by Alan Furst
“Not as protected -as I used to be,” he smiles a thin smile, “but enough, enough. Lawyers can do some interesting things that other people can’t. I’ll be okay. I’m gonna make an enquiry or two about turning your dealership. Very very tentative. Cost you ten points.”
“You got it.”
“Fine. Be careful, and try to keep your head together. You’ve got to be making some heavy decisions in the next couple days. And don’t worry about Genelle. I’ll make sure she gets up to that camp.” “Thanks for everything. Talking made it come a little clearer.”
We shake hands, Dale Carnegie style. “Don’t mention it That’s what Mary Worth is for.”
I decide to travel very light: my old dependable Justin boots, good for running and ass-kicking, jeans, a polo shirt with a pocket for the teargas pen, an old wind-breaker which has proved its rainproofedness many times. I take with me in a big paper bag extra underwear, extra socks, sun glasses, a carton of cigarettes, a jar of honey and Space Sticks. I decide against a compass, ’cause I’m not an outdoors type and that probably won’t be my best exit. I think, “This must be what every hit man does. Pack up the old overnight bag for his business trip.”
Next I go spend some money. I decide to take passport and driver’s license and social security and credit cards for Howard Fine, one of my best-done fictional people. Done while I was new at the game and so done with considerable more care than some of my others. Worked right up from the birth certificate. Last time I checked, poor Howard, who was in my geometry class in high school, was still in that nice quiet little home in Greenwich, Connecticut. My mother told me, about three months ago, that recently Howard had said both “da-da” and “poo-poo” and the doctors thought he might start growing up again.
Howie was an adventurous kid in high school and decided to make some of his own acid. He dropped some incredibly pure micage, and almost died from suffocation when his breathing reflex started - tripping off by itself somewhere. And he took a psychic journey, maybe an astral journey, back to about three months old, and there his cosmic tripmobile had some kind of flat tire and stranded him. So now he’s a perfectly healthy 180-pound three-month-old, gooing and gurgling. I’m not sure his mother, who I knew as a kid, is entirely unhappy about all of this. Mr. Fine, who pays the bills for the nice home, probably isn’t thrilled with it.
But Howie lives on in me, as the Unitarians say, and after a good beef with oyster sauce at House of Chan he goes shopping at a Chevy dealership and buys himself, for 4,000 bucks, a Chevy Carry-all, built like a truck, but with a very hot 8 cylinder engine in it. When I tell the salesman what Howie wants, he sells me his own car right off the street, and probably makes out pretty good. I get fat tires with lots of tread in the back for dirt roads, and redone brakes, carbuertor and engine: about 135 in there he says, but don’t down-shift into second until about eighty-five. It’s very casual looking, ’cause the body’s about two years old. It’s meant to surprise people, the salesman says. I tape four of my current stash of five thou in plastic to the bottom of my battery, get a good night’s sleep, call Henrietta in the morning and tell her I’m leaving the apartment, and by ten, the time I call an early start, I’m on my way back to Pennsylvania.
It’s an incredible sky all the way out on 1-80, washed out blue with lots of shapely clouds and the sun in and out and showing pink up back of them—solid album-cover stuff. My little men are having a half-time rest and my Zen Archer has taken over and I’m driving with the road and not thinking about anything. Somehow, the best thing I heard in the last two crazy days is that Lieberman is gonna make sure that Genelle and Robbie are okay. While it’s good to have a reduced target area, I’m sorry to have dragged her through the last weeks. She’s got a very up head and I wouldn’t want anything to change that. So I drive. And pretty soon it’s my exit, Einsteinian time floating by too too fast. There’s a phone booth right there and I stop and call Villegas. A girl answers and says that Tony’ll be back in five minutes. I wait for ten and try again and this time he answers.
“Howdy Villegas, it’s me.”
“Jesus, you just left, I’m not ready for a—a—a visit.”
I recognize the overinventoried businessman talking to his good-as-gold chief supplier. “That’s okay man, this is a social call.”
“You want me to call you back.”
“No, I’d like to see you somewhere quiet.”
“Well, all right. You sound funny man, is anything wrong?”
“Unh-unh. Just to talk.”
“ ’Kay. You remember the last place we didn’t
meet?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you find that again?”
“Yeah.”
“So in an hour?”
“I’m about an hour away so I can just about make it.”
“Good, I’ll see you.”
This part of the road, two-lane farm road down into Krupptown, goes even faster and all too soon I swing into that narrow dirt lane packed with trees. I go quite a spell and swing ’round an S-curve and the absolute same goddamn thing happens—only this time it’s a black and white county cop cruiser parked dead square on that road facing away from me. But I’d know that military squareback haircut anywhere, and when he hears the truck and goes into a fast profile it’s Byszka dead on. He reaches for a door handle and I slam the Chev into reverse, with a fast glance at neutral, and I’m heading back where I came from. But Byszka reacts fast and he’s into reverse and following me. Before I curl around to see over my shoulder, I get a good view of him hanging over the back of the seat, braced with the crook of his elbow, looking right at me through those mirror sun glasses.
Thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty. I’m shearing off great bunches of leaves and twigs and nothing solid yet, thank whoever, but when I glance around he’s still right there with me. The whine of the reverse gear is really screaming but that cruiser isn’t losing a foot, he’s about twenty feet in front of me, and just waiting until we hit pavement, ’cause then it’s gonna be catchee-catchee time. I’m backing through my own dust of a moment ago and it’s getting harder to see, though if anyone is coming down that road it’s gonna be too bad for everybody, especially me ’cause I’m the filling in the sandwich. And no sooner do I think that than here comes guess who in a green panel truck at the other end of the short straightaway. I’ll give you a hint: it’s somebody who hung around his apartment a little too long and then pushed it to get there but arrived a few seconds after the guy he was gonna meet. Worse, he’s already seen the parade coming at him assfrontways and the only way he’s not gonna get creamed is by throwing his own truck into R. Which he does, but no way can he make my kind of time, ’cause all he’s got in back are those little windows so he’s doing his reverse navigating in the side-view mirror. Byszka makes up the space in nothing flat and now he’s hanging right off my bumper. And so the three of us dance.
Until we go around the same curve I overlooked the other night. Villegas and I go through okay but the cruiser takes out a rear panel on the tree. I hear the crash and look around in time to see Byszka fly up off the seat with the impact, and through my busy mind runs the memory tape that Officer Byszka, with typical macho head, disdains the use of the seat belt. I spin round and frantically wave to Villegas to move it. He does and in a second or two I stand on the brakes, and whip the gear shift into first and tromp on the gas. Byszka is looking at me through the grille and I can’t see his expression but I’m sure it’s one of disbelief ’cause the rabbit is already in second gear and fast, fast approaching the stalled greyhound. My fingers wander nervously over my own harness and it’s tight as it was a second ago. Byszka now makes some kind of frantic motion, either unholstering a gun or grappling for the door handle, ’cause a certain synapse just swung open like a little electrical door and the impulse nipped in there and got on the horn to his neural receivers with the scoop that the old house of the spirit is about to get its back end whacked.
And right
quick it does.
I take a hell of a strain on that harness and the window comes back at me for an instant and the nose of my truck suddenly wrinkles with about twenty-five m.p.h. worth of disgust and a taillight somehow pops up in the air dragging a wire with it and now I can hear the glass and metal complaining about Newton’s third law and then I’m stopped and the engine isn’t running. All I see up front is a trooper hat canted at a forty-five degree angle, probably caught between head and door, but the cruiser’s front window has melted directiy ahead of the driver’s seat. The impact shoved the cruiser a few feet ahead of me, to the top of a little rise, ’cause now, very slowly, it rolls back down. There’s a whole lot of silence and I can hear a few birds start up to sing again before Byszka’s car taps me a little supermarket parking lot ‘ting’ on what remains of my front bumper. Everything quiets again and the hat disappears completely. My hand is shaking in a wide arc, but I tell it firmly what I need it to do and within seconds it turns the ignition key. For a horrible instant I’m hanging out over the entire universe by one finger, and then slowly, and a little faster, the engine comes grumbling to life. It’s not what it used to was, but it’s running on some cylinders anyway. Good, class; lesson one, starting the car. Now we’ll try shifting into reverse. After a short meeting and discussion in the gearbox, the engine pitch changes and the wheels turn back an inch, and another, and prit’soon I’m rolling as sweat suddenly starts crawling over my body.
The rest of the road unwinds quickly and when I get to pavement I make a fast calculation: Did Villegas run home? Or away? Away, I decide, remembering the gun and the wild eyes the other day, and turn left, astounding some local Krupptown folks as my smashed front end snuffles by them at seventy m.p.h. In five minutes I’ve got him, though he’s pushing the truck as hard as it’ll push. I get up next to him, make the old war-movie John Wayne follow-me-sign, and pull in front. In ten minutes I spot a state forest and a dirt road off to the right, and I slow way down and point big, ’cause I can’t say about my directional signals. I turn, he follows, and soon I see picnic tables. We stop. “Well,” I think, “we’re alone and nobody’s around to hear to see and if I was gonna do it, this is how and where.”
We both get out quick and meet midway. Villegas has his right hand shoved in the pocket of his combat jacket and I can see he’s vibrating like a fucking guitar string.
“Jesus Christ man, what in hell’s name are you doing?”
“Calm down and let’s talk. I have got bad, bad news for you.”
“You are bad news. Did you do back there what I think you did? That was a fucking COP you hit, man. That is felony, felony, felony.”
“It is maybe murder, murder, murder. We’re gonna have to play past that.”
“Play past! You jive-ass drone, play past accessory to murder one of a cop?”
“It wasn’t a cop I hit.”
“It wasn’t? Didn’t look like no dog-catcher truck to me.”
“It wasn’t a cop. It was a brother-in-law.”
That stops him good. But just for a second, ’cause now he’s getting the idea that I’m either stoned, loony, or both. “Look, we are in a very bad spot here. If I was heat and Byszka called up on the radio I’d find this little road pretty quick. Let’s sit down under that tree and discuss. Me talk you listen.”
“Okay. This is gonna be good, ’cause right now you’ve queered my whole thing here. They are gonna nail my ass.”
“You haven’t done a goddamn thing that’s illegal. You drove up a road, saw two cars coming at you, and drove back down. Period. Unless they got freakier laws than I thought in Pennsylvania that does not constitute a felony and knowing me does not make you an accessory, an accomplice, a co-conspirator or mother’s little helper third-class.” Lieberman should be here to watch, I think.
We sit down under the tree and Villegas takes his hand out of his pocket and, both out hands shaking, we light up cigarettes. I take a deep breath and jump in. “Four days ago I got busted. By that same cop. His name is Byszka. He takes me into the station with a key brick right in his hand but he doesn’t book me. Instead, this red-headed fat guy and some assistant goon with a gray crewcut take me to a motel and tell me they’re from the CIA and they want me to get you alone and kill you.”
Villegas’s eyes just about come out of his face and in one motion he goes after his pocket and tries to scramble away from me. He winds up on his back facing downhill and waving that automatic at me. I almost pee in my pants, some last little bit of self-control stops it, but I just keep looking right at him and don’t move a muscle. “You’d be dead already if I wanted, y’know.” “Sit tight. Sit real tight man. I offed a lotta people in Nam and you’d just be one more.”
“I saved your fucking life you dumb shit, now sit up and help me figure out how to keep both our asses away from the alligators!”
A long second goes by and Villegas does something or other with the slide on the gun and puts it in his pocket. “Okay. Let’s talk fast.”
“Good. Number one, we both got to disappear.”
“Not that fast. Why do these people want to kill me?”
“Good question. They think it’s an international conspiracy.”
“To help the farm workers? To deal grass?”
“No. I’d say to them it’s more.”
“There isn’t any more.”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I guess it don’t matter, I just guess it don’t.”
“I wouldn’t go trying to, ah, explain to anyone, you know.”
“No, you’re right. Once they pick you, you’re guilty.”
“Okay. So can you disappear?”
He thinks. “I can get out of the state and there are people who’ll help me out.”
“Good. People you trust?”
“I never really had to trust them. I guess I’ll find out.”
“I guess you will.”
“Why did you do this for me?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. There was only one way to go. I couldn’t imagine killing anybody.”
“You may have killed that cop.”
“That cop scared me. My body did the rest.”
“Wow. Whatta fucked-up thing. The chingadon CIA.” “Okay. Here’s the hard part. I’m supposed to get them a body. Your body.”
“Right, so now we need a body.”
“Must be.”
“Well man, I’m fresh out of bodies.”
“Think.”
“I’m followin’ you just fine. All Mexicans look alike. Now find a dead Mexican with my fingerprints and you’re out from under and to the CIA I’m dead.” “Somthing like that.”
“You know I was in the service. They have my fingerprints, blood type, everything.”
“Do you think these are CIA people?”
“How do I know? Did they show you a badge? Did they show you anything a printer couldn’t make in half an hour?”
“No. They showed me nothing. I take it back. They showed me their teeth.”
“A lot of people got teeth, and most of them are showin’ ’em at somebody.”
“Agreed. But these guys weren’t that bright.”
“So how bright does the CIA make somebody?” “Who knows?”
“So we got to go ‘as if’.”
“Really. Can you think of any way to fix this?”
“Well, assuming we can find a body, maybe we can burn it and mangle up the hands.”
“What about the blood type?”
“Nothing. Have to be the same, but I’m A-positive and that’s the most common.”
“So where do we shop for bodies?”
“Assuming we don’t want to make one, at the undertaker’s.”
“Know anybody?”
“Sure. I know Rivera, the guy that buries all the Chicanos in the valley.”
“Okay. Let’s get to a phone and try it. If that cop is gonna wake up it might be soon and he’s gonna have an awful attitude beh
ind this.”
“Right. I’ll follow you.”
“No, get on in. I can make better time. This is as good a place as any for that truck. Now I want you to lay down in the back. If somebody connects up with me, if somebody is watching me, you can’t be sitting up here.”
“Okay” he says, walks away from his truck, and gives it a little pat goodby as he goes.
We find a telephone by the state park entrance. From what I can make of Villegas’s side of the conversation, the undertaker isn’t all that upset about the request. Maybe there’s a fast market in dead bodies, I’ve never shopped for one before. But there’s a problem: if the beloved is going to be seen by his family, we can’t have him. Villegas puts his hand over the phone at one point and says “How much?”
“A grand,” I answer. What’s the going price? I guess I’m high ’cause right away the guy is offering to call a friend, and he’ll call us right back. In ten minutes the phone rings. Villegas talks for a minute and hangs up. The friend has a cousin who’s holding a dead Puerto Rican, about Villegas’s age and height, killed in a motorcycle accident. It’s in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and we have to pick it up. So it’s back on the road for four hours. Our description may be on every cop radio by now, but what the hell, we’re doing what we can. By 7:30 we’re at Montoya’s Funeral Parlor in Phillipsburg.
The undertaker’s nephew, who’s about sixteen, shows us the stiff. He came in from the hospital two hours ago so he’s not ripe yet, and it promises, thank weather, to be a nice cool evening. There’s no way to find out blood type so we’ll just have to not think about that. This whole damn thing is so silly by now that Villegas and I are getting into it as a kind of practical joke. For one thing, the guy doesn’t look anything like Villegas, and he’s clean shaven. Villegas excuses himself and comes out of the bathroom with his mustache hairs clumped in his hand. The kid, who’s starting to giggle along with us by now, gets some rubber cement from a desk drawer and we more or less get the hairs glued back into the approximate shape of a mustache above the guy’s lip, except that one side sticks up and the other down, so now it looks like I’ve murdered the friendly old organ grinder with the monkey who, if you remember, is always drawn with one mustache north and one south. Some conversation with the kid and we throw in another 100 bucks and the kid drags the stiff down into the basement and blows a few holes in him with Villegas’ automatic. When the corpse returns, some places where the hospital sewed him up have popped undone, so he’s leaking from several points. The kid throws in a canvas bag, and the corpse and Villegas lay down in back and we’re on our way back to Pennsylvania.
