Double blast, p.21
Double Blast, page 21
I turned to Fiona. “What’s in there?”
“Boxes? Old file cabinets? A few pieces of furniture from our old house on Banana Street?”
“Weapons?” I asked.
She shook her head decisively.
“Anything he could use as a weapon?”
“Boxes? Old file cabinets? A few pieces of furniture from our old house on Banana Street?”
“If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll tell you the whole story,” Florida offered.
And way too late. She could have told me the night we drank Boone’s Farm. Or the first day she rolled into town. Even earlier that very day would have worked. “No.” I stood. To the ranting of Eddie the Raging Maniac, who’d found a sliver of daylight at the side jamb where the vault door met the frame, and with his mouth pressed to it, threatened to kill Fiona, Florida, and me, before taking his boy to the Congo jungle with the monkeys, and so deep in the jungle no one would ever see either one of them again. Except maybe his Ma. Because no one told her about her grandboy either. I walked over to the same side jamb on our side and yelled back, “Shut up, Eddie!” To Florida I said, “Save it. What we need is out of here.” I pointed at the vault and lowered my voice. “And a way to keep him in.”
Fiona’s gargantuan desk would most likely barricade the vault door should Eddie the Idiot try the spindle and find freedom to kill us all on his way to the jungle, as promised, but only if the three of us could maneuver the solid oak desk out the office door.
“We could bust it through the glass,” Florida said.
“How will we pick it up to get it through the glass?” Fiona asked.
“Come on.” I blazed a trail. “We’ll push it.”
After ten minutes, we gave up, having moved it no more than an inch with what felt like a mile to go. The two-window teller counter would work if we had a way to tear it from two walls and the floor. Which we didn’t. The remaining furniture in the bank combined—five chairs and two side tables—wouldn’t even slow him down. Much less stop him. But just then, the grandfather clock that was so much part of the fabric of the bank that it might as well have been part of the wall it held up let out a single half-hour peal. Five minutes later, we had the chairs and side tables six feet to the left of the clock. To break its fall when we tipped it over. So we didn’t smash it to smithereens. Which he could plow through with the weight of the vault door. Only for us to soon learn that our strength combined couldn’t tip the clock any more than we could move the desk.
“So much for girl power.” Fiona pulled up her t-shirt to mop her brow.
“All the weight is in the middle with the mechanics,” I said while studying the grandfather clock to the lovely tunes of Eddie the Spineless Congo Jungle Snake snorting and slamming himself against the vault door. Like a deranged bull. “And that’s where we’re pushing. We need to push it from a higher vantage point where it’s hollow.”
Florida and I tried to stand on the two metal folding chairs that had flanked the clock, one I’d sat in a mere hour earlier waiting on Fiona to grant me permission to enter her office, the same Fiona who was behind us trying to hold the chairs steady, but all we managed was to rock the old clock and almost break our own necks. Because our footing wasn’t stable enough.
“Be quiet,” I whispered.
“What?” Florida whispered back.
“Do you hear that?” I dropped from my chair perch to the floor. And pointed to the quiet vault.
“Is he dead?” Florida whispered.
“Maybe he’s just asleep,” her mother whispered back.
“Maybe he’s figured it out.” I didn’t whisper.
“FIGURED WHAT OUT?” came through from the vault. “WHAT?”
Florida tossed the metal chairs out of our way. Feet planted wide, she dropped to a squat a foot from the old clock. “Come on, Davis.”
“Come on, what, Florida?”
“Hop up,” she said. “Rah-rah style.”
It wasn’t a bad idea at all, but it gave us no more height to push past the mechanical weight housed in the clock’s middle than standing on the chairs had. We untangled, I climbed on one of the chairs, then up to Florida’s shoulders. And with that move, one we’d made repeatedly back in the day to scale fences and trees, I truly was transported back to high school.
After five long minutes of her staggering under my weight, grunting things like, “You are so much heavier than you look,” and me repeatedly crashing my upper body into the old clock grunting things like, “Childbirth is easier than this,” Coach Fiona finally gave us the idea that would work with, “You need to get a running start. Hit it with your combined weights and with momentum.”
We caught our breath, passed a bottle of water between us, backed up as far as we could, and reloaded, which was me climbing on Florida’s shoulders again. Ten feet later, after slamming into the old grandfather clock with one final tackle, it went crashing to the floor. Blocking the vault door. We’d gone down with the clock. Fiona rushed to help us up, and we were rewarded with Eddie the Blasphemer repeatedly breaking one of the Ten Commandments along with a pounding fist to the bank door almost scaring us out of our very skins.
We stared at the front door.
Florida and I were still panting.
Then we heard, “Davis? Are you in there?”
It was Roy Howdy.
“I’ve got this here hospital bill for you.”
I held a finger to my lips. If I let Roy Howdy in, I’d ring his neck. He was the very source of the predicament we were in. But if I throttled the very life out of him, which I could have done just then, my father would be disappointed past the point of no return. If I hadn’t already crossed that line. So I didn’t.
Next we heard, “Okay, Davis. I’ll go look for you someplace else.”
We took the back back way to my parents’ house, through weeds and thistle up to our knees, dodging hubcaps, climbing over a discarded and threadbare loveseat that had lost its cushions, until we reached the gate behind what used to be my mother’s vegetable garden. We stumbled into the house picking twigs and leaves out of our hair, where we met up with Courtney Carr and a terribly frightened boy. Who ran straight into his sister’s arms. I gave Courtney a nod toward the kitchen to give both the small family privacy to break the news to Cole, and me time with her.
TWENTY-FOUR
I closed the kitchen door.
I pointed to the kitchen table.
Courtney dutifully sat down.
“Start talking.” I said it as I reached for and dialed into the old metal breadbox on top of the refrigerator, which was really Daddy’s gun safe, and retrieved his off-duty weapon. A Ruger LC9. Shiny, clean, and with a full clip. From the kitchen table as I was checking the chamber for a round, I heard a proclamation: “I don’t do guns.”
“I’m not going to shoot information out of you, Courtney.” But rather than tuck it at my waist, I sat down across from her and landed it in front of me. Since she’d shown me a kink in her already thin armor, I’d use it to scare the story out of her. Because I needed to hear it fast. “What’s this about silver?”
While trying to scoot her chair away from me and the gun, possibly all the way out the backdoor—the barrel was aimed at the stove, the safety was on, the gun wasn’t going to spontaneously fire—Courtney said, “It’s not my story to tell.”
I sighed. “The time for keeping Fiona’s secrets is over. Do you understand that lives are at stake?”
“Yeah.” She scooted her chair back another inch. “Right now, mine.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“If I tell you what I know, Fiona will shoot me.”
“Fiona cares about one thing right now, and that’s the safety of her children.”
“And I care about my head staying on my neck.”
“Courtney!” I slapped the table; the gun clattered; she jumped a mile. “Start talking.”
She couldn’t stop shaking long enough to start talking other than sputtering out, “I promise you, Davis, I don’t know a thing.”
I stood, used the heel of my left hand to rub the space between my eyes, and with my right hand picked up Daddy’s weapon.
Courtney slapped her hand over her mouth dampening a shrill scream.
I held my hands up in surrender, barrel looking at the ceiling, then slowly tucked the gun at my waist—out of sight; out of mind—while she patted her heart back into her chest. I walked to the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of cold water from it, placed it on the kitchen table, then scooted Courtney and her chair back to it. I took my seat again, crossed my arms on the table, and leaned in. “Let’s start with an easy question.”
She hesitantly nodded.
“Earlier today on the sidewalk in front of my sister’s, you told me Fiona was trying to keep it from happening again.”
She nodded. “I’ve got a big mouth sometimes.”
“What did you mean by that, Courtney?”
“I meant I say things I don’t mean to say.”
“What did you mean earlier when you told me Fiona was trying to keep it from happening again. Keep what from happening again?”
She stared at the bottle of water. “Do you have anything stronger?”
I went back to the refrigerator and returned with the chilled bottle of Barefoot Bubbly Brut champagne that Fantasy and I found in the liquor cabinet. I sat it in front of Courtney, who sliced the silver foil off the neck in one smooth move with the jagged edge of a broken thumbnail on her right hand. Then the bottle dipped below the table as she slid the neck under the hem of her blouse and gave the cork one quick twist. It popped open with a dull thump. Must have been a party trick. The way she drank straight from the bottle was impressive too. After she poured what felt like half of the champagne straight down her throat, she returned the bottle to the table. She delicately dabbed at the corners of her mouth with the fingertips of her left hand and I noticed another broken nail, which was when I realized it was Courtney who’d busted into Eli Atwell’s coffin. I wondered how she could be afraid of a firearm in competent hands but not afraid of a cadaver.
“Well.” Courtney wrapped her hands around the base of the bottle. “Do you remember Old Man Carter?”
“Roy Howdy’s uncle? Who died a few months ago?”
“The same.”
The weight of the Simmons family secrets she’d been carrying began pouring out in a hushed voice, her eyes darting right to make sure the door to the den was still closed, starting with, “Old Man Carter had old Adeline Jenkins on his death slab after she went flying off that wild horse she was trying to break. You and Florida were kids. Do you remember that?” Without waiting for me to answer, she said, “And if you ask me, seventy-year-old women should leave the wild horse breaking to the young people. You remember her, right? She and your grandmother were friends. Well,” Courtney leaned another inch closer to her champagne, “remember how she wore those Granny Clampet clothes? Those long dark swishy skirts? Those nasty lace-up boots?”
I didn’t, really, but I nodded.
“Old Man Carter was about to pump her full of death juice—”
“Formaldehyde?”
“That’s it,” Courtney said. “But he had to get her out of her disgusting Granny Clampet clothes first.” Courtney shuddered at the thought. “He pulls off one of those nasty boots, and a silver coin fell out. Turned out it was a silver dollar from way back when.”
“How far back?”
Courtney shrugged. “Dinosaur times?”
“There’s no such thing as prehistoric minted coins, Courtney.”
“A long time ago, okay? The coin has a woman on it with long hair. And it’s worth all the money in the world.”
“All the money in the world?”
“A lot of money, okay? Like thirty million dollars.”
She went on to tell me Old Man Carter was a finders keepers flavor of undertaker who promptly placed the silver coin in his Pine Apple Bank & Trust safe-deposit box so his nephew wouldn’t stumble across it and toss it in Brantley Lake on a wish. On his way out the door, feeling Frank’s eyes on his back, he spun around and stopped dead in his tracks with an unspoken warning for Frank to leave his safe-deposit box alone. That was all it took for Frank to know Old Man Carter had placed something of value in his bank. That afternoon, as soon as the old grandfather clock struck four, Frank locked the front door, pulled the front curtains, and found the silver coin. He stole it from Old Man Carter. He waited until dark, then buried the coin deep in the base of the hill at Wright and Oak Streets, with Old Man Carter, who’d been kicking himself for thinking the coin would be safe with Frank at the bank in the first place, watching through binoculars from the funeral parlor family viewing room.
He promptly stole it back from Frank.
Several months later, Frank found himself in somewhat of a financial crunch after a streak of bad luck with his bookmaking side hustle. Tired of borrowing money from his best friend when his personal finances went sideways, because Eli Atwell didn’t mind the money so much as he minded what Frank was doing to his family, subsequently forcing him to sit through lectures about being a good husband and responsible father before he handed over the money he knew he’d never see again, Frank decided to sell his life insurance policy instead. Turned out he just thought he was selling his life insurance policy to the highest bidder, in fact the only bidder, who said, “How much do you need for it?” What he’d done was sign a predatory loan note. When he realized his mistake, he went for his real life insurance, the coin he’d buried, but the coin was gone. He worked up his nerve to confront Old Man Carter, who’d stolen it first, then stole it again from Frank, who’d stolen it from him, and after they agreed that they’d both stolen the coin, they split custody—one month in Frank’s vault, the next in Old Man Carter’s root cellar—until they could unload it. Only to learn that wouldn’t be anytime soon. The marketplace for rare and valuable coins was nowhere near Pine Apple, and the verification process to authenticate the coin took time. And money. Money neither had. Meanwhile, Frank’s loan shark note came due. Old Man Carter didn’t have the money to buy Frank out of his half of the coin, so Frank made one final and failed attempt to gamble his way out of the dilemma with disastrous results. He went to Eli Atwell one last time, who agreed to help Frank, but only if he confessed all to Fiona and either closed the bank or turned operations over to the only other officer of the bank, Fiona. Frank didn’t like those terms, which left him no way out but to rob his own bank. Only to learn at the end of the month it took him to plan the heist—selling mortgages, depositing every dime coming in into his own account, pawning safe-deposit box family heirlooms, and hoarding every penny he could get his hands on—his loan shark debt had doubled. The money he’d stolen wasn’t nearly enough. His only choice was to run. He hid half of the cash, telling himself it was in case Fiona and Florida were to need it one day, and that’s how good Frank was at lying even to himself. Because he was really socking it away in case he somehow pulled out of the mess he’d made of his life. He used the other half of what he stole for getaway money. It was at the Pine Apple city limits sign where he was sandwiched, then run off the road by two cars full of loan shark debt collectors. With brass knuckles. And baseball bats. Frank had the advantage of familiar territory, cut through four acres of Higgly Farm’s cornfields, and lost the thugs. For three whole days. Three days he waited for Old Man Carter to sell the stupid silver coin to the first collector who’d take it and give him his half already. But before that could happen, the heavily tattooed debt collectors caught up with Frank at VictoryLand Casino ninety miles from Pine Apple, where once again Frank had tried to gamble his way out with the getaway money he’d stolen from Pine Apple, and was down to almost his last nickel when he spotted the loan shark collectors entering the small casino. He slipped to a payphone, dialed 911, and told the operator exactly where to find the man who’d robbed Pine Apple Bank & Trust. So he could go to prison. Where he'd be safe.
Almost twenty years later, which more or less brought us to present day, while whiling away the endless prison hours watching news in the day room, Frank Simmons saw a feature story that would change the trajectory of too many lives. It was about the highest price ever paid for a silver dollar—thirty million dollars—and he was so shocked at seeing an image of the coin that was the exact coin he’d held in his hands all those years earlier, he’d blurted out that he knew where another coin exactly like it was. His cellmate, sitting beside him, said, “Sure you do.” Frank insisted he was telling the truth, throwing in enough detail to keep his cellmate awake that night. The next day, the cellmate relayed it all to his favorite dirty guard in exchange for a new used mattress, three cigarettes, and twenty dollars in his commissary fund. The dirty guard researched Pine Apple, verified everything he could, then paid Old Man Carter a middle-of-the-night visit.
Old Man Carter wouldn’t give up the coin or its location.
Instead of leaving, the dirty guard found a comfortable tombstone and waited until the house went dark. He crept in and up to the old man’s bedside. He held him at gunpoint and gave him one last chance. Old Man Carter told him to go to hell. So the dirty prison guard held the old man’s head in a vice grip, then tipped three drops of straight mercury into his ear. The mercury burned through to his brain, instantly evaporating and leaving no trace, and Old Man Carter didn’t wake up the next morning.
Convinced the coin must be somewhere in the dilapidated funeral home, the dirty guard resumed his prison duties, recruited three of his favorite gang members, and plans for The Big Pine Apple Coin Heist were set in motion. Execution date? The only three days on the calendar strangers were allowed in town. Memorial Day weekend.
The first thing the dirty guard and his posse of three did was beat the stew out of Frank Simmons in the prison laundry room. Frank pointed the killers in the right direction—straight to the root cellar of the funeral home—in exchange for his, his former wife’s, his daughter’s, and his grandson’s (news to Frank) lives. The three gang members barely kept their end of the bargain on the sparing of Frank’s life’s part. It took the prison staff a week to track down Frank’s only child, Florida, to tell her if she wanted to say goodbye to her father, who was in a medically induced coma, she’d better hurry to the intensive care unit at Citizens Medical Center. It took Florida a minute to get to Frank. She wasn’t about to take her brother, her mother couldn’t raise Pine Apple hackles by closing the bank in the middle of the week with no notice to rush to Mobile and take care of her son, and by the time Florida made arrangements for Cole and got to her estranged father’s bedside, Frank’s vital signs and brain function had improved. He was brought out of the coma. When Fiona saw her father for the first time in almost twenty years, he was somewhat alert, shackled to a hospital bed in the Head Injury hall, and totally blind. He confessed all to Florida. Who, from the hospital parking lot, called her mother and told her to get her local affairs in order. Her Pine Apple clock had run out. Fiona, after being separated from her son since the day he was born with the exception of a few stolen weeks a year, on top of her miserable existence in Pine Apple, was more than ready for the next chapter of her life. Mother and daughter laid the groundwork by procuring new identities and housing in Bellevue, Nebraska, but they vowed to not make the move before they warned Pine Apple Chief of Police Samuel Way what a dirty prison guard and three soon-to-be escaped convicts had planned for Pine Apple’s Memorial Day Celebration. The day of their reunion and planned getaway arrived only for them to learn Chief Way was out of town.
