"Promise Me" by Joe R. Lansdale (first published in Bullets and Other Hurting Things: A Tribute to Bill Crider, edited by Rick Ollerman, 2021)
This was a story that Joe Lansdale thought Bill would have liked.
An accountant named Ravel was working for a very shady company. One day he walked off with half a million dollars, so the company sent two hit men after him. Surprisingly, Ravel just went home after stealing the money. He put the stolen cash in a drawer and waited for the hit men to show up. Ravel, you see, was dying. He had divorced his wife, whom he loved, because he did not want to have her or his nearly grown daughters watch him die. He took out a large insurance policy -- one that would not go into effect if he committed suicide. And he calmly waited for the hit men to come to him. Before they killed him he offered them drinks and talked to them amiably. His one request was that they not shoot him in the head. He did not want his family to view his body like that. One of the hitman (unnamed in the story) promised him that he would be shot in the chest.
The other hitman, Griffin, did not promise and callously shot the accountant in the head. His partner was upset because he had promised, but Griffin merely said that he had not made the promise.
But for the unnamed hitman, a promise was a sacred thing...
This memorial tribute to Bill collects stories from twenty of his friends, who were invited "to write about small-town crime, hard-boiled PIs, or really just anything they thought Bill might have gotten a kick out of." Bill was well-loved by every single person in the civilized world -- and most like by many in the uncivilized world. His immense talent was only exceeded by his kindness, generosity, intelligence, wit, and love of Texas. There are no more Bill Crider books on the horizon, but Bullets and Other Hurting Things gives us a bit of medicinal salve to cover his loss.
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