The Fifth Quarter.pdf

The Fifth Quarter

by Stephen King

Stephen King - The Fifth Quarter

I parked the heap around the corner from Keenan's house, sat in the dark for a

moment, then turned off the key and got out. When I slammed the door, I could hear

rust flaking off the rocker panels and dropping onto the street. It wasn't going to

be like that much longer.

The gun was in a bandolier holster and lay against my ribcage like a fist. It was

Barney's.45, and I was glad of that. It lent the whole crazy business a touch of

irony. Maybe even a sense of justice.

Keenan's house was an architectural monstrosity spread over a quarter-acre of land,

all slanting angles and steep-sloped roofs behind an iron fence. He'd left the gate

unlocked, as I'd hoped. Earlier I'd seen him calling someone from the living room,

and a hunch too strong to deny told me it had been either Jagger or the Sarge.

Probably the Sarge. The waiting was over; this was my night.

I walked to the driveway, staying close to the shrubbery and listening for any

strange sound over the cutting whine of the January wind. There wasn't any. It was

Friday night, and Keenan's sleep-in maid would be out having a jolly time at

somebody's Tupperware party. Nobody home but that bastard Keenan. Waiting for the

Sarge. Waiting -- although he didn't know it yet -- for me.

The carport was open and I slipped inside. The ebony shadow of Keenan's Impala

loomed. I tried the back door. The car was also open. Keenan wasn't cut out to be a

villain, I reflected; he was much too trusting. I got in the car, sat down, and

waited.

Now I could hear the faint sound of jazz on the wind, very quiet, very good. Miles

Davis, maybe. Keenan listening to Miles Davis and holding a gin fizz in one

manicured hand. Nice for him.

It was a long wait. The hands on my watch crawled from eight-thirty to nine to ten.

Time for a lot of thinking. I mostly thought about Barney, and that wasn't strictly

a matter of choice. I thought about how he looked in that small boat when I found

him, staring up at me and making meaningless cawing noises. He'd been adrift for two

days and looked like a boiled lobster. There was black blood encrusted across his

midsection where he'd been shot.

He'd steered toward the cottage as best he could, but still it had been mostly luck.

Lucky he'd gotten there, lucky he could still talk for a little while. I'd had a

fistful of sleeping pills ready if he couldn't talk. I didn't want him to suffer.

Not unless there was a reason for it, anyway. As it turned out, there was. He had a

story to tell, a real whopper, and he told me almost all of it.

When he was dead, I went back to the boat and got his.45. It was hidden aft in a

small compartment, wrapped in a waterproof pouch. Then I towed his boat out into

deep water and sank it. If I could have put an epitaph over his head, it would have

been the one about how there's a sucker born every minute. Most of them are pretty

nice guys, too, I bet -- just like Barney. Instead, I started trying to find the men

who capped him. It had taken six months to find Keenan and to ascertain that Sarge

was, at least, somewhere close by, but I'm a persistent little pup, and here I was.

At ten-twenty, headlights splashed up the curving driveway and I lay on the floor of

the Impala. The newcomer drove into the carport, snuggling up close to Keenan's car.

It sounded like one of the old Volkswagens. The little engine died and I could hear

Sarge grunting softly as he fought his way out of the little car. The porch light

went on, and the sound of the door clicking open came to me.

Keenan: "Sarge! You're late! Come on in and have a drink."

Sarge: "Scotch."

I'd unrolled the window before. Now I stuck Barney's.45 through it, holding the

stock with both hands. "Stand still," I said.

The Sarge was halfway up the porch steps. Keenan, the perfect host, had come out and

was looking down at him, waiting for him to come up so he could after-you him into

the house. They were both perfect silhouettes in the light spilling through from

inside. I doubted if they could see much of me in the dark, but they could see the

gun. It was a big gun.

"Who the hell are you?" Keenan asked.

"Jerry Tarkanian," I said. "Move and I'll put a hole in you big enough to watch

television through."

"You sound like a punk," Sarge said. He didn't move, though.

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Stephen King - The Fifth Quarter

"Just don't move. That's all you've got to worry about." I opened the Impala's back

door and got out carefully. The Sarge was staring at me over his shoulder and I

could see the glitter of his little eyes. One hand was creeping up the lapel of his

1943-model double-breasted suit.

"Oh, please," I said. "Get your fucking hands up, asshole."

The Sarge put his hands up. Keenan's already were.

"Come down to the foot of the steps. Both of you."

They came down, and out of the direct glare of the light I could see their faces.

Keenan looked scared, but the Sarge might have been listening to a lecture on Zen

and the art of motorcycle maintenance. He was probably the one who had jobbed

Barney.

"Face the wall and lean on it. Both of you."

Keenan: "If you're after money..."

I laughed. "Well, I was going to start off by offering you a cut-rate deal on

Tupperware, work my way up to the big stuff gradually, but you saw through me. Yeah,

I'm after money. Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars, actually. Buried on a

little island off Bar Harbor called Carmen's Folly."

Keenan jerked as if he'd been shot, but the Sarge's dipped-in-concrete face never

twitched. He turned around and put his hands on the wall, leaning his weight on

them. Keenan reluctantly followed suit. I frisked him first and got a stupid

little.32 with a three-inch barrel. A gun like that, you could put the muzzle

against a guy's head and still miss when you pulled the trigger. I threw it over my

shoulder and heard it bounce off one of the cars. Sarge was clean -- and it was a

relief to step away from him.

"We're going into the house. You first, Keenan, then Sarge, then me. Without

incident, okay?"

We all trooped up the steps and into the kitchen. It was one of those germless

chrome-and-tile jobs that looks like it was spit whole out of some mass-production

womb in the Midwest somewhere, the work of hearty Methodist assholes who all look

like Mr. Goodwrench and smell like Cherry Blend tobacco. I doubt if it ever needed

anything so vulgar as cleaning; Keenan probably just closed the doors and turned on

the hidden sprinklers once a week.

I paraded them through into the living room, another treat for the eyes. A pansy

decorator who never got over his crush on Ernest Hemingway had apparently done it.

There was a flagstone fireplace almost as big as an elevator car, a teak buffet

table with a moosehead mounted above it, and a drinks cart stashed below a gunrack

loaded with premium artillery. The stereo had turned itself off.

I waved the gun at the couch. "One on each end."

They sat, Keenan on the right, Sarge on the left. The Sarge looked even bigger

sitting down. An ugly, dented scar twisted its way through his slightly overgrown

crewcut. I put his weight at about two-thirty, and wondered why a man with the size

and physical presence of Mike Tyson owned a Volkswagen.

I grabbed an easy chair and dragged it over Keenan's quicksand-colored rug until it

was in front and between them. I sat down and let the.45 rest on my thigh. Keenan

stared at it like a bird stares at a snake. The Sarge, on the other hand, was

staring at me like he was the snake and I was the bird. "Now what?" he asked.

"Let's talk about maps and money," I said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sarge said. "All I know is that little

boys shouldn't play with guns."

"How's Cappy MacFarland these days?" I asked casually.

It didn't get jack shit from the Sarge, but Keenan popped his cork. "He knows. He

knows!" The words shot out of him like bullets.

"Shut up!" the Sarge told him. "Shut up your goddam trap!"

Keenan moaned a little. This was one part of the scenario he had never imagined. I

smiled. "He's right, Sarge." I said. "I know. Almost all of it."

"Who are you?"

"No one you know. A friend of Barney's."

"Barney who?" Sarge asked indifferently. "Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly

eyes?''

"He wasn't dead, Sarge. Not quite dead."

Sarge turned a slow and murderous look on Keenan. Keenan shuddered and opened his

mouth. "Don't talk," Sarge said to him. "Not one fucking word. I'll snap your neck

like a chicken if you do."

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Stephen King - The Fifth Quarter

Keenan's mouth shut with a snap.

Sarge looked at me again. "What does almost all of it mean?"

"Everything but the fine details. I know about the armored car. The island. Cappy

MacFarland. How you and Keenan and some bastard named Jagger killed Barney. And the

map. I know about that."

"It wasn't the way he told you," Sarge said. "He was going to cross us."

"He couldn't cross the street," I said. "He was just a patsy who could drive."

He shrugged; it was like watching a minor earthquake. "Okay. Be as dumb as you

look."

"I knew Barney had something on as early as last March. I just didn't know what. And

then one night he had a gun. This gun. How did you connect with him, Sarge?"

"A mutual friend -- someone who did time with him. We needed a driver who knew

eastern Maine and the Bar Harbor area. Keenan and I went to see him and laid it out

for him. He liked it."

"I did time with him in the Shank," I said. "I liked him. You couldn't help but like

him. He was dumb, but he was a good kid. He needed a keeper more than a partner."

"George and Lennie," Sarge sneered.

"Good to know you spent your own jail time improving what passes for your mind,

sweetheart," I said. "We were thinking about a bank in Lewiston. He couldn't wait

for me to finish doping it out. So now he's underground."

"Jeepers, this is really sad," Sarge said. "I'm gettin, like, all soft and mushy

inside."

I picked up the gun and showed him the muzzle, and for a second or two he was the

bird and it was the snake. "One more wisecrack and I'll put a bullet in your belly.

Do you believe that?"

His tongue flickered in and out with startling quickness, lapped across his lower

lip, and disappeared again. He nodded. Keenan was frozen. He looked like he wanted

to retch but didn't quite dare.

"He told me it was big time, a big score," I resumed. "That's all I could get out of

him. He took off on April third. Two days later four guys knock over the

Portland-Bangor Federated truck just outside of Carmel. All three guards dead. The

newspapers said the robbers ran two roadblocks in a souped-up '78 Plymouth. Barney

had a '78 up on blocks, thinking about turning it into a stacker. I'm betting Keenan

put up the front money for him to turn it into something a little better and a lot

faster."

I looked at him. Keenan's face was the color of cheese.

"On May sixth I get a card postmarked Bar Harbor, but that doesn't mean anything --

there are dozens of little islands that channel their mail through there. A mailboat

does the circuit, picks it up. The card says: 'Mom and family fine, store doing

good. See you in July.' It was signed with Barney's middle name. I leased a cottage

on the coast, because Barney knew that would be the deal. July comes and goes, no

Barney."

"Musta had a terminal hard-on by then, kid, right?" Sarge said. I guess he wanted me

to be sure I hadn't buffaloed him.

I looked at him remotely. "He showed up in early August. Courtesy of your buddy

Keenan, Sarge. He forgot about the automatic bilge pump in the boat. You thought the

chop would sink it quick enough, right, Keenan? But you thought he was dead, too. I

had a yellow blanket spread out on Frenchman's Point every day. Visible for miles.

Easy to spot. Still, he was lucky."

"Too lucky," Sarge almost spat.

"One thing I'm curious about -- did he know before the job that the money was new,

all the serial numbers recorded? That you couldn't even sell it to a currency-junker

in the Bahamas for three or four years?"

"He knew," the Sarge rumbled, and I was surprised to find myself believing him. "And

nobody was planning to junk the dough. He knew that, too, kid. I think he was

counting on that Lewiston job you mentioned for ready cash, but whatever he was or

wasn't counting on, he knew the score and said he could live with it. Christ, why

not? Say we had to wait ten years to go back for that dough and split it up. What's

ten years to a kid like Barney? Shit, he would have been all of thirty-five. I'd be

sixty-one."

"What about Gappy MacFarland? Did Barney know about him, too?"

"Yes. Cappy came with the deal. A good man. A pro. He got cancer last year.

Inoperable. And he owed me a favor."

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Stephen King - The Fifth Quarter

"So the four of you went out to Cappy's island," I said. "A little nobody-on-it

named Carmen's Folly. Cappy buried the money and made a map."

"That part was Jagger's idea," Sarge said. "We didn't want to split hot money -- too

tempting. But we didn't want to leave all the swag in one pair of hands, either.

Cappy MacFarland was the perfect solution."

"Tell me about the map."

"I thought we'd get to that," Sarge said with a wintry smile.

"Don't tell him!" Keenan cried out hoarsely.

Sarge turned to him and gave him a look that would have melted bar steel. "Shut up.

I can't lie and 1 can't stonewall, thanks to you. You know what I hope, Keenan? I

hope you weren't really looking forward to seeing in the new century."

"Your name's in a letter," Keenan said wildly. "If anything happens to me, your

name's in a letter!"

"Cappy made a good map," the Sarge said, as if Keenan were not there at all. "He had

some draftsman training in Joliet. He cut it into quarters. One for each of us. We

were going to have a reunion on July fourth, five years later. Talk it over. Maybe

decide to wait another five years, maybe decide to put the pieces together right

then. But there was trouble."

"Yes," I said. "I guess that's one way of putting it."

"If it makes you feel any better, it was all Keenan's play. I don't know if Barney

knew it or not, but that's how it was. When Jagger and I took off in Cappy's boat,

Barney was fine."

"You're a goddam liar!" Keenan squealed.

"Who's got two pieces of the map in his wall safe?" Sarge inquired. "Is it you,

dear?"

He looked at me again.

"It was still all right. Half the map still wasn't enough. And am I gonna sit here

and say I would have preferred a four-way split to a three-way? I don't think you'd

believe it even if it was true. Then, guess what? Keenan calls. Tells me we ought to

have a talk. I was expecting it. Looks like you were, too."

I nodded. Keenan had been easier to find than the Sarge -- he kept a higher profile.

I could have tracked Sarge all the way down eventually, I suppose, but I'd been

pretty sure that wouldn't be necessary. Thieves of a feather flock together... and

the feathers have a tendency to fly, too, when one of the birds is a vulture like

Keenan.

"Of course," Sarge went on, "he tells me not to get any lethal ideas. Says he's

taken out an insurance policy, my name in an open-in-event-of-my-death letter he'd

sent his lawyer. His idea was that the two of us could probably dope out where

Cappy'd buried the money if we put three of the four pieces of the map together."

"And split the swag fifty-fifty," I said.

Sarge nodded. Keenan's face was like a moon drifting somewhere in a high

stratosphere of terror.

"Where's the safe?" I asked him.

Keenan didn't say anything.

I had done some practicing with the.45. It was a good gun. I liked it. I held it in

both hands and shot Keenan in the forearm, just below the elbow. The Sarge didn't

even jump. Keenan fell off the couch and curled up in a ball, holding his arm and

howling.

"The safe," I said.

Keenan continued to howl.

"I'll shoot you in the knee," I said. "I don't know from personal experience, but

I've heard that hurts like a mad bastard."

"The print," he gasped. "The Van Gogh. Don't shoot me anymore, huh?'' He looked at

me, grinning fearfully.

I motioned to Sarge with the gun. "Stand facing the wall."

The Sarge got up and looked at the wall, arms dangling limply.

"Now you," I said to Keenan. "Go open the safe."

"I'm bleeding to death," Keenan moaned.

I went over and stroked the butt of the.45 up the side of his cheek, laying back

skin. "Now you're bleeding," I told him. "Go open the safe or you'll bleed more."

Keenan got up, holding his arm and blubbering. He took the print off its hooks with

his good hand, revealing an office-gray wall safe. He threw a terrified glance at me

and began to twiddle the dial. He made two false starts and had to go back. The

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Stephen King - The Fifth Quarter

third time he got it open. There were some documents and two wads of bills inside.

He reached in, fumbled around, and came up with two squares of paper, about three

inches on a side.

I swear I didn't mean to kill him. I planned to tie him up and leave him. He was

harmless enough; the maid would find him when she got back from her lingerie party

or wherever it was she'd gone in her little Dodge Colt, and Keenan wouldn't dare

poke his nose out of his house for a week. But it was like Sarge had said. He did

have two. And one of them had blood on it.

I shot him again, this time not in the arm. He went down like an empty laundry bag.

Sarge didn't flinch. "I wasn't crapping you. Keenan jobbed your friend. They were

both amateurs. Amateurs are stupid."

I didn't answer. I looked down at the squares and shoved them into my pocket.

Neither one had an X-marks-the-spot on it.

"What now?" Sarge asked.

"We go to your place."

"What makes you think my piece of the map is there?"

"I don't know. Telepathy, maybe. Besides, if it isn't, we'll go where it is. I'm in

no hurry."

"You've got all the answers, huh?"

"Let's go."

We went back out to the carport. I sat in the back of the VW, on the side away from

him. His bulk and the size of the car made a surprise play on his part a joke; it

would take him five minutes just to get turned around. Two minutes later we were on

the road.

It was starting to snow, big, sloppy flakes that clung to the windshield and turned

to instant slush when they struck the pavement. It was slippery going, but there

wasn't much traffic.

After a half hour on Route 10, he turned off onto a secondary road. Fifteen minutes

later we were on a rutted dirt track with snow-freighted pines staring at us on

either side. Two miles along we turned into a short, trash-littered driveway.

In the limited sweep of the VW's headlights 1 could make out a rickety backwoods

shack with a patched roof and a twisted TV aerial. There was a snow-covered old Ford

in a gully to the left. Out in back was an outhouse and a pile of old tires.

Hernando's Hideaway.

"Welcome to Bally's East," Sarge said, and killed the engine.

"If this is a con, I'll kill you."

He seemed to fill three-quarters of the tiny vehicle's front seat. "I know that," he

said.

"Get out."

Sarge led the way up to the front door. "Open it," I said. "Then stand still."

He opened the door and stood still. I stood still. We stood still for about three

minutes, and nothing happened. The only moving thing was a fat gray squirrel that

had ventured into the middle of the yard to curse us in lingua rodenta.

"Okay," I said. "Let's go in."

Surprise, it was a dump. The one sixty-watt bulb cast a grungy glow over the whole

room, leaving shadows like starved bats in the corners. Newspapers were scattered

helter-skelter. Drying clothes were hung on a sagging rope. In one corner there was

an ancient Zenith TV. In the opposite corner was a rickety sink and a stark,

rust-stained bathtub on claw feet. A hunting rifle stood beside it. The predominant

odors were feet, farts, and chili.

"It beats living raw," Sarge said.

I could have argued the point, but didn't. "Where's your piece of the map?"

"In the bedroom."

"Let's go get it."

"Not yet." He turned around slowly, his dipped-in-concrete face hard. "I want your

word you ain't going to kill me when you get it."

"How you going to make me keep it?"

"Fuck, I don't know. I guess I'm just gonna hope it was more than the money that got

you cranked up. If it was Barney, too -- wanting to clean Barney's slate -- you did

it, it's clean. Keenan capped him and now Keenan's dead. If you want the bundle,

too, okay. Maybe three-quarters will be enough, and you were right -- my piece has

got a great big X on it. But you don't get it unless you promise I get something,

too: my life."

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