.

But he could flounder into bushes several times on his way along the path, the last time losing one work shoe in the ankle-deep mud of Shoal Creek, so that he was obliged to stick the counterfeit bills in his mouth because he couldn’t find his pockets. Besides, he needed both hands to scramble toward that big, dark, broken storm sewer that he knew would lead him back to the familiar welcome of his Wawdeeos.

The old storekeeper was no fool, and knew better than to charge off in pursuit of an arm-waving drunk when armed with only a broom. His two young customers seemed only shaken up, and their spirits improved when he gave them free soft drinks. The dog took more time to settle down. If his master had released him there might have been a chase ranging along the creek.

“Dat man,” said the Dane, leaning on his broom, fixing the boys with a firm gaze as they sat nursing sodas, their feet off the porch as Charlie patted and soothed his terrier. “You boys know him?” He couldn’t bear to ask point-blank if one of them might be kin to the thief.

The slender boy shrugged, then shook his head. The boy holding the dog muttered, “Nossir.” Then with a glance that included his friend he added, “You know, I bet he followed us all the way from the bank. Maybe that’s why Lint kept growling.”

“Dat money, den,” the Dane probed. “Not from any bank, neh. Yours, or his?”

As if they had practiced a duet, the boys looked at each other, blinked in a pantomime of considering something new, then said together, “I dunno.” The dogless one went on, “We found it, and we wanted to see what it’s worth.”

“Maybe it was his after all,” said the doggy one. “Durn sure swiped it like he thought it was.”

“And you try to see vat it vas vort’ in my store, hah?” The boys shared a longer glance, and finally the dog-boy nodded. “I tell you vat it’s vort’;
long time in prison
,” the old man thundered. The boys’ heads lowered between their shoulder blades; they looked toward their feet, but found no help there.

After a long silence, the Dane went on more quietly: “I see him before. But today dat fellow act like a crazy man, boys.”

“Yessir, and his breath stunk like rubbin’ alcohol,” said the dogless one. “Made my eyes water.”

The Dane thought about that briefly. “Neh, drinker’s alcohol, you bet. But he knew vat he came for, and he took it. Yep, I tink he vas yust after your fake money.” Another pause before, “Vere you find dat stuff?”

The dog-boy took a long time choosing his words: “Real close to a haunted bank.”

The Dane knew that American kids used a lot of strange slang, but this soared miles above strange. “Haunted bank,” he said, trying the idea on for size.

“Yeah, real close,” said the other. “We don’t actually know if the bank’s haunted. For rent, though. Says so on the sign.”

The Dane moved back to the stool next to his cash register, drawing the boys through the doorway by personal osmosis. He was half-convinced that this whole incident had been some vast, childish practical joke of the kind that fun-loving Americans played on one another. Perhaps he should settle back on his stool and dismiss all this foolishness and stoke his long-stemmed pipe and enjoy the rest of his day. And yet . . .

Yet the man had been falling-down drunk, in no mood for joking, and intent on his getaway the instant he had the counterfeit bills in his grasp. The Dane tried to imagine such a spectacular clown following two boys and a dog all the way from a downtown bank, but his imagination refused the assignment. And all the banks were downtown, and whoever heard of a bank with a “for rent” sign? “Boys, vat bank vas dis?”

Two shrugs. After a second thought, Dogless said, “Ol’ empty house, couple of blocks away. We call it that ’cause it’s where they print the money.”

The Dane sighed. “De haunted bank, hah? Only not haunted, and not a bank. Still, dey print money. You know de house number, boys?” Twin shrugs again. “I bet he see you find dat money. People vit money like dat go to prison.”

“We went and knocked because we wanted to ask about it,” said Dogboy. “We even went twice. Then we came here because nobody was ever there.”

“You stay avay from dere,” the Dane said sternly, maybe too sternly.

Dogboy: “What d’you think he’d do?”

Without a word, but with a maniac’s wide-eyed glare, the old man drew his forefinger across his throat. Slowly. The boys stared at each other. The next instant brought a two-boy-and-a-dog stampede, leaving the Dane alone with his thoughts.

He served a few customers during the following hour, then filled his pipe with Prince Albert and hid his face in a wreath of smoke for a bit of contemplation. Every question he asked himself about the morning’s excitement led to an answer involving innocent—well, relatively innocent—kids and a guilty counterfeiter. A guilty and drunk counterfeiter. A guilty and drunk and possibly very dangerous counterfeiter, who upon sobering up would realize that a certain European-born storekeeper might figure out who and where and what was going on here. The lives of those boys might be in the same danger. With these facts in hand, any bright citizen would know enough to contact the police. And the old Dane was as smart as they come.

But he was not a citizen. He had learned English in Canada before seeking warmer winters, back in a time when Texas officials did not ask a bushel of embarrassing questions of honest working men. Like many immigrants, he had made himself useful, even prosperous. For many years he seldom thought much about his citizenship, or rather his lack of it. This war had brought many disturbing changes, though, and a man without proper legal papers was wise to avoid the notice of lawmen. To make matters worse, when that drunken fool ran off, he took the evidence with him. The old Dane could do nothing more than plead his case, in broken English.

He must contact the police.

He must not contact the police.

* * *

They had covered a quarter-mile of creekside trail far past the storm drain, with Aaron in the lead, before Charlie called, “Why are you running?”

“Because you are,” Aaron called back.

“But you’re ahead, guy. Only one chasing you is me.”

Aaron risked a glance behind them, then slowed. “Durn.”