Фредерик Браун - Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 3,1961

He opened the Caddy’s door. He stepped on the gas. As he’d seen so many times in movies, he sent the car spurting forward and leaped clear. It went over, hit the side with a tremendous rending of metal, bounced, and continued down to the bottom, about three hundred feet at its deepest point. There it settled with a chittering of smashed parts. There it lay in the moonlight, even more of a wreck than he’d hoped.

Cecily stood beside him, brushing at his clothes, examining him for cuts and bruises. There weren’t any, except for a mildly skinned wrist. “We’re all right,” she said. “It’ll be found, but not soon. They’ll think I got out and died in one of those caves. Or wandered into the desert. Or maybe wasn’t in the car when it crashed. Anyway, we’ll be in South America. Far away. We’ll be together. Forever. We’ll be so happy...” She was gripping him about the waist. He felt her body pulsing against his. But he was very tired now; very dull and drained and tired.

They returned to the Lark. He asked if she minded driving. He just had to rest for a while. She kissed him and said of course she would drive. She would do whatever he wanted from now on. Weren’t they bound together by the strongest of ties — blood?

They pulled onto the road. He slumped low in the seat and put his head on her shoulder. Her fragrance came to him, soft and delicate. After a while, he slept.

He awoke, knowing something was wrong. It was still dark, and he was still in the car, and she was still driving. Nothing had changed from the time he’d fallen asleep, so nothing could be wrong. And yet he knew there was.

His thoughts came to an end as he squinted up at her. She was sitting — or crouching — over the wheel, lips parted, eyes wide and fixed, dampness covering her forehead, face and neck. And even as he stared, a new and terrific tension entered her body.

He moaned once — a sound embodying his sudden and complete loathing for this terrible stranger to whom he was tied forever; this stranger who might yet cost him his life. She didn’t hear him. She was too engrossed in swinging the wheel hard left, peering intently at the road directly in front of the swerving, hurtling car, and then releasing her pent-up breath in a gasp of pure delight as the thump and sodden, squishing sound filled his ears and all the world.

“If I Were younger,” John Harper said, “I would do this myself. One of the troubles with growing old. Aging makes physical action awkward. A man becomes a planner, an arranger. Responsibility is delegated.”

Castle waited.

“If I were younger,” Harper went on, “I would kill them myself. I would load a gun and go out after them. I would hunt them down, one after another, and I would shoot them dead. Baron and Milani and Hallander and Ross. I would kill them all.”

The old man’s mouth spread in a smile.

“A strange picture,” he said. “John Harper with blood in his eye. The president of the bank, the past president of Rotary and Kiwanis and the Chamber of Commerce, the leading citizen of Arlington. Going out and killing people. An incongruous picture. Success guts a man, Castle. Removes the spine and intestines. Ties the hands. Success is an incredible surgeon.”

“So you hire me.”

“So I hire you. Or, to be more precise, we hire you. We’ve had as much as we can take. We’ve watched a peaceful, pleasant town taken over by a collection of amateur hoodlums. We’ve witnessed the inadequacy of a small-town police force faced with big-town operations. We’ve had enough.”

Harper sipped brandy. He was thinking, looking for the right way to phrase what he had to say. “Prostitution,” he said suddenly. “And gambling. And protection — storekeepers paying money for the right to remain storekeepers. We’ve watched four men take control of a town which used to be ours.”

Castle nodded. He knew the story already but he wasn’t impatient with the old man. He didn’t mind getting both the facts and the background behind them. You needed the full picture to do your job properly. He listened.

“I wish we could do it ourselves. Vigilante action, that type of thing. There’s a precedent for it. Fortunately, there’s also an historical precedent for employing you. Are you familiar with it?”

“The town-tamer,” Castle muttered.

“The town-tamer. An invention of the American West The man who cleans up a town for a fee. The man who waives legality when legality must inevitably be abandoned. The man who uses a gun instead of a badge when guns are effective and badges are impotent.”

“For a fee.”

“For a fee,” John Harper echoed. “For a fee of ten thousand dollars, in this instance. Ten thousand dollars to rid the world and the town of Arlington of four men. Four malignant men, four little cancers. Baron and Milani and Hallander and Ross.”

“Just four?”

“Just four. When the rats die, the mice scatter. Kill four. Kill Lou Baron and Joe Milani and Albert Hallander and Mike Ross. Then the back of the gang will be broken. The rest will run for their lives. The town will breathe clean air again. And the town needs clean air, Mr. Castle, needs it desperately. You may rest assured of that. You are doing more than earning a generous fee. You are performing a service for humanity.”

Castle shrugged.

“I’m serious,” Harper said. “I know your reputation. You’re not a hired killer, sir. You are the twentieth-century version of the town-tamer. I respect you as I could never respect a hired killer. You are performing an important service, sir. I respect you.”

Castle lit a cigarette. “The fee,” he said.

“Ten thousand dollars. And I’m paying it entirely in advance, Mr. Castle. Because, as I have said, your reputation has preceded you. You’ll have no trouble with the local police, but there are always state troopers to contend with. You might wish to leave Arlington in a hurry when the job is finished. As I understand it, the customary method of payment is half in advance and the remaining half upon completion of the job at hand. I trust you, Mr. Castle. I am paying the full sum in advance. You come well recommended.”

Castle took the envelope, slipped it into an inside jacket pocket. It made a bulge there.

“Baron and Milani and Hallander and Ross,” the old man said. “Four fish. Shoot them in a barrel, Mr. Castle. Shoot them and kill them. They are a disease, a plague.”

Castle nodded. “That’s all?”

“That is all.”

The interview was over. Castle stood up and let Harper show him to the door. He walked quickly to his car and drove off into the night.

Baron and Milani and Hallander and Ross.

Castle had never met them but he knew them all. Small fish, little boys setting up a little town for a little fortune. They were not big men. They didn’t have the guts or the brains to play in Chicago or New York or Vegas. They knew their strengths and their limitations. And they cut a nice pie for themselves.

Arlington, Ohio. Population forty-seven thousand. Three small manufacturing concerns, two of them owned by John Harper. One bank, owned by John Harper. Stores and shops. Doctors and lawyers. Shopkeepers, workers, professional men, housewives, clerks.

And, for the first time, criminals.

Lou Baron and Joe Milani and Albert Hallander and Mike Ross. And, as a direct result of their presence, a bucketful of hustlers on Lake Street, a handful of horse drops on Main and Limestone, a batch of numbers-runners and a boatload of muscle to make sure everything moved according to plan. Money being drained from Arlington, people being exploited in Arlington, Arlington turning slowly but surely into the private property of four men.