The Shark-Infested Custard

by Charles Willeford

  “I never thought about it, Wright, but in a logical sense, the job was worth more than a flat two thousand. Because I did come after you, and I did get you.”

  “I told her that might happen. And now you’re going to kill me.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m not going to kill you.”

  But I was, and I had known all along that I was going to kill him, just as he had known all along that I was going to kill him. I certainly didn’t intend to kill him at first, and I’m not sure when I passed the point when I knew I was going to kill him, that I was going to have to kill him, because I didn’t allow myself to think about it. But everything he said was reinforcement. For some minutes now, I had merely been delaying the inevitable. I still needed more delay, and I still didn’t want to think about it.

  “How many men have you hit, Mr. Wright?” I said.

  “Twenty-seven. But you’re the first man I’ve ever tried to scare out of town.”

  “How many has your son killed?”

  “None. He don’t know nothing about what I do when I go out of town. He thinks I’ve got some investments that pay off just when we need the money for the store. The store’s in his name, and he won’t be coming after you, Mr. Norton, so you don’t have to worry none about that.”

  “I was worrying about it, to tell you the truth.”

  “I know you were, but you don’t have to worry none about Francis.”

  I took out a cigarette, and lit it awkwardly, without putting the pistol down. “Would you like a cigarette, Mr. Wright?”

  “Are you going to shoot me now?”

  “Of course not. I just asked if you wanted a cigarette.”

  “No, I don’t smoke much. Sometimes a good cigar, but I don’t care for cigarettes. I just thought…”

  His voice was normal, resigned. He had had a pretty good run—twenty-seven murders, unless he was lying—and he had prepared himself for the same eventual ending. His quiet acceptance of the situation was unnerving, and I tried to close off my mind. I couldn’t allow myself to think about it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Except for the patch of vitiligo on his forehead which had turned from pink to almost white, there was no evidence of fear in his face.

  “Suppose, Mr. Wright, suppose, now, that I let you go? What would you do?”

  “Well,” he said, “I took the money from Miss Jannaire, and I mailed it to Francis, you see. He’s probably paid a few bills with it, and all. But even if I still had it, I’d have to carry out the contract. That’s the ethical thing to do. Once you take the contract, there can’t be no mind-changing going on, because then word gets around. And if the word gets around that you welshed on one, they figure you lost your nerve, and they begin to wonder about the old contracts, you see. If you lost your nerve, you might be willing to talk about them.”

  “What ‘they’ is this? I don’t believe that Wright is your real name, but I don’t think you’re any member of some crazy Cracker Mafia, either.”

  “I can’t tell you about the ‘they,’ Mr. Norton. But I’m not Mafia, no, you’re right there. I don’t know if I’d do next what I’d planned to do next, but I’d still have to scare you into leaving Miami. That was the contract I took, you see.”

  “What nasty little trick were you planning next?”

  “A beating. I was going to have you beaten. Not too bad, but enough to scare you. No broken bones, or not on the face, but a good beating with bike chains. I wasn’t going to tell Miss Jannaire about the beating because I know more about these things than she does. And I think a good beating, with some bad bruises and all, would’ve scared you pretty bad.”

  “Yes, it would have. But if I let you go, you wouldn’t leave Miami yourself and go back to Jacksonville?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good if I did. My contact here would get another man, and he’d have to make Miss Jannaire’s money good. Even if I gave it back to him to give to someone else, it wouldn’t help you any—or me neither.”

  “Suppose I gave you another fee—say three thousand—to hit Jannaire. Could you do that?”

  “No. That wouldn’t be ethical.”

  I put the cigarette out in one of the big sand-filled standing ashtrays.

  Wright stiffened visibly, but that was the only movement he made. I shot him, and he tumbled forward out of the chair, curling his body slightly as he died silently on the white shag carpet.

  22

  The things I had to do took me much longer than they should have because I would pause all of a sudden, struck by the enormity of what I had done, and stand for long moments paralyzed in thought, or not thinking, in a state of dazed bewilderment.

  Mr. Wright, a fatalist, accustomed to swift and sudden death, had died with dignity, as a right, as a rite long rehearsed in his mind. Or, to paraphrase the old cliche; “Dying well is the best revenge.”

  When my time came, as it must, there would be Wright’s example to die up to, the measurement of a real man.

  This murder of Wright, as necessary as it was, and I would always remind myself that it was necessary, and not a gratuitous act, had changed me forever. To kill a man, whether it is necessary or not, whether in anger or in cold blood, is the turning point in the life of the American male. It made me finally a member of the lousy, rotten club, a club I hadn’t wanted to join, hadn’t applied for, but had joined anyway, the way you accept an unsolicited credit card sent to you through the mail and place it in your wallet.

  The report of the .38 had been loud, but here I wasn’t concerned about whether the neighbors had heard the shot or not. In a $150,000 apartment, the walls are thick enough to deaden the sound of a .38.

  The airconditioner condenser kicked in, and I felt a sudden whiff of cool air on my neck as I stood there, waiting, waiting to see whether Mr. Wright would move again. I couldn’t see his upper body, but I could watch his white legs and the purplish snaky looking varicose veins climbing out of the tops of his black support socks.

  I put the pistol down, staring at Wright’s pale, almost feminine, legs, and willed them not to move. I had willed myself to shoot once because I had to, but I don’t believe I could have shot him again, or put a round in the back of his head for a coup de grace. As I stood there, frozen, waiting, staring, I felt very close to Larry and Eddie. Larry had killed a thief, when he was still a cop, a legitimate shooting for which he was cleared. Eddie, as a fighter pilot, had killed a good many little brown men in Vietnam on strafing and bombing missions.

  In every instance, the killing was justified, as I had so easily justified the killing of Mr. Wright. The thought bothered me, and it was difficult to brush aside. A killing can always be justified, or rationalized.

  Perhaps I could have found an alternative, another option, but no other way out occurred to me. So I quit thinking about it. I also resolved not to think about it again, or at least to try not to think about it again.

  The deed was done, and there would be no point to brood on the matter and come up with an alternative some five years from now, because I had had to do what I had done at the time.

  I went through Mr. Wright’s wallet. There was a Gulf credit card made out to L.C. Smith, a Florida driver’s license, also in the name of L.C. Smith, and fifty-seven dollars in cash. There was no credit card for a rental car, so I assumed that he had driven his own car down to Miami from Jacksonville. If there is anything harder to do than rent a car without a credit card, I don’t know what it is. But fifty-seven dollars was a very small sum of money.

  I put the money into my wallet, and searched Wright’s other pockets. I found a packet of Barclay’s traveler’s checks, all twenties, totaling $240.00. They were unsigned, neither on the tops nor the bottoms. I had no idea how a man could get traveler’s checks from a bank without signing them first, unless they were stolen, and I didn’t know what to do with them. But no one ever asks for I.D. when a traveler’s check is cashed, and these unsigned checks could be used anywhere in the world. I decided to keep them. If I c
ashed them, one at a time, over a lengthy period, they would be impossible to trace to me.

  I put Wright’s key ring, with its peculiar collection of keys, in my pocket, too. One of those keys would fit Jannaire’s duplex door, and I had a few things to talk about with that woman. There was a package of book matches from Wuv’s, a folded length of copper wire, a theater ticket stub and a parking stub from the Double X Theater, and a plug of Brown Mule chewing tobacco with one small bite missing.

  Other than that, Wright was clean. His other equipment, including the tools he had been using for his scary tricks, were probably locked in his car. His car was undoubtedly parked in the Double X Theater lot, but it could stay there. It would be just like him to booby-trap his own car.

  I removed the green oilcloth cover from the snooker table, wrapped Mr. Wright’s body in it, and carried him into the Weinstein’s master bedroom. I placed the body on the bed, and turned on the bedside lamp. In another two months or within six weeks or less the Weinsteins would return. But within three or four days, even if I turned the airconditioning down to fifty degrees, the body would begin to stink. In fact, he smelled bad already. The heavy mattress would prevent the odor from seeping out through the bottom, but I need something more to put on top of his body. I went through the apartment and gathered up all of the sheets covering the furniture, and spread them, one at a time, over his body. There were blankets in the linen closet, and I spread these, one at a time, over his body until there were more than two dozen thicknesses, counting the sheets, over him. As well as I could, I tucked in the edges all around the bed.

  By this time I was perspiring heavily, and I sat in the high pool chair to smoke a calming cigarette.

  I then took my handkerchief and ran it over everything I had touched, or remembered touching, and turned the airconditioning thermostat, which I found in the dining room, down to fifty degrees. I collected the two pistols, turned out the lights, and left the apartment. After wiping the outside doorknob, I took the stairway down to the tenth floor, and pushed the button for the elevator.

  No one, luckily, was in the parking garage, and I walked up the alley to my Galaxie.

  23

  When I got to Coral Gables, and parked on Santana, two blocks away from Jannaire’s duplex, it was ten minutes after one. I was tired and fuzzy-minded, and it took me a full minute to decide to leave the pistols locked in the glove compartment. Coral Gables, together with Hobe Sound and Palm Beach, is one of the best policed cities in Florida, and I didn’t want to run the risk of being picked up with a concealed weapon on my person as I walked to Jannaire’s house.

  There was a light in the upstairs living room window, but that did not mean that she was still awake. It might have been a burglar light, but I had no intention of ringing her bell anyway. I found the correct key on Wright’s keyring on the third try, let myself in, and climbed the stairs. No one was in the living room.

  The door to the guest bedroom was slightly ajar. I flipped the switch. The bed was made, and there was a packed, but open, suitcase on the bed. Wright’s suit jacket was draped over the back of a chair. The bed was made in a hasty, rumpled manner, and I assumed that Wright had made it, not Jannaire. I continued down the hall to Jannaire’s bedroom. I flipped on the lights and she didn’t waken. There was no overhead, or ceiling light, but both bedlamps came on, and so did a standing lamp, with a bamboo shade, beside a black leather lounge chair.

  Jannaire, flat on her back, snored gently, almost daintily, but she slept hard. Her two brown fists, close to her head, were clenched tightly, and the muscles in her tanned forearms were tensed. She wore a pale blue nightgown, and was covered to her waist with a sheet and a bright blue blanket. The airconditioning in the apartment was about seventy, if not lower, and I was comfortable in my jacket.

  I sat down in the leather chair, and lit a cigarette. The odor in the room was unpleasant, and I needed the smell of cigarette smoke. In addition to Jannaire’s unique odor, the air was stale, and there was an overlay, hard to define separately, of baby powder, cold cream, wet leather, and the general odor of sleep itself. I had noticed this phenomenon before; a woman smells differently when she’s asleep. The first time I had noticed this phenomenon I wondered if the subconscious overcomes the defenses of the sleeping body. Jannaire looked older in her sleep, too, and I wondered why I had ever thought that she was attractive. In her nightgown, with her apple-hard breasts partly uncovered, and all of her inky black underarm hair exposed, she was about as sexy as a squashed toad. Nor did I have to kiss her to determine how bad her breath undoubtedly was, either.

  “Hey,” I said lightly, from the chair, “wake up, Jannaire. There’s a man in your bedroom.”

  “Wha’?” she said, stirring, but without opening her eyes.

  “There’s a man in your room, Jannaire, and he wants to talk to you.”

  She opened her eyes and blinked at me. She rubbed her bare arms with her hands, as she stared at me.

  “Mr. Wright, your husband,” I said, “sent me to pick up his suitcase. His son’s sick, and he had to go home, so he asked me to mail him his suitcase, air freight. Incidentally, is Francis your son, or your husband’s son by another marriage?”

  “What?” She sat up in bed, and shook her head. “What do you want, Hank? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I took a sleeping pill, and it really knocked me out. What are you doing here?”

  “It’s foolish to take sleeping pills, especially at your age, Jannaire. They’re a damned poor substitute for natural sleep, and eventually they ruin your health. A cup of warm cocoa…”

  “I’ve gotta go pee. Put some coffee on, Hank. Until I’m awake I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She got out of bed, walked primly—with her knees together—to the bathroom and closed the door.

  In the kitchen I put on some water to boil for instant coffee, and discovered that I was ravenous. When Jannaire joined me in the kitchen a few minutes later, I had fixed two pieces of toast, and I was scrambling four eggs. She wore a quilted blue robe, and she had combed her hair and put on some pinkish-white lipstick. Her full lips were poked out surlily as she got down cups and mixed coffee and boiling water.

  “D’you want some eggs? Toast?” I asked her.

  “No. All I want is for you to get out of my house,” she said. “If my husband happens to walk in…”

  “Cut the bullshit, Jannaire. Apparently you weren’t listening to me when I woke you up.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “I told you. I came for Mr. Wright’s suitcase.”

  I showed her Wright’s ring of keys. I took the scrambled eggs and the toast into the dining room, and she followed me with the two cups of coffee. I had to return to the kitchen to find a fork, and when I got back to the dining room she was sitting at the end of the long glass table, facing me, and staring with an expression that managed to convey fear, hatred, and loathing. I talked to her as I ate, and her expression didn’t alter.

  “Mr. Wright and I had a long talk, Jannaire, so you can forget about the marriage fabrication. He told me that you paid him to run me out of town. Fine, I am now on my way out, and I dropped by to tell you good-bye. Inasmuch as he asked me in such a nice way, I could hardly refuse, could I? But I want some answers from you before I go. First, you could have had me killed, but then you changed your mind. Why?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t want your death on my conscience, although that didn’t matter much to me at first. And then, after I got to know you, and realized how much Miami meant to you, it was a punishment of a sort—a banishment, and that seemed like a fair substitute. In the abstract, Hank, having you killed seemed like a good ideas—and it still does—in the abstract. But when the time came, I had some second thoughts. The possibility that I might have become involved, in case Mr. Wright happened to be caught, occurred to me, and your death didn’t seem worth going to prison for…”

  “Okay. You chickened out. But why did you think about killing me, o
r having me killed, in the first place? I admit that I lusted after your smelly body, but that’s no reason to kill a man!”

  Jannaire got up, turned on the lamp in the living room beneath the black-and-white blow-up photo, and returned to her seat. She pointed to the picture.

  “That’s my sister.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  “But I didn’t tell you her name. Her name is—was—Bernice Kaplan.” “So?”

  “You don’t even remember her name?” “Should I? I don’t remember any girl who looks remotely like that…”

  “Bernice was twenty-two when she killed herself, and you’re the reason she died.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t know any Bernice Kaplan.”

  “She was a stewardess, and you knew her all right, you sonofabitch!”

  “What was her uniform like?”

  “Mustard yellow, with red piping. And she wore a little yellow derby with a red satin hatband.” “I remember her.”

  “I thought you would. Men usually remember the women they knock up. I know that Bernice had some emotional problems. Most girls do nowadays, and she didn’t have to kill herself just because she was pregnant. If she had come to me, I could’ve paid for an abortion. For that matter, she had enough money to pay for one herself. But she wouldn’t have killed herself if she hadn’t got pregnant, and because you were the one who did it, you shouldn’t be allowed to get off scot-free.”

  There was a great deal that I could say in self-defense, but I was unable to say anything. I was faced with a dilemma, a moral decision, and there was no way out of it—not a single way that I could prove my innocence.

  I had met Bernice Kaplan at a party. She had been in uniform, and she had to leave early to catch her plane. When she started to call for a cab, I had offered to drive her to the airport. It was an excuse to leave a dull party, and I had been talking to Bernice and thought she was rather cute. In their uniforms, stewardesses always look ten times better than they do in their civilian clothes. It was a hilarious and exciting drive to the airport—a drive that was filled with suspense.