Agreement to Kill

by Peter Rabe

  Loma heard, but he was past action. The pain and the fear left him immobile, with all his remaining strength glued to the voices, all of him drained except for the strength he might gain if he sucked in the sound of the voices.

  “I asked you, Doctor.”

  “Stay at your end, please.”

  “He can’t stand it. Drugs do terrible things to him.”

  “When I need your advice …”

  There was movement, movement, and then a thin sound of glass breaking on the floor.

  “Now get to work on that foot” Spinner’s voice was harsh.

  Doctor Calvin had not yet touched the foot again when Loma let go and passed out.

  • • •

  It was warm inside the cast. The soreness warmed it Loma moved his foot on the floorboard, just to feel again that the pain was so much less than before. Then he looked at Spinner behind the wheel, then at the night outside the car.

  They hadn’t talked at all since they started driving again. Loma hunched over, arms folded, and looked out at the night. Without turning he noticed how Spinner drove. Loma wondered why Spinner didn’t seem tired. He noticed that Spinner looked at him once and then front again. Loma noticed even the least important of Spinner’s motions; he rubbed his nose, he swallowed a few times. Spinner said nothing, looked blank, but Loma knew he was present. It has to do with the pain, he thought, the relief.

  “How is it?” said Spinner.

  Loma was surprised. “Fine. Much better.”

  A while later Spinner said, “Why don’t you put your teeth back in?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Loma. He took them out of his pocket and put them in. Then he said, “You have time to buy cigarettes, Spinner?”

  Spinner gave him one. After holding it for a while Loma opened the window a crack and threw the cigarette out. He rarely felt like smoking, but this time he had thought he had wanted to smoke. But the unsettled feeling had to do with the foot, it had to be that because it was the only thing different. Perhaps exchange a few words, for distraction.

  “We can make it by morning,” said Loma. “Can you drive through?”

  “Fine with me,” said Spinner.

  “Uh — Spinner.”

  “Yes?”

  “At the office — why did you do it?”

  “What you talking about?” said Spinner.

  “I’m talking about the drug. I heard you and the doctor.”

  “Oh, that.”

  Spinner might have said more, but Loma didn’t think he had made himself clear and had to say more. It was nonsense, but for the moment, to be talking was important.

  “What I mean is, there was no good reason for you — ”

  “I don’t know what you heard there,” said Spinner. “But Calvin was going to give you a shot I told him not to.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know that part.” Loma looked out past the beam from the headlights. “But you did it for no good reason — ”

  Loma let it go: it was nonsense anyway. Also, he no longer wanted to hear whatever Spinner might answer.

  CHAPTER 13

  When morning came they had both come back to their old ways with each other. They hadn’t talked any more, and in the silence Spinner had become glum again. He was gnawing the inside of his cheek and his eyes squinted as if there were something to see where there was nothing. And Loma, as most of the time when he didn’t talk, was hardly a presence at all.

  They had made a wide swing around St Louis and gone into the hills. The sun came up clear, hurting Spinner’s eyes.

  “Take the road that goes into those woods,” said Loma.

  “How much longer, wherever you’re going?”

  “An hour, perhaps.”

  “What is it, what kind of a place?”

  “A resort,” said Loma.

  “We’re going to hide out in a resort?” But Spinner should have known better than to ask. Loma didn’t answer, and Spinner was too tired to bother with any more questions.

  The road through the woods was new and well kept, but if there were a resort nearby it was not advertised at all. No signs, no traffic, only the road through the woods. Once the car passed a small lake and a rowboat was pulled up where the water came close to the road, but there was no sign of a human.

  “This resort,” said Spinner. “Does anybody go there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s the traffic?”

  “There are several roads going up to it,” Loma said. “Quite a number.”

  And at the end of those roads, none of which showed anywhere, was a deserted farmhouse, or a house looking deserted with blinds drawn and a closed garage which had doors going both ways. Something like that, thought Spinner. And for good measure an old mountaineer on the front stoop. He would be chewing a blade of grass, maybe spit tobacco at a fly that kept pestering him, and across his lap he would have a shotgun. The image had become set in Spinner’s mind when the next turn in the road showed the cabin on the side of a hill, a squat little building with a chinked chimney and bushes growing up to the windows. But the road never turned that way. It swung off again and the cabin disappeared from view.

  “Hour is almost up,” said Spinner.

  “I know.”

  Spinner was dead tired. He felt he was awake only where his palms touched the wheel, where the sole of his foot pressed the pedal, and where the road and the trees moved past his eyes.

  “You’re passing it,” he heard.

  Loma had said it twice. The cutoff was as good as the main road, but it climbed more. Spinner had to back up, swing hard to the left, and once on the road he could see nothing from the car but tall woods and a curve ahead. Each successive curve turned the other way, and then came the last one. The road seemed to splay as it dipped into the plateau and for a moment Spinner kept driving as if he hadn’t seen the change; the tennis courts to the left, the lawn with the benches to the right, and the golf course which leaned up the side of a shorn hill in the distance.

  “Not there,” said Loma. “The big house. The one with the porch.”

  The big house with the porch was a small hotel.

  “Pull up to the stairs,” said Loma.

  Spinner pulled up and looked. There were a few guests on the porch, mostly men. They wore colored shirts, and were reading papers or talking over drinks. Then a younger one came out with a tennis racket and the man with him explained about foot position for a good backhand. They walked past the car. A sign tacked to the porch railing read Movie Tonight: Lonely Love.

  Loma rolled down his window and watched the man come down the stairs. A bellhop was following him, but without that signature the man still would have looked like the host. He was dressed in a business suit with a carnation in the lapel and in his hand he carried a pencil. He came down the stairs smiling his happiness, and his free hand made eager little pats across the thin hair.

  “Gentlemen!” he began and then he saw Loma. His face became more reserved and he said, “Oh.”

  “You have room?” said Loma.

  The host looked from Loma to Spinner and back.

  “He’s with me,” said Loma.

  “Oh.”

  “Well?”

  “Uh — of course. If you say so. It’s just that I didn’t know …”

  “I’m working for St Louis.”

  “I know, I heard that But I didn’t know you were coming here. What I heard …”

  “Right now I need a place, Betman.”

  “Uh — how hot are …”

  “I don’t know if I am. That’s why I need a place.”

  “All right,” said Betman, not wanting to hear any more. He tapped the pencil against his front teeth and looked into space. Then he said, “Number Seven. You can have Number Seven.” Then he stepped back, waiting for Loma to come out.

  “Show me the place. If it’s what we need — ”

  “Very well.” Betman walked ahead of the car.

  Spinner followed slowly, past a croquet game on a law
n and down a small road with cottages visible in the woods. Loma was known, apparently. They hadn’t expected him, they weren’t happy to see him, but Loma seemed to command a certain respect.

  Number Seven was the last cabin at the end of a clearing. Several roads left the clearing, Betman held the door of the car while Spinner carried Loma into the small house. There were two rooms, a bathroom, and a carport with a door into the cabin.

  “Is there a phone?” asked Loma.

  There was a phone. There wasn’t the right kind of chair for Loma, and Betman promised to get one immediately. Loma paid a large sum in advance and sent Betman away.

  There wasn’t much for Spinner to carry in from the car, and then he sat on the bed, rubbing his face. Loma stood by the window on one leg.

  “I’m going to sleep,” said Spinner.

  “Before you do, see if that phone will reach here.”

  Spinner brought the phone to the window and went back to the bed. He wasn’t even interested in what Loma was going to do next Loma couldn’t walk, and he couldn’t drive. That’s all Spinner thought about for the moment — and sleep. He stretched out on the bed and thought about sleep. The trip was over, the strangeness was wearing off. Loma stood by the window on one leg and that too seemed commonplace. Spinner was no longer in touch with anything but the slow pleasure of sleep growing in his body. Loma was talking now, a talking bird on one leg by the window.

  “… not alone,” he was saying. “I’m staying here for the moment”

  To whom would he tell this? Betman again?

  “Send me your contact,” Loma was saying. “I can’t come in to St Louis.”

  Long distance, perhaps. His employer.

  “No … As short a time as I can … Yes.” He hung up.

  At the hide-out, for as short a time as possible, and he wouldn’t go to St Louis, at least not until they sent him another man!

  Spinner sat up with a sudden shock, trying to focus.

  “What!” he said. “What was that?”

  “I was on the phone,” said Loma. He had moved so that he half sat on the windowsill.

  “I wasn’t out,” Spinner said. “If you think you’re going …”

  “What did you hear?”

  Spinner got off the bed and walked to where Loma was. The tiredness stayed with him but the anger gave him a look of aliveness.

  “You don’t skip out,” he said, close to Loma’s face. “You and me stick till you’re no good to me any more. No other way, do you hear?”

  “Go to sleep,” said Loma.

  Spinner shouted, hoping to wake himself. “Do you hear?”

  Loma didn’t blink, but he moved his head a little.

  “I told you right from the start, killer, just the way …”

  “You want to know my plans?” said Loma.

  Spinner nodded. He was surprised and could only nod.

  “My job didn’t run the way I had planned it I don’t know how bad it turned out, or whether I’m covered.”

  “How about me?”

  “I don’t know about you. I’m telling you my plans, since you asked.”

  Spinner kept still, waiting.

  “I’m staying here to see what develops. Until I know if they’re looking for me, or just for you, I’m staying here.”

  “You son of a bitch.” Spinner said it low and with heat, but, as he could have expected, he got no reaction from Loma Spinner said, “But that phone call. I heard …”

  “You know my job was for St. Louis. I called them so they would know where I was. And the contact,” he added, “is the man who brings me my money.”

  Spinner tried to think about Loma’s answers, but things were slow in his head. He said, “Are you lying, Loma?” Spinner was hoping that was all he had to say to get an answer and no more doubt. He was very tired.

  “I don’t lie,” said Loma.

  Spinner believed him. He went back to the bed and sat down.

  “No. Maybe not And as soon as I fall asleep you just as soon put a bullet through my head as give me the time of day.”

  He saw Loma reach into his belt and then, with the soft movements he had, Loma tossed the gun on the bed.

  “There wouldn’t be any good reason,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

  Spinner fell asleep without having touched the gun.

  CHAPTER 14

  He woke in a sweat and when he opened his eyes the sunlight slammed at him, making him curl over and away from the light He lay that way for a moment Then he jumped up.

  The gun wasn’t there, and Loma was gone.

  Spinner didn’t bother to look in the other room or to check the door to the carport, but ran to the front, where the sun beat down on the clearing. Two men on the opposite side looked up from their checkerboard when Spinner came out the door, making it crash against the side of the cabin.

  He saw the tail end of the car stick out of the port but that didn’t mean a thing. Not after the phone call Loma had made, even asking Spinner to get off the bed so he could reach him the telephone; bothering to explain himself — something Loma never did; performing the gesture with the gun tossed across the room, like a melodrama; and he, Spinner, too drugged with sleep or too stupid with trust to watch that man, to watch that machine of a man whose insides were so unknown to Spinner —

  Over here.”

  Loma sat under a tree where the shadow seemed black. He was in a wheelchair. He was shaved, wore a fresh shirt, and his black hair, as always, was combed back smoothly. The empty goat eyes left Spinner to read his own meaning into the look.

  “What time is it?” shouted Spinner.

  It was stupid, both the question and the way he had shouted, but it helped a little.

  Loma said, “I don’t know.”

  Spinner walked to the tree and stooped when he got into the shadow.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I don’t know”

  Spinner pulled a bench closer and sat down, feeling angry. He got out a cigarette, but the thought of smoke in his mouth made him throw it away. Maybe he should kick Loma’s cast, crack it maybe. It would mean something violent done and Loma might scream. Hell, he wouldn’t scream, not Loma. Loma would pass out, slip away, smooth and soundless. The way that ghost could make silence

  “Well?” said Spinner. “What next?”

  “When?” said Loma.

  Spinner took a deep breath and crossed his arms. He concentrated on dipping his foot up and down over one knee and then he noticed how Loma moved his wheelchair away a little. Spinner stopped swinging his foot.

  “I was too worn out to ask the right questions before,” said Spinner. “Tell me again. What happens next?”

  “I told you. I’m staying here for a while.”

  “Yes. I know. But how about me? Why keep me around?” Before Loma could answer Spinner said, “And don’t tell me I can go where I please or some wash like that.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  Spinner had nothing to answer and Loma went on.

  “I’m here to see what develops. I told you that And when I know I can plan how to move next. As for you — ” he swung his chair around with a push on the wheels — ”I don’t know how you are going to act That’s why I want you in sight”

  “You — you want me in sight?”

  “Why are you surprised? You know more than you should.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Spinner that Loma might think this way; as if normal cautions weren’t the kind that Loma needed to worry about.

  “Tell me, Loma. And if I go to the cops …”

  “I didn’t say that”

  “You didn’t have to. When you said I know more than I should …”

  “Perhaps you think I’ve forgotten, Spinner, but I’m keeping in mind why you came along, and how you did it You came along to get in and that, most of the time, was behind everything you’ve been doing. But …”

  “Most of the time? What in hell do you think I’ve been doing the re
st of the time?”

  “I don’t know,” said Loma. He looked away, but then turned back and talked as before. “It doesn’t matter. It matters to me, though, that you must have forgotten what I told you. I can’t give you an in. I don’t know anybody.”

  “You’re working,” said Spinner, sounding vicious.

  “I work alone.”

  “When you called St. Louis before …”

  “I’ll tell you again. I can’t help you. And you don’t understand, believe me. That’s why I need to know what you are doing, because you’re not listening to me and I can’t predict you.”

  Spinner sat back and had the feeling of having been watched without knowing it For a moment it gave him a strange feeling of pleasure, that Loma had taken account of him, that he, Spinner, had all this time not been a blank to Loma. But the satisfaction didn’t last very long, because what Loma had said was that Spinner was on his own, as in the beginning, as if Spinner had never met Loma at all. As if all this and what had gone before had been nothing.

  “That’s your side,” said Spinner. He got up abruptly and stepped close to Loma’s chair. “You called somebody in St. Louis.”

  “Yes.”

  “When is he coming?”

  “Some time today.”

  “I’m going to meet him. You want me out of your hair, Loma, here’s your chance.”

  “You can meet him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. Just somebody they’re going to send.”

  “It’ll do. Anybody of flesh and blood will do, Loma.” Spinner walked back to the cabin.

  He used Loma’s razor and then he took a shower. He didn’t feel like getting back into his dirty clothes but he didn’t have any others. Then he sat in the front room. From there he could see Loma under his tree. He didn’t have to talk to him and he didn’t have to suffer his silences. If there had been some money in Spinner’s pocket he would have liked to buy himself something to eat. But it would have meant leaving his watching post. The last one maybe, because once Loma’s contact showed up Spinner would make his pitch. He felt for a cigarette but forgot to light it. He had no pitch. All he had was intentions, but that wasn’t going to stand in his way. Anybody with reasons like his behind him didn’t need a pitch. Spinner didn’t puzzle about where he had gotten his confidence, but he kept feeling that way as he watched Loma.