“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on here. You must be Connie’s twin sister or something. And I don’t know how you got in here, but I don’t like it.”
At the sight of the gun, she cursed herself silently for being so careless. Maybe she had been dreaming about killing Harold.
Or something. Maybe a daydream, planning how she would do it.
There had to be an explanation, and she bet anything he had it.
“My name is Connie, I don’t have a twin, and you think I like being here any better than you do?”
She was bluffing, but she didn’t know what else to do. She stood her ground, not even bothering to cover herself.
He laughed. “I don’t believe you’re Connie for a moment, although you do look like her a great deal. But I happen to know for a fact that Connie is dead.”
This time it was her turn to laugh. “Actually, you’re the one who is dead. That gun, one shot through the back of the head.”
He smiled. “Oh, really?” He pointed the gun at her. “I don’t think so. You see, your husband hired me to kill you.”
She heard the crack of the gun and the impact of the bullet spun her around and she dropped back onto the made bed.
The last thing she remembered was the friendly sounds of the city going about its business.
HAROLD: THE SIXTEENTH TRICK
SHE HAD WATCHED him for days. He worked in a moderate-sized office building off Wall Street. He had four different suits he liked to wear, two gray, one brown, and one deep blue. His ties were always bright, but not too much.
At one every afternoon he went out to lunch, usually to a small deli two blocks up. He had a regular spot at the deli and normally ate alone, reading the paper or a magazine. He was never anywhere to be seen on weekends, leaving the city on the train for Long Island and returning before work on Monday morning.
He seemed to have no regular friends or a steady girlfriend or boyfriend. This was going to be one of her easier kills.
On Tuesday, she managed to be sitting at the table next to his at the deli when he came in. The deli was a traditional New York deli, long and fairly narrow, with a big white glass counter full of meats and breads along one side and shelves lining the other walls.
The place usually smelled of sausage and garlic, with a faint odor of fresh-baked bread. There were maybe fifteen tables scattered the length of the place, with four bunched up in the back.
She made sure she was facing the front, glanced up as he approached and caught his eye. Then she smiled and he nodded hello and sat down. It was a little forward for most New Yorkers, but not so much as he would notice, considering they were sitting so close in such a small place. She left before he did, happy at the start she had made.
He went somewhere else for lunch the next day, but on Thursday he was back and again she smiled at him. And this time she said hello before pretending to go back to reading her magazine.
He returned her smile and hello and she noticed that a few times during lunch he glanced over at her.
Again she left before he did, acting as if she was slightly late, and making sure she didn’t glance in his direction. But she knew the bait was in the water and the hook was in his mouth. Now it was just a matter of time.
The next day she brought along one of the current best selling novels and when she smiled and said hello as he approached he asked if the book was good. She said so far she thought it was and as soon as she finished it she would let him know. He smiled at that and they spoke briefly twice more during lunch and then she made a point of saying good-bye before she left.
By Wednesday, he had joined her for lunch and on Friday afternoon they ended up at the Crown Hotel on the seventieth floor. For her the sex was good, but as soon as they finished he rolled off the bed and went into the bathroom before she had a chance to even get her gun out of the nightstand. So she laid sprawled out on the bed, pretending to sleep, waiting for him to return.
After a minute, the toilet flushed and he came out carrying a pistol.
Her gun.
And he had it pointed at her.
“Sorry, Connie.”
“What are you doing?” she demanded as she sat up on the bed and faced him.
“Just doing what your husband hired me to do.”
“My husband?”
Harold laughed. “How stupid did you think I was? Did you really think that pick-up at lunch would work? On the second day I followed you home. After the third lunch I found out your name and your husband’s name.” Harold laughed again. “Did you know he’s a very jealous man?”
She knew her mouth was open as she listened to what he was saying. She wasn’t married. She lived off 45th Street and worked freelance, doing any odd job she was hired to do that paid a great deal of money. Usually it was luring some horny man into a room and killing him. This guy was totally crazy and she was about to tell him so when he shrugged.
“It was nice,” he said. “The sex, I mean.” He indicated the messed sheets she was sitting on. “But now it’s time to get on with it.”
“No! Wait!” She held up her hand to get him to stop.
But the gun was already aimed at her.
The explosion was loud, much louder than she had expected.
The force of the impact spun her around and off the edge of the bed. The last faint thought she had was of surprise.
This just couldn’t be happening.
HAROLD: THE TWENTY-SECOND TRICK.
SHE WAS RIDING him like a cowboy rides a bucking bronco, astride his hips as they thrust hard into the air. She had one hand on the wall above the bed and the other behind her on his thigh.
“Whoa there, big guy,” she said, leaning forward and kissing his sweating forehead. “Let’s go slow for a moment.”
He smiled and kissed her back, then she sat up straight again, the pace almost relaxed.
She had been planning on killing him after they finished, just as she had done with over twenty others. But maybe she should try a little something different this time. Maybe she should do him while they’re having sex. Kinky, but it might be interesting.
She rubbed his chest and then kissed him again. “Harold, you want to do me a favor?”
He smiled and kissed her back. “Anything?”
“Just close your eyes and let me ride you for a minute.”
“Without moving?”
“Without moving,” she said.
“I’m all yours,” he said, relaxing into the bed and shutting his eyes.
Amazing how he trusted her completely, especially the first time like this.
She moved her hips slowly in a circular motion and leaned back and pulled open the drawer of the small end table next to the bed. Inside was her gun, loaded and ready.
She moved a little bit more and he moaned, opening his mouth a little.
She moved a little faster and he moaned even more, tilting his head back at just the right angle that she could point the gun between his teeth and at the roof of his mouth.
With one more good thrust she pulled the trigger.
Blood splattered over her and over a large part of the room as the pistol blew the top of his head off.
He jerked upwards and than lay quiet, amazingly still hard inside her.
“She patted his blood-splattered chest for a minute and then pulled off of him. In a smooth motion and without a look back she rolled off the bed and headed for the bathroom. What she needed now was a shower.
For the first minute the water going down the drain was pink from the blood, but she had done this before. Harold was not the first and he wouldn’t be the last. This was her job and she did it. If she enjoyed it at the same time, so much the better.
She finished the shower and then took her time drying her hair before she came back out of the bathroom.
When she opened the door, Harold was sitting dressed on the made bed, her gun pointed at her.
“What—”
“Sorry I’m not g
oing to get to partake in our little love-making session, but you see, I think that would be just a little too weird.”
“Weird?” she asked.
She glanced quickly around the room. No sign of all the blood. And the room smelled fresh.
This couldn’t be happening.
She had just killed him.
“Why,” he said, “to make love to you and then kill you. Guess I’m just not that weird, so I’ve decided to just kill you.” He looked up and down her naked body. “But I see that might have been a mistake. Oh, well.”
He raised the gun.
She put up her hand to stop him, but the explosion sent her spinning back onto the white tiles of the bathroom floor. Her last thoughts were of watching her own blood smear across the smooth, cold surface.
HAROLD: THE THIRTY-FIRST TRICK.
SHE STOOD WITH her arm linked through his at the desk of the Crown Hotel as they registered. It had been a great two weeks tracking him until she finally got him talking in the deli. He was going to be one of her best kills. She’d have to do it in a special way for him, especially if he was good in bed.
Harold was filling out the check-in form when the clerk asked, “Did you folks have a good summer? We missed you around here.”
Harold did what he could. He leaned forward and whispered “Hush, man. She doesn’t know I’m married.”
The clerk looked shocked for a moment, then remembered and looked embarrassed. He glanced at her and she winked at him, but the mood was spoiled. It just wasn’t going to work this time.
And after such a good start, too.
But Harold gave it his best, even though he knew the clerk had messed it up.
After they made uninspired love, boring love like they used to do before the murders, he raised up on his elbow and looked at her. “You think we should go to a new hotel next time?”
She shook her head no. “They’ve treated us well for years. It was just a slip.” She didn’t say that she couldn’t go back to those boring nights with him. No matter how much she loved him, they had to do something to spice things up to keep the marriage alive.
He nodded, looking thoughtful.
She rolled off the bed and went to the window.
Outside the sounds of the city covered the quiet of the room. For some reason the massiveness of those sounds soothed her, brought her back to reality, to what she was hired to do.
She must kill Harold.
She silently thanked the city for the help and turned back to face him.
But the room was empty, the bed made, and her clothes stacked neatly on the armchair.
On top of the pile was her gun, waiting.
She walked over and picked up the gun, the cold heaviness of it in her hand reassuring.
She checked it over, making sure it was fully loaded.
Then she smiled.
Harold always did know what would make her happy.
Cats seem to not care much about anything around them. Anyone who knows cats knows this to be not true. And watching a cat stalk and kill a mouse or bird shows yet another side of the creatures we let live with us.
This story, originally published in Amazing Stories back in the late 1980s warns those who don’t know cats what they can do when pushed. A cautionary tale.
At times, because of the nature of older stories appearing and vanishing in moments, I will use this magazine to spotlight a favorite story of mine from the past. For this story, Amazing Stories was on the verge of folding in that incarnation when I sold it to them, so very few people saw the story at publication, and no one under forty would have had a chance to ever read it. So I’m jumping the story forward in time. Enjoy.
THE MOUTH THAT WALKED
ONE
CRAIG LIEBERMAN SUCKED at the two inch long scratch on the back of his hand and developed his new rule: Never pet a cat.
Never.
Not on the street.
Not on the steps to his building.
Not even if one brushed up against his leg outside his apartment door. He would never again stop to pet a cat.
Damn things were obnoxious, anyhow. Half the time they smelled of wet fur or rotted fish. They never came when a person called and the only half-good thing they did was kill rats.
He sucked on the scratch even harder, pulling the faint taste of blood into his mouth. The scratch would probably get infected. There was no telling where that cat’s claw had been.
He looked back down the street at the yellow tom and resisted an impulse to pick up a rock. Damn thing. It had ruined any chance of friendship with any other cat. Craig Lieberman never forgot and he wouldn’t forget his new rule.
At the next corner, he turned toward his apartment instead of going toward the library. He’d better get home and get some disinfectant on the scratch before it ended up costing him a trip to the doctor. His usual reading of the daily paper could wait.
Important things first.
In the next two blocks he saw seven cats.
The first three he avoided, the next two he kicked at and missed, and the other two he threw rocks at.
The last marble-sized rock hit a small black and white cat just above the right front leg and sent it running up an alley. The direct hit gave Craig a small thrill deep in his stomach. That would show those damn cats that they couldn’t get away with scratching just anyone who showed a little kindness.
Stupid animals, anyhow.
Half a block later, he rounded the corner onto his street and stopped cold. The front steps of his apartment building were covered with cats. There had to be a hundred of them, their fur a rainbow of colors.
Craig hadn’t seen that many cats in one place since he had visited an animal shelter when he was a child.
Craig started to move toward them.
In unison, they turned and looked at him.
The light film of warm sweat that covered his face turned ice cold, as if someone had slammed him straight from the warm summer day into a deep freeze.
He could feel their stares like needles jabbing his skin. The weight of their aloofness held him tight. He suddenly knew, without a doubt, exactly how little he mattered to them.
He was nothing.
It was below them to even acknowledge that he existed.
But they did, in unison, and then, as if on signal, they all looked away.
The sudden fear and crystal clear awareness that he had felt melted like a sliver of ice dropped on hot pavement. His first impulse was to turn and run for the police station, but the little voice in his head told him he was just being stupid. Besides, it would do no good. The cats would simply be gone by the time he got back and then the police would laugh.
He laughed at himself instead. What harm could cats do him?
None. They were just cats.
The heat of the day must have gotten to him. That’s what had happened.
He was just about to pull out his handkerchief and dry his forehead when he noticed a man in a gray suit sitting in the middle of the cats. Craig would have sworn the man hadn’t been there a few moments before. He hadn’t been.
Craig was sure.
The steps had been covered only with cats. The man had somehow come up out of the middle of them. Craig shook his head at that thought.
Sunstroke.
He’d better get inside quick.
The man motioned for Craig to come closer.
Craig studied the cats and the man, then took a deep breath and moved forward. His own hallucination couldn’t bother him. He’d get inside, call the doctor, and then lie down. He’d be fine in an hour or two.
Not one of the cats looked at him.
Craig hesitated, then stopped just short of the bottom step. The cats weren’t going away.
“We need to talk,” the man in gray said.
The man’s voice was deep, his words clear, yet somehow flowing together. Craig studied the deep lines in the man’s face. The man was both old, yet somehow very young. And his eyes bother
ed Craig. Cat eyes: Large and green, with bright yellow flakes of color, like gold scattered through solid rock.
“These your cats?” Craig asked after a moment, avoiding the man’s gaze and making a sweeping motion with his arm at the steps. “You really can’t have them here. I could call the Super and—”
The man laughed softly and the cats around him stirred without looking up at Craig. “No one truly owns a cat. All good people know that. We came to talk to you.”
“Look, I’d like to get into my building. I don’t think I’m feeling well. So, if you don’t mind, could you have a few of your friends move aside and…”
“We need to talk,” the man said softly, but firmly.
Craig realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere by pushing. And no way was he going to go wading up into those cats. They’d rip the cuffs of his pants to shreds and he’d only had this pair for a few years. Besides, he’d already been hurt today.
“So go ahead and talk,” Craig said.
“We would first like to apologize for the cut on your hand. As with most scratches, it was an accident.”
Craig looked quickly down at the red scratch on the back of his hand. “How’d you know about that? And just who are you apologizing for?”
“I talk for myself and for those you call cats,” he said softly. “It is my curse. I am known as The Mouth That Walks. It is my plight to deal with humans on their own level. Would you accept our apology for the scratch?”
Craig scanned the cats. They didn’t look at him. None of the other passersby on the street seemed to even notice anything was strange. This was just too much. How could all the people on the street not notice a hundred cats on one building’s front steps?
“Sure,” Craig said, after he had looked around enough to realize he would have no immediate help in clearing the steps. “Why not?”
“Good,” Mouth said. “Now, would you please apologize for striking my friend with the rock and we can have this unsightly mess settled.”
Smith's Monthly #8 Page 8
