Double down, p.37
Double Down, page 37
A fierce light kindled Waverly’s eyes, stark contrast to the lunatic singsong that had entered his voice. And from behind him came the B. Epstein voice of reason, caution, prudence: “C’mon, Timothy, you can’t ice him. What’s the good? We got trouble enough.”
Waverly ignored it, repeated the directive.
“Let it alone,” the elevating voice of reason pleaded. “We got to get outta here before the steam comes down. Look at him. Ain’t no Hollywood in his future, that face. Give him a rap, it makes you feel better.”
D’Marco, waiting the outcome of the debate, hadn’t moved. Waverly jabbed the gun at him. “I’m not going to say it again.” D’Marco took one halting step back and set himself in a defiant stance, or as nearly defiant as his dangling right arm would allow.
“Use your head, Timothy. He’s the finger on the trigger is all he is. He ain’t the one.”
“I understand that,” Waverly said. “Which is why we’ve got one last obligation to discharge.” To the shooter he said, “Where’s Dietz?”
“Who’s Dietz?”
Waverly gave him a look of measuring, summing up. “Think hard. You don’t have much time.”
“You don’t have to go looking for Dietz,” D’Marco sneered. “He’ll find you.”
Waverly shook his head sadly and pointed the Magnum and squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet smashing into D’Marco’s left kneecap. The thunderous report and the agonized screams rose, comingling, and echoed off the walls and ceiling of the vast room. D’Marco flopped across the floor like some wriggly snared fish. Waverly followed him, stood over him, tapping a foot and waiting patiently till the screaming abated some. “Try again,” he said mildly.
D’Marco croaked out the words, “Sea Spray.”
“Room?”
“One-o-eight.”
“You’re sure? I’ll come back, you know.”
“It’s one-o-eight.”
“Very good. You just spared yourself a knee.”
“Fuck you,” D’Marco hissed, and he might have said more if the butt of the Magnum hadn’t banged him on the side of the head.
“General anesthesia,” Waverly said to no one but himself, and then he came back to where Bennie stood, slack-jawed and gaping, and said, “We’ve got to move fast now, Bennie. Take one of those cloth napkins, wipe down that gun you’re holding, and lay it over by him.”
“This is crazy, Timothy. What you’re doin’ here.”
“Just do it.”
“Awright. Awright. You want the piece emptied?”
“Not necessary. He’s going nowhere.”
Waverly stuck the Magnum in his jacket pocket and grabbed a napkin. He found the fork and wiped it clean. He did the same with the lamp and the rest of the scattered silver. Over his shoulder he called, “Anything you touched, get it all.” He moved purposefully, conscious of time slipping away. When he was finished he joined Bennie at the door.
“Here’s what you do. Go back to the Tropicaire, check on O’Boyle. If he’s up, keep him occupied. Watch him close, he could be in this.”
“You’re goin’ for Dietz,” Bennie said. His voice was flat, resigned.
“I’ll meet you at the car. Give it ten minutes, no more. I’m not there by then, get yourself into the wind.”
“Say it one more time, Timothy. This is puzzle house, what you’re doin’. Changes nothing.”
“Yeah, well, we do what we do.”
Bennie made a defeated shrug. “Ten minutes,” he said.
“Outside.”
Waverly came down the first-floor corridor of the Sea Spray, ticking off room numbers till he arrived at 108. He glanced to his right and left. Clear both ways. He removed the Magnum from his jacket and rapped softly on the door. Voice on the other side said warily, “Frog?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The knob turned and the door swung open. Dietz looked at him blankly. Looked past him into the empty hallway. Looked at the gun. “Who’re you?” he demanded.
“One of your debtors. Come to settle up.”
Dietz, obedient to the thrust of the gun, backed into the room. “You’d be Waverly,” he said.
“And you’d be Dietz.”
“That’s right.”
“I understand I owe you money.”
Dietz cleared his throat and, putting some menace in his voice, some growly CEO intimidation, as if there were merely a desk between them or a conference table, not a .357 Magnum, said, “That’s correct, too. You got it?”
Brash move. Ballsy guy, this Dietz. Waverly made a small contrite smile and said, “Afraid not. I couldn’t raise it.”
“Okay. Give me what you got and we’ll call it square.”
“But you see, Mr. Dietz, I’ve got nothing,” Waverly explained patiently. “Apart from this,” he added, indicating the gun.
Dietz adopted a bargaining tone. “Well, maybe we can work something out,” he said, pliant negotiator now.
“You’d extend the deadline?”
“I could do that.”
“A schedule of payments, maybe?”
“Yeah, that’s an idea.”
“Something orderly. Businesslike.”
“You’re doing business,” Dietz said, eminently reasonable, “anything can be arranged.” A thin expectant smile creased his lips.
What a curious inverted world you inhabit, Waverly was thinking, rife with curious, shifty games. Very strange. He said, “I don’t think so, Mr. Dietz. Not this time.”
“Look, what do you want?”
“Want you to step into the john there and lie down in the tub.”
Dietz’s mouth tightened. The smile, what there’d been of one, vanished. His eyes darted furiously. Waverly made a prodding motion with the gun and followed him into the bathroom. Dietz climbed into the tub and stretched out on his back.
“Come on, Mr. Dietz, you know better than that. Face down.”
Dietz rolled over on his stomach and laid his hands flat against the walls of the tub, as if he were holding them back. A man familiar with the position, aware of its special meaning. He turned his head to the side and said, “Your partner—what’s his name?”
“Epstein.”
“Let me talk to him. We can do a deal.” All the color had drained from his face, and all the growl was gone out of his voice.
“Afraid he’s not available. It’s just you and me.”
Waverly filled the sink and pulled two bath towels and a washcloth off the rack. He dunked them in the water, wrung them out best as he could with one hand, slung the towels over his shoulder, and stuffed the washcloth in a pocket. Never once did he take his eyes off the prone figure squeezed into the tub, and never once did he lower the piece. “Now you can get up,” he said.
“Fuck’s going on?” There was a ring of astonishment in the grunted question. A mix of disbelief and hope.
“Up.”
Dietz got to his feet stiffly and stepped over the rim of the tub.
Waverly moved back through the door, beckoned him. “Come along, now.”
“Where to?”
“You’ll see.” He got in behind him and poked the Magnum into the small of his back. “Oh, one thing more, Mr. Dietz. I want you to be cool. You know I’ve got nothing left to lose. You understand that?”
Dietz bobbed his head vigorously, signifying he understood.
Waverly directed him through the corridor and out the side door and across the deserted street. They passed under the Tropicaire sign, its yellow neon crackling against the black sky. At the entrance to the canvas-draped apartment Waverly said, “You’re going to have to get down again. Same as in the tub, only with your hands behind you.”
“Listen, we can still—”
Waverly brushed the back of his neck with the muzzle of the gun. “Better just do it, Mr. Dietz.”
Dietz got down.
Waverly straddled him and looped one of the towels around his wrists and fashioned a knot. It was tricky, keeping him covered and tightening the knot, but he was dextrous, he managed. With the other towel he bound the ankles. That was easier. He seized Dietz at the collar and pulled him to his knees. Helped him to his feet.
They stood facing the tarp that covered the apartment door. A sign was pinned to it. Waverly let him read it. He figured it was only fair. There was a certain ceremony to be observed here, a ritual of sorts. Beneath the skull and crossbones the sign announced:
DANGER
FUMIGATING WITH VIKANE SULFURYL FLUORIDE
DEADLY POISON
ALL PERSONS ARE WARNED TO STAY AWAY
A twittery spasm surged through Dietz’s body, head to foot, fleet as an electric charge. He rocked back on his heels. He made a peculiar sound, wordless, not particularly loud, not a moan exactly and certainly not a cry, more a sustained catarrhal bleat. Most peculiar sound. But to his credit he didn’t beg.
Waverly unclipped two sections of tarp. They fell away, exposing the door. He reached in a pocket, removed the key to the apartment, and fitted it in the door. From another pocket he took the damp washcloth, covered his mouth and nose. He found it difficult to restrain a smile: Timothy Waverly, masked avenger, instrument of divine reckoning, justice. Along with all its muddles and reversals and endless disasters, the low theatrics of his life appalled him. Nevertheless, come this far, there was nothing to do but round things off, restore the varnish of order. So he turned to Dietz, who was still producing that curious bleat, and said, almost kindly, “Just breathe deeply. They say it’s easier that way.”
He swallowed his breath and pushed open the door and forced Dietz, hopping, inside. A hot blast of clotted noxious air assaulted his eyes and penetrated the wet cloth and stung his nostrils. He gave Dietz a shove, sent him sprawling. Hacking and gagging, he backed out the door, pulled it shut, and removed the key. With the butt of the gun he hammered at the knob, springing it loose in the appearance of a forced entry. It wasn’t much in the way of a dodge. Best he could think of. Then he clipped the two sections of tarp together and wiped the clips with the washcloth. And from the other side of those tarps and from beyond that door came a brief muffled howl and some thrashing noises followed by a dwindling wail and something that sounded like a sob and then nothing at all.
Waverly ducked around the corner of the apartment and discovered Bennie behind the wheel of the idling Caddie. He climbed in and Bennie took the car squealing into the street, muttering, “I ain’t even gonna ask.”
Waverly said simply, “Happy ending to our story.”
TWENTY-FOUR
They were pointed north on the Turnpike. Bennie drove as fast as he dared. The cigar in his mouth was gnawed to a moist stub. Exits flashed by. Clouds sailed like smoke across the gradually lightening sky. Waverly gazed numbly at the streak of highway cleaving the landscape in two. There was about him something of the dazed quality of the walking wounded. A desolate sense of bleakness filled his throat.
For a considerable time they rode in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts. Waverly’s were wandering, unfocused, not so much thoughts as a confusion of images floating behind his eyes, vivid, antic, bizarre. Predominant among them, arriving like a pulse of dim light issuing through time and space from the corpse of a distant star, was a vision of Caroline Vanzoren Crown. For a while it persisted, that vision, but as the highway unspooled ahead of them it seemed to wane, displaced by a mesh of soiled emotions and vague longings, and also by wistful ruminations on destiny’s intricate intersecting orbits, the lengthening trail of violent death left in his wake, and all the multiplying games and falsehoods and fictions insulating his own life.
Without any warning his stomach began to rumble ominously. Bennie’s generated a sympathetic echo. Dyspepsia’s symphony. Waverly couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last. “Dueling bellies,” he said, for something to say.
Bennie made a gesture of impatience. “Hey, you’re thinkin’ chow, put it right outta your head. We ain’t stoppin’ till we showed this bad-news state our heels.”
“Where we headed?”
“Dunno. Outta here. West, maybe. You ever been to Nevada?”
“No. Never.”
“Maybe west, then.”
“How much are you carrying?”
“Under a nickel. You?”
“Less than a dime.”
“Holy fuck,” Bennie said, “under a nickel and less’n a dime.” He clamped down on the cigar, yellow-knuckled the wheel. “Here we go.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Kakonis was born in California, squarely at the onset of the Depression, the offspring of a nomadic Greek immigrant and a South Dakota farm girl of Anglo-Saxon descent gone west on the single great adventure of her life. He has worked variously as a railroad section laborer, lifeguard, pool hall and beach idler, army officer, technical writer, and professor at several colleges in the Midwest. He published six crime novels before retiring for over a decade, then resumed fiction writing with the novel Treasure Coast. Currently he makes his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Tom Kakonis, Double Down
