Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

the pocket knife Mal had given him for Christmas, sharpened to a razor’s edge, and left for Muscatine, driving at a steady forty miles an hour, having hardly the presence of mind to refill the gasoline tank or stop for stop signs. He shoved a ten-dollar bill out of the window to pay for four dollars and sixty -three cents worth of gas and then drove off without waiting for the change, not because he was in such a hurry, but because he’d forgotten, picturing all the number of ways he might take his vengeance with such clarity and resolve that without the automatic habit of driving the car would’ve meandered off the road and into the ditch.

“Tell me where the trailer court is,” he demanded of the first person he saw on the streets, and received directions. At exactly three a.m. he drove in among the long trailers, parked the car and walked along in the dark looking for a Mercury. He knew it was there. He found it hidden in a metal garage, and in the trailer beside it there was a light on. Also the sound of a radio and loud talking.

He slipped between two other trailers and came around in back. Two cinder blocks carefully piled upon each other brought him up to the level of the window in the bedroom, where he could look through the opened door along the whole length of the trailer.

Two young men were sitting at the small kitchen table. The other, a boy, sat on the sofa next to the radio. The two at the table were drinking beer out of bottles.

“What’re we going to do, Wally?”

“Don’t ask me that again. Don’t ever ask me that again. I’m sick of it, fucker. Use your own head for a while.”

“Murder. That’s the worst of all things. They could hang us for that.”

“Shut up. You think I don’t know that?”

“Maybe somebody seen us in the parkin’ lot ‘n’ wrote down the license plate. They’ll be the FBI, Wally.”

“Shut up, you stupid jackass.”

July could hear the sucking noises of the younger boy, and could see him crying. The older boy stood up and shouted at him to be quiet, then hit him in the face. Blood ran down from around his eye and the gasping noise grew louder.

“Shut up, fucker!”

“Don’t hit him again,” yelled the other boy, getting up from the table, knocking over the empty and half-filled bottles.

“You want to try me, mother?”

“Just don’t hit ’im again.”

“It’s his fault, you dumb bastard! You said to bring him along and now we’re here ‘n’ wondering if we won’t be hung.”

“He didn’t mean to. He just got scared.”

“They don’t want me for nothin’. I could leave you sons of bitches right now—you know that, don’t you? They ain’t getting anythin’ on me.”

“It was your idea to go out there, ‘n’ you was the one who started pushin’ ‘er.”

“Nobody’d believe I had nothin’ to do with it. I ain’t never been in trouble before. It’d be your word against mine.”

“He just got scared.”

“Scared of a girl.” The sucking noises grew louder. “Shut up!” And he raised his fist as though to hit the boy again.

“Don’t, Wally. No more hittin’.”

“Then make ’im shut up. It’s like being in the room with a sick horse or somethin’.”

“What’re we goin’ ta do?”

“I told you never to ask that again, fucker. Next time you get it. We got to think. There’s plenty a smart ways a gettin’ outa a thing like this. Shit, they don’t catch but one hundreth of murders. We just got ta have a good story up, in case we was asked by somebody.”

“We could say we just never left the parkin’ lot.”

“Then they’d say real fast, ‘What was you boys doin’ in the parking lot?’ Go ahead, you try to answer, like you would if you was being asked by a detective.”

“I can’t think, Wally. God, I’m scared.”

“I know you are, punk. That’s why we got all three of us to stay here until you guys get your cool back. Course they got nothin’ on me—you remember that.”

“Don’t leave, Wally, please.”

“Just remember that, ‘n’ get him to shut up. God damn, why don’t they have no TV shows when you need ’em? Get me a beer.”

Leonard went to the refrigerator and brought one back.

“How many more we got?”

“That’s the last one.”

“Shit. I seen me a show once where these two guys killed a guy. They was tryin’ to be smart, of course, but what give it away was that one of’em left somethin’ behind at the crime which later was traced to them—a pair of glasses. Now, we di’n’t do nothin’ like that, see. An’ no fingerprints ’cause we wiped everythin’ off. Now we got to get us an alibi—some place where we was.”

“We can say we was fuckin’ some girls.”

“That ain’t no good. They’d just ask who.”

“We’d say they was whores we picked up, that they didn’t give us no names or nothin’, and we c’n tell how each other’s looked an’ all agree.”

“Then they’d say ‘Where?’ ‘n’ ‘When?’ If we said we was in a hotel, we’d have to prove—”

“We could a been in the car . . . out in the country somewhere.”

“Oh no, never mention nothin’ like as to remind them of somethin’ connected to the crime. They’d go, ‘Ah, so you guys were out in the country, huh? What car?’ Then maybe they get the idea to ask that cop in the parkin’ lot if he remembers a red Mercury, kind of jazzy-lookin’, ‘n’ he probably would. No, we c’n say we was here.”

“But we wasn’t. There’s too many people around. Donnie was here before.”

“He’s a down guy, hell. He’d say we was here. I was here all last week. Jesus, can’t you keep ’im from doin’ that?”

July opened his knife and stepped down from the cinder blocks. Looking at it in the faint light from the window, he knew he wouldn’t be able to use it. A shiver of