Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set Page 26

He smiled. Money didn't matter, not next to the other thing. “It won't take but a minute. And I ain't got nobody else. Nobody I can trust, that is.”

  He gave her a look like the one from that time in the hayloft, the one she seemed to get all swoony over. “You'll have to put the lid on. Do you think you can drive the nails?”

  Betty Ann nodded. He kissed her. She took the hammer and nails. He climbed into the coffin and inhaled the cherry. She looked so good in her red dress.

  The lid fit perfectly. The first nail was awkward, she missed and busted her thumb. Her blood was likely soaking into the wood. He was glad he’d passed on the shellac.

  Love was built on blood and nails. You had to have both, or it didn't mean a thing.

  By the third nail, she was in the rhythm, and drove it home with four blows. Sixteen nails total, while Larry's heart pounded in time to the hammer.

  Her voice was muffled, but he could understand her. “Are you all right in there?”

  He said nothing. The air was stale. The coffin was the perfect size. He could be buried in this, when the time came. It would be a proud way to meet the dirt.

  “Larry?” she hollered.

  He waited.

  “Can you breathe?”

  She wouldn’t hear him if he answered.

  “I been thinking,” she said. “If I don’t let you out, I get the money all to myself.”

  God damn. She was a keeper. Not like those others, the ones who folded when they hit a knot or caught a splinter. This might be the one he could trust sharing his land with, his life with, his death with. Two holes and two tombstones, side by side, forever.

  They could get to that part later. First, he needed to see how good she was with a shovel.

  He pulled the hammer and crowbar from the secret fold in the velvet and began loosening the lid from the inside, too excited to concentrate. Hope pulsed through his flesh.

  This one might work out. She was the real thing, better than the others. A killer. Tight nails, warm blood, a wooden soul. And cold, cold dirt in her heart

  A woman who could nail your coffin was worth keeping around.

  One way or another.

  THE END

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  THE NAME GAME

  By Scott Nicholson

  When Vincent awoke, he felt as if he'd been dropped headfirst from the Statue of Liberty's torch.

  He moaned and rolled over into a stack of moldy cardboard and newspapers. The avenue tasted of Queens, smog stung to the ground by the long rains of the week before. A car horn bleated, amplified by the brick canyons so that the noise rattled Vincent’s eardrums. He tried to peel back his eyelids so that the brilliant green in his vision could be scrubbed away by the orange crash of daylight.

  Damn this city, he thought, each word a hammer blow. And since he was bothering to think, he figured he might as well try to remember. That was a little harder. He was on his knees, supporting himself against the slick skin of a Dumpster, by the time he got past the previous two seconds and on into the last few hours.

  It was morning. The aroma of bagels and coffee drifted from some back door along the alley, fighting with the stench of gutter garbage before mingling into a deeper smell of rot. And if this was morning, then Vincent was—

  Late.

  He was supposed to catch a pre-dawn flight, to be out of town before another sorry New York sun rose. No, he wasn’t supposed to catch the flight. He remembered harder, and more painfully. Robert Wells was supposed to catch that flight.

  Robert Daniel Wells, his new identity, a boring tourism official from Muncie. The Feds had set it up that way. A tourism official could go places, sleep in a few motels, get lost in America’s excess. Los Angeles for a convention to pitch movie locations, then Oregon for a meeting of the Christmas Tree Growers Association, zippp down to, where was it? Oh, yeah, Flagstaff, Arizona, to sell Muncie to wealthy retirees. Good old Indiana, that scenic destination, that mecca of the masses.

  Dumb damned Feds. Like Joey Scattione couldn’t figure that one out. With Joey’s resources, Vincent was meat no matter what identity they gave him. What he needed was a new face, new bones, a new brain, because his brain was halfway down the back of his neck. He touched the welt on his head.

  Ouch.

  He struggled to his feet, took a step, and nearly tripped over a pile of rags. The pile stirred, a bottle rolled to the asphalt, and a bleary eye opened amid a dark crack of cloth.

  “Suh—sorry,” Vincent said. He waited a moment for the bum to acknowledge him, but the eye closed, extinguished like an ember dropped in mud.

  His hand went to his back pocket. No surprise, his wallet was gone. It had contained nothing but cash, a few hundred bucks. No biggie. He hadn't dared carry his fake IDs in there.

  Vincent took a couple more steps. Even if he missed the flight, he still had the ticket. They’d let him catch a later one. If he had a connector in St. Louis, maybe he’d slip out of the terminal and throw Robert Wells in the ditch somewhere, dig up some new papers. It could be done. Easier that way than screwing around and counting on the Feds.

  That’s why he’d went alone. With a spook escort, Joey’s people would have spotted Vincent a mile away. Feds' shoes sparkled like skyscrapers, and they always looked as if they should be wearing sunglasses. Might as well carry a sandwich sign that said, “Hey, bad guys of the world! I’m a spook.”

  So Vincent had talked them into playing it his way. Take up the tourism official act, gawk at the skyscrapers, do the same kind of dumb things an Indiana bumpkin would do. Like try to catch a cab at four in the morning.

  Whoever had clobbered him must have been an amateur. Certainly wasn’t any of Joey’s muscle. Joey would want Vincent whole, uninjured, wide awake, and ready for some slow face-to-face. Joey's people would show Vincent ten thousand ways to die, all at the same time, and none of them easy. Joey would want it all on videotape, since he couldn't be there in the flesh.

  And the Feds, they weren’t in for the double-cross. Not only were they too dumb, Vincent had given them the slip back at the hotel at around midnight. Sure, they probably would have a spook or two haunting the airports, but they wouldn't want to make a scene. Better to let Vincent get out of town and track him later.

  Vincent neared the end of the alley, the traffic thick on the street in front of him. Pedestrians clogged the sidewalks, hustling off to make the nine o’clock ritual. He felt better already, though his pulse was playing “The War Of 1812” in his temples. Safety in numbers, and nowhere were numbers more numerous than on a Manhattan street.

  He attempted to whistle, but his throat was too dry. He put on his indifferent grimace, the mask that New York wore, and slouched into the crowd. He fell in behind a woman walking her poodle. He nearly stepped on the poodle when it stopped to relieve itself. The woman pretended not to notice either Vincent or the steaming brown pile on the concrete.

  Vincent reached inside his jacket, to the inner pocket. He stopped. The ticket was gone.

  Someone had taken his papers. The social security card, the Indiana driver's license, the credit card made out to “Robert Wells,” even a blood donor card. All the FBI's clever forgeries, along with four more bills, were now in the hands of some idiot mugger. Or mugger of idiots, whichever way you wanted to look at it.

  Vincent had been so wrapped up in worrying about Joey Scattione that he hadn't considered falling victim to a less ruthless and much more random predator. His predicament hit him like a wrong-way cab. If he were forced to be Vincent Hartbarger, he wouldn't last a half a day in this city. Not with Joey's people on the hunt. And Vincent Hartbarger at the moment was broke, no way out, no standby plane ticket, no bulletproof vest. No gun.

  “Out of the way, dude,” growled a kid with a skateboard under his arm. The kid shoved past Vincent, greasy black hair shining in the lights from a nearby shop window. Vincent moved against the glass, out of the main c
rush of foot traffic. He glanced at the passing faces, on the lookout for Joey's people.

  Calm down, take a breath. Think.

  Thinking brought the headache roaring back. Goon must have used a tire iron.

  He fumbled for a cigarette, then remembered that Robert Wells didn't smoke. But he wasn't Robert Wells anymore. He searched for the secret folds in his coat, the place where he'd kept his Vincent effects. Because he'd planned all along that, once he blew this town and shook the spooks, he'd return to being Vincent, at least until he could scrape together a new identity. He didn't have much faith in the Feds and their “witless protection program.”

  But the worse got worser. His fingers came away empty. The mugger had taken his Vincent stash, along with the extra fifty he'd tucked back for hard times. Vincent closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, inhaling car exhaust as if the carbon monoxide would dull his headache.

  I'd rather be anywhere than right here, on Joey's turf, in Joey's town. Hell, I'd even take Muncie. At least in Muncie, the only thing I'd have to worry about would be dying of boredom. And I hear that takes YEARS...

  Voices to his right pulled him back to the morning street. Two people were shouting, pointing into the shop window. In New York, two people talking on the street either meant a drug deal, a sex solicitation, or the beginning of a murder. But these seemed like ordinary folks, the kind who talked to windows instead of invisible demons.

  Vincent looked into the storefront. It was a pawn shop, bars thick across the window, a bank of surveillance cameras eyeing the street like hookers on payday. A Sanyo television lit up the window, the flickering images reflected in the glass. It took Vincent a moment to register what he was seeing.

  A shot of the East River, a harried-looking reporter trying vainly to control her hair in the breeze, a cutaway to emergency response and fire vehicles, then a wide shot of Kennedy Airport. Back to the river, a small orange speck in the water. Zoom in. A torn life jacket.

  A computer graphic popped up in the corner of the screen, the station logo a leering eye. Underneath, in slanted red letters, “Flight 317 Crash.”

  Poor bastards, Vincent thought. Imagine what kind of headache you get from dropping a mile-and-a-half from the sky.

  He was turning back to the street, his pity for the victims already fading, when the number “317” bounced back into his roaring head. He froze, got shoved by a balding man in a suit, yelled at by a package courier.

  317. Hadn't that been his flight? The one that was supposed to whisk Robert Wells to a new life?

  He went into the pawn shop. A bank of TVs filled one wall, half of them tuned to news coverage of the crash. The anchor had her hair in place now, must have snagged some hair spray during the cutaway. The computer graphic now read “Live!” under the station logo, in those same blood-red letters.

  “We're at the scene of the crash of NationAir Flight 317, which plummeted shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport this morning—”

  “What a mess, huh?” said a voice behind Vincent. He thought at first it was one of Joey's boys. But it was the pawn shop proprietor, a small man with glasses and a scar across one cheek. His nose looked like an unsuccessful prizefighter's.

  “Yu—yeah,” Vincent agreed.

  “Took about a minute for it to hit the water,” the shop owner said, leaning over a glass case of watches. “Just enough time for them to pray and crap their pants.”

  The man starting laughing, the laugh spasmed into a coughing fit. The news anchor's voice fought with the racket of the man's lungs.

  “—no survivors have been found. The Boeing 747 was reported to be carrying a full contingent of 346 passengers, according to NationAir records. F.A.A. authorities are arriving on the scene—”

  “It was one of them Aye-rab bombs, I bet,” said the shopkeeper. “Don't see why the rest of us got to suffer 'cause the kikes and the ragheads can't get along.”

  “They said the plane was full,” Vincent said, half to himself.

  “Yep. You know how they are these days. Wedge 'em in with a crowbar. They interviewed the man who was first in line to go standby. Everybody showed, so he never got on. He was thanking God seven ways to Sunday.”

  No standby passengers. But what about the ticket belonging to Robert Wells? Someone must have used it. Someone—

  Vincent stumbled toward the street, his head reeling.

  “Hey, got a special today on handguns,” the shopkeeper called after him. “No waiting.”

  But Vincent was already out the door. He walked fast, fell into the New York rhythm, blind to everything.

  Someone must have used his ticket. Who?

  The mugger.

  The mugger must have checked in with the ticket, became “Robert Wells” himself, and grabbed a seat across the country. Maybe the mugger wanted out of this town so bad that he'd risk having the authorities waiting for him at LAX. And for his trouble, the idiot was probably now in a thousand pieces, feeding fish in Long Island Sound.

  If so, the creep had gotten what he deserved. Vincent touched his sore head to remind himself that everybody had to go sometime. Everybody had to pay that one big debt. The trick was to put it off as long as possible.

  As he turned the corner, another thought came to him. Unless the spooks had been watching, then they didn't know that Robert Wells a.k.a. Vincent never boarded the plane. They would get the list, see the name, go over the data on the terminal computer, and verify that indeed Robert Wells had met his end on Flight 317.

  A perfect bow-tie on their witness protection program. Case closed. The Fed's star witness against Joey Scattione was now utterly and forever safe from the mobster's long reach. Even Scattione couldn't finger a man in the afterlife.

  Vincent walked faster, excited, his pulse racing, red wires of pain shrieking through his temples. He realized that Scattione would also think him dead. Scattione was way sharper than the Feds, even though he'd been convicted on racketeering and drug charges. Thanks to Vincent, who'd been one of his best street lieutenants.

  But Vincent knew a good deal when he saw one. When the net tightened and the Feds needed a pigeon, Vincent did even better than squawk: he'd sung like a deflowered canary. After, of course, he’d elicited a long sheet of promises, including permanent immunity and protection. And a new identity.

  An identity that was dead.

  What he needed right now was his old friend Sid.

  Vincent turned into a bar, though it was scarcely ten o'clock. A man in drag who looked like he hadn't slept was slumped in one corner, holding a cigarette that was four inches of ash. Two cabbies were drinking off the effects of the third shift. The bartender kept his attention focused on the tiny black-and-white that hung in one corner. It was tuned to the same news coverage of the crash.

  “Help you, buddy?” the bartender said, without turning.

  “Scotch and water. A double.”

  “Poor bastards,” the bartender said, still watching the television as he reached for the stock behind him. “We think we got it bad, but at least we ain't been handed our wings.”

  “Yeah,” Vincent said. Catholic humor. Like everybody was an angel.

  The man poured from the Johnny Walker bottle as if dispensing liquid gold. The ice cubes were rattled into the glass before Vincent could complain about the weak mix. Then Vincent remembered he had no money. He acted as if reaching for his wallet, then said, “Excuse me, where's the rest room?”

  The man nodded toward the rear, eyes still fixed on the set, where the field anchor was now interviewing a witness. As Vincent headed for the dark bowels of the bar, he overheard the witness talking about airline food. The news team was groping, fumbling to keep momentum, the tragedy already sliding toward ancient history. The transvestite winked as Vincent passed, and up close Vincent couldn't tell if she were a man dressed as a woman or vice versa.

  Sheesh, and I thought I had an identity problem.

  But maybe the she-male was onto something. In the bathro
om, Vincent studied his own face in the mirror, trying to picture himself in lipstick. He shuddered. Better to take on Joey Scattione than to pluck his eyebrows and duct-tape his gut.

  He washed his hands and went out. The transvestite was waiting by the door. Vincent cleared his throat. “Say, you got change for a phone call?”

  The transvestite sneered and produced some coins, then dumped them into Vincent's palm as if afraid to catch a disease. Vincent mumbled thanks and stopped by the pay phone. He dialed a well-remembered number. As the phone rang, he watched to see which gender of bathroom the transvestite chose.

  Neither. The transvestite went out the back door. The line clicked as the connection was made. “Hello,” came the welcome though nasal voice.

  “Sid, hey, it's me. Vincent.”

  “Vincent? Like I know any Vincent?”

  “Hartbarger. You know.”

  “Afraid not, friend.”

  “Jesus, Sid. Vincent Hartbarger. You sold me the damned name yourself, for crying out loud. Driver's license, Rotary Club membership, credit cards.”

  “I don't know from Hartbargers.”

  Vincent sighed and remembered he’d used a fake identity to get his fake identity. “It's Charlie Ehle.”

  “Charlie? Why the hell didn't you say so? You expect me to remember every job or something?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Listen, I need another one. Like pronto.”

  “Rush jobs cost extra, my man. But for you, I can have you set up by five o'clock.”

  Vincent nodded into the phone. Sid always got chummy when he smelled green. For a document man, Sid had enough smarm to work every side of the fence: green cards, counter check scams, fake IDs, forgery, bogus lottery tickets, anything that involved paper or photographs. But Sid liked cash, lots of it, payable when services were rendered.

  “Can't you do better than five? I'm kind of in a jam.”

  “Oh, the Scattione thing.”

  The Scattione thing. Damn those Feds. Vincent's testimony was delivered in closed court, the records sealed. Sure, Vincent expected stoolies in the judicial branch to leak to the Mafia. This was America, after all. But when even the criminal fringes such as Sid knew the score, that meant the clock was ticking down twice per second on Vincent's remaining life span.