William Haggard - The New Black Mask (No 5)

“I gots cowboy blood, Mister Downey, like you musta had when you was a young man runnin’ shine. That cop musta got loose, got Cora and Whitey to snitch. Blew a sweet piece of work, but we can still get off clean. McCarver was the only one ’sides me knew you was bankrollin’, and he be dead. Billy be the one you wants dead, and he be showin’ up soon. Then I cuts him and dumps him somewhere, and nobody knows he was even here.”

“You want money, don’t you?”

“Five big get me lost somewheres nice, then maybe when he starts feelin’ safe again, I comes back and cuts that cop. That sound about—”

Applause from the big house next door cut Simpkins off. I pulled out my piece and got up some guts, knowing my only safe bet was to backshoot the son of a bitch right where he was. I heard more clapping and joyous shouts that Mayor Bowron’s reign was over, and then John Downey’s preacher baritone was back in force: “I want him dead. My daughter is a whitewash consort and a whore, and he’s—”

A scream went off behind me, and I hit the ground just as machine-gun fire blew the window to bits. Another burst took out the hedgerow and the next-door window. I pinned myself back first to the wall and drew myself upright as the snout of a tommy gun was rested against the ledge a few inches away. When muzzle flame and another volley exploded from it, I stuck my .38 in blind and fired six times at stomach level. The tommy strafed a reflex burst upward, and when I hit the ground again, the only sound was chaotic shrieks from the other house.

I reloaded from a crouch, then stood up and surveyed the carnage through both mansion windows. Wallace Simpkins lay dead on John Downey’s Persian carpet, and across the way I saw a banner for the West Adams Democratic Club streaked with blood. When I saw a dead woman spread-eagled on top of an antique table, I screamed myself, elbowed my way into Downey’s den, and picked up the machine gun. The grips burned my hands, but I didn’t care; I saw the faces of every boxer who had ever defeated me and didn’t care; I heard grenades going off in my brain and was glad they were there to kill all the innocent screaming. With the tommy’s muzzle as my directional device, I walked through the house.

All my senses went into my eyes and trigger finger. Wind ruffled a window curtain, and I blew the wall apart; I caught my own image in a gilt-edged mirror and blasted myself into glass shrapnel. Then I heard a woman moaning, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” dropped the tommy, and ran to her.

Cora was on her knees on the entry hall floor, plunging a shiv into a man who had to be her father. The man moaned baritone low and tried to reach up, almost as if to embrace her. Cora’s “Daddy’s” got lower and lower, until the two seemed to be working toward harmony. When she let the dying man hold her, I gave them a moment together, then pulled Cora off of him and dragged her outside. She went limp in my arms, and with lights going on everywhere and sirens converging from all directions, I carried her to my car.

Chet Williamson's stories have appeared in Playboy, New Yorker, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Twilight Zone, Games, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, where his “Season Pass,” an Edgar nominee, was published. Two novels, The Pines and Ash Wednesday, are forthcoming from Tor Books. A third, Only Business, is under revision, and he is currently writing his fourth book, a novel about a small-city detective, McKain’s Dilemma.

Though Williamson has written few mysteries to date, his long interest in Hammett, Chandler, and the Black Mask writers, as well as his delight in such contemporary authors as Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker, have led him to the genre.

Williamson, 37, is a full-time free-lancer and lives with his wife and son amid ever-growing piles of books. He has no idea whatever of where “Some Jobs Are Simple ” came from, other than from his typewriter. “Sometimes they’re just there. I think people sneak in at night and leave them.”

“It took me a long time to find you,” she said, looking across the beer-wet table at him. She was a hassled-looking woman, he thought as he looked back and sipped his drink. Young, but not so young that she could hide those bags under her eyes with makeup.

“You sure I’m who you’re looking for?”

“If your name’s Joe, you are.”

He nodded. “Joe.”

“I need a… something done.”

“A job.”

“Yes. A job.”

“Who told you about me?”

“An acquaintance. He owns… owned a fur-storage place.”

“Uh-huh.” Abrams, he thought. He’d torched the building six months before.

“Not him really. His wife.”

“What’s the job?”

She looked around nervously. “Can we talk here?”

“See any cops?”

She started to answer before she realized he was joking.

“Don’t be so nervous,” he said with a thin smile. "You, uh…” He glanced down, then up. “You want me to do somebody for you?”

“No!” Her eyelids flew up. “Oh no, nothing like that.”

“What then?”

“A burglary.” She had trouble with the word. It seemed to stick in her throat. He gestured to the half pitcher of beer, but she shook her head. “I want you to burglarize my house. Steal some jewelry of mine.”

“Steal your own jewelry. That means insurance.”

“Yes. I need money.”

“And I give you back the jewels afterwards.”

“Well, yes.”

“And you pay me.”

“Yes.”

“You pay me a thousand dollars.”

“A… that’s more than I had thought.”

“I’m taking a risk. You see? Any less and it’s not worth it.”

“A thousand dollars.”

“I generally ask for more. Things are slow right now.”

“You’d want cash.”

He chuckled softly. “Yes indeed.”

“Oh!” She looked embarrassed. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Where do you live?”

“Marion Court. 1636 Marion Court.”

He licked the beer from his lip. Marion Court was an upper-class section on the city’s outskirts. The houses were widely spaced. “Who else lives there?”

“Just my husband.”

“He in on this?”

“He… no, he’s not. I don’t want him to know about it.”

“He’ll know when the jewels are gone.”

“I mean about my meeting you.”

“Why not?”

“I need the money for something I don’t want him to know about.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that’s all I want to say about it.”

He poured himself more beer and took a swallow. “Once I steal the jewels, how do you know I’ll give them back?”

“I would have to trust you.”

“I’m a thief.”

“If you kept them,” she frowned, “I could tell the police you took them.”

“Then I’d tell that you hired me to take them.”

“You couldn’t prove that.”

“Then how else would you know that I took them?” A cloud passed over her face, and she moved back, as if trying to decide whether or not to rise from the table. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll get them back. I didn’t get my reputation by double-crossing clients. I just want you to know that if you change your mind and get religion, I can take you with me, okay?”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“Good. When do you want this done?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“That's pretty soon.” She didn’t respond. “Okay. What time?”

“Two a.m.? You can come in through the kitchen door. I’ll have it unlocked. I’ll put the jewelry on the desk in the den. It’s just off the kitchen.”