Donald Westlake - The Ax

Well, I'm not perfect at this yet, God knows, I haven't attained the ideal, but I've come a long way up that learning curve since Herbert Everly. Of course, the irony in this one is, as the arc of my learning curve flattens toward complete competence, I'll have mastered a skill I'll never use again.

I certainly hope I'll never have to use it again. But it is, I admit, a useful skill to possess.

Earlier today, I took Marjorie to her Saturday job at the New Variety, and when I backed the Voyager out of the garage even I couldn't readily see anything different in there. The dark bulky bags leaned together well in the back, away from daylight, amid birdseed bags and paint cans and winter boots and all the rest of the stuff garages breed when no one is looking.

On the way to the movie house, I told Marjorie the story I'd made up in bed last night, before falling asleep, about the friend's moneymaking scheme that had caused me to go out for several hours after dinner. The story I told her was that my friend reminded me that the United States government shreds its old paper money to destroy it, and it was his idea to talk the government into letting us make fresh paper out of the shredded pulp. We would make paper bags, colored green, with dollar signs on them, and market them under the name Money Bags; they would be both useful and a great novelty item.

I told Marjorie I'd thought it was a clever idea — she seemed less sure — but that I'd asked my friend what were we supposed to do with it? We're both knowledgeable about turning pulp into paper, but that's all. His scheme needed a politician, to talk the government into letting us have the paper, and a marketer, to get the Money Bags out there. "I told him," I explained to Marjorie, "if he could find a couple of people like that, and they were serious about it, I'd be happy to join in."

"Not in a million years," she said, and I had to agree.

When I came back home, after dropping Marjorie at the movie house, both Betsy and Billy were out, she at a rehearsal of a play she's doing at college — Arsenic and Old Lace; she's one of the aunts, in much makeup — and he off at a friend's house, engrossed in the friend's new computer software (he'll make do that way until life improves around here).

I opened the garage door, drove the Voyager in, shut the garage door, moved the rear seat of the car out of the way, and loaded the two plastic bags. And now I'm on my way to the recycling center.

The recycling center, of course, is what used to be called the dump, and part of it still is that. There's private trash collection in our neighborhood, but it's considerably cheaper to sort the trash yourself and bring it to the recycling center. Glass and tin and paper and cardboard they take for free, and garbage they take for fifty cents per large plastic bag. The bags are tossed into a chute, and from there they go into a compacting garbage truck, and from there they're taken to a landfill operation down on Long Island Sound.

A sea voyage for Hauck Exman. He's a Marine, he'll like that.

My friend with the Money Bags idea turns out to be named Ralph Upton, in honor of Upton "Ralph" Fallon, the last obstacle between me and my new job. It became necessary for this friend to have a further existence, I realized, once Hauck Exman was out of the way and it was time to think about dealing with URF.

Here's the thing: URF is employed. He's got my job, which means he's at work at the mill five days a week, which means I won't be able to ever get at him until the evenings. Weekends are complicated by Marjorie's job at the New Variety and by our own fixed weekend rituals, the Sunday Times and all that. So it's a work-night or nothing, and it isn't going to be nothing.

And that meant the creator of Money Bags had to go on being a presence in my life. "He has more ideas," I told Marjorie, when I picked her up from Dr. Carney's office at six on Monday, yesterday, three days after I dealt with Exman. "He has a million ideas, and who knows, one of them might turn out to be something. Anyway, he likes to bounce his notions off me and show me the presentations he's done and all that, and to tell the truth, sweet, I'd rather be doing something than nothing."

"I know you would," she said, and gave me a tender smile, and that was that.

This morning, we drove down to Marshal to spend our hour with Longus Quinlan, and to my surprise I'm enjoying these sessions now, finding them more valuable than I would have guessed. I think any marriage, after a while, falls into routines and automatic responses. Time goes by, and you no longer see each other clearly, you just act as though the other person's a robot, with machined and well-known responses to everything, and then you act like a robot, and all the life has drained out of the relationship.

Now that the awfulness of Marjorie's affair is finished, and now that Quinlan has given up trying to probe into my personal view of the world, we're dealing with what we went there to deal with, the marriage, and I think it's helping. We're becoming surprised by each other again, we're remembering why we liked each other in the first place.

If only I could tell her about this other business… but of course I never can. I know better. There are some strains you don't put on a person, no matter what.

Anyway, that was this morning, and this evening we ate dinner at six-thirty, and now, at quarter past seven, I am on the road, heading west toward Arcadia, NY.

The long days of June, the long bright evenings. I'm driving along, crossing into New York State, and it's still sunny and nice. It occurs to me, as I drive; I'm beginning my commute. My new commute.

There's still daylight along the top of the slope, but the road into Arcadia descends into the blackness of night, decorated with neon from the town's two bars (but not from the closed luncheonette), brighter white and red light from the Getty station atop the farther slope, and the glary yellowish worklights around the mill. There are no lights visible inside the mill buildings; they're a success story, but they're only working one shift.

As I drive down the slope toward town and the dam and the quick black stream running through it, a stray thought occurs to me. What if Arcadia's success story isn't quite as glowing as the magazine made it seem? What if, even though they might not have gone all the way to downsizing, they're doing a reduction in staff through attrition, not taking on any new hires when people leave? What if I've gone through all this, and I deal with URF as well, and they don't replace him? The joke would certainly be on me, wouldn't it?

But, no. They're going to need an experienced man to run that line. If they had a night shift, then maybe the night shift man could move to days while he trains an assistant, already on the payroll, to take over at night. But this way, with only one shift, they'll hire.

I know what URF looks like, from having seen him that one time in the luncheonette, so now my first job is to find out where he lives. I don't expect much from this visit, just a little reconnaissance, to get an idea of the situation.

The Voyager's gas gauge shows just under half a tank, so I drive down to the bottom of the slope, cross the bridge on the dam, drive up the other slope, and stop at the Getty station. I fill the tank, pay the stocky woman at the counter inside, and ask if she has a phone book.

Yes, she does, though she doesn't say so. Without a word, she pulls a tattered thin phone book from under the counter, and I move off away from her a bit, as though to keep the counter clear for other customers — there are none — while I leaf through and find FALLON U R Cty Rte 92 Slt.