The Plodder's Mile -- Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Captain Greg Jones sat fiddling with his holster as the phone rang. “There has got to be a way to fix this thing,” he muttered under his breath, wondering how long the latest bruise from his gun would take to disappear. “Captain Jones speaking.”

“Hey, Greg, this is Harold from the big city! How’s the ‘burg?” Harold Smith never let a chance go by to harass his old high school buddy.

Jones smirked into the phone. “Smitty, here the air is clean, I haven’t shot my gun in a month, and the only bruise I got this month was from my holster turning my pistol into a hammer – on my hip.”

“You country bumpkins really know how to rub it in, man,” said Smitty, as his friend interjected another barb.

“How’s the leg hole?” inquired Greg.

Now Smitty was smirking as he thought back to the six months he had just spent rehabilitating a gunshot wound to his calf. “Good as new,” he lied into the phone. Greg knew it was a lie, and let it slide.

“What’s the occasion? I never hear from you anymore,” the small town cop said.

“Just a head’s up. We’re calling all the towns along the rail line to be on the lookout for some bank money. You remember, that big guy you helped us with on the train?”

“The ‘brains’ of the operation?”

“This oaf walked into a bank and got the teller to find $100,000. We think,” continued Smitty,” that they dumped the money somewhere along the tracks.”

“They?”

“Yeah, we’re looking for a small guy,” said Harold Smith, wondering how many more calls he would have to make like this today. “At least compared to the big guy, who we got off the train, the other guy is small.”

“The big one talking?”

“Yeah, non-stop about his kitty and the trip he was gonna take with his friend Raymond.” Smitty let the name sink in.

“Short guy named Raymond. Got it, Harold,” said Jones, letting the dig sink in. Smitty hated being called “Harold”.

“I knew I shouldn’t have said this was Harold.”

“You love the attention,” said Jones. “But I better let you go – lots of miles of train track to call.”

“Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.” Smitty chortled to himself. These small town cops really had it made. “Give me a call next time there’s a murder.”

“Ouch.” Jones kneaded the leather of the holster again. “I’ll call when we get our next moose sighting.” Jones hung up and wondered if there would be another incident with the local moose herd this year.

John Graham had a problem. There was no way he could keep the money, but there was no way he was going to give it up. Dueling with his conscience, he found that if he rationalized long enough, there was usually a middle ground where reason was not too shaky and ethics were somewhat satisfied. But where would that middle ground be with $100,000 sitting in front of him in a neat stack of bills?

If he turned the whole amount over to the cops, the bank would get it. If he kept it, his greed would never let him rest. Even now, he was having a struggle trying not to involve Reba, and only because he knew she would be the moral compass that she always was. He could hear her in his head, “Take it to the police. Now. Right now.”

But moral relativism was winning out today. They had struggled for so long with so little reward for the good they were doing in the community. Everyone knew school teachers don’t get paid enough, and if there was a magic way to bless the lives of two dedicated education employees like themselves – well, you just don’t kick fate in the groin when offered a gift. Perhaps the bank would write off the loss and the insurance company would pay the claim, and no one would ever come to claim the money. Right. That was never going to happen.

But in the convoluted paths of mystery and intrigue that were crowding John Graham’s brain at the moment, a brilliant solution was beginning to form in his head. He thought back to when he had first unwrapped the bundle, and noticed the 10 or 20 bills that surrounded the hundreds of other hundred dollar bills. At first, his mind registered disbelief and convinced him that there really wasn’t an entire bundle of bills, but that someone had made a fake bundle with just the outside bills being real.

And John Graham had created just enough stage props to understand how to make the bundle that looked like it had $100,000 in it.

So after three hours of cutting paper and hand dying it over the sink, the bundle, once retied, looked exactly like when he had first opened it. He had kept the brown paper wrapping of the original, and once again, sat looking proudly at the newest addition to the Graham home. A brick of mostly bogus bills, still consecutively numbered except for 18 bills which were now a stage prop. An $1800 stage prop, but still a prop ready for the performance John hoped would convince Officer Greg Jones down at the local police station. Satisfied with his afternoon of work, he now turned to the large stack of real money. Where to hide it for a while?

Raymond Johnson had a problem. There were two pressing urgencies he needed to take care of, but he was uncertain which to handle first. Not the fastest thinker in his third grade class, Ray had devised a system to help him make decisions. He didn’t realize he was using the same system Benjamin Franklin discussed in his autobiography, but that was just a sign of a good teacher in his past who had passed the idea from the book by Franklin into the brain of Johnson.

He sat at the diner eating his banana cream pie, which he noticed, had no banana pieces in it. But the large amount of whipped cream more than compensated for the lack of real pieces of fruit. Even though the waitress had given him a strange look when he ordered double whipped cream, Ray found unless he asked, he never had enough whipped cream. “A little pie with his whipped cream,” his mother used to say.

In front of Ray was a paper napkin with two columns. One was titled “Tommy” and the other “Football”. Ray was just paranoid enough to not write the word money, even though the robbery had taken place over 100 miles away. All the local newspapers had carried the story, with a giant photo of Tommy smiling as he held up his ID number for his arrest photo. The list for “Tommy” was not as large as the list for “Football”, and it looked like the money would be the very next thing Ray would take care of. He had less than $20 in his pocket, and would have to make some sort of “arrangement” tonight for another kind of “withdrawal”.

He liked Tommy, and realized that it was wrong to desert Tommy on the train, and probably just as wrong to leave Tommy in jail. But busting him out would get them both put away, and with both of them in jail, who would get Tommy out? Plus, Ray was seriously contemplating the loss of an excellent “business associate”, who would be dependable to get the job done without asking too many stupid questions. A partner who didn’t care how much of the take he was able to keep, a partner who would never be trusted by the police or attorneys to testify credibly in court. The list was long, and almost persuasive.

The nagging doubt about someone else finding the money first, or the police finding the money were the deciding factors for Ray. He knew where it should be, and the faster he got back to “Ridgeway”, the faster he could come back here and wait quietly for the police to release Tommy. Ray figured that there was no way for the cops to convict Tommy since he was not responsible for his own actions, and no one would want to take care of the big lummox anyway. So when the release came, Ray would be right there to scoop up his valued partner.

Besides, without the money, neither Ray nor Tommy would be going anywhere soon. Ray pushed the empty pie plate back from the counter and left a quarter tip. He needed to go get that money now. But first he would need to make “some arrangements” for some traveling money.

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