by Barry, Mike
He had his hand on his own gun, the hard surfaces of the point thirty-eight whickering into his hand as he came from the building. The man in the blue tie and the black suit regarded him with steady attention. Then as Billings closed the gap he was already turning, making some kind of obscure motion to the man across the street. That man was trying to cross now but they had not calculated on the traffic; a pack of cars sprinted free from a traffic light up the block and began to overtake one another, moving for a little borrowed space as they hit the center of the block, and the man across the street was unable to get to the other side. He stood there, shaking his head, hands on hips, spitting and cursing. Well, Billings thought, these little frustrations were entirely natural. They were all part of the great game of life, which you tried to play right down to the end, as if it mattered. Maybe it did. That would be the joke: if life really counted, if it was serious, if everything that took place here did add up to something after all. That kind of thought could drive a man mad if he dwelt on it. Better to juggle the odds on the tote and to deal with the Calabreses. Nothing was serious.
“All right,” the man in the blue suit said in a hoarse, high whisper, “all right, all right.” He was in his fifties, modest, inconsequential, but his eyes rolled in the purest of drug spasms. Be damned, Billings thought with some amusement, but then again in this city of wonders you could take nothing for granted. Maybe, Billings thought, maybe Calabrese kept his forces stoked on shit as a fringe benefit. There were stranger things. An army of freaks. “All right,” the man said again, “have you got the stuff?” His hands moved restlessly, like little animals, through his clothing. “Here I am, have you got the stuff?”
Billings closed in on him; now they were almost belly to belly. The man across the street was still unable to cross, tourist buses moving side by side in the near lanes were tying up everything. “I’ve got what I need,” he said, “have you got what I need?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I mean ten grand,” Billings said. Sometimes it was best to be indirect and then again sometimes you had to come right to the point. Coming to the point could sometimes be the best tactic of all because these people were often not prepared for it. “I’m looking for ten grand.”
The man in blue shrugged. He looked despairingly across the street, then back at Billings, eyes still rolling. “It works two ways, doesn’t it?” he said. “You’re supposed to have something for me.”
“Yes, but yours comes first.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“You’d better know something about it. Ten grand,” Billings said, “I’m waiting for ten grand.”
The man in blue cast another desperate glance across the street. “He’ll make it,” Billings said, “the light is going to change up above and he’ll be fine. But that’s not going to change the situation. You owe me ten grand.”
“Ah—”
“Make an independent decision. Stand on your own, for once. Sooner or later you reach a point in your life where you’ve got to lay it on the line, where you’ve got to come to terms with yourself. Come on,” Billings said, “let’s do it.”
The other man, spotting gaps in the traffic, had begun at last to move across the street. The traffic had humbled him, the roar of the buses’ exhaust, the choking fumes which had spread through the air lying heavily now a few feet above street level. He might have been older than the man in blue but he moved more slowly in a gimpy stride. The man in blue gave him another desperate glance, then faced Billings. “Where are they?” he said.
“You’ll find out. Give me the ten.”
“I can’t do that until you tell me where they are.”
“He says he can’t do it until I tell you where they are,” Billings said as the other man came up to them, still limping, his face drawn with tension. The skin of the cheeks was like canvas stretched with a very uneven strain. “But you know he’s full of shit,” Billings said, “you’re the senior operator here; he’s just carrying the bag. So tell him to pay up and be reasonable.”
The other man shook his head, made gestures with his fingers, said nothing. Billings put his hands on his hips and looked at him in disgust. “Come on,” Billings said, “be reasonable.”
“That won’t get you anywhere,” the man in blue said. Suddenly he seemed almost cheerful. “He’s a deaf-mute. He doesn’t hear and he doesn’t talk. All that he does is watch.”
“That makes sense,” Billings said, “he sure as hell isn’t going to break silence to anyone, isn’t he?”
“I don’t give a shit,” the man in blue said. “That doesn’t matter to me. Maybe he talks to other deaf-mutes. I have definite instructions; you tell me where they are and—”
“And then I get shot in the gut,” Billings said, looking at the deaf-mute who was fondling something in his pocket. “No way. Give me the ten.”
The man in blue sighed in disgust. Starting at fifty, he now looked sixty. He reached into his pockets, fumbled with something, keys clanking, then came out with a rolled up wad of hundreds. No one was looking at them at all. There was no one on the street Another avalanche of traffic came from the far corner and staggered by them.
“Here,” the man in blue said, “now you tell me where they are.” Billings shook his head in disgust, reached for the wad, took it out of the man’s hand. It came reluctantly, bulging, greasy. Slowly he began to count it.
“It’s all there,” the man in blue said, “goddamnit to hell, what kind of an operation do you think this is?”
The deaf-mute began to make croaking noises. After a fashion they could make sounds; it was pretty much a myth that they were silent. He reached out, pawed the man in blue on the shoulders, then made menacing gestures with his free hand at Billings. The eyes were cold, private, reserved, the other hand still out of sight. Billings counted the hundreds slowly, patiently. There were quite a few of them. He got up to forty-five, then stopped counting. The uncounted amount seemed to be slightly larger than what he had already gone through. All right. The deaf-mute continued to regard Billings with unusual, acute interest; he felt a fix in those eyes of unusual intensity, sucking him in. Calabrese ran a hell of an operation all right. A stupid man might think that he had sent incompetents, a deaf-mute and a panicky type, to this assignment but that stupid man would not have seen the genius of Calabrese’s calculation. There were a substantial number of corpses floating or lying around who had thought that they could outsmart Calabrese.
“All right,” Billings said, stuffing the money into a pocket, “I’ll take you there.”
The man in blue said, “What the hell is this?”
“You got a car?” Billings said. “I’ve got a car. We’ve both got cars. Everybody has a car and I’ll drive you to where they are, point out the spot, and take off. You don’t think I’m just going to tell you now, do you? I’m not stupid. For ten grand I’ll take you to where they’re holed up, point out the place, and then I’m taking off. Call it safety reasons.”
“Those weren’t my instructions. That’s not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to tell me where the fuck they are.”
“I will,” Billings said, “I definitely will. But this way everybody’s protected. You get your payoff and I get the hell out of there.”
The man in blue turned, looked at the deaf-mute. Oddly, the deaf-mute seemed to be the leader of the two. He was looking at Billings now with a low, cold expression, dementia at the edges. Deaf-mutes, Billings thought, weren’t supposed to hear anything, right? They were deaf, that was why they were called deaf-mutes. Also they couldn’t talk. But this one seemed to have taken in everything. The man in blue made vague signals with his hands. The deaf-mute nodded impatently, not keeping his eyes off Billings.
Billings turned. “All right,” he said, “let’s go,” and he then began to walk. This was the risky part of the deal, all parts of it were risky, but this was the most dangerous aspect because if he hadn
’t handled this just right it was possible that Calabrese’s men would panic, become impatient, perhaps do something really impulsive and dangerous. If he could clear this moment. Billings thought, he could probably carry it off all the way, but this was risky. There was a vague itch between his shoulder blades right in the place where a bullet would be most likely to hit him. He shrugged it away, kept on walking. His car was parked up the block, he had it within vision now and he went into his pocket, burrowing beneath the bills, finding his keys, carefully extracting them without causing the bills to fall, flapping, all over the pavement. That would be really bright. That would be exactly what he needed.
Nothing happened. He got to the Ford, walked over to the driver’s side, slowly opened the door and wedged himself behind the wheel. Only then, the door slammed, the lock button depressed, did he look up. The two were coming slowly toward him staring intently, communicating in some way with one another, making no erratic moves. Billings sat frozen behind the wheel, let them draw up to him. They stood on the pavement outside the car for a while, watching, then they slowly moved on.
Billings suppressed a wild impulse to turn the key in the ignition, floor the accelerator, get out of here, and make a run for it. That was human nature; he had to understand that the impulse was within him but under no circumstances could he do it. No, that would blow everything; so far he had handled this right with the correct measure of courage and calbut the wild, panicky flight out of here with ten grand in his pocket would be the foolish thing to do. He simply would not get away with it. They had gone along with him up to this point simply because they did not know what to do, probably had no specific instructions for this, but he could not blow it now. Also, he thought, there was no chance to get back to higher levels, get some advice. They were playing it on their own; they were as disconnected as he was. For the moment they were all freelancers.
The men began to move again, trudged slowly down the block. Billings sat there, palm flat to the cushions, not thinking, not reacting, simply waiting. He had no intention of not delivering. Delivering on the promise was the key to the deal. Only a fool would not deliver. But it was better, it was much better this way. Not only did he have some protection, a chance to get away clean … but there was also a thin chance that the two of them, Wulff and his companion, might be able to get away through no fault of Billings or his information.
He was forcing Calabrese’s men into a premature move.
He sat there in the car. After a while, a half-demolished Impala, two forms huddled inside, poked its way through traffic and came parallel to his window. He rolled it down, looked across, exchanged a look with the man in blue sitting in the passenger’s seat, the deaf-mute driving. Was that legal? he wondered vaguely. Deaf people weren’t supposed to drive; they couldn’t hear horns behind them, train whistles, officers’ commands, whatever, the state motor vehicle bureaus had laws against that kind of thing. But then again maybe the deaf-mute wasn’t really deaf and then again, being able to hear nothing while driving would certainly instill a certain calm in a man, a tendency not to get rattled.
“Don’t cross us,” the man in blue said flatly although there was a little tinge of uncertainty back of this, “that’s all I can tell you.”
“I won’t cross you,” Billings said, “do you think I’m crazy?” He wrenched the wheel, pulling the car slowly out of the space while the Impala drifted up a few feet beyond, gave him clearance, allowed him to pass, and then settled into a steady pace behind him. Thinking no, he really wasn’t crazy, not at all. He had no intention of crossing them. He would take them to the trailer park, point the way in, leave them to their devices, and get the hell out of there with his ten thousand dollars. He doubted if they would follow him, and even if they did, he figured that he could outrun them in this thing, particularly considering the condition of their car. He would take the ten thousand on the front end. After all, the front end was best. Let Calabrese do the mopping up. The shit would only wind up in his hands eventually anyway, and these two men, Wulff and the black partner, were doomed. No matter what happened, matters pivoted around those two constants: Calabrese getting the drugs, the two men dying. Take your ten grand and get out.
He put the car into a steady, grinding forty, showing nothing of the potential for cornering, the accelerative power that the three hundred and ninety ci’s under the hood gave, lulling the men behind, maybe, into the feeling that he had a junker. He was swinging in and out of the lane, driving easily, pausing every now and then while idling at traffic lights to pat the ten grand in his pocket. Ten grand in cash was nothing to Calabrese but it was the largest amount Billings had ever had altogether in his life. Out of the miniscule downtown area the roads opened up, traffic thinned, he and the Impala formed a caravan that way. They closed within a mile of the Idle Hour in only twenty minutes. That was good; much longer than that and they might have gotten very nervous and restless, thought that they were being conned in some way. That was one of the reasons why he had arranged to meet where he had. A short drive. Give them little time to think.
They were in the junkyard of America now: used car lots, fast-food franchises, miserable motels slammed up against the low hills of the landscape. The first sign for the Idle Hour came up; it was on the right, hitting him so suddenly that Billings instinctively gasped with surprise, the drive much shorter than he had thought. It must have seemed longer the first time around, stalking them, because he had been terrified that they would detect his tail at any time and pull him off the road; then, too, the careful drives that he had made here subsequently to see that they were still tucked away had been made under similar conditions of tension. It had been a risk all of those times, a terrific risk, but he had ten grand in his wallet and that payoff reduced the tension a little, even in retrospect. It had been worth it after all; ten grand was nickels and dimes to Calabrese, not much probably even to these two clowns trailing him, but to Billings it was plenty. It could finance a new life. He looked back into his rear-view mirror, seeing them come up closer behind him, pressed the hazard flashers to show that he was slowing, and then motioned with his right hand off the wheel. Five hundred yards up the road there was a small arrow under the lettering IDLE HOUR: TRAILER PARK, and then taking off the hazards he cut slowly into the shoulder lane bumping along at ten miles an hour, his right flasher indicating the turn.
His idea had been that they would fall back into line behind him, at the entrance to the park he would quickly accelerate, spinning out and getting away from there at fifty miles an hour, leaving them to their own method of figuring out where Wulff was in the park, which trailer was his. That had been his plan and figured out coldly beforehand it had been a good one, had made as much sense as not leading them here until he had the money and was in his own car…. But these men worked for Calabrese, even if they were fools they would not be total fools, there was some aspect of professionalism and anticipation in them after all, Billings realized … because the Impala sailed along in the right-hand lane, closed alongside Billings, and then almost casually cut him off, the mute yanking the wheel imperceptibly, the Impala sliding crosswise. Billings braked desperately, cursing, the Ford sliding along on the gravel almost swaying into the Impala, but even as he was pounding the wheel the man in blue on the passenger side had rolled his window all the way down, was shouting out to Billings. “All right,” he said, “where are they?”
“They’re in there,” Billings said, finally contriving the sedan to a halt, his palms so damp that they almost came off the wheel. He pointed at the sign. “Right in there.”
“Good,” the man said. “Lead us in.”
“I don’t have to lead you in. That wasn’t part of the deal. I told you they were in there and that’s enough. They’re in there.”
“You must think we’re stupid,” the man said. If he had been confused and taken by surprise on the street the drive had, seemingly, given him plenty of time to bring himself together again; the uncertainty was gone.
“How do we know they’re in there, how do we know that this isn’t just a big rib?” A bus came lumbering in the passing lane, traffic behind it already clumping up as the slow-moving vehicle had been forced to the outside. Faces like flowers peered out of the cars, looking at them coolly.
“Lead us in there,” the man in blue said. “Show us where they are.”
“That’s no deal,” Billings said, “no deal at all,” and reached to roll up his window. There was a gun, suddenly, in the man’s hand. A miniature, it glinted at him from the cave of his palm, held almost casually.
“Please,” the man said, “you’ve fucked us up plenty already. Don’t fuck us up anymore, okay? I don’t want to kill you. Take us in there, point out the trailer they’re in, let us make a quick check. If it’s as you say it is you’re out of this and ten gee’s richer.” He gestured with the gun. “People are starting to look,” he said. “Be reasonable now. Don’t be a fool. Cooperate.”
Billings nodded slowly, reached out to crank up the window. “No,” the man said, “no, no, don’t think of that. Leave the window open. You need the breeze for all that sweating you’re doing. Just drive. Drive the car, that’s all I ask.”
Billings nodded again, feeling very old, feeling at bay, and dropped the car back into drive. The wheels spun on the gravel, then lurched the car forward; it crawled down the shoulder at five miles an hour. No way to get out of the box; the Impala was still wedging him in, crowding him over on the left. He had no choice, he had to lead them in and that knowledge, that acceptance coming through him finally, resulted oddly in a relaxation of the tension, even a faint wisp of exaltation. It was always that way when you knew you were committed passing any point of refusal; had he not known it a thousand times, the needle sliding in cooly, past the dark veins, into the bruise of the body itself? Of course, he had been there; he had seen it all before. One way or the other it would be over soon. If nothing else, that could be counted on. five minutes, ten minutes, and it would be done. He would be out of this with ten thousand dollars and a new life opening in front of him at the age of forty-seven or he would be dead. No more middleground. People dwelt in the middle, on the margins, all of their lives: that was death, that was what was killing them more than mortality itself, the slide toward emptiness, the absence of clear choices, but it had never been that way for him. Once again he was in a high, clearly-defined area where the right would happen or the wrong would happen but he would never be the same again. Yes, he thought, that was what might have driven him to the needle in the first place; that might have been precisely it. The need to cut loose, the need to take the high, deadly ground. The need to get off the margin forever.
