Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales

by Loren D. Estleman

  When the waiters left, the two were alone with Francis, Little Angie’s bodyguard. He was a former professional wrestler who shaved his head and had rehearsed his glower before a mirror until it was as nearly permanent as a tattoo. As a rule, Midge got on with other people’s security, but he and Francis had disliked each other from the start. He suspected that on Francis’ part this was jealousy; Mr. Wassermann’s generosity to employees was well known, while Little Angie was a pinchpenny who abused his subordinates, sometimes in public. On Midge’s side, he had a career prejudice against wrestlers, whom he dismissed as trained apes, and thought Francis disagreeably ugly into the bargain. When they were in the same room they spent most of the time scowling at each other. They had never exchanged so much as a word.

  “I know Jake the Junkman’s been white to you,” Little Angie seemed to be saying. “Too good, maybe. Some types need to be put on an allowance. A lot of smart guys can’t handle dough.”

  Midge didn’t like what he’d heard. Everyone knew Mr. Wassermann had made his first fortune from scrap metal, but most respected him too much to allude to his past in this offensive way. He wondered if it was his place to report the conversation to his employer. So far he didn’t know why he’d been invited here.

  Little Angie reached into a pocket and took out a handful of notepaper on which Midge recognized his own scrawl. “You ain’t hard to track. Everywhere you go, you leave markers: Benny Royal’s floating crap game in the South Side, the roulette wheel at the Kit-Kat, Jack Handy’s book up in Arbordale. There’s others here. You owe twelve thousand, and you can’t go to Jake for a loan. He’s got a blind spot where gambling’s concerned. He don’t forbid his people from making a bet now and then, but he don’t bail them out either. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Midge shook his head. Mr. Wassermann had explained all this his first day. Midge hadn’t known then that the new class of woman he’d be dating liked pretty much the same entertainments as the old.

  “See, that’s a problem. I spent more’n face value buying these up. I’m a reasonable man, though. I’ll eat the difference. You got twelve grand, Midge?”

  “You know I don’t.”

  Little Angie smacked his face with the markers. Midge tool a step forward; so did Francis. Little Angie held up a finger, stopping them both. “Let’s not be uncivil. There’s a way you can work it off. You won’t even have to pop a sweat.”

  Midge heard enough of the rest to understand. Mr. Wassermann, who had the ear of a number of important people, : had promised to spoil an investment Little Angie wanted to make. The important people, he hinted, would be in a position to listen to reason if Mr. Wassermann were not available to counsel them otherwise. All Midge had to do to settle his debts was stand at his usual station outside the door to Mr. Wassermann’s office the following morning and not leave it, no matter what he heard going on inside.

  “What if I just owe you like I did the others?” Midge asked.

  “They was getting impatient. If I didn’t step In, you’d be wearing plaster instead of that flashy suit, peeing through a tube. And I got to tell you, patience ain’t my what-you-call forte. Francis?”

  The ugly bald wrestler produced a loop of stiff nylon fishline from a pocket. Midge knew he could prevent Francis from making use of it, but there were others in Little Angie’s employ who knew what a garrote was for. He couldn’t fight them all. Sooner or later he’d run into a Sonny Rodriguez.

  “1 know what you’re thinking,” Little Angie said. There’s always a place in my organization for a fellow knows the score. You won’t be out of a job.”

  Midge hadn’t been thinking about that at all. “Can I have time to think it over?”

  “If I had time I’d wait for Jake to die of old age.”

  Midge agreed to the terms. Little Angie leered and tore up the markers. Francis looked disappointed as well as ugly.

  The next morning outside Mr. Wassermann’s office was as long a time as Midge had ever spent anywhere, including seven and s half rounds with Lincoln Flagg. Mr. Wassermann had some telephone calls to make and told him he’d be working through lunch, but that he’d make it up to him that night with the full twelve courses from Bon Maison, Midge’s favorite restaurant back when I he was contending. He had an armchair for his personal use in the hallway, but today he couldn’t stay seated in it more than three minutes at a stretch. He stood with his hands folded in front of him, then behind him, picked lint off the sleeve of his new gray gabardine, found imaginary lint on the crease of the trousers and picked that off too. He was perspiring heavily under his sixty-dollar shirt, despite what Little Angie had said; he, Midge, who used to work out with the heavy bag for an hour without breaking a sweat. This selling out was hard work.

  Too hard, he decided, after twenty minutes. He would take his chances with Little Angle’s threats. He rapped on the door, waited the customary length of time while he assumed Mr. Wassermann was calling for him to come in, then opened the door. The garrote didn’t frighten him half as much as the anticipation of the look of sadness on Mr. Wassermann’s face when he told him about his part in Little Angie’s plan.

  Mr. Wassermann was not behind his desk. But he was.

  When Midge leaned his big broken-knuckled hands on it and peered over the far edge, the first thing he saw was the tan soles of his employer’s hand-lasted wingtips. Mr. Wassermann was still seated in his padded leather swivel, but the chair lay on its back. Mr. Wassermann’s face was the same oxblood tint as his shoes and his tongue stuck out. Midge couldn’t see the wire, but he’d heard it sank itself so deep in a man’s neck it couldn’t be removed without getting blood on yourself, so most killers didn’t bother to try.

  A torch lamp behind the desk had toppled over in the struggle and lay on the carpet, its bulb shattered. Both it and Mr. Wassermann must have made more than a little noise. The door that was usually concealed in the paneling to the left stood open. It was used by Mr. Wassermann’s congressmen and the occasional other business associate who preferred not to be seen going in or coming out. It was one of the worst-kept secrets around town.

  Midge felt sad. He walked around the desk, stepping carefully to avoid grinding bits of glass into the Brussels carpet, and looked down into his employer’s bloodshot eyes.

  “The thing is, Mr. Wassermann, I didn’t really go into the tank.”

  Mr. Wassermann didn’t say anything. But then Midge probably wouldn’t have heard him If he had.

  HOW’S MY DRIVING?

  The truck stop was lit up like a Hollywood movie premiere, an oval of incandescence in an undeveloped landscape where a county road ducked under the interstate. I parked my rig in the football field-sized lot and went into the diner, a little unsteady on my pins. I’d been stuck for an hour in a snarl caused by someone’s broken axle and a thousand cars slowing down to gape at it, and I’d hit the flask a few times to flatten my nerves. If I missed my contact tonight it would be another week before he came back the other direction.

  Brooks and Dunn were whining on the retro-look juke as I took a stool at the end of the counter. Most of the other customers were seated in booths. I counted eleven, shoveling out their plates and blowing steam off their thick mugs. It was late and there was a lull between early escapees from the traffic jam and the next batch backed up at the scales. The waitress, a tired-looking blonde of forty or so, came over with a clean mug and a carafe. In those places they put coffee in front of you the way they do a glass of water in others.

  I nodded at the question on her face and watched her pour. “I bet you hate these slow times,” I said.

  She was silent for a moment, looking at me, and I knew I was being sized up for a pickup artist or just friendly. “I don’t know which is worse,” she said then, “this or the rush. When it’s on I need six hands to keep up, and when it isn’t I don’t know what to do with the two I’ve got.”

  “My old man said he’d rather work than wait.” I sipped. She made a pretty good pot. There’s a
trick to brewing strong coffee without making it bitter.

  “He a trucker too?”

  “He was a hood. They’ve got him doing ninety-nine years and a day in Joliet for murder.”

  “Well, there’s a conversation starter I don’t hear every night.”

  But I could tell she didn’t believe me.

  I didn’t try to set her straight. The whiskey had loosened me up too much. I needed to put something on top of it. “You serve breakfast all the time?”

  She said sure, it’s a truck stop, and I ordered scrambled eggs and a ham steak. She gave it to the cook through the pass-through to the kitchen without writing it down and left the counter to freshen the other customers’ coffee. When she got back she served me and refilled my cup. She watched me eat.

  “You seem pretty well adjusted for the son of a convict.”

  “I was grown when he went in,” I said, chewing. “It wasn’t his first time, though. He did two bits for manslaughter on plea deals. Cops figured him for at least fifteen, but they only got him good on the last one.”

  She hoisted her eyebrows. “He was a serial killer?”

  “Hell, no. Serial killers are loonies who slept with their mothers. He was a pro.”

  “A hit man? Like for the mob?”

  “Most of the time. Sometimes he freelanced, but you can get jammed up working for civilians. I wouldn’t touch one of those.” I realized what I’d said and changed the subject in a hurry. “Got any more hash browns?”

  She put in the order. A trucker came in, one of the sloppy ones with a belly and tobacco stains in the corners of his mouth, and sat down at the other end of the counter. She ordered him a burger and a Coke and came back with the hash browns. “You’ve got a real line of crap, but it’s one I never heard. So how’d the cops trip him up?”

  “Circumstantial evidence. He ran a bar in Jersey, and guys kept going in and never coming out. His lawyer objected, but the judge was a hard case and allowed it in. There was some other stuff, but the past history’s what clinched it for the jury.” I poured ketchup on the potatoes. “That was his mistake, always operating in the same place. The best way to avoid drawing suspicion is to move around a lot. One hit in Buffalo, the next in Kansas City, another in Seattle. Get yourself a front that involves plenty of travel.”

  “Like truck driving.”

  I took a long draught of coffee. I was going to have to change my brand of booze. The one I drank talked and talked. “Sure. Or sales. The bigger the territory, the less chance of the cops getting together and comparing notes. Anyway, that’s how I’d do it.”

  “Trucking’s better,” she said. “No one looks twice. You all run to the same type.”

  I turned my head to look at Big Belly waiting for his hamburger. Then I grinned at her.

  “Okay, two types. One looks like a pro wrestler gone to seed, the other like Randy Travis. The point is, there’s a lot of both. Traveling salesmen are about extinct. You notice the ones that are left.” She folded her arms and leaned them on the counter. There were circles under her eyes, and she was older than I liked them in general, but she had good cheekbones and a serious expression. I’d had my fill of the playful kind. “How do you work it? Do they call you, or do you check in?”

  Just then the cook set the burger and a plate of slimy fries on the sill. She delivered them without comment and took up the same position at my end, arms folded on the counter.

  I pushed away my plates, unrolled the pack from my sleeve, and held it up. A NO SMOKING sign hung in plain sight on the wall behind her, but she shrugged. I got out two, gave her one, and lit them both. “If I went in for that work,” I said, blowing smoke, “I’d have them call that eight-hundred number on the back of my truck. You know the one.”

  She nodded. “‘How’s My Driving?’ with the number to call and complain. I can’t remember the last time I saw a truck that didn’t have it.”

  “That’s what’s beautiful about it. I’d have it forwarded to my cell. If I cut someone off in traffic and he called, I’d tell him I’d look into it, blow him off, like I’m a dispatcher. The other kind, the paying kind, if the cops trace it I can always say it was a wrong number. If there were no complications I’d adjust my route and take care of business.”

  “Pretty smart.”

  “Smarter than my old man, anyway. Smart enough not to go in for that line of work.”

  She straightened up and put out her cigarette in what was left of my eggs. “I thought so. Just another pickup. The trouble with you guys is you’ve seen Bonnie and Clyde one too many times. You think every girl who slings hash is just waiting for her chance to hook up with some road-show Jesse James.”

  “Badlands, actually. But you’ve got me pegged.”

  She figured my bill, slapped it on the counter, and left to bus tables. I finished my cigarette and paid, leaving fifteen percent. I wanted to leave more, but I’d done too much already to make her remember me. I went back out to my rig.

  It’s a nice one, a secondhand Freightliner with an orange tractor and a shiny silver trailer; when new it had set someone back the price of a house on the beach. In the sleeping quarters behind the seat I switched on the light, went over my notes one more time, and looked at the driver’s license photo blowup and telephoto candids once again for luck, then fed them to the cross-shredder I’d added to the standard equipment. I looked at my watch. I had better than an hour to kill. His company had him on a tight schedule, and he couldn’t afford to lose another job. The Feds had told him he had no more coming if he expected any more help from them.

  Twenty to midnight. I took two more hits from the flask and went back into the diner.

  Big Belly had finished his meal and left. I waited while she rang up a middle-aged tourist couple with fanny packs, then asked if she got off at midnight.

  “Why? You going to buy me a cuppa and tell me you’re an international spy?”

  “I started off on the wrong foot. I’ll make it cappuccino if it’ll make up for being a jerk.”

  She thought that over. She frowned more attractively than most women smiled. I had an almost overpowering urge to see what her smile looked like. She was as hard to put away as the flask, which I had now in my hip pocket.

  “I’m on till four,” she said. “But I’m past due for a break. Coffee’s fine, but I wouldn’t mind a slice of pie.”

  She asked the cook to cover the counter and brought the coffees and a wedge of lemon meringue to a booth in the smoking section, away from the others. I produced the flask and when she nodded I trickled some from it into both cups. We tapped them together in an unspoken toast.

  She made a face when she tasted it. “I suppose it’s good whiskey, but you don’t drink it in coffee for the taste, do you?”

  “My old man only drank it this way when he had a cold.”

  “You’re not going to talk about him again, are you?”

  “That subject’s closed.”

  We shared small talk, or what passed for it between strangers late at night. Her name was Elizabeth; she preferred Beth, but she had LIZ scripted on her uniform blouse and said I could call her that as long as she was dressed for this job. She was working two jobs to earn enough to pay a lawyer to get custody of her ten-year-old daughter. She was a recovering meth addict. Her lawyer said if she could stay clean another six months she had a better chance in court. “So much for budding romance,” she said, forking pie into her mouth.

  “If I go on hitting this stuff the way I’ve been lately, we’ll both be in the same boat.” I added more to my cup. She frowned again when I offered to freshen hers, then nodded. The coffee was still hot; the fumes entered my nose and speeded up the process. I had to close one eye to see only one of her.

  “Conscience,” she said. “I guess you have to anesthetize yourself to make a clean job of it.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was needling me or if she was really interested. I asked her what her other job was.

  “Not as glamor
ous as this. Tell me about some of the people you’ve killed.”

  I looked at her, closing one eye. Her mouth twitched at the corners. It was going to be one of those conversations. In the same vein I told her about Omaha and then Sioux Falls, that bitched-up job that had almost got me pinched. I’d spent a nervous day maneuvering myself back into position to make it good. I was careful to speak hypothetically, spinning a story to keep the lady’s interest.

  I put away the flask, but by then I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have. I told her what I was working on, an open contract; a hundred and fifty grand to the man who made an example of a mouthy errand boy who’d blabbed enough in court to take down a chunk of the East Coast and put himself in the Witness Protection Program. But Anderson was a grifter who couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a dishonest dollar, even if it brought attention-and he had to be relocated under yet another identity. At present he was delivering office furniture from Cincinnati to L.A. and back, with a new face courtesy of the taxpayers to keep him from being recognized in case of a chance encounter with a former acquaintance. I’d started out careful, but somewhere along the way I stopped being hypothetical and mentioned the fact that Anderson always put in at that truck stop and was due there in a little while.

  “Do you use a gun?”

  “I have, but it makes a lot of noise: A knife’s better for close work, and you know right away if you made it good. Also it’s cheaper to replace when you leave it at the scene, with the prints wiped off, and you don’t get jammed up if the cops find one on you. A lot of truckers carry buck knives for quick repairs.”

  I heard myself then, and it sobered me in a hurry. Then she chuckled, shaking her head, and the smile turned out to have been worth waiting for.