A Bone Dead Sadness

  “Okay. Let’s focus on Jim. I think you got to wondering about the packets that the armored car guards were bringing in. The ones Jim put in his desk drawer, separate of the money in the vault. Maybe you figured it out, or maybe he even told you, during a little pillow talk. But I think you understood, or guessed one way or another that that money was different. That it was mob money, and this bank was a laundry for them. It was separate money, but in time, it was laundered through the bank, and it came out clean. Or at least the cut the mob expected was clean. When I say mob, I’m saying Dixie Mafia. I’ve had a few run ins with them, and I have an idea how they work. Am I warm?”

  Marvin was looking right at Frankie.

  “You might be,” she said, and crossed her legs and swallowed.

  “So, you’ve got the money figured, and maybe you even got something going with Jim, and then the ex-husband comes back into things. I’m figuring you’re thinking not to take all the money. Not the bank money, just the mob money. The crooked money. But you don’t know you can do it. You need to be somewhere else for an alibi, so you need the ex. You have him come in, you two have that fight so everyone remembers it, and he goes out. But I figure he ended up in the storage room. The only way someone would know he didn’t go out, is if you were sitting where Tulip is sitting now. Knew he wouldn’t go out, and had in fact planned for him to hide in the storage room until the bank closed. Could it have happened that way?”

  Frankie didn’t answer.

  “All right then, I’ll go on,” Marvin said.

  Drake said, “This better have one hell of an ending.”

  “I think it might,” Marvin said.

  “So, you have an alibi. Turned out no one suspected you of anything because the money didn’t get out there in the world. How do I know that? I figure if it had, you wouldn’t have ended up living with your mother-in-law. My guess is the mob was moving some serious cash through here. They wouldn’t bother for a few thousand. Or even a hundred thousand. My guess was there was anywhere from a quarter million to a million in that big fat packet, and there was something like that every time that packet showed up.”

  “Why would I do something like that?” Frankie said. “My mother-in-law has money.”

  Marvin dipped his chin. “True. I thought of that. But greed, it’s hard to explain. It comes out of nowhere and it’s a hell of a bitch. And maybe you thought you didn’t want to live with Tom’s mother, which is what you were doing since he had been in prison. It wasn’t like this bank job was making you a fortune. But I figure you didn’t get the money that your ex stole. That it didn’t happen the way you had hoped. Then Tom was gone, and, well, things fell in place. You ended up staying with Mrs. Craver, and in time, my guess is the two of you actually became close. I saw the way you looked at her. I think you care. I think it was a stupid mistake on your part, thinking about that money. Maybe it was the adventure. Maybe you said something to Tom about it, and then he got it in his mind to steal it and cut you in.”

  “Lot of conjecture,” Drake said.

  “Yep,” I said. “I noticed all the windows are barred or wire meshed. And they would be locked. Tom had to have not only a good hiding place, but a way out. And he didn’t want it to look like someone broke in or out. He left everything locked from the inside, there was no way for anyone to suspect anyone had been inside for any reason. Next day, when people came to work, there were no signs of him breaking in. But the night he hid here, in the storage room, when everyone was gone Tom came out and took the mob money. He knew it was in that drawer, because you knew, Frankie. You knew when the guards came, and you knew Jim hid it in the drawer over night, until he could do whatever he needed to do to launder it. When he came in the next day, discovered it was missing, he couldn’t, wouldn’t say anything. Fact was, no one would ever know it was missing except him, and Tom, and you, Frankie. Oh, and in time, the mob. That’s what happened to Jim. In a way, you and Tom killed him. Because when that money came up missing, and the mob didn’t get their fair share, they thought Jim and the truck guards tried to pull a fast one. So the mob killed them all. Just moved onto another bank with another sucker. Someone who would do what they wanted for a healthy cut of the take. Same as Jim.”

  Drake leaned away from the fireplace. “That fits. That really fits.”

  “Yeah,” Marvin said. “I thought so.”

  “But there’s a problem,” Drake said. “How would Tom get out and not leave a window open, a door unlocked?”

  “He could have had a key, I suppose,” Marvin said. “But my guess is, and this is just a guess, no one had a key to lock up but Jim. That’s how he would want it, keeping that mob money here. Is that right, Frankie?”

  “He had the only key,” Frankie said. “But that doesn’t prove anything.”

  “It sure doesn’t,” Drake said. “I think your theory is falling apart. Sounded pretty good for a minute there, but now, not so much.”

  “Tom was a contortionist,” Marvin said. “I figure, from looking at that big fireplace, he thought he’d just go up that and out.” Marvin walked over to the fireplace. “Now we see if I’m an idiot.”

  Marvin reached a little flashlight from his pants pocket, ducked down carefully on his bad leg, looked up the chimney with the light. He reached up inside the chimney and got hold of something and pulled.

  When he pulled his hand back, there was a shoe in it, and part of a bone. An ankle. The rest of the foot was in the shoe. “Looks like to me, the rest of Tom is hung up in there. It was a little tighter than he figured. He got hung. Probably even yelled out. But, it being a bank holiday. Well, my guess is he got up in there, twisted about, broke something, a rib maybe. Punctured something inside. Lung, heart, kidney. And he bled out internally. Died. Probably stank like crazy. But with the place sealed off for so long, no one being in here, it wasn’t noticed, and in time he dried out. As for the money, if the rats haven’t eaten it, you might find it up there too.”

  Drake looked at the shoe, said, “I’ll be goddamned.”

  “With the bank closing, the fireplace was never used again, so no one ever thought to look up there.”

  “Until you,” Drake said.

  “Yep,” Marvin said. “Until me.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Tulip said.

  · · ·

  Marvin hated hospitals. He had spent more than a little of his time in a hospital bed after the wreck. He rode the elevator up and walked along the antiseptic hall, his cane clicking against the tile as he went.

  A nurse moved past him. Down the hall he saw two nurses hustling quickly, which was never a good thing. Someone was in distress.

  Marvin came to the room he wanted. The door was cracked open.

  He knocked ever so gentle, as if he might be waking up a dragon and was uncertain of the outcome.

  Frankie came to the door, eased out into the hallway. “She’s sleeping,” she said.

  “Maybe we could talk for awhile then,” Marvin said. “Down in the cafeteria. I came to see her, to tell her in person about the outcome, but I wanted to see you as well.”

  “When you tell her, I guess that’s not going to look so good for me,” Frankie said.

  “Let’s go downstairs to the cafeteria, have some coffee.”

  When they had their food and were sitting at a table away from the others, and there weren’t many in the cafeteria, Frankie said, “No matter what you might think, I really do care about her. I didn’t care so much for Tom after awhile, but I cared for her. And I’ll tell you this. I never planned to rob anyone. You’re wrong about that.”

  “Am I?” Marvin said.

  “I was seeing Jim, and I knew about the money, and he even bragged to me about it. He thought that might cinch the deal, me and him staying together. Maybe he just wanted to impress me right then. He was getting the goods, you know, so I don’t see how he needed to impress me any more than he had.”

  “Sounds like you still care about him.”

  “N
ot at all, but I’m trying to tell you how things were then. What he told me didn’t endear him to me at all. It just confused me. I decided I wanted out of the relationship, and I went back with Tom. There was an easy excuse I could tell Jim. That Tom and I are trying to fix our marriage. It wasn’t really any better, our marriage, but it’s the excuse I used. I was actually thinking about turning Jim in to the law. But I was uncertain. And then Tom and I seemed to be getting along, and like an idiot, and I have no excuse except I was young, but I told Tom about the money. What Jim told me about it being Dixie Mafia money, and that he laundered it, got a big cut.”

  “And that gave Tom ideas,” Marvin said.

  Frankie nodded, sipped her coffee. “Yes. It did. I knew I had messed up immediately. I mean, if there ever was a sorry criminal at heart, and in action, it was Tom. And the idea that he could steal the money and no one would know who did it, and the law wouldn’t be bothered at all, and Jim would take the heat—for him, that was just too perfect to pass up.

  “So, he tries to talk me into helping him. He wants me to give him a key. But I didn’t have a key. No one had a key but Jim. He always locked up. The doors in and out. He never locked his office. He never locked his desk. Cocky, I guess. And since the money most people would want was in the vault, he wasn’t worried. That little bank hadn’t been robbed since the famous robbery years before, and it hadn’t turned out so well for them. Arrogance on Jim’s part, I suspect.

  “But that day me and Tom had the argument, he came to the bank and asked me for some money. I wouldn’t give it to him, and then I realized he was just putting up a front. He had other ideas. He told me he wanted to hide in the store room, and for me not to let on. That he had plans. I think he thought I’d draft in with him on account of, well, there he was and he was saying he was going to do it and I wouldn’t have a choice.”

  “You didn’t report him. So I guess you did make a choice,” Marvin said.

  “No. I didn’t report him. He hid there and I didn’t say anything. I thought he’d take the money and leave, and that would be that. I mean, it was mob money. Not the people in the town.”

  Marvin added some milk to his coffee. “How’d you think he’d get out?”

  “The chimney. I knew what he had planned. I knew how he thought. Never occurred to me he’d get stuck. He was so cocky about what he could do. And then there was that long weekend, and then the bank moved. It was months before they even opened the museum. I mean, damn. No one even cleaned the chimney after all these years.”

  “I found out they blocked the chimney off at the top,” Marvin said. “Found that out yesterday. They had sealed it off some time ago, and hadn’t even noticed Tom was down there. I guess, you wanted to see him, you’d have to be looking. They just slapped some concrete on the bricks and put a piece of metal the chimney, cemented it in.”

  “What about…getting him out?”

  “They already have. They took the entire chimney out to remove the body, or what was left of it. Mostly bones in clothes. Rats had been at the money. Wasn’t worth a thing. Just some chunks and mostly dust. All of it in a leather bag, and that wasn’t in too good a shape either. Pocked with rat and insect holes.”

  “I thought he had taken the money and run off,” Frankie said. “I thought he got away with it. Figured he got away and maybe got himself killed some other way down the line.”

  “He thought he’d squeeze through. But the chimney, for all its large size, it was built small inside. He got about halfway up, and the thing was even smaller there. Bad design. Bad luck for Tom.”

  “All that time,” Frankie said. “In the goddamn chimney.”

  “How’s Mrs. Craver taking it?”

  “She doesn’t know all the details,” Frankie said.

  “No one but me and you and Drake and Tulip know all the details,” Marvin said. “I guess I was trying to be dramatic and wanted an audience. Like in an old mystery movie. What does she know?”

  “That you found Tom. That he was in the chimney, and was there to steal money. I left my connection out. Thought you could fill her in on my part. I just couldn’t tell her. I didn’t have the courage or the heart to let her down. I’m the last thing she has to cling to.”

  “How’d she take Tom’s death?”

  “Well enough. I think she just wanted to know what happened. She never expected him to come to any good, but she wanted to know, and now she does, and I think it was a relief.”

  “Her health?”

  “She won’t recover,” Frankie said, pushing her coffee cup away from her. “They say she’s got a few days at most. She comes around from the drugs about mid-day for a few hours. You can explain it all to her then.”

  Marvin shook his head. “Nope. Me and Drake, we figure you were an idiot, but you didn’t really steal anything. And it was mob money. And Jim was mob, directly or indirectly.”

  “He was still a human being.”

  “But he’s a dead human being. You’re trying to do right, Frankie. You care about your mother-in-law. It’s a twenty-five year old crime. You haven’t stolen anything in the meantime, and if it’s any consolation, I believe your story.”

  “Thank you,” Frankie said and reached out and touched Marvin’s hand.

  He patted her hand and smiled. “I think it’s best we leave it alone from here on out. No one in town lost any money. The mob made Jim and the two guards in on it pay, and that seems like a fitting end to all of it. I’ll try and see Mrs. Craver later today. But I won’t have anything new to add to what she knows.”

  Frankie opened her purse and took out a check. She gave it to Marvin. “Mrs. Craver signed this, told me to give it to you.”

  Marvin looked at it.

  “This is a lot more than we agreed to,” Marvin said.

  “She wants you to have it. I want you to have it. Take it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am. Mrs. Craver is.”

  “All right then,” Marvin said. “That’s the end of my argument.”

  · · ·

  That night at home, Rachel and Marvin had dinner. When they finished, Rachel said, “Want to watch some TV?”

  “Sure.”

  “We can surf the channels, see if there’s something interesting,” Rachel said.

  “Sounds good.”

  They went in the living room with glasses of ice tea and sat on the couch. Rachel on one end, Marvin on the other. They watched TV for a few minutes, and during a commercial, Rachel said, “What you told me about Mrs. Craver, about Frankie, not turning her in. That was the right thing to do.”

  “I think so,” Marvin said.

  Rachel slid over closer to Marvin and let her hand rest on top of his. “You’re a good man, Marvin.”

  “Think so?”

  “Stupid now and then,” Rachel said, “but at heart, a really good man.”

  Marvin didn’t say anything to that, but he smiled. A little later he put his arm around Rachel’s shoulders, and she placed her head against his chest.

  Excerpt

  If you enjoyed A Bone Dead Sadness, it wouldn't be the worst thing if you were to head back to where you bought it and leave a nice review with some stars attached. It goes a long way.

  And if you did like A Bone Dead Sadness, maybe you'll like Act of Love, too. It was Lansdale's very first published novel, introducing the character of Marvin Hanson. It starts out like this:

  MONDAY…4 A.M.

  His name was Marvin Hanson.

  He was black as a pit and ugly as sin. He was a police lieutenant. Plainclothes. Homicide division. He had short arms and abnormally large hands with fingers as thick as frankfurters. He was five feet, ten inches tall, but due to the width of his shoulders, the thickness of his body, he didn’t look a fraction over five feet, seven inches. His closest friends, all three of them, called him Gorilla. There was nothing racist about the tag. It was a name based on his power and size, and with some reluctance, Hanson embraced it. Everyone els
e called him Marvin, Mr. Hanson, or Sir. A few close associates called him simply Hanson. This was none of Hanson’s doing. He was just the sort of person that demanded respect; begrudging respect perhaps, but respect, nonetheless.

  Right now Hanson was in one of his least cheery moods. A two A.M. phone call had rung him out of Rachel’s arms, out of his warm bed and out into the night. That, he supposed, was part of the price you paid for being a cop. Constant interruption, discomfort and aggravation. Not to mention ulcers, hemorrhoids and bunions.

  In spite of his mood, as always, Hanson was an efficient cop, if a bit on the rough side. He was street-wise and back alley mean. He was also surprisingly well-educated, most of it self-acquired. This was a trait that often surprised people. From the looks of him, he seemed like the type to spend his life turning over the big rock and bursting dirt with a shovel.

  Hanson had been brought up in The Fifth Ward, but as he was fond of telling his daughter, JoAnna, he had escaped and made of himself what he always wanted to be. A cop.

  Sometimes he regretted that decision, regretted being a cop.

  Tonight was one of those times. But it was a way of escape. A way out of The Ward, out of the slime and into the mainstream of life.

  But maybe he hadn’t managed to escape at all. Sure, he no longer lived in that filthy squalor, but his assignments were most often located there. He was from The Ward. He knew The Ward, and therefore, he was the right cop for The Ward. That didn’t make him like it any better. He had their grudging respect, but on the other hand, he was still an Uptown, Uncle Tom, Nigger Cop to them. He thought it odd that the blacks complained about the ghetto, wanted out, but when one of their number made it out, he or she was immediately an Uncle Tom. Catch 22.

  There were two other men in the hot, smoky room with Hanson. One was his partner; a tall, rawboned white man with orange-red hair, green eyes and a Howdy Doodie face. Not to mention poorer taste in grey suits than Hanson had. His name was Joe Clark. He had been a plainclothes detective for just over three years. Before that a city cop, and before that a criminology major. Hanson started off being suspicious of criminology majors, and with good reason. Most of them were about as helpful as a plugged revolver. They were good at technical things, like getting fingerprints off paper or analyzing hair and blood, but they couldn’t read the truth or a lie in a man’s face any better than they could read a blank wall. They all interrogated their prisoners just alike—or nearly all—and that was in a manner that said: Nothing personal, it’s just my job. I know society has treated you rough and the world has shit in your face, but see, this is what I do for a living. I’m supposed to ask questions. Nothing personal.