Forever and a Death

by Donald E. Westlake

  The apartment was as narrow as his garage space down below, but it went all the way through to the front. In the back, where he entered, was his kitchen, with a small bath beyond that. Next to the bath, a narrow hallway led to his small living room, illuminated by a square skylight in the middle of the celling. A closed door beyond that led to an even smaller room, with his bed and dresser and the window overlooking the side street below. If he leaned out his window, he could see the traffic on China Street, passing by down at the corner.

  In the car, he’d decided what to do. He would keep the door between the living room and the bedroom closed, and also the door between the hall and the kitchen. That would give him and Diedrich a small suite of living room and bath, with only the living room’s skylight and the bath’s exhaust fan. Diedrich would have no view out any window except the sky, so he wouldn’t be able to describe to anybody afterward even what neighborhood he’d been in.

  Bennett considered. “Should I wear a mask, or maybe blindfold Diedrich?” He thought about it, the blindfold in particular, but he knew for sure they’d spotted him trailing them, they knew who he was. “Oh, they know it’s me, no question.” Curtis would simply have to—

  This was one tiny chink of opening into the future, unavoidable, but not to be looked at too closely. Curtis would simply have to move Bennett out of Singapore once this was all over, get him a job far away on one of his other projects. (Not Belize, but somewhere.) If he stayed away from Singapore five or ten years, working in other parts of the world, that ought to do it. “Or I might decide never to come back.”

  Once he had Diedrich deposited on the bare living room floor, Bennett went away to the tool drawer in his kitchen for duct tape and the underwear drawer in his bedroom for a clean white sock. He taped Diedrich’s wrists behind him, and taped his ankles, then stuffed the sock into Diedrich’s mouth. As he did so, though, he noticed that Diedrich’s breathing was very stuffy and labored, and shortly after he’d gagged him with the sock the man began to jerk and convulse. It was clear he’d stopped breathing, that something had damaged his nose— somehow the pipe had done some damage, perhaps to his sinuses—and he needed his mouth to breathe. Reluctant, but having no choice, Bennett pulled the sock out of his mouth again, and Diedrich gasped and panted and then settled down to his previous labored wheeze.

  There was blood on the sock, just a little. Bennett didn’t like that. He tossed the sock in with the dirty laundry, then scooped it out of there and threw it in with the trash under the sink. “Now, you are being stupid,” he told himself, and got it back out of the trash and put it with the laundry again.

  All this work had made him hungry. He had waffles he could heat in the toaster, and he could make tea. He had a narrow kitchen table and one chair, and he was seated there, eating his waffle, smelling the aroma from his teacup, when the hoarse voice in the living room yelled, “Help!”

  In no hurry—no one in this neighborhood would answer a single cry like that, in the middle of the day, in English—Bennett got to his feet and walked into the living room, where Diedrich had twisted around to a half-seated position.

  He stared wide-eyed and slack-mouthed at Bennett, then put his head back and screamed, “Help!”

  Bennett crossed to give him a straight jab into that damaged nose. Diedrich fell back, stunned with pain, making little bird noises in his throat. Bennett stood over him and said, “If you shout out anymore, I’ll do something to make you really hurt.”

  Diedrich stared at him. Bennett could see rationality come slowly back into those eyes, rationality and fear and hate. That’s all right, boyo, he said, almost out loud. Go ahead and hate me, I don’t mind. He said, “You ready to talk to me?”

  “You’re crazy! They’ll get you, don’t you know they’ll—” Bennett kicked him in the ribs. Diedrich shut up, breathing through his open mouth, and Bennett said, “That’s then. This is now. Maybe it’s all true, and some day you’ll get to stand there and laugh and watch the coppers carry me off, all trussed up like a Christmas goose. But that’s then. Right now, I’m in charge. You follow that?”

  “I’m your prisoner,” Diedrich said, almost challengingly, as though daring Bennett to admit to such an enormity.

  “You are my prisoner,” Bennett agreed. “And I’ll tell you God’s truth, boyo, I never had a prisoner before, so I’m not that certain sure how to take care of you. I got to control you, that’s obvious, but I don’t want to hurt you too much and have you die on me, do I? You’d like to help me keep you alive, now, wouldn’t you?”

  Diedrich stared at him, without answering.

  Bennett shook his head, and poked the man’s rib cage gently with his foot; not a real kick, just a reminder of the kick of a moment ago. “One thing I believe about having a prisoner,” he said, “is when I speak, the prisoner answers. The prisoner talks when I want him to talk and shuts the fuck up when I want him to shut the fuck up. Now, have you got that?”

  “Yes.” The word came out strangled with hate and fear, but it came out.

  “Very good.”

  Bennett felt he could sit down now, that the point of looming over Diedrich had been made, so he dragged his TV chair over and sat where he could always kick Diedrich if he had to, and said, “It’s very simple, Mr. Jerry Diedrich. I have two questions, and you’re going to give me the answers, and then we’re done with one another.”

  “You’re going to kill me,” Diedrich said. Now, oddly enough, he sounded more angry than scared. Possibly he was mourning himself.

  Bennett said, “Now, why would I want to do that? You’ll give me my two answers and I’ll be grateful, and what kind of gratitude is it kills the man that made me grateful?”

  “I can identify you.”

  “Where? When? To who? Look around, boyo, do you even know where you are?”

  “I can identify you,” the fool stubbornly insisted.

  “Only if you see me,” Bennett pointed out. “You don’t know my name, you don’t know anything about me.”

  “Curtis sent you.”

  “Somebody named Curtis, you think.” Bennett nodded, considering that. “And how many employees does this Curtis have?”

  “Criminals? Killers?”

  “Oh, now you’re hurting my feelings,” Bennett told him. He was beginning to enjoy himself. He hadn’t been so relaxed and at ease with himself in ages. He said, “I’m no criminal, Mr. Jerry Diedrich, I’m less of a criminal than you are. Do you think you’ll be looking at those police photos, and there I’ll be, and you’ll say, ‘That’s him, there he is, the handsome devil there!’ Is that what you think?”

  Diedrich looked away. Bennett’s high spirits seemed to have a dampening effect on him. He said, “What do you want from me?”

  “There, now,” Bennett said. “Simplicity itself. To begin with, Mark’s last name.”

  Diedrich stared at him. “Never!”

  “Oh, don’t talk about never, Jerry Diedrich,” Bennett said. “There isn’t a man in the world, not a man alive, who won’t answer every question put to him if only it’s put in the right way. Do you think I want to hurt you?”

  “You already did. My nose, my…” He shook his head, feeling very sorry for himself.

  “All right, then,” Bennett said. “Do you think I want to hurt you more?”

  “Probably,” Diedrich said.

  He’s going into despair all of a sudden, Bennett thought, and knew despair could only strengthen Diedrich’s resistance. He needed Diedrich to feel hope, to feel motivated to do as he was told.

  Bennett got to his feet, and Diedrich flinched, but wouldn’t look directly at him. Bennett went out to the kitchen and got his barely sipped tea and brought it back and knelt beside Diedrich. “I’ll give you a bit of tea,” he said, “to clear your mouth. You’ve a bit of blood in your throat, this’ll help.”

  Diedrich pressed his teeth together. Through the clenched teeth, he said, “What’s in it?”

  For answer, Bennett took
a swig, swirled it around in his mouth, and swallowed. Like a lab technician making a report, “Tea,” he said, “with real sugar and imitation cream. Care for some?”

  “No.”

  Bennett shrugged and got to his feet. “More for me, then,” he said, and drank it down. Then he smiled at Diedrich and said, “What’s Mark’s last name?”

  “No.”

  A kick in the ribs, same spot. “Yes, boyo.”

  “No.”

  Kick. “Yes.”

  “No.”

  He’s trying to faint, the fairy bastard, Bennett thought. He’s trying to goad me into doing something that’ll make him pass out, so he won’t have to answer my questions.

  “We’ll see about this,” he said, and carried his teacup back to the kitchen, where he ruminated while he finished his waffle and washed it down with a glass of cold water.

  Back in the living room, Diedrich hadn’t moved. Bennett walked through into the bedroom and pulled that sock once more out of the laundry. Bringing it back with him, carefully shutting the bedroom door, he knelt before Diedrich and showed him the sock and said, “Do you see what this is?”

  Diedrich gave the sock a dull look, then apparently remembered he was supposed to respond to questions, so he said, “Yes.”

  “It’s a sock.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was using it to gag you, so you wouldn’t be shouting for help and like that, such as you did, but when I put it in your mouth, turns out, your nose isn’t working. So I had to take it out again. It was like this.”

  Diedrich tried to fight, but Bennett was stronger. He pried his jaws apart and stuffed the sock inside. “And now I’ve got to wash me hands, you see,” he said, and got to his feet, and turned away from the strangling sounds Diedrich made, his legs kicking on the floor.

  Bennett went into the bathroom and washed and dried his hands. When he came back out, Diedrich’s eyes were popping, his face was mottled dark red, he was straining every muscle in his body. Bennett casually pulled the sock from his mouth, and Diedrich made horrible sounds, flopping like a captured fish in the bottom of the boat. Breathing seemed to be painful for him, but at least it was possible.

  Bennett sat in his chair to wait for Diedrich to be recovered enough to talk. He wasn’t a cruel man, he didn’t do this sort of thing, had never done this sort of thing, but he had no choice, did he? In for a penny, in for a pound. And he’d always believed, if you take on a job, you do it as best you know how.

  No self-satisfied smug little poofter like Jerry Diedrich was going to ruin Colin Bennett’s life, and that was that. That was that. No second thoughts about it.

  “Feel better, Jerry?”

  “It hurts.” The man spoke in barely a whisper, but he spoke.

  “I think a hospital would do you a world of good, boyo,” Bennett said. “I’d like to help get you to hospital, you know, just as soon as you answer my questions.”

  “What’s—” The hoarse voice stumbled and stopped, rattled, wheezed, then tried again. “What’s the other question?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Bennett said. “One question at a time, I think. So what’s Mark’s last name?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, Jerry.” Bennett knelt beside him with the sock.

  Diedrich stared at him in terror. “You’ll kill me! You’ll kill me before you know!”

  “Oh, no, Jerry,” Bennett assured him. “I’ll keep a very close eye on you. I’ll be here to protect and safeguard you. Now, open wide.”

  “Mmm! Mmm!”

  Once again Bennett forced the jaws open, and Diedrich yelled, “Sansan!”

  “What was that?” Bennett released him and leaned back.

  Diedrich’s head hung. “Hennessy,” he whispered.

  “Well, thank you, Jerry,” Bennett said. “Mark Hennessy, thank you.”

  “God forgive me,” Diedrich said, and lowered his forehead to the floor.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Jerry,” Bennett told him. “I told you, no one refuses to speak. Eventually, you know, everybody speaks.”

  Diedrich lay gasping, eyes closed, forehead pressed to the floor. Bennett doubted he’d need the sock again, but he left it on the floor, too far for Diedrich to kick, but plainly in his sight.

  Bennett’s telephone was in this same room. Through thick and thin, he’d kept the telephone, paying for it as best he could, knowing it was his only lifeline, and now at last it was paying off, wasn’t it? The job offer he’d prayed for, he’d kept the phone for, was here, wasn’t it? Came over the phone, as he’d thought it would.

  And now the phone was useful again. It stood on the small table beside the sofa. Bennett went over there, sat, and dialed the number Curtis had given him, his home phone, for the evening. A servant of some sort answered, and Bennett said, “Colin Bennett here, for Mr. Curtis, if he’s in.”

  Across the way, the gasping Diedrich didn’t react. His forehead was still pressed to the wood floor, possibly because it was cooler there. Bennett was pretty sure the man had told the truth, but he wanted it to be very clear that any of his stories would be checked up on right away.

  “Bennett.”

  “Good evening, sir. Do you have, sir, by any chance, a fellow working for you called Mark Hennessy?”

  Diedrich, on the floor, moaned a little. Curtis was silent, a stunned silence, and then he said, he half-whispered, “My God. I never would have—” Another little pause, and then, “Of course. But how do they even know each other? No, that doesn’t matter. Thank you, Colin, that’s very good.”

  “I should have the other answer for you very soon, sir,” Bennett said. He felt elated, he felt his chest swelling, he felt lightheaded, he felt better than he’d felt in years. “And tomorrow, sir, if I may,” he said, “I’d like to come talk to you. About my future, you know.”

  Another little pause. Curtis knew what he meant. How would he react? It all depended on this one answer, right now.

  “Of course, Colin,” Curtis said, sounding frank and willing. “We should have a discussion. I’ll be here most of the day.”

  I’m made, Bennett thought, and couldn’t help smiling as he said, “Thank you, sir.”

  He hung up, and except for that one moan when he’d heard Hennessy’s name, Diedrich had done nothing; no reactions, no moves. He still sprawled there, twisted, as Bennett had left him.

  Bennett crossed to sit in the chair again, within reach of the man, and waited, and it must have been a good five minutes before a long shuddering breath wracked Diedrich like an internal storm, and he rolled over onto his side, his face slack, eyes dull. “You might as well,” he whispered.

  Bennett watched him. “Might as well?”

  “Go on.”

  “Ah, question number two, you mean.”

  Diedrich closed his eyes. He was too weary, perhaps, to respond to a rhetorical question.

  Well, that was all right. Bennett could cut the fellow a little slack, now that the resistance was done. He said, “You have a special kind of hate for Mr. Curtis. Not the environment stuff, all that stuff. With you, it’s personal. So that’s the question. What do you have against Richard Curtis in particular?”

  Diedrich frowned, eyes still closed. Then his eyes opened and his head turned and he frowned at Bennett for a long time, as though trying to understand a foreign language, one that was now vital to understand. Then, calmly, as though they were merely having a conversation together here, he said, “You already know.”

  That was an odd answer. Bennett brushed it aside.

  “Jerry Diedrich,” he said, “I wouldn’t ask you a question if I already knew the answer, now, would I? That ain’t sensible, is it? So just tell me, and don’t, you know, prolong it.” (‘Prolong the agony,’ he was going to say, but corrected himself in mid-sentence, because he didn’t want to be unnecessarily cruel.)

  Something happened in Diedrich. Out of nowhere, he’d found some shred of his old defiance. Sounding angry again, astonishing Bennet
t, he said, “Ask Curtis, if that’s what you want to know!”

  Mildly, Bennett told him, “It was Mr. Curtis said I should ask you, you know that, no use beating around the bush.”

  “He knows, he already knows!”

  Bennett sighed. Why this delay, why this complication? “Diedrich,” he said, “look at that sock on the floor there, and pull yourself together. Never mind who knows what, or what you think in that very stupid mistaken head of yours. What do you have against Richard Curtis?”

  Diedrich actually did obey orders. He stared blinking at the sock. He looked very desperate. He said, not a whisper, but a voice so low Bennett could barely hear it, “Daniel Foster.”

  What? Bennett felt a terrible cold knife run up his back. Was this whole thing an elaborate scheme aimed at him, not at Diedrich after all, but at Colin Bennett, to get him to confess to the awful thing he’d done? Daniel Foster, in the water tunnel, when the lights went out, and the sound of the rushing water came.

  Bennett could hear the sound of the rushing water in his ears. It was so loud he could barely hear himself over it. He said, “What was that name? What about that name?”

  Now Diedrich turned his bitter, despairing, hate-filled, enraged eyes on Bennett. “Curtis threw him away,” he said, his voice strangled again, as though he’d just had another treatment with the sock. “He killed him, and covered it up, and made him disappear from the world as though he’d never been!”

  “Diedr—”

  “But he did exist! I loved him! I loved him, and we were going to—”

  He’d half-risen in his agitation, and now he fell back and stared at the ceiling. “My letters came back, unknown. I phoned, Central America, oh, no, nobody of that name here. But I kept asking, and met people, and later on I found out, I found out from people on the crew, it was an accident! The kind of accident you get from people who don’t care about other human beings! Greedy, inhuman! An accident! And they covered it up, and threw him away like a dead dog, and he’s so powerful, Curtis, he’s so powerful, that nobody can touch him! I can touch him! I’ll get him, and I’ll get him, and I’ll get him, and we’ll see how powerful he is.”