The Deadline (12 page)

He smiled back and waved at her.  She wouldn’t leave.

“She’s still here,” he said to Gilmartin.  “She looks like she’s expecting more.”

“
Mañana, Celestina, mañana.  Gracias
,” Gilmartin hollered again in his bad Mexican accent, and she waddled off toward the motel office.

Morgan handed the bag to Gilmartin, who fished inside and tore off the waxed paper that was neatly wrapped around a homemade hamburger.  The mouth-watering smell of it filled the dirty little space they shared and Morgan suddenly felt hungry.

“Celestina, nice gal, for a Mex.  She brings me food every day,” he said, nibbling at the edges of the saucer-sized sandwich.  “Her old man ran off and left her with five or six
muchachos
to feed.  I give her ten bucks no matter what she brings.  What the fuck else can I spend it on?  Some days, she throws in a hand job for an extra ten-spot.  I guess you could say I was a big tipper.”

Amused by his own humor, Gilmartin cackled a hoarse laugh, then coughed violently into his hand.  After the spell had passed, when he wiped his fingers across his tee-shirt, Morgan saw tinges of blood in the sticky sputum.

“I was twenty-five years old the last time a woman touched my dick.  Can’t hardly remember what it was like to have it get hard as a rock.  Shit, most of the time I can’t get it up at all because of all these fuckin’ pills, so she gets ten bucks for the good-faith effort.  Damn Mexican gals got real soft hands, you know?”

Morgan was a little embarrassed and a little sad for the old man, but tried not to let it show.  He knew he could never understand the deprivation, sexual or otherwise, of almost fifty years in prison.  Now the old man had a month, maybe less, to live, no time for the pretense of romance.

“Where does the money come from?” Morgan asked.

Gilmartin stopped eating after a bite or two.  He searched Morgan’s eyes for a sign that he already knew.

“I had some saved up in prison.  The last five or six years, I tied fishing flies and sold ‘em to a sporting goods place in town.  Takes good eyes, you know, all that tiny work.  Always had sharp eyes.  I got good at it, made some money.  Kept me out of trouble.  Nothin’ wrong with that, is there?”

“How much did you earn for tying flies?”

“Thirty cents on most of ‘em.  Sixty on the whoppers.  Good days, I done maybe ten first-class flies.  Money went straight to my prison account.  Good money, too, for prison.”

Morgan penciled out the math in his notebook.

“Best case, at six bucks a day, you’d do what, a couple thousand bucks a year?  In six years, assuming you didn’t spend any of it, you’d have, at most, twelve thousand bucks,” Morgan asked.

The old man re-wrapped his partially eaten burger in the greasy wax paper and stuffed it back in its bag.  He wiped a dollop of mustard off his finger onto his shorts and scratched his testicles.

“Lost my fuckin’ appetite.  Yeah, it came out maybe seven or eight thousand all together, I reckon.  It adds up.  That kind of money goes a long way in the joint.”

“Mr. Gilmartin, the parole office tells me you left prison with almost seventy thousand dollars.  Where’d you get that kind of money?  It wasn’t from tying Royal Coachmen and Yellow Sallies.”

Gilmartin sucked a piece of food from between his graying teeth, then smiled slyly.

“So, paper boy, you know your fishin’ flies.  And you done more research than lookin’ in them old papers, didn’t you?”

“Mr. Gilmartin, if you don’t intend to tell me everything, there’s no way I can help you.  So far, you haven’t been much help.  Time is running out.  The longer you stall, the less time I have to find out what happened.  Why don’t you start by telling me where you got the money?”

If he heard, he didn’t show it.  Gilmartin dug his finger inside an empty pack of Camels, then tossed it on the floor.  His steely eyes searched all the flat spots within an arm’s reach of where he sat.  Nothing.

Then he spoke as he peeled back the sofa cushion beside him and looked beneath it.

“Well, if you find out, we’ll both know, paper boy.  I haven’t got the faintest fuckin’ idea.  About ten years back, it just started showin’ up in my account.  The warden told me an envelope was left at the front gate with a lot of cash, which they put in my account.  Every year at the same time, the envelope showed up.  Once, there was ten thousand dollars stuffed inside, but most of the time it was less.  Hey, you seen a fresh pack of smokes around here?”

“So you don’t know where it came from?”

“It came from the store across the road.  Camels.”

Morgan was losing his patience with the old man.  He leaned forward, a grave furrow rippling across his forehead as he lowered his voice one angry octave.

“The money you got in prison, not the cigarettes.”

“I’m shittin’ you, paper boy.  You’re too fuckin’ serious.  Jesus, get a sense of humor or you’re gonna die of a stroke before I die of cancer.  If there’s one thing I know about life it’s how to stay in it.  I didn’t survive no fuckin’ forty-eight years in prison by gettin’ steamed about every little goddam thing.”

Morgan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, imperceptibly.

“The money, Mr. Gilmartin.  An inheritance?  A pay-off?  An old investment?  A lottery ticket?  Help me understand how seventy thousand dollars just lands in your lap.”

“My daddy died so poor they put him in one grave with six other dead folks.  Lucky they was all related some way.  Poor folks always are.  I never had no money to start with and the interest on nothin’ is nothin’.  And who’d pay me off?  For what?”

“Maybe to take the fall for a murder?”

Gilmartin found his pack of Camels hidden under some dirty underwear piled capriciously on the floor.  He lit up and savored his first breath of its unfiltered smoke.

“Fuck you, paper boy.  I didn’t do it and if I knew who did, I sure wouldn’t take that secret to my grave.  I’d tell you right here, wouldn’t I?  Why would I come to you to clear my name if I could clear it myself by writing a letter to the goddam governor?  What the hell would keep me from telling you now?  Fear of dyin’?  Don’t make me laugh.  It hurts to laugh.”

It was the first thing Gilmartin had said that Morgan could believe.  He had no reason to protect anyone if he expected to die within a few weeks.  And if it had been a pay-off, why was it being paid so long after the killing?  Convinced as he was that Gilmartin was telling the truth about that much, the money remained a mystery.

“Did anyone ever see this person who left the envelope?”

“Sure, but it was never the same people.  Just some poor junkies hired to deliver the envelope.”

“There was never any note?  Nothing to help you understand where this money came from?”

“Nothing.  Just cold cash in a plain envelope.  Fuckin’ warden wouldn’t let me spend any of it, though.  Just let it sit in my account.  It was like them girls in the magazines, too pretty to touch.  I reckon the warden wanted me to put him in my will, the fuck.”

Morgan watched Gilmartin’s eyes.  Common liars avoided eye contact; expert liars looked right through you.  Gilmartin’s small, slicing eyes were now riveted on Morgan.

“You said it came about the same time every year.”

“Yeah, about this time of year, first week of August.  Always in August.  Ten years, like clockwork.  Always on the same day, too.”

“Always?”

“You think I’d forget?  No fuckin’ way.  It always came on the day that little girl disappeared, August second.”

Morgan glanced at the date window on his watch.

“That’s tomorrow,” he said.

“No shit,” the old man rolled his eyes.  “You went to college to get so observant?”

So Gilmartin’s mysterious windfall
was
related somehow to Aimee Little Spotted Horse’s death. 
One day
.  It was no coincidence, but the puzzle was far from solved.  And Morgan was growing intolerant of the old man’s game of twenty questions.

“I asked if you had any idea why somebody would pay you seventy thousand dollars and you told me you didn’t,” Morgan said, boiling over.  “You think it was a goddam coincidence that it was delivered on that particular day, of all days,
ten years in a row
?  Are you just yanking my chain here?  Goddammit, I’m this close to walking out of here right now.  You can die with this on your head, for all I care.”

Gilmartin swatted the air, dismissing Morgan’s spurt of hostility.

“You didn’t ask me
why
I got it.  You asked me
where
it come from.  A con learns fast to answer only the questions he’s asked and keep his trap shut on everything else.  Ask me better questions and I’ll give you better answers.”

Morgan clenched his jaw and glared back at the old man.

“Do you have any idea who, what, when, where, why or how this money was given to you?  Any idea at all?” Morgan asked in a lower voice.  He was back in control, but his anger was restrained by the barest thread.

“Like I said, I know nothin’ about any of that,” Gilmartin said.  “And it ain’t likely I’ll be seein’ any more of it now that I’m out.  This should be enough to bury my sorry ass, right fine.”

He raised his empty, incised palms toward Morgan as if he were surrendering.  His arthritic fingers looked like gnarled sprouts from a patch of cracked earth.  Morgan glowered at him.

“It came on that day every year, and fuck if I know who did it or why.  There ain’t no more.  End of fuckin’ story.  I swear.”

“You never asked?”

“Sure I asked, but nobody knew nothin’.  Fuckin’ screws.  Why would The Man help a con?  What the fuck did they care?”

A fly flitted around Morgan’s head and he swept his hand in front of his face as it darted toward him.  He studied Gilmartin, who had turned back toward the television.

The old man’s body was wasting away.  His arms and legs looked longer than they were, their joints bulging.  Every few minutes, he flinched in pain.  Holding his breath, he’d press his palm against his abdomen until the discomfort washed through him.

“Are you going to be okay, Mr. Gilmartin?”

“No,” he said.  “I’m gonna die.”

The old man’s dark humor was a morbid comfort to Morgan.  Some light still burned inside him that wasn’t evil.

“Can I get you something?  Medicine?  Water?”

Gilmartin shook his head and closed his eyes as a new surge of pain swelled in him.  Morgan watched his face twist as he stopped his shallow breathing.  The cigarette butt between his fingers fell onto the couch cushion.  Morgan couldn’t snatch it up before it burned a small, pungent hole in the threadbare cover.  He dropped it into an empty mushroom soup can that lay half-submerged in the sink’s dirty water.

A low, tormented groan murmured in Gilmartin’s throat.  After a painful moment of silence, he breathed again, but his eyes were glassy and dispirited.

“Get me two of them red caps on the counter, and one of the big-assed white ones,” Gilmartin said.  “They won’t kill this fuckin’ beast, but they’ll settle it down for a while.”

Morgan sorted through the multi-colored potpourri of pain-killers and empty prescription bottles strewn across the counter.  Tylox, Mepergan-Fortis, Demerol, all analgesics.  Only one bottle remained unopened.  It was placed on the window sill above the putrid sink, safe and waiting:  Morphine tabs.

Morgan rinsed a stained coffee cup under the sputtering tap and filled it with cold water.

“What kind of cancer do you have, Mr. Gilmartin?” he asked as the old man choked down his medicine.

“Lung cancer.  They called it ‘oat-cell’ cancer, as in oatmeal mush.  Fuck if I know why.  The prison docs guess it’s from the smokes, but how the fuck would they know?  I breathed plenty of bad air in the joint.  Lots had death floating in it like dust.  Could be death I sucked in.”

Maybe death does lurk in the air, waiting to be inhaled, Morgan thought.  Gilmartin went on.

“Anyhow, the cancer’s startin’ to bust outta my lung and get into my guts, pancreas, up the asshole, all that.  Can’t do nothin’ about it except take these fuckin’ pain pills and wait for it to kill me, which ain’t gonna be long.”

Cancer could be long or short, but never merciful, Morgan knew.  Bridger had suffered long with his leukemia, and the last few weeks were excruciating.  Morgan prayed that death would steal him away, absolve the little boy’s pain, but it didn’t come quick enough.  When it was over at last, a small, hidden part of Morgan was unburdened.  He never told Claire, but he believed she, too, had prayed for the end to be swift.  It wasn’t.

“You should go to a hospital, maybe get chemotherapy,” he said.

“No way.  I spent most of my life locked up and I ain’t gonna spend the rest of it tied down.  No fuckin’ way.  I’m free now and I’m gonna die free.  No radiation and no chemistry is gonna make me live forever.  Might hurt like a motherfucker, I don’t know, but I ain’t dyin’ closed up from the world, pukin’ and glowin’ in the dark.  Just me, here.  Alone.”

“Dying could be more comfortable in a hospital,” Morgan told him.  “It doesn’t have to be painful.”

Morgan knew he was lying to the old man.  He knew it would hurt, no matter what.

“I’m out now, and I’m stayin’ out.  Not gonna sleep through my last liberty.  No fuckin’ way.  That’s why I’m saving that morphine for the last, to keep the dyin’ from hurtin’.”

Gilmartin fished another cigarette out of his pack.

“Why don’t you quit,” Morgan said.  “The smoking can’t help.”

“What’s it gonna do, kill me?  Dyin’s bad enough without trying to quit smokin’ at the same time.  A man should die with at least one bad habit, or what the fuck was the reason for livin’?”

“Well, it might mean a few more hours, maybe days,” Morgan said.

“Not my style, paper boy.  Every time I got straight, seems like I fucked myself up.  Why stop now?  I even got to the top once, goddammit ...”

Gilmartin clouded up.  His bottom lip quivered as he sucked a long draw on his cigarette.

“The top?” Morgan asked.

“Top of the joint.  It had three tiers, sort of like balconies around the open middle.  A hundred fuckin’ years old, that place.  The heat come from an old steam plant, where I worked when I first got to the joint.  In the winter, when it got cold enough to freeze the evil out of a man, that old steamer would run night and day.  But the heat rose up to the top tier, leavin’ the bottom colder than a witch’s tit.  That’s where the fresh meat started, down at the bottom, with all the Ice Men.”

“The Ice Men?”

“The troublemakers and the baby-fuckers.  The hard cases were always at the bottom, the coldest corner of that Hell.  Yeah, the Ice Men.  The cold only made them harder.  When I first got to the joint, I was there at the bottom and in the first winter, four guys froze to death in their cells.  Couldn’t bury ‘em in the prison graveyard because the ground was froze too solid to dig.  They just parked ‘em in the ice house ‘til spring.”

Gilmartin wiped his nose with the bottom of his tee-shirt.

“Five more winters, I was down there in the hole.  I stayed straight, mostly.  Got to know the color of blue a man turns when he freezes to death, like the sky when it gets washed out by the sun reflectin’ off snow, you know?  Before they died, these guys would see shit that wasn’t there and holler at the moon.  Their minds were all fucked up.  They’d strip off their clothes and die with their eyes wide open.  Crazy assholes.  The Ice Men would carry them out, froze in whatever position they died.  Most was just sitting.”

Victims of hypothermia were often found naked, Morgan knew from hundreds of police reports he’d seen in Chicago winters.  A medical examiner in the city morgue once told him a freezing person suffered terminal hallucinations and, because his internal thermostat was paralyzed by the cold, actually feels warm.  So he takes off his clothes.