“I got one more condition,” said the man. “The owner’s going to know he was burgled by somebody, so I can’t be here in the morning when he opens up, which also means I can’t risk living here anymore. I’ll have to go home with one of you guys.”
Beaumont almost grinned. “He’s got a point there, Yarnell, and since I gave in on the first condition, this one’s all yours.”
“I only got one bed,” said Yarnell, “and me and the missus sleep in that one.”
“I’m easy,” piped up the thin man. “How about a couch in the living room?”
“My wayward nephew has to crash there fairly often.”
“Got a closet?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m good.”
Before Yarnell could say anything more, Beaumont jumped in. “Done. Now open the safe.”
The thin man walked to the desk, turned over the telephone and pointed at a slip of paper taped to the bottom. “There’s your combination.”
“How’d you find that,” inquired Beaumont.
“There’s no television in this place, so when my insomnia kicks in, I have to do something for entertainment. I’ve probably searched the entire funeral home. Several times.”
“I’d have found that piece of paper sooner or later,” murmured Beaumont.
Five minutes later, as Yarnell got to counting out his share of the loot, one thousand and three dollars plus a handful of change, he started doing the math. He had just enough money to pay next month’s rent. “This isn’t gonna work.”
“What doesn’t work?” asked the thin man.
“I still don’t have enough cash for Christmas presents. We’re gonna have to pull a big job before Thanksgiving.”
The thin man grinned. “Excellent, already we’re planning my second burglary. This is really great working with you guys.”
Yarnell found trouble mustering any enthusiasm.
“Cheer up,” Beaumont whispered to Yarnell, “it could be worse.”
“How’s that?”
“Our new burglar in training could be living in my closet.”
Yeah, right. Yarnell now started wondering how he was going to explain this new pinstripe-suited closet dweller to his wife. It had been difficult enough getting her to accept the nephew’s frequent overnighters, and that kid was almost normal.
Plus, upon further contemplation, Yarnell admitted to himself there was no way now he’d ever be able to enter even his own closet again without flashbacks from the prior job or else mental flinching from someone now living in there. If it wasn’t one thing, it was three things or more. This meant another trip to the head doctor and, even with a medical degree from some online college, that man didn’t come cheap. Money, yep, Yarnell needed lots more money. Seemed crime didn’t pay enough these days, especially if you had to split the take with partners.
Copyright ©2008 R. T. Lawton
Carrying the News for a Dead Paperboy
by James Van Pelt
How Bragg got started in it, I’ll never know, but I felt the green fog that surrounded him; I knew what interested him. It’s what gave me a chance.
My closest encounter came when he backed his ’59 Buick out of the driveway and hit my bike. It was my fault, you see, that my bike was there. It didn’t have anything to do with him not looking where he was going, not that I think he could see through his sunglasses or his cloud of cigarette smoke, so maybe it was my fault, but BANG, my bike goes flat and all the other paperboys look at it, thinking I’m sure, thank God it wasn’t their bike in Bragg’s way.
He steps out of the car, doesn’t even look to see if he’s dented his bumper, then grabs the front of my shirt and pins me to the chain link fence. It’s a tall fence, so my feet are maybe a yard off the ground. I can hardly breathe because his fist tightens my shirt up around my neck, and the fence gouges my back. The greenness that is him engulfs me. Not an ordinary grass green, but bad cold snot green, smelling damp and mangled, like leaves torn to bits and smeared into pulp.
Mom sighed when I took the paper route job. “You’re getting so big,” she said, but I wasn’t big enough to hold off Bragg. My dad left before I was old enough to teach me how to defend myself. Bragg picks me up and I feel six again.
“You’re a frickin’ moron, Scotty,” he says, blowing his cigarette and bratwurst breath in my face. He had to be really upset because Bragg usually cursed in the most interesting way I’d ever heard. Once he said in his nasty Irish brogue to a paperboy who’d bumped him, “May the seven terriers of hell sit on the spool of your breast and bark in your soul-case.”
You don’t hear that every day.
He lets me go. He doesn’t throw me; he just releases his grip, so I drop straight down. My knees buckle, and I’m face to face with the cement.
The other paperboys stand in a half circle, watching what I’ll do. Of course they think I’ll do nothing. Bragg is three years older than the rest of us; he drives a car, for crying out loud, and he’s been shaving since he was five I guess. Even so, I’d done a lot of reading, and I’d thought about what I’d do if Bragg ever came at me.
It doesn’t do any good, you know, the futile gesture, but I’ve always liked the idea of one. If Bragg was going to stomp my head for denting his bumper with my bike, I wanted to take a shot, so I roll over on my back and say, “Go scriosa an diabhal do chroi,” which is Irish for “May the devil destroy your heart.” I’d been practicing the pronunciation for weeks. Mom told me my smart mouth would get me in trouble.
I felt the green fog that surrounded him, smelling damp and mangled.
He takes a step back. My victory is in his one-step retreat, but it only lasts a second. The afternoon sun glares behind his head, making his face as dark as a cave, then he crouches beside me. I’m in his green fog again. In a low voice he says, “I’d squash you like a kitten, but I’d rather wait till Samhain. Be guarding your backside asswipe. I know your house.”
So he leaves me lying on the cement, puts his leg over his big black bike he keeps at the paper shack. The joints have been welded so many times it looks lumpy and organic. He pedals toward his route, leaving his car parked on top of my bike. We watch him roll away, the gray bags filled with papers bumping against his front wheel. Then he turns a corner and is gone.
“Scotty, you’re going to need a good disguise the next time you see him,” says Mike, my best friend.
It is just another day at the paper shack, the last normal one for me, only I don’t know it. You see, after his route is done, Bragg picks up a friend for an evening of hell raising, and they decide they want some girls along. So they go to this house where these two sisters live — one’s a sophomore and the other’s a freshman at the high school — except the girls’ brother is there, and he doesn’t want his sisters dating Bragg and his buddy. There’s an argument, I hear later; one-fingered salutes are exchanged, and then Bragg and his friend give up. They climb into their car and drive off. Only the brother is still mad, so he reaches into a closet next to his front door, pulls out a deer rifle, then takes a shot at Bragg’s car. The bullet goes through the trunk, through the back seat, through the front seat, through Bragg, and out the windshield.
The car goes off the road, onto a guy’s yard, knocking down a mailbox, coming to rest in a thick privet hedge.
Bragg’s dead.
The next afternoon, before the papers are delivered, Mike says, “Let’s see the body.”
I lean on my bike, trying to act cool, but my insides shiver. “Why’d we want to do that?” The clouds hang low. Rain has fallen off and on all afternoon.
Mike looks at me like I’m a weird bug. “I’ve never seen a dead person before. You chicken?”