The Adjustment (22 page)
Irma looked pleased, too, flushed and newly radiant, and she leaned down and touched her hand to his cheek. I don’t think he could have been more thrilled if it had been a handjob. “Maybe we could arrange a date sometime,” she said, and she rummaged through her handbag for a calling card.
“I would like that very much, Miss,” Norman said, accepting the card as though it were a gift of great price. I was pretty sure we had established earlier in the evening the nature of Irma’s profession; her resemblance to Joan Blondell had cured him of his aversion to paying for it, which would probably result in his being a happier man. Now he turned to Wageknecht. “And what is it you do for a living, young fellow?”
“I’m a private detective,” he said, trying the phrase on like a costume. “I used to be a whore, though.”
Norman nodded, looking like the idea was new to him. “That’s interesting.”
Wageknecht nodded. “And if the private detective business doesn’t work out, I’m thinking about taking dirty pictures and selling them.”
Norman smiled. “That’s a job I would have loved to have when I was younger,” he said.
“How serious are you about giving it up?” I asked Wageknecht.
“Pretty serious.”
I thought for a minute before I spoke again. It seemed perfect. Collins might object to Wageknecht if he knew about the whole queer business, but there was no reason for him to find out unless Wageknecht told him. And he was an ex-marine. “Wageknecht, how would you like a job as a bodyguard and chauffeur?”
“Hell, yes, I’d like it.”
“All right then, show up at Collins Aircraft tomorrow at eleven and I’ll take you down to personnel.”
“That’s swell of you, Mr. Ogden.”
“I believe I’d rather have that job taking dirty pictures,” Norman said, and not long after that he fell asleep.
DRIVING HOME AT three-fifteen in the morning I felt as though I hadn’t slept in a week, and I was ready to surrender to Morpheus. I cursed, then, when I spotted an unfamiliar vehicle parked two houses south of mine, a ’34 or ’35 Chrysler Airflow with New York MD plates, an absurdly conspicuous choice for a driver who wanted to keep his profile low.
Of all the nights for this shit-for-brains to show up in person, he’d picked tonight. The adrenaline that had pumped through my system earlier in the evening came back in force, and my fatigue evaporated. I turned at the next intersection and doubled back, parking one street west on South Volutsia. I cut between two houses and watched the Airflow for five or six minutes and satisfied myself that the driver, his head back and his mouth open, was asleep. Then I went back to the Olds and drove around the block again.
This time I backed into the driveway and slammed the door when I got out. I didn’t dare sneak a look backward at the Airflow, but I hoped my arrival had startled him awake. Feigning a drunken stagger as I made my way up to the front door, I made a show of fumbling with my keys and stumbled inside, leaving the door open.
Sally was a good, solid sleeper, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain to her what was happening. In a crouch, I made my way to the fireplace and grabbed an andiron, one with a nice sharp hook at the end of it, and took a position over by the front door.
A silhouette appeared, holding a gun in one hand and a satchel in the other. He moved gingerly into the room, illuminated by the lone streetlamp outside, and as soon as he crossed the threshold I brought the andiron down hard on the back of his head, and when he hit the ground I hit him again in the face.
I got some copper wiring and a large oilskin tarp from the garage and tied his wrists and ankles with the wire before wrapping him in the tarp, then locked him in the trunk of the Olds. I took his gun, a .38, and his satchel, which was made of leather and marked with the initials WGP MD, and put them in the car, then cleaned off of the linoleum and threw the bloodied dishrag into the big trash can in the garage, piling some newspapers over it in case Sally might take a load of kitchen waste out. Then I took my trusty old wheelbarrow and a shovel and, as quietly as I could, loaded them into the backseat of the Olds.
I got behind the wheel and headed out to highway 54. Just outside the little town of Augusta was an old limestone quarry where my dad used to take me looking for fossils when I was a boy. I was hoping that the abandoned foreman’s shack was still standing; even if it wasn’t, there wasn’t a house within two miles of the place. At least there didn’t used to be.
Fifteen minutes later I was pulling into the quarry road. I hoped my bashful correspondent wasn’t dead, because I wanted to find out a few things before he checked out.
I shone my flashlight into his leather satchel: inside was a sadist’s bounty of torture tools: knives, pliers, duct tape, and an assortment of medical supplies, including syringes and surgical instruments and small bottles of drugs. It seemed impossible that my tormentor was a doctor, given the analphabetical quality of his notes, but that may have been a ruse.
I took the wheelbarrow and shovel from the back seat, opened the trunk, and heaved the oilskin bundle into the barrow. It let loose a grunt when it hit, and I loaded the medical bag and copper wire on top of it. Then I marched to the foreman’s shack, halfway around the rim of the quarry with the shovel balanced over my shoulder and the .38 in my pocket, the wheelbarrow bouncing and jiggling in the dark, the flashlight’s beam shining crazily over the path ahead.
I dumped the barrow out when I got to the foreman’s shack and hauled him inside. Very carefully I untied the wire that held the ends of the tarp closed and found that he was breathing.
From his back trouser pocket I took his wallet and learned that he was not a doctor, nor were his initials WGP. His driver’s license identified him as Ralph Joseph Gardner, of Astoria, Queens, New York, as did a Veteran’s Administration Employee’s Identification card. Apart from a Social Security card and seven dollars, that was all the wallet contained.
With the flashlight in his squirrely eyes I knew him right away. He was a PFC who’d tried to sell me a stolen army jeep in Rome, gap-toothed in front and sunken-chested, who walked with a peculiar stiff-legged gait as though he was imitating John Wayne. “Hell, you’re a fence, ain’tcha?” he’d said, insulted that I wouldn’t fork over for a set of wheels that would have got me court martialed. I remembered him spending lots of his pay on whores, though not whether he was particularly attached to one girl or another.
I considered the possibility of killing him right then and disposing of him somehow before the sun came up. I was still curious about him, though, about how he’d settled on me as the villain in his imaginary love story, so I slapped him in the face, hard. He stirred, his eyes unfocused and bleary, and then he got a load of me and tried to yell. Only a hoarse rattle came out, though, and I thought maybe I’d knocked him stupid.
“How are you, Ralph?”
“Go to hell.” He was slurring, but I didn’t think he was drunk.
“So what’s your beef with me? Still mad about that jeep?”
“Lemme go,” he said, pulling at the wire.
“I didn’t kill Brunela, you know. She killed herself.”
“Same as. Lousy pimp. She loved me.”
“She was a pro. She didn’t love you.”
“She listened to me. She was going to come to America with me when the war was over.”
“Brunela fucked you for money, just like she did a thousand other guys. She listened to your sob stories because you were paying her to. And I didn’t kill her.”
“You pimped her.”
I shook my head, exasperated at his refusal to face reality. “But I didn’t turn her out. She’d been working two or three years already by the time I came on the scene. The fact is I improved her working conditions. Made her last six months or so bearable, the way I see it.”
The funny thing about it was, old Ralph didn’t seem very scared. He was pissed off, sure, but I really don’t think he’d figured out that his number was up. “You think the rules don’t apply to you, Ogden. Just the rest of us.”
“I can’t quite figure you out,” I said. “You’re smart enough to track me down halfway across the country, and dumb enough to fall in love with a hooker.”
“And you cheating Uncle Sam while guys like me was getting killed fighting.”
“Ralph, you were stealing jeeps from the army. And I see you’re still stealing cars. I’m guessing the Airflow and the bag both belong to one of your Administration docs. How’d you find me, anyway? I know you work for the VA, but I can’t believe they’d let an illiterate work as a file clerk.”
“I got a lady friend in the filing department, helps me out.”
“Shit, Ralph, you should have been satisfied with that. A job and a girl, that’s the American dream. You probably would have had your own car before long. House with a lawn. Now what have you got to look forward to?”
“Going to make you pay for what you did to Brunela. And then I’m going to fuck that wife of yours. She’s some potato.”
“You mean tomato, you dumb shit.” I was tired of the sound of him and tired of the sight. He was just about to say something when I picked up the shovel.
“Hey, wait. You can’t kill me.”
“Sure I can,” I said, and I dragged him by the legs out the broken doorframe of the shack. He was struggling pretty hard and I thought I’d better shut him down quickly, so I swung the shovel over my shoulder like a golfer. That finally put a scare into him, and he let loose a terrified wail as I brought the blade down sideways and hard on his head. His piteous wail didn’t end with the impact but wound down over two or three seconds, like a radio that’s been turned off.
A dozen yards from the shack I began to dig.
FIFTEEN
SAUL OF TARSUS
J
UST BEFORE DAWN I drove the Airflow and left it in front of Ketteman’s bakery with the doctor’s bag locked in the trunk. I didn’t owe him, but I felt a certain kinship since we’d both had a beef with Ralph. They’d get back to him eventually. The adrenalin hadn’t burned off yet, so I headed to Stanley’s for some breakfast.
UST BEFORE DAWN I drove the Airflow and left it in front of Ketteman’s bakery with the doctor’s bag locked in the trunk. I didn’t owe him, but I felt a certain kinship since we’d both had a beef with Ralph. They’d get back to him eventually. The adrenalin hadn’t burned off yet, so I headed to Stanley’s for some breakfast.
As I ate I went through both morning papers. Burress wasn’t dead, according to the
Morning Eagle
, but he was paralyzed on his right side and unable to speak, his active career at an end. The
Beacon
ignored it, though if they’d gotten wind of the presence of half-naked whores and sneaky photographers they certainly would have featured it as their lead. I wondered about sending the photo of Burress to Wilbur Lamarr and George Latham, just as a warning. I didn’t think I needed to, though. With one member of their cabal in the ground and the other in intensive care, the message was probably getting through.
Morning Eagle
, but he was paralyzed on his right side and unable to speak, his active career at an end. The
Beacon
ignored it, though if they’d gotten wind of the presence of half-naked whores and sneaky photographers they certainly would have featured it as their lead. I wondered about sending the photo of Burress to Wilbur Lamarr and George Latham, just as a warning. I didn’t think I needed to, though. With one member of their cabal in the ground and the other in intensive care, the message was probably getting through.
Even if it wasn’t, I was done with the whole shutterbug angle anyway; it would be time for something more direct, so just for laughs I started thinking up ways Latham might get hurt. There was always the danger of something falling onto a man, for example. When I was still in England, a Master Sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps had gotten badly injured that way. An organized man with a knack for detail and a stick up his ass for proper procedure, the sarge had started investigating shortages in certain categories. Poor fellow was walking under a fourth-story window when a fifty-pound bag of cement toppled off the sill where someone had carelessly propped it. He was lucky, in a way, since he didn’t die and got to go home years earlier than he would have, and no one in authority ever figured out who’d left the bag there. Or ever tried very hard, either.
There were ways to sabotage a car, too, though there was always the attendant risk of injuring bystanders, if that kind of thing bothered one. And of course there was my friend Rackey, who might do anything to a man he suspected of nailing his dear wife.
At eleven I met Wageknecht at the Personnel office. Whittaker seemed well-pleased for once, and I left them filling out paperwork and headed for the boss’s office to tell him the good news.
Millie gave a little start at the sight of me, then with an insincere half-smile that was very unlike her she looked down and pretended to be looking for something in her desk drawer. “You can go right in, Mr. Ogden.”
Collins was waiting for me, hands clasped behind his head. He looked confident to the point of arrogance, and healthier than I’d seen him look since before the war. “Ogden,” he said as I sat on the corner of his desk.
“Found you a new bodyguard and driver.”
“Did you.”
“Wageknecht, the fellow who shot the dirty pictures of Huff.”
“Good man. Resourceful. Glad you thought of that. And your timing is perfect. You know why? I was afraid I was going to have to do the hiring myself.”
“How come?”
“Because I’m firing you, you dumb shit.”
I wished the shovel from last night was in my hands right then. I’d have smashed the ungrateful bastard’s face the way I’d done Ralph’s. I didn’t really care when he’d fired me drunk, but doing it sober was an unforgiveable insult. I had personally gotten this man free of a crippling addiction to narcotics, had risked imprisonment to safeguard his position at the company he founded, and had provided him with every vice imaginable, all the while serving as something almost like a friend, since Everett Collins had none left. If nothing else I was owed loyalty and gratitude.
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