The scene was as still as a photograph. Of course, nobody had moved because Sledge stood in the corner, the Ithaca 12-gauge leveled at the table. At this range, a couple of rounds of the double-ought buckshot would have swept the room clean.
Mabel considered the scene, then, smiling, stepped behind Carter and picked up his chair. She grabbed his shoulders firmly and gently eased him into the chair. Then she took the pistol from his hand and set it in front of him.
“You’re not going to be needing this, honey,” she said softly, then turned to the bluegum and nodded.
Sledge returned the nod with a smile. He and Mabel had been a team since the cathouse in East Memphis where they worked had been burned down by a drunk Baptist preacher, and they went into the bank-robbing business. It had been good to them. Sledge had a small chicken farm outside Tacoma, and Mabel owned a roadhouse north of Bellingham where Canadian whiskey was easy to obtain.
Mabel turned back to Carter, rubbing his neck gently with her left hand, her right hand touching her hat. “Now what’s the problem, honey?”
“Goddamned Bohunk has been dealin’ seconds all night long,” Carter answered.
“I can’t believe that,” she said, still gentle, “can’t believe that any more than I can believe...” She paused, then her voice became hard. “... that you forgot what I said about no guns, you needle-dicked bug-fucking son of a bitch.”
Mabel had done it wrong a couple of times in the past and had to deal with convulsions, confusion, and anger — usually, with the Derringer — so experience had taught her exactly where to put the hatpin at the base of the skull. When she tapped the thick pin with the heel of her hand, it penetrated Carter’s dismal brain as easily as it might slip through a round of rat cheese. He was dead before his face hit the meager scattering of chips in front of him.
“I guess you boys will have to play four-handed, now,” she said lightly as she picked up Carter’s .45 off the table. “Unless you can get the farmer to change his overalls.”
Then Mabel lifted the pistol casually and shot Lindsey just where his forehead became his bald pate. He went over like an acrobat. Baby Em stepped around the corner with a nickle-plated .32, pressed it against Freddie’s temple, then pulled the trigger twice. She kept pulling the trigger as the gimp toppled sideways out of his chair. Crazy Al went for the piece under his jacket, but Sledge took him down with his first round at such close range that he blew Crazy Al’s gun hand off at the wrist and set fire to his dirty tie. Bruno started to raise his hands as if to plead, but Sledge shot him in the face before he could open his mouth.
The sugarbeeter and his wife were shaking and weeping so hard that they had trouble dragging the bodies down to the root cellar, but Mabel kept reassuring them that the lime would destroy the bodies and that with their cut of the bank loot they could start over again in California or Oregon. The tattered couple had stopped shaking by the time they finished dumping the last sack of lime, and the tears had dried from their eyes when Mabel put the two .22 shorts into their brainpans. The couple fell on the pile as neatly as if they had planned it that way.
Sledge finished setting up the house as the women dressed for traveling. He covered the bodies with Bell jars of coal oil and phosphorus, then arranged for a fire. He laid a slow black powder fuse from the root cellar to the kitchen table, where he wrapped it around the base of a three-day candle. Then he washed the Lincoln where the gimp had hidden it in the barn, changed the local plates for real New Jersey ones, and dressed in his driver’s uniform.
The guns and money were stashed in a false bottom of the trunk, an obscene amount of luggage piled on top and strapped to the back. The women were lodged in the back seat, draped in traveling dusters, big hats, and dust veils — a wealthy widow and her daughter on their way to the West Coast for a new life.
“Are we set, Mr. Sledge?” Mabel asked as he backed the large car out of the barn.
“Everything but the match, ma’am,” he said.
“Well, strike the match, please,” she said.
“I wish we were gonna be here to see it,” Baby Em said as Sledge headed for the farmhouse. “What’s gonna happen next, Momma?”
“There’s a plump little bank in Ogallala right next to the drugstore,” she answered. “I think we’ll pay it a little visit before we go home. I know a couple of old boys in Denver who might help.”
“Just no more little red-headed pricks, okay? I’d rather suck a cough drop,” Baby Em said as Sledge drove out onto the section road.
“Just a blue-faced monster,” Mabel said, “and he’ll have plenty of cough drops, and maybe even some hard rock candy. He used to have lots of hard rock candy.”
“I wanna gun in the bank next time,” Baby Em whined. “Don’t you?”
As the sun slipped toward the horizon, the wind paused for a moment, the dust settled, and a fire burned briefly in Mabel’s eyes, a fire as brief as her sad smile.
“We don’t need guns, Babydoll.”
O’Neil De Noux
Death on Denial
The Mississippi. The Father of Waters.
The Nile of North America.
And I found it.
From Flesh and Blood: Dark Desires
The oily smell of diesel fumes wafts through the open window, filling the small room above the Algiers Wharf. Gordon Urquhart, sitting in the only chair in the room, a gray metal folding chair, takes a long drag on his cigarette and looks out the window at a listless tugboat chugging up the dark Mississippi. The river water, like a huge black snake, glitters with the reflection of the New Orleans skyline on the far bank.
Gordon’s cigarette provides the room’s only illumination. It’s so dark he can barely see his hand. He likes it, sitting in the quiet, waiting for the room’s occupant to show up. Not quite six feet tall, Gordon is a rock-solid two hundred pounds. His hair turning silver, Gordon still sees himself as the good-looking heartbreaker he was in his twenties.
He wasn’t born Gordon Urquhart those forty years ago. When he saw the name in a movie, he liked it so much he became Gordon Urquhart. He made a good Gordon Urquhart. Since the name change, he’d gone up in life.
He yawns, then takes off his leather gloves and places them on his leg. He wipes his sweaty hands on his other pants leg.
The room, a ten-by-ten-foot hole-in-the-wall, has a single bed against one wall, a small chest of drawers on the other wall, and a sink in the far corner. Gordon sits facing the only door.
He closes his eyes and daydreams of Stella Dauphine. He’d caught a glimpse of her last night on Bourbon Street. She walked past in that short red dress without even noticing him. As she moved away, bouncing on those spiked high heels, he saw a flash of her white panties when her dress rose in the breeze. He wanted to follow, but had business to take care of.
Sitting in the rancid room, Gordon daydreams of Stella, of those full lips and long brown hair. She’s in the same red dress, only she’s climbing stairs. He moves below and watches her fine ass as she moves up the stairs. Her white panties are sheer enough for him to see the crack of her round ass.