Agreement to Kill

by Peter Rabe

  “Because I’m eager. I’m so eager for that five G’s I want to be sure I can collect So all these questions keep bothering me. Here you say Loma got away clean, then you say Loma’s got to go because he messed it all up. Come on, straighten me out.”

  “He got away clean,” said Talbot, “means for right now. But he’s been seen.”

  “Yeah. By me.”

  “You don’t count. You’re in it yourself; and you open your mouth and it’s curtains.” Loma had said that too. “But there’s three civilians that seen him …”

  “Where do I stand?” said Spinner.

  They frowned at him and Talbot said, “You’re in, aren’t you?”

  Spinner closed his eyes because he hadn’t heard them say it before. He was in now.

  “That’s why I asked,” he said but he still wasn’t sure.

  “All right. So in a while they catch up with Loma — you know he’s in this business full-time — and they can tie him up with the job he done here. Don’t you get it, Spinner? It’s simple!”

  “Maybe so is Spinner,” said Keel. “Hell, it’s all in how important the mark is. Take you, you ain’t important Loma is.”

  “And after Loma, I am.”

  “How can you be?” yelled Talbot and banged his hand on the table.

  “Maybe he likes Loma. You like Loma?” asked Mercado.

  “How can you?” said Keel. “Don’t you know about Loma? He don’t belong! So how …”

  “All right! Lemme think!”

  They looked at each other and then back at Spinner. He was as crazy as Loma, Keel thought, and wrinkled his nose. And Mercado kept telling himself that it was worth the trouble because Spinner was made for this job. Talbot sat back, sucked his teeth twice. Better push a little, before the thinking got much too heavy.

  “Spinner,” he said. “You don’t want the job?”

  This was a new tone. No more wheedling him, no more doing it his way, no more going along with him because Spinner was dumb.

  “You want in, or you want out?”

  “Out?”

  “Out to where they’re looking for you!” yelled Mercado.

  “In or out, Spinner?”

  If you did it like an ape or a machine it was simple. Spinner breathed and the air felt heavy inside his lungs. If you did it the other way, the old way, then you were out, and outside they were waiting to kill you. Spinner’s skin felt cold.

  “If you kill you live, if you don’t you die,” somebody said. Could have been anyone of the three saying it Could have been Loma. Is that why Loma lived?

  But already the question was hardly a thought because thinking that way was no way to live. The choice now was already a technical one — to do it, like an ape or a machine. He didn’t like Keel, but he hated Loma. Like a machine then. Spinner said, “I need a gun.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The early evening made a strange, colorless light, turning greens to grays and washing out contrasts, but to Spinner it would have looked the same in any other light. The change had already gone far. He sat very calmly, watching Keel drive. Keel moved the wheel this way and that, turned his head and his eyes as required, but the drive meant nothing to him any more. He hardly thought, because all the thinking had already been done; there was nothing more to decide, because all the decisions were over. Spinner was in.

  The car pulled up to the clearing and when Keel stopped the car bounced. Keel liked to brake that way.

  “Hey,” he said, “there he is.”

  Loma was at the side of the cabin, leaning there with one hand and testing his foot. The wheelchair stood behind him.

  “I’ll say hello,” said Keel, and got out of the car.

  Spinner got out of the car too and watched Keel cross to the cabin. He heard Keel say, “Well, lookit you. Looks like you’ll be up on your feet pretty soon now, huh?’” Spinner didn’t hear any more but they talked for a while. Loma probably was asking what the picture was, if the police were looking for him, and Keel was probably answering they didn’t get a clear picture yet, but they’d have one tomorrow for sure.

  Then Keel came back. He looked at Spinner and said, “See you tomorrow.” Then he grinned and slapped Spinner’s shoulder. “All yours,” he said. Then he drove off.

  There had been a low, gnawing ache in his shoulder, the way it happened to him off and on. But now the ache started burning painfully.

  Loma started to walk along the wall of the cabin, carefully, holding himself, watching his feet. The sight was like nothing Spinner had ever seen before, but when he looked away it wasn’t because of any feeling. He looked away to see if anyone else was on the clearing. Nobody was there. Not that it mattered. Then Spinner walked toward Loma. His shoulder seemed like a pain that didn’t belong to him and his walk was normal, because things were working all by themselves.

  “You want your chair?” said Spinner.

  Loma was at one end of the cabin and the chair at the other. Spinner stood with his hands in his pockets and watched how Loma’s feet moved. The feet stopped their struggle and Loma said, “No. Not yet.” Loma turned around slowly, holding the wall, and Spinner watched the two crippled feet make their short, sudden movements. “Was I right?”

  “Right? Oh. The job.”

  The feet stopped and Loma leaned by the wall, breathing hard.

  “Yes,” said Spinner. “You were right”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “What else?” said Spinner and looked at the feet again. They weren’t resting. They made small shifts and anxious plays for balance.

  “When?” said Loma.

  Spinner looked up and thought Loma’s face and Loma’s feet were not part of the same man. The struggle and pain in one, and shut blankness in the other, except for a thin line of sweat down the side of Loma’s cheek.

  “When?” he said again.

  “Pretty soon,” said Spinner.

  Loma wiped the side of his face and took a deep breath. He looked at Spinner and said, “Can I have my chair now?”

  Spinner brought it and wheeled Loma under the tree. It was darker there, with even less contrast than the rest of the evening. Spinner took out his cigarettes and sat on the bench.

  “Want one?” he said mechanically and held the pack toward Loma.

  “Yes.”

  That’s when Spinner remembered that Loma didn’t smoke, only sometimes. He lit both cigarettes and leaned back to exhale, as if tired.

  “I’m sorry you’re going to do it,” said Loma.

  Spinner felt himself tense. He sat up straight because his shoulder had touched the backrest. The sharp ache was like a drill in the point But he, himself, seemed to be somewhere else and that’s how he could talk very evenly.

  “You say you’re sorry? I’ve never heard you talk like that, Loma.”

  “I rarely talk,” said Loma.

  They sat in the silence for a while. The evening spread down, big and quiet Spinner turned his head along the dim clearing and all the cabins were dark. They had said they would see to that It was all ready.

  “I don’t think you should do it,” said Loma. “I don’t think you can.”

  “No? You can. I’m no different from you.”

  “But you are,” said Loma.

  Spinner shrugged. It made him wince with the pain in his shoulder. Then he thought about how he was sitting here talking to Loma and Loma was going to be dead in a short time. Loma was now talking for the last time, but there seemed nothing final about it to Spinner.

  “What’s there to it?” he said.

  “Did you ever hear me say that?”

  “No. You don’t talk.” Spinner crossed his legs and rubbed one sole into the earth. “But now that you’re — now that you’re talking, wouldn’t you say so?”

  “Yes, I might. But you can’t.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re better than most, in everything.”

  “It’s not that way.”

  Loma stopped and Spinner saw the r
ed glow of Loma’s cigarette brighten twice, very hot. Then he spoke and the smoke had made him hoarse.

  “I can’t do many things.” He stopped to let the cigarette fall, not watching it “Many things. And you can.”

  Spinner got up and stretched. He walked out from under the tree and stretched again.

  “I’m going in,” he said, and started walking across the dark clearing. “You coming?”

  Spinner didn’t hear whether Loma answered. A sudden weird waving of light hit the tops of the trees and when Spinner turned, the white eyes of the car dipped over the rise. They nodded toward him and then stopped.

  “Jake? Oh Jake!” Ann came out of the car and ran toward him.

  Against the light he saw her fine legs, then the rest of her, she was waving at him with her face dark and in shadow. He didn’t see what was there and didn’t look for it because the shock of the change in everything pounded at him. There was noise, there was light, the dark clearing was gone, and Spinner was no longer alone with Loma.

  “Jake,” she said, “what’s the matter?”

  “I didn’t expect you. I — ”

  She was up to him now, and hesitated. Then she stopped. She started to smile but then stopped that too.

  “I just thought, the way we missed each other in town — ”

  “I couldn’t help it I’m sorry.” He tried to look past the light and see Loma.

  She turned that way and then she smiled, like changing a topic.

  “Is he there? Your friend? I’ve got something for him,” and she ran back to the car.

  Loma was wheeling himself into the light, and watched when the girl came back.

  “Here,” she said to Loma. “Nice? I thought you could use it.’” She held out the cane she had brought.

  Loma stretched out his hand and took the cane.

  “Thank you. That was very nice of you.”

  Spinner had moved back where the light wasn’t strong, and nobody saw how his face had grown stiff and his hands were shaking. Ann pushed Loma’s chair to the cabin and when she stopped Loma got out and entered the cabin using the cane. The light went on inside, first one room, then the other.

  “Jake?” Ann called. “Will you turn off the car lights? I forgot”

  He turned off the car lights and saw her small bag on the front seat Then he went to the cabin.

  “How long are you staying?” she was asking Loma. “Till your foot is better?”

  “That would be too long,” Loma answered, and when Spinner came into the room Loma looked up. “You can close the door,” he said, “I’m going to sleep.”

  Ann said good night. She walked out of the room while Spinner held the door for her without looking up. Then he closed the door and he and the girl were alone. She had sat down on the bed, but when Spinner had closed the door she got up.

  “I — I don’t want to bother you,” she said. “I just thought, the way we missed each other, I thought you might still — ” she stopped and bit her lip. Spinner thought she looked angry. “Anyway,” she said with a different voice, “anyway, I wanted to see you.”

  To keep himself the way he had become Spinner looked at a detail, the lobe of her ear, and tried to think of nothing else. He saw where the lobe had been pierced, which he didn’t think was done any more. Then he felt her hand on his arm.

  “What’s wrong, Jake?”

  He stepped back, making her drop her hand. “Nothing, Ann. I didn’t expect you, that’s all.”

  “And you don’t want me to stay?”

  “I — No. I don’t want you to stay. I’m leaving myself.”

  “Oh? Business?”

  “That’s right. That’s why.”

  It would have been time for her to leave then, with nothing to say and with her hopes dropping away because she’d been wrong again. But she stood for a while longer unable to find the right way, the old way for handling this kind of thing. It wasn’t a new situation. What was new was that she allowed it to happen this time.

  “Okay,” she said. “If you’re in St Louis sometimes you know where I live.”

  “Yeah. I know,” and he took her arm to lead her out of the door.

  Perhaps the push did it, or the fact that Spinner didn’t seem himself and she hadn’t really been talking to him. She stopped in the doorway. They stood very close. “Jake, I just want to tell you …”

  “What?”

  He said it fast, very sharp, because he did not think he could hold out much longer. Not at this time, when everything had been decided and the girl and many other things had been left out Later, perhaps, when the job was done and his new ways were a little bit better established.

  “Listen to me,” she said, and looked at his face. “I’m going to say this now because I don’t think I can again.”

  “Not in here. Outside.” He pushed her out the door. The interruption, he thought, that’s what would do it Either she would go away or be like the first time, clever and hard to reach.

  But she kept hold of his arm, walking quickly, not wanting the feeling to go away. Once outside she stopped. She pulled him to the wall of the cabin and talked fast so that he could not interrupt her.

  “I don’t know you at all, Jake, like anyone else I can call by name. Except there’s a difference. Jake, are you listening?”

  He was listening, wishing he didn’t hear.

  “With a difference, Jake: I want to know you.”

  Let her finish, he thought, and when she’s through it’ll be over.

  “I don’t know why, Jake, I don’t know that any more than I know why you suddenly changed. But I do know! It’s happened to me when I suddenly can’t go on any more. But I know I must because there’s nothing else to do. I can go on because I’ve learned how to turn myself off. You know how to do that, don’t you, Jake? You can go on because you feel nothing. You can do a million things feeling nothing, Jake; a million. I know!” She held his arms hard, and he reached out to her.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  He winced, pulling back, but the wall behind him didn’t let him go any further. His shoulder boiled with pain.

  “You know it, Jake. And you know it’s no good.” She didn’t touch him, but all her intensity came into her voice. “I don’t want to do a million things that I can’t feel. I want one thing I can feel. And you do too, I know that from the way things went after we met. I want one thing I can feel, Jake. You.” She stopped, and when she said the rest the control in her voice pushed tears into her eyes. “Don’t you want me, Jake?”

  She was tearing him open. She was trying to come into his new life. He held on, closing his eyes as if the darkness were hurting them.

  “Not now Go away now. I’ll see you later.”

  “Jake, will you? Will you later?”

  “Get the hell out of here …”

  Her gasp stopped him. She had touched him again, to make sure he could feel her, and then she gasped when she felt the gun in his pocket.

  “No!” she said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  He found his voice the way he wanted to hear it It came even and smooth and sounded as if he were standing next to himself.

  “You know Keel, don’t you? He’s in the same business, and you know Keel. Why the shock all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t want Keel, I want you!”

  “I’m busy, Ann. Later … I know where you live,” he added, and it sounded very smooth to him, like in a movie.

  “Jake, please, come with me now. We can leave. We won’t be alone together, Jake, and that’s how we can leave, don’t you see that — ”

  “Later,” he said, like a record, because he couldn’t talk any other way And then he knew she was crying even though there was no sound, and before it tore him open again — he thought about this very clearly — he lifted his hand and hit her in the face.

  A big star of pain exploded in his shoulder, making him tremble. It kept bursting, next to him, it kept shining all the time he could hear her feet run
ning away and the way she breathed, running away down the road through the trees. He had reached such perfection in this that he walked to her car to make sure where she was. She had run past the car and down the road. Dickie would be at the main house with one or two friends and that’s where the girl was running; which was as expected. But her overnight bag was still in the car. She was hysterical right now; she’d come for it later. In the meantime — now, as a matter of fact, because the car and the girl would come in handy later — now for the business. It was a very small, surprisingly small matter to do this job now. That’s the advantage of this new technique. Turn himself off and do a million things. Of course, one at a time, and each one — by comparison — very small, even unimportant. He walked into the cabin.

  CHAPTER 25

  He left the lights off and walked into Loma’s room. He walked past Loma’s bed to the dresser, and picked up the comb that was lying there. He took that with him and walked out of Loma’s room.

  In the bathroom he turned on the light, to complete the enactment, and stood in front of the mirror with the comb in his hand. A clever thing, and so simple it had to work. It was nothing for Spinner to be in Loma’s room. He borrowed a comb. And the proof was that Loma had made no move. Had he been asleep? Very good. Had he been awake and done nothing? Very good.

  And now Spinner saw a man in the mirror and Spinner and the man stood looking at each other, one very calm face which showed nothing, then the mirror man’s arm raised to comb his hair. Spinner twitched just slightly from the grinding in his shoulder, so the mirror man dropped the comb because that wasn’t the thing to take back to Loma’s room anyway. Spinner watched the mirror man reach into his pocket and come out with the gun. He would take that back to Loma. The mirror man didn’t show what happened but Spinner’s pain hurt him badly. Any moment the set face in the mirror might show the pain. Spinner closed his eyes. Now only Spinner knew that there was a stiff grinding inside the shoulder, but before he would concentrate on himself — Walk, Spinner.

  He had the gun in his hand and walked back to Loma’s room. He should walk faster, because the pain glowed and it seemed harder to keep it to himself. Spinner walked into the room, then stopped in the dark because he couldn’t see. There was Loma on the bed, and Spinner stopped. It felt very dark around him, which made him feel safe. He would raise the gun, which was simple.