Merry Christmas as he turned to leave, and Kubion said, “Sure, Merry Christmas,” thinking it was anything but, after the bust in Sacramento.
Outside again, he walked toward the overloud singing. Tomato sauce and Veal Milanese, you’d think everything was beautiful and they were having a big celebration. Still — what the hell. You had to eat, and there was no point in creating a hassle with Brodie; let him make his Veal Milanese, let him make anything he wanted as long as he didn’t try to make him.
Smiling faintly, Kubion entered the Mercantile. The store was fairly crowded, noisy, and smelled of wool and dampness and pitch pine burning in the potbellied stove. Kubion had seen most of the people there at one time or another during the previous week, though he did not know or care to know any of their names. But Pat Garvey was the dumpy blond woman being waited on by Maude Fredericks, and the three men grouped around the potbelly rapping about a forthcoming blizzard were Joe Garvey-big, work-roughened, with fierce black eyes and a sprinkling of pockmarks on his flushed cheeks; stooped and fox-faced Sid Markham, who operated a fix-it shop from his Mule Deer Lake home; and Walt Halliday. Matt Hughes stood inside the Post Office enclosure, sorting the mail which had just come in from Soda Grove.
Kubion went to stand near the front counter, close to the trio by the stove. They stopped talking about the weather and were silent for a moment; then Halliday said, “Either of you been over to see McNeil this morning?”
“Yeah, a little while ago,” Garvey said. “The way he’s yelling, everybody in the county knows the cafe was broken into last night.”
“Funny damned thing: nothing stolen, nothing damaged.”
“Don’t make much sense, I’ll grant.”
“Lew Coopersmith find out anything yet, you know?”
“Talked to him just before I came in here,” Markham said. “He hadn’t learned a thing then.”
“He been to see that Zachary Cain?” Garvey asked. “McNeil seems to think Cain might have done it.”
“Didn’t say if he had or not. But you ask me, Cain didn’t have nothing to do with it. Sure, he keeps full to himself, but that don’t make him a criminal. And keeping his own counsel is more than you can say for that fart McNeil, always running off at the mouth the way he does.”
“I don’t know,” Halliday said. “It doesn’t seem natural for a man to live all alone like that, never saying a word to anybody. You-”
He broke off as the door opened and a bearded, faintly bearish man came inside. He moved up to the counter, bloodshot eyes fixed directly in front of him, and stood next to Kubion; the three men at the stove watched him, silent again. This must be Cain, Kubion thought-they act like the poor bastard had leprosy. What a bunch of silly turds. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t stop with breaking into their cafe; I’d burn the whole village to the ground, do them all a favor.
Pat Garvey finished with her purchases, detoured around Cain, and tugged at her husband’s sleeve. “Sure, all right,” Garvey said, nodded to Halliday and Markham, and followed his wife out of the store. Maude Fredericks came down to where Kubion was standing, asked him if she could be of service; he told her he wanted two cans of tomato sauce, and she smiled as if he’d ordered a side of beef and fifty pounds of canned goods and went over to the grocery section.
The door opened again, and Verne Mullins came in briskly. He raised a hand to the three men around the stove, went directly to the Post Office enclosure, and said loudly, “Morning, Matt.” He was fat and had a huge red- veined nose and the bright, darting eyes of a bird; a bluff, somewhat testy exterior masked a soft Irish heart. Like Lew Coopersmith, he did not look his age: sixty-nine, come February.
Hughes turned, smiling. “Morning, Verne.”
“Any mail for me?”
“Couple of things. Wait-here you go.”
Mullins took the envelopes and shuffled through them; then he held one up-thin and brown, with the words “Southern Pacific Retirement Bureau” in the upper left-hand corner-and said, “About time they decided to send my check along. Man works forty-five years for the same company, never late and never sick a day of it, and then when he retires, he’s got to fight for the damned money he paid into the retirement fund all along.”
Hughes winked at him. “That’s big business for you.”
“Now ain’t that the truth?” Mullins said. “Bank open this morning, Matt? Figure I better cash this right off, so it doesn’t bounce on me.”
“Bank’s always open for you, Verne.”
Hughes came out of the enclosure and over to the counter. Mullins tore open the envelope, took the check out, endorsed it, and handed it across. “Put it mostly in twenties if you can,” he said. “Got to send a few off to my grandkids for the holidays.”
“Sure thing.”
Hughes took the check into his office, closed the door. Maude Fredericks said to Kubion, “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“What?”
“I have your tomato sauce. Was there something else?”
“No,” Kubion said. “No, that’s it.”
He gave her a dollar bill, and she rang up the purchase on the old-fashioned, crank-type register. She handed him his change, put the two cans into a paper sack. Hughes came out of his office with a sheaf of bills in his hand and counted them out to Verne Mullins-four hundred and fifty dollars. Mullins tucked them into a warn leather billfold, said, “Thanks, Matt, you’re a good lad,” and started for the door.
Hughes called after him. “Don’t forget church on Sunday, Verne.”
“Now would a good Irish Protestant like me be forgetting church on the Sunday before Christmas? I’ll be there, don’t you worry; somebody’s got to put a dime in the collection plate.”
Hughes laughed, and Mullins went out as Maude Fredericks said to Cain, “Yes, please?”
“Bottle of Old Grandad,” Cain said.
Kubion picked up his paper sack and left the store. Bank, he was thinking. Safe in that office. Four hundred and fifty dollars without even looking at the check first. If this Hughes operates a kind of unofficial banking service, if he regularly cashes checks for the people who live here, how much does he keep on hand?
Hell, Kubion told himself then, you’re starting to think like a punk. A hick village like this, for Christ’s sake, the amount in that safe has to be penny-ante. We need a score, sure, but something big, something damned big now. And you don’t crap on safe ground to begin with, especially not with the kind of heat we’re carrying. Forget it.
He went up the snow-tracked sidewalk to his car.
Eleven
When the telephone rang at four o’clock, Rebecca knew immediately that it was Matt and that he was calling to tell her he wouldn’t be home again that night. She put her book aside and stared across the living room to where the unit sat on a pigskin-topped table. Ring. Silence. Ring. Silence. Ring. I won’t answer it, she thought-and then stood up slowly and walked over to the table and picked up the handset.
“Yes, Matt,” she said.
“Hello, dear. How did you know it was me?”
“I’m psychic, how else?”
He laughed softly. “I just called to tell you I won’t be home again until late tonight. Neal Walker wants me to go to the City Council meeting in Coldville, and I-”
“All right,” she said.
“I’ll try not to be too late.”
“All right.”
“Rebecca-is something the matter?”
“Now what could possibly be the matter?”
“Well, you sound tired. Are you feeling well?”
