Then he took the stump of plumber’s candle which he had prepared and pressed it down into the drying fixative. He tested it to make sure it was tightly set into place, looped the gasoline saturated fishline around and around its base, and pushed the rags close up against it. He made sure that a proper length of candle was exposed, and then stood up to view his handiwork. Everything, as far as he could see, was in order.
Humming a little tune under his breath, Mr Keesler took the two cans of gasoline and disposed of their contents among the boxes. He handled the cans expertly, splashing gasoline against the boxes where the bandages were attached, pouring it between the boxes wherever he detected a draft stirring in the dank air around him. When the cans were empty he wiped them thoroughly with a rag he had reserved for the purpose and added the rag to the pile around the candle.
Everything that needed to be done had now been done.
Mr Keesler went back to the table, tightly sealed the gasoline cans, and placed them in the sample case. He pulled off the rubber gloves and put them and the remnants of plumber’s candle into the case, too. Then he locked the case and put on his hat and coat.
He carried the case to a point a few feet away from the candle on the floor, set it down, and took out a book of matches from his pocket. Cupping a hand around the matchbox he lit one, and walking with great care while shielding the flame, he approached the candle, bent over it, and lit it. The flame guttered and then took hold.
Mr Keesler stood up and put out the match, not by shaking it or blowing it, but by wetting his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and squeezing out the light between them. He dropped the used match into his pocket, went to the back door, switched off the electric light there with his handkerchiefed hand, and drew open the door a few inches.
After peering outside to make sure no one was observing him, Mr Keesler stepped through the door, locked it behind him, and departed.
He returned to his office by the same route he had come. In the elevator he said to Eddie, ‘All of a sudden my tooth is killing me. I guess I’ll have to run over to the dentist,’ and Eddie said, ‘Your teeth sure give you a lot of trouble, don’t they?’
‘They sure do,’ said Mr Keesler.
He left the sample case in his room, washed his hands and face in the lavatory at the opposite end of the hallway, and took the elevator down. The dentist’s office was on 56th Street near Seventh Avenue, a few minutes’ walk away, and when Mr Keesler entered the reception room the clock on the wall there showed him that it was two minutes before three. He was pleased to see that the dentist’s receptionist was young and pretty and that she had his name neatly entered in her appointment book.
‘You’re right on time,’ she said as she filled out a record card for him. She handed him the card. ‘Just give this to Dr Gordon when you go into the office.’
In the office Mr Keesler took off his glasses, put them in his pocket, and sat back in the dentist’s chair. His feet hurt, and it felt good to be sitting down.
‘Where does it hurt?’ said Dr Gordon, and Mr Keesler indicated the back of his lower right jaw. ‘Right there,’ he said.
He closed his eyes and crossed his hands restfully on his belly while the doctor peered into his open mouth and poked at his teeth with a sharp instrument.
‘Nothing wrong on the surface,’ Dr Gordon said. ‘Matter of fact, your teeth seem to be in excellent shape. How old are you?’
‘Fifty,’ said Mr Keesler with pride. ‘Fifty-one next week.’
‘Wish my teeth were as good,’ said the dentist. ‘Well, it might possibly be that wisdom tooth under the gum that’s giving the trouble. But all I can do now is put something soothing on it and take X-rays. Then we’ll know.’
‘Fine,’ said Mr Keesler.
He came out of the office at 3:30 with a sweet, minty taste in his mouth and with his feet well rested. Walking briskly he headed for the BMT subway station at 57th Street and took a train down to Herald Square. He climbed to the street there and took a position among the crowd moving slowly past the windows of R. H. Macy’s Department Store, keeping his eyes fixed on the windows as he moved.
At four o’clock he looked at his watch.
At five minutes after four he looked at it with concern.
Then in the window of the store he saw a car coming up to the curb. He walked across the street and entered it, and the car immediately drew away from the curb and fell in with the rest of the traffic on the street.
‘You’re late, Hummel,’ said Mr Keesler to the driver. ‘Nothing went wrong, did it?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mr Hummel tensely. ‘It must have started just about 3:30. The cops called me ten minutes ago to tell me about it. The whole building’s going, they said. They wanted me to rush over right away.’
‘Well, all right,’ said Keesler. ‘So what are you so upset about? Everything is fine. In no time at all you’ll have sixty thousand dollars of insurance money in your pocket, you’ll be rid of that whole load of stuff you were stuck with – you ought to be a happy man.’
Mr Hummel awkwardly manipulated the car into a turn that led downtown. ‘But if they find out,’ he said. ‘How can you be so sure they won’t? At my age to go to jail—!’
Mr Keesler had dealt with overwrought clients many times before. ‘Look, Hummel,’ he said patiently, ‘the first job I ever did was thirty years ago for my own father, God rest his soul, when the market cleaned him out. To his dying day he thought it was an accident, he never knew it was me. My wife don’t know what I do. Nobody knows. Why? Because I’m an expert. I’m the best in the business. When I do a job I’m covered up every possible way – right down to the least little thing. So quit worrying. Nobody will ever find out.
‘But in the daytime,’ said Mr Hummel. ‘With people around. I still say it would have been better at night.’
Mr Keesler shook his head. ‘If it happened at night, the Fire Marshal and the insurance people would be twice as suspicious. And what do I look like, anyhow, Hummel, some kind of bum who goes sneaking around at night? I’m a nine-to-five man. I go to the office and I come home from the office like anybody else. Believe me, that’s the best protection there is.’
‘It could be,’ said Mr Hummel, nodding thoughtfully. ‘It could be.’
A dozen blocks away from the warehouse, thick black smoke could be seen billowing into the air above it. On Water Street, three blocks away, Mr Keesler put a hand on Mr Hummel’s arm.
‘Stop here,’ he said. ‘There’s always marshals and insurance people around the building looking at people, so this is close enough. You can see all you have to from here.’
Mr Hummel looked at the smoke pouring from the building, at the tongues of flame now and then shooting up from it, at the fire engines and tangles of hose in the street, and at the firemen playing water against the walls of the building. He shook his head in awe. ‘Look at that,’ he said, marveling. ‘Look at that.’
‘I did,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘So how about the money?’
Mr Hummel stirred himself from his daze, reached into his trouser pocket, and handed Mr Keesler a tightly folded roll of bills. ‘It’s all there,’ he said. ‘I had it made up the way you said.’
There were fourteen hundred-dollar bills and five twenties in the roll. Bending low and keeping the money out of sight Mr Keesler counted it twice. He had two bank deposit envelopes all filled out and ready in his pocket. Into one which credited the money to the account of K. E. Esler he put thirteen of the hundred-dollar bills. Into the other which was made out in the name of Keesler Novelties he put a single hundred-dollar bill. The five twenties he slipped into his wallet, and from the wallet took out the key to the warehouse.
‘Don’t forget this,’ he said, handing it to Mr Hummel. ‘Now I have to run along.’
‘Wait a second,’ said Mr Hummel. ‘I wanted to ask you about something, and since I don’t know where to get in touch with you—’
‘Yes.’
‘I have got a fri
end who’s in a very bad spot. He’s stuck with a big inventory of fur pieces that he can’t get rid of, and he needs cash bad. Do you understand?’
‘Sure,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘Give me his name and phone number, and I’ll call him up in a couple of weeks.’
‘Couldn’t you make it any sooner?’
‘I’m a busy man,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘I’ll call him in two weeks.’ He took out the book of matches and inside it wrote the name and number Mr Hummel gave him. He put away the matches and opened the door of the car. ‘So long, Hummel.’
‘So long, Esler,’ said Mr Hummel.
For the second time that day Mr Keesler traveled in the subway from East Broadway to Columbus Circle. But instead of going directly to his office this time, he turned down Eighth Avenue and dropped the sealed envelope which contained the $1300 into the night-deposit box of the Merchant’s National Bank. Across the street was the Columbus National Bank, and into its night-deposit box he placed the envelope containing the hundred dollars. When he arrived at his office it was ten minutes before five.
Mr Keesler opened his sample case, threw in the odds and ends that had come in the mail that morning, shut the sample case, and closed the rolltop desk, after throwing the New York Times into the wastebasket. He took a magazine from the pile on the filing cabinet and sat down in the swivel chair while he looked at it.
At exactly five o’clock he left the office, carrying the sample case.
The elevator was crowded, but Mr Keesler managed to wedge himself into it. ‘Well,’ said Eddie on the way down, ‘another day, another dollar.’
In the subway station Mr Keesler bought a World-Telegram, but was unable to read it in the crowded train. He held it under his arm, standing astride the sample case, half dozing as he stood there. When he got out of the station at Beverly Road he stopped at the stationery store on the corner to buy a package of razor blades. Then he walked home slowly, turned into the driveway, and entered the garage.
Mrs Keesler always had trouble getting the car into the garage. It stood there now at a slight angle to the wall so that Mr Keesler had to squeeze past it to get to the back of the garage. He opened the sample case, took out the piece of plumber’s candle and the tube of Quick-Dry, and put them into a drawer of the workbench there. The drawer was already full of other bits of hardware and small household supplies.
Then he took the two gasoline cans from the sample case and a piece of rubber tubing from the wall and siphoned gasoline from the tank of the car into the cans until they were full. He put them on the floor among other cans which were full of paint and solvent.
Finally he took out the rubber gloves and tossed them on the floor under one of the partly painted chairs. The spatters of paint on the gloves were the exact color of the paint on the chairs.
Mr Keesler went into the house by the side door, and Mrs Keesler, who had been setting the kitchen table, heard him. She came into the living room and watched as Mr Keesler turned the sample case upside down over the table. Trinkets rolled all over the table, and Mrs Keesler caught the souvenir charm before it could fall to the floor.
‘More junk,’ she said good-naturedly.
‘Same as always,’ said Mr Keesler, ‘just stuff from the office. I’ll given them to Sally’s kids.’ His niece Sally had two pretty little daughters of whom he was very fond.
Mrs Keesler put her hand over her mouth and looked around. ‘And what about the suit?’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me you forgot about the suit at the tailor’s!’
Mr Keesler already had one arm out of his coat. He stood there helplessly.
‘Oh, no,’ he said.
His wife sighed resignedly.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘And you’ll go right down there now before he closes.’
Mr Keesler thrust an arm out behind him, groping for the sleeve of his coat, and located it with his wife’s help. She brushed away a speck on the shoulder of the coat, and then patted her husband’s cheek affectionately.
‘If you could only learn to be a little methodical, dear,’ said Mrs Keesler.
The Question
I am an electrocutioner … I prefer this word to executioner; I think words make a difference. When I was a boy, people who buried the dead were undertakers, and then somewhere along the way they became morticians and are better off for it.
Take the one who used to be the undertaker in my town. He was a decent, respectable man, very friendly if you’d let him be, but hardly anybody would let him be. Today, his son – who now runs the business – is not an undertaker but a mortician, and is welcome everywhere. As a matter of fact, he’s an officer in my Lodge and is one of the most popular members we have. And all it took to do that was changing one word to another. The job’s the same but the word is different, and people somehow will always go by words rather than meaning.
So, as I said, I am an electrocutioner – which is the proper professional word for it in my state where the electric chair is the means of execution.
Not that this is my profession. Actually, it’s a sideline, as it is for most of us who perform executions. My real business is running an electrical supply and repair shop just as my father did before me. When he died I inherited not only the business from him, but also the position of state’s electrocutioner.
We established a tradition, my father and I. He was running the shop profitably even before the turn of the century when electricity was a comparatively new thing, and he was the first man to perform a successful electrocution for the state. It was not the state’s first electrocution, however. That one was an experiment and was badly bungled by the engineer who installed the chair in the state prison. My father, who had helped install the chair, was the assistant at the electrocution, and he told me that everything that could go wrong that day did go wrong. The current was eccentric, his boss froze on the switch, and the man in the chair was alive and kicking at the same time he was being burned to a crisp. The next time, my father offered to do the job himself, rewired the chair, and handled the switch so well that he was offered the job of official electrocutioner.
I followed in his footsteps, which is how a tradition is made, but I am afraid this one ends with me. I have a son, and what I said to him and what he said to me is the crux of the matter. He asked me a question – well, in my opinion, it was the kind of question that’s at the bottom of most of the world’s troubles today. There are some sleeping dogs that should be left to lie; there are some questions that should not be asked.
To understand all this, I think you have to understand me, and nothing could be easier. I’m sixty, just beginning to look my age, a little overweight, suffer sometimes from arthritis when the weather is damp. I’m a good citizen, complain about my taxes but pay them on schedule, vote for the right party, and run my business well enough to make a comfortable living from it.
I’ve been married thirty-five years and never looked at another woman in all that time. Well, looked maybe, but no more than that. I have a married daughter and a granddaughter about a year old, and the prettiest, smilingest baby in town. I spoil her and don’t apologize for it, because in my opinion that is what grandfathers were made for – to spoil their grandchildren. Let mama and papa attend to the business; grandpa is there for the fun.
And beyond all that I have a son who asks questions. The kind that shouldn’t be asked.
Put the picture together, and what you get is someone like yourself. I might be your next-door neighbor, I might be your old friend, I might be the uncle you meet whenever the family gets together at a wedding or a funeral. I’m like you.
Naturally, we all look different on the outside but we can still recognize each other on sight as the same kind of people. Deep down inside where it matters we have the same feelings, and we know that without any questions being asked about them.
‘But,’ you might say, ‘there is a difference between us. You’re the one who performs the executions, and I’m the one who reads about them in the papers, and that�
��s a big difference, no matter how you look at it.’
Is it? Well, look at it without prejudice, look at it with absolute honesty, and you’ll have to admit that you’re being unfair.
Let’s face the facts, we’re all in this together. If an old friend of yours happens to serve on a jury that finds a murderer guilty, you don’t lock the door against him, do you? More than that: if you could get an introduction to the judge who sentences that murderer to the electric chair, you’d be proud of it, wouldn’t you? You’d be honored to have him sit at your table, and you’d be quick enough to let the world know about it.
And since you’re so willing to be friendly with the jury that convicts and the judge that sentences, what about the man who has to pull the switch? He’s finished the job you wanted done, he’s made the world a better place for it. Why must he go hide away in a dark corner until the next time he’s needed?
There’s no use denying that nearly everybody feels he should, and there’s less use denying that it’s a cruel thing for anyone in my position to face. If you don’t mind some strong language, it’s a damned outrage to hire a man for an unpleasant job, and then despise him for it. Sometimes it’s hard to abide such righteousness.
How do I get along in the face of it? The only way possible – by keeping my secret locked up tight and never being tempted to give it away. I don’t like it that way, but I’m no fool about it.
The trouble is that I’m naturally easygoing and friendly. I’m the sociable kind. I like people, and I want them to like me. At Lodge meetings or in the clubhouse down at the golf course I’m always the center of the crowd. And I know what would happen if at any such time I ever opened my mouth and let that secret out. A five-minute sensation, and after that the slow chill setting in. It would mean the end of my whole life then and there, the kind of life I want to live, and no man in his right mind throws away sixty years of his life for a five-minute sensation.
You can see I’ve given the matter a lot of thought. More than that, it hasn’t been idle thought. I don’t pretend to be an educated man, but I’m willing to read books on any subject that interests me, and execution has been one of my main interests ever since I got into the line. I have the books sent to the shop, where nobody takes notice of another piece of mail, and I keep them locked in a bin in my office so that I can read them in private.
The Specialty of the House Page 35
