Killer, Come Back to Me

by Ray Bradbury

  Johnny Broghman was my brother.

  Hand me the suture, nurse.

  Next!

  Dead Men Rise Up Never

  When Sherry began to scream I gripped the steering wheel and started sweating. I smelled her sweet and warm in the backseat between the stale smell of Willie and the sharp smell of Mark, and my nostrils took Hamphill into account too. Hamphill smelled soap-clean up in the front seat with me, and he tried to talk to her, calm her. He held her hand.

  “Sherry, this is for your own good. Please listen to me, Sherry. We only got you away from your house in time. Finlay’s men, the ones who threatened you, would have kidnapped you today. I swear it. In God’s name. Sherry, we’re only protecting you.”

  She didn’t believe Hamphill. I saw her dark shining eyes caught, held like crazy, wild things, in the rearview mirror. The car’s speed was up to sixty-five. Listen to him, Sherry, I thought, damn you, he loves you, so give him a chance!

  “No! I don’t believe you,” was what she said. “You’re gangsters too! I know you!”

  She tried to fling herself out of the car. Maybe she didn’t know how fast we were traveling. The ground ran past in a windy blur. She struggled. Mark held on to her. There was a shouting, a sudden scream, and silence.…

  Sherry relaxed too suddenly in the backseat. Willie must have blinked at her dully, not understanding.

  “Stop the car.” Hamphill groped at my elbow.

  “But, boss…” I said.

  “You heard me, Hank, stop it.”

  The car sound died away and all you could hear was the ocean moaning along the skirt of the cliff. We were on top of it. Hamphill stared over into the rear seat and Willie’s dull voice said, “She’s gone to sleep, boss. Guess maybe she’s tired.”

  I didn’t turn around. I looked at the gray clouds in the sky and the seagulls looping and crying—at Hamphill’s long lean face next to me, bleached to a beaten, shocked white, like a carved wooden mask left to bake and crumble on the sands.

  The ocean came in once, twice, three times. Each time Hamphill breathed through his tiny, constricted nostrils. Then, holding her wrists, searching for a pulse he couldn’t find, he shut his eyes—tight.

  I stared ahead. “There’s the cliff house, boss, just ahead. We better get inside it, in case Finlay and his men are following us. I bet they’re damn mad at us for this trick.…” I trailed off.

  Hamphill didn’t know I was alive. He resembled something as old suddenly as that ancient wind-shaped, paint-flaked mansion standing on the rim of the stony cliffs.

  Loving Sherry had made him young awhile. Now the salt sea wind was at him, rimming his hair above the ears, peeling away his new youth; the tide pounded his guts and sucked away his thinking.

  I started the car and drove the last half mile to the cliff house very slowly. I climbed out of the car and slammed the door to waken the boss from his nightmare.

  We walked into the house, the four of us carrying her. The front steps groaned when our feet touched them.

  Upstairs in a west room with a view we laid Sherry on an old overstuffed sofa. A fine dust puffed from upholstery pores, hovering over her in a powdery sunlit veil. Death had quieted her features and she was beautiful as polished ivory, her hair like the color of waxed chestnuts.

  Very slowly Hamphill sank beside her and told her what he thought of her, soft, like a kid talking to a fairy goddess. He didn’t sound like Hamphill, the beer baron; or Hamphill, the numbers man; or Hamphill, the racing boss. The wind whined behind his voice, because Sherry was dead and the day was over.…

  * * *

  A car passed on the highway and I shivered. Any minute now, maybe, if we hadn’t ditched them, some of Finlay’s boys might show up—

  The room felt crowded. There were only two people who needed to be in it. I pushed Willie and nodded at Mark. We went out and I closed the door and we stood with our hands deep in our pockets, in the hall, thinking many thoughts.

  “You didn’t have to scare her,” I said.

  “Me?” asked Mark, jerking a match on the wall and putting the flame unevenly against his cigarette. “She started yelling like a steam whistle.”

  “You scared her with your talk,” I said. “After all, it wasn’t a regular kidnapping. We were shielding her from Finlay. You know how soft the boss was on her—special.”

  “I knew,” said Mark, “that we’d collect money on her, then frame Finlay for the deal, have him jailed, leaving us in the clear.”

  “You got the general idea,” I said gently, “only let me bring out the details. The whole thing depended on Sherry’s cooperation, once she learned our intentions were for her own good. There wasn’t much time to explain today, when we heard Finlay was coming after her, so we grabbed her and ran. The blueprint was for us to hide her, then trap Finlay, let Sherry get a look at him and tell the police it was Finlay kidnapped her. Then they’d salt Finlay away and the whole business would be over.”

  Mark flicked ashes on the rug. “Only trouble is, Sherry’s dead now. Nobody’ll believe we didn’t kidnap her ourselves. Ain’t that swell!” One of Mark’s little pointed, shiny black shoes kicked the wall. “Well, I don’t want nothing else to do with her. She’s dead. I hate dead people. Let’s load her in a canvas tied with weights and put her out in the bay somewhere deep, then get out of here, get our money and—”

  The door opened. Hamphill came out of it, pale.

  “Willie, go watch over her while I talk to the boys,” he said slowly, not thinking of the words. Willie beamed proudly and lumbered in. The three of us went into another room.

  Mark has a mouth the shape of his own foot. “When we gonna get the money and scram, boss?” He shut the door and leaned on it.

  “Money?” The boss held the word up like something strange found on the beach, turning it over. “Money.” He focused dazedly on Mark. “I didn’t want any money. I wasn’t in this for the money—”

  Mark shifted his delicate weight. “But you said—”

  “I said. I said.” Hamphill thought back, putting his thin fingers to his brow to force the thinking. “In order to make you play along, Mark, I said about money, didn’t I? It was a lie, Mark, all a lie. Yes. All a lie. I only wanted Sherry. No money. Just her. I was going to pay you out of my own pocket. Right, Hank?” He stared strangely at me. “Right, Hank?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Well, of all the—” Angry color rose in Mark’s cheeks. “This whole damn setup’s nothing but nursemaiding a coupla love-birds!”

  “No money!” shouted Hamphill, straightening up. “No money! I was only kicking down the Christmas tree to get the star on top. And you—you always said it was wrong for me to love her, said it wouldn’t work. But I planned everything. A week here. A trip to Mexico City later, after she got to know me, after fixing Finlay so he wouldn’t bother her again! And you, Mark, you sniffing your damn nose at me, goddamn you!”

  Mark grinned. “You should’ve said about it, boss, how you never intended getting money from kidnapping her, to make me understand. Why, sure, there was no use lying to me. Why, no, boss; no, of course not.”

  “Careful,” I muttered.

  “I’m sure sorry,” said Mark, lidding his small green eyes. “Sure am. And, by the way, boss, how long we going to be here? I’m just curious, of course.”

  “I promised Sherry a week’s vacation. We stay here that long.”

  One week. My brows went up. I said nothing.

  “One week here, without trying to get the money, sitting, waiting for the cops to find us? Oh, that’s swell, boss. I’m right in there with you, I sure am, I’m with you,” said Mark. He turned, twisted the doorknob hard one way, stepped out, slammed it.

  I put my right hand against Hamphill’s heaving chest to stop his move. “No boss,” I whispered. “No. He ain’t living. He never lived. Why bother killing him? He’s dead, I tell you. He was born dead.”

  The boss would have spoken except that we both
heard a voice talking across the hall behind the other door. We opened the door, crossed the hall, and opened the other door slowly, looking in.

  Willie sat on the couch-end like a large gray stone idol, his round face half blank, half animated, like a rock with lights playing over it. “You just rest there, Miss Bourne,” he said to Sherry earnestly. “You look tired. You just rest. Mr. Hamphill thinks a lot of you. He told me so. He planned this whole setup for weeks, ever since he met you that night in Frisco. He didn’t sleep, thinking about you—”

  * * *

  Two days passed. How many seagulls cried and looped over us, I don’t remember. Mark counted them with his green eyes, and for every seagull, he threw away a cigarette butt burnt hungrily down to a nub. And when Mark ran out of smokes he counted waves, shells.

  I sat playing blackjack. I’d put the cards down slow and pick them up and put them down slow again and shuffle them and cut them and lay them down. Maybe now and then I whistled. I’ve been around long enough so waiting makes no difference. When you been in the game as long as I have you don’t find any difference in anything. Dying is as good as living; waiting is as good as rushing.

  Hamphill was either up in her room, talking like a man in a confessional, soft and low, gentle and odd, or he was walking the beach, climbing the cliff stones. He’d tell Willie to squat on a rock. Willie’d perch there in the foggy sun with salt rime on his pink ears for five hours, waiting until the boss came back and said to jump down.

  I played blackjack.

  Mark kicked the table with his foot. “Talk, talk, talk, that’s all he does upstairs at night, on and on, dammit! How long do we stick here? How long are we waiting?”

  I laid down some cards. “Let the boss take his vacation any way he pleases,” I said.

  Mark watched me walk out on the porch. He shut the door after me, and though I couldn’t be sure, I thought I heard the phone inside being ticked and spun by his fingers.…

  Late that evening the fog crept in thicker, and I stood upstairs in a north room with Hamphill, waiting.

  He looked down out of the window. “Remember the first time we saw her? The way she held herself, the way she took her hair in her hand, the way she laughed? I knew then it would take all the education and smartness and niceness in me to ever get her. Was I a fool, Hank?”

  “A fool can’t answer that,” I said.

  He nodded at the sea breaking over rocks, toward a point where fog bands crossed a jut of land that fingered out to sea. “Look beyond that curve, Hank? There’s an old California mission out there.”

  “Under water?”

  “About twenty feet under. On a clear day when the sun cuts down, the water’s a blue diamond with the mission held inside it.”

  “Still there, intact?”

  “Most of it. They say some of the first padres built it, but the land settled slowly and the little cathedral sank. On clear days you can see it lying there in the water, very quiet. Maybe it’s just a ruin, but you imagine you see the whole thing; the stained glass windows, the bronze tower bell, the eucalyptus trees in the wind—”

  “Seaweed and the tide, huh?”

  “Same thing. Same effect. I wanted Sherry to see it. I wanted to walk along the cliff bottoms, over those big rocks with her, and bake in the sun. Bake all the old poison out of me and all the doubt out of her. The wind does that to you. I thought maybe I could show Sherry the little cathedral and maybe in a day or so she’d breathe easy and sit on a rock with me to see if we could hear the bell in the church tower ringing.”

  “That’s from the bell-buoy at the point,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “that’s farther over. This bell rings from in the water, but you have to listen close when the wind dies.”

  “I hear a siren!” I cried suddenly, whirling. “The police!” Hamphill took my shoulder. “No, that’s only the wind in the holes of the cliff. I’ve been here before. I know. You get used to it.”

  I felt my heart pounding. “Boss, what do we do now?”

  I shut up. I looked down at the white concrete road shimmering in the night and the fog. I saw the car sweeping down the highway, cutting through the fog with scythes of light.

  “Boss,” I said. “Take a look out this window.”

  “You look for me.”

  “A car. It’s Finlay’s sedan, I’d know it anywhere!”

  Hamphill didn’t move. “Finlay. I’m glad he’s come. He’s the one that caused all this. He’s the one I want to see. Finlay.” He nodded. “I want to talk to him. Go let him in, quietly.”

  * * *

  The car ground to a stop below; its doors burst open. Men piled out, crossed the drive swiftly, crossed the porch; one ran around back. I saw guns with fog wet on them. I saw white faces with fog on them.

  The downstairs bell rang.

  I went down the stairs alone, empty-handed, clenched my teeth together, and opened the door. “Come on in,” I said.

  Finlay thrust his bodyguard in ahead of himself. The guard had his gun ready and was pop-eyed to see me just standing there. “Where’s Hamphill?” Finlay demanded. A second gunsel stayed just outside the door.

  “He’ll be down in a minute.”

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t try any rough stuff.”

  “Oh, hell,” I said.

  “Where’s Sherry?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “I want her down here.”

  “Particular, aren’t you?”

  “Shall I hit him?” Finlay’s bodyguard asked him.

  Finlay looked up the dark stairs at the light in the opening door above. “Never mind.”

  Hamphill came down very quietly, one step at a time, pausing on each one with pain, as if his body were old, tired, and it was no longer fun to live and walk around. He got about halfway down when he saw Finlay. “What do you want?” he said.

  “It’s about Sherry,” said Finlay.

  I tightened up. The boss said, far away, “What about Sherry?”

  “I want her back.”

  Hamphill said, “No.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me right. I said I wanted her back, now!”

  “No,” said Hamphill.

  “I don’t want no trouble,” said Finlay. His eyes moved from my empty hands to Hamphill’s empty hands, puzzled at our strange actions.

  “You can’t have her,” said Hamphill slowly. “Nobody can have her. She’s gone.”

  “How’d you find us?” I asked.

  “None of your damn business,” said Finlay, glaring. To Hamphill: “You’re lying!” To me: “Ain’t he lying?”

  “Talk quiet,” I said. “Talk quiet in a house with someone dead in it.”

  “Dead?”

  “Sherry’s dead. Upstairs. Keep your voice down. You’re too late. You better go back to town. It’s all over.”

  Finlay lowered his gun. “I’m not going anywhere until I see her with my own eyes.”

  Hamphill said, “No.”

  “Like hell.” Finlay looked at Hamphill’s face and saw how much it looked like bone with the skin peeled away, white and hard. “Okay, so she’s dead,” he said, finally believing. He swallowed. He looked over his shoulder. “So we can still collect money on her, can’t we?”

  “No,” said the boss.

  “Nobody knows she’s dead except us. We can still get the money. We’ll just borrow a bit of her coat, a buckle, a button, a clip of her hair—You can keep the body, Hampy, old boy, with our compliments,” Finlay assured him. “We’ll just need a few things like her rings or compact to mail to her father for the dough.”

  A vein in Hamphill’s hard-boned brow began to pulse. He leaned forward, stiffening, his eyes shining.

  Finlay went on, “You can have the body, we’ll leave you here with it, so you guys can take the rap.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I said, remembering our plan to do the same for Finlay. That’s life.

  “Step aside, Hampy,” said Finlay, walking big.


  Hamphill fooled everyone the quiet way he stepped aside, turned as if to lead Finlay upstairs, took two steps up, then whirled. Finlay shouted as Hamphill pumped two shots into his big chest.

  I shot the gun from one gunsel’s hand. The second gunsel, outside, cursed, banged the door open, and sprang inward, his revolver aimed. The second gunsel shot Hamphill in the left arm just as Hamphill clutched Finlay, and they fell downward, collapsing together.

  I got the second gunsel easily with one shot. The first one stood holding his awful red hand. Footsteps came in the back door. Willie came lumbering downstairs, bleating. “Boss, you all right?”

  “Upstairs!” I said, helping the boss to his feet from Finlay’s quiet body. “Willie, take him up!”

  The third bodyguard rushed in, maybe expecting to see us all laid out stiff. I made a mess of his hand too.

  Willie helped the boss upstairs and came down with some rope he’d found. There were no more footsteps outside. I pulled the door wide, letting the mist in, cooling my face. It smelled so good I just lay against the wall, smelling and liking it. The car was parked, its lights dark, but there was no movement. We’d taken care of everybody.

  “Okay, Willie,” I said. “Let’s tie ’em up.”

  * * *

  Hamphill lay like a long gray stick on the couch in the west room, nursing his wound. I closed the door.

  “We got a setup, if we want to use it,” I said.

  He swabbed the wound with a white handkerchief.

  I looked at him steadily. “This is the way it’ll look to the cops: Finlay and his boys fight over money and shoot each other four ways from Christmas. The police find them here, anytime we want to call and tell them.”

  Hamphill’s eyes fluttered weakly, his voice was small. “Later,” he gasped. “Later, Hank. Not now.”

  “We’ve got to talk about it now,” I said. “It’s important.”