by Les Edgerton
“Well, pal, maybe I do. All you have to do is tell me what it is and I’ll tell you if I have it.”
“A Futaba. Nine-channel crystal-controlled receiver and transmitter. I want one goes a mile, at least. And some R/C switches. At least six. No, make it eight. Some other things, odds and ends.”
The crowd jostled around them, someone bumping against Reader and causing him to lose his balance slightly. He ignored whoever it was, heard an “excuse me” as he went by.
“Well, I don’t have all that at the meet. Back at the store, I do. Got a nice Futaba, newest thing. Nine channel, PCM 1024, lists for twenty-five hundred. I can let it go for twenty-three and tax. You should have been here earlier. Sold one, not half an hour ago. Day late, pal. I got another down at the store. Didn’t figure I’d sell the one I brought. Some businessman, huh? I guess I shoulda brought both of them. Come around to the store in the morning.” He handed Reader a business card. “Jack’s Hobbies, Crafts And Electronics” it read. The address and phone number were in smaller print below. Reader looked at it and stuck it in his shirt pocket. He leaned across the table closer to the man.
“My problem...Jack...is I have to leave town tonight. Could I get you to sell it to me when you get done? I need a few other things, too. I’ll pay extra.” Reader turned on the charm and gave the man a wry grin. The dealer cocked his head slightly and looked thoughtful. He said,
“Louis Armstrong. That’s it.”
“Louis Armstrong?”
“Yeah. I’m a big fan. Got all his records. That’s who you sound like. You’re not from Brooklyn. You’re from...man, you’re from the Big Easy! That’s it! Man, I been there! Best fucking food in the world! You’re a long way from home, old son. Hell, if you’re from New Orleans, just get this stuff when you get home. Any hobby shop’ll have it. Go to a Radio Shack.”
“It’s Jack, isn’t it?” Reader looked from the card in his hand to the man’s face and next at his name tag. “Well, Jack, I would but I can’t. I’m up in Ohio on business and I’ve got to leave for Europe. My kid’s in school in Switzerland and he’s a nut over those remote controlled boats. This is a present for him. I get on the plane tomorrow morning at six and I don’t know if I can find this stuff when I hit Switzerland. He’s meeting me at the Zurich airport and I want to have it for him when he meets me. I thought sure I could pick it up at this show.”
The man looked at him. “I thought you said he has a plane. You want this for a boat or a plane? Not that it matters. Works on either.”
“Look,” Reader said making a show of glancing at his watch, ignoring the question. “It’s after six. All the places in town are closed where I might find this stuff. Can’t I get you to stop by your store after you’re done and sell it to me? Look, I’ve asked every dealer in the place and nobody else has one. This would mean a lot to my kid. I’ll be glad to pay you extra. How ‘bout I add a C-note to whatever it costs? Charge me the list and make a little extra. Have a heart, pal. I only get to see my kid once a year. The old lady swung a hell of a one-way fucking deal when we split up. You got any kids?” He leaned in closer to Jack. “You ever married to a fucking cunt who kept you away from your only fucking son ‘cept one week a year?”
Fuck. Two mistakes. He must be slipping. First, the guy pegs him from New Orleans and he ended up messing up his goddamned story trying to ad-lib. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. This changed things. All this way to remain incognito and that blown all to hell. The guy didn’t push the discrepancy any further, but Reader didn’t want to take the chance he’d start thinking about it again. Especially a few weeks down the road when there was going to be one hell of an explosion in New Orleans and the Fibbies got themselves involved, as he was sure they would. First thing they’d do is contact all electronics dealers, see who their suspicious customers were. He could try and find another source, but that would only give them two more people to quiz. No, the best thing to do was to get what he needed from this guy and take care of business. Sorry, Jack, he thought. My mistake, but looks like you’re the bozo that’s gonna have to pay for it. The thought of killing the man didn’t particularly trouble him. It just made what should have been a simple thing more complicated.
***
Reader had an idea what was going to happen with him and that dealer later on that evening, and the thought got him agitated, stirred up. Not good, Reader, he told himself. You got to be right when this goes down.
He knew what to do, how to calm the blood, get him in the right frame of mind. It couldn’t be that hard, find one in this town. He drove around, looked for a certain neighborhood, way it looked and pretty soon there she was.
It was a hooker he was after.
“It’s forty, sweetie,” she said, leaning over from the curb, her eyes checking out the back seat of his blue Caprice like she thought maybe he had a midget friend back there.
“Did I ask you how much? You got a place?”
She did and it was up the block. She said she’d go on ahead and for him to sit in his car and watch. When he saw her turn he could come on. Park the car anywhere on the street. Don’t forget the meter if he didn’t want his car towed.
Five minutes later, he was following her upstairs to an apartment. It was a pathetic little thing, hardly worthy to be called an apartment. It was barely an efficiency. He wondered if she lived there or just took tricks there, like it was her office, something. One room with a bed, unmade, a beat-up dresser and a wooden chair. A tiny bathroom. Reaer could see the rust in the sink from the open door. There was no refrigerator; nothing except those three pieces of furniture, so this was where she worked was all. Probably had a three-bedroom ranch out in the suburbs.
Soon as she heard the door close--she was ahead of him--she kept on walking over to the bed, shedding clothes as she walked, everything but her shoes. She sat down on the bed and faced him.
“Come on, big boy,” she said. “I guess it don’t matter what it cost since you didn’t ask, but that forty, that’s for head. You want to put it in, that’s forty more.”
Reader looked down at her, and she must have seen something in his eyes scared her. “Well, shit,” she said. “I said forty, didn’t I? Forty it is, sailor. Whatever you want. C’mon.”
She lay back on the bed, her feet still on the floor and spread her legs, let him have a look. Reaching down with her hand she spread the lips of her pussy with her middle and forefinger, at the same time flashing him what he was sure was meant to be a sexy smile.
“You got rubbers?” he said.
He unzipped and pulled out his penis and put the condom she handed him on himself, looking it over first after he unwrapped it. He stared at her, “Turn over. Get on your knees. On the bed. Back to me.”
She sat up.
“Whoa, cowboy. You want something like that, that’s extra. You didn’t--”
“Turn over. Now.”
She hesitated, started to say something, looked at him and down, quickly, and said, in a low, defeated voice, “Oh, Christ,” and did as he said, looking back over her shoulder as he stepped forward. She crouched on all fours, head down, fists clenched, and in less than a minute it was over.
“I didn’t get your cherry, did I?” was all he said when he’d finished. She didn’t laugh or say anything.
Reader walked into the bathroom and grabbed the roll of toilet paper, tore off a large hunk, turned on the cold water and soaked it. He slipped the condom off and threw it in the stool, took the wet toilet paper, wiped himself off and threw the soppy mess on top of the rubber and flushed. He watched, waiting to be sure it went down. You never knew about the plumbing in these kinds of dumps. He came back out, zipping up.
“Hey, buster. My money,” she said, getting up and grabbing her skirt, stepping into it and pulling it up. He could see she was angry.
“I’m going to pay you,” he said. He walked over, his knife ready in his hand and she started to say something to him, but couldn’t quite get it out in time.
When he
left, he made sure the door was locked.
An hour later and luck was with him, he found the guy’s store right away and the setup looked perfect. An alley in back and nothing open on either side of it at this time of day. He drove around until he found a twenty-four hour supermarket two blocks up and parked in the lot.
There was a coffee shop directly across the street from Jack’s Hobbies And Crafts. As dinky and run-down as the place looked from the storefront, he figured this bozo must make most of his money doing trade shows. He took a sip of coffee and winced. Fucking Cadillac coffee. I’d give ten bucks for some Community Blend dark roast, he thought. You gotta be a Yankee to drink this shit. Bandy’s Grill. He needed to remind himself not to order coffee any place with “grill” in the name as long as he was in the north. This stuff tasted like they fried it on the grill.
The weather didn’t help his mood. He hadn’t seen the sun since he’d been upth. Everything was...gray. How anybody lived in this place was beyond him.
It was too bad ol’ Jack’d placed his accent.
He ordered another cup and waited. The waitress asked how the coffee was and he told her. Come back tomorrow and maybe they’d get the good stuff in by then, she retorted. He was close to making a mistake he realized and toned down his conversation with the woman. She was a looker. Great red hair. Like that old-time actress, what’s-her-name. Rita Hayworth. Maybe he should have waited and asked her out instead of wasting his time with that fucking hooker.
When it was time, he walked out of the coffee shop and down the street. A block over, he crossed and came back up the alley behind the electronics store. He was sure nobody saw him. A knock and Jack was letting him in the back door. He followed him to the front and they went down the rows of shelves, the dealer removing the items Reader told him he wanted and placing them in a red plastic shopping basket.
“That it?”
“Yeah. I think so. Let’s see, transmitter, receiver, crystals...say, give me five, six more crystals. Different frequencies. I don’t know if he has a preference so I might as well get a bunch. And yeah. All the stuff’s here. How much? Add a hundred to that for your trouble. No, add a couple hundred. You been a real sport. My kid’s gonna be thrilled, thanks to you.”
He thumbed through the items spread out on the counter mentally cataloging them, making sure everything was there. He looked up at the guy, Jack, showed him some teeth.
“Say, Jack, you know I saw Louis Armstrong once. Live, in person. When I was a kid. Over on Camp Street. Helluva thing. On a Second Line. Lead trumpet. Cat was wailing some stuff, I tell you!”
Might as well have him go out with a stupid grin on his kisser, fucking citizen with an ear for accents. Be the decent thing to do. Yeah, right. Decent! He laughed out loud.
The store they stood in was jam-packed to the ceiling with every possible inch of shelf space stuffed with electronic parts and accessories. Some of the things Reader could see were right out of Star Wars. It’d be fun to find out what some of these items were. No time for that, though.
“This is what it comes to. Plus what you said.” Jack tore an invoice out of the pad he was writing on and pushed it across the glass counter to Reader. “What kind of boat did you say you have?”
“Looks fair, Jack. Say, what’s this?” He pointed to one of the figures near the bottom of the sheet. As Jack was leaning over Reader pulled that hand swiftly to the hunting knife sheathed behind his back at the same time his other hand was grabbing Jack’s hair and slamming the man’s face down on the counter. As the glass shattered with the force of the man’s head crunching into it, Reader said softly, “Sorry, friend,” and plunged the knife into the back of his neck and twisted it, tearing gristle and cartilage. There was no sound other than a soft grunt. Reader waited for several seconds for the tenseness to leave the man’s back muscles all the time working the blade slowly and methodically. When he relaxed, Reader withdrew the knife and wiped it clean on Jack’s back, letting him slide to the floor.
He got busy. First, he put on a pair of tight-fitting driving gloves and placed the items on the counter into a large supermarket shopping bag he took out from under his shirt and unfolded. The invoice was lying on the counter, and he picked that up and put it in his pocket along with the carbon and the copy. He left the bag on the counter while he methodically walked around the store tipping over shelves and scattering merchandise. He found the burglar alarm and cheked it. It was activated, pretty much as he’d thought. When Jack had opened the door and let him in earlier, he’d excused himself hastily after bolting the back door and hurried to the front. A cautious fuck, Reader thought, glad he was paying attention.
The alarm was one of those combination deals.
He considered the situation. Let’s hope he wrote the combination down somewhere, he thought. He went to the cash register, careful not to step in any of the blood, and lifted up the coin receptacle. Under it was a hundred dollar bill, which he stuck in his pocket. There was a mass of other papers, bills and notes, mostly names of various electronic gadgets and numbers, probably order or serial numbers. At the very bottom of the stack, so small he came close to missing it, was a torn scrap with a series of four numbers written in pencil and faded where it was barely legible.
Bingo. This is it.
It was. He entered the numbers and the green light went off.
Last thing he did was to go back to the cash register. There was only silver, no green in the slots. He took the coins out throwing some on the floor and scattering some of them onto Jack’s body. He stuck a handful of the quarters in his pocket. Something caught his eye. Jack. He was moving his arm.
Shit, Reader thought. Tough guy. Okay, tough guy.
Slipping out the back door, he made sure the alley was deserted. Once he was sure no eyes were on him, he picked up the brick he’d seen an hour earlier during his casing. Walking back inside to where Jack was beginning to move his arms--like he was trying to do the Australian crawl on the floor--Reader smacked the brick into the back of the man’s head. Twice. Satisfied the job was finished for sure this time, he walked to the back door and outside, turning the lock before he closed it. He took the brick and slammed it against the plate glass. It took two more blows before it shattered. It would look like somebody broke in. He tossed the brick inside and saw it land close to the man’s body. He stepped very quickly to the end of the alley and slowed his walk to a casual stroll until he reached his car parked in the supermarket’s parking lot.
A block away, he happened to glance at the gas gauge and saw that it registered half-full. He was going to fill it up earlier only it slipped his mind. Slipshod work like this got you caught. He always kept his car full of gas. He knew a guy in the joint who had gotten caught because he ran out of fuel during a high-speed chase. The guy actually outran the cop until his car stalled and he had no choice but to hit it on foot.
He spotted a station up the street. He pulled in, pumped his own gas and checked the oil, which turned out to be a quart low. While he was there he picked up some munchies for the trip back. Potato chips, hard candies and a jumbo pack of cinnamon gum. He paid for it with the hundred dollar bill he’d taken from Jack’s cash register. The sour look the attendant gave him made it plain he wasn’t happy about depleting his stock of change, but the guy took it anyway.
Reader went back out to his car and pulled it over to the side by the restroom. From under the front seat he retrieved a large sack and took it into the restroom, locking the door behind him. Quickly, he shucked the clothes he’d been wearing and changed into a white sports shirt and khakis that he took out of the bag. He removed the wig and the beard, wincing as the spirit gum tore loose from his cheeks. He stuffed the items into the bag and washed his face with cold water to reduce the redness, then splashed his hair with water until it was sopping and combed it straight back.
Back in his car he picked up his knife from where he’d laid it on thfloor and put it in the bag with the suit and wig and other items.
He hated to lose a good knife, but he knew he should in this case. He wouldn’t need that particular wig anymore. He had another one at home for the last part of the job. A white one.
He stayed to county roads, heading south, and when he came to the first good-sized stream he pulled off and threw the bag into it having first found a large rock to weight it down. Twenty minutes later he was on the Interstate heading south.
***
There was something. Reader rubbed his eyes. One loose end that kept nagging at him. The waitress. He’d thought about going back and acing her, but figured there wasn’t much chance she’d identify him even if the cops put two and two together and fingered him as the man having coffee across the street earlier. But, he was in disguise. No, he decided. The broad wasn’t a loose end.
CHAPTER 3
THE SUN WAS JUST coming up in Dayton when a hung-over Grady Fogarty discovered Jack’s bloody and unconscious body in the back of his brother’s electronics store. He’d come by to help Jack unload a truckload of merchandise scheduled to arrive that morning...only he’d overslept.
It was a miracle that his brother was still alive. Barely. He’d lost a lot of blood. Grady found him slumped behind the glass counter on the floor, his face lacerated by glass shards. The back of his head was worse. It was crushed. There was a gaping wound and the brain itself was visible, surrounded by splintered bone and hair matted with blood. He’d also been stabbed in the back of the neck. Gore was everywhere, soaking his brother’s shirt and pooled on the floor around him, making it difficult for Grady to keep his balance.
It wasn’t the first blood-splattered victim in Grady’s experience, not from sixteen years on the Dayton police force. It was just the first one he’d been related to. That made a significant difference in his reaction, he discovered.
By the time the ambulance and police arrived, every fiber in Grady’s being was alive with rage. In his years on the police force he’d witnessed hundreds of victims, but his brother’s wounds were barbaric beyond anything in his memory. His intuition told him that the person who did this wasn’t just desperate to get what he wanted, but took a savage glee in his attack.