The Kill-Off (6 page)

I suspect, from the brief flicker in his eyes, the very slight change in facial expression, that he had entertained some such notion himself—that is, I should say, a fake robbery to collect on his insurance. He needed money, popular opinion notwithstanding. A robbery would be the simplest, most straightforward means of getting it. And he was a simple (I use the term flatteringly) straightforward man.

I would have been glad to help him perpetrate such a robbery. Broadly speaking, I would have done anything I could to help him. Unfortunately, however—although I respected him for it—he distrusted me instinctively.

So he treated me to a long, unblinking gaze. Then he grunted, spat in the spittoon and leaned back in his chair. He rocked back and forth in it, hands locked behind his head, looking down at the desk and then slowly raising his eyes to mine.

“I tell you,” he said. “Used to be a hound dog around these parts. Fast-footedest goddammed dog you ever saw in your life. You know what happened to him?”

“I imagine he ran over himself,” I said.

“Yup. Bashed his brains out with his own butt. Hell of a nice-looking dog, too, and he seemed smart as turpentine. Always wondered why he didn’t know better’n to do a thing like that.”

I smiled. Pete would not have wondered at all about the why of his allegorical dog. Nor the why of anything. Like myself, Pete’s concern was with what things were, not how or why they had become that way.

He finished counting the money. He put it in a tin cash box, locked it up in his safe and came back to the desk. Sat down on a corner of it in front of me, one thick leg swung over the other.

“Well—” His hard, hazel-colored eyes rolled over on my face. “Figure on sleepin’ in here tonight? Want me to move you in a bed?”

“I’m sorry.” I got up reluctantly. “I was just—uh—”

“Yeah? Something on your mind?”

“N-no. No, I guess not,” I said. “I just dropped by to say hello. I didn’t have anything to do for a while, so I—”

He looked at me steadily. He spat at the spittoon without shifting his eyes. I cleared my throat, feeling a hot, embarrassing flush spread over my face.

He stood up suddenly, and started for the door. Spoke over his shoulder, his voice gruff.

“Ain’t got nothing to do myself for a few minutes. Come on and I’ll buy you a sody.”

I followed him to a far corner of the ballroom; followed, since he kept a half-pace in front of me. I wanted to pay for the drinks, but he brushed my hand aside, dropped two dimes into the Coke machine himself.

He handed me a bottle. I thanked him and he grunted, jerking the cap on his own.

We stood facing the distant bandstand where the musicians were arriving. We stood side by side, almost touching each other. Separated by no more than a few inches—and silence.

He finished his drink, smacked his lips and dropped the bottle into the empty case. I finished mine reluctantly, disposed of the bottle as he had.

“Well…” He spoke as I straightened from the case; spoke, still looking out across the ballroom. “You and Myra steppin’ out again tonight?”

I said, why, yes, we were. As soon as she got off work, that is. And after a moment, I added, “If that’s all right with you, Mr. Pavlov.”

“Know any reason why it shouldn’t be?”

“Why—well, no,” I said, “I guess not. I mean—”

“I’ll tell you,” he said. He hesitated, and belched. “I ain’t got a goddamned bit of use for you. Never have had, far back as I can remember. But I guess you already know that?”

“Yes,” I said. “And I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Pavlov.”

“Can’t say I’m not sorry myself. Always rather like someone than dislike ’em.” He belched again, mumbling something about the gas. “On the other hand, I got no real reason not to have no use for you. Nothing I can put my finger on. You’ve always been friendly and polite around me. I don’t know of no dirty deals you’ve pulled, unless’n it’s this stuff with Ralph, and I can’t really call that dirty, considering. Might’ve gone off sideways like that myself when I was your age.”

“I knew you’d understand,” I said. “Mr. Pavlov, I—”

“I was sayin’—” He cut me off curtly. “I got no reason to feel like I do, and reasons are all I go by. People don’t give me no trouble, I don’t give them any. I rock along with ’em as long as they rock with me. And whether I like ’em or not don’t figure in the matter. All right. I guess we understand each other. Now, I got to get busy.”

He nodded curtly, and headed back toward his office.

I moved toward the exit.

Myra had come in while Pete and I were talking, and she called to me from the ticket booth. I looked her way blindly, my eyes stinging, misting. Not really hearing or seeing her. I went out without answering her, and sat down in my car.

I got a cigarette lighted. I took a few deep puffs, forcing away my disgusting self-pity. Recovering some of my normal objectiveness.

Pete detested me. It was fitting that he should—things being as they were. And I would not have had it any other way—things being as they were.

But what a pity, what a goddamned pity that they were that way! And why couldn’t they have been another, the right and logical way?

Why couldn’t my own dear father and mother, those encephalitic cretins, those gutless Jukesters, those lubricious lusus naturae—why couldn’t they have had Myra inflicted upon them? Why should Pete have to suffer such a drab, spiritless wretch as she? Why couldn’t
they
have had her, and why couldn’t he have had—

Myra. A feeling of fury came over me every time I looked at her. I’d had some plans for her—vague but decidedly unpleasant—long before she came to the office that day a couple of months ago.

Father was away on some calls. I glanced at the notes on her file card.

This was her second trip. She was having menstrual difficulties—something that a good kick in the stomach or a dose of salts would have jarred her out of. But father, that wise and philanthropic Aesculapian, had set her up for a series of hormone shots.

She said she was in a hurry, so I prepared to administer the medication.

Yes, I do that: take care of routine patients. Rather, I did do it, until father became wary. I know a hell a lot more about medicine than he does. A hell of a lot more about everything than he does. In this case, for example, I knew that what Myra needed—deserved—was not hormone.

I gave her a hypodermic. She “flashed”—to use the slang expression; barely made it to the sink before she started vomiting. I told her it was perfectly all right, and gave her another shot.

Well, someone like that, someone with only part of a character, is made for the stuff. The stuff is made for them. She was hooked in less than a week. She doesn’t go to father any more, but she does come to me.

I “treat” her now. I give her what she needs—and deserves. When I am ready to. And after certain ceremonies.

Ten-thirty came. Not more than five minutes later, which was as fast as she could make it, she was running toward the car. Begging before she had the door open.

I told her to shut up. I said that if she said one more word until I gave her permission, she would get nothing.

I had her well trained. She subsided, mouth twisting, gulping down the whimpers that rose in her throat.

I drove to a place about six miles up the beach—Happy Hollow, it is called, for reasons which you may guess. I suppose there is some such place in every community, dubbed with the same sly euphemism or a similar one.

It—this place—was not a hollow; not wholly, at least. Most of its area was hill, wooded and brushy, marked with innumerable trails and side-trails which terminated in tire-marked, beach-like patches of sand.

I stopped at one of these patches. The only tire-marks were those of my own car.

I made her take her clothes off. I grabbed her. I shook her and slapped her and pinched her. I called her every name I could think of.

She didn’t speak or cry out. But suddenly I stopped short, and gave her the shot. I was tired. There seemed no point in going on. Action and words, words and action—leading to nothing, arriving nowhere. It wasn’t enough. There can be no real satisfaction without an objective.

Myra lay back in the seat, breathing in long deep breaths, eyes half shut. She didn’t have a bad shape. In fact, without clothes on—she simply couldn’t wear clothes—she shaped up quite beautifully. But only aesthetically, as far as I was concerned. I felt no desire for her.

I wanted to. My mind shrieked that I should. But the flesh could not hear it.

She dozed. I may have dozed myself, or perhaps I merely became lost in thought. At any rate, I snapped back to awareness suddenly, aroused by the dull lacing of light through the trees, the throb of a familiar motor.

Myra sat up abruptly. Stared at me, eyes wide with fright. I told her to sit still and be quiet. Just do what I told her to, and she’d be all right.

I listened to the motor, following the progress of the car. It stopped, with a final purring
throb-throb,
and I knew exactly where it had stopped.

I hesitated. I opened the door of the car.

“B-Bobbie…” A frightened whisper from Myra. “Where you going? I’m afraid to stay—”

I told her to shut up; I’d only be gone for a few minutes.

“B-but why? What’re you going to—?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I mean—hell, just shut up!” I said.

I went down the trail a few yards. I branched off into another, and then another. I came to the end of it—near the end of it, and hunkered down in the shadows of the trees.

They weren’t more than twenty feet away, Ralph Devore and that what’s-her-name—the girl with the orchestra. I could see them clearly in the filtered moonlight. I could hear every word they said, every sound. And the way it looked and sounded…

I could hardly believe it, particularly of a guy like Ralph. Because when Ralph stepped out with ’em, it was for just one thing and he lost no time about getting it. Yet now with this girl—and, no, she certainly didn’t hate him. She obviously felt the same way about him that he did her, and that way—

I didn’t know what it was for a moment. Then, when I finally knew—remembered—realized—I refused to admit it. I grinned to myself, silently jeering them, jeering myself. Ralph was really making time, I thought. Here it was only the sixth week of the season, he’d only known this babe six weeks, and they were cutting up like a couple of newlyweds. Newlyweds, sans the sex angle. Which, of course, they’d soon be getting around to.

Maybe—I thought—I ought to do the silly jerk a favor. Go up to his house some night and bump off Luane. It could be made to look like an accident. And believe me, it would need to look damned little like one to leave Ralph in the clear. Father was the coroner, the county medical officer. As for the county attorney, Henry Clay Williams…I shook my head, choking back a laugh. You had to hand it to that goddamned Luane. She had a positively fiendish talent for tossing the knife, for plunging it into exactly the right spot to send the crap flying. Henry Clay Williams was a bachelor. Henry Clay Williams lived with his maiden sister. And Henry Clay Williams’ sister had an abdominal tumor…which created a bulge normally created by a different kind of growth.

At any rate, and unless the job was done in front of witnesses, it would be ridiculously easy to get away with killing Luane. Just make it look like an accident, enough like one to give Brother Williams an out, and—

I leaned forward, straining to hear them, Ralph and the girl, for they were clinging even closer to each other than they had been, and their voices were consequently muffled:

“Don’t you worry one bit, honey”
—her.
“I don’t know how, but—but, gosh, there’s got to be some way! I just love you so much, and you’re so wonderful and—”

“Not wonderful ’nough for you”
—him. Old love-’em-and-scram Ralph, for God’s sake! Why, he sounded practically articulate.
“Ain’t it funny, sweetheart? Here I am an old man—”

“You are not! You’re the sweetest, darlingest, kindest, handsomest…”

“Anyways, I mean I lived all these years, and I reckon I never knew there was such a thing. Like love I mean. I guess I…”

I found that I was smiling. I scrubbed it away with my fist, scrubbed my eyes with my fist. But it kept coming back. That word, the one he’d spoken, the one I’d been ducking—it kept coming back. And I knew that there was no other word for what this was.

He wasn’t going to pitch it to her. She wasn’t going to hit him up for dough. They were in love—
ah, simply, simply in love!
Only—
only!
—in love. And, ah, the sweetness of it, the almost unbearable beauty and wonderment of it.

To be loved like that! More important, to love like that!

I smiled upon them, at them. Smiled like a loving god, happy in their happiness. Probably, I thought, I should kill them now. It would be such a wonderful way—time—to die.

I glanced around absently. I ran a hand back under the bushes, searching for a suitable club or rock. I could find none—nothing that would do the job with the instantaneousness necessary, nothing that was sufficiently sturdy or heavy.

I did locate a pointed, dagger-like stick, and I considered it for a moment. But a very little mental calculation established that it would never do. It wasn’t long enough. It would never pass through that barrel-chest of Ralph’s and go on into her bosom. And if I did not get them both at the same time, if I left one to live without the other—!

I almost wept at the thought.

A strange warmth spread over me. Spread down from my head and up from my feet. It increased, intensified, and I did not know what it was. How could I, never having experienced it before? And then at last I knew, and I knew what had brought it about.

I straightened up. I backed down the trail quietly, and then I turned and strode toward my car excitedly, my mind racing.

There could be nothing now, of course. Dope inhibits the sexual impulses, so she would have to be tapered off first. But that should be relatively easy; she should unhook almost as easily as she had been hooked. If I could just get the stuff to work with—and I
would
get it, by God! I’d kill that stupid son-of-a-bitch, my father, if he gave me any trouble…