Killy

by Donald E. Westlake

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘That was fast work on your part, Paul,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said again.

  I went back to the motel, and told George what Fletcher had said. He smiled and watched me. Then I said, ‘I think Walter’s going to be mad when he gets back here. I’ve got to tell him he’s not running the show any more, and that he’s got to stay here in the motel until Fletcher arrives. I don’t know what kind of temper Walter has—’

  ‘Mean,’ said George.

  ‘Well, he won’t try to take his mad out on you, because you’re bigger than he is. But I’m smaller than him, and besides I’m the one who has to give him the bad news. I’d like you to be with me, and make sure he doesn’t do anything to get himself in worse trouble.’

  George grinned in great enjoyment. ‘I sure will, little friend,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing.’

  George really did like me, in his own off-beat way. His pleasure was genuine. I amused him by being an interesting phenomenon to watch, and that made me his friend. And I also suspected that as long as he called me ‘little friend’ it would mean he still liked me, but that if he ever should call me by my name, or by some other nickname, it would be time to watch out.

  I remembered he always spoke of Walter as ‘Killy.’ I wondered if George had ever had a nickname for Walter, and what had happened between them to end it.

  George and I went next door to my room, and waited for Walter.

  Thirty Two

  Walter showed up at quarter to nine. He looked haggard and tense, his suit was wrinkled, and he was puffy-eyed from lack of sleep. He started to tell us what had happened, and that we ought to call Washington right away, and I interrupted, saying, ‘I already called, Walter. I knew about it right when it happened, so I called Fletcher, like last time.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. He sank into the easy chair, relieved but bushed. ‘Where’s Phil?’ he asked. ‘They got pictures of me; they tried to get me involved with the little bitch. Phil’s got to get the lid on.’

  ‘I already sent him.’

  He focused on me, slowly. ‘You sent him?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What—Did Fletcher tell you?’

  ‘Not exactly. Fletcher checked with somebody else in Washington, and then he told me I was to take over here until he could get here. And that you were supposed to stay right here in the motel.’

  ‘You’re taking over?’ His expression was changing, he was looking sullen and angry, but then he glanced at George, and his expression became wary. ‘What if I tell you to go to hell, Paul?’ he asked me. ‘What if I go down to the office and run things just like usual?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Walter, but if Fletcher asked me about it I’d have to tell him the truth.’

  ‘You rotten little bastard.’ He said it quietly, almost unemotionally.

  George stretched hugely, and yawned, and said to me, ‘Okay if I go get some breakfast, little friend?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Have Clement drive you.’

  ‘Okay, little friend.’ He looked briefly at Walter, and smiled his dreamy interested smile, and left.

  Walter and I sat in silence awhile, and then he lumbered to his feet and went away into the bathroom. I heard the shower running. I picked up the book I’d been reading, lit a cigarette, and settled down to wait. I still didn’t feel tired.

  When Walter came back, nude except for a white towel around his middle, he looked in better shape. The puffiness and uncertainty were gone from his face. He looked at me, lying on my bed, and said, ‘I’ll ride through this one, Standish. I want you to know that. I’ll get chewed by Fletcher and a couple other people for endangering the union’s standing in the community, and that’ll be it. I’ll keep my job, and you’ll still be working for me.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Phil will do a good job of keeping things relatively quiet, under my direction. I’ll handle things well here, and Fletcher will take you back to Washington with him, but he’ll leave me here in charge, because I’m doing the job. Fletcher doesn’t care about people, only about results. You’ll keep your job, Walter, but I won’t be working for you. I’ll be working for me.’

  ‘You’ll be coming back to Washington in two weeks,’ he said. ‘I’ll have almost six months to even the score. I just want you to know where you stand, Standish.’

  ‘Stand Standish?’ I grinned at him. ‘The score is even, Walter. You stole an idea from me, and you stole a girl from me. Now we’re even.’

  ‘I don’t figure it that way,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t think you would.’

  He stood glowering at me, his hands on his hips, his face thrust forward, the whole stance somehow very familiar. Then I realized why. I’d never seen it from this close before, but I had seen it, a number of times. From the stands, during a football game, when a particularly vicious player is finally caught on a personal foul, clipping or unnecessary roughness or something like that, and the player stands just that way, glaring at the referee. It isn’t outraged innocence, it’s outraged omnipotence. This shouldn’t have happened to him.

  So there’s the other side of the club-car football hero.

  After a minute, he said, ‘Don’t think you’re riding so easy, Standish. You played around with that little bitch yourself. She could implicate you, too, you know.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think she’ll be too busy proving she didn’t kill anybody.’

  ‘You mean trying to prove,’ he said.

  ‘No, proving. The note exists. Unless she destroyed it, and I don’t think she’s that stupid.’

  His face looked absolutely blank. In the silence, I could hear my own breathing and the passage of cars outside and the weight of the sun on the motel roof.

  He said, ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘About the note? In it, Gar Jeffers admits killing Hamilton and states he’s taking his own life. That’s the story she’s telling, isn’t it?’

  ‘How did you know, Standish? Where did you hear it?’

  ‘I didn’t hear it. It’s the truth.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I talked Willick into thinking her guilty. She is, in a moral sense. She was playing around with Hamilton. They were both involved in the embezzlement, although she did all the actual work of it. But when they got enough—fifty thousand, I suppose, or maybe a hundred thousand—they were going to take off together. Gar found out what was going on, and he blamed Hamilton. I don’t know if he knew about the embezzlement, or just about the affair. Whichever it was, he tried to stop it. I suppose he talked to both of them, and Hamilton told him to mind his own business, and I guess Alice went into her act, playing Trilby to Hamilton’s Svengali, getting the blame off herself onto Hamilton, being sure her grandfather was still sympathetic toward her and wouldn’t blow any whistles. But Gar couldn’t stand it. Alice was all the family he had, and Hamilton was a bum who’d been cheating on his wife for years. So when Gar couldn’t take it any more, he dragged out his brother’s gun and took it to work with him in his lunch bucket. He tried one last time to talk Hamilton into leaving Alice alone, and Hamilton told him to go to hell again, and Gar shot him.

  ‘I suppose Gar expected to be picked up right then. He shot Hamilton in the parking lot, with a hundred witnesses around. Alice would have picked a quieter spot. I suppose he hadn’t really thought beyond shooting Hamilton. Just shoot him, and then wait for them to come get him and take him away. But they didn’t come to get him. Everybody milled around, and nobody even looked twice at Gar. He was an old guy, and a friend of Hamilton’s, and he had every right to be in the parking lot, and nobody thought for a minute he’d had anything to do with Hamilton’s death.

  ‘So that gave him a chance to think about what would happen next. If he gave himself up, or if he were caught, the whole truth would come out, and Alice would be neck-deep in scandal. So he got away from there and decided to
keep quiet. But you and I were picked up and slapped around, and he figured that was his fault, too. He saw his guilt spreading out all the time, including more and more things. He wanted to confess and get it over with, but he couldn’t because of Alice. That’s why he came to me. He couldn’t go to the police, so he came to me, hoping I’d somehow figure out the truth and take over the job of exposing him. He couldn’t do it himself, but he had to have it done.’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess I didn’t impress him very much. He went home that night and thought it over and decided there was only one way out. He’d said something to me about having lived a long life already, and now he figured it was time to end it. He couldn’t admit his guilt. The law was working overtime not looking for the killer. I had proved a dud. So he got out the gun again and shot himself. There’s no other reason for the gun still to be in the room with him. Then Alice came along and read the note he’d left, and knew she couldn’t show it to the authorities, because it told too much about her. I suppose she’s claiming Hamilton forced her to do the embezzling?’

  ‘Yes.’ He seemed dazed. Then he shook his head, rousing himself, and said, ‘But why’d Hamilton write to us? If he was going to take off anyway, with Alice and the money, why start a big fuss about the union?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can make a guess. He was a guy who’d lived through twenty years of nothing working out the way he wanted it. I suppose he never really believed this setup with Alice would work out either. It sounded good, running off with a good-looking girl and a lot of money, but maybe it sounded too good. It couldn’t really happen, not to Charlie Hamilton. Chuck Hamilton. He was like a man who sells fallout shelters with twenty-year mortgages. He’s preparing for something he doesn’t really believe in. So all the time he was figuring to run off next month or next year, he was still living his ordinary life and making plans for that ordinary life for next month and next year. And maybe, if the thing fell apart, he figured he could sell out Alice and get himself a cushy berth with the union. Alice had done all the embezzling herself. There wouldn’t have been anything but her word that he’d been involved, and who would have believed her if he’d been the guy who turned her in?’

  Walter said, ‘So she didn’t kill anybody. And you knew it all along.’

  I shrugged.

  He said, ‘But why make up that other story and sell it to Willick?’

  ‘I owed Willick a pratfall. He’s taking it now. Sooner or later, he’s going to listen to Alice, and he’s going to send somebody to look where she says she hid the note, and it’s going to be there. Then he’s going to know he just took a pratfall, and he’s going to know I did it, and there isn’t going to be a thing he can do about it.’

  ‘And you wanted to make sure it was a noisy arrest,’ he said. ‘You knew I was with her. You wanted to make sure there’d be photographers.’

  There was nothing to say to that. I yawned and stretched, suddenly very tired. I was way behind on my sleep, and I wanted to be fresh and alert when Fletcher got here. I put down my book and took off my glasses and scrunched lower in the bed, resting my head on the pillow. ‘Don’t go running off anywhere, Walter,’ I said. ‘You’ll just get yourself in trouble with Fletcher.’

  He didn’t answer me, but I knew he’d stay put. Right now, he was too dazed to think very clearly. By tonight, when Fletcher arrived, Walter would be his old self again, smiling and cheerful, apologetic to Fletcher about the business with Alice, but making a locker-room joke out of it, and watching for his chance to stick the piton in my back. That was all right. By tonight, I’d be on the ball again myself.

  Drifting down into sleep, I thought of George, and saw his big heavy face, saw the interested eyes and the sleepy smile and the slow big body, and I thought I could hear George chuckle and say to me, Little friend, you are Kitty.

  That was a strange thought. I took it with me down into sleep.

  I am Killy.

  The End.