Robert Randisi - Hey There (You with the Gun in Your Hand)

“Mr. G., this is all we can do,” Jerry said. “The cops in this town don’t like you and me. That one guy-Hargrove? He’s bad news.”

Hargrove was the detective Jerry and I had tangled with twice last year. Explaining all of this to him wouldn’t be easy.

“The only way we’re gonna stay out of trouble-and out of jail-is to get rid of these bodies.”

I couldn’t believe I was sitting in my living room with three dead guys on my floor, calmly talking about getting rid of them. I was wondering what was going to happen to me when it all sunk in.

“Okay,” I said, with a heavy sigh, “where do we take them?”

“I don’t know this burg like you do,” he said. “City dump?”

“Too much of a cliche,” I said. “Plus, somebody might stumble across them.”

“Okay, so how about a junkyard?” he asked.

“Same problem.”

“A lake?”

“That’s a possibility, but …”

“Okay, whatayou suggest?”

“I do have an idea,” I said, “but it’s a little bit off the wall.”

“What?”

“That warehouse.”

“The one we found the other guy in?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What if these guys killed him?”

“Then it would be, whatayacallit,” he said, “ironical?”

“Yeah, it would be.”

Jerry thought it over, nodding.

“The place is abandoned, might be a long time before they’re found, and we can stage it so it looks like they all shot each other.”

“That would be ironic,” I said.

“It might not stand up to cops lookin’ into it,” Jerry said, “but by that time maybe we’ll be done. You’ll be back at work and I’ll be back in New York.”

I looked down at the three corpses. They had all bled into my rug. Damn.

“Yeah,” Jerry said, “we’re gonna have to clean your carpet.”

By the time Thomas returned-and I wasn’t all that sure he would-we had the bodies wrapped in blankets. It took all the blankets I owned, and the rest of the duct tape, which the three men had brought with them. That made me think they might have been there to do more than just deliver a message.

“What’s the plan?” he asked, as I let him in.

I told him.

“How do we get them there?”

“We’ll need both cars,” I said. “Yours and mine.”

“Okay.”

“You gonna get in trouble with your boss?”

He grinned and said, “I am my boss.”

“Hey, man,” Jerry said, approaching Thomas with his hand out, “I never said thanks.”

They shook hands and Thomas said, “Don’t mention it.”

“I do got some bad news for you, though,” Jerry added.

“What?”

“The Luger, we’re gonna have ta leave it in the warehouse.”

“Why?”

Jerry explained about setting the bodies up to look like they had all shot each other.

“How are you going to do that when one of them was killed with a tire iron?”

“Shit,” I said. “We’ll have to figure something out. Let’s get ’em over there, first.”

“The Caddy’s got a big trunk,” Jerry said. “I can back it up to the house. We take these bums out the back and drop them in the trunk. It’s dark enough for nobody to see us.”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “After you move the Caddy I’ll back my Chrysler up and we’ll put the third body in there. After that I’ll just follow you.”

“Okay,” I said with a queasy stomach, “let’s do it.”

Loading the bodies into the trunks was nervous work. Luckily I didn’t live on a block with a lot of nighttime traffic. These were mostly people who went to work during the day and then came home at night, had dinner, and vegged out in front of the TV until bedtime.

Unloading them at the warehouse was not a problem. We pulled into the deserted parking lot, made our way to the back door, and then Jerry and I went inside to check if everything was the same. This time we brought a regular-sized flashlight from my house, and Thomas also had one in his trunk.

“Still there,” Jerry said, as we looked down at the dead man. “And he’s gettin’ ripe.”

It wasn’t warm in the warehouse at the moment, but during the day it must have been like an oven. I had noticed the smell as we walked in.

“Let’s get those others in here and scram.”

With the help of Thomas we carried the three dead men in, unwrapped them, and laid them out in a way Jerry and I had worked out while we waited for Thomas at the house. There were certainly enough guns to go around.

And then we had the guy whose skull I had cracked.

“We can leave the tire iron behind,” Jerry said. “Let them figure out how he was killed that way and not with a gun.”

“So Thomas loses his tire iron, and his Luger,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Gianelli,” Thomas said. “I lied about the gun. It’s not registered to me, I didn’t bring it back from the war. I bought it several years ago in a pawn shop.”

“Why the lie?” I asked.

“It makes for a good story,” the driver said. “I actually do have one I brought back from Germany, but I keep it in my house.”

“And were you really a Ranger?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “I wouldn’t lie about that.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “All I have to do is buy you a new tire iron, and pay you for your time.”

“The tire iron will be fine,” Thomas said, as Jerry walked around making last minute adjustments. “You don’t need to pay me anything. I’ve kinda enjoyed the evening.”

“No, I’ve at least got to pay you what you would’ve got for drivin’ us around all night.”

“Mr. Sinatra paid me ahead of time.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll just add to it.”

He shrugged and replied, “If you say so.”

“I do.”

“I think we got it,” Jerry said, inspecting our work.

“I have a question,” Thomas said.

“What?”

“Aren’t the cops going to wonder how these men all killed each other in the dark?”

“Like I said,” Jerry answered, “let ’em try ta figure it out. It’ll keep them busy.”

We left the warehouse and locked the door behind us. I wondered how long it would take me to get that smell out of my nostrils.

Thomas ended up taking the hundred-dollar bill I pushed into his hand and we parted company in the warehouse parking lot.

“That was odd,” Jerry said, as we got into the Caddy.

“What was?”

“That guy,” he said. “Comin’ along when he did, doin’ what he did … odd.”

“What are you saying?”

Jerry shrugged and started the engine.

“I’m just sayin’ it was odd.”

When we got back to the house we still had work to do. We decided to leave the bloody blankets in the warehouse, among some cartons and tarps we found in a dark corner. Maybe the cops would never find them. But if they did, it’d just be another part of the puzzle for ’em to solve.

At the house, we had to clean the blood out of the living room rug. We also had to decide what to do with the chair Jerry had been duct-taped to.

It was well into the morning when we put away our buckets, sponges and mops. We had flushed gallons of bloody water down the toilet. I hoped to replace the products before my cleaning lady discovered they were gone. I also hoped the rug would dry before she showed up. I didn’t want her asking any questions.

“I’m hungry,” Jerry said, as first light started to brighten the interior of the house. “You hungry?”

“Yeah, I’m hungry, but I’m also tired,” I said. “Let’s go out and get something to eat and then come back and get some shut-eye.”

“Fine with me.”