The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne

by Barry Jonsberg

  “Never done anything like that,” I corrected.

  “But you did, Calma. You did.”

  “Listen. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, you know. It doesn't mean we're engaged or anything. Anyway, that's all beside the point. My life has just been flushed down the toilet because of it and I don't know what to do!”

  Kiffo fished out another cigarette.

  “Don't do nothing,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Kiffo leaned forward and jabbed his cigarette at me like an accusing finger.

  “Christ, Calma. You're supposed to be the big brains of the class, but you're a dumb shit at times. What can you do? Go around saying to everyone, Listen, I'm not a lesbo, swear to God. You think that'll stop people talking?”

  “No, but—”

  “Stuff ‘em. I've spent my whole life dealing with people who think I'm a step below a cockroach. Do I let that worry me? Hell, I am what I am. I don't look for people's approval and you shouldn't neither. What you did for me was real good, a real nice thing to do.”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “If it's caused other people to think bad of you, well, that's their problem, not yours. At least two of us know the truth about you and the Pitbull. The rest can shove it.”

  This was, by some considerable margin, the longest speech I had ever heard from Kiffo. I wasn't used to being talked over by someone whose preferred mode of communication was an occasional grunt, normally accompanied by offensive body language. I felt touched that my predicament had moved him to that extent. What's more, he was right. There wasn't anything I could do, but just ignoring the situation didn't seem too appealing either. For all that, what he said was important to me, particularly the bit about the two of us knowing the truth.

  “You don't fancy her, do you?” he added.

  “Christ, Kiffo!”

  “Sorry. Just checking.”

  We sat for a while, lost in our own thoughts. Talking to Kiffo had done me good, just like always. It had taken my mind off my own problems a bit, which was ironic, really, since that was all we had been talking about. Maybe it was something to do with the surroundings, the evidence of Kiffo's bleak existence. I mean, the room was disgusting. I'll say that for the Fridge. She might be working every waking hour, but she still has the time and the energy to keep the house pretty tidy. But Kiffo and his dad? It was a different world they lived in, a world where normal standards didn't apply—exactly, I suppose, the kind of world that the Fridge didn't want for me. I mulled that over for a while. I could see what she wanted to achieve. I just couldn't tell whether it was worth the price we were paying to achieve it. Gives you a headache, thinking about stuff like that, so I stopped.

  Anyway, my eye had been caught by a framed photograph on the wall. It was of a young man in his late teens, leaning against a wall. He was smiling broadly, as if in response to something said as the shutter was clicking. Whatever that might have been was gone, the words long since evaporated, but the reaction was still there, frozen in that grin. He looked happy, full of life, energy radiating from the posture, the narrowed eyes, the red hair spiked into crazy angles. The glass of the photograph gleamed. There was not a mark on it, or on the frame, which had obviously been polished recently. It was a small oasis of cleanliness against the stained backdrop of the wall.

  I glanced over at Kiffo. He was looking at me, his expression neutral.

  “Kiffo, look—”

  “Time to go home, Calma,” he interrupted. “We wouldn't want you to catch anything life-threatening here, now, would we? I'll walk you back.”

  It doesn't do to argue with Kiffo. I got up from the stool and checked myself for alien life-forms while Kiffo rolled another cigarette and opened the door for me. We walked for a while in silence. The streetlights around his place were all out, probably smashed by those in his area who preferred darkness as a business environment. In other circumstances, I would have found it frightening, but Kiffo's presence was reassuring. I looked up at the sky. The stars were hammered into its blackness like small, bright nails. I wanted to talk about the photograph, but didn't know how to start. I guess I didn't have the courage.

  “Kiffo?” I said.

  “What?”

  “If I ask you something, will you answer me honestly?”

  “Depends.”

  “Why do you try so hard to give the impression that you're dumb?”

  “I am dumb.”

  “No.” I stopped. This was important and I wanted an answer. “You're not. And you know it. All that stuff you were telling me back at your place, about looking for people's approval. That's not the kind of thing a dumb person would be saying. So why pretend?”

  He shrugged, like the topic of conversation was boring him.

  “I'm not pretending to be anything, Calma. I'm me, that's all. Like I was saying earlier. Other people think it's dumb, what I am. Who cares?”

  “Does it matter what I think about you?”

  Kiffo took a deep draw on his cigarette and thought for a moment.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It does. But then, you don't think I'm dumb, do you? So no worries.”

  “But it is important what other people think about you, Kiffo. It is important if they think you are stupid when you're not!”

  “Why?”

  “It just is.” I was floundering and I knew it.

  “I'll tell you what's important, Calma.”

  “What?”

  “What we do about the Pitbull. That's important. Where do we go from here?”

  “Are you crazy?” I said. “We do nothing about the Pitbull. I've already had enough trouble with that woman. I'm going to keep my head down, do the assignments she sets and hope that she'll either leave soon or get run over by a very large road train. Preferably the latter.”

  “Yeah. You're right,” he said, scratching behind his ear. “It's too dangerous. Keep your head down. That's the way to go. You're right.”

  That stopped me. God, he can be a real bastard at times.

  “Now, hang on a moment, Kiffo,” I said. I think I even put my hands on my hips. “Just because I'm right doesn't mean I'm right, you know.”

  “Hey, you got me with that one, Calma. Just too smart for me, I guess.”

  “Cut it out, Kiffo. Don't think, not even for one minute, that you are going to do anything about the Pitbull without me. Okay?”

  “But you just said—”

  “Never mind what I just said. We are in this together.”

  I meant it too. It hit me, right then, with all the force of a genuine revelation, that I only took chances verbally. Quick at shooting from the lip, but a bit of a wuss when it came to anything else. Maybe old Kiffo, all action and adrenaline, would make a good partner, a Clyde to my Bonnie, a Butch Cassidy to my Sundance. I decided not to share this with Kiffo. I don't think he would have liked it if I'd called him Butch. But what the hell? I'd come this far, and like old Macbeth said: “I am stepped in blood so far that to go back is as tedious as to go o'er.” Or something like that. And anyway, I was going to find out about the connection between the Pitbull and Kiffo, regardless of what he might think.

  We got back to my place and I invited him in for a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks, but I'd better get back,” he said. “Dad'll be home soon, full of grog and wanting dinner. If it's not ready for him, there'll be trouble.”

  I watched as he walked off into the dark, a slight, bandylegged figure, hunched and curiously vulnerable. I had little firsthand knowledge of the kind of life he led, but I knew that it was loveless and full of casual cruelty. I felt even closer to him then than normal. Not the sort of closeness you feel for the underprivileged, when your own comfortable existence is held up to theirs. Not the sort that is tinged with guilt. I just felt—and I know this sounds really obvious and almost childish—that we were both here and human. That for all our differences, we were still, like the rest of humanity, ninety-nine percent indistinguishable from eac
h other.

  Never mind that the bastard was lying to me.

  The Fridge was in bed when I went in. I had a hot shower and snuggled under the covers, the AC blasting above my head. It felt great, the contrast between the artificial chill in the air and the sense of womblike security in bed. I dozed a little and thought about the day. Curiously, I didn't feel half so bad now. What had seemed a nightmare was only a bad dream and fading with every passing moment. I thought about Kiffo's back as he walked off into the night, and the sense of security that gave. Most of all, I curled myself around an image of someone carefully, lovingly cleaning a photograph of a grinning young man.

  Yes, it had been a strange day. As I slipped under the surface of sleep, I was bothered by just one thought. I felt somehow that it was important to write down everything I was feeling, to record my thoughts in case they appeared stupid in the morning. Or, even worse, cloudy and insubstantial.

  Sometimes diaries are a really good idea, you know. It was a shame I'd thrown so many away.

  Year 6, First Term

  You are pinned up against the school fence. You're scared, but try not to show it. As you look up into the boy's face, your eyes blink nervously behind large, multicolored glasses. He is taller than you and a lot heavier. He has a stupid face, leaden and cruel. As he leans toward you, he prods you painfully in the shoulder with a blunt, dirty finger.

  “You need to watch your mouth,” he says. “You think you can say what you like about me, is that it? You think I won't hit a girl?”

  He pushes his face farther into yours and you can smell stale tobacco. His face buckles into anger as you say nothing. His right hand, cocked behind his shoulder, clenches into a fist. You close your eyes and wait.

  Chapter 10

  Every dog has its night

  FBI Special Agent Calma Harrison stepped from the shower. She got dressed quickly, paying no attention to the thin scar that ran down the side of her stomach. A memento of a fight in Beirut. Just before she had broken his neck, he had slashed her across the abdomen. Later, she had stitched herself with a sharpened twig and a length of twine she had fashioned from local native grasses. A neat job, even more remarkable because she had no anesthetic. She preferred to bite on a bullet. One time, she had been sewing her ear back on in Botswana when she bit too hard and shot a passing antelope.

  Her eyes flickered as she detected a sound in the corridor outside her hotel room. Nerves on full alert, she whipped her Walther PPK semiautomatic from the holster and with catlike grace backflipped across the room, pressing herself against the wall There was a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” she breathed.

  “Room service,” came the reply.

  Calma registered the voice and instantaneously processed its accent. Despite the attempt at disguise—good, but not quite good enough—she placed it within a second. A rarely heard dialect from the East Bank of the Mezzanine Strip. A tiny village called B'Gurrup. The owner of the voice lived three streets down from the butcher's shop. Maybe four, Calma thought. She hadn't been to B'Gurrup in over fifteen years.

  Her mind raced. Who had connections with the Mezzanine Strip? It was a filthy, dangerous place, a hotbed of mercenaries, hit men and used-car salesmen. The answer was clear. Only one person would think of employing the specialist skills to be found in B'Gurrup. Her archenemy. The Pitbull.

  Calma did a forward roll and in less than three seconds, two hundred rounds from the Walther crashed through the spy hole in the center of the massive oak door. She opened the door and examined the bloody mess on the doorstep. The would-be assassin had a small ground-to-ground heat-seeking missile launcher in his right hand. In his left was a Kalashnikov rifle, a cluster grenade and a Swiss Army knife. This man had come prepared for action.

  “Too bad, buddy,” Calma growled as she stepped over him and headed for the elevator. Curiously, she felt a sense of relief. She still remembered that incident in Miami when she had accidentally blown away the night manager of her hotel. She had been certain that his accent was from a small Shiite community that had ordered her death through a high-level fatwa. It turned out that he had simply had a bad head cold.

  Calma stepped from the hotel onto the bustling streets. Kiffing was waiting for her at the agreed park bench, idly kicking a small Pekingese dog that was trying to attach itself to his trouser leg.

  “News?” said Calma.

  “The Pitbull is here. We're not sure why, but we think it might be connected to next week's UN Assembly. The word on the street is that there is to be an assassination attempt on a major world figure. As you know, Harrison, the presence of the Pitbull can only mean one thing: terror and devastation.”

  “That's two things,” said Calma.

  “Okay, then. Two things,” said Kiffing.

  “You want me to take her out?” asked Calma.

  “Won't that make her suspicious? A date with a complete stranger?”

  “No. I mean, kill her.”

  “That's a negative. We want her alive.”

  Calma thought quickly. She mentally replayed all the information she had gleaned about the Pitbull. Simultaneously, she analyzed the Spassky/Fischer sixth game of the 1972 World Chess Championship, finding an Enigma Variation that poor Boris had overlooked in the endgame. It was a form of mental gymnastics that helped her focus. She turned to Kiffing.

  “Any idea of her whereabouts?”

  “We have a deep throat in Mossad. The word is that she'll stake out the pre-Assembly shindig taking place at the Hilton tonight.”

  That made sense. The trouble was that the Pitbull was an expert at disguise. Calma remembered the assassination of an African leader the previous year. Itboreall the hallmarks of the Pitbull's work. Yet one eyewitness swore that the killer was actually a small bullmastiff.

  “I'll be there,” she said, “but I want full backup. I'll need an OP35 with an APB, complete tactical support, a digitized microcam with satellite linkup, solar-powered Kevlar vest with drop sides and EVA capability. Is that clear?”

  “Well… not entirely affirmative, now you come to mention it.”

  “Just do it, Kiffing. We are not dealing with amateurs here.”

  Later that evening, Calma Harrison, disguised as a balding Oriental dwarf, surveyed the exterior of the Hilton. She was pressed up against a tree in the extensive grounds and her camouflage makeup ensured that from a distance she merely looked like a piece of flaking bark. Patting the bulge of the Walther PPK, she settled down to wait, the trunk of the tree pressing a little uncomfortably into her back….

  “Wake up, for God's sake, Calma.”

  The voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. I opened my eyes slowly. Surely it wasn't morning already? The first thing I saw was Kiffo's face about two centimeters from mine. Imagine waking up and finding yourself staring at the Phantom of the Opera without his mask at close range, and you'll have some idea of the kind of shock I got.

  “Bloody hell, Kiffo,” I yelled. “Don't do that to me!”

  “Shut up!”

  I raised my head and it all came back. Kiffo's stupid idea of staking out the Pitbull's house again, on the off chance that she'd be doing another of her early-morning assignations. A real stab in the dark. Which is exactly what I felt like giving Kiffo at that precise moment. Obviously, I had dozed off. My shoulder was hurting from where I had been pressing up against a knot in the tree. My right leg had pins and needles. That bloody casuarina tree again. The same one I had waited under for Kiffo on the night of my declaration of undying love. I was beginning to bond with that tree, I can tell you. Maybe the drama lessons hadn't been a complete waste of time, after all. “Feel yourself becoming the tree, Calma. Feel the sap rising.”

  I struggled to my feet, catching at a cramp in my left thigh where the sap was obviously having difficulty getting through.

  “What time is it?”

  “About three-thirty.”

  It took a moment to register.

  “Are you
out of your tiny mind? But of course you are. Stupid question. Three-thirty? Three-thirty? If I'd known we were going to be out this late I'd have brought a camping stove and a portable TV.”

  “Oh, stop moaning, Calma. There's no point going home at ten o'clock, is there? I mean, when she goes out on one of these meetings, it's in the early hours of the morning, isn't it?”

  “Hang on, Kiffo. You're talking as if this is some sort of regular occurrence, like the orbit of Uranus or something. You've only seen her go out once. Doesn't mean she makes a habit of it or anything.”

  “I've got a feeling about tonight, okay?”

  “So you're clairvoyant now, are you?”

  “Give it a break, willya?”

  “I can tell you exactly what is going to happen, Kiffo,” I said. “Absolutely bugger all, that's what. We are going to sit here under this stupid casuarina until dawn and then we are going to go home, get dressed for school, go into her class and prop our eyelids open with matchsticks. And she is going to be even more horrible to us than normal on the grounds that sleeping through her lesson is absolutely forbidden, on pain of death, and then—”

  But I never got to finish. The Pitbull's front door opened and that familiar, threatening bulk was now approaching the front gate. I pressed myself farther into the tree. Would I ever get the imprint of bark out of my back? There was a snuffling sound and I could just make out the heaving mass of Slasher. The night was profoundly dark. Just as well, I suppose. The Pitbull and Slasher made odd lumps of darker blackness against the night, grisly silhouettes that moved like one being. It was creepy. Kiffo leaned closer to me and we watched silently as Miss Payne made a right turn out of the gate and moved silently down the road. I became aware that I was holding my breath. Kiffo leaned in closer and whispered into my ear.

  “You were saying, Calma smarty-pants?”

  “Where the hell is she going at three-thirty in the morning?” I gasped.

  To be perfectly honest, I had taken Kiffo's story with a small pinch of salt. Well, a bloody great handful, in fact. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, exactly. I just thought that maybe he had embroidered things a little. You know, the mysterious phone conversation, leaving the house. I'd figured that maybe she had got up in the night and he had taken the opportunity to get the hell out of there while the going was good. And the rest would have been just a bit of macho stuff. Making a big deal out of what had been a humiliating experience. I wanted to apologize to Kiffo but now didn't seem the right time.