vapros
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Chapter 40
Chapter 40
Ross stared down at the body, and the ringing continued in his ears. He made a face and shook his head and bent to take the other man's gun and he put both weapons in a cabinet and closed the door. He wondered who had heard the shot, and what to do now. His preparation had extended only as far as laying his revolver on the workbench and draping the shop towel over it. In the worst-case scenario he had seen himself forced to pick up the gun and point it at Leppert, or perhaps Leppert and Velez. There was no plan to cover this. He went to the front door and stepped outside casually, looking into the street. There were cars passing, but nobody walking, nobody standing and looking toward his shop, no sign that the shot had been heard. For people to hear a gunshot and recognize it, at any considerable distance, it usually needs to be repeated. Once to get their attention, and again to verify.
He stepped back inside and locked the door. Sonny had not moved, and Ross went around him rather than step over him, to reach the back door. He opened it and looked out at the sheet metal shop, and there was nobody in sight. Again he wished for a cigarette. Leppert had cigarettes, and just now he had kicked the habit. Ross took a deep breath and went back inside and knelt by the body. There was a small hole in the back of the tee shirt, and a trace of blood, showing that the bullet had bored clear through the mountain of flesh. He tried to find a pulse at the side of the neck and at the wrist, without success. Sonny was as dead as he was ever going to get. Ross looked at him curiously, and assessed his own reaction. He held up a hand and saw that it was steady, and took it as a bad sign. Shouldn't you feel something after killing another man? Even a Sonny? He remembered why he had returned to the body, and with a grunt he shifted the great bulk enough to get the pack of smokes. They were a bit squashed, but they'd burn.
Now then, to call the police or not. He could call it a robbery he had foiled, and all he would have to explain would be why his own gun was so close at hand. But then they would ID the body and trace the family and call them to come and get him, and somewhere along the line somebody would pick up on the connection between the two of them, concerning the ransom money. Mendoza knew, Miriam knew, Bynum knew, and maybe Velez, if he was still alive. The Lepperts in Binghamton might be in on it, too, for all he knew. Velez might have told them. He and Miriam would never get off the ground in their search. The hell with that. He wasn't telling anybody.
His single shot had accomplished a number of significant things. In saving his own life he had ended Leppert's, and at the same time had locked himself into the proceedings. The decision he had made was now cut in stone. He was the reluctant owner of a pretty hefty corpse, and a dues-paying member of the expedition to recover the ransom money. There was another consequence of his act, as well. The original participants in the kidnapping were now all dead. Villarubbia had been the first, then Lindsay, then Piper, now Leppert. And with the murder of Velez, the second generation had already begun to fall. Ross was part of that generation. Piper had put him there.
So, what to do with Sonny? Nothing, surely, until late tonight, and after careful planning, but neither was he going to try to work today with a dead body in his shop. He wasn't cool enough for that. He went around, securing the blinds in the windows and checking the doors, and opened a back room and got out a dirty canvas tarpaulin. He emptied all Sonny's pockets and rolled him up neatly in the tarp. It was hard work, just turning him over each time. Almost at once, the ruined alligator shoes came off, revealing dirty feet without socks. Ross almost turned and tossed the shoes into his own garbage, but thought better of it and stuffed them as far as he could up the pants legs. Like Gus, Sonny had small legs to go with his bulk. It was an unpleasant chore, and he was glad to finish. When there was nothing to see but a fat bundle, Ross pushed it over near a wall and took a sheet of plywood and stood it on the long edge in front of the package and leaned it over against the wall, building a sort of wooden pup tent over it. Or half of one.
His telephone rang twice while he worked, but he didn't answer, and he could hear messages being recorded on his machine. Finally he stood back, panting and sweating, and looked around. There were only traces of blood on his floor. It had looked like a heart shot, so not much blood had been circulated after the wound was made, and what bleeding there was must have been inside. There was hardly any bullet hole to see in the fat carcass. He got a handful of toilet tissue, and wet it and wiped the floor clean and flushed the paper down the toilet. He smoked one of the cigarettes, then another. There was a wallet with a hundred sixty dollars in it, and he turned it over in his hands before taking out the money and putting it in his own pocket, resolving to get rid of the wallet when he ditched Sonny's pistol. Somehow, robbing the body disturbed him more than killing the man, but what the hell are you supposed to do with a hundred sixty dollars that belonged to a guy who didn't need it any more? His mood was blacker than ever, and it would not have improved appreciably had he known that most of it had been Velez' money, and that Sonny had gotten it the same way he had. He turned out the lights and left the building, checking to be sure the lock caught as it should.
Back at the apartment he showered again and changed clothes, for no good reason except Death. He had to force himself to toss the clothes in the regular basket with the others that had only Dirt on them. Housecat was at the door and Ross let him in, glad for the company. He made coffee and filled a big mug and took it out on the porch, wishing he had brought the cigarettes home with him. He hoped to get past this business without becoming a smoker again, but it got tougher as he went along. Tension and nicotine went together like spaghetti and meatballs.
How had Sonny come to Baton Rouge? Did he have a car somewhere, and if so, why wasn't it at the shop? Was there anybody with him? He decided there must not be. When he spoke to Miriam he would ask about Velez, but for now he would assume he was dead and out of the picture, as Sonny had said. He could find no guilt or horror associated with this taking of a life. Instead, he felt relief that he had been the survivor of a lethal confrontation, and annoyance that now he had a dead body - a dead body weighing more than three hundred pounds - to get rid of without being caught. Sonny had become nothing more than a bag of garbage to be disposed of. A bag of nuclear waste, maybe, that would require special handling instead of going into the dumpster. For some reason, he was glad Sandra couldn't see him sitting at ease with his coffee, pondering what to do with the corpse in his shop. She'd have made something out of that, and he had the vague feeling that he should, too, but there was nothing.
At least he had been granted the leisure to make a good plan for what had to be done. The ideal thing would be for Sonny's body not to be found at all, but that would be a big order. If you buried him, the grave was going to be visible for a long time, either because of the fresh-turned earth or because the outline of it would show after a rain or two had settled the dirt. You would need a more remote spot than any that came to mind. The bottom of the river would be even better, but he had no way to get him there - he didn't even have a boat. If he dumped him off the old Huey Long Bridge he might land on a passing barge. Most of the people who went into the river turned up before long, and even though nobody could prove where he had gone in, Baton Rouge was one of the places he might have. Dead as he was, he continued to plague Ross.
In the end, after a good deal of objective consideration, he decided not to put Sonny to soak after all. Drive him a hundred miles and find a quiet spot to dump him, and let it be somebody else's problem when he was found. Prove he had gone to Baton Rouge. Prove he came to see me. Prove I did something to him. An obnoxious son of a bitch like that could have gotten lots of people to kill him. It wasn't completely safe, but he calculated he could pull it off. It seemed that killing Mr. Leppert had been the easy part. He was tired, but it would be hours before he could act, giving him ample time for some sleep. He kicked back the recliner, but his eyes were wide open, and his shoulders were tight. The morning paper was where he had left it in the kitchen, and he looked at it without seeing it, read it without comprehending, and tossed it down.
Housecat was restless, seeming to feel some of Ross' tension, and he wanted out. He looked apprehensive as he waited for the door to be opened. Ross heated a TV dinner and ate it without tasting it, and forty minutes later he threw it up. There was no nausea, but he threw it up. Death was subtle, but it was on him, nonetheless. With an effort, he figured that today was Thursday, still two days too soon to call Miriam in St. Louis. He had been to St. Louis a hundred years ago, on Monday. Now he slept.
It was dark when he awoke, past eight o'clock. His body was stiff and uncoordinated, and his head was fuzzy, eyes puffy. His mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird cage. He stood over the basin and splashed cold water over his face, again and again. He made more coffee and ate two toaster waffles, and felt only a little better, but he returned to the shop. Sonny was urgent. Something to deal with tonight. Ross waited at the stop sign for a couple of cars to pass in front of the shop and move on down the street, and when they were gone he pulled across and turned in, cutting his lights as he went. In the dim glow of street lights he went directly to the back door, where the truck would be out of sight, and backed up close to the building. Walking around to the front, he entered through the main door and locked himself in, but did not turn on any lights. It took some effort on his part to feel his way around in the dark, within a few feet of the dead man. He found a flashlight and satisfied himself that Sonny was still there, and still dead, although he imagined the body had changed positions slightly. The rolled-up package looked different.
He switched off the flash and opened the back door. Everything was quiet, like a graveyard. The evening was cool, but sweat was forming under his shirt. He dropped the tailgate and went back for his load. Sonny was well into rigor mortis. It comes and then it goes -he had heard that - but it had a grip on Sonny right now, and just getting him to the door was no easy task. Loading him into the truck was even worse, and Ross dropped him on the ground twice before getting him aboard. For a time he thought, in a panic, that he might not be strong enough tonight to do what he had to do. In the end, he got him into the bed of the truck, still wrapped in the tarpaulin and trussed up with rope, but a corner had worked loose and the soles of Sonny's bare feet shone white in the weak light, and Ross had to tuck them in, after which he wiped his hands roughly on a rag.
He brought the same sheet of plywood and built the wooden pup tent again, with the top edge of the panel resting on the side of the truck bed. He blocked it along the lower edge to be certain it didn't shift on the road and expose the suspicious package to the scrutiny of passing truckers, and he closed the tailgate. His shirt was wet, and sticking to his back, before he was done, and his chest was heaving.
On Interstate 12 he headed east toward Slidell, with the vague idea of making his drop somewhere in the desolate salt marshes of New Orleans East, but he didn't really know that area, and when the sign announcing Interstate 55 came into view he decided to turn north toward Mississippi. He thought it quite likely that he was breaking some additional laws by hauling the dead body across a state line for disposal, but it didn't seem important at this point. Surely they wouldn't call it kidnapping, not when your victim is already stiff. Besides, he mused, who the hell would pay you to bring back Sonny Leppert - but of course somebody had once done just that, which explained why they were both there, skulking around in the middle of the night.
Traffic was beginning to ease off, and what was left was mostly trucks. He imagined that all the drivers were craning their necks to inspect his cargo as they went past him, and he drove faster to maintain his place in the line. Suddenly he realized that he was going seventy-five miles an hour, and he slowed again. He had no radar detector, and he didn't need to be stopped by a trooper. Not tonight. He drove looking straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, with frequent peeks through the rear window to check on Sonny, and before he knew it he had crossed into Mississippi. This should be far enough, and he began to scout for exits onto state roads. The one he chose was at McComb, and outside of town he turned again onto a lesser road and then again, until he was deep into piney woods, with no lights in view and no traffic. He didn't know what this spot might look like in the light of day, but it looked okay now, in the pitch dark.
He picked the high side of a banked curve in an elevated roadway; the same sort of site that Villarubbia had chosen for his money drop fourteen years ago in Binghamton. Ross pulled off the road and got out, trying to see down the embankment, and it looked like a tangle of brush down there. He dropped the tailgate again and began to fight Sonny for the last time. He got him out into the road and then rolled him over the edge into the darkness. After the fact, he wondered whether he should follow him down and recover the tarp, but decided it could not be traced to him, and then followed him down anyway and pulled some bushes over him, so one would have to look closely to find him. He had done all he could. He should have known that the tarp, speckled and stained with paint in a wide variety of colors, could not have come from anywhere other than a sign shop, but the fact escaped his attention. And without being aware of it, he had left Sonny within ten miles of the spot where Sonny's dead Buick still sat on the shoulder of 1-55, with a citation under the wiper.
The ride back to Baton Rouge was a breeze, with Leppert out of his life forever. In his mind, Ross went over the day's events half a dozen times, looking for oversights, and at last concluded that he had done well. He wasn't sure how many crimes he had committed, but he did feel like he had gotten away with all of them, at least for now. It wasn't a process he would like to have to go through every day. Being a criminal must be tough on the nerves.
On the other hand, he was planning some more crimes before he went straight again. He wanted to do a breaking and entering and some destruction of private property, like maybe a Sheetrock wall, somewhere around the Canadian border. After that, he promised the world silently, he would be a model citizen. Well, as good as most of the others, anyway.
Chapter 40
Ross stared down at the body, and the ringing continued in his ears. He made a face and shook his head and bent to take the other man's gun and he put both weapons in a cabinet and closed the door. He wondered who had heard the shot, and what to do now. His preparation had extended only as far as laying his revolver on the workbench and draping the shop towel over it. In the worst-case scenario he had seen himself forced to pick up the gun and point it at Leppert, or perhaps Leppert and Velez. There was no plan to cover this. He went to the front door and stepped outside casually, looking into the street. There were cars passing, but nobody walking, nobody standing and looking toward his shop, no sign that the shot had been heard. For people to hear a gunshot and recognize it, at any considerable distance, it usually needs to be repeated. Once to get their attention, and again to verify.
He stepped back inside and locked the door. Sonny had not moved, and Ross went around him rather than step over him, to reach the back door. He opened it and looked out at the sheet metal shop, and there was nobody in sight. Again he wished for a cigarette. Leppert had cigarettes, and just now he had kicked the habit. Ross took a deep breath and went back inside and knelt by the body. There was a small hole in the back of the tee shirt, and a trace of blood, showing that the bullet had bored clear through the mountain of flesh. He tried to find a pulse at the side of the neck and at the wrist, without success. Sonny was as dead as he was ever going to get. Ross looked at him curiously, and assessed his own reaction. He held up a hand and saw that it was steady, and took it as a bad sign. Shouldn't you feel something after killing another man? Even a Sonny? He remembered why he had returned to the body, and with a grunt he shifted the great bulk enough to get the pack of smokes. They were a bit squashed, but they'd burn.
Now then, to call the police or not. He could call it a robbery he had foiled, and all he would have to explain would be why his own gun was so close at hand. But then they would ID the body and trace the family and call them to come and get him, and somewhere along the line somebody would pick up on the connection between the two of them, concerning the ransom money. Mendoza knew, Miriam knew, Bynum knew, and maybe Velez, if he was still alive. The Lepperts in Binghamton might be in on it, too, for all he knew. Velez might have told them. He and Miriam would never get off the ground in their search. The hell with that. He wasn't telling anybody.
His single shot had accomplished a number of significant things. In saving his own life he had ended Leppert's, and at the same time had locked himself into the proceedings. The decision he had made was now cut in stone. He was the reluctant owner of a pretty hefty corpse, and a dues-paying member of the expedition to recover the ransom money. There was another consequence of his act, as well. The original participants in the kidnapping were now all dead. Villarubbia had been the first, then Lindsay, then Piper, now Leppert. And with the murder of Velez, the second generation had already begun to fall. Ross was part of that generation. Piper had put him there.
So, what to do with Sonny? Nothing, surely, until late tonight, and after careful planning, but neither was he going to try to work today with a dead body in his shop. He wasn't cool enough for that. He went around, securing the blinds in the windows and checking the doors, and opened a back room and got out a dirty canvas tarpaulin. He emptied all Sonny's pockets and rolled him up neatly in the tarp. It was hard work, just turning him over each time. Almost at once, the ruined alligator shoes came off, revealing dirty feet without socks. Ross almost turned and tossed the shoes into his own garbage, but thought better of it and stuffed them as far as he could up the pants legs. Like Gus, Sonny had small legs to go with his bulk. It was an unpleasant chore, and he was glad to finish. When there was nothing to see but a fat bundle, Ross pushed it over near a wall and took a sheet of plywood and stood it on the long edge in front of the package and leaned it over against the wall, building a sort of wooden pup tent over it. Or half of one.
His telephone rang twice while he worked, but he didn't answer, and he could hear messages being recorded on his machine. Finally he stood back, panting and sweating, and looked around. There were only traces of blood on his floor. It had looked like a heart shot, so not much blood had been circulated after the wound was made, and what bleeding there was must have been inside. There was hardly any bullet hole to see in the fat carcass. He got a handful of toilet tissue, and wet it and wiped the floor clean and flushed the paper down the toilet. He smoked one of the cigarettes, then another. There was a wallet with a hundred sixty dollars in it, and he turned it over in his hands before taking out the money and putting it in his own pocket, resolving to get rid of the wallet when he ditched Sonny's pistol. Somehow, robbing the body disturbed him more than killing the man, but what the hell are you supposed to do with a hundred sixty dollars that belonged to a guy who didn't need it any more? His mood was blacker than ever, and it would not have improved appreciably had he known that most of it had been Velez' money, and that Sonny had gotten it the same way he had. He turned out the lights and left the building, checking to be sure the lock caught as it should.
Back at the apartment he showered again and changed clothes, for no good reason except Death. He had to force himself to toss the clothes in the regular basket with the others that had only Dirt on them. Housecat was at the door and Ross let him in, glad for the company. He made coffee and filled a big mug and took it out on the porch, wishing he had brought the cigarettes home with him. He hoped to get past this business without becoming a smoker again, but it got tougher as he went along. Tension and nicotine went together like spaghetti and meatballs.
How had Sonny come to Baton Rouge? Did he have a car somewhere, and if so, why wasn't it at the shop? Was there anybody with him? He decided there must not be. When he spoke to Miriam he would ask about Velez, but for now he would assume he was dead and out of the picture, as Sonny had said. He could find no guilt or horror associated with this taking of a life. Instead, he felt relief that he had been the survivor of a lethal confrontation, and annoyance that now he had a dead body - a dead body weighing more than three hundred pounds - to get rid of without being caught. Sonny had become nothing more than a bag of garbage to be disposed of. A bag of nuclear waste, maybe, that would require special handling instead of going into the dumpster. For some reason, he was glad Sandra couldn't see him sitting at ease with his coffee, pondering what to do with the corpse in his shop. She'd have made something out of that, and he had the vague feeling that he should, too, but there was nothing.
At least he had been granted the leisure to make a good plan for what had to be done. The ideal thing would be for Sonny's body not to be found at all, but that would be a big order. If you buried him, the grave was going to be visible for a long time, either because of the fresh-turned earth or because the outline of it would show after a rain or two had settled the dirt. You would need a more remote spot than any that came to mind. The bottom of the river would be even better, but he had no way to get him there - he didn't even have a boat. If he dumped him off the old Huey Long Bridge he might land on a passing barge. Most of the people who went into the river turned up before long, and even though nobody could prove where he had gone in, Baton Rouge was one of the places he might have. Dead as he was, he continued to plague Ross.
In the end, after a good deal of objective consideration, he decided not to put Sonny to soak after all. Drive him a hundred miles and find a quiet spot to dump him, and let it be somebody else's problem when he was found. Prove he had gone to Baton Rouge. Prove he came to see me. Prove I did something to him. An obnoxious son of a bitch like that could have gotten lots of people to kill him. It wasn't completely safe, but he calculated he could pull it off. It seemed that killing Mr. Leppert had been the easy part. He was tired, but it would be hours before he could act, giving him ample time for some sleep. He kicked back the recliner, but his eyes were wide open, and his shoulders were tight. The morning paper was where he had left it in the kitchen, and he looked at it without seeing it, read it without comprehending, and tossed it down.
Housecat was restless, seeming to feel some of Ross' tension, and he wanted out. He looked apprehensive as he waited for the door to be opened. Ross heated a TV dinner and ate it without tasting it, and forty minutes later he threw it up. There was no nausea, but he threw it up. Death was subtle, but it was on him, nonetheless. With an effort, he figured that today was Thursday, still two days too soon to call Miriam in St. Louis. He had been to St. Louis a hundred years ago, on Monday. Now he slept.
It was dark when he awoke, past eight o'clock. His body was stiff and uncoordinated, and his head was fuzzy, eyes puffy. His mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird cage. He stood over the basin and splashed cold water over his face, again and again. He made more coffee and ate two toaster waffles, and felt only a little better, but he returned to the shop. Sonny was urgent. Something to deal with tonight. Ross waited at the stop sign for a couple of cars to pass in front of the shop and move on down the street, and when they were gone he pulled across and turned in, cutting his lights as he went. In the dim glow of street lights he went directly to the back door, where the truck would be out of sight, and backed up close to the building. Walking around to the front, he entered through the main door and locked himself in, but did not turn on any lights. It took some effort on his part to feel his way around in the dark, within a few feet of the dead man. He found a flashlight and satisfied himself that Sonny was still there, and still dead, although he imagined the body had changed positions slightly. The rolled-up package looked different.
He switched off the flash and opened the back door. Everything was quiet, like a graveyard. The evening was cool, but sweat was forming under his shirt. He dropped the tailgate and went back for his load. Sonny was well into rigor mortis. It comes and then it goes -he had heard that - but it had a grip on Sonny right now, and just getting him to the door was no easy task. Loading him into the truck was even worse, and Ross dropped him on the ground twice before getting him aboard. For a time he thought, in a panic, that he might not be strong enough tonight to do what he had to do. In the end, he got him into the bed of the truck, still wrapped in the tarpaulin and trussed up with rope, but a corner had worked loose and the soles of Sonny's bare feet shone white in the weak light, and Ross had to tuck them in, after which he wiped his hands roughly on a rag.
He brought the same sheet of plywood and built the wooden pup tent again, with the top edge of the panel resting on the side of the truck bed. He blocked it along the lower edge to be certain it didn't shift on the road and expose the suspicious package to the scrutiny of passing truckers, and he closed the tailgate. His shirt was wet, and sticking to his back, before he was done, and his chest was heaving.
On Interstate 12 he headed east toward Slidell, with the vague idea of making his drop somewhere in the desolate salt marshes of New Orleans East, but he didn't really know that area, and when the sign announcing Interstate 55 came into view he decided to turn north toward Mississippi. He thought it quite likely that he was breaking some additional laws by hauling the dead body across a state line for disposal, but it didn't seem important at this point. Surely they wouldn't call it kidnapping, not when your victim is already stiff. Besides, he mused, who the hell would pay you to bring back Sonny Leppert - but of course somebody had once done just that, which explained why they were both there, skulking around in the middle of the night.
Traffic was beginning to ease off, and what was left was mostly trucks. He imagined that all the drivers were craning their necks to inspect his cargo as they went past him, and he drove faster to maintain his place in the line. Suddenly he realized that he was going seventy-five miles an hour, and he slowed again. He had no radar detector, and he didn't need to be stopped by a trooper. Not tonight. He drove looking straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, with frequent peeks through the rear window to check on Sonny, and before he knew it he had crossed into Mississippi. This should be far enough, and he began to scout for exits onto state roads. The one he chose was at McComb, and outside of town he turned again onto a lesser road and then again, until he was deep into piney woods, with no lights in view and no traffic. He didn't know what this spot might look like in the light of day, but it looked okay now, in the pitch dark.
He picked the high side of a banked curve in an elevated roadway; the same sort of site that Villarubbia had chosen for his money drop fourteen years ago in Binghamton. Ross pulled off the road and got out, trying to see down the embankment, and it looked like a tangle of brush down there. He dropped the tailgate again and began to fight Sonny for the last time. He got him out into the road and then rolled him over the edge into the darkness. After the fact, he wondered whether he should follow him down and recover the tarp, but decided it could not be traced to him, and then followed him down anyway and pulled some bushes over him, so one would have to look closely to find him. He had done all he could. He should have known that the tarp, speckled and stained with paint in a wide variety of colors, could not have come from anywhere other than a sign shop, but the fact escaped his attention. And without being aware of it, he had left Sonny within ten miles of the spot where Sonny's dead Buick still sat on the shoulder of 1-55, with a citation under the wiper.
The ride back to Baton Rouge was a breeze, with Leppert out of his life forever. In his mind, Ross went over the day's events half a dozen times, looking for oversights, and at last concluded that he had done well. He wasn't sure how many crimes he had committed, but he did feel like he had gotten away with all of them, at least for now. It wasn't a process he would like to have to go through every day. Being a criminal must be tough on the nerves.
On the other hand, he was planning some more crimes before he went straight again. He wanted to do a breaking and entering and some destruction of private property, like maybe a Sheetrock wall, somewhere around the Canadian border. After that, he promised the world silently, he would be a model citizen. Well, as good as most of the others, anyway.