In fact, forty-eight hours after I’d dropped the dime on him, Axel was still walking round town as happy as Larry. A very happy Larry, who was no doubt still hanging out with his friends Curly and Moe.
Plan B was looking like it would nuzzle Plan A out to touch. Sure enough, when Axel was continuing to breathe four days after my conversion, I knew I would have to kill the guy myself.
While not exactly the ideal solution for me, I had known this was a likely outcome the minute I agreed to kill him. After all, that was the original deal I’d signed up to do.
42
I CARRIED ON following Axel for another day, hoping the mob would do the deed, but still there was nothing but a living, breathing water purification salesman. By Sunday night, I did some real planning and figured out that if I used a gun, I would have the age-old problem of trying to hide or destroy it. Neither appealed.
Then I went through the mental list of a killer’s tools: blunt instruments, sharp instruments, heavy objects and so on. I reached my conclusion before the thought process even started: that I’d need a decent pair of gloves to mask any fingerprints and my bare hands. Anything else would just be a piece of evidence to be found at some later date.
Armed with my conclusion, I watched Axel enter Angie’s front door again around ten on Sunday night and I waited. Soon after one, Axel reappeared at the door and walked to his auto, stopping only to put the key in the lock, turn it and crouch down to sit inside.
This was the moment I pounced. The car was parked away from any street lighting, precisely because Axel didn’t want to be seen. So I grabbed him from behind, snapping his right arm around his back and placing my free arm around his throat. The sudden surprise of the attack meant Axel had no time to think about what was happening to him and I let go of his hand so I could exert more pressure on his throat with my arm. He gurgled and instinctively snatched at my arm with both his hands. The air was getting harder for him to breathe.
I looked around the street and saw no-one about, but I still felt quite conspicuous. I dragged Axel by the throat, keeping my arm wrapped tightly around his neck. We slipped in between two trees buried by a nearby hedge. Then I got to work, pulling my arm tightly back to restrict the airflow as much as I could. The gurgling increased as did the ferocity of his grabbing.
I PUNCHED HIM in the kidneys to reduce the amount of struggle inside him and his hands ending up resting on my arms instead of gripping them. The gurgling morphed into a rasping sound and my work was nearly done. One more squeeze and he ceased any breathing noises.
The driver’s door was already unlocked and I only needed a minute or two to drag his sorry ass into his car and leave him slumped at the wheel. I hopped straight home, removed all my clothes and put them in a plastic bag and tied up the contents. Then I showered, changed and took the bag away from my apartment block and over to a building on the other side of the city to place it carefully in a pile of commercial trash. I’d studied the routes of various refuse collection companies and had memorized which collected early on a Monday.
On my way home, I signaled to Alice that my end of the bargain was complete through the usual addition of a fin to her morning paper. When I got back to my bedroom, my alarm sprang into action and my night’s work was done. I lay on the bed and grabbed a few hours sleep before I headed off to our rendezvous.
Café Olé was yet another venue with a dumb name and a reputation for decent coffee. By the time I arrived, Alice was already sitting in the booth with a drink in front of her, perusing the menu for brunch. When I got to the table, she stood up and threw her arms around my neck like we hadn’t seen each other for a decade. With her lips less than an inch from my ear, she whispered: “Thank you so much,” and planted a kiss on my mouth while holding both my cheeks in her hands. The broad sure was glad to see me.
“Have whatever you want on the menu. My treat!”
I smiled and when the waitress came over, I ordered a coffee and a stack of pancakes. I wasn’t hungry at all, but I didn’t want to dampen Alice’s enthusiasm either. There was a brightness in her eyes and a lightness to her voice I hadn’t witnessed before. Being a widow was agreeing with her.
“Just so I know. Is it done? Have you ...?”
“Yes, I have. The deed is done. You won’t be seeing him anymore.”
She smiled and her relaxed shoulders appeared to have another release of tension as she leaned forward across the table and took my hand, nice and casual as day. I glanced down and looked back at her face, but did nothing to stop this sweet-smelling woman from touching me. The truth was: I liked it. Her perfume was the same she wore that first day we met and it engulfed me in a warm glow, causing a little fizz of pleasure in the pit of my stomach. Or at least I thought it was my stomach.
OUR FOOD ARRIVED and she consumed her eggs over easy with vibrant energy while I picked at my stack taking only a mouthful or two. My appetite had gone from the moment Axel had taken his last breath.
We talked about the weather and Alice’s house, but one thing we did not talk about was Axel. Apart from when we were eating, Alice held my hand and stroked my fingers during our conversation. Eventually, she stood up and came over to my side of the booth.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she whispered after I had shifted over slightly to accommodate her full hips.
“What’s that then?” I asked as she put her hand on my leg under the table.
“I’ve taken a room in a hotel round the corner. Do you want to come over and check it out?”
For a widow, Alice Lechuga was coming on strong and, despite my lack of interest in food, my other appetites appeared to be working just fine.
True to her word, Alice paid for the lunch and we stepped out into the sunshine, strolling along the street hand in hand. By the time we’d turned the corner, I had my left arm around her neck and her right arm was planted at my hip.
The room Alice had got was not just any room: it was a suite.
“This must have cost you,” I said issuing a whistle of astonishment when we first entered the hallway and I closed the door.
“Sure did, but I can afford it now.”
The burrows on my frown showed my lack of understanding. I couldn’t see the connection.
“Why darling, Axel had a life policy and I’ll be able to claim it once the coroner reports misadventure. The only way I couldn’t get the money is if it had been a suicide.”
She stepped into the bedroom, placing her clutch bag on a chair. Keeping her back to me, she turned her head towards me and said, with the sweetest voice imaginable: “Be a love and unzip my dress.” And I did.
We frolicked in that room until nightfall, discovering every nook and cranny of each other’s bodies. I lost count of the number of times my dick was inside some orifice of hers or another. Just didn’t matter.
By the end, she put her clothes back on while I lay in bed.
“Stay until morning if you like, lover.”
She kissed me on the forehead, took the rest of my money and left it in an envelope on the dressing table and walked out.
Over the next week, we met twice more, but we realized the only things we had in common were Axel and that we enjoyed fucking each other until at least one of us lapsed into unconsciousness. That was not sufficient to sustain any relationship. Mainly because she was rich enough to buy someone far more interesting than I could ever be. And we both understood that.
Besides, by the end of the seven days, I was getting an extremely sore dick and, when I visited my doctor, found she’d given me a dose.
Once I was cleared up, I left the City of Angels and headed east for the rest of my life.
PART SEVENTEEN
BALTIMORE 1968
43
MARTIN LUTHER KING and Robert Kennedy were both dead several months before I found myself in Baltimore. The mood in the country had turned a shade darker since Kennedy’s brains were splattered on the floor and the tension in the black neighborhoods w
as palpable, at least on the odd occasions when I hit those ghettos.
Most of my time that long, hot summer was spent taking money from the bridges and tunnel set in Manhattan. You know the sort: worried about husbands and wives pleasuring themselves with younger alternatives during the summer of love, while hippies really pleasured themselves with any orifice they could find on the other side of the country.
As luck would have it, I followed a john into the suburbs of Baltimore around July or August. I can’t remember which at this point in my life. Either way, I walked past a cemetery near a park not far from the freeway when I realized I had no paper to use for my usual information retrieval technique: dropping a generous Hamilton on a dude. When the thought flashed across my mind, I was standing in front of a branch of the First Bank of Baltimore. The place had been open only a minute or two as I saw the time on my watch was nine.
Pushing the door open, I took my turn in line to swap out my larger notes for something more useful. As I settled into the wait, I popped my hands into my pants pockets because bank lines are plain tedious.
To relieve the monotony of the experience, the doors of the bank burst open and three guys with balaclavas shot straight in. One punched the security guard in the face as he was standing by the door, keeping the bank safe from robbers and other felons. The old man dropped to the marble floor like a sack of potatoes and one of the balaclava boys shouted: “Everyone lie on the ground and do what we say or we’ll shoot you in the fucking head!”
We all hit the floor as good as gold: everyone was attached to their heads and wanted it to stay that way.
I made sure I was particularly still because I knew I had a piece in my jacket and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of explaining that to a man holding a sawn-off shotgun, for that was their rifle of choice. And who could blame them?
WHILE ONE OF the jokers kept the barrels of the shotgun squarely on us, the other two vanished through a staff door, opened by a cashier on the advice of the leader of the gang:
“Open the fucking door or I’ll put a hole in this bitch’s head!” A clear instruction, easy to understand. The girl behind the desk made the right choice and buzzed the door open to let them through. Each of the guys were carrying a large black hold-all and the third who stayed with us passed his bag over to one of the others.
“If they move, kill ’em!” said the one issuing instructions and all the threats. I believed him and remained as still as physically possible.
I had placed myself on the floor so my head faced sideways and I had a clear view across the marble to the other side where the staff door was and, presumably, the safe beyond. This meant I could watch the two balaclava boys leave the place and close the door behind them.
While they were gone, the third guy stormed up and down the room, keeping the barrels of his shotgun trained on the citizenry who were eating dirt. He was puffed up with his newly found power, but the dude knew how to hold a rifle, so I was more relaxed than if I’d thought he was just another hothead with a gun. Those guys are the most dangerous. They don’t even know to keep the safety on unless they need it. Over the years, I’ve seen countless guys pour lead into their toes way earlier than they’d plug a civilian.
Right now though, there were many civilians inches from my head and I could see various amounts of whimpering and sniffling to know soon someone would try to do something very dumb.
Hard to say with all the commotion and shouting and tears, but I figured we’d been in this situation between five and ten minutes. By my reckoning that meant the cops would surround the place any minute, which’d be a real test of these men. How would they handle that situation when it happened? We would have to wait and see.
As predicted, and there is always one, a member of the assembled throng made their move to be a hero. It was the old guard, who believed he should make more of an effort to protect the bank from these villains. His judgement was deeply impaired because, even though I’ve never worked in a bank, I knew the money was insured so there was never any need for heroics. Banks always get their money back. No-one needed to lay down their life in the name of the First Bank of Baltimore and old Joe should have been told that during his innumerable training exercises.
However, Joe decided to have his glory day today and rolled over on his side and slide, as silently as he could, towards the main exit. He was not running away in slo-mo, but instead, his gun had fallen out of his holster and was lying by the wall next to the door.
Bully Boy might have been pacing up and down, but he was keeping a close eye on all of us and spotted Joe taking his tortuous route. Bully Boy walked straight over, kicked Joe in the balls to stop him in his tracks and then trained the butt of the gun into Joe’s head. A red ripple trickled out of his skull and coalesced on the marble floor, forming an almost perfect circle of blood coming out of Joe’s left ear.
This action sent the rest of the civilians into full panic mode, which was not what Bully Boy needed. To make matters worse, two events coincided with the butt landing inside Joe’s head: first, the other two came back from the vault with their black bags now heavy with money and, second, the police arrived outside.
NOW YOU DON’T need to be a trained psychologist to figure out what happened next. First, the folk with their teeth to the marble howled, cried, screamed long and hard, because they were not used to witnessing such violence close at hand. One thing to watch footage of the Vietnam War on TV, another to see wood entering an old man’s head only feet from your face. For the first minute or two, all you could hear was the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Second, all the wailing stopped within an instant when the sound of the detective came into the building loud and clear through a bullhorn:
“This is the police. We have the place surrounded. Put your guns down and come out with your hands up.”
The answer to this suggestion was swift and clear, as well as being the number one cliché of all time for bank robbers. Bully Boy smashed a window at the front of the bank, pointed his shotgun out of the gaping hole and let rip two short sharp blasts. Then he ducked back inside and hid behind the wall as a salvo of bullets from police guns showered into the bank, ricocheting around the place until all their energy had dissipated.
When I opened my eyes, I saw red dribbling off my eyelashes and I thought I’d been hit by a stray bullet, but I was wrong. This was someone else’s blood: a civilian had been caught and was screaming in agony. As he was so loud, I knew he wasn’t seriously injured. When you’ve been hit in a lung or the heart, you keep your thoughts to yourself as your last breaths ebb away. This dude was clutching his arm and rolling around.
Once the shooting died down, a woman took a scarf and tied it around the dude’s upper arm to stem the profuse bleeding. If nothing else, the attention the dude received shut him up and let the rest of us think.
The two from the vault reappeared.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Cops.”
“And, why were they shooting at us?”
“I let them know we mean business.”
“Brian, I told you not to shoot unless I gave permission, right?”
“Yes, boss.”
The boss shook his head and Brian looked down at his feet. He had issues following orders. The boss was annoyed rather than angry, like this was normal for Brian.
“You just oughtna done it, is all,” the boss added, expressing disappointment in his voice rather than that initial anger. Besides, he needed Brian on-side and the man was packing heat.
“What about the cops?”
“You keep an eye on the people and I’ll have a look outside.”
Brian did exactly what he was told and returned to pacing up and down near our heads, pointing the shotgun downwards but away from any body. I could see he had received some sort of arms training at some point: ex-military, perhaps.
Not that I’ve been in these kinds of situations many times, but one thing I have learned: when ther
e are guys with guns and a lot of tension in the air always be wary of the one quietly fading into the background.
I HAD SPOTTED that the third robber had remained completely silent on the way in, on his way out to the vault and now he was back and standing near the boss and Brian. The dude stood there holding his shotgun with both hands: one on the barrel and the other near the trigger. He appeared less comfortable with his firearm than Brian, but this was not his first day with one in his possession. His eyes flitted from left to right and back again. The guy was stressed out of his brains. A small ripple of sweat broke away from his hair on his forehead and meandered down, along his nose and dripped onto the floor. He was an accident waiting to happen.
The boss leaned against the wall near the front window and popped his head just above the line of sight to check out the police lines. His head bobbed straight back down. This meant the locals had come out in force and were pointing numerous pistols and rifles in our general direction.
While I was glad that the cops were taking an interest in our case, I was also aware that in their enthusiasm, the cops had already wounded one hostage. In particular, he was sufficiently close it could have been me with a hole in my arm and not him. This made me nervous, and I too felt a bead of sweat drip off my head, but because of my position, my bead fell off my ear, rolled along my neck and landed on the floor.
A noise ripped across the silence in the bank. The boss, Brian and Quiet Colin swung round pointing their guns every which way they could. The noise was emanating from a telephone on the cashiers’ desk and, once he realized this was the source, the boss walked over and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” Beat.
“Everyone is fine, but you hit one civilian with your gunfire just now... Flesh wound I’d say... Yep... Sure... Now you need to listen to me. We will need a fast car and a clear exit route out of this town, you see? If we don’t get that in the next hour then someone’s gonna die. All we came in here for was the money and the only person stopping us is you. So listen up and listen good: give us what we want or you will be on the news explaining why you let these good people get a bullet in the head. Capiche?”
The Case Page 24
