My Lovely Executioner

by Peter Rabe

  I stayed and opened the map again. Then I folded it. I put the cigarette out because it started to taste like hot sawdust in my mouth.

  I had once drifted into a slapstick crime, then through a gray, seven years, then into a movie-type escape, and now — I was going to keep drifting the way the wind blew, if I didn’t remember pretty soon how a man uses his head, arms, legs, and so forth.

  And how do you use head, arms, legs and so forth with but fifty bucks to your credit and an all-state alarm to your discredit? You use connections. Of which I had only one. Rand came into the room and closed the door.

  “No good,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t give money to strangers, he told me. My boss.”

  “You asked him for money?”

  Rand nodded and then I wanted to say the normal thing, “That was damn white of you, Rand, to go and ask that for me.” Instead, I said, “Did you tell him why? That I might haul the dragnet all over you?”

  “That’s why he wants to see you,” said Rand, and he opened the door for me to come with him.

  I could smell it before it had happened. But what else was there to do?

  CHAPTER 13

  We walked down the corridor and at one point that sharp bell I had heard once before tore loose and right through me. I stopped and so did Rand, but only to wait for me. The bell stopped very quickly and I didn’t feel like asking about it. That would have been something like asking a hangman, for instance, to be especially careful with the noose because I don’t like rope-burns.

  The boss’ name was Mishkin and he stuck out of his leather chair the way a round mushroom grows out of the ground. Mishkin was fat and white and made no effort to get up.

  “The one I told you about,” said Rand.

  “Sit down, Gallivan.”

  I sat next to his desk, and then Mishkin and I waited ‘til Rand had left the room.

  “You’re strapped, is that right?” said Mishkin. He panted when he talked.

  “Yes. You might say that, Mister Mishkin.”

  “And in more than one way, huh?”

  “You might say that too, Mister Mishkin.”

  “Stop calling me Mister Mishkin like that, Gallivan. You don’t make it sound right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Just Mishkin is fine.”

  “Fine, Mishkin.” And then I wanted to know why he wanted to see me. “I don’t want to take your time, but …”

  “Better than something else, Gallivan. What made you think you and fifty bucks could slip a five state alarm?”

  “Interest, Mister Mishkin. I’m highly interested in it.”

  “Stupidity, I’d call it.”

  “I’ve learned a lot, just in a few days.”

  “Rand was wet-nursing you.”

  “I know that And I don’t want that to go on, Mister Mishkin.”

  “If you want to get along with me, Gallivan, then stop saying …”

  “I’m sorry. It’s a form of respect, where I come from.”

  “You mean seven years ago.”

  “Prison too. The screws always insisted …”

  He gave me a look that stopped me from going too far. I felt keyed up and had to talk this way. And besides, I thought it would show me a lot — with nothing but suspicions to go on — if I could gauge just how much he would take before throwing me out.

  He said, “You remember how it was seven years ago, huh?”

  “I was in business. Very polite, everything.”

  “What in hell do you think this is, Gallivan, if it isn’t business.”

  “But not polite.”

  He took a lot, I thought. He didn’t answer but was busy hunting a cigarette. When he had it in his mouth it looked very tiny in front of his fat face.

  “Junior executive, isn’t that right? You were on sales territories?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Rand told me.”

  “Yes. I was on territories at the time.”

  “The time you shot the guy out of your wife’s bed, you mean?”

  “That’s the time I mean, Mister Mishkin.”

  “I never heard anything so stupid in my life,” said Mishkin.

  “But I would never do it again.”

  “I hope you learned something, in the meantime.”

  “Seven years of college.”

  “But don’t talk, Gallivan, like you were still in.”

  “The reason why I’m trying to make distance. And the reason …”

  “I don’t give money to strangers.”

  “Yes. Rand told me. But the reason …”

  “You want a job?”

  Just like that.

  “How come you give jobs to strangers, Mister Mishkin?”

  He took it and settled back to explain. Maybe he took all of it, my tone, my intention, because he was fat and not very sensitive.

  “On a job you wouldn’t be such a stranger, Gallivan, because I’d be watching. On a job you also wouldn’t be zigzagging across the countryside with the dicks on your tail, and me not watching. And on a job you could make yourself three C’s a week. Do that for maybe two weeks, is all, and with that kind of dough I could then steer you out so nobody innocent around here gets hurt.”

  “A two-week job?”

  “You can do it I’m thinking of what you used to do in the past.”

  “That’s right. Rand told you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, Mister Mishkin. I couldn’t do that,” I said.

  Then I sat back. I leaned forward once to take a cigarette off his desk, but for the rest I sat back, waiting.

  I should have given this kind of answer before. In the yard, in the truck, limousine, hotel, car, jail, van, all along the line. But how could I have said, “No, don’t save me — ”

  “I can’t let you walk out of here,” said Mishkin. “Don’t you know that, Gallivan?”

  And that was, I’m sure, the answer Rand would have given me, all along the line.

  “You thinking about it?” he asked me.

  He had very small eyes, because of the fat, and it was hard to tell which way he was looking.

  “If you’re not,” he said, “you’re wasting time.” He dragged on the cigarette, then talked with the clouds of smoke coming out. “You should be thinking about being out of prison, being out before your time was up, being green and without any connections, about not everybody every day getting a job offered to him, for three C’s per week.”

  “What I was thinking about, Mister Mishkin, is how come I rate such a job.”

  “Two reasons.” He was very quick. “Rand recommended you and I’m stuck.”

  I didn’t argue it If he was lying, he’d lie more. If he wasn’t lying, I would want the job.

  I would want the job anyway — I would want the first, fastest way I could find to get out from under and to learn my way. There was a herd of cons back in the bucket who would give their eye teeth for this deal. Including me.

  “If I can handle the job,” I said the way I had learned it in business school, “I’ll be happy to take your offer.”

  After that he did get up out of his chair because he needed stuff from his file. One file had the bottle and glasses, another one had stacks of folders. He pulled out one and together with the whiskey and glasses he took it back to the desk. He guided himself into the chair and then he said I should pour us some whiskey.

  “First job I ever been on where you drink during hours,” I told him.

  “You’re a liar.”

  Then we each had a drink. I wanted another one right away but that could wait.

  They wanted me badly. They wanted me badly enough to dream up a job for the purpose. And if I wanted to make it in the end, I needed money. And if I wanted to make it at all, saying no to them would be the worst thing I could do. Mishkin, in spite of double talk and a business man’s caution, had made that clear. “I can’t let you walk out of here, Gallivan,” he had sa
id. “Don’t you know that?”

  I knew that well now. The whole thing had started with breakfast, which had been the build-up for this, and the reason I felt more settled was because the doubt was now over. If I wanted to make it in the end, I’d have to fill in on two questions: Why did they want me? And why didn’t they just ask?

  CHAPTER 14

  “What’s the job?” I asked Mishkin.

  “Distribution.”

  “Ah. What I used to do.”

  “Same problems.”

  “I used to worry about distributing soap.”

  “Not soap this time. Dope.”

  Even that made not too much difference right then. Maybe later, but right then it seemed natural, even preordained, that I should do the filthiest job with the coolest methods.

  “I know nothing about the merchandise,” I told him.

  “I hope not,” said Mishkin. “Besides, you’ll never have to touch the poison.”

  “I never saw the soap either,” I said.

  This cheered him up. He took another finger or so out of the bottle and after he had poured it into his throat he went smack-smack with his lips.

  “The problem is,” he said and started fanning pages around in the folder. “The problem is money.”

  “I thought you couldn’t lose with that merchandise,” I said. “I thought the demand came from a captive audience.”

  “If you’re gonna run something like a business, Gallivan, then don’t let the fact that you’re making money stop you. Understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Try hard. Or you’ll never be anything but a junior executive.”

  “Do you have a man handling the territory now?”

  “Just a makeshift. Al Tooley isn’t much good, but whether I get somebody better or not, it’s your job to dream up a better distributing system.”

  “I knew a Paul Tooley once.” I said this very mildly.

  “You did? Sounds like Al’s brother. You knew him?”

  “Didn’t Rand tell you?”

  Rand, he said, hadn’t told him, but my Tooley, who was now in the electric chair heaven, did turn out to be the brother of his Tooley, who had been running some territory for distributing dope.

  But Mishkin wasn’t interested in talking about that, only I was. I didn’t talk about it, either, but I was still interested.

  “Here’s the problem,” Mishkin explained. “Big H has the longest chain of jobbers and middlemen in the history of merchandising. That can’t be helped, because of the cops. Anyway, there they are. The thing is, with such a long line of middlemen we got an efficiency problem. Not that the stuff doesn’t get to the market quick enough, but that we got too many expenses.”

  “You made that point, first thing.”

  “The point I make now is, where can we cut down the chain, but not the efficiency?”

  “In this case, when you say efficiency that includes safety, I gather.”

  “Yeah. You gathered that fine. Safety from the law.”

  “Let me ask you this.” I caught myself leaning back, one leg over the other, eyes up to the ceiling, with the bright, absorbed tone of voice of the old-time junior executive who, while wise and seasoned, is forever and boyishly eager to learn. “This middleman chain,” I kept at it, “is that an organizational set-up which is standardized all over the nation?”

  “Of course.”

  Now the trick with the leg down, both of the feet firmly planted, the hand on the desk, to demonstrate more firmness, and the gaze down from the ceiling and leveled straight at the boss — done with thinking and ready for action.

  “Maybe that’s your problem right there, Mister Mishkin. Yessir, that’s it and right there!”

  “What was that?”

  “Let me put it this way. What’s good enough for Macy’s — what’s the name of the other one?”

  “You mean Livingstone?”

  “Of course. And what’s good enough for Gimbel’s isn’t necessarily good enough for Stanley. You follow?”

  “No,” said Mishkin.

  “If you show me a specific territory, like Tooley’s, maybe I’ll find that the national pattern doesn’t fit this special case too well.”

  “Good head,” said Mishkin.

  “So, if you’ll show me some data, maybe something will come of this.”

  He showed me data. He asked me to come around to his side of the desk, he spread out the things from the folder, and we looked at the figures which told how the Big H was distributed in Tooley’s territory.

  It was a very masterful thing and I doubted if it could be improved upon. But in any specific case, in any set-up where a paper plan is translated into actual motions, there is always a chance to make little changes, and if worded correctly, they can be called improvements.

  I knew that, and I think Mishkin knew that. It would give me a chance to look big, it would give Mishkin a chance to keep me around. He knew that.

  So the job was a fake.

  But it was important enough to risk showing me data which could have promoted a cop on the beat to commissioner, if he had these papers. Though they weren’t entirely careless. Names of pushers and agents were given in numbers and amounts of heroin were given in some kind of standard units. Maybe I could have memorized things like that, but I wasn’t a narcotics agent Besides, why would Mishkin assume I would do such a thing. He was offering me a job. He was doing this for a con on the lam, a patsy without any connections, a confused innocent whose professionalism went no further than having committed one comic crime.

  We talked a while, and it got to be like a real conference.

  Then I said, “I may have to see this territory, Mishkin. At least the central town.”

  “I expect you to, Gallivan.”

  “What’s the name of it?”

  “Yorkdam.”

  I put one hand on top of the other and sat that way for a moment. “Yorkdam,” I said.

  “Yeah. You know the town? That would help, if you knew the town.”

  That was a fine, ugly quirk.

  I took just a half-jigger of whiskey and sipped it slowly. I was licking it, more than anything else.

  I said, “I don’t think my knowing the town is going to be of much help. I know the town well enough to be known by everybody in it.”

  “Used to live there?”

  “And got arrested there.”

  He grunted something and thought for a while, but then he explained there wouldn’t be any disadvantage. I wouldn’t be walking all over town and I would only be seeing a few people who had to do with the job. A talk here, a talk there, and all of it done very carefully. Being an ex-con, he said, should be the least of my worries.

  Maybe he was more realistic than I. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that the job was a fake.

  “Will I get to see Tooley?”

  “You mean Al?”

  “Who else. The other one is dead.”

  “That’s right. Yes,” said Mishkin. “You’ll talk to him.”

  He picked up a ballpoint, made some marks on the papers, and then he clicked the point in and out “May even be an advantage,” he said, “You knowing the other one.”

  “The dead one.”

  “Yeah. He used to be in that area, before we reorganized.”

  “Working for you?”

  “No. Sort of with. That was before we reorganized. Didn’t he ever tell you?”

  Just like that, smooth and simple.

  “No,” I said. “He didn’t.”

  “I never been in prison,” he said. “I don’t know what cons talk about, all day.”

  “We work all day.”

  “All night then.”

  “Sex.”

  “Oh.”

  He dropped it and we worked for a while. For a fake job there certainly was a lot of concrete detail and it didn’t take any effort to get the feel of a very real business problem. It was so easy in fact, that only the merchandise — which was never me
ntioned by its real name — kept the job from being commonplace but instead cast a nightmare quality over all our dry, reasonable discussion.

  We took a two-hour break for lunch, which I ate with Rand and Jessie. Mishkin ate someplace else. Rand wanted to know if I’d gotten the job and Jessie managed a smile once, when she said, “That’s nice.”

  Something was riding her. She was cold, she was hard, she showed the indifference of having been at it — at something — for a good, long time. But that didn’t fit a number of things. It didn’t fit a small remark she had made, wishing to help me, it didn’t fit the big, naked fear she had shown at the cell in the station. And the last thing she had done — or had tried to do — had been the thing with the money. Did she want me to go?

  “How long is the job going to take you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet Mishkin thinks a week or two.”

  “That’s good dough,” said Rand.

  “Yuh. I feel better already.”

  “The way things keep breaking for you,” said Rand.

  “I’ve got a guardian angel.”

  “I’d like one, sometime,” said Jessie.

  “I think they’d be afraid of you.”

  Rand left the room at that point, which gave an unnecessary emphasis to what I had said, because there was such a long pause after it. The door closed with a small snap and I wished I were sitting with someone else, Mishkin for instance.

  “Jessie?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry I said that before.”

  She nodded and said, “Yes. I wish you hadn’t said it.”

  “I’m sorry. We just don’t get along.”

  She smiled and made a small shrug. “We don’t really try, do we?”

  “Too many other problems.”

  “I was going to say the same thing.”

  We looked at each other and I think we both wished the other would say something else and not stop here, but nothing happened. I was the first to cave under the silence and got up. I said that Mishkin was waiting for me and I’d better get going.

  “See you around,” she said, but the tough little phrase didn’t fit her any more.

  CHAPTER 15

  Mishkin explained operations to me in a great deal of detail and he supplied some of the names which were missing from the papers on his desk. I’d be dealing with those people. Once I knew how to reorganize the set-up in the territory where Yorkdam was, I would have to explain it to the others.