The Ax

by Westlake, Donald E.

  And here is what is probably the main entrance, at the windowed door of an enclosed porch, through which another windowed door can be seen and, dimly, a kitchen, with the light source somewhere beyond that.

  If there were a dog on the premises, wouldn’t he have made his presence known by now? Yes; dogs are not shy about announcing themselves. As a further test, I rattle the front door, which is locked but very loose in its frame. No reaction from within.

  A professional burglar would, I am sure, get through this locked door in about ten seconds. I would rather try to find some other way in, so I leave that entrance and continue along the front wall, and when I turn the corner at the end I discover that originally this was the front of the house. With all the additions, and the driveway and the twentieth century, it has become the back instead, but this is the original section, facing the other way.

  It’s a standard Colonial center-hall design, a formal entrance door with two large windows on each side, and a second floor above with five windows, directly above the windows and door below. Inside, when it was first built, there would have been a hall and a stairway beyond this door, and four large rooms; to left and right downstairs, and the same upstairs. With the addition of electricity and indoor plumbing and central heating, all of these old places have been changed and changed and changed again, so that by now you never know what you’ll find when you open one of these Colonial doors.

  Not even if you’re an invited guest.

  In most of these old farmhouses, though, this original main entrance is no longer much used, and I see the stone landing in front of this door still has some of last fall’s leaves mounded on it. I step up there, turn the handle, and push, and it seems to me it isn’t locked, just stuck. I don’t want to break anything, alert URF that anything is going on here, but I want to get in if I can. With the handle completely turned and my feet braced among the fallen leaves, I lean my weight against the door, not hitting it but just exerting steady pressure.

  I feel it give, and I ease off, but it’s still stuck. I lean again, and all at once it makes a quick sound like a sheet of paper ripping, and pops open.

  Darkness. A musty smell, like laundry. The air inside is a little cooler and a little damper than the air outside. There isn’t a sound. I step in.

  I push the door closed behind me. It resists the last inch or so, with small compression sounds, this time like paper being crumpled, but I heave against it with my shoulder and finally hear it click shut.

  And now the house. The faintest of light shimmers somewhere off to my right, more than one room away. By its hints, I can see the large doorway just here, and then what might be furniture, and then another, slightly more defined, doorway twenty feet or so away.

  I move toward the light, cautiously, not wanting to trip over or disturb anything, and my knee does find a sofa arm. I detour around it, touch nothing else, and reach this next doorway.

  Which leads to a corridor. The light source is a room on the left, and when I inch forward and look in, it’s a bedroom. A quilt has been thrown somewhat carelessly over a double bed. The small lamp on the left bedside table is lit. There’s a wide mirrored dresser, a chair piled with clothing, a lot of shoes scattered on the floor.

  I’m beginning to think URF isn’t married. I was wondering where his family was, thinking they might all have gone out to a movie or something, but this bedroom has the look of a man who lives alone.

  When I get to the next doorway on that side, though, from the little I can see into it, it’s a children’s bed- room, for two kids. Bunk beds, low dressers, posters on the walls, toys on the floor. Is he a widower?

  A bit farther along on the opposite side is the kitchen I saw from outside. I enter it, and cross to look out past the enclosed porch at the road. When he comes home, I’ll see his headlights. If he’s with his family, I’ll have time to ease myself out the door I came in, far from the route they’ll take. If he’s alone, we’ll see what happens.

  I check the refrigerator, and it contains milk and cold cuts and soft drinks and beer and very little else. It just doesn’t look like a family refrigerator.

  I open and close kitchen drawers, because I know there’ll be a flashlight here somewhere. There’s a flashlight in every country kitchen, because country electricity goes off with fair frequency. Yes, here it is.

  Now I can explore the rest of the house, and I do, and find several empty rooms, and underfurnished rooms, and it seems to me URF lives in four rooms out of ten, all on the first floor. He lives in the bedroom with its attached bath, and he lives in the kitchen, and he lives in the first room I went through, with the sofa I kneed and a TV set and a coffee table and an end table and a floor lamp and a telephone and nothing else, and he lives in a room beyond the kitchen, originally a guest room, that he’s turned into an office, the same as I have at home. In this office he keeps his tax records and work records and all the paperwork of normal life.

  I spend some time in this office, using only the flashlight, because I want to learn as much as I can about URF, and in his case I haven’t had the advantage of a resumé, nor did I ever bother to do a public records check. The windows here face the driveway and the road, so I’ll know when he comes home.

  It takes me half an hour to go through all the stuff in here, or at least to go through it enough to get a reading on the man. He’s divorced, that’s the first thing, and it looks to me as though he’s been divorced three times. He has three grown-up kids who live in California and write him the occasional not-very-personal letter, and he has two younger kids who come to visit him in the summer and at Christmastime. He makes a good living at Arcadia—though not, I notice, quite as good as I used to make at Halcyon—but he’s constantly in debt, with an entire manila folder of dunning letters. He’s usually behind in his child support, but scrambles to make it up twice a year, just before they arrive for their visit.

  The other thing about him, which surprises me a little, is that he’s very serious about his job. From that article where I first read about him, I’d thought he was more of a lightweight, but I see that he keeps a file of articles torn from the newspapers and our trade journals, having to do with our line of work, and that he underlines sections and makes mostly sensible remarks in margins, and seems very intent on keeping up with the industry.

  Well, that’s fine. I’m good at the job, too, and I’d like my new employer to have somebody first-rate to compare me to, so he’ll know what a valuable man he’s getting.

  The other important fact is, those two younger children always seem to start their summer visit just about the first of July, which means a week from now. So that’s a deadline; much better to get all this taken care of before they arrive.

  There’s nothing else for me to look for in the office, and nothing more to learn. When I leave there and return the flashlight to its drawer, I see by the illuminated hands of the kitchen clock that it isn’t even ten. Wherever URF is, tomorrow’s a workday, so he’ll probably be home fairly soon.

  And he won’t have his family with him.

  My guess is that URF’s in one of those two bars in Arcadia. That’s where he’ll spend his evenings after work, having a hamburger or some pizza for dinner. When he gets home, I don’t imagine he’ll be completely sober.

  There’s no point my driving to Arcadia to look for him. I’d be halfway there when he would pass me, coming home, and I wouldn’t know it.

  I go back into the office, from where I get the best view of the driveway and the road. I sit at his desk, in the darkness there, and after a while lean back in his swivel chair and put my feet up on the desk, and I keep an eye on the windows.

  From time to time, a vehicle passes along the road out there, but not often. I sit here at URF’s desk, with nothing to do but wait and watch and think, and I can’t help but go over and over all the things I’ve had to do the last two months. Some of them were much harder than others. Some were very hard indeed.

  On the other hand,
some were easy. And I truly think, more recently, I’ve gained more confidence, and that makes it easier yet.

  Oh! I’m falling asleep. No good, no good.

  I get to my feet, stamping around in a circle in this dark room. I can’t be asleep when he gets here.

  I leave the office and go down the hall to his bedroom, just to be near some light, to beat off that sleepiness. And now for the first time, as long as I’m in here, and to have something to do, I make a quick search of the bedroom, and the one thing I find of interest is the pistol in his bedside drawer, next to the flashlight and the Tums. Of course I don’t know guns, except my father’s Luger, but I can tell this is some kind of pistol, with that round cylinder to give it the pregnant look. It’s black, and the handle is a bit worn as though it’s old. It looks like the starter gun used in a race.

  I don’t touch it. I close the drawer, and merely remember it’s there.

  Back in the hall, I glance into and through the kitchen, and out the porch windows, and I see the headlights just as they make the turn into the driveway. Weaving, slow-moving, hesitant.

  URF is coming home.

  41

  He’s drunk. I can tell that much before I even see him, from the way he drives his car, the excess caution with which he steers this dark-colored Subaru station wagon around the driveway curve toward his house.

  There are half a dozen methods, right in this house, by which I can finish him off with no trouble, and even make it look like accidental death. Which would be a lot better than yet another murder of a paper mill manager.

  The Subaru jolts to a stop, out front. I’m not watching from the kitchen, I’ve moved on to his living room, his TV room, whatever he might call it. In one of the windows there, I can stand without any light behind me, and watch. I was afraid, if I’d stood in the kitchen doorway, he might see a silhouette.

  Everything he does is in slow motion. Some time after he stops, the lights go off, so I suppose the engine went off then, too; I’m not sure I can hear it, through the glass. And then, a little while after that, he opens his door and climbs wearily out. The interior light goes on, but my concentration is on URF—I’m thinking of him now as a kind of dog, named “Urf” —as he slams the car door and makes his way around the front of it.

  Come in, come in. Come home, go to bed, rest, sleep. I’ll wait here. Or farther back, in the unused room on the other side of the unused entrance, just in case you decide to come on in here and fall asleep in front of the television set.

  He makes his way around the front of the car, leaning on the hood, and then he turns right again, and opens the passenger door, and a woman gets out.

  Damn! I stare at her, and she’s about as drunk as he is. A large woman in sweater and slacks, weaving. I see her stand beside the car, holding on to the open door, and I hear her voice, quite loud: “Where the hell is this?”

  “My place, Cindy! Damn! You know my place!” She grumbles something, and moves forward. He slams the Su-baru’s passenger door and follows her, and in a minute I hear him fumbling with his keys.

  Not tonight. He picked her up at the bar, and he’s done it before. So not tonight.

  But he doesn’t pick up a woman every night, not Urf. There are nights he sleeps alone.

  As the stumbling sounds of them move across the kitchen, I fade back across the TV room into the hall and to the door I used when I came in tonight. I tug on it, and it opens more easily this time, more quietly. Not that they’d hear much. I slide outside.

  There are more lights on now, in the kitchen and in the bedroom. I skirt around all three vehicles parked here, staying out of the lightspill. I walk away down the driveway. I am not at all discouraged.

  42

  I park the same place I did on Tuesday, and walk back down the dark country road toward Urf’s house. It’s nine-thirty, Thursday night, the 26th of June, and I am here to kill him. He could have an entire harem with him tonight, I don’t care. Tonight he dies.

  I’m feeling such time pressure now. It’s not only that I’ve been at this for nearly two months, though that’s part of it. Having to think about these deadly things all the time, do these deadly things, it’s wearing me down. I take less pleasure in life, and for that I don’t blame the downsizing, the chop, the adjustment, whatever you want to call it; I blame this grim hell I’m living through. Food doesn’t taste as good as it used to, simple pleasures like music or television or driving or just feeling the sun on my face have all flattened and become drab, and as for sex, well…

  Though that problem did start with the downsizing.

  Once I’m out of this. Once it’s over. Once I’m out of this and safe on the farther shore, with the new job, with my life back. Then the colors will be bright again.

  So that’s a reason to want it over, but now there’s an even more compelling one, and that’s Urf’s children. If they follow their normal pattern, and why shouldn’t they, next week is when they’ll arrive for their summer visit with their father. The 4th of July is on Friday this year, so they’ll surely want their travel to be finished well before the weekend, which means I have less than a week before they show up to complicate my life beyond imagining.

  No time at all. Weekends are impossible. Mondays and Wednesdays are impossible as well, because of Marjorie’s job with Dr. Carney. By the time I pick her up at six in the evening and drive her home, with dinner still to come, it’s far too late to set out for Slate, New York. So if I don’t get him tonight, I won’t have another try at him for five days, not until next Tuesday, and by then his children could already be here.

  I’m a little later tonight, deliberately, assuming his pattern is never to come home directly from work. And I seem to be right; his house is as dark as it was when I arrived on Tuesday. The nightlight in his bedroom, nothing more.

  There’s a learning curve with this house, as well. Tonight, I walk past the two parked vehicles and the entrance to the enclosed porch, go directly on down to the end and around the corner, then straight through the original front door. I walk through the TV room without kneeing the sofa, glance in at the lit bedroom and the dim kitchen, and make my way to the dark office, where I sit again at his desk.

  Not home yet. Out drinking his dinner. Anesthetizing himself, just for me.

  It’s a little warm in here, but I keep my windbreaker on. In the pockets are the things I’ve brought, just in case. The coil of picture wire. The small roll of duct tape. The four-inch length of heavy iron pipe, one end wrapped with electric tape for a better grip. The cotton gloves.

  I don’t have a particular plan, not yet. It all depends what the circumstances are, when Urf gets here.

  I put my feet up on the desk, and cross my ankles. A car drives by, southbound, out there on the road. Then nothing. I sit and wait for Urf to come home.

  43

  Light. I blink.

  “Wake up, you!”

  “Oh, my God!” I twitch, and my feet fall off the desk and thud to the floor, jolting me forward in the swivel chair. I stare in the harshness of the overhead light. My eyes are gummy, my mouth sticky.

  I fell asleep.

  He’s in the doorway. His left hand is still across his body, fingers touching the light switch. His right hand holds the revolver I last saw in his bedside table. He stares at me. He weaves left and right in the doorway. Even as I’m realizing the horror of the situation, I can see that he’s pretty drunk. “Mister . . .” I say, trying to remember his name. Urf, not Urf. Fallon.

  “Don’t move!”

  My hand has started upward, to wipe my sticky-feeling mouth, but now I freeze, hand in midair. “Fallon,” I say. “Mister Fallon.”

  “What are you doin here?” He’s aggressive because he’s afraid, and he’s afraid because he’s bewildered.

  What am I doing here? I have to have a reason, something I can tell him. “Mister Fallon,” I say again, stuck at that part of it.

  “You broke into my house!”

  “No! No,
I didn’t.” I protest that in full honesty.

  “The door was locked!”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Even though he told me not to move, I do move, pointing away to my right as I say, “The big door by the living room. I knocked, and… that wasn’t locked.”

  He frowns mightily, and I see him trying to think about that door that’s never used. Is it locked? He doesn’t know. He says, “It’s trespassing.”

  Fair enough. Break in or walk in, it is trespassing, he’s right about that. I say, “I wanted to wait for you. I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

  “I don’t know you,” he says. I’m not being particularly threatening or intimidating, so his aggression and fear are becoming less, but he’s still as bewildered as I am as to what reason I’m going to give for my being here.

  Is it because we’re both paper line managers? Polymer paper? I’ve just come by for some shoptalk, a little chat about our fascinating employment? At this time of night? Unannounced, walking into his empty house?

  And then I see it, all at once, and I turn my honest face up to him, and I say, “Mr. Fallon, I need your help.”

  He squints at me. The revolver is still pointed in my direction, but he no longer touches the light switch. That other hand is pressed against the doorframe now, to help him keep from weaving. He says, “Did Edna send you, is that what this is?”

  I remember, from his tax returns, that Edna is an ex-wife. I say, “I don’t know anybody named Edna, Mr. Fallon. My name is Burke Devore, I’m the production line manager for the polymer paper line at Halcyon Mills over in Connecticut, over in Belial.”