“Jesus,” Harry breathed as he shut off the engine. “If we see a kid playing the banjo or someone comments on how pretty my mouth is, we’re outta here.”
“Amen, brother, amen.” Mercer stepped from the car and tucked the automatic pistol behind his back. A cat raced off the porch and vanished under one of the dilapidated cars.
With Harry and Cali behind him, Mercer mounted the sloping porch. A screen door hung awkwardly from its broken hinges. The torn screen was loose and showed signs of being clawed by the cat. Mercer shouldered it farther aside and rapped on the main door. When there was no response he hit it again, a little louder.
“Get the goddamned door,” a male voice shouted from inside, almost loud enough to rattle the windows.
“I’m busy,” a woman shouted back. From the sound of it, both were seated in the front room no more than a few feet from each other. Harry hummed the theme from Deliverance.
“Jesus, woman! I’m watching Wheel. Go see who it is.”
“Fine.”
A moment later the front porch light, actually a naked bulb hanging from its wiring, snapped on. In seconds it had attracted every insect within a five-acre area. The woman who opened the door had a cigarette dangling from her slack mouth, and a bovine expression. She wore a housecoat that showed off her thick, blue-veined calves. Her feet were shod in slippers and Mercer could see that her toenails were cracked and yellow, more like horn or the rough body of a beetle. Her eyes were watery behind the cigarette smoke, an indeterminate color, and small. She was as thick as she was wide and probably tipped the scales in the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound range. The shadow of a mustache on her upper lip was inky black.
Behind her was a short hallway and the kitchen. The old metal sink was piled with dishes, and the fly strips above it were blackened with their victims.
“Mrs. Erasmus Fess?” Mercer said, hiding his revulsion. He put her age anywhere between fifty and a hundred.
“That’s what it says on the marriage license.” Her high-pitched voice and brusque manner made her sound like she was screeching rather than talking. “What do you want?”
“I would like to speak with your husband.”
“Who is it, Lizzie?” Erasmus Fess shouted from the living room just off the entrance.
She turned to face her husband. “How the hell should I know? He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell ’em we’re closed. Come back in the morning if he wants a car or a tow.” He then cajoled the contestants on his television. “Come on. Big money. Big money!”
“You heard him. Come back tomorrow.”
She began to swing the door closed but Mercer shot out his foot to stop her. She continued to press on the door for a moment, not understanding why it had stuck.
“Mrs. Fess, this isn’t about a car or a tow job. My name is Philip Mercer and this is Cali Stowe and Harry White. I’m here because of the safe your husband once offered to Carl Dion.”
At that, a furtive look flashed behind her close-set eyes. “You’re here about the Hindleburg safe?”
Mercer didn’t bother correcting her pronunciation. “That’s right. We came up from Washington, D.C. Does your husband still have it?”
“Have it? Hell, he don’t get rid of nothing. He’s still got the bite marks from his first case of crabs.” She turned to yell at her husband again. “Ras, they’re here about the Hindleburg safe.”
“Ain’t for sale,” Erasmus Fess shouted back.
“Yes it is,” Lizzie said hotly. “I told you back when to just give that damned thing to the feller from Colorado.” She turned to address Mercer and the others again. “Ever since Ras’s father found it we’ve had nothing but bad luck. After he dragged it home ain’t been no kids born in the family. I got seven brothers and sisters and Ras had eight. Don’t make sense we never had children.”
“Could be the crabs,” Harry muttered.
Cali silenced him with a look. “How about cancer?” she asked Lizzie Fess. “Does your family have a history of cancer?”
“Sure do. Ras’s daddy and younger brother both died of the cancer. And me and one of his sisters had our titties cut off ’cause of it.”
Given the amount of fat she carried and the shapeless coat she wore, it was understandable that no one had noticed she’d undergone a double mastectomy.
“Had they lived in the house after the safe was found?” Cali asked.
“Sure did. That’s why I said the safe brought bad luck. Ras’s oldest brother didn’t get along with his father none and moved away before they found the safe, and he’s fit as a fiddle and has twelve kids and a whole mess of grandkids.”
Cali whispered to Mercer, “Sounds like we’re on the right trail. Elevated cancer rates, sterility. Remind you of anywhere?”
Mercer’s mind had already cast back to the isolated village along the Scilla River in Central Africa. Chester Bowie must have brought a sample of the uranium ore with him on his return to the United States, but just before the Hindenburg met its fateful end he had tossed it from the airship in a safe. What astounded Mercer even more than the sample’s bizarre odyssey was how it had remained radioactive enough to cause cancer at the farm and sterilize at least one if not both of the Fesses.
The Wheel of Fortune theme music reached its crescendo and then the television was shut off. A moment later Erasmus Fess approached the door. Unlike his wife, he was rail-thin and raw-boned. He wore a pair of oil-stained coveralls with his name stitched over his chest. His hair was sparse and gray and he had dandruff the size of Corn Flakes. He wore thick glasses that magnified his bloodshot eyes and he sported five days’ worth of silver stubble. He belched a cloud of beer breath and held out a ropey arm to Mercer.
“Erasmus Fess.”
“Philip Mercer.” They shook hands.
“Why are you interested in the safe?” Fess asked.
“What difference does it make?” Lizzie hollered at her husband. “He wants to buy it.”
Mercer hadn’t come out and said that he wanted to buy the safe, but he nodded anyway.
A speculative, almost feral look came over Erasmus Fess. “Twenty thousand. Cash.”
Fess wanted five thousand more than he’d offered Carl Dion, but that wasn’t an issue for Mercer. He would have bought the safe, and its contents, for anything Fess asked for. The problem was he just didn’t have that kind of money on him. He could write a check for that amount easily, but he knew Fess would never accept it, and there was no way the scrap man would want the paper trail from a credit card transaction. Mercer hated that they’d have to wait until morning for a bank to open, but he saw no alternative. Then he remembered Harry’s winnings. He shot his friend a look. “Easy come, easy go, old boy.”
“Huh?”
“Empty your pockets.”
“What?” Harry finally got what Mercer wanted and his face turned red. “Forget it. I won that money fair and square.”
“Relax,” Mercer said soothingly. “I’ll pay you back when we get home.” He would then turn around and present a bill to Deputy National Security Advisor Lasko.
Lizzie and Erasmus Fess’s eyes bulged when Harry withdrew two thick bundles of hundred-dollar bills from his windbreaker. He handed the stacks to Mercer. “I should ask for a receipt.”
Mercer presented them to Fess but didn’t hand them over. “I want to see the safe first. And I want you to throw in a working car. We sort of borrowed that Rolls outside.”
Fess peered out into his driveway at the elegant car. He cast a practiced eye over the luxury car, paying particular attention to the ruined fender and dented doors. “I’ll give you a car so long as you forget where you parked that one.”