My Lovely Executioner

by Peter Rabe

  “I’m glad,” said Rand.

  I wasn’t holding his interest, and I hadn’t come to my point.

  “But before we can go any further with this, we have to go out there, go right out there into the field, and make a head-count customer survey.”

  “How well do you know that neck of the woods?” Rand wanted to know.

  “Like the palm of my hand. And what I don’t know about the lay of the land there, such as places and such which I might have forgotten,” I said for Rand’s benefit, “I would remember once I stood on the site.”

  “Did my brother ever …”

  “Tooley,” said Rand. “You and Gallivan can talk about your brother some more tomorrow. When we go out to the development.”

  “Oh! Yeah, sure.”

  “That is my idea,” I said to Rand. “To go out there and look the territory over.”

  It turned out that simple, and for one simple reason. Rand and I both wanted to go out to the lake. We both wanted to find the place where the dead Tooley had lived.

  The only hitch was that I had to keep my interest from him. Rand, I knew, had the same problem.

  CHAPTER 18

  We broke it up at ten in the evening and Tooley drove ahead of us to show the way to the place where we would sleep. There was no school ‘til morning and that was the time when we wanted to look Bowline Lake development over. It would be a daylight job, something Rand didn’t like, but Rand also didn’t like the way our conversation had been going. We sat next to each other without talk. We were both tired, and we were both trying to think. I had my problem, he had his.

  We didn’t drive far. Tooley stopped in a little street with old-fashioned, two-family houses. There were trees all along, and the street looked smalltown with snow under the lamplight. There were “Room for Rent” signs every so often, and the sign on our house said, “Rooms, for Respectable Gentlemen.”

  Neither Rand nor I made any comment about that. Such was the mood.

  There was a hall in boarding-house brown, and the usual double doors to the front room were open. This was a room of red plush and doilies with a little, old lady sitting there. But when we walked through the hall she didn’t turn around.

  Rand got one room and I got another. We had a connecting door and a fire escape outside our window. Tooley made a point of showing it to us.

  “But you don’t have to worry,” he said. “Something goes sour and you’ll know long ahead of time. Got a man in front, one in back, one down the block. Good night, fellers.”

  It reminded me that I was a convict.

  I sat on the bed and after a while, because the light in the ceiling was so depressing, I flipped the switch and sat in the dark. I could hear Rand in the next room. He went out once and came back in ten minutes. It was quiet in his room after that, but he wasn’t asleep. I heard the hiss of a match once, and later the soft thump when he killed the cigarette. Then the match hissed again.

  I would not have much room to move in the morning. I would have to watch every question they asked, every stretch of casual conversation, and if I should try to twist it around so I could learn something from them, I would have to watch it even more. And I would have to be careful of Rand. If I looked too long at one house, hesitated a little too long — Of course, I could do all those things to throw them off, but what I really needed to do was find the dead Tooley’s house. And with Rand watching me One in back, one in front, one at the end of the block, Tooley had said. Rand’s bed squeaked.

  The fire escape, I thought, would be the worst. What looks more suspicious than a man on a fire escape late at night.

  Rand hadn’t made a sound for a long time.

  The stairs were the nicest, the quietest stairs I had ever known and the only problem would be the old lady in her room with the double doors open. But maybe she would be afraid to ask where I was going. Maybe she didn’t care, or was deaf.

  I think she was deaf because she didn’t turn around this time either.

  And if one of the men outside asked me where in hell I was going I would tell him, for a walk. Why not a walk? I was born nervous.

  I only saw one of them. He sat in a car in an opposite driveway, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t make a move, either for or against Probably nobody had told him anything about a man coming out of the house, only the other way. Maybe he was all cued for a cop in uniform to walk up to the front door to ring the bell.

  Ten minutes later I reached a main drag and found a taxi.

  The cabby liked the trip to Bowline Lake because it was so far. He had been listening to the radio but he turned it off soon after I got into the back seat.

  “You live out there, buddy?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “The development?”

  He was worse than Tooley.

  “Yes, the development.”

  “What part, buddy?”

  “The part near the lake.”

  “Buddy, maybe you ain’t been home in a coupla years, but that development is too big for that kinda description.”

  I took a deep breath and thought that it would be easier talking to Tooley.

  “Just go to the north shore highway, where it joins the one coming from town, all right?”

  “You don’t mind my asking you all these questions, huh?”

  “I’m a little tired, is all.”

  “Because I live out there,” the cabby went on. “Because maybe you and me’s neighbors.”

  That would have been all I needed, I thought, but then I thought of something else.

  “Is that right?” I said. “Well, well, is that right? Where do you live out there?”

  “Bunny Lane. But not the new part, the old part.”

  “Did you say Bunny Lane?”

  “Yeah. Why you asking?”

  “It’s just — I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite so cute.”

  “We think so, too,” he said. “We kept that in mind with all the streets.”

  Then I brought up what I was after. I said, “I’m looking for one of the rural routes.”

  “Did you say rural routes?”

  “Yes. Why are you asking?”

  “Because we ain’t got rural routes, buddy. We got all them cute names.”

  “But I remember distinctly that the development …”

  “You ain’t been back a while, have you, buddy? We changed all that. We got all them cute names, I told you.”

  This was no help in trying to remember what rural route the dead Tooley had mentioned to me.

  “Yessir,” he told me. “We don’t like numbers. There was number two-oh-seven we made …”

  “That was a rural route number?”

  “I don’t know from rural route numbers, I’m talking about them little state highways out our way. Now, there was two-oh-seven got to be Sweet-pea Street, three-three-one got to be Donald Duck Drive, eighty-four became Riding Hood Road, even though there was some of us held out for the full name, which is Little Red Riding Hood. Even …”

  “Yes, I know that’s the full name. I …”

  “Even though there’s this ordinance says a street sign can’t be no longer than twenty-four inches whereas Little Red Riding Hood is a thirty incher any time.”

  “Hell, yes.”

  What it came down to, I would have to walk around out there myself and try as best as I could to remember the landmarks the dead Tooley had given me; that he could see the lake, that he could see a great, old elm tree. That wasn’t much, except that the place would have to be in the old part of the development, the part which had been there before I had left the scene.

  I got out where the lake made a corner, with one highway going on past the development and the other crossing over to follow the lake. After the taxi had gone it was very dark on the highway and the wind unpleasantly cold.

  I could hear the lake but I couldn’t see it I could hear the
wind in the big trees where the cottages followed the lake, and in the other direction I could see the neat row of lights from the one-family boxes which were lined up in the development The jog in all that neatness was the two-story building with the Bowline Bar on the ground floor.

  I used to walk over from the cottage and get beer there. Or I used to sit in the bar, Saturday afternoons, and watch the bulldozers make overtime and new streets where the new houses were going up one after the other. They were all pretty old houses now. Maybe some of them were even owned free and clear.

  I started to walk because I was cold. I think I kept walking for the next half hour because I had no idea what else to do. Find Tooley’s old place. Where?

  I walked back and forth in the development, once this way because the other direction was too new, once the other way because there were too many cars passing an intersection and I was afraid of being seen. I assumed all that time that I would be able to see the lake if there were daylight, even though I might only see a small sparkle of it, past the corner of someone’s garage, on the other side of somebody’s yard. I knew where the big elm would have to be, in the direction of the cottages by the lake. There were no other trees in this neighborhood. There were none at all in the development Had there been a big elm here before the bulldozers came, over seven years ago?

  There was a sameness in the straight streets, a sameness in the size of the houses, which made my task shapeless and vast The dead Tooley, counting white powder in grams, counting money in stacks, making black numbers in ledgers ruled with green lines, and once in a while looking out of a window where he could see the lake and a tree I felt stupid and helpless. And if I found the house, if I said eeny, meeny, miny, mo, that’s it over there, then what?

  Was it something in the basement, was it something behind a wall? If it was heroin, would it have to be a big, hefty box, to make them risk a prison break, risk the play on an ignorant man who didn’t know what he knew? I wasn’t sure if that would be worth their while. A few years of trading would surely have made up for the loss of a box full of heroin, even a hefty one. Did the stuff keep that long?

  The frozen slush on the street cracked with dry sounds while I was walking. The wind made my eyes water, because I was going back towards the lake. And I was sweating under my clothes.

  Then I stopped. I stopped for a breath and to wipe my eyes, and I noticed that the sweat hadn’t been just sheer nervousness. For the last stretch towards the lake I had been going uphill. The street made a gentle sweep down, in back of me, and when I saw a car pass on the highway ahead I noticed the lights going by at eye level. The lake was on the other side.

  There wasn’t a single place in the development where a man, sitting at a window, could have seen the lake!

  I stood there and had one crazy moment of feeling successful. No more walking around, worrying how to tell one house from the other, because there was no such house and I could stop looking.

  And everything for the past few days had been through the kindness of Rand, Jessie, Mishkin. And I had a three C’s per week job because I was such a hot junior executive.

  Something didn’t fit.

  Then I stood on the highway again and could see the dark mass where the old trees stood by the lake, and I could feel the wind whip at me straight over the lake.

  Tooley must have sat by the window in one of three places.

  There was the bar. There was a left-over farmhouse. There was a garage.

  I stood away from the red and green neon light over the Bowline Bar and could see the room through one of the windows. There were booths and there must be people sitting. There was a bartender walking across with a tray.

  The garage had no windows facing the lake, just the big door, which was locked now I was afraid to walk around the dark building and look into the side windows, but if that had been the dead Tooley’s place I imagined he would have to stand on a workbench next to one of the windows to look out at his view. The thought was ridiculous.

  If he had lived in the farmhouse, was there a window whose view of the lake wasn’t blocked by the bar? Or was there a place in back of the taproom where a man could have sat by the window —

  I put my collar up and walked. The nervousness made me short of breath.

  The farmhouse, dark now, was turned to look across the fields when there had been fields. The bar cut off the view to the lake.

  I crossed the parking space in front of the bar and saw a man looking out at me from the big window which had a curtain half way across. Maybe he wasn’t looking at me at all, but I got hot and cold with the doubt.

  I started to curse, and it got me over the hump. I started breathing again when I got to the corner and then I turned there because I had to know if there was a room in back of the bar where a man could see the lake and a big tree.

  I got a safe feeling of blackness once I had turned the corner and even the sound of the ice on the ground was a friendly sound.

  Then the light hit me like a fist, and if they did not see me they would see my shadow jump large across the whole brick wall and don’t run, I kept chattering, don’t run —

  The car stopped with a lot of noise, the doors opened and there was a great deal of laughter, and before the headlights went off somebody called, “It’s inside, peasant, and all automatic.”

  They laughed and went away. I walked like an automaton, which was the only way I could walk any more.

  There were three windows. One in the kitchen, I thought, and it looked out to the development. One in the toilet, but that didn’t count. The third one, to judge by the curtains, was a room where somebody might live. It looked at the back of the garage.

  Then I wanted to leave again. How important was this harebrained romp by the lake, with Rand back in town — suspicious; with the man in the bar — suspicious; with an all-state alarm — Well, unless I wanted to go out of my mind while Rand and Tooley and all of them picked my brains like a flock of vultures, this little trip was very important.

  I had to go into the bar, with the lights on and everyone looking. I had to talk to the bartender and hope that he didn’t remember me. I did hope he would remember if there had been another building around, something which had been torn down; or if the garage had been built recently. If that were the case, then Tooley’s fine view had come from the backroom window.

  Why risk it? Because in the morning I would have to know something. If I turned out useless to Rand and his bosses, I didn’t think they would want me alive.

  CHAPTER 19

  The man was still at the window and looking over the half curtain and he and I stood opposite each other for a while, he looking out, I looking in. He had a tall glass in his hand and he had trouble keeping his eyes open.

  I had known the bartender pretty good, summertimes, but the one behind the counter was somebody else. I went in.

  I had never been in the Bowline during the winter. An oil stove was rigged up in the middle and there was holly over the mirror behind the bar. There was no loud summer crowd in the small place, no sunburned week-enders buying cartons of beer. In the winter the place was a neighborhood bar, something settled, familiar, and not very exciting.

  I sat down at the bar, with my back to the booths, and looked in the mirror. I waited for the shock of recognizing somebody even though I knew that the three couples in the booths were strangers to me. I had looked at them when I had come in. Then the bartender came around to his side of the counter and I had my shock. He was young and must have been the son of the owner because he looked a little bit like Eddy who used to sell me the beer. But he wasn’t Eddy. I had seen that through the window. It had still come off with a shock. I was born nervous.

  “Something?” said the kid.

  “A shot Double shot, please.”

  “Any special …”

  “Just double.”

  He poured it out and asked if it was getting colder outside and I said, yes, like hell freezing over.

  “Why
don’t you stand by the stove for a while?” he asked me.

  I was dying to stand by the stove for a while, to get warm all the way through, to go straight to bed, to sleep far away —

  “I’ll have one more of these,” I said, and swallowed the first one.

  “You like that better than the stove, huh?” and he poured the second.

  I didn’t tell him to keep his cracks to himself, as I wanted. I would have to sit here a while and I would need conversation.

  “Does it ever get warm here, this neck of the woods?”

  “Woods?” He had pride in his neighborhood.

  “This, uh, area,” I told him.

  “You should see it in the summer,” he said. “We got a resort here.”

  “Gee. That’s nice. Must be nice living here. Not having to come out for the week end.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  We weren’t doing too well. I was talking more than he.

  “I wish I could see that lake daytimes,” I said. “Must be nice.”

  It was now his turn to say that you could see the lake from here, and the damnedest big elm, and that they used to have an old boarder in the backroom, watching that scene.

  “You a stranger around here?” he asked me.

  That was better than nothing. It was better than hearing him say, for instance, “You’re no stranger around here, are you, Mister Gallivan?”

  “Never been here before.”

  “Where you from?”

  “South. All the way south.”

  “I thought everybody had a tan down there. Florida, I mean.”

  “I’m not from Florida. I’m from Texas.”

  “Is that right? Hey, if you wanna meet a landsman of yours, you see that redhaired feller with the pretty girl there, the last booth there? I bet he’d like …”

  “No, never mind. I …”

  “I bet he’d be tickled to death, you know that? Only Texan around here I know of, and always complaining nobody speaks his kinda language and so on, just in fun, you understand, but always …”

  “Please. I really don’t feel like it. Another shot, though. This time single.”