Smugglers Notch Read online

  He patted his pockets. “Damn, I must’ve left my wallet in my other pants.”

  She frowned at him, her mouth slightly ajar, not caring if he looked all he wanted at the braces as long as he got the message. “You mean I’ve got to void this? It’s only my fourth night working here. I hardly know how to work the register.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to.” Conklin grabbed her arm, and the girl yanked away. “I like you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “You’d better go, mister. I’m calling the cops.”

  Conklin pulled the .32. “I don’t like you that much. Get over here.”

  There were tears in her eyes, but he didn’t hear sobs. She went around the counter and he marched her outside, showing her off as if he had won her trading horses with the Sioux. “Hey, guys,” he said. “Look what I got.”

  Mel snickered. “A blonde. Since when is that your type?”

  “Stuff’s all the same.” He shoved her in the truck and Walker slid over to make room. “I almost forgot,” he said, and ran back to the store. “The food.”

  He was searching behind the counter for paper bags when the door chimed and two gray-haired women in Stratton Mountain ski parkas went straight for the ice cream freezer and brought over a half-gallon. “Hot enough for you ladies?” he said, and waited for smiles that didn’t come.

  One of the women put a twenty down. “How much?”

  He scraped frost from the carton and found the price, made change from the register. “I’m all out of fives,” he said, “Mind singles?”

  The woman was fumbling in her bag. She handed him a coupon. “With this?”

  “Why didn’t you say something before?” He tore the coupon and pushed back the twenty with the ice cream. “The cherry vanilla’s on me today,” he said. “Now scram.”

  Looking over their shoulders, the women walked out to a green Dodge. Conklin filled three bags and emptied the register and caught up with the van as Mel was backing off the lot.

  Walker shook out all the bags. “One thing you’re still forgetting.”

  “What’s that?” Conklin asked as his brother slammed the brakes.

  “Shirts.”

  The girl was hunched between Walker and Stark, trying to look like she wasn’t there. Conklin offered a beer and she surprised him by twisting off the cap and taking a long gulp. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Brenda Jarvis.”

  “Brenda … Brenda … That’s not from the old testament, is it?”

  “What? No, I don’t think so.” She squeezed smaller as Conklin sat next to her. “You robbed the store, didn’t you? What are you going to do with me?”

  “Don’t look so scared.” He patted her knee innocently. “We’re just going for a ride in the mountains, have that picnic.”

  “You’ll let me go then?”

  He showed her the good smile. “How old are you, Brenda?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “You don’t look nineteen. But it’s good you’re older, probably been around the block a few times.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “We just broke out of prison, been there a long time.” He opened a bottle for himself. “I’m sure I’m speaking for the rest of the guys when I say beer’s not all we missed.”

  Her face was wet with tears, but still she didn’t whimper. He wondered what it would take to hear her really cry. Maybe after they were done with her he would scare her some more with the gun, shoot her if she was going to be stubborn about it.

  They stayed with 9 till they were in the country again, and then Conklin directed his brother southeast over hidden farm roads. When they returned to 7, he slid over the engine hump and tapped Munson on the shoulder. “You ride in back now, I want to sit with Mel.”

  The burglar swung reluctantly out of the seat and stepped over Stark’s legs to the vacant spot by the girl. Walker made him a sandwich, and he sniffed at it with a sick face. Through the rear window he made out the worn summits of the Taconic range falling away from the highway to showcase the moon. He shut his eyes and stretched out, his feet tangling in Walker’s. “It’s too damn crowded in here,” he grumbled.

  “Won’t kill you,” Conklin said.

  “There’s no reason for us to be uncomfortable.” He wedged an ankle under the girl’s and was able to spread his legs a few inches apart. “What do we need her for? She’s just taking up room … and groceries.”

  “You heard why. Course, if you’ve got things you’d rather do …”

  “Yeah,” Mel said, “don’t worry about her being bored and lonely.”

  He saw the girl watching him hopefully. But if she thought she was the issue she was mistaken. Under different circumstances he wasn’t certain that he would not be lining up for a chance at her, staking his claim to a portion of her misery. “Our job is to put ourselves as far from here as we can,” he said, “not waste time with her.”

  “You call that wasting time?” Conklin laughed.

  Munson bit into his sandwich. “Fucking idiot,” he said with his mouth full.

  “Stop the truck, Mel. Stop right now. I’ve taken all the shit I’m gonna.”

  The van slowed. They went another half-mile before they found a muck lane through bushes still dappled with snow and followed it to a pool of black water, a quarry edged in blocks of flawed marble. Munson felt the girl tense against his body and was paralyzed by the softness of her breasts, enjoyed it almost as much as seeing Conklin seethe.

  “It’s time we settled this like men.”

  “The problem,” Munson said, “is you’re not much of a man.” He looked at Walker, but the weight lifter was busy with the beer, and the point was lost on him. “And a fistfight and a gangbang aren’t going to make you one.”

  “Get out,” Conklin said.

  Munson searched for a likely peacemaker, but only Stark was not hostile to his cause. “Better do it,” he whispered. “If he doesn’t get his way, you know we’ll be here all night.”

  Munson went out to a clearing littered with plastic sixpack yokes and ashes from clandestine fires. Conklin was waiting under birches twinned from a scorched trunk, looking slight and unprepared. Munson struck a boxer’s left-hand lead, and the boy backed off and darted behind the trees.

  “What are you trying to prove?” Munson said. “You don’t know how to fight.”

  “That’s what another tough guy thought.” Conklin dashed into a puddle of light from the van’s single high beam. With his audience pressed against the windshield, he drew the .32 and held it away from his body. “It’s my choice of weapons, and I pick guns. Where’s yours, Munson?”

  The burglar dropped his hands. “You’re still an idiot,” he said, and walked away.

  The bullet caught him in the thigh before he heard the shot. He went down too quickly to break his fall, aware only of the pain and the girl shrieking, the screams ending in a strangled cry as a hand was clamped over her mouth. Conklin ran like a spaniel after a duck and stood over him with the gun. As Munson was pushing himself up, a second bullet tore his other leg from under him and he flopped in the dirt.

  “You’re out of your mi—”

  Conklin put the revolver flush against the burglar’s head. “Say something?”

  “My God,” Munson gasped, “show a little mercy. What are we arguing about?”

  The words repelled him, their shape on his lips as awful as the event they were meant to forestall. But he tortured his brain for more like them, for whatever it was the boy wanted to hear. If his life was to be ransomed from the meager self-respect that he had carried away from prison, he was prepared to sacrifice all he had.

  “You listening?” Conklin called to the others. “Hear what he’s saying?” He twisted the muzzle in Munson’s ear. “Go on.”

  “If I said anything to … to offend you, I apologize, really I do. It was just …” Munson propped himself up into a sitting position and touched his wounds. His kneecap was gone and he ra
n his hand desperately over his pants leg trying to find it. Then Conklin spun the cylinder and the burglar recoiled and toppled onto his side. “It’s just I was nervous … plenty scared myself and, you know, I had to—”

  “You had to take it out on someone so you picked on me ’cause I’m the youngest. And ’cause you were jealous of my plan, and my map, and my gang, and how I put it all together. That right, Munson?”

  “Yeah, it’s right.”

  “Now you’re sorry, aren’t you?”

  “… Sorry.”

  “So sorry you’d jump Brenda’s bones just to get on our good side, wouldn’t you?”

  Munson nodded.

  “If she’d let you. I don’t think she’s so sweet on you anymore, Munson. You don’t look real suave.”

  The burglar kept nodding, a blank check for the boy.

  “And you’d like me to take you to a doctor so you don’t bleed to death here, which looks like it’s starting to happen. That right, too?”

  Munson’s head didn’t stop.

  “What? I didn’t hear.”

  “I said yes.”

  “Yes, please, Munson. Say that.”

  “… Please.”

  “Okay, I’m not going to be a hardass about it. Get in the truck and we’ll find you a hospital.”

  Munson pushed against the ground, but fell back again. “I … can’t, I …”

  “You better start moving,” Conklin said. “Mel’s getting itchy to hit the road.”

  “Can’t get up …”

  “Then crawl.”

  Munson, starting to slip into shock, saw only the gun and the boy behind it. He was aware of the others, but the public loss of his dignity seemed a fair price for an end to his pain. He imagined himself tossing a handful of soil in the boy’s eyes and then kneeing him in the crotch, choking the life out of him the way he’d seen it done in a thousand movies. Then Conklin motioned to him with the .32, and he wriggled onto his belly and clawed at the earth. “Can’t move,” he said. “My legs …”

  Conklin seemed to be studying the problem with him. “You’re smart, you’ll find a way.”

  Munson lowered his head. He dragged himself along the ground, seizing greedily at each handful of earth that inched him closer to the truck. His fingers were, bleeding, his mouth sour with limestone grit. The side door opened. An arm reached out to him, and he put his chin in the mud and slithered toward it. But when he looked up again, Conklin was standing over him, blocking the way.

  “Know something, Munson? You were right all along.”

  “Wha—?”

  Conklin grinned, giving him the happy look again. “It is too crowded,” he said, and emptied the gun in the burglar’s head.

  Conklin heard the girl scream, but only for an instant. He walked around Munson’s body, making sure every part of him was dead, then flipped him onto his back. The truck started and wheeled around, the headlights tracing shimmering parabolas that converged on the man in the dirt. A look of surprise had congealed on his mouth. It was tempered with embarrassment, as though he were ashamed anyone should see him like that.

  “He dead?” Mel asked.

  “No, he’s faking it.” Conklin patted down the burglar’s pockets, but found nothing he wanted. “’Course he’s dead. Think I missed?”

  “What do we do with him now?”

  Conklin leaned into the light, examining the drag marks in the wet earth. He shrugged. “Throw him in the water.”

  Mel knelt over the body and straightened the limbs. He saw a spot of blood on his own pale skin and daintily nudged his sleeves up over his elbows. He was waiting for his brother to tell him what to do, but Conklin seemed absorbed with something by the pool. “You’re the one that shot him,” Mel said. “Ain’t you going to help?”

  “Hold your horses,” Conklin said. “If we drop him in the way he is, he’ll float around like the duck in your tub. What we want to do is weight him down, anchor him on the bottom.”

  “You mean like with rocks?”

  Conklin shivered. Suspecting a failure of nerve, he rubbed his hands against the gooseflesh on his arms and was relieved to find he was cold from the night air. He went inside the truck. The girl was wedged between Walker and Stark, whose hand was still over her face, the snub nose protruding under his thumb. “I’ll take her now, Jeff,” he said. “Go out and play with my brother.”

  He squatted in the trusty’s place and reached across to Walker. “Archie, make me a bologna and cheese, hold the mayo.” The weight lifter was surrounded by empty beer bottles and made no indication that he had heard. “If you’re not too busy …”

  Half a sandwich was clamped in Conklin’s teeth as he dragged the girl outside, shoved her toward the body. “What do you think of him now?” he asked, chewing. “Hot stuff, ain’t he? Hot stuff, except he’s cold.”

  She began to sob. The show of emotion excited him, but he took little pleasure from it, less as he considered the reason for her tears. He gave her back to Stark and went over to talk to his brother. With the trusty’s help Mel had constructed a small cairn beside the burglar and was working on a second one.

  “I didn’t say you should build him the Lincoln Memorial.” Conklin kicked over the pile of stones and stuffed the smallest inside the dead man’s pockets. The larger ones went in Munson’s pants. Mel took a shoulder and they dragged the body to the edge of the pool.

  “It’s not what you would call a Christian burial,” Conklin said. “But, tell you the truth, I don’t believe Mr. Munson was a real Christian.”

  He dug his foot under the burglar’s hips and levered him over the edge. The body dropped into the water without making much of a splash and went under, jackknifed at the waist.

  Mel brushed his hands on his pants. “I guess that’s that,” he said.

  “Well, maybe one more thing.” Conklin unzipped his pants and stood over the water. Mel smiled and began to walk away, not getting very far before he heard his brother yell, “Shit,” the word echoing off marble slabs that rose like giant stairs over the quarry. Conklin pointed into the center of the pool where Munson bobbed face down at the heart of a Chinese puzzle of ripples.

  “What do we do with him now?” Mel asked.

  Conklin skimmed a flat stone across the surface, barely missing the body. “Pretend he’s doing the dead man’s float. We wasted enough time on him already.”

  Stark brought the girl over with an arm bent behind her back. He made her promise that she wouldn’t run away and then let go, and she took off for the trees. The trusty caught up before she had gotten very far and ran alongside her, saying, “Faster, faster.” Tiring of the game, he tripped her up and walked her back to Conklin.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

  “You know what, Brenda.”

  The girl backed off as far as Stark let her. She glanced into the van where Walker was staring back through the windshield. “All … all of you?”

  “First time around,” Conklin said. “We’ll see who wants to be your boyfriend, get it narrowed down.”

  She hit out at him with her free hand, slapping punches that connected with his cheek. When he didn’t react except to laugh, she tried to kick him in the shins. Then she began to scream. Conklin listened, rubbing his face. He liked that, liked it lots better than all the bleating over Munson. But then it looked like she never was going to stop and he had to tell her, “Shut up, Brenda. Will you please shut up?”

  The girl screamed louder.

  “Mel,” Conklin said, “turn the radio on. See if you can drown her out before she breaks my eardrums.”

  “I was wondering when you were gonna ask.”

  Conklin went away from the girl. He wanted to look at Munson again, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He saw his brother in the driver’s seat leaning over the dashboard. Then Mel came outside looking like the messenger who gets killed bringing the bad news.

  “Now what’s the matter?” his brother asked. “Don�
�t they have the kind of music puts you in a romantic mood?”

  “I didn’t hear music. They got Graham on, talking about how you crashed out.”

  Conklin strutted into the light. “That right?”

  “Uh-huh. And then a couple of old biddies telling the reporter how you were gonna kill them.”

  “What biddies?”

  “From the convenience store. They said you kidnapped the clerk and you were gonna snatch them, too, but they ran out before you could.”

  “I’d like to hear them say that to my face,” Conklin said. “Those dumb shits, I wouldn’t take them if they begged me.”

  “They weren’t so dumb. They were watching you all the time, getting an eyeful till you jumped in a blue Chevy van—in case that sounds familiar. They said it went west out of town, and now half of Vermont’s looking for it.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Well, you better. The reporter said they got roadblocks set up all across the southern part of the state and how it’s only a matter of time before they find us ’cause the border’s sealed off with Massachusetts and New York.”

  “Jeff,” Conklin said calmly, “put Brenda in the truck. We’ll make time for her later.”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  Conklin looked around the quarry. “We could spend the night here,” he said, thinking out loud, “but they’d find us for sure in the morning. It’d be better if we get new wheels before it’s light, take them north, maybe all the way to Canada.” He walked to the edge of the pool and watched the body drifting lazily in the black water. “Got to give you credit, Munson,” he said. “You were right about that, too.”

  12

  ANNIE ARCHED HER BACK, stamped her fingerprints in the springy flesh of his shoulders. “Don’t,” she whispered with her lips against his ear. “Please, don’t.”

  “Somebody could be dying.”

  “I’ll die if you … please, Larry … don’t.”

  His hand came back to her. She locked her ankles around him, hips rolling again with the steady chug of his body. She opened her eyes and was glad for the darkness that hid their different kinds of disappointment. The phone went silent. She felt herself come alive, responding, matching her rhythms to his. But then the ringing filled her head again and Larry groped for the receiver. She shoved him away. What had begun in such perfect intimacy had degenerated into a wrestling match. She wondered what she saw in such a lug.