Halo Around The Moon: A Novel by Matt Ritter

Author:Matt Ritter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pacific Street Publishing
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Dean Callahan had the obnoxious habit of keeping a large roll of cash in his front pocket. It made him feel rich, and he thought it made his dick look bigger. He liked to peel off ten-dollar bills while paying for something expensive, with everyone watching. So as he stood shoe-less, his brother lying beside him unconscious on the dock with dark blood oozing from his right eye, Dean knew that he had just given the man who came out of the water a beautiful pair of size 11 handmade cap-toe Oxfords and a roll of tens worth over four hundred dollars.

Ralph Roe walked away calmly into the night and was never seen in San Francisco again. A short distance from where he came off the dock, he found a Chevy coupe with the keys in the ignition and three-quarters of a tank of gas. He drove south on Highway 101 through the night, arriving in Paso Robles before sun up. After sleeping in the car, he was awoken by the late-rising December sun on his face. He filled up the Chevy and spent the morning in a diner enjoying his first real breakfast in several years. After eating, he visited Dick Bruhn’s apparel shop for a new suit, and Ollie’s Barber Shop, where he had his head shaved clean. He explained to the old barber that he was a traveling salesman looking to stay in the Paso Robles area for the holidays. He offered the barber two week’s worth of rent for the apartment above the shop, where he stayed quietly during the holidays while any investigations into his and Ted Cole’s disappearance from Alcatraz would dissipate.

It was late morning on January 2nd, 1936 when Ralph Roe got back into his stolen Chevy. His plan was to drive south on the 101 to Los Angeles then on to Mexico, where he would cross the border and never return. He considered the risk of scoring one more bank robbery somewhere in Southern California and decided it was too great. Besides, the money that he collected from the Callahan brothers would last him quite a while. No doubt the federal penitentiary system and the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation were circulating posters with his likeness on them. Bureau; who uses a word like bureau? Roe thought. Have those Frenchy sissies in Washington never heard of the word agency?

Where a conscience or sense of duty resides in a normal person, there was emptiness in Roe; emptiness and burning self-preservation. He had a dull ache, though, a memory he couldn’t let go. He had made a vow to himself to avenge the death of his beloved sweetheart Olivia Ann. She died in his arms, with the metal from Frank Smith’s bullet still warm in her chest. He knew she was innocent, and he knew he was almost entirely responsible for her death. Yet it was the vow he made to himself to punish Smith that kept Ralph Roe from driving toward the border on that day.

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