The Shrunken Head

by Fish, Robert L. ;

“Don’t worry, it’ll work. I—”

  The sound of the dial tone cut into his words; Barney had quietly hung up on him. For a moment the man held the receiver in his hand, staring at the instrument without actually seeing it, reviewing the conversation in his mind, listening again to the words and the hidden nuances, and then he leaned forward and carefully replaced the receiver on its hook. He swiveled his chair slowly, glancing at the papers on his desk, at the heat calendar pad, at the expensive desk set with its slim black pen and pencil waiting alertly for use, leaning forward a bit, eagerly, from the dark onyx slab in which they were embedded. The corners of burnished mahogany that relieved the dark green expanse of blotter glistened under the oblique light from the fluorescent desk lamp.

  He smiled, congratulating himself.

  His thick muscular hand touched the desk top for purchase as he swung his large leather-upholstered chair in a wider arc. The high view of the fantastic city greeted his new position, unfolding through the blurred focus of the broad glass window framed in the long folds of the open drapes. The snow of the season’s first fall drifted past, aimless and peaceful, blanketing the rooftops of lesser buildings in the distance, tipping the sills of darkened windows across the way with soft white edging, muffling the red taillights of automobiles creeping their tortuous way through the canyon floors of the city below. In the greater distance taller buildings thrust themselves through the black of the night, glittering with rows and rows of little windows, tiny lit dominoes laid side by side.

  He smiled again, a broader smile this time, his triumph at last allowing itself to be savored, to lessen some of his inner tension, to ease some of the lines of tautness from his face. Not all of the story I told you was a lie, Barney, he said softly to himself. The scheme exists and there isn’t any doubt at all but that it will work. And will be finished and done within a month—well within a month. The fiction of the extra time was necessary, though, because you might make me trouble in your anxiety to collect, and right now the last thing I want is trouble. This way, for a month at least I don’t have to worry about you, Barney—and after that I won’t have to worry about you either. Thank you for the month, Barney, and thank you for wishing me success with the scheme.

  I’ll drink to that, Barney, he thought with a sudden grin, mentally filling a glass and raising it to his lips. Though this plan can’t really miss, since I have all the strings in my hand. Oh, yes, it will work, Barney, and it will produce a lot more than the hundred thousand dollars you seem to be so worried about. And without risk, Barney—without risk! Can you say as much about your crap games? With the possibility of loss, or police raids, or—perish the thought—bad debts? No, Barney, my way to make money is a lot better than yours. My scheme will work However, Barney, the only question is this: Will you ever see one thin dime of the money it will bring in? One red cent?

  Dubious, he said to his reflection grinning happily back at him from the vague space beyond the window that mirrored his neat office and his own triumphant figure eerily in the glass. Extremely doubtful. This beautiful scheme, Barney, wasn’t worked out so cleverly over so long a period just to repay a gambling debt. True, if I hadn’t lost the money to you I might have taken the time to polish it a bit, touch up some of the edges, possibly make it more lucrative, and with you on my back I’m being rushed just a bit. But not so much as to hurt, and I’ll be quite happy with the results; and you can hardly be surprised, Barney, that under the circumstances I don’t feel like handing almost half of it over to you. You can understand that, can’t you, Barney? You must be able to see that.…

  The snowflakes fell past him softly, a misty curtain through which he carried out the drama of his plan to the end. Palm trees swayed in his mind, tall majestic shafts fronting a wide stretch of warm sand, and the glaring rays of a friendly sun glinted from the tips of rolling blue tropical waves. And blood, of course—that was a shame, but unfortunately a part of it all. He brushed aside the thought of the blood and returned to his dream. I wonder if Brazil is as beautiful as they say it is? he thought, and then shrugged. Brazil plays the smallest part in the plan—a walk-on bit, you might say. The trip there is necessary, vital to the scheme, but actually the briefest of the many stops this plan requires. The United States is the only place to live, especially with money in one’s pocket; a pity that New York has to be ruled out, but one can’t have everything.…

  He sighed happily and bent over his desk, putting his papers neatly away in folders, and stacking them into the side drawer of the desk. There was another rap on the door. Once again the cleaning woman stuck her head in, peering at him questioningly in a combination of query and unspoken complaint. He locked the drawer and smiled, bowing as low as his position at the desk would allow.

  “Any time, madam,” he said gallantly, happily, and pulled himself easily to his feet.

  Barney Hahn’s office, set in a maze of similar cubbyholes on one of the lower floors in a sagging, shabby building a few blocks north of Times Square, had been designed neither for luxury nor permanence. In Barney’s business an office was not an essential, since few visitors were ever entertained and fewer records kept. However, it did provide room for a safe, which was a necessity since a large amount of cash flowed through Barney’s hands, and it also gave him a place from which to make and receive private and confidential telephone calls—such as the one he had just completed. This was necessary since his wife insisted, for the children’s sake, that he keep his occupation completely divorced from his home life, especially since the children were at an age when they were most impressionable. A third and possibly greatest advantage of the office was that it provided him with ostensible legitimacy, if one were to believe the B-H COLLECTION AGENCY stenciled in chipped black paint on the frosted glass of the door. It was a poor conceit, fortunately never challenged, designed to answer any questions curious police were often prompted to ask of people whose living standards far exceeded their visible means of support.

  At the moment, facing the dapper little man and sharing in his problem, was his associate, a large slab-faced individual called, for reasons none of his friends had ever cared to question, by the single name of Trenton. Even Barney did not know if the name was a legitimate heritage from his parents, or if it merely stemmed from past residence in the New Jersey city. Nor did he care. Trenton was a useful man, feared by those who had cause to fear him, and a man he could trust. To Barney, this was enough. An added benefit was that Trenton was sufficiently talented as a collector of difficult debts as to almost justify the faded printing of the legend on the door.

  Trenton watched Barney, eyes narrowed, push the telephone away from him. The thoughtful frown with which the smaller man continued to contemplate the now silent instrument brought a look of apprehension to the face of the other. He waited for some word from Barney, and when none was forthcoming, cleared his throat and spoke himself. His voice was rasping, harsh.

  “Trouble, Barney?”

  Barney brought his eyes up slowly. He snapped his fingers and Trenton obediently bent forward; Barney reached across the desk with a small manicured hand and extracted a cigarette from the shirt pocket which gaped invitingly before him. His wife was growing increasingly insistent that he cut down sharply on his smoking—it set a very bad example for the children, and how could he expect her to raise them properly if every time they saw their father he had one of the filthy weeds in his mouth? Trenton flicked a match to life with a big thumbnail, applied the flame to the end of the cigarette, and then waved the match to extinction. His gray eyes were steady on his boss’s face.

  “A welsh, Barney?”

  “I don’t know,” Barney said slowly. He inhaled deeply, withdrew the cigarette from his lips, and studied the growing ash as if searching for an answer to the question there. “He sounded different on the phone today. Like he was trying to be cute or something. A little—” He shrugged almost apologetically, as if he were somehow at fault for not being able to be more specific. “Well,
different. I don’t know.”

  Trenton shook his head decisively. “Well, obviously we ain’t going to let him get away with anything,” he said in his gravelly voice. “What the hell! One guy works a welsh and gets away with it, you might as well fold shop—might as well go down to the river and try to hit Jersey with them dice. Pretty soon words gets around and everybody figures like it’s Liberty Hall. Salvation Army. You can win but you can’t lose. Which would be nice, but that ain’t the way it is.”

  “I know,” Barney said wearily. “I know all about it.” He looked up curiously. “What’s your suggestion? That us gamblers form a union?”

  “You know what I mean,” Trenton said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his chair back, continuing to stare at the smaller man almost accusingly. “Maybe we ought to give him a little reminder. Like a busted arm, maybe.”

  “I promised him a month to pay off,” Barney said quietly. “Thirty days from today.” He leaned back in his chair and puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette, staring at the stained wall with its calendar advertising a barbershop long defunct. He had been meaning to change that calendar, partly because it portrayed a nude bent over a chair invitingly, and his wife—though it was extremely doubtful—might just decide some day to bring the kids to the office, and she wouldn’t feel it was the thing growing children should be subjected to, but mainly because it was a year out of date. However, it did serve to cover a scar left where some previous tenant had apparently hit the wall with a hammer, probably in despair at the landlord’s inattention. “He says he’s got some idea of how he can raise the money, but it’ll take him at least a month.”

  “I know,” Trenton said patiently. “I heard you talking to him. But you don’t sound like you think he really means it.” He shrugged and frowned. “This character works in a bank, didn’t you tell me?”

  Barney nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Does he know you know where he works?”

  Barney shook his head. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Trenton said, and got back to his first thought, “With a job in a bank you’d think he’d be the last guy in the world to chance getting beat up rather than paying. Christ! If a guy with a job in a bank can’t raise the dough, who can?”

  Barney stared at him sardonically. He leaned forward, crushing out his cigarette in the small rubber-tired ashtray there. “You know,” he said dryly, “there’s also the possibility he doesn’t want to go to jail any more than he wants to get his arm busted.”

  “Well, that’s his problem,” Trenton said judiciously. “Nobody forced him to shake them cubes. If he’d of won, he would have collected. So instead, he lost. So what the hell?” He leaned forward again in response to Barney’s snapped fingers and felt another cigarette being dragged from his shirt pocket. He brought out another match and lit it. “How in hell did you ever let this character into the game in the first place? And on the cuff yet?”

  “He came well recommended,” Barney said, and bent over the flame Trenton was holding out. “A letter from a guy I know. Who can buy and sell you, me, and any three other guys you can name.”

  “Well recommended or not,” Trenton said, “he lost, and now let him pay up or let him suffer. And where he gets the dough is his problem. It’s the principle of the thing; it ain’t just the dough.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” Barney said flatly. “One hundred thousand dollars? Are you serious? Who says it isn’t the dough?”

  “You know what I meant,” Trenton said stubbornly. He tossed the match on the floor and frowned at Barney. “What do you think we ought to do? Put a tail on him?”

  Barney shrugged. “I don’t know. In a town the size of New York it can get complicated.”

  “I still think maybe we ought to give him a little reminder.”

  “And then what?” Barney asked sarcastically. “Put in to the Blue Cross for his payment?”

  “Well, we ought to do something, damn it!”

  “We’ll do something,” Barney said, and pushed himself to his feet. He glanced down automatically, checking the shine on his shoes and the neat crease in his trousers. His wife maintained that he didn’t appreciate the importance of appearing properly groomed before the children; it was scarcely a wonder they came back from the school playground looking like a pack of wild Indians. “I’ll think of something. Right now I’ve got to beat it home. I got in last night after the kids finished eating their supper, and the way the wife carried on you’d have thought I kicked the Pope. She says it isn’t good for their stomachs to eat alone—or anyway, without their father around.”

  “Don’t worry about their stomachs,” Trenton said darkly. “Just teach them not to welsh on bets and the chances are they’ll grow up fine.” He also got to his feet. “So as far as this character is concerned, you don’t want me to do anything?”

  “Not right now,” Barney said. “Time enough to scream when you’re hurt.”

  “Only a little late,” Trenton said, and checked his watch. “I’ll see you later then. At the game. Same place as last week?”

  “Same hotel, but two flights up,” Barney said. “Room 1925. Eleven o’clock on the button.”

  “Right. I’ll be there.” Trenton’s thick fingers drummed on the edge of the desk in indecision. He frowned at the smaller man. “I don’t want to keep bringing the same thing up, Barney, but I still don’t like the idea that this character may get away with something.”

  Barney looked at him, honestly surprised.

  “I don’t think you understood me,” he said. “There’s a hundred thousand dollars involved. I didn’t say he was going to get away with anything. I only said that I think he figures he’s going to get away with something.”

  TWO

  Mr. Wilson, assigned to the American Embassy in Brazil, slid wearily from the battered taxi before the ornate Moorish-style arrival terminal at Galeão Airport in Rio de Janeiro and responded to the driver’s outstretched palm with a prodigious yawn. The driver, accustomed to the ways of human cargo at that ungodly hour of the morning, waited patiently, his other veined hand stroking the steering wheel of his ancient vehicle as if surprised to find it all in one piece and at its proper destination. He knew how his passenger felt; it was the way he had felt himself when his wife had roused him from his bed an hour earlier, and it was the way he knew he would feel when he finally managed to pass the cab over to his partner some twelve hours hence.

  Wilson’s yawn finally ended, almost reluctantly; he fumbled his wallet loose from his hip pocket. The driver accepted the proffered banknote, rapidly calculated the exact degree of his passenger’s aurorean narcosis, and then with a heartfelt sigh at the injustice of things, returned the proper change. Wilson, intrigued by this evidence of honesty—or at least caution, if not absolute prescience-responded by tipping generously, and then stepped up the one low step from the concrete sidewalk of the street level to the wide-arched lobby of the building.

  His eyes automatically sought the large clock on the wall; he verified his findings with his wristwatch and shuddered. The taxi had made the trip from his apartment overlooking the Lagoa de Freitas in a matter of fifty minutes, and it had been a taxi that coughed, sputtered, and generally made weird and frightening noises. It had been a taxi that should have been junked ten years before, assuming it should ever have been assembled in the first place. Had Wilson properly calculated the lack of traffic at that hour, even assuming the taxi, then he could have slept at least ten minutes more. He shook his head. Seven A.M.—what a miserable hour to meet an airplane! The man who arranged flying schedules, he thought with sudden bitterness, must be an insomniac or a misanthrope, or possibly a combination of the two. Or maybe he had just never learned to tell time, which in Brazil, would not be as surprising as it might sound.

  He shrugged in a vain attempt to be philosophical about his loss of rest, and made his way across the sparsely populated lobby in the direction of the Varig Airline counter, his hard h
eels marking his passage with evenly spaced echoes. An elderly lady with tinted hair was bent anxiously over the cluttered ledge, questioning the lone clerk on duty about something or other; Wilson moved patiently to one side to wait his turn. The clerk’s eyes flickered momentarily in his direction as if to assess the potential of the problem his next opponent might present, and then returned to the elderly lady in benign satisfaction. It was obvious that this nondescript person awaiting service would present no great problem.

  There was no doubt that Wilson’s appearance was nondescript; it was a highly cultivated effect that served him well in his profession. Ostensibly he carried the minor title of Security Officer at the American Embassy in Rio, but in reality his function was far more complex. He was a member of the CIA and Interpol, as well as several less publicized but equally important sections of the State Department. In general Wilson found his studied ability to pass unnoticed in a crowd—or even in small groups, for that matter—a distinct advantage. There were also, of course, disadvantages; beautiful girls had a tendency to look right through him in search of more exciting or more attractive prey. When this occurred Wilson told himself it was a small price to pay for his anonymity. He always followed this with a statement to himself that went: Wilson, you are an unmitigated liar.

  Above his head the loudspeaker mounted at an angle on the high wall broke into a sudden squawking sound; the solid stucco building, startled by the unexpected verbal attack, bounced the syllables back with contemptuous rejection. The entire struggle was as unintelligible as it was brief; Wilson brought his attention back to the counter to find that the elderly lady had either received the information she had been seeking, or—which was a lot more likely—had simply given up in despair. In any event, she was walking away, muttering under her breath, shaking her head dolefully from side to side. Wilson moved forward in her place. The clerk, who had returned to his pile of papers, looked up again as if surprised, and not particularly pleased, to find himself being accosted again so soon.