Pest Control

by Bill Fitzhugh

  As he paused, a lyric caught his ear, “Do you take me for such a fool?…”

  Maybe Bob Dillon was exactly what his file said, an exterminator with a lower-case e. But if that were true, how to explain that kill in Istanbul, and the Madari and Pescadores assassinations, and Riviera, and the ten-million-dollar bounty on Bob’s head?

  Wolfe absentmindedly fast-forwarded the tape and let it stop at random on another song. “He’s not selling any alibis…” the troubadour sang in his nasal voice. “How does it feel?”

  Why would Riviera offer ten million dollars for an exterminator with a lower-case e?”

  “How does it feel?”

  Just then, a ten-million-watt light bulb flashed above Wolfe’s otherwise dim head.

  “To be on your own?”

  Wolfe grabbed the Dillon folder and headed down the hallway with great resolve.

  “With no direction home?”

  He heaved Bob’s file through a shredder and took the stairs two at a time down to the basement.

  “A complete unknown.”

  He blew into the Munitions Room, stepped up to the counter, flashed his ID, and checked out a sniper rifle.

  “Like a rolling stone…”

  Chapter Sixty-six

  As the cab pulled to the curb on Putnam Avenue, deep in BedStuy, Klaus gave Bob the final word on the negotiation techniques for the acquisition of a murder weapon.

  “Dicker,” he said.

  He handed Bob 200 dollars and urged him onto the sidewalk. Confessing that he didn’t know a forty-five magnum from Magnum P.I., Bob asked Klaus if he wouldn’t mind going.

  “First of all,” Klaus said as he leaned out the window of the cab, “I am not going any farther without a gun. Secondly, you seem better able to take care of yourself on the streets of this Godforsaken city than I do. Finally, my Kurdish friend and I are at a crucial point in our discussion of the atrocities committed by Abd al-Hamid II prior to his overthrow by the Young Turks.”

  “Fine,” Bob said in a snit. “But don’t blame me if I pay too much.” Bob turned away from the car just as a loud noise erupted from around the corner. He rounded the block and saw a half dozen gangstas wearing wraparound sunglasses and faces that would have been at home in Attica. Bob watched one of them complete a transaction with someone in a car that quickly pulled away from the curb.

  That’s when they noticed Bob standing at the other end of the street, his lily-white face standing out like an intelligent comment on Rush Limbaugh’s show. For a moment Bob considered running, but he forced himself to stay rooted to the ground. He had stumbled across exactly what he was looking for—a group of ambitious young men working outside the conventional framework of the free enterprise system.

  Bob went to take a step forward but his shoe was stuck in something. He imagined a large pink wad of chewing gum, but looking down he saw the reddish-brown goop in which he was standing wasn’t someone’s Bubble Yum, rather it was a day-old pool of coagulated blood spilling across the head of a chalk outline of a human body.

  Bob saw several Northern House Mosquitoes (Culex pipiens) supping at the edge of the pool, their abdominal segments marked with broad yellowish-white bands. Their apical bands identified them as female vectors of St. Louis encephalitis.

  Bob’s shoe made a sticky sucking sound as it pulled from the congealed glop and moved toward the booming urban symphony that played up ahead.

  The gangstas passed a 40-ounce malt liquor as the sonic booms and inflammatory lyrics issued from their ghetto blaster. The vocalist—which stretched the term somewhat—labored to rhyme “no peace” with “po-lice” and “dis the mutha” with “beat my luvva.”

  Bob sidestepped a second pool of blood as he approached, then stopped a few feet away and made eye contact with the largest and most dangerous looking member of the gang. He attempted what he thought was a cool head gesture indicating he wanted to talk. It worked. The large gentleman descended the steps, got uncomfortably close to Bob’s face, and amiably inquired of the nature of Bob’s visit.

  “Yo! What you doin’ in my neighborhood, muthafucka?”

  Given the afternoon’s events, this guy wasn’t terribly intimidating. Bob noticed that one of the man’s front teeth had a shiny gold star imbedded in it. “Yo,” Bob said, “nice piece of dental work, Jim.”

  The gang leader was taken aback by Bob’s confidence. Anyone who wasn’t scared at this point was either armed or had money and wanted to buy something. “Yeah, well fuck you, punk ass faggot! You want somethin’ or what?”

  Bob looked around and lowered his voice. “Uh, I’m lookin’ to buy a couple of pieces, you know?”

  “A coupla pieces o’ what? Rock? You want some fuckin’ rock, white boy?” The others hooted and laughed while Bob explained that he wanted a gun.

  “Oh, you wanna get strapped, huh? Whatcho want, somthin’ like a A-K or a TEC-9? That’s some live shit, muthafucka. Are you down with that?”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Bob said feebly.

  “You must be a cop! You look like a muthafuckin’ cop to me. And you know what? We don’t much like cops here in the ‘hood!” The gold tooth turned to the gentleman at the controls of the high-fidelity system. “Yo, Easy-D! Let’s have a oldie-goldie. Put on the Ice-T about how we do muthafuckin’ cops!”

  The music director complied with the request and put on “Cop Killer.”

  Bob tried to remain cool in light of the not so thinly veiled death threats. “A cop? Me? Heck no,” Bob said. “If I was a cop, I’d already have a gun, wouldn’t I?” Bob smiled a nervous smile. “No, the deal is, well, I got a bunch of assassins after me. It’s a helluva mess and, well, I really do need a gun.”

  The gold star peeked out from the middle of a grin. “Yeah, alright, punk! I might have something. How much money you got?”

  Bob was caught off guard. He hadn’t expected it to be this easy. “Really? Uh, I’ve got 50 bucks. What can you do for me?”

  “Oh, yeah? You got 50 bucks? Fuck you then! I ain’t got nothin’ for 50 muthafuckin’ bucks, punkassmuthafucka!”

  Bob laughed nervously and considered his next gambit. “What did I say, 50 bucks? No, I’ve got a hundred. What can you do for a hundred?”

  “I’ll tell you what I can do for you. I can kill yo skinny white ass for a hundred bucks, that’s what!”

  Bob wondered whether this was a bluff. A negotiating ploy? Or was he being sized up for a chalk outline? He considered Klaus’ admonition to dicker before he simply pulled out his entire wad of cash.

  “Hell, would you look at this?” Bob said, trying to sound surprised. “I meant 200. That’s what I meant. What did I say, a hundred? I meant two. But I really do need a decent gun.”

  “Yeah, Slick, dat’s cool.” The gold tooth snatched the money from Bob and stuffed it into his shirt pocket before reaching behind his back and pulling an old Beretta from his waistband.

  Bob reached expectantly for his purchase, thinking he had done rather well.

  But the man behind the star cocked the hammer and snuggled the business end onto the tip of Bob’s nose.

  “Now get outta my neighborhood, punkassmuthafucka.”

  Klaus and the cabbie were still discussing the geopolitical imbroglio of Kurdistan when Bob returned, his tail between his legs. “Well, what did you get?”

  “Robbed,” Bob replied.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Tupac Shakur was extolling the virtues of random violence when Klaus arrived and approached the man Bob had described as the executive sales representative.

  “I would like to buy a gun,” Klaus said.

  “Well shit, this is yo lucky day, muthafucka,” the gangsta with the gold star said. “Today only we having a white sale for everybody what’s coming into the ‘hood. How much you got to pay for it? I needs to see
some green, muthafucka.”

  “You already have my money. Now I would like my gun.”

  Sensing trouble, the gangsta reached for his waistband. But before he got there, Klaus’ right knee shattered the gangsta’s family jewels. Crunch! The head of sales went to his knees. A roundhouse kick broke a jaw and sent one approaching member of the sales force flying into another. A second later, a knife dropped from a hand now limply connected to a broken wrist.

  The two remaining members of the sales staff considered their options and fled the scene.

  The head gangsta was on his hands and knees trying to catch his breath, hoping that this kung fu guy would shoot him in the head and put him out of his pain. But Klaus didn’t think he deserved to die, so he simply picked up the gun, deftly snapped it open, and examined it. He took the cash from the young man’s pocket and tossed a few bills onto the ground. “The action is dirty on this one,” Klaus said. “I can only give you fifty.”

  “Deal,” the salesman wheezed.

  Finally armed with more than the inherent dangers of New York, Klaus and Bob hurried back toward Queens.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  The cabbie was cursing, gesticulating, and dodging other cars, making time as best he could while struggling across the Triborough Bridge. In the back seat, Chantalle opened her purse and surreptitiously screwed a silencer into a small automatic handgun of Swiss manufacture. Her purse was, in fact, a holster designed specifically for this gun, its silencer, and two extra clips. There was no loose change rattling around in a bottom covered with face powder, no old crumpled receipts, and no perfumed pieces of cinnamon-flavored sugarless gum in tattered wrappers. Chantalle carried her American Express platinum card in her pocket and that was it.

  Once the silencer was attached, she snugged its tip into a round hollow in the bottom of the purse and closed it, as designed, so that the grip of the pistol acted as the handle of the purse. Not exactly Louis Vuitton, but killer nonetheless.

  From the paper sack next to her, Chantalle retrieved the small box from the confectionery store which contained her three perfect truffles. She untied the simple bow of gold string that bound the package and neatly folded back the puffy layers of white tissue. The last ply of tissue would not yield.

  Upon closer examination, Chantalle discovered that the chocolates had melted into a shapeless mass. She was miffed. “Merde,” she mumbled. “Driver, find me a chocolate store.”

  The driver, a native of Staten Island, replied with a derisive snort and a quick glance into the mirror. “Oh yeah, sure. A ‘chocolate store’ in Astoria. Right.”

  He glanced in his rearview mirror again to see if his sarcasm had registered. That’s when he noticed the gun in Chantalle’s willowy hand. “Ohhh!” he quickly amended, “A chocolate store. No sweat. Just hang on, we’ll get you some sugar, sugar.”

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  It was late afternoon when the cab dropped Bob and Klaus at the abandoned warehouse in Queens. As Bob paused to look at the decaying building which housed his Strain Four hybrids, he suddenly felt scared, not because his life was in danger, but rather because his dream was. This was it. His last chance. Do or die. His heart beat faster.

  Klaus turned to look over his shoulder and noticed the anxiety on Bob’s face. “What is wrong?” he asked.

  “This is it, Monty. Door number three. Carol Merrill ain’t bringing no boxes down the aisle and Jay’s nowhere in sight. I gotta admit it, I’m scared.”

  The Let’s Make A Deal references soared over Klaus’ head, but Bob’s resoluteness did not.

  “You are the most determined man I have ever met,” Klaus said. “You are also the craziest.”

  “You may be right,” Bob replied absently.

  After hearing Bob talk with such affection about his bugs, Klaus had become fascinated with the hybrids and Bob’s experiment. Klaus was surprised to discover the strong emotional attachment he had in it. For a moment he completely forgot about the other assassins. He was focused on Bob and his dream.

  “Which bugs are in here?” Klaus asked.

  “Number four, the Thread-Legged Bug/Bloodsucking Conenose hybrid,” Bob said. His hands were growing clammy.

  “These are the ones I am betting on,” he said. “Are you giving odds?”

  Bob smiled. He sensed Klaus’ interest was heartfelt.

  With his heart pounding and his blood pressure moving into a dangerous neighborhood, Bob led Klaus into the vast warehouse.

  Bob removed a pack of matches from his pocket as he crossed the vast warehouse floor, which was dotted with old shipping crates and failed, inefficient machinery from America’s golden age of manufacturing. Sweat formed on Bob’s forehead. He stooped and picked up a short steel rod from the floor as he approached the far wall.

  “What are you going to do?” Klaus asked.

  “You’ll see,” Bob said as he sat on the floor by one of his patched holes. His intestines tied themselves into a horrible knot as he used the steel rod to break through the plaster patching material. He lit one of the matches and laid down on his side, one eye closed and the other ready to inspect. He held the lit match to the hole in the wall and peered in.

  Klaus looked on, sharing Bob’s anxiety, completely caught up in Bob’s dream. “Well, how does it look?” he asked.

  “I can’t really tell. I don’t see anything.” Bob gripped the side of the hole with his free hand and pulled out some of the drywall, then continued to peer into the hole for a moment, looking left and right. “Ouch!” Bob burned his finger with the spent match.

  “Hurry up,” Klaus said.

  “Would you give me a minute?” Bob’s heart was pounding. His blood pressure was 210 over 120. Hypertension and stroke lurked uncomfortably close as he lit another match. If Strain Four had failed, Bob thought, so had he.

  He looked to the left but saw no evidence, so he looked to the right. Finally, he saw something. “Shit,” Bob said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Goddammit!”

  “What’s wrong? What is it?” Klaus assumed this meant Strain Four had failed and he worried how Bob would react. He thought he’d better say something to cheer Bob up. “Listen, it is not the end of the world and…I tell you what, if we get out of New York alive, I will help you find some more buildings for your experiments.”

  Bob stuffed his left arm deep into the hole and made grunting noises as he groped blindly inside the space.

  Klaus grew uneasy as Bob made guttural sounds, his face pressed hard against the wall, distorting his nose and lips into a Picasso.

  Finally Bob extracted his cupped hand from the wall, stood, and walked over to an apprehensive Klaus. “Look at this!”

  “What is it?” Klaus asked, backing away a few steps.

  “What does it look like?” Bob thrust his open palm toward Klaus revealing the shriveled, dehydrated, and dismembered corpses of dozens of dead bugs. Klaus recoiled.

  “It looks like shriveled, dehydrated, and dismembered corpses of dozens of dead bugs,” Klaus said. “I thought that’s what you expected from this strain.”

  “Do these look like cockroaches to you? Huh? No! These are my hybrids, goddammit!”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Who the hell knows? Maybe they scared all the roaches into hiding. If that happened, then they probably started fighting over the limited food supply and cannibalized each other.” Bob looked forlornly at the handful of legless bodies. “Sons-uh-bitches probably self-destructed. Just like me.”

  Klaus feared the disappointment might be too much for his friend.

  “I’m screwed,” Bob said as the crumbling carcasses slipped through his fingers. His optimism had finally been defeated. It was the moment Bob had hoped would never come. In one aching instant, it flashed
through his mind: all his work, and maybe his life, had been wasted. He had chased a dream he would never catch. He was a pathetic dreamer who let his family down. Pratt was right—what a loser.

  “Are you alright?” Klaus asked gently.

  “Yeah, I guess. It’s just so damn frustrating,” Bob sighed, “but it’s not the end of the world.”

  Klaus was relieved Bob was taking this so well.

  Suddenly Bob grabbed the gun from Klaus and jammed the barrel into his own mouth. “Woggamib! Ba gream bust bibbered ub ad habits lillyl glegs whipped wum iss fwobby.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” Klaus said.

  Bob pulled the gun out of his mouth and put it to his head. “I said, ‘goddammit! My dream just withered up and had its little segmented legs ripped from its body.’”

  “That’s better,” Klaus said. “Now I can understand you.”

  “Mary and Katy don’t deserve to be stuck with a loser.”

  Klaus looked into Bob’s eyes. “Mary would not have come back if she felt that way.” He held out his hand to Bob. “Now give me the gun.”

  Bob held fast to the weapon. “No!” Bob paused for a moment and looked sideways at the gun as it pressed to his temple. “Where’s the safety on this thing? Is it on?”

  Klaus shook his head. “No it’s not. If you pull the trigger now, you will probably die. If not, you will certainly be a vegetable for the rest of your life.”

  The thought repulsed Bob. “No! No life-support systems. You tell them I don’t want to be hooked up to a bunch of machines, alright?”

  “Listen, you may have a point,” Klaus said. “Maybe you are a loser, but you can’t kill yourself if you really care about Katy and Mary.”

  “I can’t?” Bob queried.

  “No. If you really want to cash in on this situation, give me back the gun and I’ll tell you how we can double our money.”