Okay, then, I’m out of here.
The door doesn’t open from the inside. There’s a place for a key, but no matter what I do with my lock picks, the handle doesn’t turn. I can’t even feel the tumblers, much less make them click.
I force calm. Think. The brain that works every mark smooth as wet glass is the same one that saved me from several beatings before I got so good. I can think on my feet. A grifter’s greatest gift.
Another way out, then. Apartment 213 is too high to jump; at the least I’d break both legs, at worst my back or skull. No way to climb up. Okay, call for help. There’s a lock on the phone, like people have to keep their kids off those 900 numbers. Self-conscious, I shout “Help!” out the two windows I can get open, but nobody responds even when I abandon my pride and scream “Fire!”
Fire? I see smoke detectors, but I don’t think anything less than a real fire is going to get the firemen here. I’m not starting a fire where I’m trapped.
Annoy the neighbors until they call the cops? Usually I avoid interacting with the police, but for this I’ll make an exception. I thump walls, floors, and ceiling, blast the radio and TV, but it falls on deaf ears or empty apartments.
Think, I order myself. Do your damned job.
Before any big scam I conduct a rousing internal pep talk. Hey, I can do it! I’m the guy who talked four Marines into betting, and losing, their tickets home, convinced them not to beat me up, and let them buy me one last drink before they left. Now that was hard. This is one guy, an easy one who’s smiled and nodded and toasted me. He already likes me.
Good thing, because he’s going to find me here in his apartment when he gets off work. I’ll have to learn what I can, then wing it. Good; my best work is off-the-cuff, everybody says so.
I might have to do some pretty distasteful things; he’ll recognize me from the gay bar. I’ll pretend I’m new at it, confused and scared, but that I like them. And him.
To a con man, knowledge is power. I have an eight-hour factory shift to learn everything I can about this guy, to have exactly the right answer for any damned thing he says or does, the right reaction to every action. He’s not only going to let me leave, but we’ll make a date for later.
I find photo albums and memorize what little they tell about growing up with Mom and Dad and Grandma and a tidy suburban house.
Canceled checks will tell more. Kroger’s, Sears, cash, the phone company, rent, Target, Exxon, Kroger’s again, but then, my exit visa: a whole string of ten- and twenty-five-dollar donations to charities.
He may not have much, but he wants to help people with less. Isn’t that the essence of being a good man? A good man capable of forgiveness, even mercy? Okay, not great, but it’s a jumping-off place. I have seven hours to hone it until it sings.
I put back the checks, every one signed in an uncommonly readable hand: Jeffrey Dahmer.
I’m betting that I not only get away with breaking and entering, but that he has me for breakfast.
Concrete Crosses
by Angie Irvine
© 1996 by Angie Irvine
In her second piece for EQMM, and her second, published work of fiction, Carmel, California author Angie Irvine again makes use of subsidiary characters from the Traveler novels written by her husband Bob Irvine. Ms. Irvine is a computer engineer by day; she is currently at work on a high-tech thriller.
The summer of fifty-seven came early to Utah. The previous winter had been dry, and for the first time in living memory the glacier on Mount Timpanogos retreated, leaving a naked scar on the side of the mountain. The Wasatch Mountains were brown by June, and Salt Lake City baked. When the fires came, in August, the smoke boiled down the mountain’s flanks and settled in the basin, choking the city. The sidewalks were slick with soot and gray ash swirled in the air like some perverted imitation of a winter snow storm. The more nervous in the town cried Armageddon and took to the Temple in droves.
I found that whiskey was a powerful remedy for cleansing the throat, but I guess I wasn’t the only one. All my usual sources in this state were overwhelmed with demand. I had to make a run north to Idaho to stock up.
When the smokejumpers were killed, the headlines were big even up north. One of the boys was a local kid who lived on a ranch just outside of Samaria where I went to replace my stock. Driving up to the general store I noticed the door was draped in black bunting. The kid’s stepdad shopped there, the owner told me, and he wanted folks to remember that they had lost one of their own. I looked at the fly-specked display windows and the dust coating the cans and thought that in a small community each life helps shore up the barricade against the wilderness. Lose enough pieces and the barricade crumbles. I shivered and high-tailed it back to town.
And now, a year later, this grim-faced man sat in my office, another casualty of the big blowup at Hardscrabble Creek. His name was Harold Torvilson and he had an ugly gleam in his eye.
“Mr. Traveler, I want you to bring my son’s murderer to justice,” he said, sliding a newspaper clipping across the surface of my desk.
The clipping’s headline read, “Forest Ranger Saves Life by Setting Fire.” I looked up at Torvilson.
“Go ahead, read it,” he urged at my questioning glance.
The article was about the blowup at Hardscrabble and how this guy, James Ferguson, the crew boss, had set a fire right where he was standing and then lain down in the hot ashes. Evidently the fire he set burned off enough fuel that the big fire that was just behind it roared right past him. It was a hungry fire, consuming everything in its path, including Ferguson’s crew.
“They were just boys, you know. My Donny’d just turned eighteen.” For the first time I thought I caught just a trace of emotion in his voice, but there was some inner fire stoking him that had dried up all the tears.
“I don’t understand,” I said, handing him back the clipping. It was worn and crumpled like he’d squeezed it in his fist.
“I used to be a smokejumper, before I broke my leg. Broke it in so many pieces the quacks never could get it right. They wanted to give me a desk job, but I wouldn’t have it.” The limp had been noticeable when he’d come in. Evidently he was too proud to use a cane.
“I know fires,” he continued. “The fire Ferguson set, that’s the one that killed them. He saved his own hide and killed my boy. My Donny could run, he could run like the wind. If Ferguson hadn’t set that fire where he did, Donny would have made it to safety. They found his body the farthest out.” He said it with a kind of pride, as if “last one dead” was better than just plain dead.
I shifted some in my chair. It was hard to feel comfortable in the same room with this man. He had that ability to be perfectly still in a world full of winks and nods and other small motions that most of us indulge in when we’re carrying on a conversation. Among my acquaintances, only my Indian friends can be that still.
“The police don’t like outsiders messing in their affairs, Mr. Torvilson.” I didn’t try a smile; it would have been wasted.
“This isn’t a police matter,” he replied. The words came out, but we weren’t really having a conversation.
“Murder usually is,” I insisted.
“Not this one. They’re too stupid and pigheaded to see what’s as plain as the nose on their faces.” He hesitated a minute, but I could tell he was going to come out with it.
“Besides,” setting his teeth he spat out his words like they were giving him indigestion, “it happened on federal territory.”