Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales (5 page)

The irony was, he hadn't gone Into the tank, he'd taken the money when it was offered, and since he considered himself an ethical person he'd fully intended to fake a couple of falls and force a decision against him, but he hadn't gone three rounds before he realized he was no match for the untried youngster from Nicaragua. He was out of shape and slow, and Rodriguez was graceless for all the fact that any one of his blows would have downed a young tree. Even the fellow who had approached Midge and ought to have known a fix from a legitimate loss called him afterward to tell him he was a rotten actor; he feared a congressional investigation.

Midge had considered returning the money, but that had proven to be a more complicated thing altogether than he'd suspected. He was both a fighter who had sold out and who had never thrown a fight. Just trying to think where that placed him in the scheme of things gave him a headache worse than the one he'd suffered for two weeks after he went down to Ricky Shapiro.

On this particular Saturday off, he'd broken a date with a soap opera vixen to meet a man with whom Mr. Wasserman sometimes did business. Angelo DeRiga—"Little Angie," Midge had heard him called, although he was not especially small, in fact an inch or two taller than Mr. Wassermann—dyed his hair black, even his eyebrows, and wore suits that were as well made as Midge's new ones, from material of the same good quality, but were cut too young for him. The flaring lapels and cinched waists called attention to the fact that he was nearing sixty, just as the black black hair brought out the deep lines in the artificial tan of his face. The effect was pinched and painful and increased the bodyguards appreciation for his employer's dignified herringbones and barbered white fringe.

Little Angie shook Midge's hand at the door to his the King William, complimented him upon his suit—"Flash, the genuine article," he said, and invited him to sample the gourmet spread the hotel's waiters were busy transferring from a wheeled cart to the glass-topped mahogany table in the sitting room.

Midge, who knew as well as Little Angie that the electric-blue sack was inappropriate, did not thank him, and politely refused the offer of food. He wasn't hungry, and anyway, chewing interfered with his concentration. Too many blows to the head had damaged his hearing. High- and low-pitched voices were the worst, and certain labials missed him entirely. By focusing his attention on the speaker, and with the help of some amateur lipreading, he'd managed to disguise this rather serious disability for a watchdog to have from even so observant a man as Mr. Wassermann; but then Mr. Wassermann spoke slowly, and always around the middle range. Little Angie was shrill and carried on every conversation as if it were on a fast elevator and had to finish before the car reached his floor.

When the waiters left, the two were alone with Francis, Little Angie's bodyguard. He was a former professional wrestler who shaved his head and had rehearsed his glower before a mirror until it was as nearly permanent as a tattoo. As a rule, Midge got on with other people's security, but he and Francis had disliked each other from the start. He suspected that on Francis' part this was jealousy; Mr. Wassermann's generosity to employees was well known, while Little Angie was a pinchpenny who abused his subordinates, sometimes in public. On Midge's side, he had a career prejudice against wrestlers, whom he dismissed as trained apes, and thought Francis disagreeably ugly into the bargain. When they were in the same room they spent most of the time scowling at each other. They had never exchanged so much as a word.

"I know Jake the Junkman's been white to you," Little Angie seemed to be saying. "Too good, maybe. Some types need to be put on an allowance. A lot of smart guys can't handle dough."

Midge didn't like what he'd heard. Everyone knew Mr. Wassermann had made his first fortune from scrap metal, but most respected him too much to allude to his past in this offensive way. He wondered if it was his place to report the conversation to his employer. So far he didn't know why he'd been invited here.

Little Angie reached into a pocket and took out a handful of notepaper on which Midge recognized his own scrawl. "You ain't hard to track. Everywhere you go, you leave markers: Benny Royal's floating crap game in the South Side, the roulette wheel at the Kit-Kat, Jack Handy's book up in Arbordale. There's others here. You owe twelve thousand, and you can't go to Jake for a loan. He's got a blind spot where gambling's concerned. He don't forbid his people from making a bet now and then, but he don't bail them out either. Tell me I'm wrong."

Midge shook his head. Mr. Wassermann had explained all this his first day. Midge hadn't known then that the new class of woman he'd be dating liked pretty much the same entertainments as the old.

"See, that's a problem. I spent more'n face value buying these up. I'm a reasonable man, though. I'll eat the difference. You got twelve grand, Midge?"

"You know I don't."

Little Angie smacked his face with the markers. Midge tool a step forward; so did Francis. Little Angie held up a finger, stopping them both. "Let's not be uncivil. There's a way you can work it off. You won't even have to pop a sweat."

Midge heard enough of the rest to understand. Mr. Wassermann, who had the ear of a number of important people, : had promised to spoil an investment Little Angie wanted to make. The important people, he hinted, would be in a position to listen to reason if Mr. Wassermann were not available to counsel them otherwise. All Midge had to do to settle his debts was stand at his usual station outside the door to Mr. Wassermann's office the following morning and not leave it, no matter what he heard going on inside.

"What if I just owe you like I did the others?" Midge asked.

"They was getting impatient. If I didn't step In, you'd be wearing plaster instead of that flashy suit, peeing through a tube. And I got to tell you, patience ain't my what-you-call forte. Francis?"

The ugly bald wrestler produced a loop of stiff nylon fishline from a pocket. Midge knew he could prevent Francis from making use of it, but there were others in Little Angie's employ who knew what a garrote was for. He couldn't fight them all. Sooner or later he'd run into a Sonny Rodriguez.

"1 know what you're thinking," Little Angie said. There's always a place in my organization for a fellow knows the score. You won't be out of a job."

Midge hadn't been thinking about that at all. "Can I have time to think it over?"

"If I had time I'd wait for Jake to die of old age."

Midge agreed to the terms. Little Angie leered and tore up the markers. Francis looked disappointed as well as ugly.

T
he next morning outside Mr. Wassermann's office was as long a time as Midge had ever spent anywhere, including seven and s half rounds with Lincoln Flagg. Mr. Wassermann had some telephone calls to make and told him he'd be working through lunch, but that he'd make it up to him that night with the full twelve courses from Bon Maison, Midge's favorite restaurant back when I he was contending. He had an armchair for his personal use in the hallway, but today he couldn't stay seated in it more than three minutes at a stretch. He stood with his hands folded in front of him, then behind him, picked lint off the sleeve of his new gray gabardine, found imaginary lint on the crease of the trousers and picked that off too. He was perspiring heavily under his sixty-dollar shirt, despite what Little Angie had said; he, Midge, who used to work out with the heavy bag for an hour without breaking a sweat. This selling out was hard work.

Too hard, he decided, after twenty minutes. He would take his chances with Little Angle's threats.
 
He rapped on the door, waited the customary length of time while he assumed Mr. Wassermann was calling for him to come in, then opened the door. The garrote didn't frighten him half as much as the anticipation of the look of sadness on Mr. Wassermann's face when he told him about his part in Little Angie's plan.

Mr. Wassermann was not behind his desk. But he was.

When Midge leaned his big broken-knuckled hands on it and peered over the far edge, the first thing he saw was the tan soles of his employer's hand-lasted wingtips. Mr. Wassermann was still seated in his padded leather swivel, but the chair lay on its back. Mr. Wassermann's face was the same oxblood tint as his shoes and his tongue stuck out. Midge couldn't see the wire, but he'd heard it sank itself so deep in a man's neck it couldn't be removed without getting blood on yourself, so most killers didn't bother to try.

A torch lamp behind the desk had toppled over in the struggle and lay on the carpet, its bulb shattered. Both it and Mr. Wassermann must have made more than a little noise. The door that was usually concealed in the paneling to the left stood open. It was used by Mr. Wassermann's congressmen and the occasional other business associate who preferred not to be seen going in or coming out. It was one of the worst-kept secrets around town.

Midge felt sad. He walked around the desk, stepping carefully to avoid grinding bits of glass into the Brussels carpet, and looked down into his employer's bloodshot eyes.

"The thing is, Mr. Wassermann, I didn't really go into the tank."

Mr. Wassermann didn't say anything. But then Midge probably wouldn't have heard him If he had.

T
he truck stop was lit up like a Hollywood movie premiere, an oval of incandescence in an undeveloped landscape where a county road ducked under the interstate. I parked my rig in the football field-sized lot and went into the diner, a little unsteady on my pins. I'd been stuck for an hour in a snarl caused by someone's broken axle and a thousand cars slowing down to gape at it, and I'd hit the flask a few times to flatten my nerves. If I missed my contact tonight it would be another week before he came back the other direction.

Brooks and Dunn were whining on the retro-look juke as I took a stool at the end of the counter. Most of the other customers were seated in booths. I counted eleven, shoveling out their plates and blowing steam off their thick mugs. It was late and there was a lull between early escapees from the traffic jam and the next batch backed up at the scales. The waitress, a tired-looking blonde of forty or so, came over with a clean mug and a carafe. In those places they put coffee in front of you the way they do a glass of water in others.

I nodded at the question on her face and watched her pour. "I bet you hate these slow times," I said.

She was silent for a moment, looking at me, and I knew I was being sized up for a pickup artist or just friendly. "I don't know which is worse," she said then, "this or the rush. When it's on I need six hands to keep up, and when it isn't I don't know what to do with the two I've got."

"My old man said he'd rather work than wait." I sipped. She made a pretty good pot. There's a trick to brewing strong coffee without making it bitter.

"He a trucker too?"

"He was a hood. They've got him doing ninety-nine years and a day in Joliet for murder."

"Well, there's a conversation starter I don't hear every night."

But I could tell she didn't believe me.

I didn't try to set her straight. The whiskey had loosened me up too much. I needed to put something on top of it. "You serve breakfast all the time?"

She said sure, it's a truck stop, and I ordered scrambled eggs and a ham steak. She gave it to the cook through the pass-through to the kitchen without writing it down and left the counter to freshen the other customers' coffee. When she got back she served me and refilled my cup. She watched me eat.

"You seem pretty well adjusted for the son of a convict."

"I was grown when he went in," I said, chewing. "It wasn't his first time, though. He did two bits for manslaughter on plea deals. Cops figured him for at least fifteen, but they only got him good on the last one."

She hoisted her eyebrows. "He was a serial killer?"

"Hell, no. Serial killers are loonies who slept with their mothers. He was a pro."

"A hit man? Like for the mob?"

"Most of the time. Sometimes he freelanced, but you can get jammed up working for civilians. I wouldn't touch one of those." I realized what I'd said and changed the subject in a hurry. "Got any more hash browns?"

She put in the order. A trucker came in, one of the sloppy ones with a belly and tobacco stains in the corners of his mouth, and sat down at the other end of the counter. She ordered him a burger and a Coke and came back with the hash browns. "You've got a real line of crap, but it's one I never heard. So how'd the cops trip him up?"

"Circumstantial evidence. He ran a bar in Jersey, and guys kept going in and never coming out. His lawyer objected, but the judge was a hard case and allowed it in. There was some other stuff, but the past history's what clinched it for the jury." I poured ketchup on the potatoes. "That was his mistake, always operating in the same place. The best way to avoid drawing suspicion is to move around a lot. One hit in Buffalo, the next in Kansas City, another in Seattle. Get yourself a front that involves plenty of travel."

"Like truck driving."

I took a long draught of coffee. I was going to have to change my brand of booze. The one I drank talked and talked. "Sure. Or sales. The bigger the territory, the less chance of the cops getting together and comparing notes. Anyway, that's how I'd do it."

"Trucking's better," she said. "No one looks twice. You all run to the same type."