Brett Halliday - At the Point of a. 38

“Remember we don’t want to hurt this man unless we have to,” Gold said. “Just watch me and do what I do.”

Skinny enough before, Gold had wasted away in that miserable Israeli prison. He could take the flesh on his belly and fold it over like the flap on an envelope. He had been semi-bald for years, and had always shaved clean. Now, with a scraggly beard and a hairpiece, with sun glasses blotting out most of the space between, he was a totally different man, he hoped. Nevertheless, he hated to be out in the open in a town where so many people were dying to get their fingernails in his eyes. He entered the funeral parlor with his head down, clearly bereaved.

The funeral director, Mr. Everett, had been watching at the front window to see what kind of car he came in, as that would have an effect on the price. A plump man, Mr. Everett had the silkiness and perennial low spirits that went with his profession. He took Gold’s hand in both of his own, and gave it an extra squeeze before letting go, to show how much he sympathized in the loss of the dear one. There was only one girl in the front room; Gold had decided that the maximum number he and Artie could handle comfortably would be three. After introducing Artie as a young cousin who had been kind enough to drive him, he and the funeral director withdrew to discuss options and prices.

Embalming, he learned, was done on the premises, by Everett himself, with the help of an assistant who came in afternoons. Apologizing for being so picky, Gold asked to be shown the complete range of coffins. His sister had been a particular person, and he wanted everything exactly as she would have wished.

Alone with Everett and his coffins, Gold produced a pistol and showed it to the undertaker, who had been in business long enough to see almost everything. His jaw dropped into a nest of double chins.

Gold said mildly, “You’ve been helpful, but I’m sorry to say I don’t have a sister.”

“A robbery,” Everett breathed.

“That’s what it looks like. I don’t suppose you carry a gun.”

“Why, no.”

“I think I’ll believe you. Being frisked is so unpleasant. I hate it when it happens to me. Back up over there and be good, unless you want to end up being embalmed by the competition.”

“I never keep much cash.”

Gold decided he had been friendly enough. He snarled and stabbed the fat little businessman with the pistol barrel.

“No noise. Back up. Here.” He pulled the lining out of one of the coffins. “Tear this up.”

The undertaker, very scared and confused, managed to rip off several long strips. Gold ordered him to climb into one of the expensive coffins, rust-resistant steel lined with cedar lined with lavender-colored silk, with a pillow for the corpse’s head. He wasn’t coordinating well, and he had to be helped with a succession of light slaps with the gun.

“It’s airtight,” Everett whispered.

“You won’t suffocate,” Gold told him. “I’m not completely out of my mind.”

Everett seemed to doubt that statement, but he clambered in and lay back. Gold tied his ankles and wrists.

“Promise you won’t close the lid?” Everett said. “I’ll hold you to it. Because they really make it so no air can get in-”

Gold had never liked complainers. He reversed the pistol and gave Everett a really good rap with the butt-plate. Then he gagged him, and went back to the reception room and told the girl that Mr. Everett wanted her. She walked in briskly, with Artie a step behind. She was only a year or so out of high school, and Gold really dug her freshness and the way she moved, though her face was marred by too many pimples. He snaked an arm around her from behind and kept her from yelling when she saw her employer trussed up in one of the firm’s best coffins.

Gold’s second hand went naturally to her breast, and the nipple stood up between his fingers. Artie grabbed her ankles and tied them. She twisted in Gold’s grip, trying to buck loose, and her soft backside jolted against his midsection, arousing him to the point where he nearly forgot that the ticklish part of the morning was just beginning. Then she went limp.

“That’s right, dear,” he said, panting. “Relax and enjoy it.”

She was completely out. They lifted her into another coffin. Gold kept his word, and when he lowered the coffin lids, he remembered to leave several thicknesses of fabric so the seal was less than complete.

Artie went out for the Dodge and brought it around.

Gold chose a child’s coffin, lined with white satin dotted with rosebuds. It was surprisingly heavy. Artie used a two-wheeled dolly to load it into the hearse. Then he opened the Dodge’s trunk. The Thompsons from Homestead Air Base were piled up inside, wrapped in rags. Gold passed them in, one by one, then the loaded clips and the boxes of ammunition. Artie stowed everything in the coffin. He backed out and they closed the double doors.

“I almost forgot something,” Gold said.

Using the point of a screwdriver, he chewed up the lock so the latch wouldn’t hold, and fastened the doors with tape.

“Did you happen to notice she wasn’t wearing pants?” Artie said.

“What?”

“The chick. How about that, in a funeral parlor? If you don’t believe me, go and look.”

“Thanks,” Gold said chillily. “What kind of a zombie do you think I am?”

Artie chuckled and faked a punch. “Didn’t it all go easy, though? Like you said.”

“The day’s just getting underway.”

Artie had taken three Dexies before they left, a dose Gold had considered about right. But after tying up the girl and laying her out in the coffin, without underpants, he was so high that Gold considered feeding him something different now to take off the edge. No, he decided. He wanted the boy to seem dangerously excited when they met the Arabs. Of course it was a gamble. He would have preferred to use somebody from his old world, whose behavior could be predicted exactly, but what the hell! This whole thing was out of character for him. He might as well go all the way.

Artie did an impromptu shuffle on the blacktop while Gold tended to one other matter. He had a paper bag containing two timing devices, two lumps of plastic explosive, two ping-pong balls and a hypodermic needle. Each assembly had cost him twenty dollars. He had placed the order by phone, refusing to give his name, and Helen had driven in to pick them up. The ping-pong balls were partly filled with some mysterious fluid. Gold had never inquired into the chemistry of it; all he knew was that it worked. He injected each ball with a spurt from the hypodermic needle, and sealed the puncture with a drop of quick-setting adhesive. He set one timer for 11:40, the other for thirty seconds later, wired each package, and then installed one in a limousine, the other in the hearse. At 11:40, when the plastic material blew, the ruptured ball would scatter its contents over the motor, burning with an intense heat. And if for any reason the timing mechanism failed, the ping-pong balls would catch on fire themselves, sometime within a twenty-minute range, between 11:30 and 11:50.

“I know you’re going to explain all this to me sometime,” Artie said, watching.

“When we get to Uruguay.”

“I wanted to look that up on the map, where it is.”

“Their winter is our summer,” Gold said. “Otherwise it’s about the same. Now throttle down, Artie. I want you to look like Bogart, in those early movies. Dumb. Deadly.”

“Like this?” Artie said, making a face.

Gold gave a half snort and waved him into the hearse. The black raincoat helped, but no funeral director in his senses would hire a driver with that tangle of hair. But it wouldn’t matter. They would only be travelling a few blocks.