Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

The sheriff kept asking me where the stolen money was. After all the two bank robbers was dead with no trace of the money and all the sheriff had was me. Just a poor dumb farmer with a knack for handling a car.

But I don’t want to worry you with all this. I’m real lonesome for you like I said. So when are you coming up here to visit me? And how are you and how’s Ike and the farm?

Your loving husband

April 10

Dear Walt

I got your letter and the reason I ain’t come to see you is that I just don’t have the money for the trip. Besides I got to do all the chores now. Uncle Ike’s down with the rhumatiz again and Doc Saunders says he won’t be up and around until the warm spring weather sets in and that’s not liable to happen until May. And when Ike’s feeling puny he wants me around all the time and all he does is complain and tell me everybody’s out to take the skin off me. He even tried to chase George off the place when George came around in his new car to ask me out for a ride. And I sure needed to get away from the farm for awhile.

George was real nice to me too. He wanted to know how I was getting along without you and if I missed you much. Well I said it was kind of lonesome, there was things a girl needed sometimes and who was around except Ike? Seems George got my meaning wrong but I straightened him out real good. Afterwards I told him right out that we was liable to lose the farm unless we got that mortgage installment paid and how could I pay it until I got a crop in? And I said that what with George getting promoted to be vice president of the bank he could maybe do something. He said he’d see what he could manage and that was about as far as we got. Anyhow it was nice getting away from Ike for awhile, specially when George took me to dinner at that new place in town.

Walt, I wish you was a banker too.

Your loving wife

April 15

Dear Judy,

I know it’s hard on you and with Ike to take care of it’s even worse. He’s tetchy enough when he feels good but when he’s got the aches he’s enough to try the patience of a saint. But the good Lord will provide, Judy, and I know what I’m saying.

About George and the bank holding off — you want to get it writ down. So next time you see him you want to ask him about Ruthie Watkins which I found out about from a guy up here named Ernie Taylor. Ernie, his business is selling letters. And like he says, if I got a cow or a bushel of wheat I can sell them, can’t I? So why can’t he sell letters?

Ernie and me get along fine because the both of us we’re innocent men and we shouldn’t ought to be here. But as long as we are we talk about things and Ernie happened to mention some letters he got hold of which George writ to this Ruthie Watkins. So maybe you better mention them to George next time you see him.

Your loving husband

April 22

Dear Walt,

George took me out to dinner again and we talked about a lot of things. And like you told me to I just happened to mention Ruthie Watkins and then I said about the mortgage and how it ought to be writ down. And the very next day I got a letter from the bank promising to hold off until autumn but I don’t know what good it’s going to do. Because next time I was out with George, Ike got hold of some of that while mule stuff and after that he got the idea he ought to go riding in the tractor. Which he did, as far as that big ditch on the west side. Ike didn’t get hurt bad, just a bruise or two that he’s relaxing from, but you ought to see what’s left of that tractor. So how do I make that mortgage payment in the fall with no crop coming in? And if I don’t pay up we got no farm.

I’m tired, Walt. I’m plumb tired and just about at the end of my tether. You said the good Lord will provide — but how? How?

Your loving wife

April 28

Dear Judy,

You got to be patient like I said and if you’re real patient the Lord will provide. Because He come to me in a dream and He said that there was something buried in the south field that would take care of us. So you tell Ike to get over that rhumatiz of his. Tell him I only got a year to go and then I’m going to dig up that something in the south field and after that everything’s going to be all right.

Your loving husband

May 4

Dear Walt,

I don’t know just how to tell you this but I guess I’ll just set it down the way it happened.

You know how Ike hates the law ever since they come around and took you away. So when the sheriff and six deputies showed up the day before yesterday Ike tried to chase them away. He got up out of bed and ran all over the place looking for his shotgun, only I had it hid. Then he yelled at them and called them all kinds of names and they finally grabbed him and tied him up for a spell, so he never did see what they done. He’s spry again, all that running after the deputies loosened him up and now he’s as good as ever. But I don’t rightly know what the sheriff come for and you’ll never tumble to what those deputies of his done.

Walt, they went down to that south field and the six of them spent the whole day digging and then they come back the next day and kept on until they dug up just about every inch of that field. And I never did see any six men look so tired and they sure was mad. I asked them lots of questions and one of them — I think he come all the way down from the prison — he allowed as how all your mail gets read. Walter, what did he say that for?

Your loving wife

May 7

Dear Judy,

Now plant.

Your loving husband

The thin man on the witness stand fumbled with the edge of his necktie. He had been Raynor’s secretary and one of the two men present in the district attorney’s house the night he’d been murdered.

I asked him: “The day Raynor was killed, didn’t he tell you he had enough on the defendant to hang him?”

“Objection!” Sam Lubock, the defense lawyer, had leaped to his feet, thick-jowled face flooded with color.

“Sustained,” snapped Judge Martin. He said it without even glancing at me.

That’s how it had been all through the trial — Lubock making objections, the judge sustaining them. And this was supposed to be a court of justice. The lady outside, weighing scales in her hand, must have been laughing in her stone throat. Only there was nothing funny about it.

Lubock grinned and sat down beside his client.

I looked at the defendant, and a white sheet of fury blazed through me. There was no doubt in my mind that he had murdered my chief. District Attorney Raynor, the one man I had worshiped and respected.

Judged by certain standards, Frank Hauser was a success. He had made and kept three fortunes, had done it over the sweat and toil and blood of a hundred men. Night clubs, clip joints, slot machines, numbers, protective societies — anything that paid big dividends.

He was a slender man, smooth and oily, cold and deadly as a rattlesnake. He sat there, smiling contemptuously, a stain on the community. Any time he pulled the strings, a couple of politicians danced.

And then, quite suddenly, two months ago, a reform ticket had placed Dan Raynor in the district attorney’s office. Dan Raynor was not for sale. Nobody had that kind of money. Alone, Raynor was not dangerous. But teamed with his special investigator, Tom Gahagan, they menaced the organization, the very existence of Hauser’s machine.

Gahagan was all cop. Ploddingly, meticulously, he’d piled up the evidence against Hauser, enough to send the man to the gallows, and some half dozen big shots with him.