The Contractor

by Paul Moomaw

  At length she looks at her watch. Before she can speak I stand up and help her from her chair.

  “Such a gentleman.”

  “Because I would like to see you again.” Once again, the words slip out before I know I am going to speak them.

  She hesitates, then smiles. “I hope so, too.”

  “I’ll be in town next Wednesday.”

  “One of my traveling days.” She hesitates again, then pulls a business card from her purse and writes a telephone number on it. “I’m usually at home evenings when I’m not out of town.” She hands me the card, and as our fingers brush, I feel arousal again. The picture of her strong legs leaps into my mind, and I am intensely aware that I want to have sex with her, and that she probably also would like it.

  I stand by the table and watch her walk toward the bank of elevators that will take her to her office. I wait until she has boarded one and the closing door erases her from my view. I wonder again why her brother wants her dead. Perhaps it is simply because she is so clearly competent, and he is not.

  * * *

  That night I sit at my window, my nose in a brandy, watching the lights of Seattle, and my thoughts turn to Katherine again. I wonder what it will be like to take her life. I wonder if the time to do that comes, whether I will be able to be creative. I like to do my work with a certain amount of originality. I have a strong esthetic drive, and I hate being bored or boring. I find myself thinking of Shakespeare. Shall I be the Moor to Katherine’s Desdemona? And with Angwin a spiteful Iago? Then the image of her strong legs, and the recollection of the spark that passed between our fingers intervenes, and I have to question whether I will kill her at all. Maybe I will simply save her until the last, take the final payment from Angwin, and then snuff out his useless life instead. It presents a dilemma. If I make love to Katherine and then murder her, I am betraying her trust. If I kill her brother, I am a traitor to my contract and my professional pride.

  I smile and shake my head. I can make one decision, at least. Katherine Danner definitely goes to the end of the line. As they say, never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after. I drain my glass and set off for bed. I fall asleep immediately, and then am as immediately awake again, or so it seems until I glance at the clock and realize that more than four hours have passed. I have had a dream, and it still resonates in my mind. I never dream, as a rule; or I should say I never remember dreams. Everyone, I understand, dreams several times a night. Some remember their night journeys. Psychologists call them sensitizers. Others remember little or nothing. They are labeled repressers. I am one of those, and I can imagine, from what I understand of the nature and purpose of dreams—to deal with past trauma, present stresses or future anxieties—that I am better off that way. The last time I remembered a dream was more than three years ago, right after I almost killed the wrong man because of a foul up in identities. I thought I had handled the stress of that with no problem. Then I had the dream—nightmare, really—and was a wreck for days; and for close to six months afterwards I had flashbacks, where bits and pieces of the dream returned during waking hours. It played hell with my appetite.

  This was not a nightmare, but it left me sitting bolt upright, my nerves jangling. It was a jumble of a dream. I was in bed with Katherine, and then Angwin was there, watching, and then I was lying next to Angwin, both of us naked, and Katherine was standing over us, taking pictures with a giant camera, one that looked like the old Speed Graphics they used fifty years ago. And then all at once I was in bed with both them, all of us naked, not even a sheet to cover us, and my father was standing in the door, a snarling dog straining at the leash in his hand.

  My old psychologist could have done wonders with a dream like that, but she is not around, so I let it drift away.

  Chapter 17

  Arden Frost sits in the passenger seat of my car as we drive sedately down Highway 395, heading from his house to dinner in Spokane. He is surprised that I have insisted on driving my car, instead of the Mercedes, but does not argue; and I do not bother to explain to him that it would be awkward for me to have to return his vehicle to his house after I have killed him.

  He thinks we are going to have dinner. He has picked Cucina Cucina again. I wonder if it makes him feel more like a man to have dinner in the open air with his bodyguard. I have offered a different option, a Japanese restaurant two blocks away from the Italian place. His first reaction is that you have to sit on the floor there, and he does not want to do that. I have assured him that they have other rooms with normal tables and chairs. He has promised to consider the idea, but right now all of his attention is on the tall, slender bottle that rests in a cupholder on the dash. He gazes at it with the hunger of a compulsive drinker. I have counted on that, because I need him to drink a considerable amount of the bottle’s contents. I nod toward it.

  “That’s something a little special, all the way from Russia,” I say. True, the bottle is, although not what is in it. “I wanted to say thank you for giving me the job.” That is true as well. I am grateful to him for opening that door and making my life a little easier.

  Frost takes the bottle into his hand and looks at the Cyrillic label.

  “What does that say?” he asks.

  “Staraya Moskva. It means Old Moscow. It is a very special, aged vodka. First class stuff.” That is a lie. There has been no Staraya Moskva in that bottle for a couple of years. What it contains now is vodka, but ordinary citron flavored stuff, with a strong enough taste to cover the considerable amount of PCP, phencyclidine, I have spiked it with.

  I reach for the bottle, tuck it between my legs, and unscrew the cap. Then I open the glove compartment and retrieve a small, pewter glass. I hand the glass to him.

  “Hold this,” I say, and as he does, I fill it close to the brim with the spiked vodka.

  “Isn’t vodka supposed to be frozen or something?” Frost asks.

  “The ordinary stuff, yes. This is different.”

  Frost nods and takes a sip of the vodka. “Good stuff,” he says. He turns the glass in his hand, trying to act as if he does not want to drain it and fill it again.

  “Have all you want. There’s another bottle in the trunk, if we need it.”

  Frost smiles happily, holds the glass to his lips, and tilts it up. He smiles happily. “Really good stuff,” he says again.

  I smile, too, and am happy. I have been counting on him not to be able to resist anything alcoholic. I motion toward him to hold out the glass, and I refill it. This time he does not hesitate to bolt half of the vodka down. Already his eyes are getting a little wide and starey. By the time we have reached downtown Spokane, he will be well under the influence of the PCP.

  I still have a vivid memory of my first and only experience with a large dose of that drug. I was in college, at a party, and they were passing a bong of marijuana. I had a few hits, and then the PCP, which they called “Angel Dust,” and with which the weed was adulterated, hit me. I can still remember almost every moment of what passed next. I floated in a bubble of crystal clarity and awareness. I can remember the feeling of a large bass speaker vibrating through my body, shaking every molecule in rhythm with the music. I remember the music, a Jefferson Airplane album. I remember having to imagine that there were strings attached to my knees that I could pull up and down in order to be able to walk. I can remember grinning happily at everyone I saw, telling them, “I’m not actually here, you know. I’m not really here at all.” I can remember splitting my sides laughing at the humor of that. I remember being completely aware of how bizarre my sensations were. I remember thinking, I could die from this, and of not caring at all. I remember being completely calm and detached. I remember how passive I was, pleased to go along with anything that anybody suggested to me. I remember knowing everything that was happening to me and not caring. And I remember the odd, in and out feeling of coming down from the high, bits at a time, until everything finally returned to normal.

  It was
only later that I found out what the substance was, horse tranquilizer essentially, and that many of my friends took it as a hallucinogen. All of them described the same clarity, calm and detachment that I had felt. Frost will feel that tonight. He is beginning to already, I am sure. He will be calm, detached, passive and easygoing. He will know that I am going to kill him. I will tell him so, in fact, for my own amusement. And he will not care, right up until the moment he dies.

  Frost is smiling at me, and holding out the glass for more vodka. “Staraya Moskva,” he says. “Really good stuff.” He speaks slowly, with some effort, but the words are pronounced clearly and precisely. I fill the glass one more time. That will be enough. We will soon be in town, and then he will have other things to occupy him.

  We work our way south on Division Street. The traffic is worse than usual, and I seem to develop a magnetic attraction to red lights; but there is no hurry. The PCP in Frost’s system will last for at least three hours, or it would if he were going to be alive that long. Finally we reach Sprague, turn right, and head toward the center of Spokane and the parking garage. I find a space on the second level, pull the car into it, and turn off the engine. I get out, walk around to the passenger side, and open Frost’s door. He looks up at me quizzically, but calmly. He is at peace.

  “We’re here,” he says.

  I nod, and hold out my hand. Frost places the now-empty glass on the driver’s seat and takes my hand for support as he pulls himself out of the car. He stands erect and takes a deep breath, then smiles slowly and broadly.

  “Good stuff,” he says. “Staraya Moskva.”

  I take his upper arm in my hand and guide him toward the elevator that leads to the street. He walks deliberately, but steadily. We reach the elevator and I push the button.

  “Cucina. We will go there.”

  “No,” I say.

  Frost turns his head and looks at me.

  “No?”

  I shake my head.

  “That Japanese place?”

  “Neither one. I am taking you to the park.”

  “Oh,” Frost says, and turns to look at the elevator door again. It opens, and we enter, and then he says, “Why there?”

  “Because I am going to kill you there.”

  “Oh,” he says again, and nods his head slowly up and down.

  We descend to the street level and leave the elevator. I guide him toward the sidewalk outside, and then turn him lightly in the direction I want to go. He moves easily, ready to go wherever I take him. At a traffic light just before the edge of the park, we stop, and he turns to me again.

  “Why?”

  “Someone is paying me.”

  He nods again, then the light changes and we start across the street. When we reach the curb on the other side, he pauses again.

  “How much?”

  “Enough,” I reply. He nods and begins to walk again. We follow the curving, paved path to the small footbridge, then turn left toward the little chairlift over the falls. When we get there, I see that one of the trams waits conveniently in front of the steel building that contains the controls. I leave Frost standing where he is and turn to the door of the building. I pull out the wire cutters I have brought in my jacket pocket. As I was sure they would, they cut through the links of the thin chain guarding the door with little effort on my part. I open the door. It screeches, which makes me wince, but no one is in the area. There is a guard, but like so many security people who do not believe their jobs are truly necessary, this one sticks to a strict schedule. I have observed, and seen that he passes by the chairlift on his motor scooter every two hours on the hour. I have at least an hour and a half before he comes by again.

  I turn back to Frost, who is gazing at the lift.

  “All these years, I’ve never ridden on this,” he says.

  “Now you will.”

  Frost nods, then says, “You told me Clarence was going to kill me.”

  “That’s right.”

  He begins to smile, then says, “You were lying.”

  “That’s right,” I say again.

  Frost’s smile broadens until he is beaming in triumph at his discovery. I open the door to the little tram car, take his arm, and guide him to it.

  “Please sit down,” I say. He does. His movements are more awkward now, as the full force of the PCP takes effect, but he manages to enter the car and sit down.

  I reach into a pocket and retrieve a small case. I open it and look briefly at the syringe that it contains. Then I take the syringe and hold it up to the lights that illuminate most of the park. I can see the amber fluid it contains, and so can Frost.

  “Is that how?”

  “Yes,” I say. Quickly, before he can really see it coming, I slam the needle into his neck and push the plunger. He winces and moans softly, then sighs as I remove the needle from his neck. He looks up at me, his eyes wide with awareness, but with no fear or concern.

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all,” I reply. As I return the syringe to its case, I can see that he is already responding to the poison it contained. It is a very fast-acting chemical named batrachotoxin. It comes from the skin of a Central American amphibian called the poison dart frog. The natives have used it since time began. It stops the heart almost instantaneously. The natives obtain the poison by roasting the skin of the frog. Scientists believe the frog becomes poisonous because it eats fire ants, which in turn have dined on some unknown poisonous plant. It is a lovely chain. An ant eats a leaf. A frog eats the ant. An Indian roasts the frog and sells the resulting product to persons unknown, and it eventually wends its way to me, and finally to a man in a cable car in eastern Washington, about as far from Central America as you can get. Frost will be comatose in less than a minute, and dead in less than five. He slumps against the wall of the tram car, and I close the door. I walk back to the control building, go inside, and feel my way across the dimly lit space until I reach the switch that starts the motor of the lift. I pull the switch and back across the room as the motor comes to life with a scream that takes me by surprise. I had not realized that the damned thing would be so noisy. I step quickly outside and close the door to the little building. Frost’s tram car is already ten feet away and moving toward the edge of the falls. I grit my teeth against the noise, hoping it does not attract attention. I have intended to let Frost go until he was at the end of the tram’s travel, well suspended over the water, but the thing moves too slowly, and my concern of discovery mounts. Finally I dash back into the building and slam the switch shut. The noise stops, and so do the trams. I step back outside again. I can not be sure which car contains Frost, but I tell myself it does not matter. He will hang there until Friday, when they begin the weekend operation. I stand for a moment longer, watching the cars sway softly from their short journey. Then I walk back into the park and toward my waiting car. It occurs to me that someone may be waiting to get in when Frost’s little cable car comes to rest and they open the door. It makes me laugh.

  I reach my car, start the engine, and descend the ramp to the street. I will sleep tonight in a small motel in the town of Chewelah, north of Spokane. Its amenities are uninspiring, but the manager, who doubles as front desk clerk and housekeeper, does not suffer from the sin of curiosity. Tomorrow, I will engage in a ritual that I often turn to as a method of re-entry after I have finished a job. I will go fishing.

  Chapter 18

  The Kettle River pours into the Columbia, or tries to. The Columbia here is a lake, behind one of the many dams that have bottled the river up in the name of hydropower. The lower reach of the Kettle is more a pond, but higher up, beyond the little town of Carson, it spills over rocks and through rapids and cascades, and it is there that I will fish it. I learned to fly fish as a boy, and it is one of my escapes, one of the ways I purge and clean myself. I stand on the banks now, just at dawn, fresh from my latest sin, preparing to wash away the stains. I do it even though I know I will dream about Hiram tonight. Hiram taught
me to fish. He lived north of Livingston, on the banks of the Shields River, in a little town called Wilsall. He was an old man, or at least he seemed old to the twelve-year-old Daniel I was then. He taught me other things as well, and those are the things I know I will dream about. It began innocently, playing grabass, touching and wrestling. Then, one afternoon, sitting on the bank of a creek waiting for a hatch to begin, he rested his hand on my crotch, and could tell that I got hard, and asked me if I had ever had a blow job. That was the beginning, and it went on until I was fifteen, then stopped as quietly as it had begun. Looking back I realize that I had become too old to interest him, but at the time I felt a confusion of things—disappointment at losing the only sex I knew, relief at no longer doing something weird, and concern that I must be homosexual, and that everyone would be able to tell.

  Hiram had false teeth, and one of my most vivid memories is of him taking them out, that first time, and wrapping them in a handkerchief before he sucked me. He always did that, and always moaned so loud while he was doing me that I thought people could hear miles away, and then would cough and choke when I came in his mouth. Later, he would take me to his little place, and have me take my clothes off, and lick me all over, and suck on my balls. I was not sure whether any of it was right or wrong, and my young body did not care. It felt good.

  Hiram could fish. There was not a cast he could not make, not a stretch of water he could not read, not a trout so well hidden that he could not see it. He could tie flies as well as any you could hope to buy, at a special table in his house and right on the stream, too, sitting on the bank, with only his hands and a small pair of pliers to work with. He taught me all of those things, along with the secret thrills of illicit sex. Now, every time I fish, I know that I will dream about Hiram. In the dream, he will always take his dentures out and wrap them in a handkerchief, and then begin to touch me in all the places he knew about, and I will wake up hard in the middle of the night and masturbate myself back to sleep.