John Sandford - Mad River

Jimmy Sharp stepped back from the curb and impatiently waved the car by, waved it by like a big shot, like he couldn’t be bothered to assert his rights to the pedestrian crosswalk.

“We shoulda parked closer,” Tom McCall said. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

As the car went by, a woman driver peered out at the three of them. The overhead reading light was on, and she was wearing an overcoat, wool hat, and one black glove. Her bare hand was holding a cell phone to her ear, and she was talking as she looked at them. A multitasker, headed for a three-car smashup somewhere down the line.

“One big problem there-somebody would have seen it, and put two and two together, and then we got a witness,” Jimmy said. “Besides, the walk will warm you up.”

“Glad I got the gloves,” McCall said.

Becky Welsh said, “It’s April, you fool. You don’t need gloves for the cold. Just walk.”

Jimmy had smoked a Marlboro down to the filter, and he snapped it into the street and bent into the task of climbing the hill, Tom and Becky on his heels, the three of them throwing splashy shadows in the pale April moonlight. Halfway up, Jimmy stopped to catch his breath, turned, and said, “That’s a pretty sight of the town.”

They all turned to look, the Bigham business district spread out below them, the county courthouse with its eternal flame, a few cars turning corners, flashing red lights on an ambulance heading into the hospital. The Minnesota River was down there, a black ribbon at the foot of downtown, not much more than a creek, really. They’d left Jimmy’s Firebird in an apartment parking lot at the base of the hill, where they could get to it in a hurry.

“It is pretty,” Tom agreed. Puffs of steam came out of their mouths, dissipating in the night air.

Jimmy took another cigarette out of the pack and tapped the tobacco end on a thumbnail, then cupped his hands to his mouth and lit it with an old Zippo lighter that left behind the stink of lighter fluid when he sparked it off. His square jaw looked yellow in the light of the flame; the trace of a ladder-stitched scar showed up on his chin, from the bad old hay-humping days down in Shinder, when a piece of wire from an ancient baling machine lashed him like a whip.

He was wearing a green army field jacket that he’d bought at a flea market, with the collar up under his ears, and a blue Dodgers baseball cap with a big white LA on the front. He’d never been to LA, but he planned to go, someday soon. He’d manage Becky’s career, and they’d both get rich and buy a Winnebago and tour around the country.

“Diamonds tonight,” Becky said.

Tom said, “I don’t know about this. It don’t feel entirely right to me.”

Tom was tall and wiry, and wore silver-rimmed glasses that he got from the three weeks he was in the navy. At the end of three weeks, one of the RDCs noticed the scale on his arms and asked, “Is that the heartbreak of psoriasis I see there?” It was, and Tom was out.

On this cold night, the psoriasis was concealed by a thin blue work shirt and an uninsulated leather jacket, the sleeves too short to cover Tom’s bony wrists. With his black jacket and black jeans and black hair and glasses and big nose, he hovered around Jimmy and Becky like a cartoon crow.

“Don’t be a pussy,” Becky said.

“It’s diamonds,” Jimmy said. He rolled the words around the cigarette as he studied Tom’s pinched face. “What’s the matter with you? You look nervous. You nervous?”

“Naw, I’m not nervous, I just want things to go right,” Tom said.

They crossed the top of the hill, heads down, hands in their pockets, around the curve and past George, past Arroyo. They were in the dark, with nobody around, a quarter to two o’clock in the morning, a sharp eye out for prowling cops. Jimmy had a pistol stuck in his waistband at the small of his back, and he reached back under his coat and touched it from time to time, a talisman of power. He’d never had one of those.

“Getting close,” Becky said. Now she sounded nervous. They passed a streetlight, and in the pool of light, which fell on them like a mist, she said, “Stop a minute, Jimmy.” She caught his arm and pulled his cigarette hand out to one side, and kissed him, and put her tongue in his mouth, and pressed her pelvis against him. He tasted like nicotine and french fries.

Jimmy said, “Baby,” and stepped back, and took a drag and tipped his head into a dark side street and said, “Let’s go.”

They were going over to Lincoln, to a dark wood-frame house with a wide front porch and bridal wreath bushes down the sides: good cover. They’d scouted it earlier in the day, Jimmy and Becky, arm in arm down the sidewalk, Becky spitting, “Fuckin’ Hogans, they think they’re so hot-shit. Like, not .”

“O’Learys,” Jimmy said. “O’Learys, now.”

Marsha Hogan had grown up in Shinder, out on the prairie, her father the town pharmacist. Hogan had sent his virgin daughter up to St. Kate’s, the big Catholic girls’ college in St. Paul, and hoped for the best. A nice Catholic boy, he hoped, from St. Thomas, who might even be a. . pharmacist.

He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Marsha had met John O’Leary, a biochemistry major who had ambitions in medicine. She’d married him a week after their graduation, lived with him in dark apartments as he worked through medical school at the University of Minnesota, and then through an internship in Milwaukee. Back in Bigham, John joined a prosperous practice and Marsha bore him two daughters, Mary, named after her mother, and Agatha, named after his, and four boys, John Jr., called Jack, and James, Robin, and Franklin.

Marsha was fifty-three years old when she went back to Shinder for her thirty-fifth high school reunion. She’d been on the court of the homecoming queen, back when, and had been her homeroom representative to the student council, had organized a school-wide charity to help support the county animal-rescue program. She still had friends in Shinder, though they mostly saw her in Bigham, which was only thirteen miles away.

For the reunion dance, she wore her twenty-fifth anniversary necklace, possibly the most expensive array of diamonds ever seen in Shinder. Everybody commented on it, both approvingly to her face, and jealously behind her back. The homecoming queen, who rumor said was an alcoholic down in Des Moines, didn’t show, so Marsha was the belle of the ball.

And had been served a square of chocolate sheet cake by Becky Welsh, the prettiest and hottest girl ever to come from Shinder, a girl who’d never had a diamond, or much of anything else.

Becky had seen Marsha O’Leary in a Snyders drugstore right after they hit town, had recognized her immediately, though Marsha hadn’t shown a flicker of interest in Becky. She mentioned the diamonds to Jimmy, but he hadn’t been interested until that night, when he showed her a gun and said, “Let’s go get you them stones.”

Lincoln Avenue was quiet and dark. Jimmy, Becky, and Tom sauntered along, looking far too casual for people on a midnight stroll. If a cop car had come along, they might all have died, for Jimmy had said he’d never give himself up to the law, and he meant it, which Becky felt was one of the exciting things about him. He meant it. No cop car came.

They slowed as they came up to the house, taking a last look around, then Jimmy said, in a whisper, “Quick now.”

They crossed the lawn in single file, their feet crunching on the blades of grass that had stiffened in the night chill. They stepped between the bridal wreath bushes, now invisible to the street, took cowboy handkerchiefs from their pockets and tied them over their faces. Becky and Jimmy pulled on the same type of cheap brown cotton work gloves that Tom already wore. Jimmy took out his pocketknife and unfolded the main blade, and in the dim light from the street, he led the way down the side of the house, checking out the windows.