Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

Rudell pulled a case of Spam onto the floor and removed the top layer of cans, and there was the money, neatly stacked, on the bottom with Tod Spender’s ledger book.

“Siddown over there,” murmured Black, and Rudell obeyed, easing himself down into a corner and drawing up his knees. He watched as Black picked up each stack, fanned it with his thumb like a deck of cards to check the denominations, and replaced it.

“We ain’t hardly touched it,” Rudell ventured, like a child trying to please an agry parent. “We wasn’t going to spend it but a little at a time.”

Black ignored him and opened the ledger. He grinned without humor and remarked, “Had a hundred and twenty thousand to start with and got it down to one-nineteen-eight. You guys are big spenders.”

The animal seemed to have gone out of Black, now. The terrible raging energy had left him, to be replaced by the affability he’d shown earlier that day, right out there on Tod’s porch. Now that Black had what he came for, Rudell dared to hope, maybe he might be softened. Maybe now Rudell might get on his good side. Maybe now Rudell could live. He cast about for something to say, trying to engage in small talk with a mass murderer.

Black dropped the ledger back on top of the money and stood. “Okay,” he said in the same civil tone as that morning, “put the cans back in the box.”

Rudell did so, then looked at Black for further instructions. Black raised his eyebrows at him. “Micchiche, remember? If you’re gonna need a shovel, you better find one.”

Black carried the shovel and made Rudell carry the box with the Spam and the money. Walking over to the ancient cemetery, Rudell plucked up his courage and asked, “How’d you know?”

Alongside him, Black smiled. “The guy who runs the gas station down by the turnoff remembered Micchiche coming in. Never saw him leave, and there’s only one road to Glory. Only reason Micchiche would bother with this dump was to hole up, so I just asked the residents. The ranger got scared and tried to throw me out. You guys lied to me. Every goddamn one of you had to be in on it. You stashed his car in the mill, right?”

“Yeah, but — oh! You saw the marks on the dirt road where we swept out the tire tracks, didn’t you? Pretty smart.”

“That ain’t it, Rudell. You guys were just too stupid about the whole thing. Handled it like amateurs.”

“You’re in that Mafia, ain’t you?”

Black smiled again. “There’s no such thing.”

“You’re one of them hit men, huh?”

“Been called that once or twice.”

The grave looked like all the others, except that this leaning headstone had nothing carved on it. Rudell put the box down while Black stood away from him and tossed the shovel.

“I sure hope you clowns didn’t put him a full six feet under. Gonna be a lot of digging for you if you did, Rudell.”

“Nope. We didn’t.” Rudell got to work with the spade.

Black said, “You make sure you toss all the dirt over there on the other side, right?”

Well, he still wasn’t taking any chances, but Rudell could see he was getting friendlier. Most men warmed up by talking about themselves to a willing listener, Rudell knew. So he continued to get on Black’s good side. Between spadesful, he asked, “How you think we did it? I bet you got that all figured out, too.”

For a moment, Black just stood there in the moonlight, watching. Then, “What’s to figure? Micchiche came into town, found out who the residents were, and buttonholed a couple of you. Maybe he flashed some money. He offered you good cash to let him live here, out of sight.

“You guys added it up, decided he had a big pile with him and no one would ever know if you hid him really good and kept everything for yourselves. After you snuffed Micchiche, you scared the ranger into keeping his mouth shut, maybe forced him to take a piece of it so he’d be involved.

“So all six of you buried him, shoved his car in the mill, brushed out the tracks, and played dumb to anybody coming looking for him. Right?”

Rudell’s spade struck wood. He started shoveling the dirt swiftly now. “Mainly. There was a while there we thought we might have to kill Warren, too. Make it look like an accident, you know. But we didn’t have to, he went along.” Rudell bent, scooped, threw. Bent, scooped, threw. “What’d this Micchiche fella do, anyhow?”

Rudell didn’t dare look up through the silence. Finally Black answered him.

“He was what is called a bagman. That’s a guy who goes around collecting money. In this case he collected it from numbers runners. Most bagman have been in the organization a pretty long time, and the money ain’t bad. Lots of ’em have families. They buy tract houses and second cars and make payments on color TVs. and send their kids to college.