Boldt

by Ted Lewis

  We put my stuff in the pickup and look at each other.

  “Come on,” I say to her. “Let’s go inside. We have to have a farewell drink.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “What I mean is this is where we met. You know what I mean. It deserves the honor of a final drink.”

  She nods and we go inside. I fill the remaining tumbler for her and take mine from the bottle and when we’ve taken our drinks, we kiss for a long, long time; then after the kiss she rests her head against my chest and we stay that way for a while, no words, scarcely moving, the only sound the wind outside.

  It’s a small town on the edge of the highway. Even the main street’s been bypassed by the through road. On the opposite side of the town, the railroad flanks the straggling buildings.

  Joan drives the pickup off the main street and takes a left and then another left until she’s almost back to the main street again. Then she stops the pickup and we sit there in silence for a minute or two. I look at the brightly lit car lot on the corner of Main Street. Then Joan takes out the envelope with the money in it I’d stashed at Sammy’s and gives it to me. I open it and count out what she’s going to need and put the rest in my inside pocket. “Did Sammy ask why I wanted the whole bundle?” I ask her.

  She nods and says, “Yes. I told him what you told me to. I told him you’d had this fear that you might have to move fast and without the money you’d be dead.”

  “And he still thinks I’m at the ranch?”

  “I told you. I told him everything you said to tell him.”

  “And when you go back, you tell him I want to move on and that’s why you’ve got to go back to the ranch so soon.”

  She nods.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “He’ll be so relieved he’ll never question anything else again. You’ll just go and you’ll have eight hours start.”

  “It’s not that I’m worried about.”

  “No,” I tell her. “I know it’s not that. I’m just pretending to help us both.”

  She nods, agrees, but nothing’s helping her. There’s another long silence. Then she gets out of the pickup and begins to walk toward the car lot and I slide over to the driver’s seat.

  It takes her around twenty minutes. Then I see her drive across the intersection in a ‘72 Pontiac. I take a pull from the scotch and during the ten minutes I wait, I take a couple more pulls and then I switch on the ignition and making a U-Turn I drive back around the block and get on to Main Street and make it back onto the highway. A quarter of an hour later, I turn off left and a mile or so down the road the Pontiac’s in the pickup’s headlights. I stop the pickup and get out and Joan gets out.

  “Till the day,” I say to her.

  Again she doesn’t say anything, just nods. We transfer all the gear I need for what I’m going to do and then she gets into the pickup and I get into the Pontiac and I sit there watching the pickup’s headlights in the driving mirror as she begins her reverse.

  Hoffman in his town is like Florian in mine. A member of that particular Masonic Order that stretches nationwide and can tune in the Hit Parade. And unlike Florian, he’s single and unlike Florian, he’s stupid with the broads. Sure, he’s got guys walking behind him, but when he’s into a broad or two that’s all that matters to him, all that’s in front of his eyes; that he’s lived this long is some kind of miracle. The boys can go home and file their nails or the numbers of their heat and expect to see him in the morning, maybe. A couple of days’ watching him in his town, it makes me smile and not only because he’s so fucking stupid because his stupidity is an omen. His charmed life is a lucky charm for me.

  So on the third night, I follow him through his usual routine. Around ten he comes out of his house. A nice house, well-appointed, secure as Fort Knox. So having a house as secure as Fort Knox, he leaves it. The limousine slides out of the garage, he gets in, the chauffeur eases the automobile down to the gates, the gates are opened, the automobile slides out. And from then on it’s the same route as the night before. On to the Blue Dahlia. Hoffman goes in, the chauffeur waits and so do I. Then two hours later, a guy comes out, has words with the chauffeur, the chauffeur says something back and about ten minutes later, the guy comes back with a tray with some beer and sandwiches on it. The chauffeur takes the tray, puts it on the passenger seat and sits in the car to have his midnight feast. So we’re there for another couple of hours. The only activity in that time is the guy coming back out for the tray and taking it back in again. But eventually Hoffman reappears and like on the last two nights, he’s not alone. He has a blonde on each arm, lookalikes, same kind of hairstyles, clothes, they could be sisters, but my guess is they’re just a team; some way back they decided two could make three times as much as one. Last night and the night before, Hoffman left the Blue Dahlia with them, and so I know where they’re going to be going. I ease away before Hoffman and party have time to get into their job and I drive across town ahead of them, keeping them in sight of my driving mirror. When I get to the house where the blondes hang out, I take a left and park and get out of the Pontiac and wait around the corner until I hear Hoffman’s car pull in at the curb. I hear the chauffeur get out and let out Hoffman and his trade and I hear Hoffman tell his man to go on home and he’ll call tomorrow afternoon or sometime when he needs picking up. Then I hear the chauffeur close his door and the car pulls away and when it’s passed the corner I’m hiding around, that’s when I come out to play.

  Hoffman and the girls are on the house steps; one of the girls is trying to put the key in the lock while Hoffman and the other girl are standing a couple of steps below. The house is on the corner of the block, so Hoffman has no real time to make me as I walk up the steps holding what I’m holding. There’s nothing but blank disbelief on Hoffman’s face but the girl standing next to him starts to fix her lips to shriek but I cut that by talking to them and saying, “No noise. Otherwise the three of you take it here. No noise, no death. Just inside. Open the door and we all go inside.”

  The other girl, the girl with the key, she just stares at me.

  “You heard me,” I tell her.

  “Do it,” Hoffman says, in a voice that only just makes it through the phlegm in his throat.

  The girl flicks her head in animal-like assent and now she’s able to put the key in the lock.

  “Wait,” I tell her. “I want the right answer to this—there anybody else?”

  Hoffman answers for her by shaking his head over and over.

  “Fine,” I say. “So now we all go in.”

  The girl turns the key and the door swings inward; the three of them walk very carefully through the door and I follow them and close the door behind me and then I lock it, both locks.

  We’re in a very low-lighted hall, very tastefully decorated, a couple of expensive original rubbish paintings and a pedestal bearing a statuette of some Grecian goddess. There are two doors on either side of the hallway and there is a flight of stairs leading to an even dimmer upstairs. I frisk Hoffman and then I say, “Upstairs. Girls first. Stop on the landing.”

  The girls go upstairs, Hoffman follows them and I follow Hoffman. They all do as they’re told and stop on the landing.

  “The bedroom,” I tell them.

  The girl who unlocked the front door opens a door on the right of the landing. I look through the door, “Okay,” I say. “In. Go over to the left-hand wall and stand with your noses touching it. One at a time.”

  The first girl goes in, then her partner, then Hoffman. They all face the wall like I said to.

  The bedroom is just as dim as the rest of the house. It’s lit by a central orb of diffused light set in the ceiling. There is an eight-foot-square bed and the wall in back of the bed is all mirror. On the other walls there are half a dozen framed pornographic drawings, each one showing different aspects of a set-up
involving two mature girls and a boy of around seven or eight.

  “Nice,” I say. “You never grew up, hey, Hoffman?”

  Hoffman begins to speak but I shut him up. Then the room is full of silence and I let it hang for a minute or two. Then I say, “Okay girls, listen carefully. When I say go, the one next to Hoffman, turn away from the wall and walk over to the bed and sit on the end near where I am. Then you, the other one, you do the same, only when I say so. You got that?”

  They nod. There is a visible sagging relief from Hoffman; he suddenly thinks he’s got it all figured.

  “Fine,” I say. “First one go.”

  The first one turns away from the wall and sits on the edge of the bed.

  “Now you.”

  The other one does the same and sits next to her partner. They look ten years older than when they left the Blue Dahlia. I take the bottle of pills out of my top pocket. I hand the bottle to the first girl. They both stare at the bottle.

  “Unscrew the cap and shake out all the tablets onto the bed next to you.”

  She’s frozen.

  “Do it,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t move. I let my silence speak for me. Then she moves. When she’s emptied the tablets on the bed I say, “Now divide them equally into two heaps. There’ll be a dozen each.”

  This time she does like I say first time.

  “Now pick up one heap and give them to your friend.”

  She does it.

  “Pick up the others yourself.”

  She does that, too.

  “Now I want you both to eat them.”

  They both look at me.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell them. “All you’re going to do is sleep. But if you like, there’s another alternative.”

  They begin to eat the tablets. It takes about five minutes until they’ve swallowed the last one. Then I take out the surgical tape and hand it to the first girl.

  “Your partner’s mouth. And you, when she’s done that, you do hers.” Again, they do as they’re told. Then I say to the first one, “Now get on the bed and lie face down and put your hands behind your back.”

  She twists around and crawls up the bed and lies face down and puts her hands behind her back.

  “You,” I say to the other one, “take off your friend’s tights and tie her hands.”

  I get no argument from her either. She crawls up the bed, too, and kneels next to her partner and pulls up her partner’s long dress to the waist and tugs down her tights, fumbling them off her feet, and ties her partner’s hands. She knows how tightly I need it done; she doesn’t want to have to be asked to retie the knot, and when she’s done that she looks dumbly at me for the next instructions.

  “Lie down like her,” I tell her.

  She turns around and lies down alongside her partner. When she’s done that, I bend down and take the lengths of slim cord from my hold-all and throw them on the bed; they land at the feet of the girls.

  “Okay Jimmy,” I say to Hoffman, “now it’s your turn to get in on the act. You can turn around now.”

  He turns around.

  “Listen Mister,” he says. “Look, you don’t have to go this far. You don’t have to worry any; you can have them any way you like only let me go home, huh? You don’t need me around and I won’t cause you any grief. Christ, how can I? I mean, I don’t even know you.”

  “You know me,” I tell him. “Take a closer look. And when you realize who I am, don’t say the name or you’re dead.”

  Hoffman looks at me. Then it falls on him and he almost says my name. But not quite. The fear in him is now too great for him to speak at all.

  “Yeah,” I say to him.

  He begins to shake his head but I wave the gun at the bed.

  “Over there,” I tell him.

  He manages to make it.

  “Now,” I tell him, “I want you to take the tights off your other lady friend and tie her hands the same way.”

  Hoffman kneels on the edge of the bed and tries to push up the other girl’s tight, long skirt but he begins to crap himself because he’s not doing it right. He can’t push it up, so he panics and in his panic, he resorts to solving his problem by ripping the skirt from hem to waist. And when he scrambles her tights off, he’s in so much of a fucking hurry he pulls her panties off with them; then he panics even more trying to separate them from the tights and in the end, he gives up and the panties are still interwoven with the tights when he ties the knot on the girl’s wrists. When he’s finished I say to him, “Now take a piece of cord and tie it tight around the nearest girl’s neck and when you’ve done that, carry it onto the other girl’s neck just the same.”

  When Hoffman’s done that I speak again.

  “Run the rest of the cord under the bed and bring it up the other side then join it to where it goes around the first girl’s neck. And I want it tight. You got that?”

  He’s got that and he does it. Then I tell him to take another piece of cord and tie it around the ankles of the girl on the left and again pass the cord under the bed and join it to the ankles of the girl on the right. When he’s done that I say to him, “Now take me to a room where there’s a phone.”

  I stand to one side and let him pass and as he’s passing by, he takes his life in his hands by stopping and turning to face me and launching into an appeal; but I say to him, “All you have to do if you want to stay alive is what I tell you to do.”

  The resolve breaks up; the muscles of his face go slack and he seems to lose three inches in height. Then he turns away and I follow him out of the bedroom and back along the landing, down the stairs and when we’re in the hallway, Hoffman turns to the door on his right but he’s very careful not to open it without me telling him to. He stands there and looks at me like a dog asking its master if it can go out and take a leak.

  “Go ahead,” I tell him.

  He opens the door and goes through and I follow him in. This time we’re in a broad room with a low circular hooded fireplace set dead center and around it, echoing the fireplace’s circle, is a corduroy kind of divan going almost all the way around, broken only by the gap through which you get in to actually sit down. Again the lighting in this room is like the lighting in the rest of the place, and again there’s the thinking man’s pornography hanging on the room’s dark walls.

  The phone is on a long cord so I pick it up and I tell Hoffman to sit down on the semicircular divan. When he’s done that, I go through the gap and sit down next to him and put the phone in his lap. His hands fall onto the phone and he sits perched on the edge of the divan like a girl who’s suddenly realized her skirt is too short for comfort.

  “This is going fine so far,” I tell Hoffman. “Now if it continues to go fine, you stay alive. You understand that?”

  Hoffman shakes his head.

  “I’m dead,” he says. “There’s no way you walk out of here, otherwise. I stay alive and you’re going to be found and you know that. So I’m dead.”

  It’s my turn to shake my head.

  “Believe it,” I tell him. “Your living or dying makes no difference to me. All I need is twelve hours. Now I can get those hours with you like the broads upstairs or with you dead. Like I say, it makes no difference to me, but I feel it maybe makes a lot of difference to you.” Hoffman tries to believe me for a moment or two then he says, “What do you want me to do?”

  I tell him and for a while, his fear is overcome by his disbelief.

  “You’re crazy,” he says.

  I don’t answer.

  “You’ve got to be crazy,” Hoffman repeats.

  Again I don’t answer.

  “I mean,” Hoffman says, “just supposing I do that. Just supposing I make that call. And it works out the way you want it to. I’m still dead. I do that and
I’m dead. No way. So why should I do it? Why should I do the thing that means my own death?”

  I shrug.

  “If you don’t do it, you’re dead in a few minutes,” I tell him. “If you do, you’ve time to make arrangements.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “For my funeral.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Listen,” he says. “You’re crazy. Okay, so I make the call. How can you guarantee he won’t check it out? How can you even guarantee he can be there when you say? I mean, it’s crazy.”

  “Could he be there?”

  Hoffman doesn’t say anything.

  “And your other point,” I say to him. “The guarantee he won’t check it out. You know he won’t. Because you’re making the call. No question.”

  Hoffman doesn’t say anything to that either.

  “So then we have nothing to talk over,” I say to him. “And now all you have to do is make the call and say what I’ve told you to say, and after you’ve done that, we can go upstairs again and you can lie down with your sweethearts.” Hoffman is silent for a minute or two then he picks up the receiver and sticks his finger in the dial. He starts to move it and then he stops, letting the dial spin back, and he turns to me and says, “You’re crazy. I mean, you know that?”

  “You could always prove that another way if that’s your taste.”

  Hoffman dials and he doesn’t have to wait long before the receiver is lifted at the other end. Then he says what I’ve told him to say and I have to hand it to him, he does it well; he sounds the way he’s supposed to sound. It doesn’t take long which makes it even better, makes it seem right.

  Hoffman puts the receiver back on its cradle and shakes his head and then with one sudden movement he sweeps the whole phone into my face and jumps up, hurling himself over the back of the divan. Before I can loose anything off at him, he’s over to the door and through it. He’s not stupid so he doesn’t try and unlock the door to get out that way. Instead I hear another door open and slam and by the time I’m out in the hall, I hear the opposite door being locked from the inside so I start kicking away at it. It doesn’t take long for me to loosen the inside fixings and the door flies inward; there’s a bathroom, not big, all black tiled even on the ceiling except for one wall which echoes the wall in the bedroom above, just all one mirror. Hoffman’s standing on the toilet seat trying to unlatch the bathroom cabinet door and when he hears the bathroom door crash inward, he screeches like a white owl and turns the gun he’s grabbed from the cabinet in my direction. Then he hauls off a couple of wild shots and jumps down off the toilet seat, rushes toward his own reflection in the mirror wall clawing at the glass as though he’s somehow going to make it through to Wonderland, screaming and gibbering at his own screaming and gibbering reflection. Then I get the gun on me again, and for all his insanity a part of his mind is still capable of taking in my double-handed movement as I home in the silencer on him; then I have to adjust my aim as he slides down the glass and onto his knees imploring to Christ and his own image for it not to be, waving the gun around. I pull the trigger twice and the bullets follow each other in at the base of his skull and part of his face mingles with his reflection on the glass and both slide slowly down toward the floor.