by Les Edgerton
“Well, ol’ buddy. It’s just you and me. Time to get to work.”
***
Grady talked as he worked. “You and me, ol’ buddy, we’re gonna make us a drug deal. You’ve made drug deals before, haven’t you?” He didn’t figure the man to respond and he didn’t.
Reader lay on the bed, spread-eagled, his arms and legs secured to the brass posters by handcuffs.
“I know you know I was a cop,” Grady said. “But did you know I used to work on the bomb detail? No? Well, I did. I know electronics, too. Used to help my brother out all the time. I probably unpacked that Futaba you just had to have.”
He went over and got a sitting chair from the corner and brought it over by the bed where he could be comfortable while he was explaining to Reader what the man needed to know. He looked around for an ashtray but didn’t see any. Hell, the floor was fine. He lighted a Marlboro medium and sucked in the smoke. Damn! That felt good. It was going to be hard to quit something he enjoyed so much, but he felt it was time to give up the habit. That was just one of a lot of changes in his life he was looking forward to. It’d be nice to not end up like that Pelkerson guy. Especially when the future looked so...promising.
“I’ve been thinking about something, Kincaid.” For a second, he considered giving his prisoner a drag on the butt. Nah. He ought to quit, too. His future wasn’t nearly as rosy as Grady’s. He sure didn’t need lung cancer on top of it. He went on. “I’ve been thinking a lot about justice. Not the kind courts deal out these days. Good old-fashioned justice. Street justice. The kind you’re familiar with.”
He stood up, ground the cigarette into the carpet.
“I gotta go get some things. You just relax here for a while.”
It took him a good ten minutes to unload Reader’s car, put most of the money in the trunk of Whitney’s Taurus. Another ten, working fast, to transfer the dope from the limo into Reader’s fake back seat. All except two of the plastic bags. Those he took with him back into the house. Along with a couple of packets of the money. He was sweating when he walked back into the bedroom.
“Whew!” he exclaimed, walking over and throwing the bags of dope up between Reader’s outstretched legs. “This drug stuff is hard work!”
“Fuck you,” Reader snarled.
“Why, Kincaid,” Grady smiled. “I do believe my lady friend’s right. You don’t have much of a vocabulary, do you?”
“What do you think you’re doing, you fuck.”
“Well, see, Reader, here’s your drugs. We’re going to do us a little deal. That’s my part of the deal. I got to count the money, see if you held up your end of the bargain. That’s the standard procedure, isn’t it?”
He took one of the packets of bills and rifled it. They were all hundreds.
“Yep,” he said. “Seems to be all here. Minus what I’m keeping.”
Reader craned his head around as far as he could to watch him, his eyes mean and small. Reader said, “There’s six million. Three apiece.”
Grady laughed. “Why would I split with you, Reader? Looks to me like I’ve got all of it.”
“Because you’re smart. Looks to me if you were going to turn me in, the cops’d be bustin’ down toor by now. Same way with killing me. I think you woulda done that, too, by now. I’m something of a gambler, you know? I think I can read a poker player and that’s the way I read you. I think you’re going into business for yourself. Can’t say as I blame you. But you know what? You’re a jackass moron cop and that means you’ve only got so much smarts. You take the whole six million and I’ll find you. It won’t be that hard. All I got to do is figure out what beach you got in mind. It may take a while, but I’ll find you. I’m gonna kill your sorry ass. First, I’m gonna take out your other eye. Split with me and I’ll be happy, leave you alone.”
My, Grady mused, the guy could talk! Regular chatterbox. He’d figured him to be a bit more reticent. Grady threw both packets of money up next to the cocaine between Reader’s legs. He went over to a small table, brushed the knickknacks on it off onto the floor, picked it up and brought it over alongside the side of the bed.
“Like I said, Reader, I’ve been thinking.”
He reached in his pocket and got his cigarettes. Damn. Only one left.
“You got any squares? No? Well, what the fuck. I’ll get some later.” Grady reached over and plucked a bill loose from one of the packets. He lighted it with a match he took from his pocket and used the bill to light his cigarette.
“I’ve always wanted to do that. How ‘bout you? You ever do that? I did it once when I was a kid. Only it wasn’t a hundred dollar bill. It was a single. I did it on a dare. My brother dared me. We used to dare each other to do a lot of shit. After I did it I was sorry. This is different. This time I don’t feel sorry. It’s only paper.”
“Fuck you. You want to burn up your share, go ahead.”
Grady took a last drag, stubbed out his cigarette and stood up again.
“Actually,” he said. “That was one of yours.”
He laughed.
“Share? You got this share thing on the brain, Reader. You have got to forget that nonsense. Hey, I got some things out in living room I need to get. You lie back and relax. You’re gonna get a kick out of this.”
When he came back in with the other box, he saw that Reader’s T-shirt was twisted up around his stomach and the man was perspiring.
“You trying to get loose? Well, buddy, you can give it a shot, but I don’t think you’re gonna get too far. Go ahead, though, be my guest. Give it the ol’ college try.” He dumped the contents of one of Sally’s cardboard boxes on the bed beside Reader.
“What’re you doing, man? What’s that stuff?” Reader twisted his head around to see.
“Why, Reader,” he said, showing him. “You’re asking me? You know what this is. It’s a pipe. You’re familiar with pipes, aren’t you? These have a million uses. Kinda like a Swiss Army Knife. Let’s see...you can use them to blow up dogs, you can use them to blow up bankers...by the way, did you finally blow up Mr. St. Ives? Nah, don’t answer that. I can guess. These little babies, you can use them to...well, you probably know way more uses than I do.” He picked up a pair of wire cutters.
“I admit this is probably not as fancy a setup as you’d make, but I’m new at this game. I was usually the guy took stuff like this apart, not hooked ‘em up. One’s about the same as the other, though, way I figure it.”
He stepped back and looked at his handiwork. It looked about right.
“I know what you’re thinking, Reader. Fucking amateur. I suppose you could’ve put it all together in two seconds, blindfolded. Well, Im slow, but I’m thorough. And you know what? You’re gonna get a blast out of this.” He slapped his knee. “That’s good, isn’t it! A blast!”
Reader snarled, “You’re not going to blow me up, cop. You’re not the type. You woulda done it by now. You think you’re scaring me? Fuck you, you puke. You better take the deal I offered.”
Grady placed the pipes bound together with electrician’s tape on Reader’s stomach and wound the three connector cables first under his stomach and next under his crotch and the last one around his neck, clicking the IDC connectors into place in turn.
“I’ve got a better deal in mind, Reader.” He winked at the man and took a last glance at his work. Perfect.
“Well, Reader, looks good to me. Whaddya think? Well, I think it looks fine. I put mine in a different place than you did yours, but I think it’ll do the trick. I guess you’re like most of us, you like your balls. I didn’t use quite the same setup you did, though. I used the streamlined model, no Plaster of Paris, no Bondo. I don’t think it matters in this case. Do you?”
Reader said, sullenly, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, pal. You’re not going to kill me. I told you, you’re not the type. And you’re not going to turn me in or the cops would’ve already been here. So what’s this little deal all about? Doesn’t make sense. Why don�
�t you take half the money and get the hell out. Let me go. Fuck. Take it all. I don’t care. I’ll find you.”
Grady stared at him. “You don’t think I’ll blow you up, is that what you’re saying? Or that I’ll kill you? Well, maybe not right away, but you wait. You don’t think I’m the type, huh? Maybe you psychoanalyzed me all wrong. Maybe I like killing as much as you do.”
The funny thing was the more Grady got into this thing, the more he did like it. He kept seeing a vision of Kincaid erupting in a geyser of blood and bone and pieces of his organs and it was giving him a feeling he hadn’t known he was capable of. No, that was wrong. He’d felt this way before about other murdering slime.
“Got another surprise for you, Reader,” he said and reached down beside the bed.
“What the fuck’s that?”
Grady smiled at him. It was a telephone wrapped in a bundle of cord which he began unwinding.
“What’s it look like, Reader? It’s a telephone. Only it’s not a regular phone. This one’s special. This one has a number programmed into it. My friend Sally hooked this up for me. And something else.” He reached down and picked up the last item. “This is a speaker, Reader. Hooks right into the phone. Lots of executives have these. You’re an executive, I figure. You plan things, hire people, do stuff executives do, don’t you? I figure you’re an executive all right. Well, this here’s your executive phone.”
He connected the speaker to the phone. He took the cord, plugged it into the base of the phone and walked over and plugged the other end into the phone jack alongside the bed, replacing the phone that was there. He came back over to the bed.
Grady’s grinned hugely. “You wouldn’t believe how hard some of this shit is to get. It pays to have friends.”
Reader’s face was murderous. “I don’t get it. If you’re gonna call the cops what’s wrong with the phone that’s here?”
Grady was busy attaching the phone to the bedstead with wire.
“Because I’m not calling the cops. You are. Well, maybe. There.”
He’d finished his wiring.
“See? You can jusarely reach it with your hand. You want to make a call, flip the receiver off and push that button. You can do it if you stretch your fingers.” He put his finger on the button to show him. “Don’t worry, you can’t talk into the receiver. That’s only for you to hear. I thought you’d enjoy hearing the conversation. That button activates a recording. You’ll hear a woman’s voice on it. Kinda disguised, though. I don’t think anyone will recognize the speaker. Tells where you are and all that. Tells them to expect a bomb so they’ll send the right guys.”
“What’s the number?” Reader’s voice sounded hollow.
“I’m glad you asked that, Reader. You push that button, the call rings down at the Covington police station. This real nice sergeant, trained for emergencies like this one, will answer.”
“Emergencies?”
“Yeah, genius. Your emergency. See, when I leave--with the money of course--the dope is all yours--the rest is out in your car. ‘Course if you decide to make your phone call the police may have a different idea about that. When I leave I’m going to activate those little beauties on your back. With this.” He reached one last time to the box on the floor and picked up a canary yellow Futaba, a twin of the one Reader had used except for the color. His coup de gras. Ha! He liked that.
“That’s when you’re going to have to make a decision. But that’s what geniuses like you get paid the big bucks to do, isn’t it? Make executive decisions? You’re gonna get to make one pretty soon. You’ll have to excuse me for a minute. I’ve got to pack up, get ready to put it in the wind. You rest easy while I finish up.”
He made one last pass of the house, gathered up everything he’d used that was lying around and put it in one of the cardboard boxes, along with the book of matches he’d used to light his last cigarette. The cigarette butt, he stuck behind his ear. Reader craned his neck watching him.
“You fuck, what’s this all about?” Reader’s neck muscles strained into ropes. “I don’t get it. You think I’m gonna call the cops? You an idiot or what?”
Grady looked around checking for anything he might have missed. Satisfied, he sat back down in the chair across from the man in the bed, took the cigarette from behind his ear and stuck it between his lips and lit it.
“You disappoint me, Reader. For an genius and a big-time criminal, you really aren’t that bright, are you?” He took a deep drag on the cigarette. “This is a filthy habit, you know? Wish to hell I could quit it. Maybe I’ll get in one of those programs. Maybe buy one of those patches. What do you think? You think those patches work?” He blew smoke at the ceiling, took another drag, stubbed it out on the floor and put it in the box with the other items.
“It’s simple, Reader. I’m going to leave with the money. No split. All mine. You get the dope. All yours. Some of the money. Enough that the cops put two and two together. And you’re right--I’m going to find a nice beach somewhere. Might surprise you where though. This beach, I don’t think you’d ever guess where it is. You can try though. If you get warm I’ll let you know.”
Grady was enjoying this. This was the best, sweetest part of this whole deal. This was better than justice. This was a reckoning.
“Well, here’s the deal, Reader. It’s simple. You either call the cops or you push a button. I’m going to leave the Futaba. Within easy reach if you strain a little. You pick whatever button strikes your fancy. Phone button, transmitter button. I’ve got to tell you though, I rewired this little baby. I’m not sure which is the right button that’ll deivate your little setup. It might be this one or it might be that one. Or you might want to call the cops and let them decide. Choice is yours. Remember choices? You tell me you’re a gambler. Gamblers get to make lots of choices. You get a big fat one. You get to call a bluff. Biggest fucking pot of your life. Do you go to jail or do you blow up? Or maybe you get lucky, pick the right button if you’d like to try that transmitter. I know which way I think you’ll go, but I’m not telling. I like to do a bit of psychoanalyzing myself from time to time. I’ve played a little poker too. I think I know what you’ll do. In fact I’m betting on it. I don’t think you got the guts you think you have when it comes right down to it. Either way I don’t give a rat’s ass. I win either way. You lose either way. Life’s a bummer, isn’t it?”
Grady held up the Futaba. He turned it around so Reader couldn’t see it and pushed a button.
“See? It’s activated. One of these two buttons deactivates it. One does something else. Something you won’t like. You’re on your countdown, Reader. Talk about tense! This is exciting shit, isn’t it!”
He laid the remote control device on the bed next to Reader’s left hand.
“All you got to do is turn it off, Reader. Or hit the button on the phone. Left hand, right hand, which will you choose?” He smiled at the man. “Of course they’ll also get this.”
He took a manila envelope out of his jacket pocket and went over and placed it on the table next to the package of cocaine.
“In case you’re wondering what this is, it’s a full account of how you pulled this job. Has your little episode up in Dayton on it. My writing’s not so hot, probably some misspelled words in it, but they’ll get the drift. I think there’s enough in there to convict you. This, plus the dope I’m leaving for you... See, this turns into a perfect deal for me. I thought about this a long time during the whole time I’ve been tracking you. Figured some of this out a couple of days ago. The rest came to me just a couple of hours ago or so. Something else. I kept thinking about the guy you thought you killed up in Dayton--his name was Jack if that matters to you. The thing is, if you woulda just paid him for the Futaba you woulda probably gotten away with your little foolproof plan. It’s a shame, isn’t it? You know, at first I was gonna catch you, turn you in, go back home. Maybe I woulda shot you ‘trying to escape.’ I asked myself what Jack would advise. We were pretty close, I�
�m happy to tell you. I think this is what he’d say to do.”
“I’ll kill you,” Reader said. His eyes were narrow slits. “There’s no place you can go I won’t find you, you one-eyed fuck.”
Grady couldn’t quit smiling. As much as he wanted to keep his face serious he couldn’t wipe off his grin.
“Well, ol’ buddy, that’s the chance I’m going to have to take. Oh, and I wouldn’t wiggle too much trying to get loose. The sad truth is I’m not that great at tying things and too much shaking and I’m afraid that phone’ll fall off. Then what would you do? All cuffed up and nobody to call. Now that’s what I’d call tense.
“Another thing. I expect you’ll want to make my part in this known if you choose the phone option. Go ahead, but I think you ought to know that I know something about getting lost too. Remember, I was a cop for sixteen years. I paid attention to some things. In fact I got a good idea on how to disappear for a long, long time. Probably forever. I feel pretty confident that’s what Jack would have wanted ‘specially since this money doesn’t belong to anybody but some asshole low-life drug dealer. I think a lot of cops are gonna like this idea, the g guy getting the money for a change. Maybe they won’t be so anxious to spend a lot of time and effort tracking me down. You know?”
Reader gave a bellow and lunged against the cuffs, making the bed shake, and the phone slipped and fell off. Grady made a “tsk-tsk” sound with his tongue and shook his head sadly. He got up, picked up the phone and replaced it, rewrapping the wire that held it, but with only one turn. It looked precarious.
“See? I told you I wasn’t good at this. You might want to think about doing that again ‘specially since I won’t be around to fix it next time. I’m glad you did that though. Reminds me.”
He took out a roll of gray tape from a pocket and went over and taped Reader’s mouth. His eyes widened.
“Wouldn’t want you making too much noise. Might spoil everything if somebody heard you and came in. I don’t think that’s likely, out here in the boonies, but you never know when some kid might happen by, coon hunting or after one of them cute little alligators you folks got down here. I believe you might try and talk them into helping you out of your little fix. Who knows what lies you might come up with? You see, I’m good at these little details. Who knows? I might be executive material myself. ‘Course not as good as you, I know. You’re the genius. Me? I’m a dumb cop. A detail man. Although, you might pay more attention to details in the future, Reader. Next time, you might check who a man’s relatives are before you kill him. You might also get your next dog from the pound and you might want to get a different partner, one who isn’t into shoes, one who maybe favors old boring wingtips. Like these.” He held up a foot and chuckled.