by Ralph Dennis
No doubt about it. It was Alec Troutman. The lean angry face I’d seen in the magazines now puffy, swollen. His mouth was open, lips quivering, as he gasped for air. While I watched, the nurse approached the bed from the other side. She reached out a hand and dropped a pill or tablet of some kind into Troutman’s mouth. It reminded me of the way I’d seen a sick cat given medicine once. The nurse put her hand on Troutman’s chin, forced his mouth closed and held it that way until the old man swallowed.
Not a good time to talk to him. Perhaps tomorrow.
I edged away from the wall. I was fifty yards away from the cottage, circling away, when I heard the click. It was a hammer going back on cock. I’d heard it enough in my time. Hear it a few times and you don’t forget.
Right away, knowing I didn’t have much time, I dropped into a deep knee bend and I did a few more before the flashlight glare hit me full in the face.
I stopped in the squat and said, “What … what are you … ?”
“Who are you?” The light was steady on me.
“I’m Harper, Jim Harper. I’m at the diet clinic.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Walking and exercising. I’m supposed to …”
The front door to the cottage opened. A man moved from the doorway, the light framing him. “Something going on, Artie?”
“Some guy doing exercises, Mr. Clark.”
“This time of night?” He was a tall, narrow man, with sloping shoulders and a long, flat loaf of a face, dark hair and pale skin above a dark robe. “Is he fat?”
“Yeah, Mr. Clark.”
“Point him in another direction,” Clark said. “Tell him to do his squats somewhere else.” He closed the door and the light wagged across me.
“You heard the man.”
I straightened up and walked away. After a few feet the light went out. Then I could reach up and run a hand over my face. The sweat on it felt chilled, like the condensation on the sides of a tall drink.
During the night I dreamed about a thick slice of prime rib. It seemed to be about a foot thick and the blood running down the sides of it bubbled and hissed.
Rice and purple plums and carrot juice. Hot black tea in the small pot. I was pouring the tea down the john when the orderly came for me. After a few minutes of walking he turned me back toward the gym. There, in a sweatsuit and tennis shoes, the D.I. type ran us through straddle-jumps and deep knee bends. When the rasp of breathing got up to heart attack level, he paired us off and we tossed a medicine ball back and forth for half an hour. I might not have lasted if the fat man with me hadn’t kept dropping the ball on his foot.
Showered and dressed, I left the gym and traced my path from the night before. I reached the place where I’d been stopped. Then I realized something had happened. I could see the black Continental parked a few yards from the front door to the cottage. What was new was the ambulance there, the rear doors open. While I kept my distance and watched, two attendants wheeled out a stretcher bed. A blanket-covered body was on the bed. They lifted the stretcher and rammed the bed through the back of the ambulance and slammed the doors shut.
Dr. Black, the young one who’d given me the examination the day before, stood on the lawn in front of the cottage and shook his head as the ambulance pulled away and headed in the direction of the front gate. Still shaking his head, he walked toward me. He saw me and stopped. “Mr. Hardman … right?”
I nodded. “What happened?”
“A death,” he said.
“Anybody I know?”
“You might have heard of him,” Dr. Black said. “A Mr. Alec Troutman.”
“I’ve heard of him. Natural causes?”
“Of course.” He looked shocked that I’d think otherwise. He seemed to regret that he’d spoken to me at all. He gave me a tight, grim nod and walked away.
I might have turned away if the Continental hadn’t been parked there. It made me think someone might still be in the cottage. I walked across the lawn and knocked at the door.
After a few seconds, the door was opened a foot or so. The man beyond the door was the one who’d stood there last night, the one in the robe who’d been called Mr. Clark. The way he stared at me, I was fairly certain he didn’t remember me. “What do you want?”
“I’m Jim Hardman.”
“Hardman?” His eyes raked over me, seeing me for the first time. “Am I supposed to know you?”
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“For what good it’ll do, come on in.” He hit the door with the heel of his hand and swung it open. I followed him inside. We were in a living room. Dark red leather furniture, with the smell of the leather or whatever they cleaned it with strong around us. “Am I supposed to know who you are?”
“I work for the Templetons.”
His face didn’t show it but I felt he knew who I was. “You heard about Mr. Troutman?”
“I heard.”
“Then what do you want with me?”
“Now that Troutman’s dead, does that end it?”
“End what?”
“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got it worked out. That’s why I’m here.”
He looked at my waistline and grinned. “I thought it was for the rice.”
I walked past him and looked into the bedroom. The sheets were stripped from the bed, balled up on the floor, waiting for some orderly to remove the death signs. “I don’t know who you are.”
“I’m Frank Clark. I was Mr. Troutman’s executive assistant.”
“You ought to be able to answer my question. Is it over?”
“What?”
“The try on Templeton.”
“On poor Edward?” He dropped into one of the leather easy chairs, put his head back, and laughed.
I let it run down until it was somewhere between a sob and a giggle. I said, “Let me in on the joke and I’ll laugh with you.”
“You won’t,” he said.
“Try me.”
“See if you can laugh about this. Yesterday, when the old man finally realized he was dying, that he didn’t have much time left, he made the big deal. It’s the one that assured him that he would get what he wanted more than anything else in the world.
“What was that?”
“Revenge. Satisfaction against a man who’d stomped him into the dirt like a bug.”
“How?”
“He bought himself a death squad.”
“Go on.”
“He paid in cash. One hundred thousand dollars. It’s a nonrevocable contract. It’s to be carried out no matter what happens to him.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“Fuck you, Hardman,” he said, all the laughter gone. “Fuck you and Templeton.”
“Nothing can stop it?”
“You can quit,” he said.
He wouldn’t say anything more. I left him and went to my cottage and packed my suitcase. I called Hump from a phone in the main building. He picked me up at the main gate about half an hour later.
CHAPTER TEN
“A death squad?”
I was having my second big meal since I’d been rescued from the rice and fruit. For lunch, I’d had two Big Macs and a vanilla shake on the way back into town.
Now, for dinner, Hump and Art Maloney and I were at the Butcher Block, a steak house on Luckie. I’d ordered myself about a two-inch sirloin and a big potato with butter and sour cream and I was planning on about a whole apple pie with my coffee.
Art had asked the question. I’d thought he might have an answer for me. That was why I’d invited him to dinner. But he’d answered my question about death squads with another question and that wasn’t much help.
“That’s what the man said.”
“I’ll ask.”
“When?’
“Oh, shit,” Art said. “You buy me the best steak I’ve seen in five years and now you want me to walk away from it and let it get cold.” He stuffed a bloody wedge into his mouth.
&nbs
p; “Time’s short.”
“It always is.” He gave the rest of his steak a sad look and pushed back his chair. He went to the pay phone back by the rest room. He dialed one number and talked for a minute and then hung up and dialed another number. Again he talked for about a minute. On the way back to the table, he stopped off and spoke to the waiter. He sat down at the table, pulled his plate toward him, and cut another wedge. After he chewed it, he said, “It’s still warm.”
“I had Hump breathe on it.”
“Thanks, Hump.” He swallowed and looked over at me. “I talked to Intelligence. Nothing. Then I talked to the district F.B.I. agent and he said he’d check around and call me back.”
“He know anything?”
“Seemed vague to me.”
We were on coffee and Benedictine when the phone rang at the bar. The waiter waved a hand at Art and he went over and took the call at the pay phone. He talked for a couple of minutes, listening most of the time. Back at the table he shook his head. “Mostly rumors.”
“I’ll take rumors.”
“Washington says it might be a new concept in killing for hire. You want Joe Blow offed, you need a gun and a wheelman. That could be pickup help. But say you want somebody done who’s got good security. A big money man or a political figure or a labor leader. Then you’ve got to have more than casual help. You need a team that works together.”
“How big a team?”
“They’ve heard stories about four-man squads. Kill anybody if the money is right. Specialists in weapons and explosives.”
“What’s new about that?” Hump asked.
“They train as a team. They work as a team. It’s not pickup. It’s forever.”
I drained my coffee. I didn’t feel too good. “Does steak curdle on your stomach?”
“It does on mine,” Hump said.
“You still in?” I asked him.
“Might as well.”
“You still got that Austrian shotgun?”
“Just like new,” Hump said.
“We leave here, you go by and pick it up. On the way to my house stop by some pawn shop or K-Mart and pick up a hundred or so shells.”
Art leaned in. “You two starting a war?”
“Maybe.”
Hump asked, “Where’ll you be?”
“Recruiting.”
I was in the back booth of the Gray Horse Tavern out on Ponce de Leon. The man across from me had been a cop back in the early sixties and he’d been wiped off the force because he’d been too close to some gamblers and pimps. I wouldn’t trust him with a five-dollar bill but he’d also been a hardass in his time. Tough and hard and go-to-hell, that was him. In the years since I’d last seen him, he’d done security for some department store or other. That was just a cover. He also ran some book. He looked out of shape now. He’d had trouble getting his belly into the booth.
“The money’s good,” I said.
“My burial insurance is already paid up.”
Sad. He’d been a good man in his time, good with a rifle, hell with a handgun.
“You’re saying no?”
He nodded.
“You know anybody?”
“I can call around. It would have to be somebody crazy.”
“Make the calls,” I said.
He was in the closed phone booth three or four minutes. I saw him make four or five calls, maybe more than that. When he came back, he stood out in the aisle. He lifted his drink. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I made the calls.”
“Thanks.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ve got business at the bar.”
“Sure,” I said.
“The word’s out. Anybody interested will be here in the next hour.”
“Appreciate it, Ed.”
“Look.” He leaned over me so his voice wouldn’t carry as far as the bar. “I can’t do that kind of stuff anymore. It all ran out of a hole in my toe.”
I patted his shoulder. “You didn’t say that. If you said it, I didn’t hear you.”
He sat for the next hour at the bar with his back to me. I couldn’t tell if I’d made a friend or an enemy out of him.
Three men showed up. I culled the first one right away. It was that obvious. The bottle had him. And he didn’t have much pride left: the white shirt he wore was so dirty he’d tried to talcum the collar and the cuffs. His hand trembled when he tried to lift the drink I bought him.
“I can’t use you,” I said. I palmed a five and slid it across the table toward him.
He lost half the drink, spilling it down his shirt, trying to get it down. He didn’t thank me for the five.
The second one looked better. Young, about twenty-four or five. Good clothes but a bit on the loud side. Talked well about a year and a half in Nam. Had hunted all his life. Worked now as a bouncer in a downtown girl show. I was about to take him on, but first I went up to the bar to get myself another drink. The open space was next to Ed. When I pushed in there, he said, without turning to me, “The needle.”
I carried my drink back to the booth. I put down the drink and said, “Roll up both sleeves.”
“It’s just skin-popping.”
“Let me see the veins.”
He slid out of the booth and walked outside without looking back at me.
The third one was just mouth. He’d seen too many cowboy movies or something. As soon as he sat down. he opened his jacket so I could see the butt of the chipped-handled .32. “I’m not afraid of anybody,” he said.
“You do service time?”
“No.”
“Police work?”
“No.”
“Hunt much?”
He shook his head.
I shook my head back at him. “Maybe I can use you for a later job,” I said, “but not this one.”
He swaggered out. Probably scared to death and glad I couldn’t use him.
The hour was up. I edged up on Ed at the bar. “A drunk, a needle, and a cowboy. It doesn’t look good.”
“The scared word is out. You can get fifty to knock over a supermarket. But not this one.”
I thanked him and bought a round for the seven or eight men at the bar.
I was out in the parking lot when he called me from the doorway. “Where’ll you be?”
“My place.”
“How long?”
I looked at my watch. “Two hours.”
“Anybody else comes by I’ll call you.”
“Cull them for me.”
He nodded and waved.
I drove home. Hump was parked in the driveway waiting for me.
Hump put the wrapped weapon on the kitchen table and nodded at it. “Art dropped this by. He said you might find a use for it.”
I untied the cords and unrolled the canvas. It was an Ml carbine, the officer’s model, with a tube clip taped to each side of the stock.
“I guess I can.”
I guess you never forget. I field-stripped the carbine while Hump sat across the table and drank a beer. It was in good shape, no rust or pits.
I was in the bathroom washing the oil off my hands when the phone rang. It was Ed at the Gray Horse Tavern.
“I think I’ve got you one.”
“He look good?” My hands were dripping and I couldn’t find a towel in the bedroom. I dried my hands on the sheet.
“He might be the real thing.”
“You know him?”
“No.”
I asked what the guy called himself.
“Runt.”
“Huh?”
“He’s a cocky little bastard. You want to talk to him?”
“Send him out.”
“Sure.”
“And Ed?”
“Yeah?”
“Check around on him. See if anybody knows anything about him.”
He said he would. He’d call me back if he found out anything I ought to know.
He came in as if he was about a foot taller than he really was. He was a shade under five fee
t even with the heels on those scuffed cowboy boots. Young, not more than twenty-three or twenty-four. Hair blond and long, shaggy. Wearing tan jeans and a fringed buckskin jacket. His face still had a few patches of acne and a couple of festering pimples down low on the side of one nostril.
“If you’re the one hiring, I’m your man.”
I waved him through the doorway and back toward the kitchen. I followed him in and watched while he and Hump looked each other up and down. He looked back over his shoulder. “This your whole army?”
“So far.”
“You need help then.” The Ml carbine leaned against the door where I’d left it. He jerked it up to inspection arms and cleared it. “You can’t kill shit with this.”
“Maybe you can’t,” I said.
He snapped it dry and leaned it back against the door frame.
I tapped the back of one of the chairs. “Sit down and tell me about yourself.”
Hump opened the refrigerator and got out three Buds.
“How do you want it?”
“Name?”
“Bob Ward. They call me Runt.”
“Tell me the rest of it.”
He’d enlisted in the army at sixteen, using his older brother’s birth certificate. Did a tour in Nam up on the line. Wounded about the time his tour was up. Back in the states for his eighteenth birthday. Discharged when they found out about the fraudulent enlistment. After that he’d worked for a year in one of the New Haven gun plants, test-firing M-16’s. Recruited there by white African mercenaries. Fought there, in one country or another for three years. Good money. Ran out of jobs and came back to the states. Had thought about going back in the army, but they’d found out about the three years in Africa and wouldn’t touch him. Now he was running out of cash and needed a job. He was expert with most arms. Pistol, rifle, or most automatic weapons. And he had some knowledge of plastic explosives.
“How’d you hear about the job?”
“Overheard some dude at a bar where I was having a drink. Bought him one and he pointed me to the Gray Horse Tavern.” He poured about a third of the bottle into the back of his throat and burped. “This job. They’re real pros?”
