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

to keep living. As his father had long ago said, it isn’t age that kills anyone. It’s always some malfunction. Just as much an accident with Mal as with Carroll—even to decide to take one’s own life is an accident. And what could be more rightly attributed to ignorance and malevolence than a traffic accident? Wasn’t there malevolence in his grandmother’s death too? He thought there was.

It was light when he returned home, and he sat in the living room staring at his own image above the sofa, drawn with a broken piece of charcoal and sprayed with a thin fixative to keep the tiny grains of black dust from falling off. He looked at it and thought he would rather be dead.

In the trailer, Wally Cobb thought he heard something and went over to the side window. A solitary figure was walking by in front, moving with caution, and he watched him get into an old car and drive out of the court.

“Come on,” he said. “Hurry.” And all three of them got into the Mercury, backed out of the garage and went after the moving tail-lights.

“What you suppose he wanted, Wally? Maybe he didn’t have nothin’ to do with us. Do you s’pose he was a cop?”

“I don’t know, but we better find out for sure.”

They followed him to the police station and watched him walk inside.

“He must be a cop. Let’s get out of here.”

“No, I don’t think so. If he was, we’d be caught now. No, he ain’t a cop.”

“You think he maybe didn’t have nothin’ to do with us—maybe it’s somethin’ else? Did you really see him up close to the trailer?”

“No. We got to just wait.”

A short time later he came out of the station, got into his car and drove off. They followed him from a careful distance behind. Hours later, back in the Iowa City area, they began to getnervous. Then, when they continued to follow and he led them back to the brown-stone house, they began to panic.

“He must be her husband, Wally. How did he know—”

“I don’ know. I don’ know.”

“How could he know we was—”

“I don’ know.”

“God, what’re we goin’ a do? They’re goin’ a get us, Wally. They already—”

“Shut up. We ain’t caught yet. First we got to get rid of this car.”

“Then what?”

“Then we c’n go see my cousin Ollie. He’ll know what to do. He’s been in plenty of trouble before. He’ll know what to do.” Staying on the back roads, they headed for Kalona, where they hoped to be able to steal a car and drive to Illinois.

The Shamrock Hotel and Bar had rooms for $2.50 a night, and sold bottled beer at thirty cents. There was one common bathroom on the second floor. At about four o’clock in the afternoon the low, hoarse sounds of arguing and cursing began to flood out onto the street. The prostitutes came in at seven, and when one least expected it a woman’s cry from an upstairs room would disturb the night lull of the traffic. By midnight, dark, stooping figures from inside began to spill out onto the sidewalk, where they lay intermittently sleeping and cursing at imagined audiences. Pushers met addicts and suppliers here and made dealings across the tables along the wall. Black-marketeers sat at the bar selling as freely as vacuum -cleaner salesmen. Only a few of the girls lived there. The rest went home at 3:30 a.m., walking past the warehouses and abandoned office buildings. It was a retirement home for the morally destitute.

Today was Friday. The official weekend had been ushered in just moments earlier, when M. Beshamp came back from work, went into his room, ordered his wife to undress and lie across thebed, took off his belt and beat her with it before they made love, as they did at the same time each week.

Two young men were talking in the hallway on the third floor. One was Ollie Parrott, twenty-nine, who stood six feet three, with the build of a 314-pound refrigerator, long blond hair, nearly white skin and red, red lips, hips like a woman—a monster who had already left five men lifeless on the street after pulling their billfolds from them and digging out the change from their front pockets with his huge fingers. His brutal eyes were light blue, as though filled with faintly colored water. The other was Earl Schmidt, dishonorably discharged from the Army for striking a superior officer, living now with Ollie by what they could steal. Though only twenty-three, he appeared to be fifty and stood bent and leaning against the hallway wall as though he could not support his own weight. They talked of money in soft, secretive voices, and went down the corridor to their room to eat plain bread and coffee.

Through the front door downstairs came three boys, one larger than the other two, and the desk clerk, from behind his newspaper, watched them approach. “Ollie Parrott,” one of them said very nervously.

“Ollie Parrott what?” said the clerk insidiously.

“His room. Which is his room?”

“Thirty-six. Third floor.” He went back to his newspaper.

Ollie opened the door, and immediately Wally Cobb greeted him by name, in the same breath explaining who he was in case Ollie had forgotten. Obviously he had. Ollie leveled his cold stare at them, still holding the door as though to slam it shut at any unexpected second. Earl Schmidt sat at the little table and looked at them with abstract contempt. In his pocket the safety was off his automatic.

“What do you want?” snapped Ollie. “We’re busy.”

Wally stammered.

Leonard Brown blurted out, “We’re in trouble. God, we’re in trouble. Help us.”

“We’re in trouble,” added Wally.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“We thought maybe you could help us. You’ve been in trouble before.”

“Tell ’em to say what they want or get out,” said Earl.

“I’ve never been in trouble,” put in Ollie. “OK, punks, come on in and tell us what you want.” They came in and