Step to the Graveyard Easy Read Free

Sam never said anything about having a son.”
    “If he’s there, put him on.”
    “Just a minute.”
    The receiver banged against something on the other end. The party sounds rose and fell like a pulse. Somebody yelled, somebody else squealed, a woman said distinctly, “That Polly, she gives blow jobs a bad name.” A minute passed. Then the same male voice spoke again in his ear.
    “He can’t come to the phone right now. Sam can’t.”
    “Why can’t he?”
    Seal-bark laugh. “He’s indisposed. Any message?”
    “No. No message.”
    “Want him to call you back?”
    “Forget it,” Cape said. “We don’t have anything to say to each other after all. Hell, we never did.”



3
    The bank officer was a plump middle-aged woman with a smile that she wore like cheap perfume. She peered at her computer screen, wrote carefully on a slip of paper; tapped the keys, and wrote again. She slid the paper over to Cape’s side of the desk.
    “There you are, Mr. Cape. The balances in both your accounts.”
    He looked at the figures. Checking: $1,678.24. Savings: $26,444.75.
    “Let the checking account stand,” he said, “except that I want my name taken off it.”
    “And the savings?”
    “Withdraw thirteen thousand, leave the rest. My name off that one, too.”
    “Ah, may I ask the reason you’re—”
    “No,” Cape said.
    She colored slightly, as much from his direct stare as from the sharp negative. She lowered her gaze a couple of inches, kept it fixed on his mouth and chin. “What would you like done with the thirteen thousand dollars?”
    “Open a new checking account in my name only, deposit nine thousand. The rest of the money in cash, six hundred in fifties, four hundred in twenties.”
    “Yes, sir. If you’d like a new ATM card—”
    “I won’t need one. I’ve got credit cards.”
    She busied herself with forms. Not looking at him any longer, not saying anything, as if he were already gone.
    At his brokerage firm downtown Cape put in an order to sell his shares of Emerson Manufacturing stock and deposit the proceeds in his new checking account. After transaction fees, the amount came to a little more than fourteen thousand.
    Cape’s car was a three-year-old brown Buick Riviera, supercharged V-6, chrome premium wheels, all the options. He’d driven it out of state only a few times, on short business trips; it had just 29,000 miles on it, was in near-new condition inside and out. He took it around to half a dozen dealerships before he found the car and the trade package he was hunting for. When he left Hammerschlag Motors, “Nobody in Illinois Beats Our Prices,” he was behind the wheel of a ’91 yellow-and-black Corvette, six-speed, most of the extras plus a new glass top. The odometer read 57,500, and the salesman swore it had had just one owner. Cape didn’t believe either claim, but he took it anyway. It was exactly what he’d always wanted.
    On his test drive it had handled reasonably well on turns and curves, smooth-shifting through all the gears, fast pickup, no pings or knocks or rough spots in the engine. Now he took it out on the interstate and opened it up to eighty-five for a mile or so on a straight stretch where the traffic was light. Blew along just fine.
    He was almost ready to go.
    St. Vincent’s was on the south side, in the neighborhood where he’d grown up. Old neighborhood, old church: grit-darkened stone, twin steeples surmounted by bronze crosses, scrolled and brassbound entrance doors. Inside it was cool, dark, hushed. And empty this afternoon, as far as he could see.
    He walked slowly down the center aisle, slid into one of the pews toward the front. He sat there with his hands on his knees. Crucified Christ gazed down on him from the wall above and behind thealtar. So did the Virgin Mary, the twelve apostles at the Last Supper, other biblical scenes in bronze and backlit stained glass.
    Cape stared at the altar, seeing it for a time and then not seeing it. The