Max believed in death because death contained certainty. The changes in once-living tissue, the decay, were absolute. The dead were truly destroyed and gone. Max was fascinated by the thought that death terminated all being; death changed a man to a pile of rotting waste.
Max believed killing a man was doing him a favor; life insurance policies were good once the widow and family were cleared by police and private investigations. The men and women Max had got contracts for all deserved it. “Don’t play if you can’t pay.” Max had had little cards printed up for the hits. Cops ate up weird messages on calling cards left at the crime scene. Cops were criminals at heart. Leave the calling card and the cops would think they had a serial killer on their hands. Cops liked to believe the victims had it coming, so the printed cards were the finishing touch. “What goes around comes around,” was printed on another batch of cards. The cards had functioned as codes to alert contract-holders the job had been performed by Max. Max never lifted a finger, or if he did, he was hundreds, even thousands, of miles away lifting only a telephone receiver.
Max had spent considerable time thinking about the best modes of assassination. Max preferred the word assassination because each death had been “political.” Max had made a set of guidelines he followed. A death that disgraced or discredited the victim was, of course, the form of death most in demand in the international business world. The value of this guideline could easily be seen in the Philippines, where Marcos had made the mistake of assassinating Aquino at the airport, instead of the whorehouse. The result had been instant sainthood for Aquino and political jet-power for his widow.
Max favors .22 caliber pumped four times into the nape of the neck, point-blank, followed by a liberal dousing of white gas. Sign the .22-caliber bullet “Anonymous.” Under microscopes in the crime lab, even the best ballistics men could not distinguish which .22 had fired the bullet.
Arson after the hit was almost a necessity nowadays, due to the increasing sensitivity of lab tests for hair, blood, skin, and fibers. Fire took care of everything. Max had followed the fishing-boat murders in Alaska because the State had been able to produce so little physical evidence at the murder trial. The secrets of success had been a cheap .22 rifle and five gallons of white gas. The intense heat from the fire had melted dental fillings and the teeth of the corpses had shattered so that no identification on one corpse was ever made. Max liked to think of himself as somewhat a scholar, an expert in a very narrow field. He had favorites that regrettably no one would ever know about.
Max believed the ordinary details and normal circumstances of accidental death had been the components of his success. The one-car accident at night, the hit and run while the subject jogs a residential street, the garden hose to the car exhaust and the victim at the wheel with the engine running; irrefutable accidents. People slipped and died of blows to the head in tubs and showers all the time. People suffered strokes and heart failure in hot tubs; people died all the time while swimming laps.
Max had favorites. A lawyer had been found facedown in the swimming pool in his shorts with a wedge-shaped gash in the back of his skull. Tucson police were as stupid as they were corrupt. Tucson police saw accidents where Max had only tried for unsolved homicides. The lawyer had gone to a small apartment complex he owned to collect rents early one Sunday afternoon. Tucson police had ruled the death a swimming accident, and the head wound a result of “colliding with the edge of the diving board.” The guy who had whacked the lawyer had panicked and thrown the golf putter into a big tree near the swimming pool. Only by accident had a gardener found the golf club in the tree. Weeks had passed and the dead lawyer was just another unsolved murder.
Max had always delivered top-quality work because he had been careful to observe and to refine his methods. The key to success was to give the cops ample simple explanations for the death. Any appearance of even a remote possibility of accident or suicide was explanation enough to satisfy police and relieve them of further investigative work.
Max called the categories “big time” and “small time,” although they were all murder or assassination, the word Max increasingly preferred. In the “small” category Max had one or two he liked: the swimming-pool accident and the motorcycle accident. Max the choreographer and designer had been home asleep while “subcontractors” had followed his blueprints all night. They had done the neck-breaking and had then loaded the corpse, with his motorcycle, and driven them to a little grove of paloverde trees growing by the Speedway Exit ramp off I-10. Max had rather liked that it was March and the paloverdes had been thick with bright yellow blossoms when they had hung the “motorcyclist” upside down in a paloverde and left the bike appropriately skidded and smashed lying at the bottom of the exit ramp. Max had liked the newspaper report that a woman on her way to work had sighted “strange fruit” in the flowering desert tree at six o’clock in the morning.
GOLF GAME
MAX RUNS HIS BUSINESS from the men’s locker room of a municipal golf course. He uses the pay telephone in the lobby or outside the Jacuzzi. As far as local people know, Max is a retired businessman who plays golf every day for his health. But Max goes to the golf course every day for the light, and for the blue vastness of the sky. He played golf to savor the single instant of perfection when the ball and the head of the club met in absolute alignment, and the ball arched gracefully above the pale ribbon of grass. Max loved the purity of natural physics and geometry. When he watched the arch of the ball against the sun, Max thought of the great cathedrals he had seen in Europe where light was celebrated as the presence of God. After the shooting Max could remain indoors only a few hours before he felt claustrophobic. He returns to the house only for messages. Weather permitting, Max takes a nap on a chaise lounge on the patio. At night Max no longer sleeps more than a few hours.
Many nights Max stays on the driving range with two shifts of bodyguards until two A.M. The secret of Max’s security plan is the helicopter and .44 magnums with infrared scopes for all his guards. Max hires and trains the bodyguards himself. The most important parts of the process are the testing and the personal interview. Max hires the shy loners with the dreamy eyes who answer no when Max inquires about wives, children, parents, or close friends in the area. Max watches the men. He rotates the guards so he can watch them at the golf course. Max watches a few weeks and then he can tell which of the new men can be trusted for special assignments. Max has found the optimum number of men is twelve. Max provides the car, the housing, and pays for a telephone. The guards don’t seem to care that Max is able to keep an eye on them with this system. Max never pays armed guards anything less than top dollar because, after all, they do have guns. The quiet ones who worked out constantly and swam in icy rivers alone seemed relieved to have Max take a special interest in their personal lives. Max knew loyalty was always bought. A man had to eat. Humans bought the loyalty of the dog and the horse with food. The worst betrayals came from one’s own blood. Brothers sold out sisters, and sisters betrayed one another; mothers informed on their own children. Max had always avoided hiring family members or “friends” of friends. Preference was given to out-of-town applicants who had recently lived abroad in the Middle East or Asia.
Max sketches out the entire operation step by step, act by act, so all the gunman has to do is pull the trigger. Because Max had learned the hard way about assassins: if they did not have each step mapped out for them, the least decision became overwhelming for them. Assassins easily pulled triggers, but they might be paralyzed for hours deciding what model or color of car to rent. Max favors .22 calibers with cheap silencers he buys wholesale from a Church of God minister in Tucson. Max still can not get used to working with the white trash of Tucson. But he has little choice; the Mexicans and Indians all stick together in this town. The preacher who makes silencers fights income tax laws; the silencers are just a sideline to pay legal fees. White men had never been able to control Tucson or the Mexican border. In Tucson white men got the leftov
ers, as Sonny Blue had bitterly called them—cigarette machines, pinball games, and racetracks—dogs and ponies—kid stuff. Or garbage and toxic waste.
Naturally Max was pleased at the prospect of working with Mr. B. Mr. B., of course, was ex-military, still called “the major” by Greenlee. Max knows Mr. B. has important friends because the senator gives Max a call.
On the golf course Max finds out a great deal about a man; if he is deliberate and slow at the tee or if he rushes a hole or panics in a sand trap. Mr. B. has a nervous, tight swing that pulls the ball into the cactus and mesquite so many times Max quits keeping score. Max marches him through eighteen holes; Mr. B. talks about national security, and the need for good men.
Max likes to watch his guests flail at golf balls while attempting to carry on business discussions. Golf-course meetings give Max every advantage. Max is aware of a growing sense of satisfaction and well-being as he finishes off the last hole.
Max watches the major clench his jaws as he swings. Mr. B. jokes that he is more at home at a poker table as his ball disappears into the big arroyo curving near the eighteenth hole. As Max drove him back to the clubhouse, Mr. B. leaned out the golf cart to get a better look.
“What’s the real estate market like around here?” Mr. B. had asked.
Max smiled. “Ask my wife. The real estate developer.”
“Commercial property?”
“Absolutely!” Max said, proud that Leah had taken Tucson real estate by the throat. “Industrial parks—warehouses, showrooms, business suites.”
Mr. B. smiled. “These friends of mine,” he began, looking directly at Max, “are looking for warehouse and office space.”
Later Max had phoned Leah from the clubhouse. While Mr. B. was in the shower. Could she possibly join them for drinks at the Arizona Inn in an hour?
LEAH BLUE
MAX WAS NEVER HOME anymore with Leah and the boys. Max knew she would not say it, but he did not make love to her anymore either. Max had looked at Leah as she made the accusations. He said nothing. He did not feel angry or irritated. Leah was not a stupid woman. She knew what she needed and what her two sons needed. Leah was much like her brothers and her father, who operated real estate ventures in California and Florida. From time to time her brothers and father had found the “liquidation of certain assets or deficits” was necessary. Rival developers or difficult contractors had suddenly disappeared. Max had been attracted to that killer’s quality about Leah. But the attraction—the feeling—had been lost, left behind that morning he had slipped on the sidewalk in his own blood. Max had not forgot the murderous expression that had seized Leah’s face when he had told her about the move to Arizona. He had promised her the real estate business then. The money would be hers and she could run it any way she wanted. He didn’t care. Max had tried to sound lighthearted and tried to make a joke: “Almost a widow twice.” Leah would have the real estate to support herself and the boys if Max ran out of luck.
As the only daughter and with her mother dead, Leah had been a daddy’s girl. Her brothers had always taken her with them to parties and the beach. Her father had explained business deals to her and the brothers at the table after supper. Leah was one of them, and they had taught her to be bossy and had let the killer shine in Leah’s eyes. So Max had bought Leah off. Otherwise, no Tucson unless Max went alone.
Max left Leah alone and Leah left Max alone. The real estate market in Tucson and southern Arizona was wide open, ripe for development. Leah only had to visit her father and brothers to see the possibilities. Her father had driven down to San Diego by way of Palm Springs. Her father would only nod his head as they passed huge tracts of desert that had been bulldozed into gridworks scraped clean of cactus and lined with palm trees. Leah didn’t say anything. She just nodded. She got the idea, she got the idea.
“Max wants Leah to go into Tucson real estate.”
“Real estate what? Industrial, commercial, apartments, condos—what?”
“That’s what we were just trying to figure out.”
But Leah had laughed at all three of them. “This is Tucson, Arizona, we’re talking about—a dusty one-horse town,” she reminded them.
“You’ll knock them dead, sweetheart,” Daddy had told her at the airport, and given her a big kiss. Her brothers both stared out the windows at the airplane. It wasn’t any secret who was number one with Daddy.
Leah wore whatever she wanted when she went to look at acreage or city lots. If the housekeepers looked busy or if the kids wanted to go, she took them. They were good for about forty-five minutes playing with the knobs and buttons on the dashboard of the big Chrysler. The lights would flash and the wipers would go. The windows went up and down. But then Sonny would lose interest and tease Bingo. Finally Bingo would slump against the wheel in tears. The first time it had happened, the agent representing the seller turned pale. He paused, expecting Leah to rush across the vacant lot to get the kid off the horn. And Leah might have done that except she saw the agent’s discomfort. Cars on the street were slowing, and it was Leah, in her bright green mumu and matching heels standing in the center of the vacant lot, people were staring at. Leah had sensed the agent was about to give in on the interest rate; the sound of the car horn had worked like a vise. Leah never even glanced in the direction of the car. The agent broke. Leah opened her bright blue straw handbag and fished out a ballpoint pen. A light breeze shivered past carrying a springtime odor of blossoms—desert trees, she didn’t know which ones. The agent unfolded the real estate sale contract. At that moment she had felt something she had never felt before. The horn had stopped and she could hear the voices of the boys approaching behind her. But nothing could interfere or change what she had just experienced. She had outwitted the agent. The sensation was the closest to anything sexual she’d felt since Max got shot. Sometimes when she was driving back from the county recorder’s office or her lawyer’s office downtown, she would think about what she was doing. Max had told her to put the land titles in her name or the names of the boys. Max was busy with more important things. Anyway, she had already started financing her own deals. She didn’t have to wait for money from Max. If something really big came up, she’d call her brothers.
There was nothing to talk about. Max was working on something. That was all he would say. Max slept on a big leather couch in his office and took phone calls in the middle of the night.
DESERT REAL ESTATE
THERE DIDN’T SEEM to be any way to explain to Leah what had happened. A great deal of what had been his life before had vanished. When Max took a piss, he’d look down at his dick in his hand. He’d watch the urine spread in yellow clouds in the water of the toilet bowl. He’d watch the yellow stream flow away in urinals. In the shower he’d lather his balls with soap, then work the suds in the tip of his dick. But that was all. It might have been his foot he was touching.
Some nights Leah would lie with her eyes closed and imagine that the city limits of Tucson and surrounding Pima County were a gridwork of colored squares for Chinese checkers. They had been in Tucson for a year and a half, and Max had not had sex with her or even slept in the same bed with her. Going over offers and counteroffers and joint-partnership deals was Leah’s way of getting back to sleep. Otherwise Leah would be engulfed by loneliness and she would cry. All Max could tell her was the shooting had changed him. He lived and sometimes even slept at the golf course.
Buying real estate was a real rush, Leah was fond of saying. Max had hardly noticed the changes in Leah’s schedule or the full-time housekeeper. Max did not ask questions if Leah did not ask questions. In the beginning Leah had had to work late nights and all weekends to catch on to the real estate investment business. She called her father and her brothers and asked their advice. She canvased neighborhoods on the edges of the city, leaving her business cards in case large parcels of desert became available. Within the family and the organization, Leah’s real estate business was looked upon as evidence of how bad off Max real
ly was. None of them, not even those who were suspicious of Max and his strange “retirement” to Tucson, bothered to look closely at his wife’s investments. Most assumed that her half dozen duplexes and bungalows next to the air force base constituted a modest real estate business the family had arranged to support Max. The ones who were suspicious kept close watch. Those who did not play golf had to learn. Max did not meet with anyone except on the golf course. Always outside, always in the open air. Max played foursomes three times a day every day. Max’s preference was to play in hot months; he had teed off by six A.M.
Leah had said nothing to anyone. Max wanted the confusion. Max could not leave Tucson, that was the rumor. It was supposed to have something to do with the hot, dry climate and how the doctors had sewed him back together. Something about the cold made his bones and joints ache.
For a long time Leah had not much enjoyed sex with the men she got. If they were not too terrified to fuck her, then they were either crazy or stupid.
Leah had been intrigued with the reactions men had when they learned they’d just fucked Max Blue’s wife. Some sent dozens of roses or pots of orchids in bloom addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Max Blue. Leah knew she would never get those suckers in bed again. But those who did not send flowers but telephoned with inside information on classy municipal bonds, followed by a call for lunch later in the week—well, those babes were few and far between. Leah sensed their sexual excitement was aroused by danger. They might race motorcycles or sky-dive, or they might be aroused by the danger of having the wife of Mr. Murder himself. Leah tries to imagine their fantasies—the race to pump a load into her before the gunmen break through the door, and everything explodes right then, every pore wrenched by prolonged throbs.
The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Page 42