Murder Is My Dish (6 page)

“It's not going to work out like this,” I said, “is it?” He cursed in Spanish again. “Get up,” I told him. I stood up and backed away from him. He came groggily to his feet. I jerked the gun at him and thumbed the safety off.

“Take your coat off,” I said.

He looked at me. He took his coat off, then swung it in front of him and reached for the gun that wasn't there.

“Drop it,” I said.

He dropped the coat.

The wind howled. He began to shiver almost at once, probably because he knew what I had in mind. “Get undressed,” I told him. He glared at me but took his jacket off. He wasn't wearing a tie.

“The shirt,” I said.

He unbuttoned the shirt and took it off. He was shaking all over. I was wearing a topcoat and a jacket, and I was cold.

“All right,” I said. “The pants.”

“
Madre de Dios
,” he whispered, stuttering with the cold.

“Caballero,” I said.

He shook his head violently from side to side.

“Is he dead?”

“… don't know.”

“Did you take him?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

He was shivering so much he could barely talk. “… don't know,” he said again.

“The pants,” I said.

He glared at me. I cocked the Magnum's hammer. He heard it. He would have heard it in the eye of a hurricane.

“You from the
Mistral
?” I asked.

“N-no. My fren.”

“In the car?”

“
Sí. Madre de
Dios, meester. I freeze.”

I walked close to him. He brought his hands up in a stiff, awkward motion. I hit him over the ear with the Magnum. He went down without a sound.

I rolled him over. He was covered with snow. I got his coat under him and his shirt and jacket on top of him for a blanket. I figured it gave him a fifty-fifty chance, which was more than he deserved.

His hat was a few feet off in the snow. I put it on and pulled the brim down. I took the Manila envelope from my pocket and carried it in my hand. Then I walked back toward his car. The snow was coming down harder now. I couldn't see very far. The car loomed suddenly.

“You get it?” a voice called.

I waved the Manila envelope over my head. The car's engine ground and kicked over. The headlights went on. I opened the door on the side opposite the driver and climbed in.

The driver sat huddled in an overcoat and a scarf behind the wheel. “Jesus,” he said. “
Tengo mucho frií
o.”

I jammed the Magnum against his ribs. “That isn't all you're going to tengo,” I said, “unless you start driving.”

He yelled in surprise and his foot slipped off the clutch, making the car buck forward before it stalled. I brought the gun up higher, where he could see it.He leaned toward the ignition key. I watched his hand.

I should have smelled her. She was wearing perfume, not very good perfume and a lot of it. She was sitting in the back of the car. All I saw at the time was a blur of movement as her arm whipped around my neck. She wasn't very strong, but she was strong enough to make me reach up and drag her arm away so I could breathe.

The guy in front with me grabbed for the gun. I lunged away from him. The woman's arm went back around my neck. The man grunted something. The woman screamed. The Magnum jerked and roared, shooting a hole through the roof of the car. The sound of it bounced and echoed and clattered in my ears. I didn't hear anything else. I got the woman's arm away a second time, but she grabbed my arm and held on. The man hit me in the face. He didn't have much room to swing, but it slammed my head back against the window. The woman still held my arm. I ducked my head and butted the man's face. My hat fell off. He opened his bloody mouth and said something, but I heard only the roaring of the Magnum.

I swung my right fist, following through awkwardly because there wasn't much room in the front seat of the car. My hand went through the spokes of the steering wheel. The man leaned down on it. The woman bit my left wrist, almost making me drop the gun. Then the man grabbed for it. I got my right hand loose and hit him in the side of the neck. His eyes clouded, but he held on. The woman bit me again. I'm human. I bleed. The man pried the gun out of my fingers. I clubbed the side of his neck again. His mouth opened. Red saliva drooled. He dropped the Magnum. The woman grabbed it. I started to turn around.

She had opened her mouth to scream. She was probably wailing like a tormented soul. I heard nothing. Something moved over my head.

It came down and split my skull into two hemispheres of pain. I tried to put the hemispheres back together, but somehow they wouldn't fit. I was still trying when I fell into the hole which had opened up below the floor of the car and the snow.

Chapter Six

I
N THE
very center of the earth there is a block of ice. Inside the block of ice a tiny man lives. His vocation is trying to keep warm. His avocation is trying to break out of the block of ice by batting it with his head. The ice is five hundred feet thick and he hasn't a very hard head. If that isn't bad enough, two tree trunks grow out of the man's chest, pinning him down. I wouldn't trade places with that man for anything in the world. But then I don't have to. His name is Chester Drum.

The tree trunks moved. That wasn't fair. It was inconsistent with their nature as tree trunks. It added a new dimension of difficulty to the problems of the tiny man in the block of ice: he had to think. He opened his eyes a little way and saw that the tree trunks had changed into legs. The legs wore heavy shoes and the shoes were on his chest. The legs, as legs will, were wearing trousers.

A voice said in Spanish, “Murder is different. You didn't say murder. I don't want anything to do with murder. I didn't figure on murder. I won't be a part of murder.”

The man speaking had a one-track mind, but I was on his side. It took some figuring, but I decided the object of the murder, if any, would be me.

Another voice said, “He left you out there to die.”

First voice: “Murder is different. I don't want anything to do with murder.”

Second voice: “If we didn't find you, you'd have frozen to death.”

First voice: “My wife found me.”

Second voice: “I had to stay with the man. Is he conscious?”

First voice: “No, I don't think so.”

A woman's voice: “Julio, Julio. Ramon is right, unless this of the twenty-five thousand dollars means nothing to you. Don't you wish your share of the money?”

The first voice, which belonged to Julio, came from the back of the car. The car was moving. I could tell because the crankshaft kept banging the small of my back. Julio's legs were planted on my chest. The second voice, which belonged to Ramon, came from the direction of the driver s seat. The woman's voice, which belonged to Julio's wife, came from the other side of the front seat.

“My head hurts,” Julio complained.

“Did the bleeding stop?” his wife asked.

“I think so. But it hurts. I need a doctor.”

“No. I can take care of you. Your head keeps you from thinking straight, Julio. It is most necessary that we kill this man, Julio.”

“No,” said Julio stubbornly. “Let the man go.”

“Y pues?” his wife asked. “What then?”

“Then we go home.”

“Just like that,” said his wife, mocking him.

“We're almost out of gas,” Ramon, the driver, said.

Julio said bitterly, “You. It was your idea. I wish you had never come to me with your idea. This is not my fight. I am not of the Parana Republic. I am Puerto Rican.”

“Qué
hombre,” Julio's wife said with bitter sarcasm. Her hand came up over the top of the front seat of the car. It was holding the envelope with Mrs. Caballero's twenty-five thousand dollars. It was steady as a rock. “For this you said you would do anything. Anything, you said. Fool. Oh, you great fool. It has nothing to do with the Parana Republic. It has to do with the money.”

“I wish,” Julio said, “I had never met Ramon. I wish he had not known where to find us in New York. I wish he had forgotten I existed. I wish I had never sailed in the Nicaraguan merchant marine and met him there.”

Julio's wife waved the envelope. “You wish! You should be thankful when Ramon needed help in this of the money he thought of you.”

“We have only enough gas to take us home,” Ramon observed.

“We can't stop for gas,” Julio's wife said.

“Your wife is right,” Ramon told Julio. “It has nothing to do with the Republic.” Julio's legs shifted on my chest. I flexed the muscles of my left arm. I was making real progress. I was almost strong enough to make a fist. “They killed this man Caballero. This teacher. I saw them kill him. They dropped his body into the river wrapped in an anchor chain. They took the Mistral out a little way to do it.”

Julio only groaned.

“Drive home,” Julio's wife said. “It is dangerous to stay out. We cannot stop for gas.”

“We can kill him,” Ramon suggested. I did not like Ramon.

Julio's wife said, “No. Not now. Not until Julio sees what must be done. We cannot fight among ourselves. We can hide the man in our apartment until Julio sees what must be done.

“Julio is weak,” Ramon said, probably with a sneer.

“Then be thankful he has a strong wife.”

“The two of you,” Julio said. “The two of you.”

“Shut up,” his wife told him. “Try to think. God gave you a brain. Use it.”

“Murder,” said Julio. “To pretend kidnaping is bad enough. But murder.”

“Look out!” Julio's wife cried.

The car skidded. Ramon grunted. I was aware of his weight shifting in the front seat. He pulled us out of the skid.

Julio said, “He is conscious.”

I must have tensed when we went into the skid. Julio leaned forward. His legs became heavy. I opened my eyes. Julio was staring down at me bleakly between his knees.

“Watch him,” Ramon said.

Julio nodded. Julio had a gun. He watched me.

No one said anything for a while.

“We're almost there,” Ramon said finally.

Julio's wife asked, “How's the gas?”

“Basta. Enough.”

My strength was returning. My head ached fiercely. Pain seeped from it in dull slow waves throbbing down my spine. I thought if my life depended on it I might be able to clobber my way out of a paper bag, provided the bag was wringing wet.

Pretty soon there were street lights. I could see the alternate glow and shadow from the floor of the car. We drove straight and then turned. We turned again. In the detective stories you read the trussed up, blindfolded hero can deduce with mathematical certainty from the number of turns where he is being taken. I thought we were back in New York. It seemed a pretty good guess under the circumstances. It was the only guess I had.

We turned again. Julio's wife smoked a cigarette. She was a cool one. She moved her weight in the front seat of the car, sitting closer to Ramon. Julio's face was ugly. A muscle worked in his jaw.

In a few minutes Ramon patted the brake. We pulled over to the curb. Julio's wife opened her door and got out. “Nobody's coming,” she said.

Ramon went out into the snow too. The weight of Julio's legs left my chest. I tried sitting up. My vision blurred for a moment, then cleared. Ramon was pointing my Magnum at me. Julio held his own automatic. They were both outside.

“Out,” Ramon said in English.

I got to my feet and staggered, bending at the waist from the car. Julio's wife was there to support my weight. Julio jammed his shoulder under my other arm. We walked that way across the sidewalk through the snow, Ramon following us.

It was a run-down tenement neighborhood which the Puerto Ricans had taken over from the Negroes who had taken it over from the Italians when it was already pretty far gone. We went up a small flight of outside steps into an unlit hall which smelled of garbage and tomcats and stale urine. Julio bore my weight up some more stairs into a hall with a single bare light bulb in the ceiling. The apartment doors were big black narrow rectangles, like scabby coffins standing on end. The walls were scabby too, the paint peeling away in large uneven strips. A woman laughed behind one of the closed doors. A man shouted and there was a smacking sound and the woman's laughter ended abruptly.

“Hurry up,” Ramon said.

“You try dragging him,” Julio complained.

We reached a door. Julio's wife fumbled for a key. “That's funny,” she said. “The door isn't locked.”

“You forgot to lock it,” Ramon said.

“No. I locked it.”

“Just open the door,” Ramon said.

She turned the handle and pushed the door in. She went inside first, then Julio and me, then Ramon. I felt stronger now. Not good, but stronger. If they meant to kill me here, which did not seem likely, I thought I could make a fight of it. Ramon closed the door, and locked it. There was a click and a sudden flood of harsh white light as Julio's wife found the wall switch.

Sometimes if I have a bad night and sleep won't come and I can't even drink myself to sleep, I get to think of it. I will never forget anything about that room. I have had nightmares about it. It was a large kitchen with a white icebox and an old gas range in one corner. There were a table and four chairs and a unit of unpainted pine shelving which stored canned goods and boxes. There was a television set, the only new thing in the room, set against one wall. In front of it, making the big kitchen into a kind of parlor as well, was a shapeless, undignified old sofa wearing a tattered slipcover torn along its upper seam.

A man had been sitting in the sofa. He got up. His motions did not seem particularly swift, but no one had time to shoot him. He was the biggest man I have ever seen outside of a circus sideshow. He was big all over. He was between six and a half and seven feet tall. Everything about him was outsized. His head was almost as big as a basketball. He had slicked-back black hair and an enormous jutting brow over alert, incongruously mild blue eyes. His nose was huge and jutting too, high-bridged like the upside-down prow of a racing sloop. His lips were large and fleshy. His jaw was not quite as large as a poke bonnet, which it resembled. His shoulders were three feet across. His upper arms were as big around as most people's thighs. He wore a turtleneck sweater.