The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (65 page)

Then again he moved behind her. They walked slowly toward the bedroom door. The blade kissed the velvet and it told her to use the key with a minimum of sound. She put the key in the lock and there was no sound as she turned the key. There was only a slight clicking sound as the lock opened. Then no sound while she opened the door.

They entered the room and he saw Riker in the bed. He saw the brown wavy hair and there was some grey in it along the temples. In the suntanned face there were wrinkles and lines of dissipation and other lines that told of too much worry. Riker’s eyes were shut tightly and it was the kind of slumber that rests the limbs but not the brain.

Ken thought,
He’s aged a lot in nine years; it used to be mostly muscle and now it’s mostly fat
.

Riker was curled up, his knees close to his paunch. He had his shoes off but otherwise he was fully dressed. He wore a silk shirt and a hand-painted necktie, his jacket was dark grey cashmere and his slacks were pale grey high-grade flannel. He had on a pair of argyle socks that must have set him back at least twenty dollars. On the wrist of his left hand there was a platinum watch to match the large star-emerald he wore on his little finger. On the third finger of his left hand he had a three-karat diamond. Ken was looking at the expensive clothes and the jewelry and thinking,
He travels first-class, he really rides the gravy train
.

It was a bitter thought and it bit deeper into Ken’s brain. He said to himself,
Nine years ago this man of distinction beat you up and left you for dead. You’ve had nine years in Quentin and he’s had the sunshine, the peaches-and-cream, the uninterrupted and desirable company of the extra-lovely Mrs Riker while you lived alone in a cell
–

He looked at the extra-lovely Mrs Riker. She stood motionless at the side of the bed and he stood beside her with the switchblade aiming at her velvet-sheathed flesh. She was looking at the blade and waiting for him to aim it at Riker, to put it in the sleeping man and send it in deep.

But that wasn’t the play. He smiled dimly to let her know he had something else in mind.

Riker’s left hand dangled over the side of the bed and his right hand rested on the pillow. Ken kept the knife aimed at Hilda as he reached toward the pillow and then under the pillow. His fingers touched metal. It was the barrel of a revolver and he got a two-finger hold on it and eased it out from under the pillow. The butt came into his palm and his middle finger went through the trigger-guard and nestled against the back of the guard, not touching the trigger.

He closed the switchblade and put it in his pocket. He stepped back and away from the bed and said, “Now you can wake up your husband.”

She was staring at the muzzle of the .38. It wasn’t aiming at anything in particular.

“Wake him up,” Ken murmured. “I want him to see his gun in my hand. I want him to know how I got it.”

Hilda gasped and it became a sob and then a wail and it was a hook of sound that awakened Riker. At first he was looking at Hilda. Then he saw Ken and he sat up very slowly, as though he was something made of stone and ropes were pulling him up. His eyes were riveted to Ken’s face and he hadn’t yet noticed the .38. His hand crept down along the side of the pillow and then under the pillow.

There was no noise in the room as Riker’s hand groped for the gun. Some moments passed and then there was sweat on Riker’s forehead and under his lip and he went on searching for the gun and suddenly he seemed to realize it wasn’t there. He focused on the weapon in Ken’s hand and his body began to quiver. His lips scarcely moved as he said, “The gun – the gun—”

“It’s yours,” Ken said. “Mind if I borrow it?”

Riker went on staring at the revolver. Then very slowly his head turned and he was staring at Hilda. “You,” he said. “You gave it to him.”

“Not exactly,” Ken said. “All she did was tell me where it was.”

Riker shut his eyes very tightly as though he was tied to a rack and it was pulling him apart.

Hilda’s face was expressionless. She was looking at Ken and saying, “You promised to let me walk out—”

“I’m not stopping you,” he said. Then, with a shrug and a dim smile, “I’m not stopping anyone from doing what they want to do.” And he slipped the gun into his pocket.

Hilda started for the door. Riker was up from the bed and lunging at her, grabbing her wrist and hurling her across the room. Then Riker lunged again and his hands reached for her throat as she tried to get up from the floor. Hilda began to make gurgling sounds but the noise was drowned in the torrent of insane screaming that came from Riker’s lips. Riker choked her until she died. And even then he stayed where he was and went on screaming at her.

Ken stood there, watching it happen. His mind absorbed and recorded every detail of the scene. He thought,
Well, they wanted each other, and now they got each other
.

He walked out of the room and down the hall and down the stairs. As he went out of the house he could still hear the screaming. On Spruce, walking toward Eleventh, he glanced back and saw a crowd gathering outside the house and then he heard the sound of approaching sirens. He waited there and saw the police cars stopping in front of the house, the policemen rushing in with drawn guns. Some moments later he heard the shots and he knew that the screaming man was trying to make a getaway. There was more shooting and suddenly there was no sound at all. He knew they’d be carrying two corpses out of the house.

He turned away from what was happening back there, walked along the curb toward the sewer-hole on the corner, took Riker’s gun from his pocket and threw it into the sewer. In the instant that he did it, there was a warm sweet taste in his mouth. He smiled, knowing what it was. Again he could hear Tillie saying, “Revenge is black pudding.”

Tillie
, he thought. And the smile stayed on his face as he walked north on Eleventh. He was remembering the feeling he’d had when he’d kissed her. It was the feeling of wanting to take her out of that dark cellar, away from the loneliness and the opium. To carry her upward toward the world where they had such things as clinics, with plastic specialists who repaired scarred faces.

The feeling hit him again and he walked faster.

It had been a long time since I’d had any trouble sleeping. Probably Vietnam, and that was gunfire that kept me awake. I’ve never been an insomniac. You might think killing people for a living would give you restless nights. Truth is, those that go into that business simply aren’t the kind who are bothered by it much.

I was no exception. I hadn’t gone into retirement because my conscience was bothering me. I retired because the man I got my contracts through got killed – well, actually I killed him, but that’s another story – and I had enough money put away to live comfortably without working, so I did.

The A-frame cottage on Paradise Lake was secluded enough for privacy, but close enough to nearby Lake Geneva to put me in contact with human beings, if I was so inclined, which I rarely was, with the exception of getting laid now and then. I’m human.

There was also a restaurant nearby, called Wilma’s Welcome Inn, a rambling two-story affair that included a gas station, modest hotel accommodations and a convenience store. I’d been toying with the idea of buying the place, which had been slipping since the death of Wilma; I’d been getting a little bored lately and needed something to do. Before I started putting people to sleep, I worked in a garage as a mechanic, so the gas station angle appealed to me.

Anyway, boredom had started to itch at me, and for the past few nights I’d had trouble sleeping. I sat up all night watching satellite TV and reading paperback westerns; then I’d drag around the next day, maybe drifting to sleep in the afternoon just long enough to fuck up my sleep cycle again that night.

It was getting irritating.

At about three-thirty in the morning on the fourth night of this shit, I decided eating might do the trick. Fill my gut with junk food and the blood could rush down from my head and warm my belly and I’d get the fuck sleepy, finally. I hadn’t tried this before because I’d been getting a trifle paunchy, since I quit working, and since winter kicked in.

In the summer I’d swim in the lake every day and get exercise and keep the spare tire off. But in the winter I’d just let my beard go and belt-size, too. Winters made me fat and lazy and, now, fucking sleepless.

The cupboard was bare so I threw on my thermal jacket and headed over to the Welcome Inn. At this time of night the convenience store was the only thing open, that and one self-serve gas pump.

The clerk was a heavy-set brunette named Cindy from nearby Twin Lakes. She was maybe twenty years old and a little surly, but she worked all night, so who could blame her.

“Mr Ryan,” she said, flatly, as I came in, the bell over the door jingling.

“Cindy,” I said, with a nod, and began prowling the place, three narrow aisles parallel to the front of the building. None of the snacks appealed to me – chips and crackers and Twinkies and other preservative-packed delights – and the frozen food case ran mostly to ice-cream sandwiches and popsicles. In this weather, that was a joke.

I was giving a box of Chef Boyardee lasagna an intent once-over, like it was a car I was considering buying, when the bell over the door jingled again. I glanced up and saw a heavy-set man – heavy-set enough to make Cindy look svelte – with a pockmarked face and black-rimmed glasses that fogged up as he stepped in.

He wore an expensive topcoat – tan, a camel’s hair number you could make payments on for a year and still owe – and his shoes had a bright black city shine, barely flecked with ice and snow. His name was Harry Something, and he was from Chicago. I knew him, in another life.

I turned my back. If he saw me, I’d have to kill him, and I was bored, but not that bored.

Predictably, Harry Something went straight for the potato chips; he also rustled around the area where cookies were shelved. I risked a glimpse and saw him, not two minutes after he entered, with his arms full of junk food, heading for the front counter.

“Excuse me, miss,” Harry Something said, depositing his groceries before Cindy. His voice was nasal and high-pitched; a funny, childish voice for a man his size. “Could you direct me to the sanitary napkins?”

“You mean Kotex?”

“Whatever.”

“The toiletries is just over there.”

Now this was curious, and I’ll tell you why. I had met Harry Something around ten years before, when I was doing a job for the Outfit boys. I was never a mob guy, mind you, strictly a freelancer, but their money was as good as anybody’s. What that job was isn’t important, but Harry and his partner Louis were the locals who had fucked up, making my outsider’s presence necessary. Harry and Louis had not been friendly toward me. They had threatened me, in fact. They had beaten the hell out of me in my hotel room, when the job was over, for making them look bad.

I had never taken any sort of revenge out on them. I occasionally do take revenge, but at my convenience, and when a score strikes me as worth settling. Harry and Louis had really just pushed me around a little, bloodied my nose, tried to earn back a little self-respect. So I didn’t hold a grudge. Not a major grudge. Fuck it.

As to why Harry Something purchasing Kotex in the middle of the night at some backwoods convenience store was curious, well, Harry and Louis were gay. They were queens of crime. Mob muscle who worked as a pair, and played as a pair.

I don’t mean to be critical. To each his own. I’d rather cut my dick off than insert it in any orifice of a repulsive fat slob like Harry Something. But that’s just me.

And me, I’m naturally curious. I’m not nosy, not even inquisitive. But when a faggot buys Kotex, I have to wonder why.

“Excuse me,” Harry Something said, brushing by me.

He hadn’t seen my face – he might not recognize me, in any case. Ten years and a beard and twenty pounds later, I wasn’t as easy to peg as Harry was, who had changed goddamn little.

Harry, having stocked up on cookies and chips and Kotex, was now buying milk and packaged macaroni and cheese and provisions in general. He was shopping. Stocking up.

And now I knew what he was up to.

I nodded to surly Cindy, who bid me goodbye by flickering her eyelids in casual contempt, and went out to my car, a blue sporty Mazda I’d purchased recently. I wished I’d had the four-wheel drive, or anything less conspicuous, but I didn’t. I sat in the car, scooched down low; I did not turn on the engine. I just sat in the cold car in the cold night and waited.

Harry Something came out with two armloads of groceries – Kotex included, I presumed – and he put them in the front seat of a brown rental Ford. Louis was not waiting for him. Harry was alone.

Which further confirmed my suspicions.

I waited for him to pull out onto the road, waited for him to take the road’s curve, then started up my Mazda and glided out after him. He had turned left, toward Twin Lakes and Lake Geneva. That made sense, only I figured he wouldn’t wind up either place. I figured he’d be out in the boonies somewhere.

I knew what Harry was up to. I knew he wasn’t exactly here to ski. That lardass couldn’t stand up on a pair of skis. And he wasn’t here to go ice-fishing, either. A city boy like Harry Something had no business in a touristy area like this, in the off-season – unless Harry was hiding out, holing up somewhere.

This would be the perfect area for that.

Only Harry didn’t use Kotex.

He turned off on a side road, into a heavily wooded area that wound back toward Paradise Lake. Good. That was very good.

I went on by. I drove a mile, turned into a farmhouse gravel drive and headed back without lights. I slowed as I reached the mouth of the side road, and could see Harry’s tail lights wink off.

I knew the cabin at the end of that road. There was only one, and its owner only used it during the summer; Harry was either a renter, or a squatter.

I glided on by and went back home. I left the Mazda next to the deck and walked up the steps and into my A-frame. The nine millimeter was in the nightstand drawer. The gun hadn’t been shot in months – Christ, maybe over a year. But I cleaned and oiled it regularly. It would do fine.