Ellery Queen - Cop Out

“What the hell difference? Medium well, Goldie, can you do medium well in a fireplace?”

“Coming up,” Goldie said, she was certainly anxious to please these days, “if Stinkfoot ‘11 get me a load of kindling and firewood. I saw a woodshed out back that’s stacked.”

But by this time Hinch had finished the fifth and thrown it through the mirror behind the bar.

“He shouldn’t ought to done that,” Furia said, “not a high-class dump like this. Hinch?”

“I heard her,” Hinch said, coming in from the den. His face was white and his nose red, his eyes bugging. He looked steamy. “I ain’t lugging no wood for her, I ain’t her nigger.”

“That shows how ignorant you are,” Goldie said. “You have to say Negro or black.”

“Nigger nigger nigger,” Hinch said. “I ain’t hauling no wood for nobody, special not for her.”

“How about for me?” Furia asked.

“I don’t feel so good,” Hinch said, and sat down on the floor suddenly.

“You ain’t used to fat cat booze is why,” Furia said indulgently. “It’s my fault for letting you. What the hell, Goldie, I’ll get the wood,” and to her surprise he sprang off the sofa and trotted out on his stockinged feet. She almost called after him it’s a dirt floor out there but didn’t, you never knew with Fure and things were going too good. She heard the back door open and stay open.

Goldie went into the downstairs bathroom which was all tiled in black and white real tiles and used the black porcelain john, it made her feel like a movie queen squatting there. Christ I’m going to live this way and no fooling, it’s the only life. Soon as I shake Fure and that smelly Hinch.

She was primping her hair in the bathroom mirror which had the cutest little frosted bulbs set all around the frame a la Hollywood stars’ dressing rooms when she jumped a foot. She had never heard such a scream except in the movies. It was like a police siren going off in her ear or a pig getting stuck, she remembered that from when she was a little girl and sneaked off to Hurley’s chicken farm after her old man against orders just to watch what they did to the pigs. When the sound turned all bubbly she could practically see it choking on its blood.

She made it to the woodshed before Hinch, who had trouble getting off the floor.

Furia was backed off in a corner of the shed chucking firewood in every direction while his mouth opened and closed and nothing came out. The shed was full of furry things jumping and dodging. His eyes were dropping out of his head, the corners of his nose were blue. There was drool coming out of his mouth.

“Rats… “

Goldie couldn’t believe her ears. She walked over to him and shook his arm hard.

“What are you talking about, Fure?” she said. “They’re field mice.”

“Rats,” he panted. His tough little body felt like Jello under her hand.

“Fure, for Chrissake. I ought to know a field mouse when I see one. They used to run all over our kitchen in the Hollow. They won’t hurt you.”

“They went for me… “

“They couldn’t do that. They’re harmless.”

“They bite… “

“Not people. They’re grain eaters. Not like rats. See, they’re all gone now.” There was a hundred-pound sack stamped golden bulky in the shed. The mice had gnawed holes in it, the dirt floor was honey brown where they had burrowed. “The Thatchers must keep a horse here summers. This is horse feed, Fure, that’s what they were after, not you.”

He didn’t believe her. He kept shivering and hugging himself.

Hinch was spreadlegged in the entrance with a puzzle written on his face. He was looking from Furia to the dirt floor of the shed and back again. Furia’s wild heaves had struck two mice. One was lying with its head flattened out in an omelet of blood and brains. The other was still alive, scrabbling with its forelegs as if its back were broken.

“You scared of these bitty things?” Hinch asked in a wondering voice.

Furia swallowed convulsively.

Hinch walked over to the wounded mouse with a grin and kicked. It flew up and against the back wall of the shed and fell like a shot. He picked it up by the tail and went back and picked up the other one by the tail and went back again and dangled the two dead mice inches from Furia’s nose. Furia screeched and tried to climb the wall. Then he was sick all over the dirt. Goldie had to jump back.

“Be goddam if he ain’t scared shitless,” Hinch said. He walked out and threw the mice all the way over into the empty pool. It was as if Hinch had just learned that babies didn’t come out of their mothers’ armpits.

Furia couldn’t get down more than a couple of mouthfuls even though Goldie did the steaks exactly the way he liked them. She almost laughed in his face.

She found it a gas too the way he kept hanging on to the fireplace poker, a five-footer with three prongs at the business end. His eyes had grown as quick as the mice, darting about the floor, especially in corners. He drank three cups of black coffee without letting go of the poker.

Barbara woke up whimpering and Furia got ugly. “Shut that brat’s yap or so help me Jeese I’ll ram this thing down her goddam throat.”

“All right, Fure, all right,” Goldie said, and found some powdered milk in the cupboard and stirred up a glass. She brought the child the milk and a piece of cold steak. Barbara sipped some of the milk but turned away from the meat, her eyes were rolling up, I guess I gave her too much of a slug, well, better drunk than dead. She finally dropped back to sleep.

“She won’t bother you now,” Goldie said, coming out.

“Cool it, big man,” Hinch said with a wink. “A couple of lousy mice.”

That was when Furia swung the long fire tool and ripped Hinch’s cheek. If Hinch hadn’t been so quick the prongs would have gone through to his tonsils. He looked astounded. Goldie had to swab the wound with antiseptic she found in the medicine chest, she swabbed good and hard, and she slapped one of those three-inch Band-Aids over it.

Hinch kept looking at Furia with his eyebrows humped up like questions.

Saturday morning passed in jerks like a film jumping its sprockets. Malone wandered about the house picking things up and setting them down as if to satisfy himself that they were still there. The next thing he was taking in the milk. The milk brought Bibby into focus and he shut the refrigerator door as reverently as if it were the lid of a coffin. When Ellen set breakfast before him he simply sat and looked at it. He did not even drink the coffee. She finally took the dishes away.

Ellen had mourning under her eyes, bands of dark gray. Once she said, “Noon. What happens after noon, Loney?”

He turned away. He resents my reminding him. As if he needs reminding. What a thing to say, now of all times. Why am I so good to him at night and so bitchy daytimes?

But she’s my child.

My lost, my frightened baby.

They sat in the parlor, he on the sofa, she on the rocker, watching the little cathedral clock on the mantel. When noon came they both sat up straight, as if at a call. When the clock stopped striking it was like a death.

Ellen began to cry again.

Malone jumped up and ran out into Old Bradford Road leaving the front door open. It was a mean day and the meanness slid into the house. He stood in the middle of the empty street staring in the direction of Lovers Hill. The Cunninghams’ mongrel bitch came trotting up and licked his hand. Malone wiped his hand on his pants and went back into the house, shutting the door this time. Ellen was upstairs, he heard her moving about in one of the bedrooms.

Bibby’s I’ll bet.

He sank onto the sofa again and placed his hands uselessly on his knees, looking at the clock. When John Secco drove up it was twenty minutes of two and Malone was still sitting there.