Shark Infested Custard (20 page)

       "Wait a minute, Mr. Wright. What's the beeper got to do with Jannaire? You're getting off the track."

       "Not with the beeper. You see, that's how I followed you. I planted the transmitter in your gas tank, and then with my sonic receiver I could sort of run you down. It takes a little time, and if you don't know how to work it, you might as well quit. But I know how to work it, thanks to my son having the patience to drive all over Jax for about six weeks with me chasing him. Of course, with Francis, it was sort of a game with him. But it was just hard, hot work for me. But I found out I wasn't gypped on the beeper set. I know how to use it now"

       "Okay. That's interesting. You could trail me with a sonic beeper. That explains part of the mystery. How'd you get a duplicate key to my car?"

       "From this same guy in Lauderdale. It cost me ten bucks. If I'd had more time, if Miss Jannaire had told me the make of your car and all before I come down, I could've sent away for one and got it for five bucks."

       "Send away where?"

       "Lots of places. They advertise keys in the car magazines. Don't you ever read the classifieds in the car magazines? You can get a key to any make car and year you want for five bucks. But this guy in Lauderdale, he charged me ten, and I give it to him because of the shortness of time."

       "All right. Let's get back to Jannaire. She hired you, somehow, to kill me. Is that right?"

       "No. That's what I thought it was when my contact down here called me. He told me he had this contract for me, and a contract means a hit, so that's what I thought. I think she had the same idea when she talked to my contact here, but she changed her mind later."

       "Who was the contact?"

       "I can't tell you that. It's unethical."

       "Maybe it is, but I can't help wondering how she found out how to go about hiring a pro killer, that's all. She's a dress designer who dabbles some in real estate, isn't she?"

       "I don't know. I don't care what people do for a living. I've got my living to make, and they got theirs. I offer a service, and if they can pay, they get it."

       "How much do you get for killing a man?"

       "Two thousand dollars. In advance. I've got more, but I won't work for no less. And I do it clean. I come in, I find the guy, and I hit him. Like that. Then I'm long gone back to Jax."

       "Why'd she want you to kill me?"

       "She didn't say, and I didn't ask. Besides, she didn't want me to kill you. She wanted me to run you out of town instead. That's what caused a lot more delay, you see. It's one thing to come into town, hit a man—nice and clean—and then get out. But to scare a man so bad he'll just pick up and leave, that's stupid. Maybe, in time, I could've scared you out. I just don't know about that now. But even if I did, you'd come back probably. And there was a lot of danger exposing myself to you that way, pretending to be her husband. That's why I couldn't say much to you in her apartment. Just the little we talked, you wondered why a woman like that would marry a man like me, didn't you?"

       "Yes. I wondered about that. But I didn't think too much about it because I was surprised to find out that she had a husband in the first place."

       "Well, I ain't him, Mr. Norton. She might have one someplace, but I ain't married to her. And I'm glad I'm not, neither. I'm a widower. There's just me and my son, Francis, and our little grocery store. And that's what I'd like to go on being; a widower. It was the money, Mr. Norton. I hope you know that I ain't got nothing personal against you. Tell you the truth, I felt sorry for you, all mixed up with that woman, a woman that don't shave under her arms or anything."

       "It doesn't reassure me, Wright, to know that you didn't do all these things for personal reasons."

       "I know. I just put that in. I know you're going to kill me, but it won't make it easy for you if you get to feeling sorry for me."

       "I don't feel sorry for you, Wright. I've never met a professional killer, or a hit-man before, but I don't like you personally, Mr. Wright."

       "I'm not a hit-man all the time, though. That's the problem. My son and me got us a small neighborhood grocery store, and the big chains've made it tough on us the last few years, what with cut rate prices and all. But the last year or so, what with rising costs, we been breaking even again. For the last year, and I could prove it to you if you want, there is hardly any difference in prices. With just me and Francis running the store, we don't have their big overhead, you see—not with inflation, so..."

       "I don't care about your damned grocery store. I want to know why Jannaire hired you to kill me, and why she changed her mind, and why she wanted you to run me out of town."

       "I don't know. I never hired out to no woman before, so it was different with her. Maybe she got chicken-hearted. Anyway, if I hadn't needed the money, I would've left as soon as she changed her mind. But we got to dickering, and I agreed to do it, with her giving me amateur advice ever step of the way. What I did, you see, was up the price to twenty-five hundred. If you kill a man, that's it. No danger. But fooling around this way, trying funny tricks and all, the man gets to know you, who you are, maybe, and then he comes after you instead of leaving town. Or, he leaves town, and then maybe he hires a man to hit you sometime. It's worth more, so I charged more. But she shaved me down to twenty-two hundred. I needed the money, and I would've gone back to my flat two thousand, but she ain't as good at dickering as she thinks she is."

       "I never thought about it, Wright, but in a logical sense, the job was worth more than a flat two thousand. Because I did come after you, and I did get you."

       "I told her that might happen. And now you're going to kill me."

       "No," I said, "I'm not going to kill you."

       But I was, and I had known all along that I was going to kill him, just as he had known all along that I was going to kill him. I certainly didn't intend to kill him at first, and I'm not sure when I passed the point when I knew I was going to kill him, that I was going to 'have'' to kill him, because I didn't allow myself to think about it. But everything he said was reinforcement. For some minutes now, I had merely been delaying the inevitable. I still needed more delay, and I still didn't want to think about it.

       "How many men have you hit, Mr. Wright?" I said.

       "Twenty-seven. But you're the first man I've ever tried to scare out of town."

       "How many has your son killed?"

       "None. He don't know nothing about what I do when I go out of town. He thinks I've got some investments that pay off just when we need the money for the store. The store's in his name, and he won't be coming after you, Mr. Norton, so you don't have to worry none about that."

       "I was worrying about it, to tell you the truth."

       "I know you were, but you don't have to worry none about Francis."

       I took out a cigarette, and lit it awkwardly, without putting the pistol down. "Would you like a cigarette, Mr. Wright?"

       "Are you going to shoot me now?"

       "Of course not. I just asked if you wanted a cigarette."

       "No, I don't smoke much. Sometimes a good cigar, but I don't care for cigarettes. I just thought..."

       His voice was normal, resigned. He had had a pretty good run—twenty-seven murders, unless he was lying—and he had prepared himself for the same eventual ending. His quiet acceptance of the situation was unnerving, and I tried to close off my mind. I couldn't allow myself to think about it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do it. Except for the patch of vitiligo on his forehead which had turned from pink to almost white, there was no evidence of fear in his face.

       "Suppose, Mr. Wright, suppose, now, that I let you go? What would you do?"

       "Well," he said, "I took the money from Miss Jannaire, and I mailed it to Francis, you see. He's probably paid a few bills with it, and all. But even if I still had it, I'd have to carry out the contract. That's the ethical thing to do. Once you take the contract, there can't be no mind-changing going on, because then word gets around. And if the word gets around that you welshed on one, they figure you lost your nerve, and they begin to wonder about the old contracts, you see. If you lost your nerve, you might be willing to talk about them."

       "What 'they' is this? I don't believe that Wright is your real name, but I don't think you're any member of some crazy Cracker Mafia, either."

       "I can't tell you about the 'they' Mr. Norton. But I'm not Mafia, no, you're right there. I don't know if I'd do next what I'd planned to do next, but I'd still have to scare you into leaving Miami. That was the contract I took, you see."

       "What nasty little trick were you planning next?"

       "A beating. I was going to have you beaten. Not too bad, but enough to scare you. No broken bones, or not on the face, but a good beating with bike chains. I wasn't going to tell Miss Jannaire about the beating because I know more about these things than she does. And I think a good beating, with some bad bruises and all, would've scared you pretty bad."

       "Yes, it would have. But if I let you go, you wouldn't leave Miami yourself and go back to Jacksonville?"

       "It wouldn't do any good if I did. My contact here would get another man, and he'd have to make Miss Jannaire's money good. Even if I gave it back to him to give to someone else, it wouldn't help you any—or me neither."

       "Suppose I gave you another fee—say three thousand—to hit Jannaire. Could you do that?"

       "No. That wouldn't be ethical."

       I put the cigarette out in one of the big sand-filled standing ashtrays.

       Wright stiffened visibly, but that was the only movement he made. I shot him, and he tumbled forward out of the chair, curling his body slightly as he died silently on the white shag carpet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The things I had to do took me much longer than they should have because I would pause all of a sudden, struck by the enormity of what I had done, and stand for long moments paralyzed in thought, or not thinking, in a state of dazed bewilderment.

       Mr. Wright, a fatalist, accustomed to swift and sudden death, had died with dignity, as a right, as a rite long rehearsed in his mind. Or, to paraphrase the old cliche; "Dying well is the best revenge."

       When my time came, as it must, there would be Wright's example to die up to, the measurement of a real man.

       This murder of Wright, as necessary as it was, and I would always remind myself that it was necessary, and not a gratuitous act, had changed me forever. To kill a man, whether it is necessary or not, whether in anger or in cold blood, is the turning point in the life of the American male. It made me finally a member of the lousy, rotten club, a club I hadn't wanted to join, hadn't applied for, but had joined anyway, the way you accept an unsolicited credit card sent to you through the mail and place it in your wallet.

       The report of the .38 had been loud, but here I wasn't concerned about whether the neighbors had heard the shot or not. In a $150,000 apartment, the walls are thick enough to deaden the sound of a .38.

       The airconditioner condenser kicked in, and I felt a sudden whiff of cool air on my neck as I stood there, waiting, waiting to see whether Mr. Wright would move again. I couldn't see his upper body, but I could watch his white legs and the purplish snaky looking varicose veins climbing out of the tops of his black support socks.

       I put the pistol down, staring at Wright's pale, almost feminine, legs, and willed them not to move. I had willed myself to shoot once because I had to, but I don't believe I could have shot him again, or put a round in the back of his head for a 'coup de grace''. As I stood there, frozen, waiting, staring, I felt very close to Larry and Eddie. Larry had killed a thief, when he was still a cop, a legitimate shooting for which he was cleared. Eddie, as a fighter pilot, had killed a good many little brown men in Vietnam on strafing and bombing missions.

       In every instance, the killing was justified, as I had so easily justified the killing of Mr. Wright. The thought bothered me, and it was difficult to brush aside. A killing can always be justified, or rationalized.

       Perhaps I could have found an alternative, another option, but no other way out occurred to me. So I quit thinking about it. I also resolved not to think about it again, or at least to try not to think about it again.

       The deed was done, and there would be no point to brood on the matter and come up with an alternative some five years from now, because I had had to do what I had done at the time.

       I went through Mr. Wright's wallet. There was a Gulf credit card made out to L. C. Smith, a Florida driver's license, also in the name of L. C. Smith, and fifty-seven dollars in cash. There was no credit card for a rental car, so I assumed that he had driven his own car down to Miami from Jacksonville. If there is anything harder to do than rent a car without a credit card, I don't know what it is. But fifty-seven dollars was a very small sum of money.

       I put the money into my wallet, and searched Wright's other pockets. I found a packet of Barclay's traveler's checks, all twenties, totaling $240.00. They were unsigned, neither on the tops nor the bottoms. I had no idea how a man could get traveler's checks from a bank without signing them first, unless they were stolen, and I didn't know what to do with them. But no one ever asks for I.D. when a traveler's check is cashed, and these unsigned checks could be used anywhere in the world. I decided to keep them. If I cashed them, one at a time, over a lengthy period, they would be impossible to trace to me.

       I put Wright's key ring, with its peculiar collection of keys, in my pocket, too. One of those keys would fit Jannaire's duplex door, and I had a few things to talk about with that woman. There was a package of book matches from Wuv's, a folded length of copper wire, a theater ticket stub and a parking stub from the Double X Theater, and a plug of Brown Mule chewing tobacco with one small bite missing.