The Ax (29 page)

He’s turned, he’s stepping between cars, he’s turning again, he’s unlocking a car door. When he opens it, I see the car is black; I would have expected that from him. I start the Voyager’s motor, sit there with it idling.

Now nothing happens. What is he doing in there? Probably, come to think of it, with the relative privacy of the interior of his own car, probably he’s allowing himself a minute to be unglued, to be angry and unhappy and frustrated and afraid. But, if I know my man, he won’t need long.

No. Here he comes. It’s a Ford Taurus; HCE would buy American.

I switch on my left turn signal. His Taurus drives by me, then a gray Chrysler Cirrus drives by me, and then I pull out.

We drive out of town, me keeping at least one other car between us, his black Taurus always clearly visible up ahead. Out of Regnery, this secondary road takes us over to State Route 9, where he turns north toward Sable Jetty, as expected.

There’s more traffic on this road, but he’s still easy to follow. I’d thought his anger and frustration might make him drive too fast or too aggressively, but he’s a law-abider, and we stay respectably just above the speed limit whenever we aren’t slowed by trucks.

I expect him to take the right turn that leads into Sable Jetty, but he doesn’t; instead, he continues on up Route 9. I follow, keeping well back, wondering where he’s going. North of town, he’ll meet the other end of River Road, but that would be the long way round to his house.

Here’s River Road, with the diner beside it and the big mall just beyond it, on the other side of the road, and
that’s
where he’s going, the mall. He signals for a left, moving into the special mall lane there, and the three cars between us all go straight ahead, and I too signal for a left as I come to a stop behind him.

There’s no traffic light at this spot, but there is one some distance ahead, and shortly after that one turns red the southbound traffic peters out, and then we can both make our turn, and so can the two cars that have come along behind me.

It’s harder to follow him in the parking lot, without being noticeable. I stay well back, seeming indecisive about which lane I want, while he heads confidently forward and then to the right, and parks some distance away from the main building, half a dozen empty spaces from the nearest parked car. Is he afraid of dents and damage from other people getting into their cars next to his? I think that would probably be like him.

I find a slot closer to the building, and stop, and take out my memo pad and pen, as though I’ve chosen this moment to do my shopping list. I’m aware of him walking this way, then see him clearly first in the right mirror, then the inside mirror, then the left mirror.

Please. Let this one not be as awful as Everett Dynes.

When he’s almost to the end of the row of parked cars, I finally get out of the Voyager, lock it, and follow. He’s crossing the lanes between the parking area and the mall building, and I’m not very far behind him. Other people are walking here, too, from their cars. We all enter the building.

This is an enclosed mall, with a long broad corridor from these doors, flanked by chain stores of all kinds, and with a three-story Dolmen’s at the far end, Dolmen’s being a line of suburban department stores, mostly or maybe entirely in malls. In front of Dolmen’s, the corridor Ts left and right, with more shops facing the fashion windows of the department store. Only the part of the building containing Dolmen’s is more than one story high.

HCE walks briskly down the long corridor. He certainly seems to know where he’s going. Could he be planning to buy himself something, some small luxury to soothe his feelings? He doesn’t seem the type.

Dolmen’s, that’s where he’s going. The sliding doors open for him, then close, then open for me, and I see him moving just as briskly as ever toward the escalators in the middle of the store.

I keep well back. There are a good number of shoppers in here, but it isn’t really crowded, and I wouldn’t want him to become aware that he’s seeing me every time he looks around.

Not that he does look around, really. He’s clearly concentrated on his destination. Up the escalator he goes, and I can tell he would step briskly upward except that the large family in front of him, everybody but Dad, is standing still.

I hang back, and hang back, and don’t board the escalator until he’s nearly to the top. Then, as I am rising upward, I just glimpse him make the U-turn and march back toward the second flight.

Yes. As I come off the first escalator and turn toward the second, I just spy his hand and part of his dark suit moving up. I follow.

He’s at the top when I reach the bottom, and I see him angle left. I walk up the moving steps, gliding rapidly upward, and when I can see the third floor he’s nowhere in sight.

That’s all right. I saw him go leftward, toward the left rear of the store, and there aren’t that many sections up here. I’ll spot him any second.

But I don’t. I move along that leftward aisle, looking both ways as I go along, as though searching for something to buy, not a man to kill, and he isn’t anywhere. The final department up here is menswear, racks of suit jackets and sport coats along two right-angled walls, and he isn’t here, either.

Where the hell did he go? I’m not worried yet, because whatever he’s come here for will take him at least a few minutes to choose and buy. He’s in this quadrant on this level of the store; I’ll find him.

I’m still standing in the middle of menswear, frowning one way and another, deciding which route to take first, when HCE himself comes out from a doorway in the very corner, between the racks of suits and coats. He sees me, and smiles, and marches toward me, and I’m bewildered and frightened and ready to run. Then I realize, he’s now wearing an oval blue-and-white nametag. It says DOLMEN’S in the upper half, and below that it says “Mr. Exman.”

He works here. He’s a suit salesman, that’s why his own suit is so good. He’s a suit salesman and I’m a customer.

“Yes, sir?” he says, hands clasped together, beaming at me in a way I know to be false to his nature and probably abhorrent to his soul.

I can’t just stand and stare. I have to be quick-witted, I have to move things along smoothly, I have to not seem astonished, or guilty, or afraid. I have to be nothing at all, a blank customer, in front of a salesman. “Just looking,” I say. “Thank you.”

“If I can be of help,” he says, with that smile, “you’ll find me around.”

There are no other customers in this section at this moment, and no other salesmen visible. We’re alone here, but not usefully. “Yes, yes, thank you,” I say. I don’t want him to remember me.

Or, wait. Yes, I do. I’m thinking now, I’m seeing the possibilities all at once. I return his smile, I don’t turn away, and I say, “It’s a sport jacket I need, for summer, but I can’t pick it out for myself, my wife has to be with me. So now I’m just looking around.”

“Yes, of course,” he says, nodding, sharing my male experience. “We always have to listen to the wife.”

“She’s a teacher,” I explain, “so she’s working today, but I could come back with her tomorrow.”

“Good idea,” he says, and slides two fingers into his inner jacket pocket and produces a business card. “I’ll be here,” he tells me, extending the card. “If you don’t see me, ask.”

This sort of job is mostly commission, of course. I take his card and look at it, and it’s like his nametag, with the store name prominent above and his own name printed below. On the card, on the lower right, it also says, “Sales Representative.” I nod at the card, and at HCE. “I’ll be back,” I promise. Then I switch the card to my left hand, stick out my right, and say, “Hutcheson.”

“Mr. Hutcheson,” he says, pleased.

We shake hands.

I walk away from him, my mind suddenly full of ideas. I put his card in my pocket, telling myself I must remember to throw it away soon. In the meantime, I have things to do, beginning with a telephone call.

There’s a bank of phone booths just inside the main entrance of the store, next to the large sign giving Dolmen’s opening hours; on Friday, it’s “12 till 9.” I throw HCE’s card away in the trash barrel there, check my pockets to be sure I have enough change, and step into a booth, where I phone Marjorie, at home. We both say hello, and I say, “Could we eat dinner early tonight?” We usually eat around seven or seven-thirty.

“I suppose so,” she says. “How early?”

“Well, I ran into a guy I used to be at Halcyon with. He’s got some sort of idea, some business he thinks we could go into.”

Sounding dubious—quite rightly—she says, “Do you think it’s any good?”

“Don’t know yet. He wants to show it to me at his house this evening, the specs he’s done and everything.”

“Does he want you to invest something?”

“Don’t know that yet, either,” I say, and laugh, and say, “If he does, he’s barking up the wrong dead tree.”

“He certainly is,” she says. “What time would you want to leave?”

12 till 9. HCE started late, nearly two-thirty, so he’ll surely stay till the store closes. “Seven,” I say.

“We’ll eat at six.”

“Thanks, sweet,” I say, and hang up.

And now, I have shopping to do. If you want to kill somebody, you can find everything you need for the job down at the mall.

Five minutes to nine. I open the driver’s door beside me, and the interior light goes on.

I am back at the mall, and this time I am parked only four spaces from HCE’s Taurus, where he’ll have to walk by me. The left side of the Voyager is toward the mall building, and the long sliding door on the right side, away from the building, is open. The stubby hood is open, too, in front of me, exposing the chunky little engine. The new hammer rests on the depression between windshield and hood, where the windshield wiper lies when not in use; the hammer’s business end is pointed downward, and its handle is out toward the side of the car.

My other purchases are all in the vehicle with me. Over there at the main entrance, the last shoppers trickle out. The parking lot is less than a quarter full, and none of the remaining cars are close to HCE and me.

What I’m planning has some risk to it, but without the gun anything I do must include some risk, and this plan has as little as possible, I think. The long June twilight is nearing its end, so, even though darkness hasn’t really settled in yet, it’s that tricky time of evening light when you’re never quite sure what you’re seeing. Also, no one but HCE is going to walk out this far across the parking lot, because our two vehicles are the only ones this far from the building. I expect to have the element of surprise on my side, and I have my purchases from the various shops in the mall.

Four minutes to nine. Three minutes to nine. Still three minutes to nine.

I keep looking at my watch, I can’t help myself. My hands clench and clench the steering wheel, no matter how hard I try to relax, no matter how much I tell myself I shouldn’t exhaust these hands, I’m going to need them soon.

Someone coming. A man, in silhouette against the lights of the mall behind him. In a dark suit, I think, and trudging as though he’s tired, or discouraged. Or both.

He’s passed every other parked car now, and he’s still coming. Is he going to be so caught up in his own gloomy thoughts that he won’t even notice me here?

No. He’s a man who notices things, and he does see my open car door, the soft yellow interior light shining down on me, the open hood. “Trouble?” he calls.

I sigh, theatrically. “Won’t start,” I say, and then I lean partway out of the car, as though I’ve just recognized him: “Oh, hi!”

He’d still been walking toward his own car, but now he veers in my direction, squinting at me, finally getting it: “Mr. Hutcheson?”

Yes, you’ll remember the name, the hot prospect for a sport jacket, going to come back tomorrow with the wife. I say, “Yes, hello. Didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong?” He frowns at the open hood. I’ve read him to be a take-charge kind of guy, somebody proud to be there in an emergency, and he’s certainly acting the part.

I say, “I hate to admit it, but I don’t know a goddam thing about car engines. I called my wife, she’s going to have the garage send somebody out. God knows when.”

“That’ll cost you,” he says.

“Don’t remind me,” I say. “And I really can’t afford it, not now.” I step out of the car, keeping my right hand down by my side, and gesture at the engine with my other hand. “There goes my new sport jacket.”

Now it’s personal. “No, no, Mr. Hutcheson,” he chides me. “Never say die, that’s my motto.”

“I wish it was the car’s motto,” I say.

He laughs and moves toward the front of the Voyager, saying, “Let’s just take a look. Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” I say. “If you can save me a tow and a repair…”

“No promises.” He picks up the hammer and raises an eyebrow at me. “Going to fix it with
this
?”

I move my hands, showing helplessness. “I thought I might have to loosen a wing nut.”

Shaking his head, he puts the hammer back where I’d placed it, and leans over the engine, his head close to the open hood. “Try to turn it over,” he tells me.