The Ragtime Fool (20 page)

The bell rang again, long, loud, followed immediately by a series of heavy knocks. “All right,” Alan called, then hurried across the room and pulled the door open.

Jerry Barton grinned at him. “Ready to wow the committee chairman, kid? When I told them about your journal last night, they got all worked up. Mr. Rosenthal wants to talk to you before the program gets printed.” Barton pointed at the blue bag next to Alan on the couch. “Come on, grab your book there, and I’ll drive you over to his office.”

***

Otto Klein, working at a huge lathe, pulled back his hands and swiveled his head as he heard the little bell that sounded when someone opened the door to his shop. Christ, that old bitch, Luella Rohrbaugh. What the hell was she doing here? And who was that coot with her? Klein snickered. Maybe Luella had stuff going that nobody knew about. A guy would have to be pretty desperate. “Be right with you,” Klein shouted.

He set down the chunk of metal he’d been shaping, and flipped the switch to turn off the lathe. Then he wiped a shirt sleeve over his forehead as he walked to the counter. “’Morning, Mrs. Rohrbaugh,” he said. “Mister…?”

“Brun Campbell.”

Klein looked like a person trying to put his finger on a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Luella’s face turned severe. “Mr. Campbell is here from California to meet a young man from New Jersey who has a book Mr. Campbell needs.”

Klein shrugged. “Okay.”

“Mr. Klein! I’m talking about the young man who’s staying at your house, the one who escorted Eileen to the supper last night. She introduced him to me as a family friend. Alan Chandler.”

Light came into Klein’s eyes. “Oh, yeah, sure. Alan. Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.” He pointed toward the lathe. “I got a real rush on that piece, and I guess I was concentrating.” He glanced at the big clock on the wall to his right, quarter past eleven, good. Jerry’d have the kid away by now. “Well, I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Campbell. Alan’s probably sittin’ over in my house, being bored, so whyn’t the two of you just go on over. I’d take you myself, but…” He pointed again toward the lathe. “This guy’ll have my ears if I don’t get that work to him by noontime. Hear him tell it, his whole farm’s sittin’ and waitin’ on it.”

Luella glanced at Brun. “Very well,” she snapped. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Klein.”

Klein shrugged. “Glad to be of help, Mrs. Rohrbaugh. Mr. Campbell.” He went back to the lathe, turned it on, picked up the workpiece.

After the bell rang and the door slammed shut, the machinist counted to fifty, then shut off the lathe, took the piece of steel from the chuck, and stashed it under a cloth beneath the lathe. It’d take those mossbacks at least ten minutes to get to his house, and that long to come back. Klein turned the sign in the door to CLOSED, hurried out, locked the door, ran to his car, and drove off, leaving a cloud of gray smoke in front of his shop.

***

Alan cracked the window of Barton’s truck. The weather was turning nicer, sunny and warming a bit. Barton smiled. “Air out here smells different from back where you live, huh?”

The boy nodded. He clutched the bag in his lap, wondered what to say to Mr. Rosenthal to explain why he didn’t have the journal with him. He’d think of something. He always did.

The grassy smell from outside the truck struck Alan odd. They’d driven out of Sedalia, up through the colored section where Mr. Ireland lived, across Highway 65, and now they were cruising along the Georgetown Highway, which was actually just a two-lane country road like the ones in western New Jersey, farms all along both sides. “Mr. Rosenthal’s office is out here?” Alan asked.

Barton shrugged. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. Just seems like an office’d be in town.”

“That’s the trouble with you east coast yokels.” Barton snickered. “You think if something ain’t in the city, it ain’t worth thinkin’ about. Mr. Rosenthal sells oil to farmers, so he has an office out close to his clients. Lot of us farmers do all we can to not have to go into the city.”

Barton turned onto a dirt road; Alan bounced in the seat. This wasn’t right. The boy started to ask what was going on, but decided to hold his tongue. He looked all around, trying to fix the route in his mind.

They drove through a meadow and into a stand of trees. A hundred yards in, just like that, the road ended, dense forest on three sides. Barton stopped the truck, shut off the motor, set the brake.

***

Some twenty-five yards into the woods, Richard Curd, Jr. stopped digging, and listened. Nothing. He was sure he’d heard a car, but who’d be coming out here this time of day? Not that it mattered. Mr. Armstrong used to let his daddy dig here every spring, and when Daddy died, Mr. Armstrong told Richard, Jr. he could dig in the woods. “Don’t want to be responsible for half the people in Sedalia to die without their spring tonic,” Mr. Armstrong had said. Curd shrugged, and went back to work.

***

Barton gestured toward Alan’s book bag. “Give here.”

Alan pulled the bag away, grabbed at the door handle.

“Uh-uh,” Barton snarled. “Get both of your hands on the bag. Now.” He reached inside his jacket, and Alan found himself staring into the barrel of a pistol that looked as big as a cannon. “Open up that bag,” Barton said. “Gimme the book.” He snickered. “And I tell you what, you piss on my seat there, you’re gonna lick it up before I blow out your brains. Now, do like I tell you.”

Slowly, Alan undid the catch, slid his hand inside, then put on the best look of amazement he could manage. “It’s not here.”

Barton grabbed the bag with one hand, shook it upside down, peered inside. Then he flung it to the floor. “God damn, boy, I’m startin’ to lose my temper with you. Where the hell is that book?”

“I don’t know,” Alan said. “It was in here. Maybe it dropped out somewhere.”

Barton half-closed one eye. “‘Maybe it dropped out?’ How thick d’you think I am?”

“No, really. I slung the bag down on Mr. Klein’s couch when I sat there this morning. The book could’ve slid out and gotten under a cushion.”

“And you didn’t notice how light the bag was when you picked it up?” Barton waved the pistol. “Get out of the truck.”

Long hike back to town, Alan thought, but that would be a bargain. He’d go straight to the police station, ask the cops to go with him to Kleins’, get back the journal, and then hole up in a hotel room with a chair wedged under the doorknob until the ceremony. Mr. Campbell would just have to wait till then.

But as Alan pushed the door open and stepped down to the ground, Barton jumped out from his side, ran around the truck and up to the boy. “Okay, now.” The man’s face was blotchy, lips twisted into a snarl. “One more time. Where’s that book?”

“I told you, I don’t—”

Barton delivered an open-handed crack to Alan’s cheek, then brought the handle of his pistol down hard against the side of the boy’s head. Alan staggered, fell.

Barton nudged him with a boot. “Get up.”

Alan tried to stand, couldn’t get past hands and knees. Barton grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “I got all day, boy. Keep messing with me, an’ you’re gonna be hamburg steak. Now, where the hell is—”

Barton froze. Car coming down the dirt road, and from the sound, it was not somebody out for a nice drive in the country. Damn, couldn’t be the cops, could it? How would they know? He loosened his grip on Alan, who crumpled to the ground.

A brown Hudson roared up and screeched to a stop, practically on the rear bumper of Barton’s truck. Before the engine had completely quieted, Otto Klein was out and running up to Barton.

***

Richard Curd, Jr. stopped digging again. Another car? Something ain’t right. He cocked his head toward the clearing, listened.

***

Klein looked wildly from the man to the boy on the ground. “You didn’t kill him,” Klein shouted.

“Not yet. I’m just getting started. Little son of a bitch’s got that book hid away somewhere. Otto, what the hell you doing out here?”

“We can’t kill him,” Klein bawled. “He took my daughter to the Bible school supper last night, and met Old Lady Rohrbaugh there. So now she knows he’s been staying with us. She just came around my shop with a geezer from California, he looks like death warmed over. He’s the one the kid picked up the book for.”

Barton’s expression said if they made stupider people than Otto Klein, he didn’t want to see them. “Christ Almighty, Otto. Why in holy hell did you let him out of the house in the first place, never mind to go and talk to a room full of people?”

***

Curd frowned. He couldn’t quite make out words, but no problem picking up on the fact he was hearing two angry men shouting at each other. He started walking toward the edge of the forest.

***

“What was I supposed to do, huh?” Klein howled. “What was I supposed to say when Eileen wanted to take him to the supper? I don’t got any idea how Rohrbaugh and the California guy got together, but it don’t matter. Question is, what the hell we gonna do now?”

Barton blew out a chestful of vexation. “God damn, Otto, you are a lily-liver. Lettin’ some old bag get your bowels in an uproar, then hightailin’ it out here. What did you tell her about where the kid was?”

“I said I left him at the house when I drove Eileen to school and went to work. Told ’em to go ring the doorbell.”

Barton wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Fine. No problem. The kid ain’t got the book here, but you better believe I’m gonna get him to tell me where he stashed it. Then I’ll do just what we planned with him. If Rohrbaugh or anybody else comes around asking, you say you don’t know where he is, he was there when you left the house. Rowena’ll say the same, because he was. Maybe he ran off, he was a weird kind of kid. Maybe he just ain’t right in his head.”

Now it was Klein’s turn to look disgusted. “Sure, Jerry, great. That Rohrbaugh bitch was loaded for bear, God knows why, and you gotta figure the old goat from California’s gonna be plenty pissed off if he’s out the five K he paid for the stinkin’ book. Between the two of them, I’m gonna have the cops on me, and what then?”

***

As he approached the clearing, Curd walked slowly, carefully, balancing himself at each step with the handle of his shovel. He slid up behind an old-growth maple tree at the edge of the woods, then peered around the edge. Jerry Barton and Otto Klein, Lord! For damn sure, they couldn’t be up to anything good. Let them see him, and he’d have problems he didn’t even want to think about.

He squinched behind the tree, and edged his head forward, just far enough to see they had a man down on the ground. Curd’s palms went cold and slippery. He wiped them on his pants. Better get himself far away, fast. He took a half-step toward retreating, but Klein was facing his way, so he slid back behind the tree.

***

Barton glanced at Alan, who’d just pushed himself to his knees, then pointed the gun at the boy. “Stay down there, kid, or you’ll be dead before you’re all the way up.” Then he turned a face full of contempt onto Klein. “‘What then?’ Damn it to hell, Otto. You tell the cops exactly the same thing. No one’s gonna come out here lookin’ for him, and even if they did, I’ll fix the hole so nobody’ll ever notice.”

***

Curd’s stomach knotted. That ain’t no man they got there, it’s jus’ a boy. An’ they means to kill him.

***

Barton rested his free hand on Klein’s shoulder, spoke softly. “Listen here. Cool off, or you’re gonna have a goddamn stroke. Get yourself back in your shop before Rohrbaugh and her friend see you’re missing, and wonder about that.”

“I told them I had to make a delivery over lunch hour.”

“Good.” Barton felt as if he were talking to a little kid who was sure he’d just seen the bogeyman. “That’s great. Now, haul your ass outa here, and let me do my work. I’ll get back to you soon’s I’m done and we’ll take it from there.”

Klein trudged back to his car. Behind his back, Barton shook his head. As the Hudson chugged out of sight down the dirt road, the man turned to face Alan. “You heard all that, huh?”

“Just the last part.”

“So you got a good idea what you’re in for. You can make it tough for yourself or easy. Tell me where that book is, and you’re not going to have any more pain. Otherwise…” Nasty grin. “You play piana, huh? Guess I’ll start with your fingers.”

Barton reached for Alan’s right hand; the boy scuttled away. Barton cursed him, stepped forward, grabbed. A sense of motion toward his right side pulled him up short, then a blinding red light filled his vision. He fell to his knees, agony bouncing back and forth inside his skull. Another blow sent brilliant white stars shooting through his head, and he fell forward into blackness.

***

Alan watched the twitching man go still, then goggled at his rescuer, a well-built colored man in a blue work shirt and dungarees, and wearing an old broad-brimmed leather hat stained with years of sweat and dirt. The man held a long-handled shovel by the business end. He bent to touch the side of Alan’s head; the boy winced. “Dirty dog gave you a good li’l shot there,” the man said. “Well, I give him one better, an’ one for good measure.” He bent to pick up Barton’s gun, jammed it into his pocket. “Can you get up?” he asked.

The boy nodded. “I think so, yeah.” He struggled to his feet.

The colored man had started moving off toward the woods. “Be right back. Go on over by his truck, get inside.”

By the time Alan had slid into the passenger seat, the man was back, carrying a large gunnysack over his shoulder. In one motion, he slung the sack and his shovel into the truck bed, and hopped in behind the steering wheel. “Glad he left us the keys.” The man turned on the motor, began backing out. “Gotta get us a good head start.”

For once in his life, Alan said nothing.

When they got to the Georgetown Highway, the colored man turned southward, drove half a mile, then pulled the truck to the side of the road, killed the motor, slipped the key into his pocket, and got out. Alan followed suit, pausing just long enough to grab the empty book bag from the floor. The man picked up a twig, bent over the right rear tire, unscrewed the cap from the stem, and pushed the twig into the recess, sending air hissing out. A couple of minutes, the tire was flat. The Negro nodded approval, then grinned up at Alan. “Mr. Barton see this, he think we was headin’ to town and had a flat.” The man motioned toward the woods at the other side of the road. “We goin’ that way, though. I knows my way through these woods like nobody else, an’ he ain’t never gonna find us.” He grabbed his sack from the truck, slung it over a shoulder, then snatched up his shovel. “Come on, boy. Best we get us movin’.”