Anatomy of a Killer (15 page)

After that, standards having nothing to do with it; Jordan turned on the light by the bed and smiled down at the man.

“I bet you think I’m it,” he said.

Benny could not talk but he got it across with his eyes and the worm-bunched wrinkles on his forehead. And he wetted his pants, though Jordan did not know this.

“I’m not,” said Jordan. “This is me, in between time.”

He took the pillow out from under Benny’s head and put it over his head, on his face.

God, I don’t want him to suffocate, Jordan thought, and pressed the twenty-two into the pillow and fired.

Then he picked up the pillow to see if the shot had been all right, but because of the feathers glued down all over he was not too sure. He put the pillow back, and the gun, and did it again. Soft, muffled thud, and this time Benny did not jerk. Jordan went by that.

Almost twelve and I better hurry. He turned off the lamp and left the way he had come.

And even though he was in a hurry there was no jumpy tension in the way he felt. All was new, all was fine, Smith being done up to perfection back in town, and this, Jordan knew, was the first time ever, the first in-between-time job, only done out of idleness.

19

Meyer, because of all that had happened, was still at his desk in the middle of the night. Then he got two phone calls one after the other.

“Mister Meyer, how are you?”

“Who in hell….”

“Not well, I notice, not too well.”

“Do I know you?”

“Not directly, but just the same. This is Caughlin.”

The nut. And how did that forger get this number? “Would you buy a birth certificate with the name of Smith?”

“Listen! My name’s Meyer which is bad enough, but if I should want your merch….”

“Not you. I meant that just for an example. For a fact though, this is for somebody else.”

I’ll wait. For a minute I’ll wait, thought Meyer. Caughlin is a talker but with his prices he is not all nut.

“For who?” said Meyer.

“Whom. You mean, whom.”

“Goddamn your crazy….”

“Please, Mister Meyer. You know I always end up serious.”

Meyer said he was sorry and would Caughlin hold the phone for a minute. He put his hand over the receiver and said, Smith, Smith. Then he yelled at the door, “Come in here a minute,” and Sherman came in.

“That Penderburg dame,” Meyer said, “who did she say was her button salesman?”

“Smith. That’s the name Jordan gave.”

Meyer nodded and bit his lip. “When did Sandy say Jordan left for Miami?”

“Sandy’s dead.”

“I know that! Preserve me—” Meyer said to nobody and then he screamed again. “When? I asked you,
when
?”

“Last night sometime. I think he said….”

“Call National and Capital and whoever else flies the Florida run and check out on his flight. Jordan or Smith. Where he got on and got off.”

Then Meyer talked to Caughlin again. “You still there?”

“Mister Meyer, the price just went up.”

“Yeh. Sure. Listen. Your Smith customer, when is he picking up?”

“That isn’t free information either.”

“But he isn’t picking up in the next half-hour.”

“Mister Meyer, the way I earn pin money….”

“I know. The price just went up. My point is, Caughlin, I want to call you back.”

“Why?”

“Half an hour.”

“You don’t think it’s important?”

“That’s why I want to call back in half an hour.”

“The customer is paying four thousand dollars. You still think it isn’t important?”

“You gave that away for free, didn’t you, Caughlin?” and Meyer hung up.

If he needed Caughlin, and Meyer thought that he did not, then he would call back for sure. And at that moment the phone rang again.

“Caughlin,” said Meyer, “when I say half an hour….”

“Hey—is this Meyer? Let me talk to Meyer.”

“Yes?” said Meyer, because the voice sounded sick.

“Benny’s dead.”

“What?”

“This is Ferra, you know, Ferra. I got hit on the head, I mean got jumped here at the Landing, and then Benny is dead.”

Meyer groaned through the whole story, through the whole thought that the Sandy thing made no sense now, not that the Benny thing made any sense either, except haywire sense, if there was such a thing. He hung up and went into the next room.

“I got this,” said Sherman, “there’s no Jordan anywheres, but a Smith took the eight-ten National flight out as far as Washington.”

“D.C.?”

“Yes. That.”

“So?”

“But his ticket was paid into the International at Miami.”

Meyer nodded and went back to his desk. He picked at some papers there and then walked to the dark window.

He thought, Sandy once said if that one goes he’ll be crawling into a corner and whimpering …

Then Meyer walked back to the other room and laid it out to Sherman what he wanted done.

When Jordan turned into the street with the office buildings, there was one lighted place, right at the corner, and after that came the dark street. He walked past the hamburger place with its bright, steamy windows, and when he passed the door somebody said, “Psst”

Jordan did not stop or look around because the sound made no sense to him.

“Mister Smith.”

This time he stopped and the hate in his sudden movement was automatic.

“If you’ll just turn around slowly, Mister Smith, you’ll feel ever so much better.”

Caughlin stepped out from the crack between buildings and walked with his stiff head held straight, facing front. He walked to the hamburger place and said, “You should follow me.”

Run. Put the scream of fear into a very fast run…. That was how much everything broke in on Jordan, as if nothing good had ever happened before and nothing good was hoped for in any future….

“Wait,” he said and grabbed for Caughlin’s arm. Caughlin stopped immediately and tried to smile Jordan’s motion away.

“You son of a bitch,” said Jordan. “What? What happened?”

“We should go into the restaurant so that….”

“I’m going to kill you bone by bone, old man, bone by bone if you’re double-crossing me—”

“Jordan, please. It’s more complicated than that.”

“We’re going to your basement, old man.”

“That is precisely, Jordan, precisely why I am here. To tell you about that. And you must get off the street.”

Jordan let go of the arm and when he looked down the dark street he realized that he himself stood in a bright shaft of light. He pulled Caughlin again, away from the door and into the shadow. Caughlin talked now without being pressed any more.

“They’re in the street,” he said, “and I think it’s for you.”

Jordan looked and saw nothing. Then he saw a car pull away from the curb at the end of the block, pull away slowly, and the lights going on only later. But the car was going away, not coming closer.

“You don’t mind being seen,” said Caughlin, “but they do.”

“More,” said Jordan. “Tell me more.”

“It’s very complicated. You can let go my arm.” But Jordan did not and Caughlin tried again. “It has to do with raising the ante.”

“You said four thousand. If you….”

“I know. It didn’t work.”

“We’re going to the basement.”

“No. I’m trying to tell you, by way of help, if you can believe that….”

“I want the paper, old man, I must have the paper!”

“The double-cross is,” Caughlin tried again, “that by way of double-crossing me in a matter of business, there’s a stakeout for you which I am trying to counteract, counter-cross if you wish, as a pure matter of ethics and because you’re my only true paying customer, though that isn’t the whole….”

“Who? Who is there?”

“How redundant….”

“They’re all dead, except you.”

“Meyer knows,” said Caughlin, and Jordan, with a great, sudden tiredness thought how wrong he had been that last time.

The between-time idleness job. What a strange, wrong thing to have done. Like a—like a killer. Jordan felt ill and leaned by the wall.

“Now, the point I was delicately trying….”

“The paper,” said Jordan. “Come on.”

Or Jordan the provider, even he would not be worth anything any more, without the paper to make Smith.

This has got to be, got to be; he kept going on, and pulled the old man down the street.

“This one,” said Caughlin and stopped by the big door which showed the bulb in back over the elevator and the narrow hall leading there.

“The basement door you showed me is down the alley.”

“I should want to check first, Jordan. For heaven’s sake, if I were you….”

“All right, all right—”

Caughlin kept knocking on the glass door for a while till a man came out of the lighted elevator. He limped and kept craning his neck to wake up. When he stopped by the door and saw Caughlin, he kept craning a while and then opened up. “I thought you was downstairs. Ain’t you supposed to be watching the furnace?”

“It’s summer time,” said Caughlin and went in.

“I meant was, ain’t you supposed to be watching the blowers because of that air-conditioning trouble up on the third?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“And why ain’t you using the back way, like you’re supposed to?”

“Door slammed shut.”

They all went down the hall, to the lighted elevator. “And who’s this here? You know you ain’t supposed….”

“Air-conditioning expert.” Caughlin looked at Jordan and said, “Good, huh?”

“You mean you gonna take the elevator? Why don’t you….”

“How I hate a whiny old man,” and Caughlin took Jordan past the elevator to the back stairs. “Sometime when you have nothing to do, Jordan, why don’t you, just between times….”

“Damn you, shut up!”

The door to the staircase hissed a little when it swung back and Caughlin took Jordan one flight up. “While I go and check,” he said, “I’ll leave you….”

“Wait a minute.”

“Jordan. Please. You’re worth four thousand dollars.”

“Three-five, Caughlin.”

“Why, of course, three-five. And as a token of my you-know-what,” he put his hand into his pocket and took out a card. “A beauty, isn’t it?”

It was a bona-fide driver’s license, state of New York, for Samuel Smith with a local address. “Take it.”

Jordan took it. “I need that other paper,” he said.

“Now you admire this while I go and check,” and Caughlin left Jordan in the dark, first-floor corridor where a firm had fixed easy chairs, scenic photos, and its advertising in a restful manner. Jordan watched the door hush shut and sat in the dark with his hand on his belt. In a while, because of the long wait, he pulled the Magnum out and held it.

Caughlin did not go all the way down to the basement. He stopped on the ground-floor landing where the pay phone hung on the wall and dialed his number again. Meyer, he felt, should have his one more chance.

Meyer, said Sherman, had gone to bed, and when that and some questions did not stir the old man into any worthwhile talking, Sherman said, go to hell, the deal’s off, and he should go to bed too.

Caughlin drew his resigned conclusion, looked down the wall to the basement door, and then sighed. I’m a coward, he said, and why change now? He went to get Jordan then, so that they could go to the basement.

“There’s nobody down there,” he said. “Come along.”

“How do you know? Just by walking in?”

“The truth is, I didn’t even walk in. I called my informant and got the all clear.”

“You’re scared.”

“I know. Are you?”

“Yes,” said Jordan, and though it shook Caughlin and made him gape it was now too late for anything else because they were down at the door. “I want the paper,” Jordan said again, and Caughlin pulled open the metal door.

One of the air-conditioning motors was humming. “Usually,” said Caughlin, “the light by the furnace….”

At that point, he got shot.

Caughlin spun and pitched into the railing which ran down the cellar stairs and Jordan tossed himself flat on the floor. He heard, “Got the wrong one—” and then, “but I think both of them—” He did not listen to all of it because he spun on the floor where he lay halfway through the basement door and with a hip shot blew out the bulb back of him in the stair well.

Now both sides were in the dark.

The motor hummed and it took him a while to hear anything else. And then I’m going to get the paper … He then heard a short scuffle which was way in the basement and while that went on Jordan got off the floor. He stood up on the cellar landing and let the door hiss shut behind him.

There was a useless shot, because Jordan was no longer in line with the door. While the shot still twanged back and forth on the concrete, Jordan bumped into the fire extinguisher next to the door. He yanked it off the hook.

“Hey—” someone said in the basement. “Hey, you think he’s still here?”

Jordan spun the wheel on the extinguisher and tossed the cylinder off the landing. When it bounced into the basement the sound was a fright.

Two quick shots, useless.

Then the thing lay there in the dark and just hissed.

Jordan said nothing, the two down in the basement said nothing.

“Hey—” and then, “Jeesis in heaven what
is it
?”

“I don’t know. Just shut up, I don’t know—”

After that Jordan told them, “It takes about one minute. If you think you got the guts, put out that fuse.” The thing lay there in the dark and hissed.

“—Fuse?”

“Shut up,” said the other one. “Shut up, shut up—”

“Forty seconds maybe,” said Jordan.

It hissed.

“Hey … Hey, you up there!”

“Thirty maybe.”

“Hey you up there, you’re Jordan, ain’t you Jordan?”

“What good will it do you?” said Jordan. He licked his lips in the dark and wiped his free hand.

The hiss changed then, because the pressure was going down.

“For godssake answer up there, will you please?”

“Turn the light on,” said Jordan, “and I’ll stop the fuse.”

“Okay. Now hold….”

“You shut up you shut up,” said the other one.

“Fifteen and Geronimo,” said Jordan.

“Wait!”

“Toss your guns where I can hear them clatter,” said Jordan.

One clattered, by the foot of the basement stairs, the other one didn’t. The other one fell on top of the dead Caughlin, but Jordan knew it was there.

“Okay, you got them. Now just hold it, Jordan, do you hear?”

Jordan got ready to see in the sudden light, and the bulb went on.

There was a big, foamy puddle of white on the floor and the fire extinguisher in it, still burbling a little. The two men in the light were just staring. It gave Jordan good time to come down the short stairs, and as soon as he was there he shot first one and then the other. They both got identical holes in the forehead and were dead when they hit the floor. And then the rush was on Jordan again and he jumped over the men and ran to the back of the furnace. Back there. Caughlin’s door was locked.

Reason had nothing to do with it, just a wish strong as his will. He pulled, wrenched, rattled the door and said hoarse things. He lost his senses, found them, lost everything he had ever learned, got it all back at the wrong moment, lost one hope after another, turned into worm, rat, idiot, rage, hate splinters, baby panic, a gasp in no air….