Bill Crider: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 1. Whole No. 797, January 2008

Sam didn’t like him having to say that. He couldn’t see how this involved him.

“You’re heading up to watch?” asked Sam. “You on your way up there now?”

“Me?” said the detective. He shook his head. “I’m on my way home.” He looked past Sam to the grill. “Just stopped off here for a bite to eat.”

Sam went silent then. After a moment he returned to the grill and the cooking meat. He pressed down with the spatula, bleeding off juice, before remembering he had done that already.

The burgers were ready. He lifted off the sizzling patties, one at a time, laying them onto the waiting buns. The clock on the wall said a little before six. Sam, who could normally juggle seven separate orders in his head, was having trouble focusing, and had to look back at the takeout man. “That was — no cheese?”

The man went back into his jacket pocket for the slip of paper, found it, unfolded it, turned it right-side up. He cleared his throat before speaking. “No cheese. No pickles.”

Sam focused on the torn paper in the man’s hand. “It’s not for you?”

“No,” answered the man. He tried to look casual.

Sam swallowed. He looked over near the detective. “And yours?”

“No cheese. No pickles. Exact same.”

Sam turned back to the open-faced burgers. He covered up the patties with the mayonnaise-slathered buns. He had the feeling he was being made part of something he wanted no part in.

He prepped two meal orders of fries and slaw, one going into a plastic serving basket lined with paper, the other into a Best Burger To-Go sack. He brought the two burgers around, side by side, not knowing what to do. He set them down before the two customers.

Sam said, “Which one do you...?”

The takeout man said nothing.

The detective told Sam, “You choose.”

Sam hated him for saying that. He looked at the takeout man, who wouldn’t meet his eye — then he wrapped one burger and dropped it into the sack, laying the other down in the basket of fries. He set the basket meal in front of the detective. The takeout man paid cash and asked for a receipt.

“Don’t forget napkins,” said the detective.

Sam, rushing now, thumbed six or seven yellow Best Burger napkins off the top of the stack and stuffed them into the bag and rolled the top shut. He wanted the takeout man to leave now.

The takeout man did leave. The detective didn’t turn to watch him go. He waited until the bell over the door stopped ringing and the engine started up and the tires rolled back popping over the gravel. Then he took the sandwich into his hands. Sam saw it still steaming, saw the bottom of the bun already sagging with grease. He watched the detective bite in deep, and felt a tang in the back of his own throat, almost sick-making. He saw grease and juice run down over the man’s fingers, dripping into the basket, and then he had to look away.

Cooper drove the Ford sedan up the interstate back toward the penitentiary. He hadn’t cared at all for that cop in the diner. Trying to make him feel bad. Cooper’s job sucked, no question. He worked at the pen because it was a night job and they reimbursed half his tuition. But as to job satisfaction, there was zero. Cooper wasn’t out catching killers. He did what he was told. They sent him out to pick up a sandwich — and he was happy to do it. Happy to get away from there, even just for thirty minutes. Drudgery pervaded the pen like a factory choking on its own pollution. So what did he have to apologize for? That he wasn’t rich? That he had to work to make a better life for himself?

A claw hammer.

He was angry. He’d had to put the sack into the trunk, which was the last thing he’d wanted to do after listening to that cop — open a car trunk — but it was his boss’s order. Cooper would be passing protesters on the way back inside, and they weren’t to see the food or anything else that might set them off.

He almost regretted stealing those few fries out of the bag — at the same time wishing he had some more. The Coke was handy, stuck into the cup holder at his side, so he righted the steering wheel with his knees and popped the clear plastic top off the cup and took a few sweet sips. He was returning it and trying to squeeze the cover back on when he thought he heard a thumping inside the trunk. It stopped his heart for a second. Like that feeling that someone is hiding behind you in the car.

For a moment he imagined he were Mossman, driving into the woods with someone bound and gagged in his trunk, knowing what he was going to do to them...

The penitentiary exit surprised him and he looked down and saw that he was doing eighty-one. The wheels squealed as he took it too fast.

Early protesters were indeed assembling with their signs and bullhorns and candles — ready to make a night of it. How good it must feel to stand for something, he thought. To commit oneself to a lost cause. To gather with other like-minded souls and lock arms and sing songs under the stars. Wallowing in futility. Championing it, actually. How wonderful it must be to fight only losing battles. How safe and how comfortable. To posit yourself squarely on the side of peace and good. How brave the sand on an eroding beach.

They stared through his windshield as he slowed near the front gates. Cooper was nobody to them, but the sedan was a prison vehicle, and so one of them — a woman wearing a black robe, her hair drawn back fiercely into a long white-gray whip — pounded once on the roof over his head, so startling Cooper that his foot hit the gas pedal, jerking the vehicle forward, almost running over three people.

They scattered out of his way pretty fast after that. He thought about stopping and walking back to confront them. Not with cant, but with food. Passing around the bag of French fries, one to each. And then asking them, Is this really whose last supper you want to be at?

He parked inside the safety perimeter and stood before the trunk with keys in hand before opening it and finding the food sack tipped over onto its side. Grease soaked the side of the bag, leaving a dark oily stain on the carpet lining the trunk, and Cooper erupted suddenly, unleashing a string of bitter curses into the prison night, even though it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t even his car.

Sonny Mossman looked up from where he sat on the slab bed of his special holding cell. They had just shaved his head and one leg. A Restraint Team guard entered in full kit — riot helmet, spit shield, lineman’s gloves, breastplate, jump boots — with two others backing him, their steel batons extended. The Restraint Team ran the Death Tank because some cons lose it at the end. They go screaming like a virgin to the flaming stake. But not Sonny.

The lead guard brought him a familiar yellow paper sack all grease-soaked on the bottom and one side. He set it on the shelf with the Coke and then stood there a moment looking at Sonny through his goggles. They think it’s their job to eye-rape you. They backed out and closed the tank door and Sonny stood and went to the bag.

His mouth was already filling up with saliva. He’d been looking forward to this for a long time now. The only thing he had to look forward to. If they really wanted to hurt him, they would have brought this in and showed it to him, pushed it into his face — then taken it away. Left his stomach jumping like a stuck puppy.

Sonny opened the sack and quickly unwrapped the big, soggy burger. He took it in his thick fingers and bit in quick — and the taste exploded in his mouth. It was perfect, made just the way he liked it. He chewed through half of it before realizing that this was it, there wasn’t anymore, and maybe he should slow down.

He lifted out the fries and napkins and set aside the coleslaw. He smiled at the cartoon burger with the “EAT ME” sign on the napkin. It put him right back inside Best Burger: the front counter with the busted stools and the meat cooked in front of you by the grill man with fast, mechanical hands.