Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

I knew then that it was both of them. I knew that he had seen what I’d sent him to see and that he’d done what I’d thought he might do. I couldn’t stand the sight of him sitting there crying, so I rolled over and buried my face in my arms, but I could still see him just the same, and I can still see him now, and I only wish they had, in the place where he is, a field where he could work under the hot sun with his big hands, and a creek where he could go when the work was finished.

Originally published in Manhunt , February 1956.

Carey Regan had word that Campan wanted to see him at his apartment, so Carey went up. It was Campan’s wife, Phyllis, who opened the door.

“Hello, Phyl,” Carey said.

Such abbreviations usually suggest intimacy, and in this case the suggestion was valid. Carey and Phyl knew each other better than Campan dreamed. She was wearing a white cashmere sweater tucked into the waist of a pair of blue velvet toreador pants. Her short black hair had a seductively tousled look, as if she’d just crawled out of bed, and the bright lips that could thin on provocation to a hard red line were now relaxed in a receptive pout. She put her arms around Carey’s neck and her mouth on Carey’s mouth, and for a long minute or two the situation was pretty exciting, but it couldn’t develop much because of Campan, who was certainly near by.

Pretty soon she stepped back and said, “Campan’s waiting for you. Campan calls and Carey comes running.”

He raised an eyebrow and hid his sudden anger behind a derisive smile. “Campan? You too? Has he started taking his ego to bed with you yet?”

“The last name stuff, you mean? Why not? It’s the sign of a man getting big. It’s a man riding a star.”

“Sure. Drop the Adolph. Drop the Benito. In this case, drop the Joseph. Just Campan. Even to his wife, just Campan.”

“You sound bitter, darling. Why? You’re going along, aren’t you? On the ride, that is. Campan needs you. He needs an errand boy. He needs a smooth, hard guy with practically no conscience.”

“Where is he?”

“In the office. Stop and have a drink with me on the way out.”

“Maybe.”

He walked the length of the living room and went into a short hall and down the hall to the door of the room Campan used as an office. He knocked and heard Campan’s voice telling him to come in. Inside, he closed the door behind him and gleaned his shoulders against it. It wasn’t a large room. There was a rug land a desk and three chairs and a green metal filing cabinet. That was all. Campan was a luxury-loving guy who would eventually run to fat but in this one room he affected a phony Spartan simplicity. It was very odd. It probably indicated something or other about his character.

Campan said. “Come in, Carey. Sit down.”

Carey crossed to a chair and sat looking at Campan behind the desk. Campan looked the same as last time, but this was an illusion. He wasn’t the same because every time he was a little bigger, and bigger is different. Every time he was a little more Campan and a little less Joseph. The short body, the brown, tight, glossy skin that looked stuffed to bursting, the pale brown eyes, almost yellow at times, the small pink bud of a mouth — these were nearly constant, changing only in the very slow and indiscernible process of getting day-by-day older. But these were not Campan. These were only Campan’s baggage. Campan himself was inside. Campan himself kept getting bigger and bigger. Campan was a voracious ego eating itself to immensity. Hardly anything bothered him. Danger didn’t bother him. Cruelty didn’t bother him. Death didn’t bother him. Only the thought of defeat bothered him. He had been defeated a few times in his life, and the ones responsible for his defeat had lived to regret it. Or, precisely, had in certain cases not lived to regret it.

Carey wondered how he did it. All the money coming in. All the power coming in with the money. All the officials in his pocket. Growing right up in the fat rackets to measure stature with no one but the Swede himself. Someone had to go. Either Campan or the Swede. Everyone on the inside understood it and kept wondering when it would be and which it would be, because they thought, of course, that it would be very nice to get on the right side in good time.

“You wanted to see me?” Carey said.

“That’s right.” Campan’s little pink bud of a mouth spread on his teeth. “You like a drink?”

“No, thanks. Phyllis asked me to have one with her on the way out.”

“Sure. You do that. You have a drink with Phyllis and then run on and do this little job I have in mind.”

Carey found a cigarette and lit it. “What job?” he said.

Campan didn’t answer directly. He sat back and folded his hands across the belly that would someday get sloppy. He watched Carey go through the business with the cigarette, and his pink mouth kept smiling, but his eyes hadn’t even begun. They were more yellow than brown, Carey decided. There seemed to be a light behind them on the inside.

“I got a call from the Swede,” Campan said.

“Yes?”

“I said so. Couple hours ago. He wants to see me.”

“When?”

“Ten, he said. Tonight.”

“Where?”

“You know that little office he keeps down on Twelfth?”

“Sure. Everyone knows it. It’s the one he started in. So he’s superstitious about it. So he keeps it.”

“All right. I know the legend. That’s where. At ten tonight.”

“He told you to come? Like ordering up a bellhop?”

“That’s the way. Real brusque. Docs Campan run when someone calls?”

“Maybe when the Swede calls.”

“No. Yesterday, yes. Today, no. Campan doesn’t run.”

“Who runs? Carey Regan?”

“Campan’s shadow. Campan’s right arm. The guy who goes where Campan goes and shares in Campan’s take. Is that Carey Regan?”

“What does the Swede want?”

“He didn’t say, but it wasn’t necessary. He wants to draw a line. He wants to draw a line right in front of Campan. This far, he wants to say. No farther, Campan. Time’s up, I mean. Tonight at ten, Carey, time’s up.”

“About the line. You going across?”

“Going? I’m already across. I’ve been across for longer than the Swede will ever know. Connections I’ve got. Strategy I’ve got. The Swede goes, Campan’s in his place. Just like that. All at once, Campan’s there. It’ll look real simple, but it hasn’t been. There’s been work. There’s been deals. There’s been waiting.”

“But the Swede’s still there.”

“Until ten. He set the time himself. It’s sad to think of a big guy’s last hours. To think about everything he’s been and done, and all the time it’s taken, and how in a little while it’ll all be gone. Nothing left. Like it never was. It’s sad as hell, Carey. Thinking about something like that could break a guy up. Well, he’s been around a long time. He’s had quite a run, and no reasonable guy can expect to last forever.”

“Will he be alone?”

“As alone as he ever gets.”

“He and Johnny Derry?”

“That’s right. He didn’t say Johnny would be there, but you can count on it. He’s always there. The Swede’s getting old, and there are a lot of guys around who think it would be a good thing if he didn’t get any older. You can always count on Johnny being around.”

“The two of them. The Swede and Johnny.”

“Two. No matter how many times you add it, it comes out two.”

“It’ll be quite a job of work.”

“I like a guy who can do a job of work. A guy like that is a guy Campan likes to do something for.”

“You’ll want a report?”