Kill Me Tomorrow

by Richard S. Prather

  I strode into the bedroom and grabbed the second .45 off the table, and with it in my coat pocket and the other automatic still stuck in my belt headed for the open door.

  Paul said—very sweetly—“Don’t you say good-bye?”

  I stopped. “Good-bye. Wish me luck. See you later.”

  “And where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ll figure that out on the way. To wherever those boys are who clanged inside here tonight. Or any one of their pals. Only this time there won’t be any polite fun and games. This time I’ll start by breaking an arm or two. Then a couple legs. If it’s Bludgett, I may temper action with wisdom and first shoot a hole in each of his kneecaps and elbows. But I am sure as hell going to find out where Lucrezia is, and then—”

  “Sheldon, I have long cherished the hope that one day you would do the sane and sensible thing. But no. Invariably you do the foolish, and possibly at last suicidal, thing.”

  “Go to hell. This is the kind of thing I do my way.”

  “Wouldn’t it help, just a little, if you knew what happened during those minutes you cannot now recall?”

  “You’re dumber than I am. I already told you, I remember. It has all come back, all of it.”

  “Not the time between the second Bludgett tap and your arising, like a primeval monster, from the desert ooze.”

  “That, Dr. Anson, is the time during which I was totally unconscious. When tapped by Bludgett, one does not recall anything between the tap and the awakening, hours or days or weeks later. Those moments are gone, irretrievably.”

  I turned toward the door. Or rather the doorway. And then stepped on the door, starting out.

  “Those minutes are not gone irretrievably. They are not, as you earlier said, lost in limbo. You can recall them.” He paused. “I am the doctor, Sheldon. However, if you’re not interested …”

  I turned and blinked at him. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am.”

  I just stood there. So Paul rose slowly to his feet and said, “Come on. We go to my rooms. I wouldn’t want to be telling you, ‘Your fat head is getting heavy, heavy,’ and discover your friends had returned.” Out he went.

  I still figured he was nuts, but I followed him. In his front room I sat down while Paul rummaged in his bedroom for a minute, came back carrying two books, one in hardcover and the other a paperback. “Our experiment may proceed more speedily if I first eliminate some of your disbelief. Which is to say, your abysmal ignorance.”

  He thumbed through the hardcover book. “This is one of the excellent Prentice-Hall volumes, Self-Hypnotism, by Leslie M. LeCron. See the bottom of page eighty-two. This other one is The Intimate Casebook of a Hypnotist by Arthur Ellen with Dean Jennings, a Signet Mystic Book published by the New American Library. I direct your attention, Sheldon, to … wait’ll I find it … pages fifty-four and fifty-five.”

  While I obediently—but still unbelieving—glanced at the first line of an already underlined passage, Paul continued, “Some other time, if your already gratifying enthusiasm continues to grow, I shall provide you with other references, both in popular and technical literature, as proof that the unconscious mind forgets nothing and, even when under anesthesia, the patient hears and remembers—subconsciously remembers, to be sure—everything said and done in his presence.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “More, that it records those words and actions indelibly and in exact detail, with even greater fidelity than the conscious mind. When a man is unconscious as the result of accident, anesthesia, sleep, even—I hope—being sapped on the head or bludgeoned by a Bludgett, hypnosis by probing the unconscious mind can uncover, and bring into consciousness, that which was said and done to him or near him. Things, by the way, which may unconsciously have been making him ill, crippling him, bugging the hell out of him—”

  “You really are kidding.”

  “Read! That is, if—I never did ask you, Shell—”

  “Yeah, I can read. If I move my whole mouth.” I read the marked passages in both books. I had to admit it: maybe Paul wasn’t nuts. Either that, or he was not the only cuckoo about.

  Paul said, “Ah-ha, my medical training leads me to believe a modicum of intelligence is leaking into your cranial disaster. Your eyes have less of their normal dull, glazed look.”

  “I still don’t believe it. Paul—seriously, that bit about patients totally snoozed eavesdropping on the sawbones … you’re quite serious?”

  “Of course. I’ve convinced some of my fellow surgeons. Others—well, some minds you can’t open with a meat-ax. These colleagues of mine continue to yak in operating rooms and, unquestionably in some cases, continue to lose patients who might have been saved if their gabby healers had kept their mouths shut.”

  “You mean, say Myrtle is under anesthesia, and they’re carving away on her, if a doctor or nurse says, ‘Well, we might as well finish the job, but this one’s going to kick the bucket for sure,’ or, ‘Ugh, lookit that, I don’t know how she lived this long,’ or, ‘Hurryitup, willya, I gotta date in twenny minutes—’”

  “You have the general idea. Some, who might otherwise have survived, kick the bucket. Shall we give it a go?”

  “Hypnosis?”

  “Of course, hypnosis. Quit stalling.”

  “Well …”

  “Consider: what have you got to lose? You’ve already lost it, have you not?”

  “Yeah …”

  “And you have everything to gain?”

  “Well … yeah …”

  “So? I do need your permission.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was ten-four P.M. “So … OK. You’ve got it. Fire away.”

  “OK,” I told Paul. “Fire away. Let the great experiment begin.”

  “It began. It proceeded splendidly. And it has ended.”

  “You mean I’ve already been hypnotized?”

  “That’s right.” I noticed a portable tape recorder on the floor near him, reels still turning, a small microphone on a table between us. Paul pressed the “Stop” button.

  “I gave you a posthypnotic suggestion that when I say a certain key word you’ll recall everything you revealed—you were talking quite a streak, by the way—during the twenty minutes or so you were under. You’re a fine subject.”

  I thought of checking my watch. When I’d last noted the time—it seemed only seconds ago—it had been ten-four P.M. on the tick. Now it was ten-thirty. Twenty-six minutes. It shocked the hell out of me.

  Paul went on, “I could simply have told you to remember everything upon awakening, of course, but—under the circumstances—if you revealed something under hypnosis which could be traumatic I intended to prepare you for the fact. Didn’t want to smack you with it cold.”

  “If, for example, I’d heard one of the hoods saying Lucrezia was dead?”

  “Something like that.” He hastened to add, “There was not anything like that, however.”

  It was only now beginning to sink in. “You mean, I really remembered? I actually talked about what those hoods said—while I was unconscious?”

  “You most certainly did, Shell. I recorded it all in case you want to listen to yourself describing what happened to you—or as insurance should you get hit on the head again, which I feel is destined. But there’s no reason for you not to remember it all right now.” He paused, then said: “Watchdog.”

  It was fantastic.

  I was sitting there, still watching his lips move as he completed the “g” of “Watchdog,” and instantly the blankness was filled. Every moment from the time when Bludgett’s fist smashed against my forehead to awakening in the mud was in my mind again—or, to me, in my mind for the first time. It was an almost brain-bending thought, that all of it, the sounds and voices, even feeling, had been in my memory, traced in pathways in my brain, all the time; there, but unknown; and now known completely, not in separate little bits and pieces which gradually formed a whole but as a solid mass that
leaped into my consciousness and was simply there.

  It was not, of course, like living it over again. But it was a remembering of something I had lived through, had experienced. Just as when you’ve read a book you know the middle, end, beginning, and can think of any part of it or go through it mentally from beginning to end, so could I now examine any single part of that recovered forty minutes, or relive it all in mind from start to finish.

  There was much of importance that I knew now and hadn’t known before. But most important, still, was: Lucrezia. They’d grabbed her, all right—but she was alive. At least, when Bludgett and Ace and Fleepo and Lucky had been talking in those forty minutes or so she had been alive.

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” Paul said quietly.

  “That’s kind of an understatement.”

  “Shall I play the tape? The recording only runs a few minutes. It took much less time to tell than to live it.”

  “OK. If I go over it in my head while it comes in my ears it might help pin down something that’ll give me an edge. I’m going to need all the help I can get tonight.”

  Paul began playing the recording of my voice again, the words I’d so recently spoken during a state of—well, whatever hypnosis is. And I began one of the most unusual and oddly disturbing few minutes of my life.

  I knew the words now, but I also knew they had only minutes ago been forgotten completely. So, even though I still winced or smiled once in a while, and thought about the goddamned hoods and for scowling moments wondered how I’d be able to get the bastards, at the same time another almost bewildered part of me roamed like a stranger in the endless reaches of the mind. Strange … how very strange it was. From the words audible in the room, my spoken and tape-recorded words, and from that indelible tape of neuron and synapse and cell within the living brain—the subconscious memory of unconsciousness made conscious—I could put it all together, like a script, or a story, or dialogue and movement from a play.…

  “Madre de Dios! I think you keeled him.”

  “Nah. He ain’t kilt, Fleepo. He was movin’ away when I hit him.”

  “He for sure was after you hit’m. I thod he was goin’ to fly clear outside through where the door was at and land—”

  “Prop him up and lemme bounce him again. Turn my brains into marblecules, will he? I’ll learn the bastard—”

  “No—hold it!” The hard flat voice of Ace. “Don’t mark him up any more.”

  “Why not? We’re gonna kill him, ain’t we?”

  “Yeah, sure. But—it’s better if it looks like a simple shooting, see? Besides, we got to get the hell out from this joint. Letch must be outa his crappy mind makin’ us come here to get the crud. Bludgett, pick him up. Lucky, get out to the heap and open the back door, then start her up. Fleepo, go glim around, make sure there ain’t nobody watching.”

  I was able actually to feel—or at least remember feeling—the hands on me; being lifted, flung like a sack of cement over a big shoulder; movement, to the car, thud and clunk as I was tossed—not gently and reverently placed—onto the carpeted floorboards.

  Soft purr of the engine, idling. Sounds of others getting into the car. A minute passed, another. Feet on pavement, a man climbing into the front of the car, door slamming.

  The new voice, Fleepo: “Well?”

  And Ace saying, “Yeah.”

  Fleepo, “Well?”

  Ace, “Yeah.”

  “Do we sit here sayin’ well-yeah, well-yeah all night? What’s this well-yeah crap anyways, some kind of code?”

  Ace, up front, “Drag ass, Lucky. I had to make a phone call.”

  Louder sound of the engine, surge of movement. “What the hell for, at a time like—”

  “Chop it. I had to tell Letch and the rest no sweat, we got him and all the … We didn’t have no trouble.”

  Screech of tires, the car swaying and straightening out. After a few seconds, close by, in the back seat near me, Fleepo, “Hey, Bludgett, they tell me on the phone you say Scott knows where Reyes and Jenkins are planted? There on the golf course?”

  “Yah.”

  “How’d he find out that?”

  “Beats the beans outa me.”

  Silence. Fleepo again. “Be goddamn funny as hell if he found it out out of you. Goddamn, Ace and me wouldn’t never—”

  “You wanna tap, too, Fleepo? I’m the one phoned you bums and tole you where he was at, ain’t I? I’m the one hangs around and sees him go in his room, ain’t I? You wouldn’t even have him if it wasn’t for me—”

  “Don’t get riled up. Haysoos Creesto, all I do is ask a plain question. All I wonder, how in hell he finds out all these things.”

  “He’s got ways,” Bludgett said.

  Silence for a while, then Bludgett again, “What do you think, Ace, that tape you got outa Scott’s pocket—it the one he played there in front of The Letch plus all them square dudes?”

  “Don’t worry about it, for crissakes. Let them worry about it.”

  Lucky, at the wheel, “What tape’s this? Scott played a tape somewheres?”

  “Forget it. It’s not important.”

  “Well, where was that at? How come I didn’t hear nothing about it?”

  “Chop it, Lucky, it’s not important. And easy on the gas. Real easy. We get a ticket with Scott laying on the floor, we’ll have to do more’n tear up a ticket. We’d have to shoot us a cop.”

  “So why don’t we just blast the sonofabitch now and roll him outa the car?”

  “No, we’re gonna leave him laying closer to the Villas.”

  “What for? That don’t make sense.”

  “Because Letch says do it there, that’s what for. They got it all figured. Weeton’s the one planned it out. You got to admit he’s pretty sharp, right, Lucky?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Reason it’s gonna be at the Villas, it’ll be fixed so nobody finds Scott for a coupla days, won’t be no way to tell exactly when he got killed. It’ll look like he could’ve got it last night, when he was banging away at Frankenstein and Bludgett here.”

  “I tole you, call him Frankie.”

  “Yeah, I meant Frankie. Sorry, Bludgett. Didn’t mean no harm, just slipped my mind.”

  “Seems like you don’t mean no harm all the time.”

  “C’mon, Ace, you were saying what about leavin’ Scott around the Villas someplace?”

  “Well, you know Weeton’s getting a warrant ready on Scott, for killing Frankenst—Frankie. Bullet he took out of Frankie’s noodle come all to hell apart when it went in there, but Weeton says he can manage it so it’ll look like it’s the same as the four he took outa The Nailer. It’ll look like Scott was shootin’ everybody in range. Hell, that’s for the science bugs to figure. There ain’t no doubt Scott killed Nailer, and we know he knocked over Frankie. So all we’re doin’ is plugging a guy already wanted for murder—who in fact is already dead when we plug him. What could be more perfect?”

  “Slow down on that. He’s already dead? He’s layin’ there right behind us still breathin’—”

  “Lucky, it’s a goddamn good thing there is guys like Weeton and Letch and Holyjoe to do the thinking. You—you and me, we’d leave it with lost ends. We kill him tonight. But it’s arranged so everybody thinks he got chilled last night. By Frankenstein—”

  “I tole—”

  “Frankie. It looks like Frankie killed him last night. That’s all I meant by he’s already dead when we plug him—forget it. Everything’s set. You been itching to plug Scott. So, OK, plug him good. Only you don’t use your heat.”

  “I don’t? What the hell do I use? I grab his neck—”

  “You use this, buddy. Here. And don’t bang Scott in the head. Put three-four in his guts, so it looks like he could’ve lived long enough at least to hit Frankie.”

  “Hell, this is a .45, same as mine. I’d rather use one I’m friends with—”

  “Will you use your head, Lucky? You want the fuzz to figure out
the slugs come from your gun—like they figured it was Scott’s gun put the pills in Nailer and Frankie—and send you up to the slammer again?”

  “No …”

  “OK. So you use this one. It’s Frankie’s. You know he carried a .45, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. But it don’t quite figure …”

  “Will you listen? I told you this was all planned out by Lecci and Weeton. Using Frankie’s gun you poop Scott. Already in Frankie—and The Nailer—is pills from Scott’s gun, which Weeton by now took from out of them. We leave Scott pretty near where we dumped Frankie last night. By the time they find Scott he’ll be startin’ to get mold on him, and it’ll look like Frankie drilled him and Scott lived long enough to bang him with a lucky one in the noodle. They kill each other. Christ, don’t you get it yet?”

  “I guess … They sure make killin’ a guy complicated, don’t they?”

  “That’s so there ain’t no stink. It’s open-and-close-it, like they say, no lost ends. You get the kick of doing it, but there’s no way to tie you in. No way. See?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, now I get it. Goddamn smart, now it makes sense.”

  Tires hummed on pavement, the car swayed as it went around a curve. After a short silence the rumbling voice of Bludgett, “I been thinkin’. Supposin’ the fuzz don’t buy it, about Frankie done it to Scott. And it’s like … like we heard, if they figure it’s a bang-job, them L.A. fuzz could heat it up plenty—”

  “Bludgett, will you for crissakes quit your worrying? Few minutes it’ll be all over.”

  “Yeah. You’re right enough on that. Maybe—well, it don’t seem natural, I know it don’t but I almost wisht we didn’t have to bump the sonofabitch.”

  “You outa your mind—”

  “I mean, he ain‘t such a bad guy, once you get to know him a little, considering he’s the kind of bastard he is. I’d like to bounce him again, I’d like to beat the crud outa him. But—well, I won’t make no bones on it, I’m glad it ain’t me gonna drill him. I mean, him just layin’ there, and all.”

  “You are outa your conk. And don’t worry about no heat, either. So what if there is some for a few days? There’s enough grub and booze we could hole up six months and never stick our heads from out of the place. Grub and booze—and babe. How about that, boys? Think on that for the minute. Once Scott’s chilled for good, we knock off the babe—Christ, seems a waste killing such a sweet looker, don’t it?”