Killy

by Donald E. Westlake

  ‘That may be,’ said Jerry. ‘You may be telling the absolute truth, Paul, and I’d like to think you are. But you should’ve explained it all that nice and clear to Mrs Hamilton. You had that poor lady worried, don’t you realize that? Why didn’t you tell her you were just a couple of boys working for a union?’

  ‘We did tell her.’

  ‘Oh, come on now, Paul. She told us you two forced your way into the house and—’

  ‘She’s a liar!’

  The hand stung my face again, and a voice said, ‘Don’t interrupt.’

  ‘Now, listen, Paul,’ said Jerry. ‘Mrs Hamilton signed a sworn statement that you two knocked on the door, forced your way Into the house, looked through it for Mr Hamilton, and then demanded to know when he got home from work. She refused to tell you, and then you told her you were staying at the motel and Hamilton had ought to come there by seven or you’d be back for him. And that’s all you told her.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ I said. ‘We told her we were from the union first thing, and she knew about the letter her husband had written us.’

  ‘She says she never heard of such a letter. And you know we didn’t find it when we looked through your place.’

  ‘It was right in the briefcase.’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’

  I remained silent, because there was nothing I could have said that wouldn’t have resulted in my being hit again. But I was hit anyway, and a voice said, ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘There wasn’t any question!’

  Slap. ‘Don’t raise your voice.’

  ‘Now, Ben,’ said Jerry. ‘Paul, why do you want to protect this Killy fellow? We know you’re in the clear, so why don’t you get smart and tell us the truth?’

  ‘I don’t know what truth you want,’ I said. The side of my face was aching, like an undefined toothache.

  ‘Well, there’s only one kind of truth, Paul, isn’t there?’

  ‘That’s what I always thought.’

  ‘All right, now. You don’t want to call Mrs Hamilton a liar, do you?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Listen, there’s no reason to make yourself trouble. You explained what Killy meant, and I believe it, but why tell a lot of lies? He said what Mrs Hamilton told us, and she just misunderstood it, that’s all. Isn’t that possible?’

  ‘We didn’t force our way into the house.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that, Paul. I’m talking about what was said. That quote I read you. Now, was that an accurate quote hi wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Now, wait a second.’ He read the quote to me again, and said, ‘Isn’t that just about what Killy said? Not word for word, maybe but pretty close.’

  ‘But that isn’t all he said!’

  ‘That isn’t what I’m asking you, Paul. I’m asking you if Killy said that there that I just read you, or something very close to it.

  ‘Yes or no,’ said a warning voice.

  I spread my hands, helplessly, but they were waiting. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Jerry. ‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Paul I’m glad to know you’re going to come clean now. I know you didn’t really want to call Mrs Hamilton a liar.’

  ‘But she is a liar.’

  ‘Oh, now, Paul, there you go again. You just admitted—’

  ‘We didn’t force our way into the house.’

  Slap! ‘Don’t interrupt.’ Slap! ‘And don’t raise your voice.’

  ‘You son of a bitch—‘ I jumped up out of the chair, swinging wild at the vague shapes in front of me. My fists hit nothing but air, and then I was hit solidly in the stomach, just under the belt. I doubled, unable to breathe, feeling the blood rush to my head, and somebody pushed me back into the chair. My mouth stretched wide open of its own accord, trying to find air, and my arms were folded across my stomach.

  Jerry said, ‘Now, Paul, you weren’t trying to strike an officer, were you?’

  I tried again, even though I couldn’t breathe, and this time I tried to get my hands on Jerry. But the hands shoved me back into the chair before I was fully out of it, and then the door slammed behind me and Captain Willick shouted, ‘What the hell is going on around here?’

  Jerry, sounding suddenly sheepish, said, ‘He was gettin’ awful unruly, Captain.’

  ‘I thought I told you to give him back his glasses.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ My glasses were shoved into my hand, but I didn’t try to put them on. The breath was scraping back down my throat into my lungs at last, burning all the way, and I despised myself because I knew I was going to cry any second.

  ‘You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves,’ Captain Willick was saying. ‘Get the hell out of here and leave this boy alone.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ There was a shuffling of feet, an embarrassed silence, and then the door closed again and Captain Willick and I were alone.

  He came around and sat at the desk and said, ‘Put your glasses on son.’ His voice was kindly and compassionate.

  And the tears came, burning salty tears of rage and frustration and humiliation. I bent my head and covered my face with my hands and pounded my feet on the floor, willing the tears to stop. But they wouldn’t.

  Willick laid a fatherly hand on my head, and said, ‘Take it easy, son, it isn’t as bad as all that.’

  I jerked away from his hand and glared at him, and with the idiotic tears still streaming down my face I screamed at him, ‘Get your hands off me! Do you think I’m a moron, do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? Hard and soft and hard and soft, don’t you think I know that? First they slap me around, and if that doesn’t do it then you come in and play father-confessor for a while. Don’t you think I know you were listening at the door all the while?’

  ‘If that’s what you think of me, son, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You hypocrite. Hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite!

  ‘Now, you just settle down, you hear me?’

  ‘Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite, hypo—’

  And I got slapped again.

  I stopped then, and regained partial control of myself. I wiped my face and put my glasses on, and said, ‘All right, so it has to be hard and hard. When your hands are tired, they’ll come back. You can all go to hell.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. We can all go to hell. But on the way there, boy, we’re going to make some hell for you. This is a serious situation, and if you think your punk wisecracks and snotnose—’

  ‘What’s a serious situation? If you people think you’ve got a reason for all this bullshit, why don’t you spit it out and quit treating me like Humphrey Bogart’s standin?’

  He stopped; his mouth twisted around as he glowered at me from under lowered brows. Then he nodded and said, ‘All right, boy, I’ll spit it out. You and that fellow Killy come into town here, come into a nice peaceful town where nobody’s causing you any trouble and nobody wants any trouble. You come into town and threaten Mrs Charles Hamilton, and four hours later Mister Charles Hamilton is shot to death in the parking lot out beside the Work Boot building of the shoe company. Now, what do you think about that?’

  Seven

  Think? I couldn’t think. I could only gape, slack-jawed, frozen in that breathless instant between the crash of lightning and the sound of the thunder.

  Shot to death. The phrase rebounded in my mind. Shot to death. Shot to death. Shottodeathshottodeathshottodeath …

  A phrase repeated often enough ceases to have any meaning. I once said piano to myself, over and over and over again, and niter a while it actually did work. There was the object, this large musical instrument, and over here was this sound pattern, piano, and they didn’t go together any more. It only lasted for a few minutes, but it was kind of frightening; in those few minutes I went around half-convinced that piano was a nonsense word I’d made up and that there was actually an entirely different word to describe that musical instrument.r />
  I think my mind was trying to do something like that with shot In death. The phrase just kept bouncing back and forth, back and forth, a hard quick syllable first, and then a small, barely present syllable, and finally a long fading syllable leading to silence and the briefest of pauses and the repetition of the first hard quick syllable again. Shot to death But it doesn’t always work. Scenes of war movies: a running soldier suddenly falls, and the camera pans on, a soldier in a foxhole throws up his hands and falls backward. Scenes of crime movies: the killer in the black suit lurches, and falls off the fire escape, the bank guard, crouching, drops all at once to the sidewalk. Scenes of western movies: the Indian rears back, and falls from his rushing horse, and rolls in the dust, the cavalryman in the Conestoga wagon slumps.

  I had never seen a man shot to death; I had only these simulations to pictorialize the phrase in my mind. The phrase bounced back and forth, the remembered fictitious images flashed and flashed, crowding together, and I hung still in the empty space between the lightning and the thunder. And Willie I waited with me, watching my face.

  My mind was full of leaping images, and sentence fragments Shot to death. And then: Murder in the first degree. ‘We find the defendant guilty.’

  ‘And there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead.’

  Me? Me?

  As the thunder rolled over me, I focused again slowly on Willick’s waiting face, and whispered, ‘You’re going to frame me.’

  He stared at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Mr Fleisch told you to frame us. He told you to.’

  ‘Why, you rotten little punk.’ His face was mottled with rage again. ‘Who’s trying to frame you? Nobody charged you with anything, did they? Nobody even accused you!’

  My mouth flapped open, driven by panic. ‘No, no, and nobody slapped me around or locked me in a cell or ripped my suitcase or broke Walter’s typewriter or tried to get me to say Walter was out of the motel while that man, that—that, he Hamilton, was being killed. And, and, nobody faked up a lying affidavit from Mrs Hamilton or tried to get me to say Walter had a gun and used to know Mr Hamilton or—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘A—and nobody took my glasses away or punched me in the stomach—’

  He leaped toward me out of the chair, grabbing my shirt from and hauling me up to my feet. Our faces were only inches apart, and his breath smelled of cavities. ‘You keep your face shut,’ he whispered. ‘You push me too far, and I will pin a rap on you. I’ll get you for assaulting an officer, and don’t think I can’t do it. If you don’t want two fast years in a cell, you better wise up right this minute.’

  I was shuddering all over. I squeezed shut my mouth and my eyes and my fists, and I held my breath, and I waited. I waited for Willick to tell me there was no hope, that I was enmired in this terrible jungle for ever; and the instant I knew that for sure, that he intended to do the very worst to me that he possibly could, I would open again just long enough to kill him.

  I urn capable of it, Willick, you see? I hadn’t known that till then, that I was capable of thinking the thought, I will kill him, and meaning it utterly. What a teacher you were, Willick!

  But the silence lengthened, and he didn’t say any more, the die was not yet cast, and I continued to hang shuddering from his hands, until at last he let go of my shirt and stepped back from me. I opened my eyes then, and saw him sitting down again at the desk, his face stiff and dark. He glanced at me and said gruffly, ‘Sit down.’

  I sat down. The shuddering was receding.

  ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to ride me like that.’

  What a knack he had for being the injured party!

  ‘One thing you said,’ he muttered. He flipped open the sheaf of papers. ‘About Mrs Hamilton’s statement. She dictated it, and she swore to it, and she signed it. I want to believe you on most counts, but we keep coming back to this. Now this time I want the truth. I don’t want to play around with you any more, I want the simple truth, and then we can be finished with each other.’

  I waited. He still might say the word of finality. I waited.

  ‘All I want to know,’ he said, ‘is why you two didn’t tell Mrs Hamilton you were from the union.’

  So there it was. I actually felt myself relax, felt relief spreading out through my limbs. The point had been reached at last. I would tell him the truth this one last time, and then he would tell me that hope was gone, and then I would reach across the desk and close my hands around his throat and no power in this world would release my hands till he stopped breathing.

  My voice surprised me, calm and low. It said, ‘The first thing Walter told Mrs Hamilton was that we were representatives of the Machinists.’

  ‘God damn it!’ He shoved the papers at me. ‘Here, read it!

  Why should I read his inventions? I left the papers where they were and said, ‘The first thing Walter told Mrs Hamilton was that we were representatives of the Machinists.’ And now?

  He leaned back in his chair and gazed at me, his eyebrows up. After a minute he said, ‘You know, I’d almost believe you, I really would. Except your partner already admitted it, and explained it away by saying he didn’t think it was any of her business who he was or where he was from.’

  I hesitated before answering. I could change my story now, to agree with Walter’s. It might even be the best thing to do. But without having foreplanned it, I had reached a position from which all retreat was impossible. I couldn’t go back now, even if I wanted to.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Walter’s smarter than I am,’ I said. ‘He probably didn’t want to be hit by Jerry.’

  He thought that over, twisting his mouth around again, his eyebrows going down low over his eyes. He fiddled with a corner of the papers, and after a while he said, ‘But why should she lie? What possible reason would she have?’

  Was he sincere? I watched him, trying to understand him, and slowly the calm of panic faded away, and it was possible for me to think again. Had Mrs Hamilton really made that statement? But why?

  After a minute of silence, he got heavily to his feet. He seemed older now, and more troubled. Watching him, I thought, He’s just a guilt-ridden hypocrite, after all, no more. And what would his defence be, how would he forgive himself?

  If I didn’t do it, somebody else would. And a man’s got to make a living.

  Is that all there was to him? I nearly laughed, remembering that only a minute ago I’d thought him real enough to kill.

  He looked down at me for a second, and then said, ‘You wait here. I’ll be right back.’

  I looked away from him.

  He went out, moving heavily, and closed the door behind him. I lit a cigarette, and it tasted foul. I had been asleep for I didn’t know how long, and hadn’t had anything to eat since waking up. I made a face, but I kept smoking, managing without difficulty to avoid all thought. And when I finished the cigarette I put it out in the ashtray in the corner.

  As I was straightening from the ashtray, the door opened and Willick came back in. He stood with his hand on the knob and said, ‘You’re free to go. They’ve got your stuff at the desk. There’s a reporter wants to talk to you.’

  I looked up, interested. ‘Oh, is there?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go shooting off my mouth to her, if I were you.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘She’s waiting in an office downstairs, if you want to talk to her.’

  ‘I’d love to talk to her.’ I was free, the ultimate had been avoided. A kind of wild joy now filled me. The longer I spent in this building, under this cloud, the more my emotions fluctuated, and the greater the fluctuations.

  Willick grunted, and led the way out to the corridor. I followed him out and down the stairs to the first floor. He pointed at a door and said, ‘In there.’

  I started thinking about what I would say to her, the girl reporter, and my emotions shifted heavily again, and I found myself feeling angry, feeli
ng more and more enraged. I’d planned I smart remark with which to part from Willick, but now I swept it out of my mind and left Willick without a word.

  Eight

  The minute I saw her I remembered her, though I couldn’t figure out from where. She was about nineteen or twenty, very trim and slim, with assured and rather sharp good looks. Her black hair was modishly short, and softly waved to curve around and frame her face. She wore eye make-up, and managed not to look too young for it. She was wearing a dark blue suit with a tight long tubular skirt and a brief ineffectual jacket over a white blouse. Her legs were nyloned, and she stood in black heels.

  She had been standing looking out the window, on the other side of the long table flanked by wooden chairs, which were the room’s only furniture, and when I came in she turned and came toward me, an impersonal professional smile forming on her lips. She came around the table and extended a slender pale hand toward me the way Audrey Hepburn might, and said, ‘How do you do? I’m Sondra Fleisch, of the Beacon.’

  My hand stopped halfway to her. ‘Fleisch?’

  The smile widened. ‘Yes, that’s my daddy. But I don’t work for him, I work for the Beacon.’

  Then I remembered. I said, ‘Well, for God’s sake.’

  Pencilled eyebrows rose, and she said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ Her hand still hung out there between us.

  ‘You go to Monequois,’ I said.

  The poised professional smile turned a trifle puzzled. ‘Yes, 1 do.’

  ‘So do I!’

  The smile wilted, and total bafflement showed through. ‘You do?’

  ‘Well, sure I do. Here, wait, let me show you my activity card.’ I pawed at my hip pocket, then remembered they’d taken my wallet. ‘Wait a second, let me get my wallet back; they’re sup posed to have it at the desk.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘Well, for Pete’s sake,’ I said. I stared at her, and grinned like •a fool, and sat down at the table.