Shirley Murphy - The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

When he had the two loaded money bags, he locked the bank officer and the women in the vault and spun the dial. Before he left the bank carrying the two canvas bags he dropped the hairs from the envelope into the blood on the marble floor. When he hit the door he had already pulled off the stocking cap and shoved it into one of the bags. Quickly he slid into the Dodge, pushed the bags under the seat. He was ten blocks away when he heard sirens; he never had heard a bank alarm, maybe it only sounded at the station and that didn’t seem fair.

The sirens grew louder but he eased on at a leisurely pace, heading north to the outskirts of Rome. He parked Morgan’s car in a patch of woods next to the red pickup he had “borrowed” earlier from a man that he knew would be out of town all week. He crammed the money all into one bag and dropped it into the cab of the pickup, left the other bag with a few scattered bills under the passenger seat of Morgan’s car. He changed shirts and boots with Morgan, hard to do, manipulating a limp body. He emptied the bottle of bootleg whiskey over Morgan’s clothes, smeared some in his mouth, the rest on the driver’s seat. He wiped his prints off the bottle, forced Morgan’s prints onto it in several handholds. Holding the bottle with his handkerchief, he shoved it under the seat with the canvas bag.

Pulling the red pickup out onto the narrow macadam road, he got out and picked up the four wide boards on which he had parked to prevent tire tracks in the raw earth of the shoulder. He scuffed leaves over the indentations the boards had made, threw the boards in the bed of the pickup, and headed around the outskirts of Rome, up toward Turkey Mountain Ridge. The way he figured, taking his time to hide the money in the one place where no one would ever look, he’d have the truck back in his friend’s driveway well before midnight, would be back in Natalie’s apartment in perfect innocence, fondling her in her warm bed. He had no thought for the dead guard or the girl he had hurt, he had no idea of the extent of her suffering nor did he care, his thoughts were on the damage he had done to Morgan Blake, for taking Becky from him, and on Becky for turning her back on him. Soon now Morgan would be hurting bad, as would Becky, and that was only right, that was as it should be, those who crossed him were meant to pay, and he was making it happen.

In Blythe, the ghost cat, as he accompanied Lee in the careful laying of his plans, was aware as well of Falon’s brutal robbery even as the iron door to the vault was slammed and the manager and tellers locked inside. Misto hurt for those who had been beaten, for the guard who had been killed and for his poor wife newly widowed. He hurt for Morgan, who would suffer long and hard, too, for Falon’s cruelty, and he hurt for Becky and Sammie. But at this juncture there was little he could have done. A momentum was building that was beyond the ghost cat’s frantic powers; this shifting of fate was now far too strong for one small and angry feline.

But he knew this: the lust of Brad Falon against the Blakes was inexorably drawing Lee in. Lee would soon become a part of the scenario, as surely as pressures could build beneath the earth toward an explosive cataclysm. The paths of Morgan, and Brad Falon, of Sammie and Lee were tangling ever closer; and the ultimate outcome, the final choice, would be Lee’s to make. Uneasily the cat watched and waited, often giving Lee a gentle nudge, rubbing warm against him, his purring rumble meant to remind the old convict where survival lay: Lee’s ultimate afterlife lay with those who could give of their love, never with that which destroys love and joy. Never with that which would leave nothing of Lee but dust, scattered and gone, swept to nothing by the winds of time.

27

Pausing on the porch of the mess hall, Lee stamped dust from his boots, startling a flock of chickens that flapped up squawking, kicking sand in his face. Beside the tool house the trucks stood idle, and the packing-shed doors were shut tight. Looking in through the wide screens, he could see that the mess hall was empty; but the smell of cooking breakfasts lingered. On Sunday mornings, the men fixed their own meals. Moving on inside the screened room and back between the long tables, he stepped into the kitchen and set about making his breakfast.

The big wire basket on the counter was full of rinsed dishes left to drain and several burners of the oversized commercial stove were still warm. The stove was familiar to Lee, from working in a number of prison kitchens. He found bowls of eggs in the refrigerator alongside rolls of chorizo, and there were packages of tortillas on the counter and a couple of loaves of bread. The big commercial coffeepot was warm but nearly empty and was of a kind he didn’t know. He found a saucepan instead, and made boiled coffee. He fired up the stove’s big gas grill, started the chorizo, and when it was brown he broke three eggs beside it. He dropped two slices of bread in the big commercial toaster, buttered them from a gallon crock, and carried his steaming plate and coffee mug to a table beside the long, east-facing screen, where the edge of the rising sun was just appearing over the sand hills and above the scraggly willows.

The cash from the traveler’s check scam was in his hip pocket. He’d left his new gun and the ammo hidden inside his mattress, had ripped the stitching just enough to slide them in. Not very original, but they wouldn’t be there long. His cabin didn’t offer a lot of options, not even a cupboard under the sink. But no one seemed to have been in there since he’d moved in, his few personal possessions, his clean clothes, Mae’s picture on the dresser, never seemed disturbed.

He had dreamed of Mae again last night. He didn’t dream of her often but when he did the scene was shockingly real. Again she had been in a strange place, lying half asleep on a flowered couch, a blanket tucked around her, and her face very pale. She woke and looked up at him, looked right at him. “Cowboy,” she said, reaching up to him, her thin little hands cold in his hands. She was telling him that he had to come and help her, when Lee woke.

It must have been around midnight, though in his dream it seemed to be morning. Outside his window the moon had already moved up out of sight above the cabin roof. He lay wakeful a long time staring into the dark, seeing Mae so vividly, hearing her voice so clearly—Mae’s voice, and yet not quite her voice. There was something different in the way she spoke, an accent of some kind. Dreams could be so deceiving; but something in her voice left him uncertain and puzzled. The child had to be Mae, but something was different not only in the way she spoke, but something in her searching look that wasn’t quite like Mae, something that teased and puzzled him so that when he slept again he worried restlessly. Even as he stirred and tossed in his dreams, part of him knew that Mae would be an old woman now, if she was still alive. Maybe he had dreamed of a time long past, when Mae needed him and he wasn’t there for her?

But he didn’t think so. This child belonged to the present, this child so like his small sister, this little girl was real and alive, now, today, this child reaching out to him, badly needing him.

Trying to settle his puzzled uncertainty, he told himself he’d let last night’s dreams run away with him, that he needed to calm himself, not indulge in crazy fancies. Forking up the last of his eggs, looking out through the screen to the bunkhouses, he watched half a dozen pickers lolling on the long, roofed porches, and he could hear the murmur of Spanish radio stations clashing together in a senseless tangle. In the yard, a ball game had started, loud and energetic, lots of shouting and swearing in Spanish. He watched four young pickers leave their bunkhouse all dressed up in clean shirts, clean jeans, and polished boots, laughing and joking. They piled into an old blue Packard and took off, heading for town. He hoped that wasn’t the last car to go. The next step in his plan depended on a ride into Blythe—but he could still see Tony polishing his car, and that was what he was counting on. Smearing jam on the last of his toast, he crammed it in his mouth, washed it down with the last swallow of coffee. He got up, picking up his plate, thinking about the day ahead.