The Murderer Vine (3 page)

“Jeeze, you’re some kind of a — ”

“Yeah. I am. And I’ll tell you how much your opinion of me grieves me. As soon as you hang up, I’m going to eat a big steak with French fries and then I’m going to do some dealing. Then I’m going to go home and sleep. That’s how much it worries me. But I’ll give you fifty. You be at the southeast corner of Eighty-ninth and First Avenue in twenty minutes.” I hung up.

I told Kirby I’d be out for the afternoon. She kept her eyes on the typewriter. She was still angry because I had snapped at her.

I got my car and drove up to Eighty-ninth and First. It was no area for action for pushers, so it was safe. Mel was standing on the corner nodding and yawning. Pushers should not use the stuff they sell. But then pushers should not do a lot of things. He leaned on the window. I gave him the fifty. He wanted to chat, but I brushed him.

I took the East River Drive to the end, cut across the north end of the Triboro Bridge into Bruckner Boulevard, and then onto the New England Thruway. I got off at Westport and took a leafy road northward along the Saugatuck River for a few miles. It wound around groves of oaks and willows, past farms and estates and little lakes edged with cattails and tiger lilies. I passed thoroughbred horses up to their hocks in the rich grass. I turned off on a little dirt road and stopped on the crest of a ridge where I could see anyone coming from either direction.

I changed the plates for a set of phony Connecticut plates that a very good metal worker had made for me earlier in the year.

Then I drove out again to the main road. Four miles further brought me to Haskell. It had big white houses with lilac bushes in the center of town. The new high school was on the edge of town, and the houses there were planted with magnolias and English yew. I parked near Haskell High and wished I could have gone to a school with a pond in the front of it and big trees scattered over its green lawn. I sat down in the luncheonette and ordered a cup of coffee. It was terrible. I sipped it as slowly as possible. Halfway through, a red Chevrolet Impala parked across the street. NY 3D–6754. The driver got out and walked into the comfort station in the park next to the high school grounds.

Then he came out and sauntered toward the luncheonette. I had paid and was out on the street before he had set foot on the sidewalk on my side.

I entered the comfort station. I looked under the radiator. There it was. A plastic bag. One deck. Not much imagination for hiding places. Every pusher’s idea of a good place.

I walked back.

The pusher was talking to some kid who looked about seventeen. He was wearing the usual uniform of his group, the khaki pants, the brown loafers, and the button-down Brooks Brothers shirt. He was nervous. He looked at me, but I was reading a newspaper. He turned back and gave my friend a twenty-dollar bill. He listened carefully to the instructions and left. I folded the paper neatly, got up, and walked over to the booth. I was wearing a different jacket and a loud tie and a hat. I never wear hats. Loud ties make people concentrate on that instead of your face. I keep a couple of ties in my glove compartment at all times. A tie and a hat — better disguises than all the false whiskers ever invented.

I showed him my private detective badge. I put it away after a second. I was counting on the hope that my man didn’t know Connecticut’s detective badges. And if you work on the cool assumption that your man is sure you’re a cop, he’ll frequently believe that the badge is a police badge.

“Nilsson,” I said. “State police. May I see your identification?”

He smiled. “Have a seat, Nilsson,” he said. I put on the proper, stiff look that a state trooper would get when called by his last name. I repeated my request very politely, but with some annoyance in my tone. He shrugged. He had nothing on him, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could prove. His attaché case was in his car, and most likely he had a hidden compartment for it that no hick cop would ever find. He pulled out his driver’s license.

“Montecalvo, Montecalvo,” I said thoughtfully. I gave it back to him.

“Mr. Montecalvo,” I said, “you don’t seem to have visible means of support.”

“You can’t book me,” he said. He took out a wallet. It was about an inch thick with green stuff. He was taking it all very calmly. The fix must really be in, but solid. He sighed. He decided that I was looking for a contribution for my own charitable foundation. On my own. Beyond the normal payoff.

“Look,” he said, “would you like a new hat?”

The old phrase made me grin. He relaxed.

“You know how it is,” I said.

He took his wallet out. I shook my head.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Look,” he said, leaning close. “I could drop a C-note on the floor. I could look out the window. And not see what happens — you know? I couldn’t testify then. Never. Right, Captain?”

He opened the wallet. The green stuff was tens and twenties.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” I said regretfully, giving him the sort of polite handling he wasn’t used to in New York. “It’s the Lieutenant who wants to talk to you. I’m only a trooper. And what the Lieutenant wants, he gets.”

“Yeah. He gets. And
gets
.”

He stood up. He was feeling sour. His mind was as transparent as his plastic bags. The local bite, he was thinking, was going to get bigger. He was thinking that it was my job to give him this little speech on how expenses were getting higher and could he get up a little more? He was getting mad. He had been told the fix was in, and here he was, being arrested or being dragged in, it was all the same, and maybe the fix
was
in, and my lieutenant was getting greedy on his own. So he would make a phone call to the mob’s local lawyer and he’d get out, but that would kill the afternoon.

I held the door open for him like a well-bred cop on the take. He got in. I had tossed a copy of
Law and Order,
the police professional magazine, onto the front seat. He picked it up idly. I liked the magazine lying there, it was a nice touch.

“Mind if I look at it?”

“It’s a free country.”

“Ha-ha.”

When we drove by police headquarters, he jerked his head up.

“Hey, man, we ain’t stoppin’?”

“I’m a state trooper,” I reminded him. “We’re going to the state trooper barracks at Redfield.”

“Redfield! That’s twenty-four miles, for crissakes!”

“There’s no way I can bring it closer, sir.” State police always say “sir.”

“You’re new, aincha?”

“Yes, sir.”

That explained it. It hadn’t been made clear to me that the fix was in.

“You better stop and lemme make a phone call, Jack. You’re makin’ a big mistake and you’ll get your ass in a jam.”

“Sorry, sir. My orders are to bring you in. No stops for anything, the Lieutenant said.” I was getting closer to my abandoned dirt road where I had changed my plates.

That clinched it. No stops meant we were really going to shake him down for a little extra before we released him. We were going to try and scare him. He looked at me with the contempt I deserved.

“You’d better go back. I don’t feel like goin’ forty-eight miles round trip, even if you’re a new guy. I got important appointments.”

I was getting more and more sick of this snotty pusher with his influential friends.

“I’m sorry, sir. I do what I’m told.”

He was beginning to steam. I turned onto the dirt road.

“Now
where the hell are you goin’?”

“Short cut to Redfield, sir. This way it’s only eighteen miles. A bit rough, but we’ll save fifteen minutes.”

He wasn’t grateful. He took out a little notebook.

“What’s your shield number?”

I gave him the last four numbers of his license plate. He looked thoughtful. They had struck some buried recollection, but he couldn’t figure it out. Most people don’t know their own license numbers.

He wanted my full name. Oh, boy, he was going to go all the way up with his squeal. I told him I was Sigurd Nilsson. He had a lot of trouble with the spelling and he was still repeating the two s’s of my last name when the bouncing of the car down the rutted little road brought his eyes off the page.

I got out. He stared at me.

“What — ” he began. I took out my gun and held it on him.

“Out,” I said.

“Listen, you — ”

“Out!”

I had never hit anyone in my life except in self-defense, and then only just enough to overcome opposition.

I had never been one of those cops who take out their fears and tensions beating up some helpless kid.

But when I thought of the plastic envelope in my pocket, I did get some satisfaction in what I was doing. Not pleasure. Satisfaction. There was a difference. If this was the only way this slow murderer could be blocked, then it had to be done. It took about a minute. Most of it with the barrel. I didn’t want my knuckles damaged. And the barrel is very effective. I carry permanent proof of its efficacy at the bridge of my nose. Some guy shot off his bullets at me but he missed. He had better aim with the barrel.

When I finished with him, I bent down.

“Listen to me, boy,” I said. “Listen careful. You hear me?”

He said nothing. I lifted the gun.

“I hear ya,” he mumbled. His front teeth were broken and he was spitting blood.

“You come back again to Haskell, and you don’t get off this easy.”

“You’re crazy, cop,” he said. So he still thought I was after money.

I took out the plastic envelope.

“I don’t want to see this, or you, or your attaché case, or any of your friends. The fix is in. But that isn’t going to do any good. Because we’ll get you on the road or back on One Hundred and Third Street.”

That little piece of Mel’s information was effective. He didn’t like the fact that I knew his home address.

“You ain’t no cop.”

“Pass the word, friend.”

I pulled out his shirt and wiped the barrel. I took the attaché case. A mile away I found another little road. I pulled in and changed the plates back to New York. I buried the attaché case deep in the leaf-mold. I buried the Connecticut plates and my loud dollar tie under a bush. They’d never be useful anymore. His boss would have a long memory, and I wouldn’t want to make it easy for him. I got into the car and got out just in time. I vomited. That sure was a surprise.

I got in again and drove slowly down the beautiful, lush summer lanes. I kept thinking about the German occupation of Poland in World War II. The Polish underground set up a secret court to try traitors. A real lawyer was chosen as judge, another one was the prosecuting attorney, and a third was defense attorney. The problem was that the accused never could learn that he was on trial. The defense attorney’s duty was to provide as good reasons as he could that his absent client should not be found guilty. But when the verdict was guilty, an executioner was chosen. He would study his victim’s movements, and then, in an isolated place, he would brace him, say, “I execute you in the name of the Polish Republic,” and then carry out his orders. The interesting thing about this process was that these devoted members of the underground, who had not wanted to kill but accepted it as a duty, found themselves liking it. It was finally decided that a man would only be permitted to kill three times. No more. He had begun to like it.

Well, I hadn’t liked my little session one single bit. That was a comforting sign.

Next morning I was sitting at my desk drinking some terrible coffee from a container. I had drunk too much the night before and I felt lousy. I was looking at the mail. Two pieces of junk mail and the light bill. The phone rang. It was Gilbert. “Thanks for the shipment,” he said.

I said nothing.

“Would you like payment?”

A stupid question.

“Yes.”

“How about us having lunch together?”

“No.”

I was feeling monosyllabic. There was an unhappy silence. I ran my tongue along the back of my teeth. Everything felt like sandpaper.

“You don’t want lunch?”

He wanted to be loved.

“I don’t eat business lunches.”

He probably had two-hour business lunches with ulcer appetizers.

“Would you like payment?”

“Yes. Now.”

He came up half an hour later. He gave me a thick manila envelope. “I thought you’d like it in small bills,” he said. “It’s in twenties. I hear from the hospital they spent four hours patching up some guy from out of town who claims he was jumped by three muggers.”

“Policing remote areas is a problem.”

“I suppose so. I see you awarded yourself a bonus.”

I looked at him.

“He says he was rolled.”

“Any objection?”

“Out of curiosity, how much did you get?”

“Five hundred eighty-five.”

He looked at me in a funny way and stood up.

“It takes all kinds, I suppose,” he said. He stared at me as if I was the guy in the sideshow who bit the heads off live chickens. I was just in the mood to be affronted.

“Now you listen to me,” I said. “You needed a dirty job done. I did it. He didn’t get that five eighty-five being nice to your kids. I hurt him bad in the body and I hurt him bad in the wallet. He won’t be back.”

“It’s nice to feel virtuous when you rob somebody, isn’t it?”

Gilbert and I were co-conspirators. It wouldn’t be smart for me to dump him, although the fact that there wouldn’t be any witnesses was tempting.

I looked at him for a couple of seconds.

“Honest to God,” I said, “I don’t understand guys like you, I really don’t. You want to sell a window cleaner on your network, you show a car without a windshield to prove how really, really clean your product cleans. You sell a cigarette, so you say your filter traps one point four milligrams more tar, or whatever the hell it is, than your biggest competitor, and all the time you have the laboratory report in front of you telling you that your variation is meaningless in lung cancer incidence. You take some lousy white bread jammed full of chemicals so it looks fresher, and it doesn’t have any butter in it, and the eggs are the worst grade on the market, and it smells like wall plaster, and you say it develops strong muscles umpteen ways, and
you
wouldn’t permit it in your house because you eat freshly baked Italian bread. I beat up this guy for money, and he deserved it. I did it because he had to be kept away from your kids. I took his money because you might, you just
might,
talk a little too much, and the big bad people might hear I was responsible, and they might come looking for me. I need that edge the five eighty-five gives me. Now why don’t you get the hell out?”