Read Online The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed by Charles Runyon - Free Book Online
Authors: Charles Runyon
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without Curt, since only Curt knew how to keep books and make a profit. And Frankie took up his strange affair with Anne. They seemed to fight against being together; each night they’d go in separate directions with separate groups; each morning around three a.m. they’d be sitting together in a booth at the Club 75. Neither of them had the sense to wipe the slate clean and start over….
Frankie, meanwhile, was playing baseball with a local league, whooping it up around the district, and jousting with the law. It was part of a Brushcreeker’s heritage to have law trouble. Frankie was jailed for a week in St. Joe for throwing two bouncers out of their own dance hall; he drew another week in Omaha for tearing up a nightclub; he drew thirty-days in Franklin County Jail for resisting arrest. (He’d taken Deputy Hoff’s guns from him and thrown them in a grader ditch, then kicked the deputy in after them. Nobody blamed Frankie; the deputy was a vicious little brute who wore two ridiculous forty-fives low on his hips. He used to walk into the Club 75 slapping his club in his palm, daring somebody to step out of line. Frankie hadn’t been able to resist taunting him, and the deputy had been waiting when he left the club.) A week after Frankie’s release he was sitting in the club with Sandy when Gil Sisk said Anne wanted to see him in the car. At the trial, Frankie explained it when he took the stand in his own defense:
I usually met Anne at the club and took her home. I just figured she didn’t want to come in for some reason, so I went out. She’d parked in the dark and I didn’t see anyone in the car. I opened the door and saw her lying across the seat. I reached in to touch her and something blew up in the back of my head. I don’t remember anything after that.
Defense Attorney: You made a statement to the sheriff after your arrest that you could remember nothing that happened the night before. Is that true?
Sure, but it all came back to me later. The bump on the head blacked out my memory.
You weren’t drunk?
No, I felt good.
What do you mean, you felt good?
I wasn’t mad at anybody. I was having a ball.
In the cross-examination, the prosecutor asked:
Isn’t it true that in the past your idea of having a ball had led to violence, fighting, destruction—
Objection, which was sustained. The prosecutor then asked why he’d run when they came to arrest him.
Frankie: Hell, I didn’t run. Those bastards came out to the house, got me out of bed, and asked me to come with them. My head was splitting and I had a bloody lump on it. I decided I’d busted up some joint the night before and there’d be a stink. I got in and the sheriff took off into the hills, driving slow, asking me questions about the night before. Deputy Hoff had his gun out and was trying to look tough. Little by little I realized somebody had been killed. I got jumpy. I knew the deputy would set me up if he got a chance. So when we stopped—we’d been riding a couple of hours, and eventually you gotta stop—
Who wanted to stop?
The sheriff was driving. He just stopped. We all got out and stood there, you know, taking care of our own business, and I looked at the trees ahead and thought, well, what the hell? So I took off. Blam! Right in the back. Two days later I woke up in the hospital handcuffed to the bed.
Frankie had been found guilty. His family had gone broke appealing the sentence, but it had stuck. Now Curt wanted to open it up. I couldn’t see that he had any chance at all.
I got out and walked toward the summit of Bald Knob. Years ago, somebody had cut off the oak and hickory timber in the hope of growing crops, but rain and wind had stripped away the soil and left only jumbled rocks and boulders. Curt sat on a large boulder, smoking his pipe.
“Safest place in the world,” he said as I came up. “A barren hill.”
I looked at the terrain dropping off in all directions. To the east a glint of light marked the
Frankie, meanwhile, was playing baseball with a local league, whooping it up around the district, and jousting with the law. It was part of a Brushcreeker’s heritage to have law trouble. Frankie was jailed for a week in St. Joe for throwing two bouncers out of their own dance hall; he drew another week in Omaha for tearing up a nightclub; he drew thirty-days in Franklin County Jail for resisting arrest. (He’d taken Deputy Hoff’s guns from him and thrown them in a grader ditch, then kicked the deputy in after them. Nobody blamed Frankie; the deputy was a vicious little brute who wore two ridiculous forty-fives low on his hips. He used to walk into the Club 75 slapping his club in his palm, daring somebody to step out of line. Frankie hadn’t been able to resist taunting him, and the deputy had been waiting when he left the club.) A week after Frankie’s release he was sitting in the club with Sandy when Gil Sisk said Anne wanted to see him in the car. At the trial, Frankie explained it when he took the stand in his own defense:
I usually met Anne at the club and took her home. I just figured she didn’t want to come in for some reason, so I went out. She’d parked in the dark and I didn’t see anyone in the car. I opened the door and saw her lying across the seat. I reached in to touch her and something blew up in the back of my head. I don’t remember anything after that.
Defense Attorney: You made a statement to the sheriff after your arrest that you could remember nothing that happened the night before. Is that true?
Sure, but it all came back to me later. The bump on the head blacked out my memory.
You weren’t drunk?
No, I felt good.
What do you mean, you felt good?
I wasn’t mad at anybody. I was having a ball.
In the cross-examination, the prosecutor asked:
Isn’t it true that in the past your idea of having a ball had led to violence, fighting, destruction—
Objection, which was sustained. The prosecutor then asked why he’d run when they came to arrest him.
Frankie: Hell, I didn’t run. Those bastards came out to the house, got me out of bed, and asked me to come with them. My head was splitting and I had a bloody lump on it. I decided I’d busted up some joint the night before and there’d be a stink. I got in and the sheriff took off into the hills, driving slow, asking me questions about the night before. Deputy Hoff had his gun out and was trying to look tough. Little by little I realized somebody had been killed. I got jumpy. I knew the deputy would set me up if he got a chance. So when we stopped—we’d been riding a couple of hours, and eventually you gotta stop—
Who wanted to stop?
The sheriff was driving. He just stopped. We all got out and stood there, you know, taking care of our own business, and I looked at the trees ahead and thought, well, what the hell? So I took off. Blam! Right in the back. Two days later I woke up in the hospital handcuffed to the bed.
Frankie had been found guilty. His family had gone broke appealing the sentence, but it had stuck. Now Curt wanted to open it up. I couldn’t see that he had any chance at all.
I got out and walked toward the summit of Bald Knob. Years ago, somebody had cut off the oak and hickory timber in the hope of growing crops, but rain and wind had stripped away the soil and left only jumbled rocks and boulders. Curt sat on a large boulder, smoking his pipe.
“Safest place in the world,” he said as I came up. “A barren hill.”
I looked at the terrain dropping off in all directions. To the east a glint of light marked the
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