Брайан Гарфилд - The Hit

After a little while I summoned strength and got to my feet. I felt rickety and weak. Still throbbing with angry, hot pain. I climbed into the house and went around shutting off all the lights. I felt my way back to the front door and found Joanne on the step, fooling with her handbag. She pulled my .38 out and held it pointed at the place where Cutter had stood. I sat down by her and put my hand over hers, depressing the gun. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

“He’ll come back.”

“No. He’s too conceited. He thinks if he searched the place and didn’t find what he expected to find, then it isn’t here. He wouldn’t have given up if he hadn’t been convinced. Showing a little muscle before he left — that’s just his way.”

“He’s an animal.”

“Yeah.” With cops like him, who needs gangsters? I guess if you’re far enough away from the Cutters, if you haven’t actually come under their guns, you can find all kinds of Freudian explanations for them. It’s a cop’s job to handle garbage. He has to deal with vicious, ignorant, hysterical, self-important gutter people. He sees so much casual violence he becomes indifferent to cruelty. You could look at it that way. You could, but I couldn’t. To hell with the psycho-sociological explanations. I didn’t want the Joe Cutters in the same world with me. They didn’t have any right to life.

Then, I thought, why hadn’t I used the Beretta on him?

There had been a time when I understood killing. I’d have understood it, without questioning, if I’d shot Cutter, or if he’d shot me. But something along the years had taught me words — mercy, justice, responsibility, pride, dignity. I had learned the words and I didn’t understand any more. The words had turned me into a human being. Simon Crane vs. the inevitable.

I became aware of the soft rhythm of Joanne’s breathing beside me. I had been thinking — compulsively, to mask pain, to hold myself together. Angry, I stood up fast. Weakness flowed along my fibers. I walked around, testing my legs. I felt needles; there was a little tremor behind my knees. Tender here, stab of pain there. I walked a small circle, waving my arms around. When I came back to Joanne she pushed her lower lip forward to blow hair off her forehead and then turned her face away from me; I didn’t understand why until she said, with a lurch in her voice, “I wish somebody would invent a mascara that wouldn’t run.”

She had been through so goddamn much in a few hours. I lowered myself beside her and turned her head with one finger, at her chin. Her face hovered before me. The wind kept a mesquite branch scratching on the side of the house. I felt the faint touch of something we had once had — the soft warm, nesty feeling of love.

The lights had been off long enough; the diesel generator had stopped. I squeezed her and said, “Maybe you’ll want to stay here, I’ve got to take care of — Mike.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t be alone, Simon.”

“It’s got to be done.”

“I know. I’ll help. Oh, God, poor Mike.”

We buried Mike far back in the desert mountains, near a place where some hopeful hardrocker had tried to strike it rich. We had tugged the tarp-wrapped body out from under the diesel generator platform in back of the house. Cutter hadn’t been able to look down there while the engine was running; he would have risked an ear against the engine’s whirling, bladed fan. We had loaded the body into the Jeep and come lurching across country, using four-wheel drive.

It was three in the morning and the ground was full of stones under its thin layer of dusty topsoil. I ached in all my joints; every stab of the shovel into the resisting earth plunged pain through me.

I tucked the tarp around him as tightly as possible and piled high-mounded rocks over him, to keep the animals away. It didn’t matter if someone found the grave; the body could not be traced to me, now that it was away from my home. The tarp was Army surplus, ten years old; in work gloves I left no fingerprints, even if there had been surfaces smooth enough to retain them.

When it was done we both stood by the mound, not speaking. An owl drifted above the saguaro cactus and the wind rubbed itself against us, cooling the sweat on my unclad torso. I was caked with dirt; my hair was matted when I ran fingers through it. Back here in the hills it felt as if civilization was a thousand years away.

In the moonlight Joanne was wan and pinched, near her limit of endurance. I told her to get in the Jeep and drive it down as far as the old rutted mining road a quarter of a mile below. I came along after her on foot, sweeping away tire tracks with a mesquite branch, taking agonizing punishment from the simple exercise of stooping and walking backward to sweep. When I climbed into the Jeep I put my shirt on and let Joanne drive us home. Her hands were locked white-knuckled on the wheel but she drove with steady competence. She astounded me; she seemed to have no breaking point.

We reached the old rock fort before dawn. Getting out of the Jeep and letting her reel past me into the house, I said, “You’re fantastic.”

There was a trace of her old laugh, hearty and mellow — just a trace; she shook her head at me, the laugh dwindling to a wan smile. I said softly, “You’re pretty deep in my guts, you know.”

She rubbed her face with both hands, closed her eyes very tight and let them spring open. She said, “I know you don’t like coffee but you need some.” She went into the kitchen, turning on lights.

I sat down by the phone. I had to think but my brain was stunned. Finally I fished from my pocket the number I had jotted down and dialed long distance. The line rang five or six times before Jerry Sprague grunted fuzzily into the mouthpiece and I identified myself.

“Jesus Christ. You know what the hell time it is, Simon?”

“I know. I’m damn sorry about it, but I’m telling you the literal truth when I say it’s a matter of life or death.”

“Crap. Whose?”

“Mine,” I said. “About Raiford and Colclough — what have you got?”

“A headache,” he said. “I waited at the office till damn near two o’clock, expecting your call.”

“What about Raiford and Colclough?”

“Neither one of them has left the city in the past forty-eight hours. They’ve been here straight through. I know it positive, because — oh, hell, you want the details?”

“No. As long as you’re sure neither one of them could have come down here for a few hours.”

“And bumped off Sal Aiello. Simon, what’s the score down there?”

“Nothing to nothing,” I said, and added with addled wit, “two hits, no runs, a million errors. Go back to sleep Jerry. Profound apologies. If I live long enough I’ll buy you a steak dinner at Porfirio’s.”

“I’ll hold you to it. Listen, Simon, is there anything I can do? I mean, this has got to be something serious, and if I can help—”

“If I think of something I won’t hesitate. Jerry — thanks.”

When I hung up I sat, drained, my hand draped forgotten over the telephone. Joanne came in with coffee. I took one swallow and put the cup down. I said, “I’ve got to wake up. Maybe a shower.” I went into the bathroom and stripped and turned on the water, full cold; stepped in, holding breath against the icy shock, and stayed just long enough to soap away the larger cakes of sand-grit. When I went dripping into the bedroom Joanne was standing by the door, unclothed, indifferent to her own nakedness and mine. She said, “You’re too beaten to think straight, Simon. Go to bed. Don’t try to think about it — don’t think about anything. Forget. Sleep.” She walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the shower begin to splash.