Catch Me: Kill Me

by Hallahan, William H. ;

  “Meaning what?”

  “Let’s cut the b.s., Geller. It’s going to take a miracle to find the guy and haul him out. The guy who does it is going to be big-time. If it’s me, I want to belong again. I want my stripes back, all my buttons, all my fringes, and full pension when the time comes.”

  “You’re asking a lot. There are some people down there in the mother church who’ll fight like tigers to keep you out. You made plenty of enemies, and it’s not so easy to put you back in the lineup with all your goodies. It’s going to take major surgery to do it. You’re asking a lot—a hell of a lot.”

  “What’s Kotlikoff worth?” Brewer watched Geller. “I had nothing when I walked in here tonight, Geller. Maybe I’ll have nothing when I walk out again, but I’ll tell you this: If I take this deal, those are my terms.” Brewer was playing with no cards in his hand. His hole card was a big fat “No.” If Geller thought he’d turn the job down, he was in the game. If Geller realized he was bluffing, Geller could knock the price way down—to a fishcake.

  Geller sat and puffed on his cigar. Brewer watched the thick smoke ascend and flutter in a light cone up in the ceiling. Geller shook his ice and took some of his drink. He put a hand behind his head and idly scratched, then belched softly. “Hmmm.”

  Brewer waited. He was thinking also. And he had a thought. “Tell me something, Geller. Who’s ordering this job?”

  “Me. I am. What do you mean?”

  “I mean, who are you working for?”

  “You know who I work for.”

  “Yeah, but the way you’re hesitating makes me wonder if this is official business or if it’s something you rinky-dinked with a little bit of private money here, a little bit of someone else’s tab there. I don’t figure the old guard is behind this.”

  “You don’t have to bother your head about that. If I make a deal with you, it sticks.”

  “Who’s on this case besides you?”

  “No one. Alien Registration Section over in Justice is chasing its tail here, mainly trying to find witnesses to the kidnapping. Nothing else. Oh, yeah, there’s some shit from Immigration and Naturalization, but he’s not too bright, and I think he’s filed his dossier on it.”

  “You’d better say a prayer, Geller. If anyone starts tracking back on you, he’ll find Napletano, and won’t that be fun.”

  “Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about Napletano.”

  “Me worry? Perish the thought. But what happens if you leave, retire, or—God forbid, Geller—if you should die? An oral contract ain’t worth the paper it’s written on, you said.”

  “What do you want—a notarized contract?”

  “No, but I want some assurances. Assurances, Geller.”

  “Look. Dummy up. You’re valuable for this job because you aren’t connected. I can’t plug you back in until after—long after, maybe, not until all the noise dies down.” Geller puffed and commenced a tuneless whistle. He got up and went to the men’s room. When he came back, he nodded. “You got a deal. Get him.”

  Brewer was down. Way down.

  He walked along Forty-second as though the firing squad were right behind him. He’d always known better than to get hopeful around that creep; when Geller offered a banquet, it always turned out to be burnt toast and cold coffee.

  But Brewer had figured, this time, he was so low that even a Geller deal was better than the hand he was playing now in the Sports Complex. He had been ready to take any offer from Geller; he would have agreed to do anything to get back into the game.

  Leave it to the Great Brown Wave to come up with the one assignment that he couldn’t handle—that no one could handle. “It’s made for you, Brewer” translates into: “I’m offering this because nobody else would touch it.” “I’ll put some fancy money down” translates into: “A fishcake wrapped in ten broken promises.”

  Geller was a lousy con man. Everyone said so; he had no imagination; he was a poor liar; his reputation for welshing was known to everyone in the trade; yet he had a fiend’s eye for spotting the desperate man in the crowd. His stock in trade was hope, and he traded it at usurious rates to the hopeless. Geller had made a career out of other men’s despair. And now he’d come to Brewer.

  Brewer was surprised by the depth of his disappointment. He was no worse off than he’d been before he’d received the telegram; he’d told himself he was just going to listen to what was sure to be a bad offer; but now that it all had turned out as expected, the disappointment was profound anyway.

  Especially at night now, despair nibbled around the edges of his life like rot, and this little flight of hope had served only to intensify his despondency. He put an honest word to it: fear.

  During all his intelligence career, he’d never truly known fear. In the greatest danger, when the world in front of him seemed filled with dark and menacing doorways, he felt he was part of a team. It was a job—he was a pro; he was building points in his career; his paycheck was always there; he had fringe benefits and pension credits and medical coverage, and he was safely nested in an organization that would take care of him, come what may.

  Now he faced no danger. There were no darkened doorways. Yet now he was afraid—he was alone; he was facing the future without a plan; he had no job, no career, no identity, no backup, no security. The future was a door he was afraid to open.

  The first time he’d felt fear was the day they bounced him. He’d sat in the Man’s office signing all the forms, the waivers and the releases and the early pension applications; he’d heard the wind on the window and seen his hand with the pen. It was trembling.

  In his gut was an ice cube.

  And it had been there ever since.

  This morning, he’d awakened like a cornered rat. A babble of voices in his head demanded that he announce a plan, a course of action. The awful thought crossed his mind that he might simply age in that room, that brown cube like a coffin, and, one day, die in that bed. The thought made him rise and dress. It had been only four-thirty.

  Brewer found that he’d walked down by the East River. The air was mild, and the traffic on Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive flowed both ways along the edge of the riverbank.

  The Kotlikoff situation was impossible. But if he pretended for a moment that he was still on the team roster and it was a new assignment, the Kotlikoff situation seemed more routine, more everyday, more solvable.

  He turned and looked around him. In any one of those buildings. But, chances were, there were only a few places where they’d put him.

  No, no, no. It was too hopeless. Geller didn’t put his own people on it, because it could escalate out of sight in seconds. It clearly needed a wild risk taker. An expendable risk taker. A free-lancer.

  Neither side tolerated a free-lancer—a starving stray who dogged both camps for whatever he could scavenge. Freelancing was like renting yourself out as a clay duck in a shooting gallery. It was a form of suicide—sooner or later, with the odds running more against you with each successive day. If he got caught afterward, Geller would never lift a hand for him. The free-lancer was a man without a country … and this was a suicide mission. Except—he was smarter than Geller.

  No. Forget it. It was hopeless.

  Yet it was the only move on his board. It was that or despair. It was his last chance to get back in.

  He’d have to think about it some more.

  Brewer didn’t want to be alone. He decided to hunt up Abbott for a couple of games of eight ball.

  In rack pool, Slick Willie Walker could shoot the lights out. He’d parlayed a long career of balkline, three-cushion and straight pool into something resembling comfort while most other pool hustlers had been starved into full-time employment elsewhere.

  Trouble was, it was hard to get a money game going. The big names that had come in from Chicago and L.A. and down South loaded with money and looking for action with other well-known hustlers were long gone. And the local hustlers found it harder to line up marks. In fact, they
were playing one another—pressing one another’s pants. There was no fresh money coming in from outside. At night, people got off the streets. The marks fled to crabgrassland or triple-locked themselves into their apartments. Restaurants were half-empty; famous university clubs were filing bankruptcy under Chapter 11; and, after dark, New York was abandoned to the crawling night people.

  The hustler, fingers flexed, eyes sharpened, chalked cue in hand, found himself at night standing under a cone of light at the pool table, alone.

  He faced his own kind of Chapter 11.

  Slick Willie Walker hung on because he had what he called enterprise. When the marks didn’t come in, he went out—to saloons. “Half the time I get a fish on the hook; the other half, I get a hangover.”

  When Brewer entered the poolroom that night, Walker had two sailors bent over their cues, “hanging out to dry.” Talk was his stock in trade, and he kept it going. First he’d set up a modest game of eight ball; then he’d agitate for side bets as the game went on; then he’d goad them into bets on difficult shots.

  Brewer was into his third inning with Abbott when Fatty the Fence arrived with Just John, a local bookie who was supposed to be on hard times, although Just John always dressed exceedingly well, ate only the blue-plate items at the Lido Tuscany and somehow prospered. There was talk on the stair landings and street corners, as always, that he had other means of making money.

  Fatty the Fence, who was also a reverent patron of the Lido Tuscany kitchen, paid for it with every flight of stairs. Fatty paused at the top of the stairs, wheezing loudly and waiting for his heart to stop its sledgehammer pounding. Then he stepped slowly across the room and carefully fitted himself into a high judge’s chair to watch the action, still panting. It was said that when his feet didn’t hurt too much, Fatty could take a cue and shoot down many of the best hustlers around. He sat tonight in close conversation with Just John and casually watched Walker coax one bet after another from the two sailors. Then he turned to watch Abbott shoot down Brewer.

  Abbott was another good pool player. When he was sober and not too badly bent and chewed up from the night before, he could make money with his cue. Brewer watched him drop the three ball into a corner pocket. The cue ball obediently rolled back to prime position on the four. Good—Abbott was good; in fact, he was good at a lot of things: Brewer liked the way Abbott handled himself, the way he held his cue, the way he walked, the way his hands hung at his sides in repose, the way he touched things.

  Brewer asked: “Where’d you learn to shoot pool, Abbott?”

  “In Florida, with curved cues and elliptical balls—”

  “What?”

  “Elliptical. Egg-shaped. It was a vaudeville routine. A bunch of trick shots copied from W. C. Fields. My uncle took me on the circuit with him when I was ten.”

  “No kidding. Vaudeville?”

  “Yeah. And the circus.” Abbott dropped the four ball.

  “Ha? You grew up in a circus?”

  “Yeah. Every boy’s dream.” He put away the eight and banged the butt of his cue stick on the wooden floor for Arty, the rack man. They waited. “I started out as a clown when I was eight. I worked with the best. I was a trick-shot pool shooter for three years, but vaudeville was dying, so I became a circus juggler—good one—and an aerialist—”

  “You mean—?” Brewer waved a hand over his head.

  “Yeah. High wire.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I can’t handle heights.”

  “That’s nothing. I developed this Houdini act when I was sixteen that was a dilly. I was famous for it. Rack! Goddam! Rack! Anyway, they’d pick someone out of the audience and put a straitjacket on him. Then they’d put one on me. And we’d both try to get out. Only I was sixty feet up, hanging by my heels. And no net. I always got out and the customer never did. Same kind of straitjacket. Then I became a nightclub magician—”

  “Come on—”

  “No lie. I got married—my wife was circus family too. And when I tell you that she was beautiful, I mean in her tights for the magic act, people would stare at her all the time we were on. We made bundles. Only—she died.” Abbott turned away looking for Arty.

  “Sorry.”

  “Okay.” Abbott cleared his voice. “I didn’t do right by her.” He cleared his voice again.

  “So what are you doing now?”

  “Oh—scuffling. I pick up a one-nighter now and again. Smokers mainly. Raunchy people. See, Millie was the brains—the businesswoman. I’m nothing without her.”

  “But you can still do your act—”

  “I lost my nerve.”

  “What, nerve, what? You mean you got stage fright?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many years you do that magic act?”

  “Thirty. Something like that.”

  “What are you talking about, then?”

  “It wasn’t the act. At least, that’s not all of it. I lost my nerve for—everyday. For living, you know?”

  “What do you mean, living? You just keep breathing. That’s living.” Brewer felt the cold spot in his gut spreading throughout his torso. Was that what was happening to him, losing his nerve, too?

  “I just woke up one day and—and I lost it. My nerve.”

  “I don’t understand, Abbott.”

  “Neither do I. I don’t like it when it gets too quiet and dark—it’s like being in a coffin. I’m afraid to go out on the street sometimes. I just feel scared a lot. I sleep with the light on.”

  “Maybe you think too much.”

  “Don’t you? Don’t you ever think of the bad days ahead of you?”

  Brewer wanted to change the subject, but his curiosity was too great. “Why don’t you go back to the circus?”

  “You can’t hardly get them no more. My brother has a small circus in Texas, a kind of rodeo thing, but I don’t fit in there.”

  “It’s better than here.”

  “Nah. You don’t know Texas.” Abbott watched Arty, the rack man, make change for Slick Willie Walker. The two sailors squirmed into their jackets and walked past Abbott and Brewer to the stairs.

  “Well,” said Willie to Just John and Fatty the Fence, “room rent’s paid for another week. Where’s the landlord?” He counted his money. “Jesus, all that work for this. It didn’t used to be this way. I remember the night I took Dutch Weismer right on this same table for five hundred. Whacked him out clean as a bone. I run a hundred and twenty-eight balls. Ha? You remember?”

  They nodded. They remembered.

  “Why don’t you go back to your magic act, Abbott?”

  “Nah.”

  “Christ, Abbott, you’ve got yourself all bricked up. You can’t do anything, thinking that way.”

  “I’m fifty-eight. Fifty-eight, Brewer. I have a trunkful of old nightclub gimmicks and a shaky pair of hands. I got nothing. I got nowhere to hide. If I can pull myself together and get off the sauce, this rich circus widow I know up in the Bronx is hot to marry me. If I quit drinking. I get three meals, board and vacations in Florida and bridge three nights a week plus a séance.”

  “Séance?”

  “Yeah. I do a little séance. I move the table with my knee and do some magic stuff and they all twitter. Jesus, it’s so hard to keep a straight face.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Jesus me no Jesus, Brewer. When the wintry blast climbs your ass, then you thank God for a warm bed and a warm body to schmoozle up to even if it ain’t Venus. I can’t marry her until I stop drinking, and I can’t stop drinking because I’m afraid to go in that room alone. I wish I had Millie back. The worst thing in life is being alone. Forever and ever alone, alone in silence and darkness—that’s what hell is. That’s what’s waiting for us.”

  Charlie Brewer racked his cue stick. “It’s time for your Tiger Rose, Abbott.” He walked out of the poolroom, past Willie Walker who was reading the race form.

  Walker had said it: It didn’t used to be this way.

  Brewer felt as thou
gh he’d been infected with a contagious disease as he went up the stairs to his furnished apartment. The place was like a leper colony.

  He’d come to live in the Sports Complex because during his adolescence it had been a nationally famous center for tournaments. But now the greats were gone and the idols either fallen, toppled by time and circumstance, or slowly fading, like Slick Willie Walker. In their places had come the Abbotts.

  Abbott. The guy had just quit. Just quit. With all those talents—trick pool shooter, circus clown, juggler, high-wire and trapeze man, nightclub magician. Why should he hide from the future? Brewer told himself that if he had those talents, his troubles would be over. He’d have a new and interesting career started by morning.

  The stairs reminded him of the first time he’d climbed up to the poolroom, up the dark brown steps to a jammed poolroom and legendary play, but now he noticed the chipped paint and the worn black-rubber treads and the pale lights on each landing, glowing weakly like ebbing life.

  These were the same steps he’d climbed to see the great and colorful—Welker Cochran and Rudy Wanderone (Mr. Minnesota Fats himself). Danny McGoorty, Willie Mosconi, Ralph Greenleaf, Willie Hoppe, Jack Schaefer. The building had then thronged with authentic Damon Runyon characters-including Nicely Nicely.

  But the parade was over. The greats were gone. Nicely Nicely now shot up every night, either arm, ten cents a bag. There were no antics and the characters weren’t funny. They were defeated men, losers, incompetents—frightened, hopeless men.

  The Sports Complex had become a leper colony.

  He was not one of them. Not yet. Not yet. But defeat was a contagious disease, and he could be infected. As with any other psychic disease, you become first a hypochondriac. In the morning you check for the symptoms: the dull eye, the slow shuffle, the hesitant hand, the love of bed, the cold region in the gut, the promise of tomorrow, the sudden confession while shaving: I can’t go it. I’m beat. Finished. Maybe tomorrow….

  It was quite clear to him that he had to pack up and get out before he was tainted with the slow gangrenous rot that was moving from all the edges of the room toward the center. And the way out was on his table: the Kotlikoff file.