The Porkchoppers

by Ross Thomas

  Now that he was president, Hanks didn’t feel that he could afford to inquire too closely into how Marvin Harmes had stolen the election in Chicago, so he didn’t, and Harmes could never see any point in telling Hanks that he hadn’t.

  Hanks’s second official act was to call Oscar Imber in and fire him. The next day Imber went to work for the Teamsters.

  Twenty minutes after he fired Imber, Hanks called Fred Mure in and did the same thing to him. Mure could think of no one who needed his talents so he called Sadie Cubbin, but she refused to talk to him.

  Charles Guyan, who had already collected the last of his fee a week before Cubbin was killed, loaded his wife onto their Chris-Craft, along with two cases of Scotch, and sailed off down the inland waterway to Florida.

  As soon as he heard of Marvin Harmes’s new appointment, Indigo Boone sold him a $100,000 life insurance policy over the telephone. Neither of them mentioned the election, but Harmes thought it best to take out the policy anyway.

  Two days after Cubbin’s death, Walter Penry received a scrawled note on a piece of ruled tablet paper from his immensely wealthy, immensely eccentric client, informing him that his services were no longer required.

  A day after it was announced that Hanks had won, Mickey Della sent him a bill for the balance of his fee which amounted to, in Della’s estimation, $21,312.57. Hanks threw it in the wastebasket.

  A number of editorial writers who had mourned Cub-bin’s death as the passing of a colorful labor statesman, indeed the passing of an era, now started writing about how Hanks’s election signaled the dawn of a tough, new breed of leadership for the nation’s hard hats.

  And on October 27, a Friday, ten days after his father’s death, Kelly Cubbin went calling on Coin Kensington.

  The fat old man opened the door to his hotel suite and liked what he saw. He’s got his old man’s looks, he decided, but he’s got something else, too. He’s got spunk.

  “Come in, son,” Kensington said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Thank you,” Kelly said.

  “You like a drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  “I’m having a little refreshment of my own concoction. You take a Coke, add a jigger or two of chocolate syrup, and a couple of scoops of vanilla cream.”

  “Sounds good,” Kelly said.

  “You like one?”

  “Sure.”

  Kensington calculated how much ice cream he had left, decided that there was enough, and bustled over to the kitchenette. “Find yourself a seat, son. Walter Penry said you wanted to see me.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “He said it was something to do with your dad’s death.”

  “That’s right.”

  Kensington came over from the kitchenette carrying two of his concoctions. “I find this real tasty,” he said, handing Kelly one.

  Kelly sampled it with a spoon. “Good,” he said. “I never had one with chocolate syrup before.”

  “I gotta confess to you, son, that I’m afraid I’m addicted to chocolate. You know it makes me sympathetic to folks who’re hooked on drugs or booze. I’ve tried to quit and there were times when I thought I had it licked, under control, you know, but then I’d bite down on a little old bar of Baby Ruth and whoosh, I was gone again.”

  With that Kensington devoted himself to the sticky mixture and Kelly watched him poke it into his, mouth. I guess gluttony’s what he has left, Kelly thought, that and power and wealth and the desire to meddle in other people’s lives. I can understand that because that’s what I wanted to do, be the village wise man, and maybe that’s what he’s been able to do except on a grander scale. Wise man to the nation, not the village.

  “I was sorry about your dad, son,” Kensington said when he finished his sweet.

  “Did you know him?”

  “No, not personally, but I’d read after him, as they say. Now I ain’t gonna tell you he was a great man, but I think I’d have liked him if I’d known him.”

  “A lot of people did, I guess.”

  “Now just what is it you wanted to see me about?”

  “I want to find out who killed him.”

  “Huh,” Kensington said and set his mind to racing. Well, now, maybe he knows something and maybe what he knows can be useful and just maybe it’ll tie up all those loose ends that are still flopping around all over the place.

  “Cops say that Goff fellow killed him,” Kensington said.

  “He pulled the trigger for a price,” Kelly said. “I want to find out who met his price.”

  “From what Penry tells me they got eleventy-dozen FBI agents tracking that Goff boy back to the year one.”

  “I know,” Kelly said. “I used to be a cop.”

  “Any good at it?”

  “I would have been if I stayed in it long enough to get mean.”

  “You got a theory, then?”

  Kelly nodded. “That’s right. I’ve got a theory.”

  “And you’re gonna tell me because I’ve got something to do with it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I’m listening, son.”

  “It’ll take a while.”

  “I got time.”

  “Goff didn’t have a motive. None at all. I’ve done some checking on him and all he was interested in was his job over in Baltimore and television and paperback westerns. I’m not saying I’ve done as thorough a job as the FBI’ll do, but I’m satisfied that Goff wasn’t crazy. So that means that he did it for money.”

  “So who paid him?”

  “I think they’re going to find out that Goff was a pro, a free lance. I don’t think they’re ever going to find out who paid him because I think it was a professional murder broker and those guys just don’t get caught.”

  “How much you think he got paid?”

  “You can get a pretty good east-coast murder done for around seven or eight thousand, if it’s somebody that’s going to stir up a lot of heat. My guess is that whoever signed up to kill my old man probably asked ten or eleven thousand.”

  “How much would just a run-of-the-mill kind cost?” asked Kensington who always found details fascinating.

  “Anywhere from two-fifty up to three thousand.”

  “Huh. Life’s pretty cheap when you get right down to it.”

  “It is in this country, but it’s even cheaper in others.”

  “Well, I suppose you’ve got a suspect.”

  “Two,” Kelly said.

  “Well?”

  “You’re one of them.”

  “That’s what I thought. Why?”

  “The stock market. The day after my old man got killed, the stock in the companies that the union has contracts with took a nose dive. They kept on diving for three days because they didn’t know whether there was going to be a strike or not. Stock in two of them dived so far that they even suspended trading.”

  “I know that,” Kensington said.

  “Anybody who knew that my old man was going to be killed, and who knew the market, could have sold short and cleaned up. You sold short, Mr. Kensington.”

  “How much did I make?”

  “Three million dollars, give or take a hundred thousand.”

  “I made four point two million, boy, but your homework’s pretty good.”

  “How’s my theory?”

  “It’s a pretty good theory, but it just ain’t true. I sold short because I back my judgment and I honestly thought that Sammy Hanks would beat your dad. Even after that television fiasco, I still thought Sammy would beat him. Now I didn’t have any inside information, but I can spot a trend because that’s my trade and the trend in labor unions in the last few years has been to throw the rascals out and your dad, and no offense is intended here, was about the top rascal of them all. So I figured Sammy would win and with all his strike talk, he’d just scare the hell out of the market. Well, there wasn’t any reaction after that TV program, because they thought your dad had it won, but when he got k
illed and there was the chance that fit-throwing nut was gonna be president, well, the smart money panicked and I cleaned up. Now you can believe that or not, son, but that’s how she happened.”

  After a moment, Kelly nodded. “I believe you.”

  “Good. Now who’s your other suspect?”

  “Before I tell you, I want to find out if you’ll do what I want you to. I don’t guess I put that very well. What I’m asking for is your help. I went to Penry, but he said he couldn’t do it without your okay.”

  “Penry works for me. If you need something done and I think it needs doing, then I’ll sic him on it.”

  “I want to check somebody’s checking and savings accounts for the last three or four months. I can’t get that kind of information.”

  “Big sums of money, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “In or out?”

  “Out.”

  “You don’t think the FBI’s gonna do that?”

  “It might take them a while and that might be too late.”

  “Just give me the name and we’ll have what you want in fifteen minutes. Well, hell, maybe thirty.”

  A half hour later, Coin Kensington walked Kelly to the door. Kelly turned and held out his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Kensington. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  Kensington nodded and then scratched the top of his bald head. He looked almost embarrassed. “Your dad leave you any money, son?”

  “Yes, he left me some.”

  “You wouldn’t want to come study it with me, would you?”

  “Study it?”

  “I mean study what it really is. You can make a lot of it while you’re studying, if you want to do that, too.”

  Kelly looked at the fat old man. He’s lonely, too, I guess. The nation’s wise man is lonely just like everybody else. “What is money, Mr. Kensington?”

  The old man brightened. “You come back, son. You come back when you’re done with all this and I’ll tell you.”

  Kelly grinned. “I may just do that.”

  Coin Kensington looked at Kelly closely and the bright expression faded from the old man’s face. “No, you won’t come back.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, son, to learn about money, you gotta be mean and—” Kensington broke off.

  “And what?”

  “You’re just not mean enough.”

  At three o’clock that afternoon Kelly knocked on the door of apartment 612 in a three-year-old building in Southwest Washington. The door was opened by a man who hadn’t shaved that day, or the day before, or the day before that. He stared at Kelly for a moment before he said, “You should’ve called.”

  “I took a chance. You busy?”

  The man shook his head. “No, I’m not busy.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “It’s not cleaned up.”

  “That won’t bother me.”

  The man shrugged. “Come on in.”

  Inside Kelly saw that a coffee table was littered with two empty vodka bottles, a half-full one, four crumpled, empty packs of Lucky Strikes, two brimful ashtrays, three smeared glasses, and a .38 revolver. The man took a chair near the vodka and the pistol.

  “You want a drink?” he said, and for the first time Kelly noticed the slight slur in his speech.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You never liked me, did you, Kelly?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “You never liked me and your dad never liked me.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Why did I do what?”

  “Why did you have the chief killed, Fred?”

  Fred Mure’s hand moved out and closed around the butt of the revolver. He picked it up and rested it in his lap, not aiming it at anything.

  “I loved him, Kelly,” Mure said, his face distorting it self into a parody of grief, although real grief often seems to parody itself. “I loved him like a—”

  “Like a son, Fred.”

  “That ain’t nice to say.”

  “How much did it cost you, Fred, twelve thousand dollars? That’s what you took out of your savings account on July twenty-fifth.”

  “Sadie was gonna marry me. We were gonna get married.”

  “Sadie never said that.”

  “She didn’t have to say it. I knew. I could tell.”

  “You mean you took Sadie to bed a few times when the chief couldn’t get it up and you thought it was true romance. Hell, the chief knew all about it and Sadie knew that he knew.”

  “He told me—” Mure said. “He told me—uh—”

  “What’d he tell you, Fred?”

  Fred Mure’s eyes bulged and his mouth twisted. “He told me to stop fucking his wife!” It came out as a long, loud shout.

  “After he died, what did Sadie say?”

  “She wouldn’t see me. She wouldn’t even talk to me.”

  “Jesus,” Kelly said and wiped his hands on his trousers as though they were soiled. “Who’d you hire to do it, Fred? Who’d you broker it through?”

  “Goff,” Mure said. “Truman Goff.”

  “You got his name out of the papers. Who set it up for you?”

  “I killed Goff,” Mure said, and there was pride in his tone now. “I killed him after he killed Don. I killed Don’s murderer.”

  “You shit, too,” Kelly snapped. “Who’d you broker it through? Who’d you pay the money to?”

  “Bill,” Mure whispered, clutching the revolver more tightly.

  “Bill who?”

  “Just Bill.”

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “It was a phone number that I got from some guy I met in a bar. I don’t know who he was. Just some guy. He said if I ever wanted anything done, all I had to do was call that number in New York at ten sharp on any Wednesday.”

  “What was the number?”

  “382-1094,” Mure said. “Area code 212.”

  “Pay phone,” Kelly said. He got up. “Come on, Fred, I’m taking you down.”

  “You’re not a cop. You’re not a cop anymore.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Mure seemed to remember the gun he held in his hand. He aimed it at Kelly. “You’re not taking me nowhere, Kelly. You’re not a cop.”

  “Go on, Fred, pull the trigger. Get it over with.” Kelly held his breath and then let it out to say, “You want a real fat mess? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger.”

  Fred Mure looked down at the gun, examining it as if he had never seen it before. “They gave it back to me,” he said. “The Pittsburgh cops. They gave it back to me.”

  “Let’s go, Fred.”

  “Oh, God, I don’t want to live!” Fred moaned and then visibly brightened at the thought. He looked slyly at Kelly, darted across the room, down a short hall, and into the bathroom. As Kelly followed he heard the click of the lock on the bathroom door.

  Kelly waited. After a moment, Fred Mure called: “You won’t have to worry about me no more, Kelly. Nobody will. I’m gonna shoot myself.”

  Kelly waited some more.

  “Tell Sadie. Tell Sadie I still love her.”

  Kelly kept on waiting.

  “I’m no fuckin good!” Mure screamed.

  Kelly waited.

  “I’m gonna do it now, Kelly.”

  Kelly said nothing. He only waited.

  “I hate this fuckin world!” Fred Mure yelled through the door.

  Kelly waited another full minute before the door opened and Mure slowly came out, his eyes downcast, a sheepish, embarrassed look on his face. “I just couldn’t do it, Kelly.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  29

  On October 26, a Saturday, the gray-haired man who sometimes called himself Just Bill came out of his apartment building on West Fifty-seventh and turned left. In his right hand he held a leash that was attached to an aged English pit bull that waddled as it walked and wheezed as it breathed. In his left hand, Just Bill carried a brown, oblon
g, stamped and addressed manila envelope.

  “Come on, Dum-Dum,” Just Bill said to the dog and strolled slowly down the block toward the mailbox. Half way there he stopped and bought a New York Daily News because its screamer headline had caught his eye:

  CUBBIN’S ‘REAL’

  KILLER SQUEALS

  Just Bill raised his eyebrows as he read the story while waiting at a lamppost for Dum-Dum to relieve himself. As he walked on toward the mailbox, Just Bill ran the facts of the story through his mind to determine whether any of them might implicate him. When he was satisfied that there was no possible way that they could, he smiled slightly, and checked the envelope again to make sure its address was correct:

  Mr. Karl Syftestad

  Room 518

  Benser Building

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

  Just Bill read the address twice to make sure it was right, nodded to himself in a satisfied way, and dropped the envelope into the mailbox.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1972 by Ross Thomas

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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