Макс Коллинз - Shoot the Moon (and more)

“Shut-up, Smitt.”

So now “war buddy” Vin turns nasty, huh? “Okay, pal, it’s your gun.”

“I said shut-up, Smitt.”

I did.

“Your full name is Phillip James Smith, you are a veteran of the Korean War, presently working as a freelance insurance investigator.”

He looked at me as if he expected an answer; since he hadn’t asked a question I didn’t have one for him.

“Well?” he asked. Demanded.

“Well what?”

“Is what I’ve said correct?”

“Yeah, yeah, so what?”

“And you carry a firearm?”

“No.”

“You don’t? Don’t try lying to me, Smitty.”

“I own a gun, but I’ve never carried it with me. It’s a little .32 revolver. I never even fired it once. Carried it on a couple jobs, few years ago, but that’s about it.”

“Go get it.”

“What?”

“The gun. Your gun. Go get it. But no shells, please. I’ve got shells for you. Then throw on some clothes and we’ll get moving. Hustle, Smitt.”

“What’s going on?”

He showed me a plastic I.D. of some kind which identified him as an FBI agent. Looked legit, as far as I could tell.

“So,” I said, “Uncle Sam wants me.”

“You might say that.”

“Well he can’t have me. He had me once and that was one time too many.”

“I’m got giving you a choice, Smitt.”

“I have to take the gun?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s just a .32, wouldn’t stop a fly...”

“If you have to shoot, aim at the head.”

“If I have to shoot... what kind of shit is this...?”

“Hurry up.”

The man driving the car kept his mouth shut the whole time. He wore a black suit which looked slept-in and a black tie which was food-stained and black shoes which looked like they’d just finished kicking somebody’s teeth in. I noticed all of that because I was practically sitting on top of him; Thompson, the driver and I were all piled into the front seat of a black Lincoln Continental. There was a solid partition, a black padded wall without a window or anything, separating the front from the back. So I didn’t know who or what the hell was back there. Nor by this time did I care. Still had the migraine, paisley spots floating in front of my eyes.

The heater was on heavy and it was hot in the car, as crammed together as we all were, though outside it was cold, crisp October. The driver switched off the heater and rolled down the window. Since I was sweating like a pig on a barbecue, I took this as a gesture of good will.

“I appreciate that, buddy, thanks a lot.” I gave him a cheerful look.

The driver cleared his throat and shot a clot of mucous out the window. Then he rolled it back up and let me sweat some more. He turned his head toward me for a moment and his face looked like a slab of cement with a single crack running across it. An unfriendly crack at that, surrounded by pockmarks.

I didn’t speak to him again.

“I don’t have to tell you I don’t like any of this, do I?” I asked Thompson.

“I didn’t exactly expect you to, Smitt.”

“How do I know this is on the level, really FBI and all?”

“You don’t.”

“How do you know I’ll even go though with the damn thing, whatever it is?”

“You will carry it out, just as I outline it to you, because if you don’t you’ll sour my entire assignment and I’ll be forced to eliminate you.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“You motherfucker.”

“Shut-up, Smitty.”

I did.

We drove on through the cold crisp October night and I pretended I didn’t hear the sounds going on behind the black padded partition. Unidentifiable sounds, but sounds. Then I relaxed. Tried to ignore the press of Vin’s automatic in my side.

The whole damn set-up sounded far-fetched as hell, but then I didn’t have much say about it.

Vin and his men were assigned to guard the daughter of Edward Stewart, a United States Senator who’d been murdered a few weeks before. The daughter, whose name was Susan — Suzie to her friends — had seen the murderer, but hadn’t revealed her knowledge until recently, within the last several days. I’d seen the girl’s picture in the papers; it had been getting some big press. I asked Vin why she’d waited to talk and he told me that she was twenty years old and probably scared half out of her mind, which I could easily understand. After all, I was thirty-five and completely scared out of my mind.

Anyway, Vin and a couple other government agents were supposed to watch Susan Stewart closely, until proper steps were taken. Whatever the hell the proper steps were.

Now and then I would stop and ask Vin a clarifying question or two and Vin would tell me to shut-up. But I was pretty well convinced of all this. As you would’ve been, had someone with an automatic been doing the convincing.

The pay-off was that there’d been some related emergency come up in the past few hours which called for Vin and all of his men. And they needed someone to watch the girl for the hour they’d have to be gone, the exact hour being three-thirty to four-thirty a.m. Fifteen minutes away. And I was the lucky candidate. Why me, you ask? Don’t you think maybe I was asking that question enough?

Not that Vin didn’t have some answers for me. He and I had been friendly during Korea and he knew I lived in the city, since we’d exchanged goddamn Christmas cards for a few years after service. And, because I was an insurance investigator, I was in some vague way further qualified for the job. According to Vin he immediately thought of me when he’d gotten in this spot, and supposedly the “office” Vin worked out of had prepared a list of likely civilians to recruit in such emergencies. And I was the only one on this sucker list Vin knew personally.

So there I sat. In the front seat of a black Lincoln Continental, a manned automatic sitting on my one side and a hunk of pock-marked concrete on the other.

At five till four the driver brought the Lincoln to a halt in front of an aging brownstone.

It had to be said, and the nerve to say it came to me, God knows from where. “Damn it, Vin, what is all this crap you’re spoon-feeding me supposed to mean? How can you expect me to believe you? That you can’t spare just one of your men for this task? And how can you be sure I’ll be an obedient dog and not just head for the proverbial hills after you guys dump me off?”

Vin shrugged, backed the automatic off. The long-lost-war-buddy look took over his face again. “I’m not going to wave any flags, Smitt, but...”

“Put a hold on that crap, pal. It won’t take with me. You say for security sake you can’t call the cops, so you haul in a civilian, take him into your confidence and lay the whole bag on his shoulders. My ass! And why me, for Christ’s sake, Vin, I’m anything but a hero. Hell, man, you could’ve done better picking a bum off the...”

“You hold it, Smitt. I told you we couldn’t tell you everything. Do you want to know too much? It’s on your shoulders, you say, and why you? I said this was spur of the moment, Smitty, I’m taking a chance, a big one. Believe me, my head’ll be on the chopping block if you blow this. It isn’t the way I want it, Smitty, but so help me God it’s the only possible way it can be.”

I sat there for a moment.

“Well, Smitt?”

“Give me a cigarette, damn it.”

He did, lit it for me off the dash lighter.

“What would you do, Vin, if I got out of this car and walked away from it?”

Vin lifted his shoulders and set them back down. “Not a damn thing, Smitty. Not a damn thing.”

I bit my lower lip. Sure, sure he says I can walk away. But those eyes, damn flint-gray deep-socketed eyes say he’ll shoot me down as I get out of the car. Let me fall to the gutter as he drives off.