Handsome Harry by James Carlos Blake

Earl did, I’ll say that for him.
    Sandra and I were leaving right away, but she’d given me the address to give to Earl. I taped it to the icebox and stuck my head in the bathroom where he was singing in the shower and told him where it was. Then I was out the door.
    The drive was a little more than two hours, and the afternoon turned gray and chilly. Her house was the nearest thing to a mansion I’d ever been in—a huge two-story with gables and balconies and three chimneys. She wasn’t sure how many rooms the place had. A middle-aged couple lived in an efficiency off the kitchen and took care of the house. The fireplace mantel was lined with dozens of photographs of distinguished-looking men and women, some of the men posing in front of factories. The house was on a bluff, and boats and barges chugged by on the misty river below. You could see downtown Louisville.
    Her bathroom was equipped with a Roman tub. She lit a few clusters of candles for mood and drew us a hot bubble bath that smelled of violets. At hand was an ice bucket with a bottle of brandy. We did it in the bubbles and then dried each other off and did it again on her bed, which was big enough to take up most of Earl’s living room. I napped briefly while she saw to supper, then she woke me and we went downstairs to a meal of broiled sole, asparagus, and a bottle of Chablis. She said what she liked best about me were what she called my dangerous blue eyes and that I didn’t ask questions. I said what I liked best about her was everything.
    We were back in bed and about to have another go-round when we heard loud but indistinct voices downstairs. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet but I figured Earl might have arrived sooner than planned.Sandra wasn’t happy about it and was practically growling as she put on a robe and went downstairs to investigate. I never saw her again.
    I was sitting up in bed and smoking a cigarette when the door crashed open and two gorillas barged in. One pointed a pistol at me and the other stuck a shotgun in my face and said Harry Pierpont, you’re under arrest for bank robbery.
     
    W hen they told me Ted’s true name was Thaddeus Skeers, I laughed out loud, but it proved to be his real moniker, all right. There’d been warrants on him for breaking parole and for two drugstore robberies back East someplace, and there were witnesses in both holdups who could identify him. He was facing the big bitch—a mandatory life sentence on the habitual criminal law for a third felony conviction. The only way he could avoid the bitch was by giving up his partners in the bank job.
    The bastard had been plenty willing to finger me and Earl, but he didn’t have much to bargain with, since all he could tell them was what we looked like and our first names, and for all he knew they weren’t true. For some reason he didn’t rat on Pearl. The cops thought she was another guy, and Skeers let them go on thinking it. He said he’d never seen the driver before the day of the job and all he knew about him was he called himself Jackson. The cops were ready to throw the book at him, but Thaddeus had a hole card. He must’ve been used to things going wrong and had learned to prepare for that eventuality, because he’d taken the precaution of writing down the plate numbers on Earl’s car. The cops were floored when the plate turned out to be legit. They went to the address of record for Earl Northern and there he was, all dressed up and about to leave for Kokomo. Five minutes later and they would’ve missed him. Half an hour earlier and they would’ve had me there too.
    They found the bank money and Earl’s guns, then took him to the station and told him to save himself a hard time and give up the othertwo partners. Earl said he didn’t know anything about us, including our names. Like Skeers, he was facing life on the habitual law, but he wouldn’t finger me or Pearl, even though they really gave him the business. Then the head cop