Frederick Zackel - Dead Wrong About the Guy

I stared at Flea and thought of every reason why I should split. And I thought about the one reason I was staying. I ended up laughing more at myself than at the situation. Then I relented. I gestured east, up the coast. "Tell him ten minutes. First turn-off, two miles from here. That way!"

Flea hurried off.

I watched Flea talking with Corky. "Assholes!" I growled. I took a deep breath. "But this is the last one!" I swore. I wasn't being paid enough to put up with this crap.

Flea came back, and we climbed in the Mustang.

I made sure the Mustang left the parking lot in a hurry, my spinning tires spewing gravel and dust. Corky Collins, looking lost, desperate and whipped, watched us leave. After a moment's hesitation, he walked to his own pickup truck.

When Corky's pickup truck arrived at the meeting place, I had the Mustang parked off the highway, away from the tourists. There were several phone booths at this roadside stop. I watched Corky park his truck and walk over to us. Then I made Flea go walk on the beach.

Corky was still sheepish. "I was out of line."

"What do you want done?"

"Flea told you, didn't he?"

"I need to hear you say it."

"I'll pay ten thousand dollars to have my wife killed," Corky said.

"You do know murdering your wife is illegal."

Corky blinked, surprised I would even consider bringing up the obvious.

"Murder for Hire. That usually starts with a jail sentence of twenty-five years to life. With good behavior, you'd get out in seventeen years."

"Why all this shit?"

"I want you to know what you're getting into. Going through with this, your life will never be the same ever again."

Corky was impatient. "I know that."

"And I want you to know how Vegas feels about this offer of yours. At the least, we're very suspicious."

"Ten grand if you can do it."

"Don't quote prices to me. I'm just the estimator."

"I figured the price would be a straight-forward--"

I was grinning, a gambler with a superior hand. "Oh, no, Mister Corky Collins. Whacking somebody you love is a serious thing. It's got to mean something to you." I poked Corky's chest with a stiff finger. "Just so you can appreciate what we're doing for you." I poked him harder. "And you will pay whatever the price is."

"That's all I can afford!"

"We'll be the judge of that."

"Hey, you already got a grand!"

I rejected that. "Expenses."

"Okay. But if it's a deal, then that grand is part of the final price."

I laughed, but didn't disagree.

"So how soon will I know?"

"I will look things over first. All that takes time." I faced the ocean again. "Some things I already don't like the looks of."

Corky tried being bold. "Maybe I should get somebody else to do the job."

I turned back, changed my tone of voice, got low and menacing. "As of now, we are the only bidders on the job. There are no others until after we make our decision."

Corky made a rude noise.

"You don't talk to any other outfits and you don't take matters into your own hands."

Corky tried being cocky. "Or else--?"

"Or else we whack you," I said.

Corky backed down. "What else?"

"I want a copy of every key on your key ring. We don't know which one we'll need, and we may need it in a hurry."

"It's gotta be authentic--" Corky said nervously.

"If we jimmy while she's alive, anything can happen. She can call the cops. She can protect herself with a kitchen knife. Once she's dead, we can go back and jimmy the locks to make them look right. By the way, you got a dog at home?"

"Yeah," Corky said, mystified.

"Get rid of him now. Before we need to have him gone. Before people notice him gone on the night we do it. And we need a map of your house. Every room and who's in it."

"How soon?"

"Go home and start now. Take your time at it. Let's do it right while we've got the time."

I walked away, followed by Flea, leaving Corky Collins behind.

Flea was impressed by the complimentary fruit basket in my room at the Beach Chalet. The hotel was on the beach at Kaanapali. It was as expensive as Las Vegas, but the room had more light and more fresh air. And of course the room had a view of the ocean.

I ignored him, the basket and the view and kept paging through the newspaper I had bought earlier in Lahaina. One headline on page ten read "Senator Urges East Maui Nat'l Park."

I said, "What's different between Maui and Vegas for you, Flea?"

Flea was confused and defensive. "I like Maui because it's dark at night. In Vegas you never know if it's day or night. Ever notice they got no clocks in the casinos?"

I stared at the headline. "I think that's my handle." I considered all the angles, liked how they connected, then said to Flea, "If anybody asks, I'm working with the National Park Service."

Flea did not understand. "How come?"

I set down my paper. "It just dawned on me. Flea, you're not even making expenses on this deal."

"I'm getting those checks back."

"What happens when it's over? What do you do next? Where do you go?"

Flea didn't understand. "I don't go nowhere. I stay here and do the same things I did yesterday, last month, the same things I did before all this shit started."

"Why stay here?"

"There's no place else I want to be. Everybody's got a place like that. You got Vegas, don't you? It's the same thing with me."

"How much were the checks for?"

Flea tasted bile with each word. "Five bills."

"For what? What did you spend the money on? Women? Dope? Are you back on the booze?" I remembered: "Horses!"

Flea squirmed. "I thought I had one this time."

I laughed. "Flea, you're always dead wrong on everything!"

"The horse couldn't run, that's all."

"One race or a bunch of races?"

Flea was silent, condemning himself.

"What else has he got on you?"

"Just the checks, Mister Paoli."

I disbelieved. "You were willing to escalate yourself up to Murder One just because some local yokel's got you for bad checks?"

"I wanna stay here," Flea said. "I like it here. Back in Vegas a guy can end up dead for dumb reasons."

"Better than risk getting busted for bad paper, you agree to solicit Murder One."

Flea had nothing worth saying.

"Didn't you never think that just maybe going to county jail for six, seven months for bad checks was smarter than committing Murder One for somebody else?"

Flea was consumed by anguish. "I don't want to do any more time."

I was sour. "No, Flea, you wanted to get us involved instead." I became somber. "You know, Flea, there is going to be an accounting."

But Flea had given up. "What choice did I have?"

Twilight brought a calming of the sea, and most boats returned to their harbor. I showed up at the Pier Inn, where that skinny young waitress was busied herself busing tables. I took a table near her. I let her wait on me.

"Could I have some coffee?" I said. "Black."

She brought my coffee and set it in front of me.

My hand swept out over the chair on the other side of the table. "How 'bout joining me?"

She was wistfully smiling. "I couldn't." She glanced at the clock above the jukebox. "I got customers."

I spoke with my sexiest voice: "Please."

Slowly, she slid in across from me.

"Michael Bishop."

"Ivy Lawson."

"Ivy's a pretty name," I said. "How’d you get it?"

Ivy sloughed it off. "I was born two months premature. My mom and dad said I was hardly a handful. He named me Ivy because of how I was clinging to life, after the doctors had given up on me. Where are you from?"

"Las Vegas."

"What do you do for a living?"

"I work for the National Parks Service.

Ivy started laughing. "Smokey the Bear!"

"Hey, somebody’s gotta. How do you like living here?"