Филип Керр - A Five Year Plan

Willy ‘Four Breakfasts’ Barizon got his nickname from the time when he ate four whole cooked breakfasts — two eggs sunny side up, two strips of bacon, a sausage and hash browns each — in a Denny’s on Lincoln Avenue. A little over six foot three, he weighed around 230 pounds in his shorts and 250 when he was dressed, the extra twenty being mostly referable to the two handguns he wore underneath his loose, Hawaiian style shirt. His tongue was a couple of sizes too large for his face, which meant he spoke out of the side of his wet-looking mouth as if he still had one of the breakfasts pouched in the other cheek, like a chaw. His black hair was naturally curly although the cut made it look as if he’d just had a permanent, with small dreadlocks that hung loosely over the tops of his elephantine ears, like a Hasidic Jew’s. With a passing resemblance to a budget-sized giant, Willy Barizon was a hard man to miss. Besides, it was a while since he had done this kind of work, and he had forgotten how to be subtle. The ice-trucking business had been all front. Looking tough when you turned up to collect was nearly all you needed to know. It was rare that you actually had to smack someone.

Dave made Willy the minute he saw him. Or rather, he made the look the big man received from the bell-boy when Dave came out of the hotel restaurant and asked the front desk to send the fax he had written out in neat Cyrillic capitals while having his dinner. Five years of watching his ass in Homestead had given Dave eyes in the back of his head. The bell-boy might as well have shot a neon arrow into the big man’s chest. ‘There’s your mark. Go get him.’

Dave stepped into an elevator car alongside a woman with hair as tall as a chefs hat. What was it with Miami women and big hair? With one eye on this confection of hair and the wizened doll beneath it, he pressed his floor button and stood back in the car as the woman selected her own floor. Then she moved to one side as Willy joined them. It was a second or two before he thought to press a button himself, which more or less confirmed Dave’s suspicion that the big guy had been waiting to follow Dave up to his room. But the question of motive still eluded him. Not a cop, that much was certain. A cop would have pinched him in the lobby. And for what? Suspicion Grand Theft Auto? As the doors slid shut, Dave turned toward Willy Barizon and held out his left wrist to display the watch he had bought in the Bal Harbor Mall that same afternoon.

‘You see this watch, man?’

‘What?’

‘Not what. Watch. This watch is a Breitling Chronometer. Best watch in the world.’

Baby Doll was pretending that he didn’t exist.

‘Forget Rolex. I mean, that’s just for the movies. And National Geographic. This. This is a goddamn quality timepiece. Cost me $5,000.’

‘So fuckin’ what?’ snarled Willy.

‘Wait, I haven’t finished. You wanna see my wallet?’ Dave took out his wallet and flipped it open. ‘See that? Coach leather. Isn’t that beautiful? And there’s $1,000 in cash too.’

‘You’re nuts.’

The elevator chimed as it reached Baby Doll’s floor.

‘Really,’ she said, stepping smartly out on her high heels. ‘Some people just don’t know how to handle it, do they?’

‘You’re so right, lady,’ agreed Willy.

Dave returned the wallet to the coat pocket of his linen suit and took out his new fountain pen as the doors closed again.

‘Then there’s this fountain pen.’

‘Fuck you pal, and fuck your fountain pen,’ said Willy, and instinctively patted one of the two pieces he was carrying under his waistband.

Dave’s prison-sharp eyes took in the tell-tale bulge at a glance. ‘I’m telling you all this for a reason,’ he explained coolly. ‘I’m telling you this so you’ll know how high I rate your fucking chances of robbing me.’

‘You’ve got the wrong guy, Delano. Who said anything about robbing your dipshit ass?’

Dave took a step back in the car. The tongue almost fell out of the guy’s mouth when he talked. Dave had felt the spittle on his face like early rain. His eyes lingered on the tongue, momentarily fascinated by its grotesque aspect. At best it looked like the record label for the Rolling Stones that Andy Warhol had designed. Sticky Fingers. He still had the album in his record collection. If his sister hadn’t sold it. At worst the tongue looked like some kind of hideous pink jellyfish that lived inside a ring of yellow coral. The elevator chimed again as it reached Willy’s chosen floor, only he paid it no attention.

The guy had used his name. He was carrying a piece and he had followed him into the elevator. What else did Dave need to know? He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen.

‘Are you finished giving me a guided tour of your personals?’

‘There’s one more thing,’ insisted Dave. ‘There’s this pen. This pen is a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck. It’s called Mont Blanc because the fourteen-carat nib tells you the height of Mont Blanc, should you want to know. That’s the highest mountain in France. Go ahead and take a look.’ Dave held the pen up for Willy’s inspection. ‘Four thousand eight hundred and ten meters high. Go ahead and look because I’m gonna give you this pen as a gift.’

Willy looked.

Dave hardly hesitated, stabbing the big man in the white of his eye with the mitre-shaped point of the Cohiba-sized pen, simultaneously spattering Willy’s face, neck and shirt collar with a galaxy of ink-spots.

Willy howled with pain, pressing both hands to his injured eye, leaving Dave free to hit him hard with a punch to each kidney as if was working the heavy bag in the prison gym. He finished a trio of blows with a low arcing hook to Willy’s balls that had his whole shoulder behind it and felt as cruel as if he’d tugged pieces of Willy’s flesh from his body with red-hot pincers. The elevator doors opened with a gasp of air that echoed the sound from Willy’s misshapen mouth. Crouched down on his haunches, one hand on his balls, the other on his eye, Willy looked more dwarfish now and easily manageable. Dave could see that there was no need to hit him again. But he had questions that needed to be answered. And placing the all-leather sole of a smart new loafer in the small of Willy’s back, Dave launched him into the hallway. Willy belly-flopped onto the thick-pile carpet, hit his head against a fire extinguisher attached to the wall, and then passed out.

Dave collected his pen off the floor of the elevator and stepped quickly out of the car before the doors closed. A glance both ways. No one about. He took hold of Willy’s legs and dragged him down the hallway and into his suite.

Safely through the door, Dave frisked Willy carefully, relieving him of a Ruger Security-Six, worn on a belt inside his pants, that he figured was mostly for show; and, underneath a belly band, a smaller, quieter-looking .22 automatic that was probably what usually got the job done. Dave unloaded the big revolver and kept the .22 handy for when the guy came round. The name on the driver’s license he found in the sweat-dampened wallet was Willy Barizon. Dave had never heard of him. There was a Mastercard, eighty dollars, a ticket from the Sheraton’s valet-parking service, a slip for a dog at Hollywood, and a hooker’s business card with a 305 area number: ‘Foxy Blonde. Young voluptuous beauty. I visit you.’ On the back was written a name. ‘Tia.’ Dave flicked the card into the trash.

‘I don’t think you’ll be visiting Willy for a while,’ he said, recalling the ferocity of his blow to the big man’s balls. Dave ducked into the bathroom and returned with the cords from the two bathrobes with which he bound Willy’s hands behind his back and then his ankles. He fixed himself a drink and gathered some matchbooks from his bar area as Willy groaned his way back to consciousness. Dave squatted down on the backs of Willy’s thighs, facing his feet, and began to remove the big guy’s shoes and socks. He glanced over his shoulder and said: