“He wasn’t supposed to be there,” I said, blowing my nose on The Gent’s immaculate linen. “He was supposed to be the lookout, but where was he?”
“Ah yes,” Wiggy said. “Don’t think I didn’t ask about that. Very loudly. Guess what?”
“What?”
“He had a beer in the pub, remember? So he’s standing outside the newsagent waiting and watching and, stripe me pink, his bladder starts playing up. So the silly old bugger goes to take a leak. On his way back, he sees the SecureCorps guy disappearing upstairs and all he can think of to do is follow him up and shoot him.”
“He was aiming at the man?” The Gent asked, horrified.
“That’s what he said.”
“I’m too old for this,” I sniffled.
“I have to take the blame,” The Gent said. “If I hadn’t been too much of a wimp to go to the dentist we wouldn’t have gone to the pub. If Harold hadn’t drunk a pint of bitter his weak bladder wouldn’t have been a determining feature of this fiasco.”
“Don’t let’s talk blame,” Wiggy said firmly. “Because I might have to admit I’m not fit enough for this kind of life anymore. If I hadn’t been out of breath Elsie wouldn’t have had to take charge — which she’s obviously unsuited to do. I feel directly responsible for her whatchamacallit.”
“What?”
“Don’t get arsey with me, Elsie. You had a… er… an emotional episode in Cristettes.”
“Just a momentary confusion,” The Gent put in tactfully. “You were splendid in the betting shop.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But Wiggy’s right. I have been having, well, memory lapses. I’m taking St. John’s Wort and fish oils and something else I can’t remember. But I should have told you.”
“Told us what?” Wiggy asked. “That you’re a mad old bat? Gee, what a surprise.”
“Maybe all three of us should think again about the active approach,” The Gent said. “Maybe the way to go is technological.”
“I haven’t got a computer,” I said. “It’s too late for me to learn, and anyway I can’t afford it.”
“Yes, you can,” The Gent said. “Besides what we took from the betting shop you’ve got…” He turned to Wiggy. “In her freezer she’s got dozens of oddly shaped packages labelled ‘Leg of lamb’ and ‘Ham hock,’ which, believe me, are not legs of lamb or hocks of ham or even sides of beef.”
“You’re mistaken,” I said. “I’m a vegetarian. I don’t buy ham hocks.”
“We know,” The Gent said. “You’ve got a freezer full of cash under all those woks. You’re like a squirrel who’s forgotten where she hid her nuts.”
“She’s certainly nuts,” Wiggy said. “But she might be right, Gent: We might just be home free. No one saw us.”
“Of course they saw us.” I waved at the TV. “They called me a man.”
“Exactly,” said The Gent. “They called two doddery old men and one dotty old lady ‘three very violent men.’ Longevity makes us invisible and prejudice renders us incapable.”
“Apart from ripping off a betting shop,” Wiggy said, “our second most serious crime was to get old.”
“But it saved our asses,” I said.
“Maybe,” The Gent said, “but not for long.”
“Don’t worry.” Wiggy consoled me. “He doesn’t mean the cops. He means the Grim Reaper.”
“Oh, that’s all right then,” I said.
One Good One
by Chuck Hogan
Copyright © 2007 by Chuck Hogan
Art by Mark Evans
Chuck Hogan sold his first crime thriller at age 26, while working in a video store. His 2004 novel, Prince of Thieves (Scribner), won the Hammett Prize, and a film version is now in production at Warner Brothers. He says he was inspired to try his hand at short fiction when he met one of the great current masters of the form, Ed Hoch. This is Mr. Hogan’s second short story. His latest novel, The Killing Moon, is just out from Scribners.
Milky got home about nine that night, sweating and shivering like he had the flu. Which he did. He had the street flu; he was in a bad way. He opened the door to the house on O Street (Best thing about living on O Street? You only have to walk a block to P.) trudged up the stairs to the third-floor apartment, and watched his shaky hand try to fit the key inside the lock.
Ma was at the table. In her housecoat. Her close-set eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and Milky knew instantly.
“Why, Eddie?” she said. Grief tuned her voice up a notch. “Why?”
Edward Francis Milk felt his gut drop, like a sack of garbage hitting the floor.
He said, “What, Ma?”
“You know.” Her hands, worn like old dish towels, gripped her crossed arms tightly in hopeless self-consolation. “I know it when I see it.”
“Ma.”
“Eddie, you promised me. You always promised. My little boy…”
The guilt. Milky was thirty-one years old, still living with his mother. Then the anger. Milky was thirty-one years old, still living with his mother. “What were you doing in my room, Ma?”
“You been away two days. No phone call, no nothing. I’m scared, I’m all alone. What’m I supposed to do? Sit here and wait?”
“Not go through my things.”
“I was going to call the police. Report you missing. You should thank the man above I didn’t.”
“I was… I was working.”
“You used to want to be a cop.” She wept for him now. “You’d put on Dad’s shirt and hat and pretend you was him…”
This memory had lost all traction with him, the number of times she retold it. “Ma.”
“Jimmy’s passing killed him. Not the grief of it. The shame. Having it in our house? In his house? He told me, your father did, he said, ‘Eddie ever does it, Eddie ever follow in Jimmy’s footsteps, out of my house he goes. Put him right the hell out.’ You know I got to honor that, Eddie.” She looked at Eddie’s father’s picture, framed and standing on top of the stove. Him in his transit-cop uniform. A smaller photo of Jimmy laughing on the front steps was next to it. “This is still his house.”
“Ma.”
“Now I got to put you out.” She pushed herself up from the chair, and in her housecoat nearly flew to the sink. She clung to it as though hands from the floor had her by the ankles, pulling her down. “My baby boy. I should of dragged you to church with me. Should of dragged you. You’re leaving me all alone in the world!”
“Ma.” He just couldn’t do this now. “Ma, sit down.”
“Where you been all this time, Eddie? Where?”
“Working, Ma.” He hit his chest where the letters MBTA, for Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, were stitched over the pocket. Milky had been fired five months before, but still left the house most mornings dressed for work. For her sake.
“Two days straight, and no call?”
“Work is work, Ma.”
“How could you bring this evil down upon me? You’re all I got, Eddie! Daddy’s in heaven and Jimmy’s in the ground and you… you…”
She felt her way back into the chair, a handkerchief clutched in her hand over her heart. She looked gray. She wasn’t breathing right.
“Ma. Ma, listen to me. Where is it? Tell me what you did.”
“How you could bring it in this house after your only brother…”
“Ma, where’d you put it?”