Andrew Shaw - $20 Lust

It’s tough with your bare hand. You have to be good. But when you use the butt of a gun there is nothing to it at all. It’s a snap.

I took a breath, let it out, then stuck the gun back in the waistband of my trousers and reached for his pulse. It wasn’t a hellishly huge surprise not to find any pulse.

Bunkie Craig was dead.

I stood there for a few minutes and stared at him. I should have felt something — hatred for the corpse, pity, self-disgust, anything. Musso had been different — then he had a gun and so did I, and I had to shoot him to stay alive. Bunkie Craig had been a wounded man asleep and I had made sure he would sleep until Judgment Day.

But I felt nothing, nothing at all. I was a machine, a well-oiled properly primed machine with one goal in mind. I had no tears for Bunkie Craig. They were all for myself if we failed. Then I could cry. Not now.

I turned away from death and left the bedroom, found the stairs again and followed them to the bottom. I walked away from Craig and found Cindy and Casper, my girl watching him like a hawk, my prisoner still out. She looked at me and asked me with her eyes.

“Everything’s fine,” I said. And wondered if it was or not.

I didn’t kill Casper. He had things to tell us, things we had to know. I let him sleep for a few minutes, then dumped a glass of water over his face. It did the trick. He came up sputtering and shaking all at once. It made a pretty picture. When a weak man is helpless it makes him look much less like a crook. I couldn’t help wondering how a fish like Casper had gotten involved with hard guys like Reed and Baron. I had a hunch that all I had to do to find out was hand him my gun.

“What do you want?”

“Information,” I said. “Some questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“For a starter,” I said, “where’s the press?”

“Basement.”

“Take us to it.”

He got up and led the way. The basement stairs were rickety and the railing shook a little. I kept the gun pointed at the top of his spine every step of the way. He didn’t try anything.

“This way.”

We followed him to a little room off the main floor. It was pretty impressive. It didn’t look like any quick turnover operation. It was professional.

There was an automatic-feed rotary on a workbench, a stack of bleached paper, a few bills. The bills were nice new twenties hot off the presses. Just a few of them, just enough so that Reed could be sure the boy had done his job properly on the plates before he removed him from the picture.

The plates were also there. Plus a whole case of inks, all the inks necessary to print the bills. It was an amazing setup. The press would ink automatically, feed automatically, dispense bills automatically. All you had to do was hook it up and plug it in and watch it roll.

It was lovely.

The plates had number gadgets hooked up, set to turn over each time a bill was printed. No problem of the same serial number on every bill. No switching it by hand between each impression. It was perfect. All I could do was stare at it.

Then I remembered something.

“The paper,” I said. “You got the formula for bleaching the paper?”

His eyes got crafty.

“The formula,” I said. “Give.”

“If I don’t?”

“Then you die.”

He shrugged. He had a card to play now and he was making the most of it. “I die anyway,” he said, guessing rather accurately. “You killed Bunkie. You’ll kill me. Why should I make it easy for you?”

“Make it easy for yourself.”

“Huh?”

“Think,” I said. “Think what happens to you if you don’t talk. Think about matches up and down the soles of your feet. Think about thumbs popping your eyes out. Think about taking three days to die.”

I hardly recognized my voice. Evidently he did a little thinking, because his face turned a few unpleasant colors and when he spoke his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “You’d find it anyway,” he croaked. “The drawer.”

I found the drawer he was talking about and opened it. A slip of paper, a batch of fairly complex directions, a few bottles of chemicals. That had to be it. But I had to be sure it would work.

“Cindy,” I said. “You hold the gun. I want to tie him up while I check this out.”

I used his belt on him, then let her hold the gun while I carried out the directions. When the brew was ready I took one of the nice fresh twenties and did what I was supposed to do with it. It didn’t take long. The bill came out white and pure, not a trace of ink on it.

“It works,” I said reverently. Cindy nodded.

I turned to Casper. “More information,” I said. “Reed and Baron. You hear from them?”

He hesitated and I glared at him. “A call,” he said finally. “Last night.”

“What did they say?”

“Not much.”

He shrugged again. “They said expect them tonight. Around ten, maybe later.”

“Nothing about me or Cindy?”

“Nothing. Just that they hadn’t gotten the schlock but that they were going to roll anyway. Reed said he was through chasing wild geese. Something like that.”

That was fine. Cindy and I exchanged glances, pleased with the news. The sooner Reed was coming back, the better for us. We didn’t want to hang around any longer than we had to. Enough is enough. And Reed and Baron wouldn’t be ready for us. They would be fish in a barrel, which was fine with me. It had been hard enough. Plenty hard. Anything that made it easier was fine with both of us.

“I got a favor to ask.”

I looked at him.

“Look,” Casper went on, “you can do me a big favor. Fair enough?”

“Go ahead.”

“Kill me,” he said. “Now. I don’t want to die but I don’t want to wait either. You’re not going to let me live. You as much as said so. Get it over with right away, will you? Waiting makes my skin crawl.”

There was nothing more he could tell us, nothing I didn’t know. He was scum but he deserved that much.

“You sure you want it?”

“I’m sure.”

Cindy’s hand was on my arm. Killing in a fight was one thing, she was saying silently. Killing Reed and Baron was one thing. But killing a trussed-up man was another thing. She didn’t like it a bit. Well, hell, neither did I. But if there was another way open I couldn’t see it. If he lived we were done. There were only three of them now, three who knew the score. Reed and Baron and Casper.

They all had to go.

“How do you want it?”

“A bullet.”

I shook my head, hating myself. “I don’t want to risk the noise.”

“Muffle it with a pillow.”

I thought about that. Then I remembered Musso, and the slug in him. Same gun. Ballistics. A connection between the two killings.

I shook my head.

“Then hit me,” he said. “Knock me out. Then any way you want. Just quick and easy, that’s all.”

“Ted—”

Cindy didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. But I couldn’t help it. Casper had had enough already. At least I could make it quick for him.

“Close your eyes.”

He closed them. I took the gun from Cindy, reversed it, gave him the butt across the front of the skull. It didn’t kill him but it knocked him cold. He slumped in the chair.

“Don’t kill him,” she said. “Not murder. Please, Ted. We can get away anyway. He’s small. He won’t chase us.”

It was a very simple equation and I spelled it out for her. “If I kill him we have a chance,” I said. “If I let him live we die. Any connection is enough to do it. Anything tying us to the rest of them, any witness left alive — that’s all we need. Then we’re dead. Murder one. The gas chamber in California. You want the gas chamber?”

She didn’t.