Letters From the Grave
good, and don’t overdo it tonight. It’s supposed to be hot, and I don’t want to see you slumped in that chair in the morning.
T.W. saluted with his beer can, “Adios, Amigo.”
Jake walked to his mailbox, then down the driveway to the back door. Callie’s ghost no longer haunted him since Julie had come into his life. Both had shown him the path to a better future. He’d been on a collision path for dual plots with T.W. in some forgotten cemetery. Now the thought scared him. How had he sunk so low? Doesn’t matter. It’s all over now. He was alive, healthy and in the best shape of his life. After changing clothes, he grabbed a cold high protein fruit drink and left for the gym.
That same evening, Ryan used some of the rehab money for a camo shirt and floppy hat. He walked to the bus station and purchased a ticket to Baton Rouge. He’d done some on-line job searching that actually led him to an area of pawn shops in the capital city. He didn’t want to be implicated in Lafayette. He got off the bus at the central station downtown and walked four blocks to Florida Avenue. According to his Google search, there were numerous pawn shops located along the street. He didn’t have a specific plan. The advantage of pawn shops is that they frequently attract questionable-looking people, and he looked about as questionable as he could be. With the shaggy hair of a Neanderthal and a long sleeved camo shirt to cover his body markings and a floppy hunter’s cap, he looked out of place in any normal setting. Pawn shops always had cash and weapons that people exchanged for cash when desperate.
He’d walked several blocks in the searing heat, dripping sweat like someone who walked through a carwash. He passed one old homeless man, and a pair of dangerous looking men, who glanced at him and let him pass. There were no streetlights once he was a few blocks away from Main Street. He was in an area of town with heavy iron bars on all windows. A large yellow sign was illuminated reading “Pawn Shop” a couple doors down with only one small front window and a thick glass door.
Ryan stopped outside and observed a man alone inside. He looked to be about forty, fat, in a stained white undershirt. There were no other patrons, and there was only one car in the darkened lot beside the store, under a large water oak with Spanish moss draping down around it.
The door chimed when he went in. From observation, he knew there were at least a dozen security cameras aimed at him. The man lowered his hands behind the counter as Ryan approached. “Howdy, partner, what can I do for you?”
Ryan stood opposite with his beltline lower than the counter top. “Howdy, yourself, frien’. I’d like to see what you got in the way ‘o guns and huntin’ knives.”
“Okay, I got a lot of both.” He motioned farther down the counter to a glass case.
Ryan stared wide-eyed. It had been years since he’d seen so many weapons in one place. “Ah. Let me see that black-handled Buck in the back. What’s that got? Is that a four-inch blade?”
The man paused for a moment. “Ah. First I need to know if you have cash. I only take cash.”
“Sure.” Will reached in his pocket and put several twenties on the counter. “See, I got plenty o’ cash.”
The store keeper smiled and unlocked the back of the display, removing the knife. “This one’s brand new. Fella brought it in right after Christmas. Said he needed cash and would come back for it. I held it sixty days as my agreement, then it’s up for sale. It’s razor sharp, so be careful handling it.”
Ryan picked up the knife and fondled it, then opened the blade and tested the edge against his fingers. “That’s a fine knife. I can understand why the fella wanted it back.”
The man responded, “I can let you have it for eighty dollars.”
Ryan continued examining the knife, then looked at the man. “I’ll give you sixty, how ‘bout that?”
The man felt uneasy now that Ryan was holding the knife. “How about we split and call it seventy?”
Ryan opened and closed the blade several times, leaving it open before answering. He looked sternly at the man then broke into a big grin. “Deal.”
He folded the knife and put it into his pocket and shoved four twenties across. The man said, “All right, if you’ll come up front with me again, I’ll write out a receipt and take your information.” Ryan gave him a sideways glance. “It’s required by the city, you know.”
Ryan smiled again, walking toward the front of the counter. “No problem.”
When they got to the front, the man waited for Ryan to volunteer his license but he stood motionless. Nervously, the man pulled out a pre-printed form saying, “Well, all right. Let’s write up the receipt.” He didn’t see Ryan pull the knife from his pocket.
As the man balanced on the counter with pen in hand ready to write, Ryan drove the knife through the clerk’s left wrist, pinning him to the counter with blood spurting over them both. “Where’s the cash?” The man was gasping trying to free his arm with his other hand. He was screaming. Pain prevented him from responding, so Ryan jerked the knife out and jumped over the counter, as the man slumped, grasping the wound and sobbing uncontrollably. Ryan pushed the tip of the blade against the man’s eye socket repeating, “Where’s the money!”
“It’s in the safe in the back. Please don’t stab me again. I don’t want to die!”
“Shut up!” Ryan grabbed his shirt and forced the man up, as he still clamped his wrist, trying to stop the bleeding. Ryan pushed him to the back. In the small back room, the shop keeper continued pleading. “There ... there’s the safe!” It was a small two foot cubed box on the floor, in the corner. “It’s not locked, just turn the handle, and it’ll open. Please take what you need. Leave me something, I got a family. Please don’t kill me.”
Ryan pushed the man down onto the floor by the safe. “Open it yourself and show me!”
The man did as he was told, and Ryan kicked him aside. The paper money was stacked neatly in bundles by denomination. Ryan was thrilled at the thick stack of hundreds, fifties and twenties. He grabbed a bag on the floor and scooped all of the bills into it. The man pleaded. “Aw. Leave me some it’s all I got ... my family.”
“Shut up. Is that your car outside?”
“Yes. Oh, please, don’t take it. I can’t afford another one.”
“Give me the keys!”
The injured man struggled to stand and quickly reached into his right pants pockets, letting his wrist spurt for a moment. He pulled them out covered in blood, which Ryan wiped on the man’s shirt. He had been careful not to touch anything in the store.
The man sobbed, “Look, you got everything, now just go. Let me alone.” He moved into a corner of the storeroom and looked helpless, grasping his nearly-severed wrist.
Ryan stepped up to him. “Sir, you genuinely been helpful, but I gotta do one mo’ thing.” He patted the man’s shoulder with his right hand then thrust the knife deep under his ribcage, twisting the blade left and right. “Now you jus’ gotta die.”
The man fell, gasping, to the floor, wrapping his arms around his midsection. Ryan didn’t pay any more attention to him. He just wiped the blade again on the man and watched him momentarily while he folded the blade and put it in his pocket. He left him to bleed out on the floor.
He calmly walked back behind the counter and pulled a gun, a .357 revolver from the case. He looked back at the man slumped on the floor who seemed to be staring at him through glazed eyes. Ryan saluted with the gun but decided it was too incriminating if he took it. He calmly walked out the front door of the store, turning the corner toward the big tree. It was dark under the canopy as he fumbled for the right key. In half a minute, he was backing up, heading back to Main Street where he parked across from the police station, three blocks from the bus station. He chuckled at the irony of it when the police would find the car. Before abandoning it, he removed his camo shirt with a few blood spatters, and wiped the wheel and gearshift with his hat. The keys, hat and the shirt were rolled together under his arm
for the bus ride back to Lafayette. He sat alone at a window seat, smiling at himself in reflection.
He left Baton Rouge on a Greyhound bus after eight o’clock. The fare was only about twenty dollars and it arrived only two blocks from the halfway house at nine-fifteen, giving him forty-five minutes to spare. He threw the rolled clothing and keys in a dumpster behind a store and then walked back toward the house. At an unlit segment along the street there was an derelict house with boarded windows. He found a breach in the siding and stuffed his booty from the pawn shop inside for the night before continuing to the halfway house only a few doors further down the street. He smiled at how well the day had gone per plan. He only needed to be inside the house before curfew at ten o’clock. He was so excited he could hardly wait to count the money, but he couldn’t take a chance in public.
Wedding Plans
The phone rang shortly after Jake got into the house from visiting with T.W. He anticipated her call. “Hello, babe.”
“Jake! I sold the house!”
He smiled. “Sweetheart, that’s unbelievable. How do you feel?”
“Jake, I feel wonderful. I got full price, two hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars! Paul and I paid about one tenth that much when we bought it.”
He sat down and started doing some mental calculations about how long closing