3

He’d already pulled the dresser drawers out one at a time, running his latex-gloved hands through the old lady’s clothes. He’d turned the drawers over, searching for a hidden key, a note with instructions, or an envelope. Something. Anything. Now he moved on to her bedroom closet, gagging at the lavender, lilac, orange peel, and clove stench of the big potpourri sachet on the shelf. It wasn’t just the potpourri getting to him. It was the way the mildew and camphor mixed and clashed with each other. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Since coming into her bedroom, he hadn’t been able to escape the memories of his own grandma. Memories of how she used to powder herself up and pile on the clownish face paint over her sagging chicken skin, how she sprayed on sickly-sweet old-lady perfume to cover up the telltale scent of her own decay. He couldn’t escape the feeling that she was watching him, judging him, especially when he touched the old lady’s underthings. That really gave him the creeps.

After patting down her dresses, her coats, and inspecting each of her shoes, he grabbed a chair. He stood on it and began to remove things from the shelf: hat boxes, cardboard boxes, photo albums, letters bound together with faded red ribbon. This was more like it. He tossed each item onto the bed, gladly leaving the white satin sachet bag behind. As he stepped off the chair, there was a knock at the bedroom door. Heart thumping, he froze, one foot still on the chair seat, the other on the floor. He laughed at himself for reacting. The cops wouldn’t have knocked, and unless the old biddy had Houdini skills, she was still tied up in the basement.

“What is it, Hump?”

A linebacker-sized man in his forties with a face pitted like a bad country road stepped into the bedroom. Six-foot-three and two-forty, going soft around the middle, he looked like he’d forgotten to take his shoulder pads off after practice.

“King,” he said. “Why are you dumping out the old girl’s panties and stuff on the bed?”

King shook his head at his ex-cellmate. There was a reason everyone who knew him called him Hump. Hump was a good guy and somebody you wanted on your side in a prison fight, but he wasn’t the brightest gem in the jewelry box.

“Yeah, Hump. The thing we’re looking for can be hidden anywhere. Don’t pass nothing up. Look under lamps, ashtrays, under the phone. Come on, we went over all this already, right? It’s worth ten grand to us.”

“But why are you dumping—”

“Because I’m looking for a key, a safe combination, a note with numbers on it... like that. The man didn’t say we would definitely find it here, only that it might be here.”

“Okay, King. I got it.”

“Hump, I’m glad I cleared that up for you, but why’d you come up here in the first place?”

“The old gal.”

“What about her?”

“I don’t think she’s doing too good.”

King raced right past Hump, taking the steps two at a time, and barreled into the spindly-legged table at the base of the stairs. The collision knocked a white-and-blue-speckled ewer and basin off the table. The antique porcelain smashed onto the wide plank flooring and cracked into a hundred nasty-looking shards. He didn’t stop to check out the mess he’d made, hoping the job wouldn’t end up the same way. He turned down the hallway and headed for the rickety basement stairs. They creaked and moaned under his weight.

“Hey, lady! Lady, you all right?” he called out to her even before he reached the basement slab.

She didn’t answer. They’d been pretty gentle with her, up to a point. Sure, they’d made a show of their handguns, threatening to use them on her if she didn’t behave. Maybe Hump had tugged her white hair a little too hard and King had had to slap her when she started squawking. The blow split her lip and she bled a lot more than he expected a dried-up old prune like her to bleed. Her skin was so brittle, so papery and white, she didn’t even look like she had any blood in her. But they’d been gentler with her after that, careful not to break her birdlike bones when they tied her to a lally column. They’d used duct tape to bind her hands behind her and to wrap her ankles to the base of the pole, making sure not to cut off her circulation. When she started squawking again, Hump had shoved a balled-up sock in her yap and covered it with a strip of tape.

King called to her again. “Lady!”

But when his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw her head slumped, body sagging, he knew it was a waste of breath. The only voice she would hear now was St. Peter’s. King felt her neck for a pulse even though he knew he wouldn’t find one. When he pulled the tape away from her mouth, King was sickened by the stink of vomit. The old lady had puked into her gag and choked to death, or maybe it had been a combination of things. Maybe it had just been her time. What the hell did he know about it?

There was a loud pounding as Hump came down the stairs.

“She okay?” he asked.

“Dead.”

He crossed himself. “Oh, jeez, King. We killed the old lady. You said this wasn’t that kinda job.”

“Well, pal, she’s dead, and unless you know how to unscramble eggs or raise the dead, we better find what we came to find.”

“What should we do with the old lady?”

“We’ll figure that out later. For now, leave her. She’s not going anywhere.”

Hump shrugged, turned, and went back upstairs.

When Hump was gone, King prayed. Not for the old lady, but for himself.

Загрузка...