Robert Alter - Carny kill

I started to turn south once we reached the hub of the central garden, thinking we would go on over to the bunk-house. But the thin-faced man took me by the elbow, lightly, and said,"No. We're going to headquarters."

Something was out of stride. I didn't know what and I didn't like what I didn't know. But I said nothing.

We went through the main gate. The parking lot was well lighted and I expected to see a squad car waiting in front but there was none. There were only two or three thousand cars parked out there.

We walked along the north drag until we came to aisle 10 and we turned down that and walked some more. Nobody said anything and every time I looked the pansy faced guy on my left was grinning the same tight, plastic grin.

I'm not simple-just slow. I started to lag my pace.

"Uh-maybe I better have another peek at your buzzer," I suggested to the thin-faced man.

He took me by the arm again.

"Let's not have any trouble, Mr. Thaxton," he said levelly.

"Naw," Pansy-face spoke for the first time. "He don't want no trouble, Chad. Do you, mouth?" He gave me an elbow nudge in the ribs.

I started to take in my breath. The thin-faced man, Chad, stopped short. He stopped me. We were standing by a dark new sedan. I can't tell one new American car from another but I could tell that this one wasn't a police car.

A third man was sitting behind the wheel. He looked out the window at me with bright little piggy eyes that were set in a face the color of uncooked dough. That's what the glaring bluewhite arc lights did for him.

"Okay?" he, the driver, said.

"Okay," Chad said.

Not by me it wasn't. I pivoted like a soldier doing an about-face and planted my right in Pansy-face's bread basket, and at the same time Chad gave me a chop behind the neck with the edge of his hand and Pansy-face and I leaned together like a couple of drunks holding each other up, or like a pair of lovers trying it English style.

Then Pansy-face gutted me and I swung to the left with a windy grunt and doubled over, and his upcoming knee brushed past my shoulder and caught me on the side of the face and straightened me out quick, sending my head toward the stars, and just then I heard Chad say "Enough!" and I felt the hard, positive business-end of a pistol barrel in the small of my back.

"Sonofabitch tagged me, Chad!" Pansy-face cried. "Ain't no bastard on gawd's earth goan lay hands on me!"

"I think I said it was enough," Chad said. "Is that right?" His voice was very flat, very impersonal, and when you heard it you knew you were dealing with a man of authority.

Pansy-face backed down grudgingly. I think he was on something. I didn't smell any booze so it was probably a needle.

"Get in the car, you -ing mouth!" He gave me a shove.

The dough-faced driver had reached back and swung open the rear door and I collided with the edge of it. Pansy-face got me under both armpits and gave me a heave from behind and if I hadn't ducked my head I would have lost the upper half of it as I was propelled into the backseat.

Pansy-face followed me in and slammed the door after himself.

"Okay," I said in a strained voice. "Okay, I've had enough."

"You gawddamn better believe it, boy," Pansy-face snarled. "Or I'll purely gouge your -ing eyes out!"

It was important to me that he believed he really had me cowed. I didn't want him reaching for his shoulder holster with the intention of subduing me further with his gun. If he reached, he would discover that the holster was empty.

I had palmed his Roscoe while we were hugging each other and had slipped it under my belt when I swung away and doubled up. It was a twentytwo with a snubbed barrel, the kind that is easy to pack and doesn't make much noise and is nice for close work. I let it rest where it was because there was no chance to unlimber it right then. The driver was holding another snubnosed revolver on me while Chad went around the back of the car and got in up front on the passenger side.

Chad pulled his own Roscoe and rested it on the top of his seat, aiming in my direction.

"Go," he said to the driver.

Dough-face turned the motor over and punched R and looked around and we backed out of our parking space. He braked and punched DI and swung the wheel andwe started cruising down the aisle, all the chrome bumper guards and exaggerated tailfins and red parking lights winking and gleaming and turning to a smear as we picked up speed.

"Slow," Chad said to the driver, watching me. "Let's not attract attention to ourselves. We don't need a speeding citation tonight. Is that right?"

"I've been here before, Chad, remember?" the driver said. He watched the headlight-illuminated aisle ahead. "I know what I'm doing."

"Yes you do," Chad said. His eyes never left me.

Pansy-face was starting to get jittery. He needed more action.

"What say we have Bob stop somewheres first, Chad?" he said. "The mouth here purely needs some working on."

He gave me a short vicious one in the ribs.

"Don't you, mouth? You need some exercise, huh?"

He worried me. His kind of bent-brain needed to feel power. He liked to intimidate helpless people. I was afraid he would want to pull his bobbed target pistol, to wave it in my face and make me cringe.

"Cut it out," Chad said. Then he said to me, "No hard feelings about this, Mr. Thaxton. It's the way the cookie crumbles."

"Or the ball bounces," I said.

We were out on the highway now and I could just make out the gray strip of beach with its pile line of foam running along on the left side of us.

"How serious is it?" I asked him. "Do I just get a working over from the hophead here, or are you going whole hog?"

"Oh, you're gonna be mine, boy," Pansy-face murmured.

"I wouldn't worry about it, Mr. Thaxton," Chad said. "One way or another, you've got to face it."

"Sure," I agreed. "But you don't have any objection about telling me why I've got to face it, do you?"

"I wouldn't know, Mr. Thaxton, I really wouldn't. And I'll tell you something else. I really don't care to know."

I had figured that. He was a sharp big-city hood and he did nasty little jobs like this on consignment. He tidied up other people's garbage for them and he never asked questions. That's what kept him in business.

"But you know who hired you," I said.

"Um," he said. "I know that somebody pays me. Beyond that point I don't sweat it."

"You know the name of the person who paid you this time?"

"Could be."

A night-owl kid on a bike missed death by inches as we whoomed by him-his gawk-eyed blob of face appearing briefly in our lights and streaming by to be swallowed up in the winged blackness. Chad's eyes flicked to the left.

"Didn't you hear what I said, Bob?" he asked quietly.

"I gave the bastard a mile's clearance," the driver said defensively.

"I said slow. Is that right?"

The driver eased up on the accelerator.

"Look," I said to Chad. "I figure you're passing up a bet."

"I've been known to do it before."

"Yeah, but I mean one from the horse's mouth. There could be money in this. Fat money."

He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he said, "They always say the same thing. Different words, may be, but it always comes to the same thing. I'm being played for a sucker. I could grab a bundle instead of settling for peanuts. I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground."

His teeth flashed at me in the dark. "Is that right?"

"I'd say so," I said.

"I thought you would. Because they all do. All right, I've got to kill time anyhow. Go ahead. Tell me how I'm throwing away a fortune this time."

"First you'd better tell me who hired you for this."

"Oh," he said. "I see. You're just guessing. Fumbling around for an answer."