“Get out,” Dix said. He tapped on Queenie’s shoulder with one knuckle. “You, stay here.”
Willie picked up the bones and followed Dixon into the shadows.
A brisk wind swayed the awnings jutting out over the alley. Willie, defiant and out of options, straddled the bag holding Kardu’s bones. In his left hand he waved the knife Queenie had slipped him. Three feet away Dixon raised a pistol and pointed it at Willie’s chest.
“I gave you a chance, Willie, to be something more than a sideshow freak. Instead of making that work, you put a move on my wife, help yourself to my savings, and steal the most valuable showcase I’ve ever owned.” Dixon’s eyes swept over Willie’s disheveled form and settled on the bag. The blue denim jiggled and swayed.
“I thought Queenie was your most valuable possession,” Willie said.
Dixon pressed forward. He held out one hand. “Queenie’s a pleasant distraction. The bones, now, are my upward mobility, my chance to win favor in the world of freaks. Once, I thought you’d serve that purpose. I was wrong.”
“You sell out everyone around you.” At Willie’s feet the bag swayed. Kardu’s humming coursed upward through his body like a train. “You really are a jerk.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m the jerk holding the gun,” Dixon said. “Give them back. Now.”
“You can’t bully me anymore,” Willie shouted, poking the knife at Dixon’s waist.
“You got no moves left, little man,” Dixon said. He squeezed halfway down on the trigger. “Checkmate.”
Willie swore. Behind him, he heard the staccato of high heels clicking on the asphalt paving. Dixon looked up and winced.
“Nobody owns me,” Queenie said, her voice muffled by the garbage bins lined up at the alley’s entrance.
Willie listened to the flapping of discarded papers down the gutter, the rattle-crack of loose shutters. He thought about Queenie, moving him and Dixon around like pawns on a chessboard. He thought about his own need and his greed and the feel of Queenie’s body in his hands. By his feet, the bones shifted. A sound like laughter escaped from the bag. Willie sighed. Dix had it figured right after all. He had no moves left. Mum-mum-mum-nal, the bones jabbered. Willie scrubbed at his nose, trying to figure it all out. His lips and tongue tasted like salt. Dixon moved another half step closer and struck at him with the gun.
Willie staggered back, righted himself and stabbed at Dixon. The knife caught Dix under one arm, leaving a long tear in his sleeve. A slim worm of blood tracked its way down Willie’s hand. Willie stabbed again. This time he caught Dix below his rib cage.
Dixon stumbled, righted himself, and lifted the gun with both hands. One foot caught in the drawstring of the laundry bag, twisting his stance, and the first shot angled to the right of Willie’s head. Dixon pulled the trigger again.
Shaking his head, holding his hands over his ears, Willie fell to his knees. Pulled forward by the blade in his gut, Dixon stumbled, coughing, and collapsed next to Willie. The bag, kicked forward in the struggle, opened. The bones spilled free.
One of Kardu’s fingers sprang loose and gouged itself into Dixon’s eye. The skeleton’s skull rolled over to nestle close to Willie’s broad nose. Humming, cajoling, demanding, the skeleton’s inarticulate chant claimed kinship, obligation, and command, but Willie had moved beyond the bones’ influence, the dwarf’s wide blue eyes gazing up at the crow-black sky.
Queenie stepped out from behind one of the dumpsters. A drumroll of raindrops pelted her head. She brushed them off, then lifted the taipan out of her purse, the snake’s restless length still encased in its binding. Humming her notes in tune with the wordless song leaching from Kardu’s skeleton, she waited. Dixon looked up. His lips moved.
“Queenie,” he said, struggling to raise his shoulders.
Debating the wisdom of introducing venom into Dixon’s bloodstream, Queenie circled the fallen men. The storm-driven wind blew harder, ruffling the fringe on her shawl. Before she made up her mind, Dixon stopped moving.
“Well,” she shrugged, staring at Matey, “guess Dix was right about one thing. No need for snakes.”
Bending, she removed the skeleton finger from Dix’s eye. She layered Kardu’s bones back inside the bag and stuffed the taipan in with them. Twisting the handkerchief free of Willie’s neck, Queenie wrapped it around the money inside Willie’s vest and dropped the wadded bills in her purse. Checking for shoe prints below and faces above in the few windows that overlooked the alley, Queenie moved off, trailed by the rustle of the taipan and the muffled lament of the bones in the bag.
Copyright © 2011 Janet E. Irvin
Why
by Robert Lopresti
“Come in, Alan,” said Captain Stevens. “That was a hell of a job you did on the Mattocks mess.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Lieutenant Poley. He sat down on the worn visitor’s chair.
“I mean it. The report you wrote will be the model we use for, God forbid, any future events like that.”
“Thanks. There’s one more thing.” Poley held out a single page of paper.
“Something you missed? I find that hard to believe because your—” Stevens frowned at the paper. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“But my God, man. You can’t resign. How much longer until you could retire on a full pension?”
“Six months and a week.”
Captain Stevens shook his head. “I’m not accepting this. You’re just stressed out. Anybody would be.”
“I’m not stressed. I’m done.”
“My God, Alan. What happened?”
Poley shrugged. His career had ended on Tuesday, the day after Mattocks died. A sense of duty kept him going to the end of the week to finish the report, but now it was time to go.
“The final score is four dead, including the shooter,” Shellcross had said at the Tuesday briefing. “Plus three wounded, but they’re expected to recover.”
“If you use the word score again,” said Poley, “you’ll be back in uniform. This was not a sporting event. Are we clear?”
The detective’s face went red. “Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Good.” He looked around the squad room. Almost twenty cops stared back. “Listen, everybody. This is time for your Sunday morning, church-with-the-in-laws manners. We’ve got reporters in town from all over the country, probably all over the world, and since they don’t have a live perp to point their cameras at some of them are going to look at us.”
“Too bad the bastard killed himself,” said Juarez.
“Saved the state a pile of money on a trial,” said Hacker. “Trials are expensive.”
“I didn’t say I wanted him tried,” said Juarez. She grinned. “I just wished we’d had the chance to finish him ourselves.”
Poley threw a pencil, which bounced off the table and hit Juarez on the chest. He waited until the cops stopped laughing. They had had a hell of a day yesterday. “That’s exactly the kind of thing you can’t say in front of a reporter. Does everyone understand that?”
Nods all around.
“Let’s talk about live suspects first. Now, is there any possibility of an accomplice?”
“No sign of one,” said Washington. “We’ve traced Mattocks from his house straight to the travel agency. No sign that he contacted anyone along the way. We’re still getting his phone dumps.”
“Keep at it. If anyone knew — or had any reason to suspect — what he was doing, we need to know it.” And God help the guy if he exists, Poley thought, because everybody would sure like a scapegoat now, to stand in for the unreachable murderer. Speaking of which—