Chapter 1: A Bargain For Frances
By Allen Frost
The wind came through the broken blinds into the basement and woke him up.
“How long have I been out?” he asked his daughter.
“Only a couple of minutes maybe,” she said. “I’ve got the carotid pressed. He’s still alive. You can save him when you’re ready.”
He smiled, “Okay,” and took over the life of gangster ‘Charlie’ Benodonci quickly and skillfully. His tired voice continued, drawn like charcoal, “One of these days I may not return from that black sleep. You’ll be looking at me but I’ll be gone. But don’t worry,” he looked at her with awakened eyes. “That will be your chance to escape this racket.” He sewed the life back into the gunned down hood.
All the blood that covered Charlie could have ended him, but he found the crime doctor just in time. His wound was healed and the doctor was suddenly falling asleep beside him.
Frances caught her father before he fell over the table. She led him back onto the stretcher. He needed some rest now.
She left them, doctor and patient, closed the door on that room and went into the other.
She was facing a counter, a cash register, and a mob of children waiting for her. “Uhh, who’s next?”
“I’m next!” piped up Crybaby Johnson. He had his gang of first graders all crowded around him. Their eyes barely made it over the counter but they were all looking at her. “I want a pound of Whoppers.”
“Of course,” Francis smiled while she spun around. She noticed some blood on her hand as she unscrewed the jar. She wiped her hand on her black apron, poured a paper bag full of malted chocolate and returned. “Two ninety five,” she said.
“Is that a pound?” Crybaby squinted at her.
The boy next to him rattled at her, “Yeah, is it, dummy?”
“Weigh it,” the little voice ordered.
“Yeah dummy, weigh it.”
What could she do? She put up with them. She set the paper bag onto the silver scale and everyone stared up at the red moving arrow. It stopped on one pound exactly.
A moment of silence passed, then Crybaby said, “Not bad.”
“She’s cheating!” shrieked his partner. “She’s a big dummy!”
Crybaby Johnson gave her a long look. “No…I don’t think so.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” she said. “Here you go then, a pound, that’s $2.95.” The bag plopped down onto the glass.
“Pay her, Louie,” the boy leader snapped his fingers softly at some other six year old as he grabbed his candy. “Let’s scram.”
She watched them leave, the shrill little crowd of bird voices flying away, all except for Louie. He was left at the counter, standing on his tip-toes counting through a pile of silver and copper coins. He tipped his glasses and tried again. “Sixty three, sixty four…seventy four…” he mumbled. All the money was a math problem for him.
“That’s okay,” she told him with a wave. “You can go with them.”
The relief shined out of him. “Thanks lady!” and he pulled his hands away and ran away. The bell over the door rang as he left.
With the store quiet again, she raked the coins into the cash drawer and yawned. She was about to go check on the operating room when the door rang back open.
Wind and some flicks of falling snow blew in a tall thin man, wearing a black coat, staggering like a mechanical wind-up toy.
“I need the doc,” he gasped.
“I can see that.” She slid around the counter and caught him before he collapsed into a tower of chocolate boxes. “I’ll help you.”
“Never saw it coming…They had tommy guns,” he coughed.
She wiped the blood off his mouth, “Take it easy,” she urged. “Follow me to the back of the store. The doctor’s in there.” She clawed open the paneled door and yelled, “Wake up! Bullet wounds!”
Her father gave a jerk falling up off the flat stretcher. “Nobody’s bulletproof,” he muttered to life. “Lay him down on my table, I’ll get my tools.”
He had a bad habit of falling asleep at any moment. Even if his life was broken up by dreaming spells, this place was his calling. When he was awake, he saved lives. As he prepared his patient, he recognized the scars from one of his previous jobs next to the fresh wounds.
His daughter had already placed the mask over their patient, feeding him gas.
A bare light bulb stuck in the wall above the door was flashing. “Oh!” Frances cried, “Someone needs me out there. Will you be okay?”
“Sure, sure Frances,” he grinned, “I could do this in my sleep.”
“If you start fading out, give me a shout before you go,” she said as she left.
The shop was silent and looked empty, until a girl with green eyes jumped up above the counter level. “Can I have twenty cents of taffy, please?” she hopped.
“Yes, of course.” Frances scooped an arm into a jar. “Here you are.”
“Thank you,” said the girl, adding, “Ummm, this is for the doctor, from Tiny Snopes.” She put a gray soft looking statue on the counter. It looked like a guitar wearing a dress.
“Wow! Another one…Will you tell him thanks.”
“Mm-hmm,” the little girl answered. With five cents of taffy chewing away, she sunk, out of sight until she got to the other side of the floor and opened the front door. “Bye.”
“Bye bye.”
Frances thought about locking the door, putting up a Closed sign, but what would they do? The doctor was in business saving the lives of the underground, the element who would die in the street if bullets weren’t taken out. They needed them.
She put the cold flesh feeling statue on the wall shelf, in the row full of more guitars wearing dresses. There were slight variations on the theme. Or was he just getting better?
A year ago, the doctor had sewn new hands on Tiny Snopes. Every
month or so another sculpture would arrive. Maybe he was getting better.
Frances opened the door to the next room.
She was glad to see her father’s back, standing there at the table while she followed the tiled floor to the sink. “We got another present from Tiny,” she told him. She smiled, turned around to face him, “Another thanks to you.”
Quiet…except for the slow drop of blood onto the floor. Her father was asleep standing up, with a saw cut stuck in the arm of his patient.
In the next second Frances clicked out across the distance to wake him, shout him out and reverse the cold death taking over.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered for the hundredth time, “I’m sorry,” again. He quickly put his knowledge into saving what he might have lost to sleep. The hovering specter fled as he cut, sewed and fed new blood into that dying form. From that moment to the next, he worked the miracle. Frances passed the tools to him, followed his directions, until another gangster was going again.
She reached and touched his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Sure.” He had a smile after all. “I’m tired though.”
“Okay dad. Take a rest now.”
By the time she settled him on another cot, he was already gone. No, there was nothing she could do about it. He came and he went. She dimmed the light in the room. It was alright. There were already two patients resting, plus her father. While they all slept, she crept to the door and went back to the store.
It was quiet in there but nothing was wrong. She found her seat behind the counter. She picked up a book that hadn’t been seen for hours. There was a page marked where she left off. There was always time for poetry when time allowed.
The door belled open with a crash.
“Tiny!” she yelped. The book fell from her.
Snow falling off him, he tottered through the candy displays like a small slow motion mummy. “Can you hide me?” he asked her. “For a while?”
“Yes. Of course.” Frances pointed at the wide cardboard display of a chocolate colored cow. “You can hide behind that. There’s room back there nobody can see.”
He was already gone.
“Thanks for the new statue,” she whispered.
The quiet was slow before she lifted her book again. The page remembered where they were.
With a sighing, the door behind her opened and her father stepped out. He put a hand on her shoulder, “Frances. We’re a little low on ammonia. Could you go to the store and get some more?”
“Of course,” she said. Her book caught that place where she left it. “Are you okay if I go?”
He laughed. “Go ahead. Don’t worry about me. I’ve given myself an injection. I’ll be here and I won’t fade.”
“Really?”
“Don’t worry.”
Outside wasn’t a place she went very often. Out there was where gangsters got shot. Death roamed where she let herself out and it was snowing.
The black sky showed between all the tall grown buildings with the wind scattering white. The street was so cold she felt difficulty going in that dimension. She hurried as fast as she could go in that other dream.
Across the street, in the distance, Food Castle was a burning sight of haloed neon, pale blue in the night. She cut across a dark parking lot, over the curb and street to the next block. She directed herself towards the light of it. She and every moth in the neighborhood flew to the same bright place.
She walked by parked cars turning into white sloped and sleeping silhouettes. It could have been a peaceful walk until she got closer to the corner, where she saw a dog thrown down on the sidewalk and a man holding its paw.
She sped up, she was sure it was someone she knew. He was.
“Can you get us to the doc?” the big sad face of Don Benny begged her. “They shot him…This crazy dog took the bullets meant for me,” he choked.
“Here…” she reached and took the dog’s pulse, her hand touching fur and snow. “We have to get him back to the store.”
“I can carry him lady. I’d walk ten miles for this dog.”
“Alright Mr. Benny. We have to hurry though.”
He staggered after her across the parking lot. The three of them made a monster movie image, wading away.
“You’ve gotta save him,” he puffed clouds in the cold air. The dog was draped in his arms, its breath made ghosts, it was still alive.
“We’re almost there,” she told him. They crossed the street. The light was a blur in the curtained candy store window. As she hurried ahead to unlock the door, she noticed fresh footprints running from the wall.
“What?” she said aloud as she read the graffiti left behind. DUME. It took her about five seconds, then “Ohh…” she said as she realized what it was, sounding it out, “Dummy.”
“Lady…” Don Benny wheezed up to her, straining and resting the dog over his leg.
“Yes!” She quickly found the handle and they went inside.
“We’re here,” Don Benny told his dog. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
Frances led them to the back door. She brushed snow off her and pushed the door open.
Ahead of them the doctor was okay, sharpening a blade with a whet stone.
“Bullet case,” Frances announced to her father. “Here, you can lay him here, Mr. Benny.” She straightened the fresh sheet on the table.
Don Benny’s hands and gold coat buttons were wet with blood. He stared like an owl.
“A dog…” The doctor approached and looked at the wounds. “What’s his name?” he asked while he went to work.
“Agnew,” Don Benny rasped.
“Agnew. Agnew?!” the doctor looked up for a moment until the next.
“Can you save him, doc? Can you fix animals?”
“Of course. We’re all animals. I remember one time we had a racehorse in here. Sniper got him. I put him back on the track though. You’ll see, Agnew will be good once I get these bullets out of him. All he needs is a lot of blood.”
“That’s what I’m here for!” Don Benny suddenly rolled up his sleeve. “Take all you want,” he held out his arm. “What’s mine is his.”
“Okay. You want to sit him down, Frances? And get an I.V set up.” There was a plink rattle as a bullet dropped into the tray. “There’s one,” he said.
Frances guided Don Benny onto the cot beside the operating table. “Lay down here Mr. Benny,” her voice poured while she prepared the needle and the tube to connect him to his dog.
“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Agnew.”
“I know, Mr. Benny. Now relax…” she tied off the vein, “This will only hurt a second, just take it easy. The doctor will take care of you both.”
Don Benny let out a yelp when it bit and the blood flowed out of him.
Another bullet clinked into the pan.
“Oh!” Frances turned to look at the door. The light bulb above it was flashing.
“Go ahead,” her father answered. “This is fine. I’ve got company and man’s best friend.”
“Alright. I’ll be back soon as I can.”
“Go sell some candy.”
“Okay.” She smiled back at him before she left the room.
Opening the door she had to push on someone leaning against the other side. Registering the police uniform before her, she tried to hide the operating room from sight as she slid into the store.
The officer was absorbed in something else though.
“Can I help you?” she asked him.
“This thing.” He hefted one of the sculptures in his hand. “Where’d you get all these things?”
Cautiously she said, “I’m not sure…Maybe from—”
“This is pure opium,” he interrupted.
She stood blocking the operating room door, with her body pressed against it and the frame.
“So this is what’s going on around here.” He was getting louder. “We’ve been watching this place.” He carried the sculpture to the space in front of the counter and plopped it down. “All this candy in here is nothing but a front,” he pointed at the chocolate boxes and penny bins, “Opium is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Opium!”
Frances didn’t say anything, someone else’s voice did. “It ain’t opium.”
“What?” the policeman spun to see who was in the corner.
“It’s Connie Francis.” Tiny Snopes stepped out of the darkness. “Stick your hands up, copper.” He sneered, “Opium…” He chuckled. He was holding a little gun pointed at the policeman. Tiny steered the conversation into the middle of the room. “You got a chair for the lawman?” he asked Frances.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Let’s just get the lawman com-for-table.” Tiny Snopes let it drawl.
She pulled a stool across the wooden boards. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”
“Noone’s gonna get hurt, precious,” the little man sneered. “Not if everything goes alright. So sit down, flat-foot.”
“What do you mean Connie Francis?” the policeman finally spoke. “Is that something new? Slang?”
Tiny Snopes gasped.
“Listen outlaw—”
“What do you know about opium?” Tiny waved his gun at him.
“We know this place is crawling with opium. There’s more officers
outside, they’re waiting for the signal from me.”
“Those are just statues I made. Art of an angel, Connie Francis.”
“You made this, huh?” The policeman’s hand began to squeeze. The gray form mushed and spilled out between his fingers.
“Hey!!” Tiny Snopes shrieked. “That’s it! No mercy for you! Nobody messes with Connie Francis!”
Frances wanted to step in and stop whatever was building into happening, but just then the operating room door flung open.
“He’s alive!” Don Benny lurched into the store. He trailed a loop of tubing taped to his arm vein. “He’s alive!” When he saw the policeman though, he turned instantly malevolent, hissing, “Copper…” as he reached into his coat.
“He’s mine!” Tiny Snopes shot. “I’ve got a plan for him. Oh yeah…” he grinned wickedly. “Why don’t you give me a hand, Benny?”
Frances was worried about this. “Listen fellows, I think we should stop this.”
Tiny Snopes hissed at Don Benny, “Bring me the rest of those statues.”
“With pleasure,” Don Benny grinned. He filled his arms with Connie Francis idols.
The policeman stood there frozen, his numb face watching his fate unfold.
Don Benny and Tiny Snopes worked efficiently, tucking the statues in all over the silent policeman.
Then Tiny Snopes took a roll of wire out of his coat pocket. He spun the thin copper coil back and forth, round and round the blue uniform, connecting the charges. “Opium!” he spat laughter.
Don Benny wheezed with delight. “Yeah, opium!”
“What are you going to do to him?” Frances asked at last. “That’s plastic explosive, isn’t it?”
“Flatfoot here is going to take a little walk,” Tiny Snopes leered. “He’s gonna go out there and call off the raid, see. He’s gonna tell all his pals he was mistaken and—” he jerked the end of his wire tied to the policeman like a leash, “And if he makes any stupid mistakes…it’s curtains.”
Don Benny laughed like a dry sprinkler. “Fourth of July!”
“Get walking!” Tiny Snopes snapped the wire and began to let out slack.
“This won’t work, Tiny,” the officer warned. He took a couple steps toward the door, pulling wire along, pausing.
“Walk!”
Onto the leak of light coming from under the operating room door, Frances faded from the store, swung through the wall and locked the latch behind her.
The operating room was an underwater green. There was that dog Agnew sprawled across the table, striped white with bandages, sleeping off the effects.
“Dad?” she called. She looked around. She followed the smoke signal cloud coming from the corner, behind a Chinese folding screen.
She peered around and caught her breath in surprise.
Atop a cushion, her father rested with a long black pipe laid across his folded legs. He smiled at her and lost some smoke.
“Opium?” she sighed, realized.
“Yes…” he whispered slowly. “Opium…The mob keeps me supplied…I’m addicted…I belong to them…But I made a bargain with them.” He took another tug of smoke and drifted into a nod.
“Wait! We have to get out of here! This place is surrounded by police.”
He was smiling. He was asleep and didn’t mind at all. Then he awoke for a breath and his words walked out. “This is your chance, Frances. I always told you it would happen like this. I made a bargain with them…They own me but when I’m gone you’re set free. My life for your life. Use the passage…” he motioned the pipe at the bookcase. “I’ve got my escape. Now go while you can.” His eyes closed him down. He was gone.
Frances heard a crash behind her and she spun around. It was the dog, Agnew. Either he had rolled off or pushed himself off of the table. The will to survive staggered him in his mummy cloth, his bleary eyes searching for a way out.
“This way, boy,” she called. “This way!” She ran to the bookcase full of medical tomes. Pushing the shelf revealed the creaking passage opening beyond.
The wind came through the broken blinds into the basement and woke him up.
“How long have I been out?” he asked his daughter.
“Only a couple of minutes maybe,” she said. “I’ve got the carotid pressed. He’s still alive. You can save him when you’re ready.”
He smiled, “Okay,” and took over the life of gangster ‘Charlie’ Benodonci quickly and skillfully. His tired voice continued, drawn like charcoal, “One of these days I may not return from that black sleep. You’ll be looking at me but I’ll be gone. But don’t worry,” he looked at her with awakened eyes. “That will be your chance to escape this racket.” He sewed the life back into the gunned down hood.
All the blood that covered Charlie could have ended him, but he found the crime doctor just in time. His wound was healed and the doctor was suddenly falling asleep beside him.
Frances caught her father before he fell over the table. She led him back onto the stretcher. He needed some rest now.
She left them, doctor and patient, closed the door on that room and went into the other.
She was facing a counter, a cash register, and a mob of children waiting for her. “Uhh, who’s next?”
“I’m next!” piped up Crybaby Johnson. He had his gang of first graders all crowded around him. Their eyes barely made it over the counter but they were all looking at her. “I want a pound of Whoppers.”
“Of course,” Francis smiled while she spun around. She noticed some blood on her hand as she unscrewed the jar. She wiped her hand on her black apron, poured a paper bag full of malted chocolate and returned. “Two ninety five,” she said.
“Is that a pound?” Crybaby squinted at her.
The boy next to him rattled at her, “Yeah, is it, dummy?”
“Weigh it,” the little voice ordered.
“Yeah dummy, weigh it.”
What could she do? She put up with them. She set the paper bag onto the silver scale and everyone stared up at the red moving arrow. It stopped on one pound exactly.
A moment of silence passed, then Crybaby said, “Not bad.”
“She’s cheating!” shrieked his partner. “She’s a big dummy!”
Crybaby Johnson gave her a long look. “No…I don’t think so.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” she said. “Here you go then, a pound, that’s $2.95.” The bag plopped down onto the glass.
“Pay her, Louie,” the boy leader snapped his fingers softly at some other six year old as he grabbed his candy. “Let’s scram.”
She watched them leave, the shrill little crowd of bird voices flying away, all except for Louie. He was left at the counter, standing on his tip-toes counting through a pile of silver and copper coins. He tipped his glasses and tried again. “Sixty three, sixty four…seventy four…” he mumbled. All the money was a math problem for him.
“That’s okay,” she told him with a wave. “You can go with them.”
The relief shined out of him. “Thanks lady!” and he pulled his hands away and ran away. The bell over the door rang as he left.
With the store quiet again, she raked the coins into the cash drawer and yawned. She was about to go check on the operating room when the door rang back open.
Wind and some flicks of falling snow blew in a tall thin man, wearing a black coat, staggering like a mechanical wind-up toy.
“I need the doc,” he gasped.
“I can see that.” She slid around the counter and caught him before he collapsed into a tower of chocolate boxes. “I’ll help you.”
“Never saw it coming…They had tommy guns,” he coughed.
She wiped the blood off his mouth, “Take it easy,” she urged. “Follow me to the back of the store. The doctor’s in there.” She clawed open the paneled door and yelled, “Wake up! Bullet wounds!”
Her father gave a jerk falling up off the flat stretcher. “Nobody’s bulletproof,” he muttered to life. “Lay him down on my table, I’ll get my tools.”
He had a bad habit of falling asleep at any moment. Even if his life was broken up by dreaming spells, this place was his calling. When he was awake, he saved lives. As he prepared his patient, he recognized the scars from one of his previous jobs next to the fresh wounds.
His daughter had already placed the mask over their patient, feeding him gas.
A bare light bulb stuck in the wall above the door was flashing. “Oh!” Frances cried, “Someone needs me out there. Will you be okay?”
“Sure, sure Frances,” he grinned, “I could do this in my sleep.”
“If you start fading out, give me a shout before you go,” she said as she left.
The shop was silent and looked empty, until a girl with green eyes jumped up above the counter level. “Can I have twenty cents of taffy, please?” she hopped.
“Yes, of course.” Frances scooped an arm into a jar. “Here you are.”
“Thank you,” said the girl, adding, “Ummm, this is for the doctor, from Tiny Snopes.” She put a gray soft looking statue on the counter. It looked like a guitar wearing a dress.
“Wow! Another one…Will you tell him thanks.”
“Mm-hmm,” the little girl answered. With five cents of taffy chewing away, she sunk, out of sight until she got to the other side of the floor and opened the front door. “Bye.”
“Bye bye.”
Frances thought about locking the door, putting up a Closed sign, but what would they do? The doctor was in business saving the lives of the underground, the element who would die in the street if bullets weren’t taken out. They needed them.
She put the cold flesh feeling statue on the wall shelf, in the row full of more guitars wearing dresses. There were slight variations on the theme. Or was he just getting better?
A year ago, the doctor had sewn new hands on Tiny Snopes. Every
month or so another sculpture would arrive. Maybe he was getting better.
Frances opened the door to the next room.
She was glad to see her father’s back, standing there at the table while she followed the tiled floor to the sink. “We got another present from Tiny,” she told him. She smiled, turned around to face him, “Another thanks to you.”
Quiet…except for the slow drop of blood onto the floor. Her father was asleep standing up, with a saw cut stuck in the arm of his patient.
In the next second Frances clicked out across the distance to wake him, shout him out and reverse the cold death taking over.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered for the hundredth time, “I’m sorry,” again. He quickly put his knowledge into saving what he might have lost to sleep. The hovering specter fled as he cut, sewed and fed new blood into that dying form. From that moment to the next, he worked the miracle. Frances passed the tools to him, followed his directions, until another gangster was going again.
She reached and touched his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Sure.” He had a smile after all. “I’m tired though.”
“Okay dad. Take a rest now.”
By the time she settled him on another cot, he was already gone. No, there was nothing she could do about it. He came and he went. She dimmed the light in the room. It was alright. There were already two patients resting, plus her father. While they all slept, she crept to the door and went back to the store.
It was quiet in there but nothing was wrong. She found her seat behind the counter. She picked up a book that hadn’t been seen for hours. There was a page marked where she left off. There was always time for poetry when time allowed.
The door belled open with a crash.
“Tiny!” she yelped. The book fell from her.
Snow falling off him, he tottered through the candy displays like a small slow motion mummy. “Can you hide me?” he asked her. “For a while?”
“Yes. Of course.” Frances pointed at the wide cardboard display of a chocolate colored cow. “You can hide behind that. There’s room back there nobody can see.”
He was already gone.
“Thanks for the new statue,” she whispered.
The quiet was slow before she lifted her book again. The page remembered where they were.
With a sighing, the door behind her opened and her father stepped out. He put a hand on her shoulder, “Frances. We’re a little low on ammonia. Could you go to the store and get some more?”
“Of course,” she said. Her book caught that place where she left it. “Are you okay if I go?”
He laughed. “Go ahead. Don’t worry about me. I’ve given myself an injection. I’ll be here and I won’t fade.”
“Really?”
“Don’t worry.”
Outside wasn’t a place she went very often. Out there was where gangsters got shot. Death roamed where she let herself out and it was snowing.
The black sky showed between all the tall grown buildings with the wind scattering white. The street was so cold she felt difficulty going in that dimension. She hurried as fast as she could go in that other dream.
Across the street, in the distance, Food Castle was a burning sight of haloed neon, pale blue in the night. She cut across a dark parking lot, over the curb and street to the next block. She directed herself towards the light of it. She and every moth in the neighborhood flew to the same bright place.
She walked by parked cars turning into white sloped and sleeping silhouettes. It could have been a peaceful walk until she got closer to the corner, where she saw a dog thrown down on the sidewalk and a man holding its paw.
She sped up, she was sure it was someone she knew. He was.
“Can you get us to the doc?” the big sad face of Don Benny begged her. “They shot him…This crazy dog took the bullets meant for me,” he choked.
“Here…” she reached and took the dog’s pulse, her hand touching fur and snow. “We have to get him back to the store.”
“I can carry him lady. I’d walk ten miles for this dog.”
“Alright Mr. Benny. We have to hurry though.”
He staggered after her across the parking lot. The three of them made a monster movie image, wading away.
“You’ve gotta save him,” he puffed clouds in the cold air. The dog was draped in his arms, its breath made ghosts, it was still alive.
“We’re almost there,” she told him. They crossed the street. The light was a blur in the curtained candy store window. As she hurried ahead to unlock the door, she noticed fresh footprints running from the wall.
“What?” she said aloud as she read the graffiti left behind. DUME. It took her about five seconds, then “Ohh…” she said as she realized what it was, sounding it out, “Dummy.”
“Lady…” Don Benny wheezed up to her, straining and resting the dog over his leg.
“Yes!” She quickly found the handle and they went inside.
“We’re here,” Don Benny told his dog. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
Frances led them to the back door. She brushed snow off her and pushed the door open.
Ahead of them the doctor was okay, sharpening a blade with a whet stone.
“Bullet case,” Frances announced to her father. “Here, you can lay him here, Mr. Benny.” She straightened the fresh sheet on the table.
Don Benny’s hands and gold coat buttons were wet with blood. He stared like an owl.
“A dog…” The doctor approached and looked at the wounds. “What’s his name?” he asked while he went to work.
“Agnew,” Don Benny rasped.
“Agnew. Agnew?!” the doctor looked up for a moment until the next.
“Can you save him, doc? Can you fix animals?”
“Of course. We’re all animals. I remember one time we had a racehorse in here. Sniper got him. I put him back on the track though. You’ll see, Agnew will be good once I get these bullets out of him. All he needs is a lot of blood.”
“That’s what I’m here for!” Don Benny suddenly rolled up his sleeve. “Take all you want,” he held out his arm. “What’s mine is his.”
“Okay. You want to sit him down, Frances? And get an I.V set up.” There was a plink rattle as a bullet dropped into the tray. “There’s one,” he said.
Frances guided Don Benny onto the cot beside the operating table. “Lay down here Mr. Benny,” her voice poured while she prepared the needle and the tube to connect him to his dog.
“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Agnew.”
“I know, Mr. Benny. Now relax…” she tied off the vein, “This will only hurt a second, just take it easy. The doctor will take care of you both.”
Don Benny let out a yelp when it bit and the blood flowed out of him.
Another bullet clinked into the pan.
“Oh!” Frances turned to look at the door. The light bulb above it was flashing.
“Go ahead,” her father answered. “This is fine. I’ve got company and man’s best friend.”
“Alright. I’ll be back soon as I can.”
“Go sell some candy.”
“Okay.” She smiled back at him before she left the room.
Opening the door she had to push on someone leaning against the other side. Registering the police uniform before her, she tried to hide the operating room from sight as she slid into the store.
The officer was absorbed in something else though.
“Can I help you?” she asked him.
“This thing.” He hefted one of the sculptures in his hand. “Where’d you get all these things?”
Cautiously she said, “I’m not sure…Maybe from—”
“This is pure opium,” he interrupted.
She stood blocking the operating room door, with her body pressed against it and the frame.
“So this is what’s going on around here.” He was getting louder. “We’ve been watching this place.” He carried the sculpture to the space in front of the counter and plopped it down. “All this candy in here is nothing but a front,” he pointed at the chocolate boxes and penny bins, “Opium is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Opium!”
Frances didn’t say anything, someone else’s voice did. “It ain’t opium.”
“What?” the policeman spun to see who was in the corner.
“It’s Connie Francis.” Tiny Snopes stepped out of the darkness. “Stick your hands up, copper.” He sneered, “Opium…” He chuckled. He was holding a little gun pointed at the policeman. Tiny steered the conversation into the middle of the room. “You got a chair for the lawman?” he asked Frances.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Let’s just get the lawman com-for-table.” Tiny Snopes let it drawl.
She pulled a stool across the wooden boards. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”
“Noone’s gonna get hurt, precious,” the little man sneered. “Not if everything goes alright. So sit down, flat-foot.”
“What do you mean Connie Francis?” the policeman finally spoke. “Is that something new? Slang?”
Tiny Snopes gasped.
“Listen outlaw—”
“What do you know about opium?” Tiny waved his gun at him.
“We know this place is crawling with opium. There’s more officers
outside, they’re waiting for the signal from me.”
“Those are just statues I made. Art of an angel, Connie Francis.”
“You made this, huh?” The policeman’s hand began to squeeze. The gray form mushed and spilled out between his fingers.
“Hey!!” Tiny Snopes shrieked. “That’s it! No mercy for you! Nobody messes with Connie Francis!”
Frances wanted to step in and stop whatever was building into happening, but just then the operating room door flung open.
“He’s alive!” Don Benny lurched into the store. He trailed a loop of tubing taped to his arm vein. “He’s alive!” When he saw the policeman though, he turned instantly malevolent, hissing, “Copper…” as he reached into his coat.
“He’s mine!” Tiny Snopes shot. “I’ve got a plan for him. Oh yeah…” he grinned wickedly. “Why don’t you give me a hand, Benny?”
Frances was worried about this. “Listen fellows, I think we should stop this.”
Tiny Snopes hissed at Don Benny, “Bring me the rest of those statues.”
“With pleasure,” Don Benny grinned. He filled his arms with Connie Francis idols.
The policeman stood there frozen, his numb face watching his fate unfold.
Don Benny and Tiny Snopes worked efficiently, tucking the statues in all over the silent policeman.
Then Tiny Snopes took a roll of wire out of his coat pocket. He spun the thin copper coil back and forth, round and round the blue uniform, connecting the charges. “Opium!” he spat laughter.
Don Benny wheezed with delight. “Yeah, opium!”
“What are you going to do to him?” Frances asked at last. “That’s plastic explosive, isn’t it?”
“Flatfoot here is going to take a little walk,” Tiny Snopes leered. “He’s gonna go out there and call off the raid, see. He’s gonna tell all his pals he was mistaken and—” he jerked the end of his wire tied to the policeman like a leash, “And if he makes any stupid mistakes…it’s curtains.”
Don Benny laughed like a dry sprinkler. “Fourth of July!”
“Get walking!” Tiny Snopes snapped the wire and began to let out slack.
“This won’t work, Tiny,” the officer warned. He took a couple steps toward the door, pulling wire along, pausing.
“Walk!”
Onto the leak of light coming from under the operating room door, Frances faded from the store, swung through the wall and locked the latch behind her.
The operating room was an underwater green. There was that dog Agnew sprawled across the table, striped white with bandages, sleeping off the effects.
“Dad?” she called. She looked around. She followed the smoke signal cloud coming from the corner, behind a Chinese folding screen.
She peered around and caught her breath in surprise.
Atop a cushion, her father rested with a long black pipe laid across his folded legs. He smiled at her and lost some smoke.
“Opium?” she sighed, realized.
“Yes…” he whispered slowly. “Opium…The mob keeps me supplied…I’m addicted…I belong to them…But I made a bargain with them.” He took another tug of smoke and drifted into a nod.
“Wait! We have to get out of here! This place is surrounded by police.”
He was smiling. He was asleep and didn’t mind at all. Then he awoke for a breath and his words walked out. “This is your chance, Frances. I always told you it would happen like this. I made a bargain with them…They own me but when I’m gone you’re set free. My life for your life. Use the passage…” he motioned the pipe at the bookcase. “I’ve got my escape. Now go while you can.” His eyes closed him down. He was gone.
Frances heard a crash behind her and she spun around. It was the dog, Agnew. Either he had rolled off or pushed himself off of the table. The will to survive staggered him in his mummy cloth, his bleary eyes searching for a way out.
“This way, boy,” she called. “This way!” She ran to the bookcase full of medical tomes. Pushing the shelf revealed the creaking passage opening beyond.
posted by Miguel at 12:08 PM
0 comments
