The Murderer Vine

by Shepard Rifkin

  I had just about exhausted all of these little fantasies. I don’t think I could have produced any more of them as a defensive wall against any more nighttime surprises from the swamp. I had had it.

  Then I floated around a bend and saw the lights of the Catfish Club.

  38

  A few kicks and I was under the pilings. Light poured down in narrow gold slabs through the cracks in the flooring. If anybody upstairs would take a look down he might see me, especially if I moved.

  I had to rely upon habit patterns: no one ever looked down at a floor as a matter of course. And I made doubly sure by maneuvering the mattress so that it would be directly under the table, the way I remembered it.

  Someone said, “Aw, not on yore filthy pants.”

  Joe Sam added, “Wipe that goddam knife afore you cuts the fish. Jus’ once. Jus’ wipe it once.”

  Back in Okalusa I had cut a slit in each projecting corner of the mattress. Then I had run a piece of clothesline through each slit. When I had the mattress nicely positioned under the floor, I made the lines fast to four pilings. Now the mattress held firm against the current.

  The water was up to my chest. Inside the recorder it said, in four languages:

  vor nasse schutzen

  protégez contre l’humidité

  proteger contra humedad

  keep dry

  If they considered keeping it dry important enough to repeat it four times, who was I to disagree? I wiped my hands very carefully. Then I lashed the mike with another length of line to a piling so that it was directly under one of the cracks. I faced it upward. It was a dynamic directional mike with low impedance. I didn’t know what it meant, but I hoped it meant good.

  The Kim’s controls were like a piano keyboard. I pressed the start and record keys simultaneously. It was like spanning a small octave on a piano. It made a tiny click! which was drowned by the gurgling noise of the water coiling around the pilings. I reached up and turned the on switch in the mike. There was a faint rustle as the reels turned. It was the sound a snake makes as it moves over dry leaves.

  I settled back with my back against a piling and listened.

  The sounds of plates. Knives and forks. I could smell fresh hushpuppies. Then the tinkle of glass, probably the jug against a glass rim. Then a gurgling sound.

  “I don’t hold with that ungodly stuff,” Joe Sam said.

  “You still talkin’?” That sounded like Vince.

  “That squashed-up frawg an’ that tooth a hangin’ from it. More I think ’bout it, more I think we shoulda done somethin’. Like make the sign of the cross afore we touched it.”

  I suddenly noticed something shining. I looked down. I had forgotten that the voltage meter was illuminated. I threw a quick glance upward, half expecting to see a curious eye peering down, but there was no one. I pulled an end of the towel over the meter.

  “You keep talkin’ ’bout it, you gonna vex me, Joe Sam.”

  “Cain’t help it. I cain’t git it outta my mind. That there frawg stuck in that stick is a power!”

  “Joe Sam, you shut up!”

  “Vince, you know Ol’ Man Mose, he kept a pocket full o’ fish scales? When I wasn’t no bigger’n ’at frawg, he kind o’ squeaked an’ rattled them scales in his hand an’ right then I wished I was dead. I purely don’t think we shoulda gone to his house. Then he used — ”

  “You talk some mo’, you gonna rile me.”

  “Then he used to have a lil bitty ol’ dry-up tuttle, jus’ a mud tuttle ’bout the size o’ my thumb, the whole thing jus’ dry-up and dead. He used to take out that tuttle an’ put it in the palm of his hand an’ sot down an’ say:

  ‘Little bunch o’ pepper,

  Little bunch o’ wool.

  Two, three pammy Christy beans,

  Little piece o’ rusty iron.

  Mumbledy-mumbledy.’

  He used to make my hair creep all ovuh the back o’ my neck when he do that. For a fact.”

  “What’s that ‘mumbledy — mumbledy’?”

  “How should I know? It’s African. I’m sure glad I didn’t do nothin’ to Ol’ Man Mose.”

  “You scairt?”

  “I ain’t scairt o’ doin’ what we done with them No’th’n niggers, an’ that white boy ’cause he ain’t no better’n a nigger, but Ol’ Man Mose, he’s diffrunt.”

  Vince said, “Aw, you believe in that nigger voodoo.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ yes an’ I ain’t sayin’ no. All I say is, it don’t hurt none to go up there an’ make a sign. I got me a mind to go up right now.”

  “Sit down, you damn fool.”

  “Ain’t goin’ to sit down. You think jus’ because you threw that stick an’ that frawg way into the piny woods the power’ll stay away? You got to fight power with power. An’ killin’ Mose ain’t the way to do that.”

  The sheriff spoke. “I don’t give a damn ’bout power or voodoo or hoodoo. Don’t believe in spirits or hants. That’s for ol’ ladies an’ niggers. All I believe is when someone knows somethin’ you don’t want him to know, you make sure he don’t talk.”

  “I’m sure glad I didn’t do nothin’ to Ol’ — ”

  “Aw, shut up.” This was Ray.

  “It fair sickened me to my stomach, the way Vince went at Ol’ Man Mose.”

  “Why doncha try puttin’ your lips together an’ not movin’ ’em for a while, Joe Sam?”

  “I don’t like you beat ’im with chains. All you had to do was shoot ’im.”

  “Chains teaches ’em a lesson.”

  “How does it teach ’em if they’re dead?”

  Ray interrupted. He said, “You think mebbe we should bury ’em somewhere else?”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff said. “No tellin’ if Ol’ Man Mose din’t tell somebody. We better go tonight an’ take ’em somewhere else. Joe Sam, you get that ol’ tarpaulion outta your garage. You go git it an’ meet us back of my house.”

  “Why that tarpaulion? It’s a good one.”

  “You want your car all smelted up with them boys? They’re ripe. Now you go git it, y’ hear?”

  Well, that was enough to convict. Maybe not in front of a jury of twelve good men and true in Okalusa. But enough for the only jury I cared about. It was sitting at 28 Battery Place, high above Manhattan. I knew what he would accept as convincing evidence. And I had it on that silently circling plastic reel.

  I had better begin work. I reached out for the stop key, but just then I heard a car turning off the road. Then it stopped. Doors opened and slammed. Two or three people were coming up the walk. I cursed silently.

  They knocked.

  “Who’s at?”

  “Andy ’n’ Boone.”

  “ž’Bout time. Come in.”

  They walked in.

  “Put it down easy, now,” said the sheriff.

  Andy or Boone put it down easy. I heard glasses. Then the sound of a liquid being poured.

  “How much we owe?”

  “Aw, you know how much.”

  “Okay. You fellas want a drink?”

  Jesus. The local bootleggers making the rounds.

  The chairs scraped. Damn them, I hoped they weren’t settling down for the night. They talked. From the sudden way the Catfish Club had dropped the topic under discussion, I was sure that the newcomers had nothing to do with the three boys. If they were settling down for an evening of hard drinking, I was out of luck. The next meeting wouldn’t be till Friday.

  In that week, if A.B.C. was as smart as I thought he was, he might be making me, as they say in the profession. That is, he would have traced me, and found out who I was.

  I couldn’t afford to wait that long.

  So that created an ethical dilemma. If the night went by and those two bootleggers were still there, should I drop half a million bucks just in order to avoid killing two bystanders? Who might not have been involved in this particular killing, but who might have approved of it?

  I listened to them talk abo
ut the new girls at Mike Gillen’s Motel and Truck Stop. There were four cabins in the rear, each one fitted out with a whore from Jackson or Mobile. The girls were rotated every two weeks by the local syndicate. The Catfish Club began to compare the current batch to the previous ones. It was decided that the new ones weren’t so hot. This news was very interesting but not worth half a million.

  Half an hour passed. I was tired of standing in one place. My legs were becoming cramped and chilled. I didn’t dare move. I might make some noise that wouldn’t sound fishlike. I might step into a hole on the river bottom and make a man-sized splash.

  They talked about the new liquor tax man down at Jackson; about the Air Force plane that had flown low over their mountaintop still a year ago, and how Boone had shot at it and put a bullet hole in a wing, and how the FBI and Air Intelligence swarmed all over the mountaintop looking for the saboteur. Only it was the wrong mountain. This was also interesting information, but Parrish wouldn’t pay five cents for a reel on Federal Liquor Tax evasion. Should I kill them?

  They might deserve it for having the Catfish Club for a customer. I suddenly felt an agonizing pain stab my left calf. With my city boy reactions I almost let out a yell, but I gritted my teeth and forced myself to remain motionless. It took a second before I realized it was only a muscle cramp.

  I bit my thumb to keep from moaning. When the spasm passed, I kneaded the calf with all my might. The cramp finally went away. I was beginning to lose patience. I picked up the gun and started to wade ashore. But suddenly there was a lot of chair scraping and “see y’alls.” Then the door opened and Andy and Boone walked out and drove away.

  I went back and put down the gun and took a deep breath. Thank God. God would take a more lenient view about five deaths than he would about seven.

  I didn’t know what the sheriff said next. My attention was turned in another direction: someone was coming down the walk. It swayed and creaked. Then he ducked under the top railing, dropped to the mud, and came toward me. It was only later, when I played the tape, that I heard the sheriff tell Vince to get some mud, and smear it over their license plates.

  All I knew at that second was that a man was coming toward me. I thought at first that he was going to urinate, but when he came off the walk I knew I was wrong. And the chances were very good that he would see me and the mattress. There were just too many bars of light coming down on me and the equipment.

  I could have gotten him with my machine gun. But the silencer didn’t mean that it functioned in complete silence. It meant that it didn’t go off with an ear-shattering blam! blam! blam! It made a sound which would carry over a hundred feet or more on a quiet night, and even further in a narrow river with high banks. It was all right for night ambushes, or to pick off a patrol without alerting the main body, but the sound of the gun below the Catfish Club would certainly alert the men above. That and the splash he would make when he would fall into the water. And he might scream.

  They had guns above and they knew how to use them. I might even get knocked off myself.

  It would be better for me to handle Vince without the help of Hiram Maxim’s noble invention, the silencer.

  So, as soon as Vince ducked under the railing I began to wade toward the shore as quickly as I could. It’s not easy to wade fast and quietly at the same time. I moved several feet, then got behind a piling only two feet from the shore. I stuck out plenty on both sides, but I didn’t worry too much. I had had lessons in Korea. I was making a night patrol toward the Chinese lines when a flare went up. And I was standing. You might think the best thing to do in such a situation is to dive flat. Well, that’s wrong. The best thing to do is not move. You might think you stand out like the Empire State Building. But you don’t. People frequently will not notice the most obvious thing. As long as it doesn’t move. So I froze.

  He squatted down with an old pie plate. He was three feet in front of me. He began piling the mud onto the plate. Since I hadn’t heard the sheriff telling him to get the mud, I thought he was so drunk he had reverted to childhood and was going to make himself some mud pies. And he wasn’t too smart to begin with.

  That made me hold back. It was almost like attacking an idiot child. I wouldn’t have gone for him if he had just gotten his mud, stood up, and left. I mean I wouldn’t have gone for him then. Later would be different.

  But when he had almost filled the plate, his eyes lifted and saw my knees. His eyebrows shot up and he started to open his mouth.

  I clapped a hand over it, and with my other hand clapped to the back of his neck I pulled him forward fast. Since he was squatting, he was easily knocked off balance. I forced his mouth and nose deep into the mud. Since he would make too much noise thrashing around, I got his right arm in a good strong lock and then I lay on top of him. He couldn’t move and my thirty pounds weight advantage kept him pressed into the soft mud.

  He shuddered and quivered for two minutes. Then it was over.

  It was much worse than I ever thought it would be.

  I lay on top of Vince for a minute more. To make sure. Then I waded back and got the gun. Then I put it back.

  The reason why Old Man Mose had been killed was because of my shoes.

  I had walked all around the melon patch in the damp ground. All those footprints. So I went and thought up the camouflage idea.

  And here I was all set to walk all around the murder scene with my sneakers. They were a distinctive pattern. They had been made for gripping slippery decks and I used them whenever I went out fishing. They cost nine and a half bucks. Because of four little side holes at the arch they let in cool air, and on especially hot days when I was out taping people I had worn them. I bet no one within a hundred and fifty miles had a similar pair.

  “Vince, what the hell’s keepin’ you?”

  I took off the sneakers and put them on the mattress. I picked up the gun and waded ashore. “Goddammit, what you doin’?”

  I grunted out, “Minnit.” It was a pretty good imitation.

  The door of the shack was half open. I walked through the mud, ducked under the railing, and walked in. They were all sitting together at the table, I was happy to see.

  Ray began to talk. He got out, “Vince, you — ” before he fell silent.

  The others turned.

  I brought the gun up and swung the muzzle slowly back and forth. The arc was small but big enough to cover them all in its oscillations. “Freeze,” I said.

  The sheriff was stretching his arms in a huge yawn. His gun belt was hanging from a nail in the wall three feet in back of him. The gun rack had two shotguns in it. It was four big steps from the nearest club member, who was Ray.

  No one said anything. They were staring at the gun. I couldn’t blame them. It didn’t look like a gun. With that pale plastic stock and the fat round silencer and the round pale-blue drum on top, it looked like a bad piece of modern sculpture or a sloppily designed electric fan.

  Then they looked at me. I just wore a pair of swim trunks and my legs from the knees down were black with mud. I was covered with mosquito bites and they were beginning to puff up. I had just killed Vince and that must have given me some sort of an added bonus for my personal appearance which I wasn’t aware of, but it all totaled up to something which made the sheriff’s next remark, now that I thick back, seem reasonable.

  “Now, perfessor,” he said, soothing. “You’re a little drunk, looks like, an’ what you’re doin’ half naked I’ll be goddamned if I can figger out. What you need is to sit down an’ have some of our white mule here. So you better sit down. Ray, give your chair to the perfessor.”

  His right hand was beginning to drop toward the back of the chair. It would also pass by his gun butt. I had to take charge immediately.

  I put the lever on single shot, dropped the muzzle, and squeezed off one shot. The gun went chug! and the jug blew into splinters. The sheriff’s hand went up again and stayed there. I put the gun back on automatic.

  They looked a
t it with respect.

  “Well,” Ray said agreeably, “I’ll be diddle-dog-damned if I ever see a thing like that.”

  No one looked scared. Joe Sam looked expectantly at the door when he thought I wasn’t looking at him.

  “Vince isn’t coming,” I said.

  “What you do with Vince?” asked the sheriff.

  I saw no reason to get into a debate. Ray was inching toward the shotguns every time he thought my attention was diverted. The sheriff was watching my eyes. In a few seconds I would have to keep both Ray and the sheriff under close observation, and I was sure that within a few seconds one of the others would make a try for my gun or for the shotguns. Then a mess would develop and my chances of coming out of it unhurt would lessen.

  I had thought of making some sort of a statement; after all, I was both judge and executioner, and the right to make a brief speech before carrying out sentence was traditionally mine. I wanted them to know exactly why I was there and why they were about to die.

  I pulled the trigger instead and swept the gun back and forth across the table as if it were a fire hose. It went chugchugchugchugchug!

  Although the sheriff had been sitting down, the impact jerked him to his feet. His hands shot out, palms downward, and then jerked up to chest level. His face was contorted.

  After a while I realized the drum was empty. Yet I was still squeezing the trigger so hard that my knuckle was white. No one was moving.

  The shack was filled with the sharp, bitter smell of powder. I made sure they were all dead. I bent down and took out the sheriff’s .45. I went to each one and took his pulse. I put the muzzle of the .45 in each man’s ear. If any one of them had made a move, I would have fired. No pulse beats.

  I wiped my prints off the .45 butt with the dirty dish towel. I put the gun back in the holster.

  I went underneath the shack and waded out to the mattress. The moon had come up. There was a lot of blood dripping down through the cracks. The towel was pretty well soaked with it. I balled up the towel and was about to toss it in the river when I realized that it might be found downstream. I had bought it yesterday in town. I untied the mike and put it away. I untied the mattress from the pilings and towed it ashore. I wiped the blood from the recorder and my sneakers. I rinsed out the blood from the towel. I couldn’t get it out of the sneakers by wiping them, so I rinsed out the sneakers in the river.