“Huh?”
“What in hell’s the matter with you, Paul?”
“Nothing.” He sighed and looked at his cigarette. “Those were lousy french fries,” he said.
Kemp pulled his legs up and pushed the shoes off his feet. Then he dropped them on the floor. “It’s quarter to seven. You’ll be late for the movie.”
“Yeah. The movie.” Paul stretched in the chair and said, “I don’t think I’ll go. I wanna read this magazine.”
“Ohforchristsakes,” said Kemp.
Paul looked at Kemp, waiting for more, but nothing came.
“What’s the matter with you,” he said. “Why you riding me?”
“What’s the matter with
me
?”“Yeah. If I wanna sit here and read a magazine….”
“You can’t read.”
“Now listen, Kemp—”
“You listen. You go to the movies. You go to the movies and just figure it’s going to be maybe one more week like this and no more. So go to the movies.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to think about you sitting in the movie, for God’s sake! Now beat it!”
“Listen, Kemp—”
Kemp groaned. Then he said Paul shouldn’t put on so and how much worse it would be if he, Paul, had to make a living selling buttons, for instance, instead of resting his butt in a movie and being able to look forward to a very bright future in no more than a week or so.
“You know what I think of that guy, don’t you?” said Paul.
“He’s not your type is what you want to say.”
“He’s a creep.”
“Leave him alone. Rest yourself.”
“Did you ever see any of the buttons he’s selling?”
“No. Buttons are very small.”
“Now listen, Kemp. I been trying to tell….”
“You’re going stir crazy,” said Kemp. “Go talk to Betty.”
“Listen, Kemp. You ever see a salesman before what never brags about his loot or the territories or what in hell they brag about all the time?”
“We’re no customers is the reason.”
“I been trying to tell you….”
“Go to the movies.”
“You know something, Kemp? I wouldn’t buy nothing from him, you know that? He—what in the hell is the word—he don’t come out. You know what I mean?”
“Shy?”
“Shy? He ain’t shy, man. I don’t know what but he ain’t that way.”
“No,” said Kemp. “He isn’t really shy.”
“So? Like I been telling you!”
“Go to the movies, Paul.”
Paul gave up. He did not want to talk any more about something which he wasn’t certain about, and he had no way of dealing with Kemp when he took the tone of the older man.
“I’m going to the movies,” Paul said.
“Why, how you think of those things?”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Spend the evening, Paul. I’m going to just waste it away.”
“You staying here?”
“Yeah, I’m staying here and I want to stay here alone!”
“All right,” said Paul. “I’m going.”
He left. He felt less sure about everything than before, and for a moment he stood in front of the house on the street. He looked up the street and down the street but not as if looking for something but like one who did not know what to look for and feeling sullen about it. His good will had been insulted. He could not tell Kemp about it but he would make somebody feel this. Go sit in the diner? He looked across and saw the girl Betty through the windows in front. To hell with her, he said. Go to the movies and to hell with all this. I’ll go to the diner with Kemp afterwards. Like always. And the button man might even be there. Go to the movies now and then the button man. That’s the ticket. The evening all planned and no problems about any of it. Sit in the dark in the movie, that’s no problem, and later the button man, in the diner, that’ll be just as good.
Paul walked down the street, toward the square, and he even felt something like interest. He did not think he had seen this movie before and that would mean almost two hours of entertainment. The street was dark and the square up ahead was lit up. Maybe the movie would be something funny. Maybe a cops and robbers thing and he’d laugh while the yokels sat there with the kiss of drama all over them. Or a big, bad syndicate thing, he’d laugh.
He was late for the movie but he stood near the ticket booth for a moment and looked at the girl behind the glass. She thinks she’s a movie star. She looks at everybody like they’re a scout and treats everybody like they aren’t. She’s going to rot here. She’s going to have a white-eyed miner for a husband and ten slug-colored babies. He said nothing to her when he bought his ticket because ignoring her hairdo and make-up would be even worse. Yessir, he thought, this is the life I’m getting away from.
“I give you enough for two tickets, honey. Where’s my two tickets?”
“Oh—I thought—I didn’t see anybody….”
“Gimme two tickets, honey. One seat’s for my feet.” He bought two tickets and laughed. Then he saw Jordan.
Paul walked a ways into the movie because he hadn’t quite realized anything yet but then he stopped and looked out again.
The button man. The creep son of a bitch on the side of the square, standing there with that wet butt in his mouth. And no sample case either. Going home? Not going home. He’s thinking about going into the movie to beef up his life for the evening. Not the movie.
Walking. Who’s the button man? Nobody knows the button man, not even Kemp. What I don’t like I don’t like and the button man fits into that dandy.
Why Third. Who does the son of a bitch know on Third? Betty. Everybody loves Betty.
And me with two tickets paid for in my pocket and creeping after the button man loving Betty. Who’d love a thing with a wet butt in his face….
Son of a bitch, he’s cagey. If he don’t act like a stranger in town. If he don’t act like he didn’t know Betty from nothing, with his back to the diner and looking the other way. Who does he know?
Kemp.
To sell Kemp buttons, and he don’t carry a sample case. To ask about renting that room and he’s got it rented already. To hang around and be a pain in the neck because who in hell is anybody with a name like Smith….
Not Kemp? Just a walk, then, which is worse yet. The button man takes a walk where he knows people on the same street and he doesn’t stop to see either of them. He doesn’t stop to see either of them because he doesn’t like to be followed. Just for that….
Then Paul kept his distance and stayed in the dark to see what the other one would do. He watched Jordan go to the end of the block and turn down the street which joined Fourth. Paul didn’t follow. He crossed by the apartment building, through the back, past the pigeon coop and he stood in the dark drive where he could see Jordan come down the street.
Have a word with him now? He’s thin and a button salesman but like Kemp said, not really shy. Not really a button salesman, maybe….
He watched Jordan open the trunk of his car and take out a suitcase which he took into the house.
Time to go through his samples? That is the same suitcase he took into the room that same afternoon…. Leaving, then, staying….
Jordan came out again very soon and got into his car. What a sweet-sounding motor, thought Paul. What a weird thing to watch somebody move, not know what the man does, and to dislike the son of a bitch right from the start and then more so the less he made sense. With a sweet-sounding motor like that he drives like a funeral….
Slow enough to walk, thought Paul, and he walked. He rounded the corner to Third when Jordan’s car crept up to the apartment building. There it stopped.
Paul started to run.
And this time the bastard saw me for sure, thought Paul, because why should he take off like that. A type like that and he takes off with the tires squealing. That don’t fit, Smith don’t fit, the buttons don’t fit…. He ran to the lot where the diner stood and where his car was parked. He jumped in and then he thought that son of a bitch should hear this—the kind of noise he, Paul, was making; how the motor let out a scream and the gravel shot out and the whine when the car hauled over and into the street. And that’s all for you, button man….
And now he’s running and he’s driving as if he knew the road and the countryside well. He’s running from me hell-bent-for-leather.
When Paul realized this he stopped wondering who Smith was; he stopped turning it back and forth in his mind if he was salesman, or grifter, or a man who had come down to wheedle a deal, or had come casing even, because now the other one ran and Paul after him with never a doubt he would make it. And if I can’t talk to him, he said to himself, then you will, Anna-Lee, and he squeezed his left arm into his side so he could feel the holster.
The car up ahead didn’t cut speed at all when it turned. It leaned so heavily into the turn that Paul held his breath for a moment. Then he braked very sharply because he didn’t know the road which the one up ahead was taking. Black top and two lanes and plenty of bumps. The two tail lights up ahead bounded up and down. Break a spring, you bastard, but nothing else. I’ll break the rest for you, button man….
Then the car was gone.
Paul gunned and had to fight the wheel when he came into the bend of the road and what pulled him through, so it seemed, was the sight of the red lights up ahead again. Steady as…. He had stopped, that’s why! Slammed into the side of the road with one door hanging open, with the lights still on, with one front wheel almost hanging over where the embankment dropped off and the bridge railing started. Why the door open? He fell out that way. Why had he been running? Because I was after him.
Paul grinned and stopped his car so that it slammed down on the frame.
“Smith?”
He could look down the embankment but at the bottom he saw only dark.
“Smith? Hey, button man!”
“Yes?”
He thought he could see him now, down by the culvert which went under the bridge.
“Come on out!”
He could see Smith standing there and that man would have looked the same had he stood on a street. Smith looks weird standing in weeds up to his knees.
“Don’t be scared, boy. I come to buy buttons. Smith?”
“Yes?”
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
“I got all night, Smith. You hear me?” and he moved toward the bridge so that his shadow stretched out ahead of him.
Smith doesn’t move. No sir, but now he does. Back, he does, and afraid of my shadow. Yessir, that one scares….
“Smith, little buddy, can you see me clear?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God, you sound all choked up.”
This time no answer. Oh my God, how I hate the bastard.
“Little button buddy, here I am. For a sample—”
Then it spat so fast, Paul barely heard all the sound that went with it.
Oh my God, oh my God, how I hate, he thought, and was finished.
9High angle shot, thought Jordan. Chest or head? Hard telling, with the headlight glare making false borders around his shape, and the foreshortened angle.
He put the gun in his pocket and climbed up the bank, through the dry weeds.
With the kind of jerk he had given, I think it was chest.
Paul, on his back, was dead, of course, and the jacket had slid up into bunches and the pants had pushed up to his calves. How that always happens. Chest. Like I thought.
First, Jordan moved the cars. He moved Paul’s car to the other side of the bridge and well onto the soft shoulder. He turned the lights off and left the key in the ignition. Then he walked back and moved his own car to the other end of the bridge, also well off the road. This way, the cars would not alarm any motorist.
Jordan got out of his car and after he had closed the door, leaned against it for a moment. Dark and hot and I’ll lean here for a moment and then go back. The rest can be as simple as it’s been so far, because it needs no planning, because all I have to do is grab him by the back of the jacket and drag him down to the culvert. Done.
Jordan walked away from the car and back to the bridge.
But he’s lying on his back and can’t be grabbed by the back of the jacket.
Jordan held out his hand for the railing and when he touched it—he knew he would touch it—gave a start.
He’s dead, so don’t worry. This almost made Jordan giggle, though he did not let himself. It stayed a sharp, fluttery tickle in his throat.
Jordan slowed on the bridge because he could now see the body on the soft shoulder.
Though this is not a job as jobs go. None of it fitting the habits. Everything I do now is with the props gone. That new.
He worked his hand along the railing and walked like a blind man. He could see well enough now, but did not want to.
And even the job as jobs go hadn’t been all that good. It had gone easily, because of the habits, but the habits had not been quite good enough for all that was needed. For instance, he thought, and then, for instance, again. I’m calmer already, he thought. But I got him at the right time for the best light but not at the right time for the best drop. He should have stood closer to the edge so he’d drop down the incline all by himself.
Jordan stopped. He could see it lying there, crabbed out with arms and legs the way they always do. He would now have to touch it.
His scalp moved on his skull, and he thought he could feel his skull tight and hard over the inside of his head. He had an upsetting image—all of him curled soft into the inside of the skull. But it’s the second time. This is not the first…. He started to sweat, thin and quick, when he saw that it was worse now and not easier.
Then he moved because it became impossible to do nothing.
Jordan bent down and touched. He thought about the time after this time, all done with this, never again this, and so registered very little of what he was doing or what the body was doing, but the worst moments came through.
He touched the jacket high up and yanked. A dead arm swung around and hit Jordan’s ankle. After his gasp the breath came out of Jordan’s throat, shocking him with the sound because it was like a giggle. But his throat felt all right after that, without the strain in it.
I won’t drag him down, I’ll roll him down. I’ll do that and between now and the moment when I touch it again a headlight will swing around the far bend, and I’ll have to let all this go and just run, just run.
But he only thought this and suddenly scratched his head where sweat tickled him and for a moment he was just scratching—nothing else—and after that he had his feelingless calm again, out of nowhere, but the way he was used to it. He only worried for one split second about the quick switches that went on inside him, but that thought never got anywhere because then he touched again.
He dragged like a dog worrying a bone. When the body was over the edge Jordan let go with a quick jerk of his hand and kept jerking his hand like that, through the air, a little bit like a conductor with temperament. Because the body wasn’t rolling. But the quick pizzicato beat kept up Jordan’s speed. The dead arms and legs made contrary motions; Jordan kept worrying the thing like a bone, down the bank, through the weeds, feeling intent and all right about it because all the worry was in his hands. What he touched, how much he touched, where. And when he pushed it into the culvert, which took perhaps two minutes, he counted time by the number of times he pushed against bone instead of flesh.
Done, back through the weeds which were pulling at him. He kept wiping his hands and then wiped them with the weeds. They were not wet but brittle and dry and Jordan, wiping over and over, cut himself. Up the bank, job over. And how quick and clever the whole thing. It had probably been spite to start with—Paul following him by the movie—but then it was the plan working. It was good to know about plans working. Going down Third, drawing Paul after. Stopping at Kemp’s place, getting Paul all riled up. Then the fast walk around to Fourth—Paul already there, having cut through a lot; then moving the suitcase to give him time and to mystify him, then the slow stunt with the car so he could follow on foot, and then driving off fast when Paul showed up again near Kemp’s building.
Jordan worked up the incline to the highway, rehashing things this way, something he had never done. Job over.
Though this was not yet the important one.
Before the haste went out of him and left just nervous splinters, he rushed all the rest. He drove the dead one’s car a little ways down the next lane and from there up a path which went to a spent quarry. Jordan knew it was there, drove Paul’s car there, and left it. Jordan was not concerned with eliminating all trails but only with working for time. They would find the dead one and they would find the car. He worked for one day’s leeway, and the trail would lead nowhere.
He ran back to the highway and his haste didn’t change into something else until he sat in his car and knew what he would do next. There was all this momentum but it now turned sharp and clean. Clean like routine. Kemp was next.
Jordan drove back to town, sitting neat and still. He sat with his head on top of his neck like a stopper on top of a bottle. Fine. Everything fine now. Finish it….
He went through Third and saw a light where Kemp’s room was. He drove past and turned through the square, doubling back to Fourth. To pick up his suitcase in the room and then finish. He parked and when he went across the street he went fast and kept his hand on his pocket. The Magnum was heavy and Jordan did not want it to swing. Then would come Magnum in suitcase, target pistol for job, suitcase in trunk, drive to Third, check target pistol in front seat, car on street pointed the right way, up Kemp’s building, finish it.
Jordan opened the door to his room where the light was on and then everything became very slow. The brain, the movement of the door closing, the door
thunk
when it closed, even Kemp. He sat in Jordan’s chair, looking slow, and he held Jordan’s other gun.“Ever use one of these?” he asked.
Jordan stayed by the door and the weight of the Magnum in his pocket was so great that he felt his right shoulder ache and thought Kemp must notice any moment.
“You don’t look well, Smith. Why don’t you sit on the bed?”
Jordan walked to the bed and wasn’t aware of any muscles moving in him. He was only aware of Kemp telling him to sit down.
And this is the payoff for Paul, he thought. This is the payoff. Not for the job he had done, but for having done the job wrong. He had touched him afterwards.
“Jeesis,” said Kemp. “You can smell pigeons all the way up here. You mind if I close the window?”
“There’s a chicken coop down there,” said Jordan.
“No. It’s a pigeon coop. Hear ‘em fluttering?”
“I thought it was a chicken coop.”
“No. Mind if I close the window?”
“Go ahead,” said Jordan.
Kemp smiled and closed the window behind without changing position. With one hand.
“That’s better. Come on, Smith, relax, huh?”
“I can’t,” said Jordan.
“You’re no salesman, are you?”
Jordan did not answer. He shifted a little on the bed and sighed. It was a natural sigh.
“And Smith yet. What a handle to pick. Don’t you know about Smiths?”
“No.”
“There aren’t any.” Kemp laughed.
The Magnum wasn’t so heavy now because it was resting on the bed.
“Make it easy on yourself, Smith, why don’t you.”
Jordan nodded and put both hands down on the bed. It did not relax him but it would be more efficient.
“I’m not saying you’re dumb all the way, or
that
obvious, and maybe I just spotted you, Smith, because I got some background. That surprise you?”“I am surprised. Yes.”
“Take your coat off, why don’t you?”
“Thanks. No.”
“Okay.”
Kemp looked at the target pistol in his hand and didn’t say anything for a moment. Jordan crossed his legs for position so he could lean on one elbow.
“And loaded yet,” said Kemp. “This,” and he nodded the gun.
Jordan finished leaning down on one elbow.
“You like this type?” Kemp asked.
“What?”
“This kind of gun,” said Kemp, “means one or the other to me. Either hobby, or business.”
“What do you want from me?” said Jordan.
“Fess up, I guess. Instead of me getting it out of you.”
Jordan. shrugged, which brought his right hand where he wanted it for the moment.
“I think I’d like this kind myself,” said Kemp. “Very accurate, isn’t it?”
“If it’s balanced good.”
“Is it?”
“For my hand.”
“I noticed it’s top heavy for me. You got a long thumb?”
“Yes.”
“Figures.” Then Kemp sighed. “Look,” he said, “I’m just talking around to make you feel relaxed. Honest, Smith.”
Jordan put his right hand on his hip and when there was no objection, he did relax. He relaxed into a balance which was like a steel spring balance.
“I mean it, Smith. Put it away.”
He leaned forward and held the gun out. Jordan was not prepared. He was so set that he felt the Magnum might go off if he moved even a little.
“You won’t say it, I’ll say it, Smith. You’re on the lam, aren’t you?”
It took almost as long to get back to normal, thought Jordan, as it had taken him to get set. He straightened up with a pain in his back and he reached out for the target gun so that it felt like slow motion.
“Well?” said Kemp.
“Yes. You’re right.”
Jordan took the gun and turned it to look at the clip. The butt was empty and he held a cold gun.
“I took it out,” said Kemp, “because I’m afraid of guns. Imagine that thing goes off in here. Bad for both of us.” He pointed and said, “I left the clip in your suitcase.”
Jordan tapped his knees with the long barrel and then he tossed the gun on the bed. He felt exhausted and didn’t want to try figuring moves any more. Not for the moment. Not after all this.
And the Magnum was out. The silencer was in the suitcase and the racket would be too much. After that, even if the gun went off like a normal gun, after that he would have to run with half his things left in the room because all he would have time to grab would be the new tube of toothpaste on the dresser, a shirt of the wrong size, meaningless things like that.
Nothing now. He just wished Kemp would leave.
“So tell me, Smith. Who do you know?”
“Nobody. I don’t know anybody who makes any difference,” said Jordan.
“You know me.”
“Kemp. That’s all I know. Just the name.”
“Well, let me tell you a little.”
“Listen. I just as soon you wouldn’t. I mean it, Kemp.”
Kemp raised his eyebrows and watched Jordan sit on the bed. He thought the other man looked suddenly tired.
“I just meant for an introduction. Just a talk, Smith….”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“… to see if there was something for you and me in it.”
“What?”
“Maybe there’s a job. Maybe I can use you.”
“Ohmygawd—” said Jordan, and rubbed one hand over his face.
“Well, maybe not,” said Kemp. He got up and scratched under one arm. “I didn’t mean in this town, if that’s what you meant.” He walked to the door and stopped there. “Just think about it, huh, Smith? Before you blow town, come over and see me. Okay?”
“Yes,” said Jordan. “I will.”