And we’d spent a lot of hours out in his back yard drinking beer and talking about the old days. Lately he’d been trying to talk me into a new deal. He thought he could talk his partners into letting him go to Europe to line up new sources of supply for some of the fancy stuff they serve at his restaurant. He wanted to take a big wad of loose money over and open up two number accounts in Switzerland for us. He’d looked it all up.
“It’ll work like this, Jerry. With a number account, nobody can trace you. It’s against their law. And you can tell the Swiss bank what to invest in. They hold the securities in the number account and bank the dividends. By the time we’re fifty, we could have such a big slug of dough over there that we could quit and move to Spain or Italy and live like kings the rest of our life. What the hell’s the good of just blowing the loose money?”
It sounded pretty good, but I hadn’t made up my mind yet. I was up to about twenty-six thousand in the wall safe, and I didn’t feel exactly easy about turning it all over to him. If he decided to get funny, I couldn’t yell cop, could I?
But the idea of a number account or any other kind of account had gone pretty sour. I lit another cigar, but it tasted so bad I threw it into the darkness of Arnie’s lawn. I knew I should be hungry, but the thought of eating made my stomach knot up. It was a little after eleven when I heard Arnie drive in. My house was dark so I knew Marie had gone to bed.
Arnie came out into the back and said, “Hi, Jerry? Where the hell are you?”
“Over here.”
“Janice said you wanted to see me about something.” He fumbled his way to a chair beside mine and sat down.
“How are things going?” I asked him.
“Fine and dandy. Fine and dandy. And you?”
I knew I was going to tell him. I didn’t know how to start. I had to tell him how it was at six o’clock when I was helping out at the biggest lot on account of the rush. And a guy came in and I didn’t look at him, just held my hand out for the stub, but he didn’t give me one, and then I looked at him and nearly sat down on the asphalt. He hadn’t changed as much as I’ve changed and Arnie had changed. He hadn’t put on the pounds like we have. He was smiling, and in our past relationship I hadn’t seen him smile much.
“Hello, Captain,” I said.
“Hello, Sergeant. Got a minute?”
“Sure, Captain. Sure. My God, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” I took him back into the cubbyhole office that’s part of the shack on the front of the lot.
He sat down, still smiling, and said, “A little over sixteen years since I made my mistake, Thompson.”
“Mistake, Captain?”
“I made the mistake of trying to take the company over and run it. I made the mistake of trying to take it away from you and Sergeant Sloan.”
“I don’t know as we were running it, Captain.”
“Just mister, Thompson. Mister Driscoll. You know, Thompson, I’ve never considered myself a vindictive man.”
I didn’t know what he was driving at. I didn’t know why the way he was smiling should make me so uncomfortable. “What do you mean, Ca... Mr. Driscoll?”
“You boys really took me over the jumps, didn’t you?”
“You know how those things are.”
“You taught me how they are. Good business you have here, Thompson.”
I shrugged. “Three lots. I make out.”
He turned and looked through my dusty window at the beat-up office building across the street. “Suppose, Thompson, a man wanted to find out just exactly how well you’re doing. Suppose he rented desk space near a front window over there and used a mechanical counter and took the trouble to check all your traffic in and out?”
My smile felt as if I wasn’t wearing it straight. “He’d have to be... pretty curious, wouldn’t he?”
“And have a lot of time on his hands, too.”
“I... guess so.”
“Cat and mouse isn’t my game,” he said. “I’m enjoying this, I suppose, but not as much as I thought I would. So I’ll leave out the routine and cut it short. Here. This is for you. I don’t generally deliver these myself, but I made an exception in this case.”
I picked it up. It was a subpoena. As I stared at it blankly he stood up and said, “We’re scheduling you at two P.M. tomorrow, Thompson. Bring your books and records for all of last year, the duplicate of your return, and you might be well advised to bring your attorney.”
“I don’t understand,” I said in an empty way.
He placed a card on the corner of my desk. He paused in the doorway and said, “Give my regards to Arnold Sloan. I expect to see him soon.”
I picked up the card. RICHARD E. DRISCOLL. TREASURY INTELLIGENCE. FEDERAL BUILDING.
Arnie said, in a nasty way, “Look, buddy, are you just going to sit there and sigh at me? I put in a long day. I’m ready for the sack. If you’ve got something to spill, let’s start hearing it.”
But I still couldn’t find the place to start. So I did it another way. I took the captain’s calling card out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“What’s this?” he said.
I didn’t answer him. He took out his lighter. I watched his face as he read the card. I watched him real close.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The Straw Witch
Lately Williamson found himself remembering all those weeks he had spent in that Dutch cellar with the old man named Gulligan. He wondered why he should think of it now, after twenty years, why he should dream of it.
This mission was going smoothly. The one with Gulligan had gone wrong, all wrong. Their security had been compromised, and there wasn’t damn else they could do but hide in the cellar blackness and try to talk the timid girl who brought the food to them into taking a message to Ostlund, assuming he was still alive and hadn’t sought other cover.
Gulligan, like an old hound, had caught the whiff of death. In the darkness his mind wandered, and he talked on and on. Gulligan was a sour old hulk, an Irish murderer, a lifelong saboteur and conspirator, just the sort of malignant riffraff they sent on missions like that one. They never sent their clean young men to assassinate civilians.
Gulligan had muttered away in the darkness, talking of death. The wounds and the whisky and the women had not killed him, but they had readied him.
It seemed odd to Williamson that after all the years Gulligan’s voice should come so clearly into his mind. “I don’t know how they summon all the others, Billy boy, but for the ones like you and me, for us they send one of the straw witches. Now not that I mean to be telling you they’re made of straw, lad. It’s a habit they have, known to my father’s father and way back to before the Romans built their walls of stone. On the nights when the moon rises full and yellow they gather where there’s a black pool, and quaggy ground so no fool can approach them. You can hear them on a still night, making their little singsongs of laughter, sitting with their pale beautiful feet in the black water, all of them with silver needles knitting straw in the moonlight, fashioning it into wee gallows ropes and dainty shrouds.”
“For God’s sake shut up, Gulligan!”
“No, they’re not of straw. Not at all. They are the fairest you could find in a day’s journey, lad. Dark-haired lassies with skin satin fine, eyes of a tilt, full of dark secrets and half laughter. Colleens for the taking, lad, all heats and softness under a black dress, and pale arms bare in the moonlight.
“When yours comes for you, lad, you won’t be thinking she’s a straw witch. No, you’ll have your mind on but one thing, and she will take your hand in hers and be in such a sweet hurry to take you to a private place. But when you reach to her, her thighs will be as smoke, her breasts no more than the wind passing, and it is only her lips you will find, with a snow taste to them, cold as pebbled snow, and with a quick and clever suck she takes your wind away and your murderer’s soul.”