Warren Murphy: Midnight Man

wholesale jeweler he saw.

"May I help you?" a clerk asked. Was that suspicion in the man's eyes, Wimpler wondered. He almost backed out, but then cleared his throat and said, "I want to ... er ... sell some jewelry. It was ... my mother's. She's dead now."

May l see i . I ^ f^gj. j^d aiwayS told him that a man ai^^

Wimpler dumped the contents of his cloth bag on I ^ when ^^ ^

the counter He could feel the sweat running in nv- I had ^ ^ Life had been a 1qssfof ¡^ &¿

ulets under his arms ¦ j and now fae wag m tQ cut those losseg He

Lovely pieces, the clerk said. F stoodg filthy water, wondering if he

"Mmmmmm," said Wimpler afraid to say more would ^^^ nerve > himse]f¿^

because his throat was so dry that he might not be ^ He walked ^^ doc

able to get any words out. ° > j o

tiem for interminable sec-

„.,„, „ , „, . j crate and listened.

Til have to call the manager, he said. „„ , . . . y, „ . . ,

"Why? Wimpler sputtered out. Whats ... fe

"He has to appraise them," the clerk said with a

buüd up his nerve, when suddenly he heard voices.

The clerk looked at them for interminable sec- c F Új_*juu-ji i •

i uk ^iwi v/ For some reas0I1) jje Parted behind a large packing

suspicious smile. As Wimpler watched the man's re-

23 22 Âi

say. "There's no way around it. If Romeo testifies, we're all cooked."

"Yeah, sure," the other man said with disgust. "But try to do it with all that freaking, federal security around him."

"If he testifies . . ."

"Don't tell me what I know already, Tony. Shit. I offered this hit to everyone in town. Nobody wants to touch it. I think we're gonna have to put together a squad and go up there and take the whole place out."

But he wasn't. Not any more. What he was now was the best hit man money could hire.

"Don't let appearances deceive you," he said. "I can do what you want done."

The two men looked at each other. Tony shrugged.

24

"The man won't like that, Jack. Too much bad press. A lot of blood, a lot of bodies, a lot of reporters, and a lot of feds."

"You know another way?"

Suddenly, Elmo Wimpler knew that he was not going to take his own life. Suddenly, he knew that his days as a wimp were over. Suddenly, he felt power. Power over life and death.

He took a deep breath and stepped out into the view of the two men.

"What? the . . . ?" one yelled.

"Who are you?" the other snarled.

"The answer to your problem," Wimpler said with confidence and a sureness he had never felt before. "Whoever it is you want iced, I can do it."

"Wha ... ?" said Jack.

"You?" Tony asked, unbelievingly. Elmo knew

what they were thinking: that he was a clown. He s™, , „ . , . „ „ „,.

u a u 11 a n n, i a Thank you. Tomorrow night. Two a.m.," Wim-

had been called all those names: clown, nerd, wimp. Jb '

"Whàt've we got to lose, Jack?" he finally said.

Jack sighed, then nodded. He looked at Wimpler. "How much?"

Elmo cleared his throat. He hadn't thought about money.

"Would a thousand dollars be too much?" he asked.

"You do the job, you get ten thousand dollars," Jack said.

"This person will be dead tomorrow night," Wimpler said. "Tell me who he is and where he is."

They told him. He was a big-time gangster, now a federal witness, testifying to save his own skin. He was being hidden out on a large, private estate in Westchester County, surrounded by cops, FBI agents, and who knew what else.

"Be here tomorrow night. Two a.m.," Wimpler said. "And bring the money."

"All right," said Jack.

"I need an advance," said Wimpler.

"How much?" Jack asked, reaching into his

pocket.

All Wimpler could think of was a steak dinner. He decided to think big. "Twenty dollars," he said.

Jack leafed through the hundred dollar bills in his he found a lone twenty and handed it

pier said.

"Sure, pal," Jack said. Elmo turned and walked away. He stopped at the first cheap steak place he saw, ordered two steak dinners and devoured them both. With his change, he took a cab home.

He hurried to his garage. He had his first con-

25

tract but how would he carry it out? What would he use to kill his victim?

He searched through his garage, overturning useless inventions until he found the item he wanted.

Wimpler had worked it out as a revolutionary new nutcracker, but it hadn't sold. It was a small hand-held compressor. After fitting it with a long slide arm that would allow it to hold something bigger than walnuts, Elmo tried it out on an old bowling ball in the garage. The compressor's arms reached around the ball, and when he pressed the trigger, the two arms closed together with a hiss. The bowling ball broke up into hundreds of pieces that fell to the floor.

Done. All he would have to do would be to spray paint it, and the invisible man would have his invisible weapon.

And then he went to sleep. The first good night's sleep he had had in months.

The next morning, he cleaned the black paint from the windshield and windows of his old car parked in the garage. Then he quickly painted over the invisible, black paint with a light-blue, spray enamel, letting the paint run in drippy, gooey masses, not caring how the paint job looked, but just wanting to make the car visible again, presentable for riding around the street.

Then he drove up to White Plains and rode past the large estate where the federal witness was being held. In the gathering dusk, he could see guards stationed near the door of the house and lounging about on the lawn.

But for some reason, he was no longer afraid.

Wimpler drove around for a while and when it

26

was fully dark, he parked about a half-mile from the estate. Inside the auto, he changed into his invisible clothing, treated with what he now didn't mind calling WIMP—Wimpler's Invisible Metallic Paint.

The edge of the road was lined with trees and Elmo walked behind the trees in the dark, toward the estate.

He moved through the shadows toward the house. Once he passed within two feet of a guard who was looking right at him but didn't see him. Wimpler was tempted to play games, to tap one on the shoulder or to whisper in one's ear, but he decided to stick to business.

It was all business. There was no panic, no fear. Just a cold sense that this was what he had been put on earth to do. To kill.

He entered the house through a side French door. Two men were in the darkness of the room, but they did not see him.

"The door's open," one said.

"Must have been the wind," the other said, and got up to close the door.

Wimpler scouted through the house, hiding in shadows, listening to conversations. The police, it seemed, liked the federal witness no better than the mob did. Everybody seemed to wish someone would just blow him away and save everybody a lot of trouble.

Elmo Wimpler was going to save them a lot of trouble.

He found his victim in an upstairs bedroom, sitting in a chair, watching television in the darkened room. Anybody who watched reruns of "Güligan's Island" deserved to die, Elmo thought.

27

He quietly walked up behind the man, opened up the arms of his compressor device; quickly clapped it to both sides of the man's head, and before the man could move, depressed the trigger.

There was a sharp hiss, the crack of bones, and a man with a head in pieces.

Wimpler went out through a window and climbed carefully down a trellis to the dark side of the house. Without looking back, he cut across the field, passing near guards, heading for his car parked down the street. He had to resist the urge to shout exultantly. He had done it. He had done it.

He did not change from his WIMP invisible outfit, but merely took off the hood for his drive back to Brooklyn.