My Lovely Executioner

by Peter Rabe

  “He still out?” he asked after a while.

  She looked back and said, “Yes.”

  “So tell me. You got nothing?”

  “I’m punk, so why ask?”

  “Oh for chrissake, don’t take on, will ya?”

  “No,” she said. “I got nothing out of him. He won’t give.”

  “Just like you, huh?”

  “Rand, leave me alone, will you please?”

  He looked over to her briefly and then I think he gave a pat to her thigh.

  “Take it easy, honey. And just stick to coffee. All right?”

  I could see her nod. I also thought that had been damn nice of Rand the way he laid off. He had done more, as a matter of fact He had encouraged the girl.

  “No,” she had said. “I got nothing out of him.”

  But that wasn’t true. I had made it very clear to her, on the porch, that I knew they were trying to pump me for something.

  But she said nothing about that She and Rand didn’t talk for the rest of the trip, except once more. Jessie said, “You think he’s going to be very angry — about me?”

  “Well — you know what’s at stake for him.”

  “God, he frightens me.”

  “Yeah. He ain’t pretty,” said Rand.

  This meant very little to me. At first I had thought they were talking about me again, but that didn’t fit, not with the emotion they showed, or held back. But they were talking about someone on top, though I felt certain they did not mean Mishkin.

  I sat up after that. It didn’t stop any conversation because they had stopped anyway. We drove back to the sanatorium as if we didn’t know each other. The building stood big and white in the park and if it had not been cold because of the season, the sight would have made it so.

  • • •

  I had a few hours sleep and then Rand woke me and we left again.

  It could have been a plain, bleak day, because of the thick-clouded light and because of the night before. But there was not time for the careful coasting through the hangover hours. There was no time for gently suffering through a gray day until the weather might change. Very soon now they would find out that I knew less than they, unless I suddenly managed to know —

  We drove most of the afternoon. The latter part of the trip Rand went more slowly because traffic got heavier and because he didn’t want to drive into town in full daylight.

  “Recognize it?” he said.

  I looked at him and saw that he was pointing.

  “You said you used to live here,” he said.

  “Yuh. I recognize it.”

  “Nervous? You seem nervous, Gallivan.”

  “Rand,” I said, “I was born nervous.”

  He laughed and said he didn’t think so, he thought I was pretty steady most of the time and was just feeling the hangover. Otherwise, steady as a rock.

  “Yuh. Like a rock. Like a rock bouncing down the side of a ravine. You ever notice how nervous that looks?”

  “All I know is about liquor, and believe me, Gallivan, I never saw anyone put it away like you did.”

  “I don’t remember a thing.”

  “It’ll come back to you.”

  He smiled to himself and I lit a cigarette. The cigarette made me think of Jessie. Then something else stung me, and though I didn’t know where it would lead, I asked him.

  “Remember what, Rand?”

  “What?”

  “Yes. What.”

  “I meant the party,” he said, but I thought he looked at me just a little too long and then it came back to me.

  Did I remember what I had told him about Tooley in the yard, that day when the sun was shining and we looked at the cons playing baseball?

  I remembered it now because of the scene outside which was all very familiar to me. I knew the roads, the skyline, where to turn off the highway to get into Yorkdam a little bit faster. That day, in the yard, I had felt sentimental, which had been the reason why I had talked to Rand. I told him about Tooley and me, reminiscing the night before in the cell.

  It hadn’t been reminiscing at first, but bragging. Tooley did that sometimes, as long as nobody could catch him up on it. He had said how cautious he had been all his life, why, most of the time, he had said, his buddies and even closest associates hadn’t known all there was to know about him. Such as where he lived. Good precaution, he had said, when in a dangerous business.

  Then he had said that he also enjoyed the privacy of it, the plain and simple privacy, with a view of a lake, a big tree in the distance, maybe, that kind of thing. I used to have a place on a lake, I told him, Bowline Lake, a little cottage for week ends.

  Tooley knew Bowline Lake, it turned out, and that’s how we spent the rest of the long evening, talking about that miserable lake which was nothing really, except that it was in the past and not in prison.

  Once he even got carried away into details, about the kind of view he had had, the road he used to take most of the time, which was a rural route going towards a new development, and I remembered all that because I knew the lake.

  And feeling sentimental, which means there was nothing good in my present life, I told all that to Rand.

  In retrospect, there seemed no question that Rand had taken the subject up. Did Tooley say he used to live out there? — Sometimes. Did he say when? — I don’t remember. Did he say where? — No. Not exactly. Exactly what did he say?

  If Tooley had mentioned an address, I had told Rand, then I had forgotten it, but I knew the lake pretty good, I had said, and if I ever wanted to visit Tooley out at the lake — one of those weird thoughts, since he wasn’t going to live very much longer — then I might very well find it.

  That had been half a year before the break. It had taken them half a year to set up that break because I knew, or could find, Tooley’s house.

  That’s why I was important.

  We splashed through the town where the salt had made mud out of the snow. We passed the big building where I used to work. We passed the big building where I had stood trial. It was also the building where I had been married. But I hardly remembered about that, and I wished I could have been as finished with several other things. I was wishing again. I sat cursing under my breath because this was not a wishing game. This was no game of any sort, and I cursed that fact into myself.

  There was less traffic where Rand drove us now, and fewer lights. We went into the fringe of the factory section, with small machine shops, trucking depots, and boarded-up stores. We turned into a long drive with a giant brick wall on one side and a tall wire fence on the other, and at the end of the drive was a building. The building was dark on the inside, except for one light, but I could see the sign when the headlights ran over it Laundry, it said. There had to be a laundry in all this.

  “To make me feel more at home?” I said to Rand.

  He finished killing the motor and lights and yanking the brakes up, and then he didn’t know what I was talking about I had to explain to him about the laundry.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “Does it bother you?”

  Obviously, it didn’t bother him, and I envied him. I envied him and I admired him, and if I had to lead a life like this one I would want to be like Rand. Except there was no “if” about the life I was in. It could even be the death of me.

  “You coming, Gallivan?”

  It smelled moist inside and the rows of silent drums, dryers, and the white-chalked boiler in back, all that was badly familiar. The only difference here, they used something in their detergent which smelled like citronella.

  Our steps made an echo, and the building looked as if it were underground because there was only one light in the back. The light was in the office, and Tooley sat there.

  He looked like the dead Tooley, only younger. He had the same vapid grin on his face and gave the same impression of a lewd old man. I disliked him immediately.

  He got up from behind the small desk, gave Rand a pat on the arm, a
nd then he shook my hand as if that was the way he got his kicks.

  “Gee, am I glad to meet you, Gallivan.”

  He would be the kind who said “gee,” meaning, “to hell with you, mac.”

  We sat down in his beaverboard office and he pointed to a hot plate on top of a file.

  “Coffee, fellers? I kept it hot just for you.”

  I didn’t want coffee. It suddenly reminded me of Jessie.

  “Gallivan here,” said Rand, “has been getting the twenty-four-hour treatment from Mishkin, as you know, and ought to be able to talk business without any more briefing. Besides, he’s smart,” Rand added.

  I took that the way it was meant, a meaningless introduction, though it might have been a message to Tooley to treat all this carefully. Then I started right in.

  “The way I get it,” I said to Tooley, “You deliver on a four-hundred-per cent mark-up — or profit — and Mishkin wants more. He wants more, but no price change.”

  I wanted to set the tone, the excuse being that I was a junior executive, the reason being, “to hell with you, Tooley.”

  “Gee,” he said, “lemme talk to you fellers first, you know, friendly You know, I’m happy to see you guys out. Really happy. And you and me, Gallivan, we must have a long talk about my poor brother, sometime. You must have gotten to know him good, huh, in his last hours?”

  “His last hours,” I said, “he spent in a special block, but I heard he ordered hot dogs for that meal they get for a fare-thee-well.”

  “Gee.”

  “Yuh. That goes to show something. Now, Mishkin explained to me — and stop me if I’m wrong — that Yorkdam lies in the center of a six-section matrix which breaks down your delivery problems. Just on the basis of desk work, and I don’t hold much …”

  He didn’t give me a chance to go on, but this was the pitch I would have to take to do this job right, I’ll have to do field work. This field work, for my purposes, would have to take me out to that lake.

  And I hoped I would remember enough to triangulate the house which old Tooley had talked about At that point I didn’t even speculate on what might be there. I just had to find the house first.

  But he interrupted with “gee” again, and how wonderful it was to see us fellers out, which seemed to be his chosen way of breaking the ice. Even Rand looked a little bit pained.

  “I thought there’d be some more people here,” I said, “your lieutenants, so to speak, because there are a few concrete things I’d like to ask about the various sectors.”

  “Well, yes,” said Tooley, “that’s what I had in mind too, at first, but then I got to thinking about you fellers just being out and I thought maybe a party …”

  “We had a party,” said Rand.

  “And it didn’t pan out,” I said.

  I didn’t think Rand took note of that, but I would have to watch this kind of remark, I decided. This was not the time for private kicks.

  “So we might as well talk some more here,” said Rand. “How about you taking the ball, Tooley. You know what this is all about.”

  Rand, I knew, hadn’t said that for kicks either, but because he didn’t think there was any reason to watch his remarks in front of me. This was fine. It gave me a fine sense of safety.

  “Well sir,” said Tooley. “We been getting along good, of course, but if Mishkin wants better, we’ll do better. Our motto, kind of. Eh, Rand?”

  “Yes,” said Rand.

  “Now, when my brother was here,” said Tooley, “the territory wasn’t divided up quite this way, but he managed a four-hundred margin easy. Of course, prices were different then, but …”

  “We don’t want the price changed,” I reminded him, and I thought the “we” sounded just fine for the touch I wanted. It was front office visiting the territories. Then I added the informed type of touch and said, “We don’t feel that the suckers should be squeezed any more, because it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Just enough of them are going to crack under it and that means cop attention with all those cold turkeys running around. For that reason I don’t advise raising prices.”

  I think even Rand looked impressed. He cleared his throat and went to get himself coffee from the hot plate on top of the file. Tooley said,

  “Why, yes — of course. Uh, what I was going to say was — ”

  “You were talking about your brother,” Rand reminded him.

  “Ah, yes. Well, I mentioned him for an example. I was going to say, he had a funny system of pushers which we never quite figured out, and even if you disge — disre — even if you forget about the bigger prices then, he did get more out of just paying less in expenses.”

  I thought I’d cut the ground right out from under him and said, “You can account for that just by the difference in wages paid then and now. So there’s nothing to figure.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute — ”

  He gave a very quick look in Rand’s direction but I did catch how helpless it was.

  “Mishkin thinks,” said Rand, “there was more to it. That his brother here,” and he nodded at Tooley, “might have had some kind of system. Better system than now.”

  That way he put Tooley on the track again, and now it was Tooley’s turn. He went back to his formula.

  “Gee, my poor brother,” with that sickening smile of his. “It hurts me, kind of, to be talking of him just with business in mind, you know, Gallivan? What’s your first name, Gallivan?”

  “James.”

  “Jimmy. Let me call you Jimmy.”

  “Go ahead. About the …”

  “I was the kid brother, you know? His kid brother. And he and I used to talk a lot. Used to tell me everything. He was that way. But you know that, Jimmy. You and him used to talk a lot, I bet Huh, Jimmy?”

  “No.”

  “No? I bet you just don’t remember. I bet, being out now and all, you just don’t want to think back. But you gotta think of my dead brother different, Jimmy. You gotta think how you and him, in the same lonesome cell there, how you and him made things easier for yourselves talking. What you talk about mostly?”

  Rand was getting edgy. That Tooley idiot was being a little too artless.

  To answer him, I said, “Sex.”

  Tooley giggled. Then he said, “Yessir, haha, that’s important too. And what else? Did he ever tell you about the time he lived around here? He must have, seeing you and him come from the same place.”

  Careful. A simple “No” wouldn’t do now Rand was standing there with the cup to his mouth as if he wasn’t listening, but he knew that the dead Tooley and I had talked about Bowline Lake.

  “Well, we talked about fishing …”

  “Fishing?” said Tooley. “My brother never went fishing.”

  Rand lowered the cup. He kept his eye on it, but I went stiff and shivery with the gesture. I seemed to take a hell of a long time before I came up with the simple answer.

  “We talked about fishing because I like fishing,” and then, being nervous, I went too far. “I used to fish Bowline Lake.”

  “Oh yeah?” Tooley smiled. “I bet my brother liked to talk about that.”

  “Well, no. As you said, fishing didn’t mean anything to him.” But it didn’t work. We were now on the subject.

  “I meant the lake. He liked that lake, you know. He ever tell you about the times he spent on that lake?”

  “Fishing?”

  “No. What I mean is, he lived there. Didn’t he tell you?”

  I was stuck with it and said, “Yes, he told me he lived near that lake.”

  “Where?” Tooley asked, with a lot of greed in his manner.

  “Tooley,” said Rand, talking slowly and with care, “you’ve got to remember, Tooley, that Gallivan and I don’t like to talk about prison too much. Not so much that it sticks out, you understand me? And besides, we came here on business.”

  “Oh yeah, yeah. The business. Gimme a cup of that coffee, will you, Rand? Fine. That’s enough,” and while he fussed
around with the coffee subject, trying to get his bearings, I got my own.

  They want to talk about the lake? I want to talk about the lake.

  “He mentioned this to me,” I said, “when we had one of our talks. Now, at the time it didn’t mean much to me, because I lacked background, but since my sessions with Mishkin, I feel this might be important.”

  Tooley’s ears were getting pointed, he was listening so hard. And Rand put his cup down. But he slopped it.

  “You know the Bowline development?” I asked Tooley.

  “Huh?”

  “There’s a development out by that lake,” said Rand. “For chrissakes, Tooley, do you know your territory or don’t you?” I don’t think he liked Tooley any better than I did.

  “Yes, of course, hehe. I was just — Anyway, go on, Jimmy.”

  “What your brother mentioned to me didn’t bear directly on our problem, which is cutting overhead. At least there was no bearing at the time.”

  “Wait a minute, Jimmy. You were saying …”

  “Just go on, Gallivan,” said Rand, “while Tooley shuts up for a while, please?”

  Tooley shut up and I played it my way.

  “Your brother pointed out how that end of the area wasn’t covered at all. No customers at all, that he knew of. At that time they were just starting to build a big high school there,” I kept improvising, “which must be finished by now and full of a hell of a lot of students.”

  “Was this about high school you were talking about?” Rand wanted to know.

  “Let me finish. He wanted to make dough out that way, but of course he got nabbed before the development was halfway finished.” And for the sake of Rand’s interest I threw in, “Your brother, Tooley, knew that section well, because as you know, he lived around there.”

  “Where?”

  “You know where he lived. He was your brother. I was saying: We want to cut overhead, we don’t want to raise prices. What’s one simple answer to that? Find more customers. With the same crew you got now — and I’ve got some details in mind which could make all this real — you just add territory to the business you got.”

  Tooley looked at Rand and said, “You know he’s got something there?”