by Dan Taylor
“What difference does that make?”
“I wanted to get it out to somewhat prove my story about that madman, Jimmy, wanting me killed.”
“How would that prove it?”
“Because if you’d have come to—you know—a couple days later, I wouldn’t have been here. I’m moving.”
I frown. “Why would you use a box cutter to move out?”
He too frowns. “Good question. I suppose there’s not really a use for it until I move in someplace. But still, my intention is to move.”
I think a second. “If Jimmy wants you dead, then why aren’t you already?”
“It may surprise you, but not only are you not the first hitman to visit this apartment building in its history, you’re the second one to visit this month. Jenny Ulversen came to take me out, and an LAPD detective, whom I’m definitely not friends with or associated with in any way apart from this one incident, arrested her.”
I know her. I also heard she’s been indicted. This guy seems legit.
Which, if he’s telling the truth about Jimmy Blumstein wanting him dead, puts me in a position I’m best not being rash about.
I say, “Hold on a second. I’m just going to phone someone and check your story.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
I take out my cell phone and dial Jimmy Balbone’s number.
While it’s ringing, I tell him to back up a couple yards and to put his fingers in his ears, real tight. I also tell him that if he takes them out and looks even remotely like he’s going for the box cutter, he’ll be Ms. Hammer’s sleepover date for the next couple days.
Jimmy answers. “Talk to me.”
“It’s me.”
Jimmy doesn’t save numbers in his phone. He’s superstitious… don’t ask. I want to avoid saying my name, just in case the neighbor can lipread.
“Who’s me? And who do ya think I am, thinking I’ve got time for this guessing-game bullshit?”
“It’s Logan.”
“Elvis, is that you?”
“It is.”
“Then why didn’t you just say it was you?”
“Never mind that. I’m at the job, the delivery. And one of the neighbors came knockin’. He’s standing in the apartment now, his fingers in his ears.”
“Are you saying you’ve been caught?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what are ya waiting for? Put a bullet in him and call it a bad gig. Tomorrow’s another day… Listen to me. Going straight is making me all soft.”
“There’s a problem.”
“What is it?”
“He says he’s a target of Jimmy Blumstein.”
“Eight Fingers?”
“The one and only.”
He sighs. “Jimmy, in all likelihood, won’t like it if someone else has him taken out. This one time, one of Jimmy’s guys cheated on his wife. Being the traditionalist that he is, Jimmy got another one of his guys to take care of him. Problem was, by the time his other guy got there, the cheat had hanged himself with a length of garden hose. Jimmy was so pissed he killed the cheat’s wife and the guy who got there too late. This is a volatile situation.”
“That’s what me and the neighbor thought.”
“Smart kid, that neighbor.”
“Can you phone Jimmy and check with him what he wants me to do with the neighbor? This Jake Hancock guy.”
Jimmy sighs. “Me and the other Jimmy don’t see eye to eye, ever since I wouldn’t let him look at my math paper. But I’ll do it. Only for you, Elvis, am I doing dumb things like this.”
“Thanks. You and the other one went to school together?”
“Course. Catholic school. Had our knee socks pulled up so high they were practically jock straps. Me, the other Jimmy, and the other other Jimmy.
“Babinonini?”
“Who else?”
“It’s a small world.”
“Shit it is. What did you say the name of this neighbor was?”
I say it slowly for Jimmy this time: “Jake Hancock.”
“Is that Jake with a K?”
“That’s the one.”
“Okay, give me twenty minutes.”
Jimmy hangs up.
I tell Hancock to take his fingers out of his ears, but he’s got them in there so tight he doesn’t hear me, so I go over to him and pull one of them out.
He says, “Can I take them out now?”
“You can.”
“I promise I wasn’t able to understand any of that conversation by reading your lips. While you were talking on the phone, I thought of a way to get us out of this mess. I can hit you, give you a shiner—or you can hit yourself, whatever—and we can make it look like I got away. That way we can avoid upsetting Jimmy Blumstein. I won’t snitch either. I don’t know what I was thinking knocking on the door like that. Margaret was a terrible neighbor. The worst.”
“That’s not going to happen, Guy.
“Shit. Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Okay. Then let’s get it over with. Do me a favor: If you go for the face, make it the chin. I don’t want it to look like a miserable wound, like an eye wound. They’re the worst.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“Oh gee, Mr., thanks for—”
“Yet. I’m not going to shoot you yet.”
He shakes his head. “You should’ve probably said ‘yet’ straightaway. You really got my hopes up there.”
“Have you ever done a day’s labor before?”
“I tried to put up a female friend’s shelf once and cut my finger.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re getting out of here, and you need to look like my assistant.”
20.
After mussing his hair up a little, scuffing his shoes, and putting a cigarette behind his ear, the neighbor could pass for looking like my assistant, apart from the T-shirt with the cartoon character printed on it.
But I have a solution. I tell him.
He says, “No way am I taking my shirt off in front of another dude. There’s a reason I don’t go to the gym, and it’s called sausage city, which is what I call the changing—”
“Just take it off and put in on again, but inside out.”
“I heard you the first time, buddy. And it’s not going to happen. Anyway, how do you know I won’t scream when I’m outside the building, letting all the passersby know you’re a lunatic who’s going to kill me?”
“Same reason you didn’t scream when Bill, your neighbor, went past.”
“That’s because I care about Bill. Guy puts up a notice every time he has a party. He’s a real considerate neighbor. I didn’t want him to get shot, too. But the people outside, I couldn’t care less whether they get shot.”
I indicate the Beretta, letting him know it’s still pointed at his face. “Are you telling me you’re going to scream when we’re out in the open?”
“I am not. I was just stalling.”
He shakes his head, and then takes his jacket off, his T-shirt, before putting them back on again, only with the cartoon character on the inside.
He looks down at his jacket. Then says, “Why didn’t I just zip up my jacket?”
“Because it’s a shade under a hundred degrees outside, and you’re a working man.”
“Is that what a working man does, makes sure he’s at a comfortable temperature while hiding the fact he enjoys cartoons, somewhat ironically? And how will I look like your assistant to the other residents in the apartment building? They know who I am, most of them… some of them. Now that I think about it, I’m only familiar with the people on my floor, but surely they’ll recognize—”
“Shut up. To your fellow apartment building residents, you’ll look like you, and we’ll have a conversation about the possibility of me helping you move, as I’ve seemingly just completed a delivery. But when we’re outside, going to my truck, you’ll look like my assistant. And when
we’re driving along, you behind the wheel, you’ll also look like my assistant, and not some terrified guy who’s being kidnapped and is being forced to drive along at gunpoint.”
“Is this necessary? It seems excessive. Why would people on the sidewalk, mostly tourists, think twice about seeing two guys in a delivery truck… Ohhhh, I get it. You don’t want us to look like we’re romantically involved.”
“It’s not that. I’m just a careful man. A careful man who’s going to retire someday.”
“It’s cool. I don’t want us to look romantically involved, either. But there’s a flaw in your plan. The cigarette behind my ear. I don’t smoke.”
“How many people in the apartment building are aware that you don’t smoke?”
“Good point.”
“Now put the cuckoo clock back into place by that wall.”
He doesn’t move. Says, “We’re not taking the cuckoo clock with us?”
The plan was, before this guy Hancock came sticking his snout in, to take the cuckoo clock with me, but that plan went out the window when the other neighbor Bill saw me in the hallway without the clock, like I’d just delivered it.
I tell him, “No, I delivered it, before someone came to burglarize Margaret. That’s what I was doing in the apartment building.”
He still doesn’t move. “And you put it there?”
“What’s wrong with that place?”
“Let me guess. Your home looks like it was decorated by Homer Simpson.”
“What my home looks like is of little importance. What it looks like happened here, according to the statement Bill gives, along with other residents, is what’s important.”
“So you happened to deliver a clock, and then Ms. Hammer turned up dead, and I went missing, and my neighbor Bill saw us talking in the hallway, acting somewhat suspicious, if we’re to assume me standing there with my hands raised, one of which was holding a banana, looks suspicious. I gotta say, it sure sounds like you should let me go. I can tell the police Margaret was alive and well after she’d received the clock. I can tell them while I borrowed some butter or sugar or both, that the clock was already there. I was baking a cake.” He thinks a second, and the only reason I’m listening to this bullshit is because he’s making some good points. Apart from letting him go, of course. “Shit, but then they’d think I was baking a marijuana-laced cake. That won’t work—”
“There’s holes. But I’m cutting my losses. And what happens to you is out of my hands. Now put the clock by that wall.”
“Okay, but it’s going to look fishy. That’s all I’m saying.”
It takes him five minutes to put the clock into place, and he makes a hell of a racket while doing so.
Then I say, “Are you ready?”
“To go on a trip that will end in me dying? As ready as I can be.”
“You’re going to push the hand truck down to the delivery truck. You take your hands off it, I’ll put one in your back.”
“No, you won’t. Not out in the open, in a densely populated area, and before you know what Jimmy Blumstein wants to do with me, but I’ll play ball anyway. I’m using the possibility of you being a good guy and letting me go, after Jimmy Blumstein inevitably gives you the okay to kill me, as motivation.”
He goes over to the hand truck and I instruct him to go to the door, but not to open it before I’ve put the Beretta away in my holster.
Before we go out, I tell him, “And act cool.”
“Will do.”
When we go out into the hallway, he whispers, “There’s your glove and what was my lunch lying on the floor.”
“Pick them up.”
“If someone comes out now, it’ll look less fishy if you do it.”
“I’m not doing it, for obvious reasons.”
He sighs, then does.
“Give me the glove and put the banana in your pocket.”
“I’d put the glove in there, but I draw the line at the banana.”
He sees the serious look on my face, and then shakes his head as he hands me the glove but puts the banana in his pocket.
We make it down to the lobby before we see someone: a lady who’s checking her postbox.
As we walk past her, in a loud voice and obvious tone, Hancock says, “So what are we talking for the whole gig? And will I have to do some of the lifting myself. Because that might be a deal breaker.”
“We’ll work something out. And you won’t have to lift a finger.”
“Sounds good. And you’re welcome for my helping you wheel this—what’s this called again?”
“A hand truck, and it’s appreciated.”
Now that we’re outside and the door to the apartment building is closed, I tell Hancock to wheel the hand truck over to the rear of the delivery truck. I lower the elevator platform for him, and then he takes the hand truck up and into the storage area, and then he comes back down.
Then I say, “Go and get in the cab.”
He starts heading around to the driver’s side, so I say, “Not that way. Get in the passenger side, and climb through to the driver’s side.”
“Relax, man. I’m not going to make a run for it.”
As I follow him to the passenger side, I can’t help but think this guy isn’t acting like a guy who knows he’ll probably be dead in an hour. Sure, he thinks I’ll let him go. But he must know that’s bullshit.
But there’s no harm in letting him think that.
Unless he knows something I don’t.
But it’s hard to imagine that’s the case, when he climbs into the cab and says, like a child, “Wow, look at how high up the driving position is!” and then sits at the wheel, bouncing up and down on the seat. “This is going to be fun.”
I take the seat next to him.
Then he says, “Where to?”
“There’s a seemingly abandoned warehouse, on some brownfield land east of El Porto.”
“There?”
“Yeah.”
He sits and thinks a second. “Can’t we just go to a Starbucks or whatever, hang out until we hear what Jimmy Blumstein says?”
“We can’t.”
“Oh, shit! You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?” He turns to me, pleading. “Don’t do it, man. Margaret Hammer, I totally get it. But me? I don’t deserve this. You’re a good guy. I can tell. I’m a great judge of character. A guy like you doesn’t want to kill a guy like me in cold blood.”
“Let’s just see what Jimmy says, and then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, I need you to act cool. Can you do it, buddy?”
He shakes his head, but calms down, stays silent as he starts up the engine. Before he sets off, he puts his seatbelt on, and I put on mine.
He takes a deep breath, and sets off down Hollywood Boulevard.
I say, “Get off this road the first turn you come to.”
“We still heading to the abandoned warehouse? A totally obvious place to shoot me, by the way.”
“We are. But I need to do some thinking on the way.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“That it would be nice to have some peace and quiet.”
He’s quiet thirty seconds or so before he says, “You married, chief? Have kids?”
“I know what you’re trying to do.”
“I’m just making conversation. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You do. It’s not quite as easy to kill the cow if it has a name, no matter how hungry you are. There’s a right.”
He takes it.
Then says, “I don’t have kids myself.”
“I’d have never have guessed that.”
“Ha-ha. But maybe someday. I just met the girl of my dreams. Well, I met her a while ago, but it’s only now fate has decided we can be together. Never thought I’d get married again until I met that girl.”
I play along. “How’d you meet?”
“In the diner she works at. Worked at. I saved her from her piece-of-shit
husband. Guy slapped her around like she was a slab of cheap-cut steak.”
I glance at his physique. “Did he bring a bunch of grapes to a banana fight?”
“No, but he didn’t like getting hit with his own kitchenware. He’s a chef. The chef at the place my girl was a waitress.”
“Do you always state the obvious?”
“Just wanted to make it clear, is all. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Married?”
“Yeah, I’m married.”
He glances at me. Then says, “Not happily, I guess.”
“What’s it to you?”
He holds his hands up, says, “Just making conversation.”
“What the hell are you doing?” I say, and then grab the wheel.
“Shit, sorry. I’m little rusty.”
He takes the wheel again, and I take my hands off it.
“Well don’t be rusty.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Take the next left.”
“That one?”
“The one that’s next, yeah.”
He’s silent a second.
Then says, “Five years, ten?”
“Ten next week.”
“Congratulations?”
“Why’d you ask that, and not just say it?”
“Never mind. I did mean it. It’s nice to see shit like that. Ten years is a long time.”
“Thanks, and I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I am happily married. We are, I meant.”
“Then why’d you bristle a little when I asked?”
“Maybe it’s because I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“I get it.” He’s silent a second or two. “You having an affair or something?”
“No.”
“She sick?”
I don’t say anything. He glances at me again.
“Shit, it isn’t the Big C, is it?” he asks.
“No, she doesn’t have cancer. But thanks for asking.”
Silence a minute.
“She’s not cheating on you, is she? With another guy?” he asks.
“I changed my mind. Pull over so I can shoot you.”
“Is over there good?”
“Just keep on driving. And try not to make assumptions about my life, marriage or otherwise.”
He thinks a couple seconds. “No, I’m guessing she wouldn’t cheat on a guy like you. You look like the type of guy a home invader would apologize to, before tucking you back in bed.”