Max Collins - Scratch Fever

Julie was in her yellow Mustang, the laundry bag of money sitting in back like a person.

He had her in his sights, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t shoot. Couldn’t kill her.

So he shot at her tires; maybe hit one.

Then she was gone.

And minutes later he and Nolan were pursuing her. There were only two ways she could go: back to Port City, which on the heels of the bank robbery was unlikely, or toward West Liberty, a little town near where she’d lived before moving into Rigley’s cottage.

On the outskirts of West Liberty, they saw it: the Mustang, with a flat tire, pulled over on the shoulder.

In front of it was a blue Ford that said WEST LIBERTY SHERIFF’S DEPT. on the side. Julie was in the back seat of the Ford. So was the sack of money.

The sheriff or deputy or whatever, a pudgy-faced guy with a weak chin, close-set eyes, five o’clock shadow, and a western-style hat, sat in front, getting ready to pull out on the highway, into town. He apparently had stopped Julie for driving recklessly in a car with a flat tire, and stumbled onto something a bit bigger.

Julie saw Nolan and Jon as they drove by, but didn’t alert the sheriff. Nolan and Jon drove back to Iowa City to sit it out.

That night, back at the antique shop, in the upstairs living quarters, they kept the radio on and the TV too, waiting for news of the West Liberty arrest. It never came.

“I think we been snookered,” Nolan said. “I think that West Liberty hick was in on it with her.”

“Nolan, that’s nuts,” Jon had said. “She couldn’t’ve planned ahead for a flat tire. She couldn’t’ve put something that complex together.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”

“So now what?”

“We keep waiting.”

The next morning it was on the news: on a narrow bridge on the highway outside Ft. Madison, a gas tanker truck struck a car, head on. There had been an explosion. The two men in the truck were killed, as was the woman driving the car. Several thousand dollars in burnt bills in Port City bank wrappers linked the young woman driving the car to yesterday’s Port City bank robbery. In the days to come, the woman, though burned beyond recognition, was identified as the dead bank president’s mistress. The cops put a scenario together for the robbery and its aftermath that did not, thankfully, include Nolan and Jon.

But Nolan had not been satisfied. He went to Ft. Madison and looked at the burnt wreckage of the Mustang.

“I think we been snookered,” he said again.

Again, Jon said, “You’re nuts. She was running, and it all caught up with her.”

“You mean God killed her?”

“Well...”

“He doesn’t have that good a sense of humor.”

There was one thing Nolan could still do, and Jon drove him, after a good month had passed, to West Liberty. The weak-chinned deputy sheriff — whose name was Creel — lived in a little white frame house a few blocks from the outskirts of town — a few blocks from where he stopped Julie’s Mustang. So at two in the morning one night, with Jon at his side, Nolan knocked on Creel’s door.

Creel answered in his pajamas. Nolan, wearing a ski mask, put a gun in Creel’s neck.

Within the house, a female voice from upstairs called, “Honey? Is something wrong?”

Nolan said softly, “Nothing’s wrong.”

Creel looked at Nolan wide-eyed, slack-jawed; he looked at Jon standing just behind Nolan, also in a ski mask, also with a gun.

“Nothing’s wrong, honey,” Creel called back. “Just some sheriffing!”

And Nolan walked the deputy around back and had him sit in a swing on a swing set. Creel had kids, apparently.

“Tell me about Julie,” Nolan said.

“What?”

“Tell me why you didn’t turn Julie and that money in last month.”

And Creel did something amazing: he started to cry. He sat in the swing and cried.

Then he talked.

“I was nuts about that cunt. She had a beauty shop in town. For two years I tried to make her. I usually don’t cheat around, but that cunt was s-o-o-o-o-o-o beautiful. And she laughed at me when I came onto her. Two years I tried making her.”

“Get to the point.”

“There’s not much to tell. I saw this car driving wild. Flat tire. Pulled it over and it was this Julie. She had a shotgun, but it was empty. And she had a bag of money. All that fuckin’ money. She said, ‘You hear about the Port City bank job this afternoon?’ I said yeah. She said, ‘This is the money. Hundreds of thousands here. Nobody knows I got it but you.’ Jesus, I said. She says, ‘You want to be rich and fuck me whenever you want?’ I didn’t say nothin’. She says, ‘Rich,’ and reaches for my dick. ‘Nobody’s home at my place,’ I says. My wife and the kids was at her mom’s in Des Moines, for Christmas. She says, ‘Drive us there, then. Now.’ And I did.”

Creel started laughing.

“We parked the Mustang in back here, in the garage, and took the bag of money in and plopped it on the kitchen table. She and I sat and played with the money and laughed. Then we went upstairs to the bedroom and, sweet Jesus, I fucked her. Three times, and it was... nothing like it, ever. We was in bed together, and I drifted off to sleep, thinking it was a dream, a crazy dream. I woke up a couple hours later, handcuffed to the bed. Alone in the house.”

Creel sat there, swinging.

“You believe she’s dead?” Nolan asked.

“If she isn’t, I’d like to kill her.” He laughed. “Or fuck her.” Then he just sat there blankly. Swinging.

“We never had this conversation,” Nolan said.

“Right,” Creel said.

And Nolan and Jon went back to Iowa City and forgot about it.

Now, a year later, Jon was in the back seat of a car, handcuffed like that dumb asshole Creel, while Julie and some dyke named Ron talked about whether or not to kill him.

Right now Julie was still talking to that sandy-haired guy. If only they’d go into that warehouse for a while, maybe he could do something...

The car he was in was an old souped-up Ford, with tuck’n’roll upholstery, four-on-the-floor, stereo speakers on the back ledge. He was locked in, of course, but maybe...

On the other side of the car, the one facing away from Julie and Ron and the Hulk, Jon bit the tip of the locking knob on the door. He pulled up his with teeth. It clicked.

He glanced over to see if the figures out in the parking lot had heard it. It had sounded incredibly loud to him. But they still stood there, Julie and the guy, talking, Ron doing her James Dean slouch.

With his back to the door, he used this cuffed hands to grasp the door handle. He pulled. The latch gave, but he didn’t open the door. He was still watching the people in the lot. To see if they’d heard the sound — which seemed to him to echo across the world like a shout in the Grand Canyon. But they didn’t seem to. Ron glanced over, but just momentarily.

He waited a minute or so.

Then he pushed the door open a bit, hoping the dome light wouldn’t go on. It didn’t. One small break. He edged it open and slipped down out of the car onto the gravel and eased the door shut.

On his belly, he looked under the car, toward Julie and the Hulk and Ron. He saw their legs; they hadn’t moved.

He looked off, in the opposite direction. Another twenty feet of parking lot, then trees. If he could make it to the trees, and perhaps hide, then eventually work the ropes off his ankles, and find a highway...

He crawled on his belly. The gravel was rough; it scraped him. He was only in T-shirt and jeans. His mouth, already tasting like an old gym sock, took in dust.

He could hear them talking. They hadn’t noticed him. Trees ahead, a few yards.