Carny kill

by Robert Edmond Alter

  "Yes you do," Chad said. His eyes never left me.

  Pansy-face was starting to get jittery. He needed more action.

  "What say we have Bob stop somewheres first, Chad?" he said. "The mouth here purely needs some working on."

  He gave me a short vicious one in the ribs.

  "Don't you, mouth? You need some exercise, huh?"

  He worried me. His kind of bent-brain needed to feel power. He liked to intimidate helpless people. I was afraid he would want to pull his bobbed target pistol, to wave it in my face and make me cringe.

  "Cut it out," Chad said. Then he said to me, "No hard feelings about this, Mr. Thaxton. It's the way the cookie crumbles."

  "Or the ball bounces," I said.

  We were out on the highway now and I could just make out the gray strip of beach with its pile line of foam running along on the left side of us.

  "How serious is it?" I asked him. "Do I just get a working over from the hophead here, or are you going whole hog?"

  "Oh, you're gonna be mine, boy," Pansy-face murmured.

  "I wouldn't worry about it, Mr. Thaxton," Chad said. "One way or another, you've got to face it."

  "Sure," I agreed. "But you don't have any objection about telling me why I've got to face it, do you?"

  "I wouldn't know, Mr. Thaxton, I really wouldn't. And I'll tell you something else. I really don't care to know."

  I had figured that. He was a sharp big-city hood and he did nasty little jobs like this on consignment. He tidied up other people's garbage for them and he never asked questions. That's what kept him in business.

  "But you know who hired you," I said.

  "Um," he said. "I know that somebody pays me. Beyond that point I don't sweat it."

  "You know the name of the person who paid you this time?"

  "Could be."

  A night-owl kid on a bike missed death by inches as we whoomed by him-his gawk-eyed blob of face appearing briefly in our lights and streaming by to be swallowed up in the winged blackness. Chad's eyes flicked to the left.

  "Didn't you hear what I said, Bob?" he asked quietly.

  "I gave the bastard a mile's clearance," the driver said defensively.

  "I said slow. Is that right?"

  The driver eased up on the accelerator.

  "Look," I said to Chad. "I figure you're passing up a bet."

  "I've been known to do it before."

  "Yeah, but I mean one from the horse's mouth. There could be money in this. Fat money."

  He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he said, "They always say the same thing. Different words, may be, but it always comes to the same thing. I'm being played for a sucker. I could grab a bundle instead of settling for peanuts. I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground."

  His teeth flashed at me in the dark. "Is that right?"

  "I'd say so," I said.

  "I thought you would. Because they all do. All right, I've got to kill time anyhow. Go ahead. Tell me how I'm throwing away a fortune this time."

  "First you'd better tell me who hired you for this."

  "Oh," he said. "I see. You're just guessing. Fumbling around for an answer."

  "But suppose I get the right answer? There is such a thing as blackmail."

  "I'm afraid you're not very smart, Mr. Thaxton," Chad said. "Elimination and blackmail are two divergent businesses. If you try to mix them you end up bankrupt."

  At least he had made one point clear. I was to be eliminated.

  We turned off the main drag and went down a lightless back road at a casual forty. It wasn't paved. I could hear the pebbles banging off the bottom of the frame and a lot of sand or dirt was hissing inside the fenders.

  "What you say, Chad? We have some exercise with him first, huh?" Pansy-face made another eager appeal.

  Chad didn't take his eyes from me. He said no.

  Thinking back I realized that the only time he had removed his eyes from me was in that split second when the kid on the bike had flashed by the car windows. That was good. He could be distracted. And a split second was all I needed.

  Chad watched me. He said, "We close?" to the driver.

  "Uh-huh. Any place along here. Nearest farmhouse is five miles."

  I glanced out the window. A continuous murky scar on the dark earth was running along our right side. A drainage ditch, I supposed. Some kind of coulee.

  "This will do," Chad said, and the driver applied the brakes.

  "I'm going to ask you to conduct yourself with a little dignity, Mr. Thaxton," Chad said. "I wouldn't want you to kick up a row and have to put a bullet in you."

  I wet my lips. The car had stopped. The twin beams of light converged and showed us fifty yards of drab dirt road rolling flatly on into the mystery wall of night.

  "I see," I said. "A little incident is going to be arranged, huh?"

  "A hit and run accident," he said. "Too bad about this, Mr. Thaxton, but business is business."

  "Yeah, I know. The crumbled cookie."

  "I did mention I was sorry, didn't I?" He didn't sound like he had too much remorse.

  Pansy-face made a little giggle and leaned on the door handle.

  "Lemme square him away, huh Chad?"

  The door had opened about an inch. I said, "Any of you know what became of the hophead's Roscoe?"

  They did what I thought they would. Pansy-face slapped a hand to his left armpit and Chad's eyes leaped right after Pansy-face's gesture.

  I had the twentytwo out and I pulled the trigger at Chad's chest but it kicked and he caught the slug spang in the Adam's apple and it must have been a dumdum because what it did to his throat and all over the windshield behind him was not pretty to see in the sheet of flame that roared from the pistol.

  I lunged all of me against Pansy-face and the door shot open and we went sprawling through it and hit the road together, me on top, and then I started rolling like a log as the driver's snubnose went WOW WOW WOW out the window after me.

  I got behind the car and came up in a crouch and I had to do something fast because in a second Pansy-face would have Chad's gun and then he and the driver would come after me around either end. I took a running jump into the coulee and it was like leaping into a well at night, only it was dry and it wasn't as deep.

  I was afraid it would be loose shale but it was dint so I didn't make any noise as I started crawling along it, working parallel to the road and going in the same direction as the headlights. The driver was yelling at Pansy-face.

  "Take the right side. I'll take the left. He must a jumped in one ditch or other."

  "He's mine, gawddamn you, Bob! You hear me? Wait'll I get Chad's gun." And then, a second or so later, Pansy-face cried, "Aw gee-_sus_, Bob! You see what he done to Chad?"

  I kept on crawling along the ditch till that blazing streak of opaque light overhead lost its power of penetration and started to dissolve in the darkness beyond. Then I snaked up to the edge of the parapet and looked back down the road.

  The car's headlights glowered at me like jack-o-lantern eyes. Pansy-face's silhouette cut across them. He was holding Chad's pistol at hip-level. I eased myself out of the ditch and sat down in the road facing the car and tested my gun arm on my cocked right knee and gave it support with my other hand and took a sight and called, "Down here."

  Pansy-face spun around with the front of the car at his back and gave me a beautiful fullfront silhouette. I squeezed off but it went high again and nabbed him in the neck and threw him back against the nose of the hood. Then his knees buckled and he went down in the road like a dropped shirt.

  I only caught a flicker impression of the driver piling back into the car and I snapped one at him but God knows where it went. The motor was still idling and all he had to do was flip off the emergency and punch a button and give it the gas.

  But he forgot about Pansy-face.

  "_Jesus Christ, Bob, wa-!_"

  The car lurched forward and went thump over the meaty obstacle and a shriek like I
never want to hear again ripped the fabric of the night.

  The driver was already rattled and the good-god realization that he had just mashed Pansy-face must have unglued him completely. He floored it and that big rumbling crystaleyed sedan came hurtling down the road at me, but it was already slated for crashvile when I started jerking off shots at the windshield, and it swerved out of control and to the left and I took a frantic roll back into the ditch.

  The tires howled and the brakes started to scream and all of it went into a great metallic crash and seemed to surround me in a shivering glass ball of sound. Then it popped and all I could hear was the quiet, tentative giving of ruptured metal parts and the plippity-plip of draining liquid puddling. The headlights were burning steadily at a crazy tilt.

  I climbed out of the ditch and went across the road and looked down the other side. The car had turned turtle on the slope. It was on its top and two of the tractionless wheels were still spinning. The driver was partly out the window and he was in a crumple on his head and shoulders. The black liquid running over his face looked like oil but of course it wasn't.

  I went down the road and looked at Pansy-face. His legs were at an odd angle to his body and he was hemorrhaging from the mouth. I hoped he hadn't died right away.

  I wiped off the pistol and pitched it in the field by the wreck. I didn't see any reason why I should get involved with the law-any more than I already was. I started hoofing back the way we had come.

  16

  It cost me an hour to reach the highway and another halfhour to find an all night coffee stand. I phoned for a taxi from there and it was 12:45 when I paid off the hack in front of Billie's apartment, the Regency.

  Billie was getting ready for bed and she was in one of those skimpy nylon nighties that end where Eve wore the fig leaf. She looked at me as if I'd just dropped out of the moon.

  "Why, Thax!"

  I stepped into her room and closed the door and said, "I had a little trouble."

  She gave me a half wondering, half critical look.

  "You look like you've been rolling in it. What happened?"

  I told her it was a car accident.

  "Well, whose car? Was anybody hurt?"

  "Nobody was hurt. Just three guys were killed. Okay I use your bathroom? I feel as grimy as a Union Pacific engineer."

  I told her about it after I got out of the shower and put my shorts back on. "It was an anachronism. An honest to God old-fashioned ride. Like something out of the _Little Caesar_ days."

  "But why, Thax? Who would want to do such a crazy thing to you?"

  "Someone who figures I'm getting too smart."

  "You mean the same person who killed Rob Cochrane and Terry Orme?"

  I shook my head and asked her if she had a drink around there. After-reaction was setting in and I suddenly needed a drink very badly. She had bourbon.

  "No," I told her. "It wasn't the same person. The person who fixed Cochrane and Orme does his own dirty-work. This Edward G. Robinson-type ride is someone else's style."

  Billie looked annoyed. "I don't understand. Just how many people at Neverland have homicidal tendencies?"

  I grinned at her. "One too many. That's what had me going in circles so long. I didn't figure it that way."

  "Honestly, Thax. You're the most maddening person I know. Are you going to tell me what it's all about, or just leave me up in the air?"

  "Up in the air is one place I'm not going to leave you. Not while there's a nice warm bed waiting ten feet away. Shut up now like a good little girl, huh? And come to daddy."

  I didn't want to talk about murder. I had just been too damn close to my own. I had been lucky and now I was full of the joy of living and I had to do something vital and energetic to establish my love of life.

  "Really, Thax," Billie said. "Sometimes I wonder about you." But she was smiling.

  I took her by the hand and walked the ten feet.

  We drove to Neverland around noon. We had decided I should find myself a room somewhere. There were no doors I could lock in Tarzan's hut and it was no longer a very safe place for me to sleep in.

  "I've got a couple of clean shirts and whatnot tucked under Tarzan's bed," I told her. "I'll pick 'em up after we close tonight and meet you at the main gate."

  "Thax," Billie said, "be careful. Don't trust anyone."

  "Stop worrying about it, will you?"

  "I can't help worrying about it. We're so close to everything I've ever wanted. In another week we'll be starting out for a glorious new life."

  I nodded, thinking about it, looking at Neverland.

  "Like conquistadors in a fabled city, plundering the treasure vaults of their frozen jewels," I said.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Just something else de Saint-Exupery said about aviators and the stars. It doesn't matter."

  Billie looked at me doubtfully.

  "Well, I'm afraid I don't see the connection," she said. "But just the same, don't do anything to spoil it."

  "Don't worry," I said. "I'll take care of myself. See you tonight."

  I was never more wrong in my life. I wasn't going to see her that night and someone else was going to take care of me. I had forgotten that a man's will has very little to say about the direction he is going when he is caught in a current.

  It was a hot, almost sultry day with no help from the sea, and we had a good crowd. I worked my stand for a few hours but my mind wasn't on it. I kept waiting for something to happen and when nothing did I began to wonder if I'd been wrong.

  The way I figured it a crack had to appear in the egg-shell soon so that the chick could show its beak. When it didn't, I started to get nervous.

  I stayed at my stand till about four and then I went over to Gabby's gallery.

  "Smoke break," I said.

  He was agreeable. He said, "Want a snort?"

  "No. But let's step around back a minute."

  We went around to the little tented area and lit up. There was a small locked shack back there and I knew he kept his twentytwos and live ammo inside.

  I said, "Look, Gabby. You mentioned something about if I ever needed a gun."

  He gave me a sharp look and forgot to drag on his smoke.

  "Has it come to that, Thax?"

  I shrugged. "I've got a funny feeling it might."

  My funny feeling was a matter of nerves. I was getting spooky with suspense. Nothing was happening when I damn well knew that something should happen. Everything pointed to it.

  The corners of Gabby's mouth dipped into points.

  "Why don't you use your head, Thax, and cut and run?"

  "I'm in too deep. I've got to go along with it."

  "You mean you want to go along with it," Gabby said.

  I thought about it. Maybe he was right, and maybe he had just put his finger on the cracked keystone of my character. I had been content to drift as a nonentity through a life I didn't understand or like, blaming my inadequacy on fate, when it was actually my own gutlessness that kept me a nothing, a Then person.

  This train of thought was more of an emotion than an idea and the emotion had a personification. The picture I suddenly saw of myself made me lonely, empty, and it fified me with distaste.

  "Well,"I said defensively, "it doesn't really matter, does it? Because one way or another I'm going to see the end of it."

  "Yeah," Gabby said, "and I think you're a goddam sap."

  "You ain't alone in that thought. But can you help me or not?"

  He made points with his mouth again.

  "That's the thing. I ain't helping you any by giving you a gun."

  "Look, Gabby. Let's not make with the pseudo-profound platitudes. Let's just call it backass help and let it go at that."

  "Well, but you don't want to go wandering around with a twentytwo rifle over your shoulder like a goddam sentry, do you?"

  No, I didn't want to do that. In fact I'd been thinking about kicking myself because I'd been so goddarn hasty
in throwing away that pistol the night before.

  "Look," I said. "A couple of days back you offered me the loan of a gun if I thought I needed one. You weren't thinking about a twentytwo then, were you?"

  Gabby scowled at the ground. "No," he admitted. "I've got a Roscoe put away-but you're a damn fool if you try to use it'

  "Gabby-let me sweat it, will you? How about it? Do I get the Roscoe?"

  Gabby shrugged. "It's your neck."

  He unlocked the shack door and went inside and made some noise and climbed out again with an automatic in his hand. He didn't look one bit happy about it when he passed over the weapon.

  It was a fortyfive, a Colt. I thumbed the clip latch and extracted the magazine. It was loaded. I palmed it home and pulled the slide and made sure the safety was on. Then I shoved it under my belt and buttoned my jacket over it and nodded at Gabby.

  "Maybe I won't have to use it," I said.

  He looked at me and said, "I hope not. I hope you figure out another way."

  "Maybe somebody will figure out another way for me," I said.

  The funny thing was-somebody already had.

  Nothing happened. Six o'clock ticked around and I knocked off and went over to the Queen Anne Cottage and had a New York cut and amused myself kidding with the cute waitress over my smoke and coffee.

  I asked her what she thought of _Treasure Island_ and she told me she had gone over there one night with one of the college boys who worked on the lot and had she ever had a time fighting him off, and I said no I meant the book, and she gave me a blank look and said huh? Then she said oh and went on to tell me that _Treasure Island_ was just a kid's book.

  "You're only half right," I said. "_Treasure Island_ was written for those who won't let youth slip away. For those whose attitude toward life has not been ruined by life."

  She gave me a look that was supposed to imply that I just might be some kind of nut.

  "I can't imagine what you think you're talking about"

  "Neither can I," I said. "Because my attitude doesn't fit in that picture. I've already been ruined for life by sexy young things like you."