Good Lord, Deliver Us (20 page)

The man groaned.

It didn't do a man's face any good to
have a couple layers of skin stripped off.

"Speak," Z snarled, looming over Smith
like the harbinger of doom.

"I ... don't know what
you're talking about," the man squealed. For what it was worth, he
sounded sincere -- as only a practiced liar,
can
.

"Pardon me if I have not been clear,"
Z said sarcastically. "You must stop threatening your wife.
Threatening to kill your child."

"But I didn't!" Z ignored the hit
man's high-pitched denial.

"Could it be that I am in
the wrong apartment?" Z hissed, cynically. "And that you are
not
Mr. Samuel Smith,
married to Vivian Smith? With a son, Sammy?"

"I am, but ...."

"But?"

"I don't know who told you I
threatened my wife, but it's not true. It's the other way around.
My wife's sick. Crazy!" On a graph, the man's voice could be
plotted as moving steadily toward falsetto. "She's taken everything
I have. Wants more. She hates me. Because of her father." The hit
man was babbling now. "She's getting worse. Something happened to
her so that she hates men. She seems loving -- but isn't. She even
blames me. Says I'm trying to rape her. She's that way about all
men. Even though I was her husband. She'd come on to me, then
accuse me of trying to violate her. She's scary." Nearly out of
control, a thin line of drool seeped down one corner of the
hitter's mouth. "She said she'd kill Sammy if I didn't pay more
support. I've been giving her everything I have. Sold everything.
Moved here."

"Mothers don't hurt their children," Z
said, offended that the hitter would take that tack.

"I hope to God you're right!" Said
with some heat. "But I couldn't take the chance. That's why I've
just filed papers asking for custody of Sammy." Suddenly, he
stopped. Looked up at Z. "Is that what this is all about? Has she
hired you to kill me?"

Interesting. At least the
man was making this interesting, not that Z believed a word he
said. He must be lying because Z made it a rule never to take a
case where he had any doubt about his client being in the right.
That was the
crucial
part of the Zapolska code, the part that allowed Z to take
... extraordinary measures ... to see that his client's received
justice.

Z had a sobering thought. He'd been
... tired ... lately, as only a "gentleman friend" of Jamie
Stewart's could be. Courting exhaustion, he just realized he'd left
out the most important safeguard in the code: making an independent
check of a prospective client. Instead, he'd taken Mrs. Smith at
her word that her husband was as guilty as the lady
charged.

Sloppy. Inexcusable.

The question was, what could Z do to
remedy the situation at this late date?

He didn't know ... but still had time
to think it over. Surely, the punk inside the man's pants had a
ways to burn before it set off the candle's six colorful
balls.

Red!

Green!

Z thought fondly of the
swishing sound, followed by a hollow
thuck
as a Roman candle's tube shot
another beautiful, fiery globe, high into the midnight sky
.......

Time for a few, clarifying questions.
"When I arrived, you were waiting for me. Explain."

"I don't know, myself." Though seeming
to have gotten control of himself, Smith kept looking at his
outstretched leg as if trying to see through the cloth to the
glowing punk inside his pants. "I got a phone call. Saying someone
was coming to kill me. At 9:00."

"What!?" It seemed impossible since
only Z and the woman knew Z's plan.

"That was just before 9:00," Smith
said, nodding. "I was about to call the police when I looked around
the edge of the drapes and saw you coming into the building. Even
three floors down, you looked ... dangerous." The man attempted to
lick his lips with a dust-dry tongue. Was trying to hurry. "I knew
it would take the police a long time to get here, so all I could do
was get the gun out of the drawer and try to scare you
off."

"You had a gun in the
drawer?" Was the Pope Catholic? Does a wild bear shit in the woods?
Does a fool piss into the wind? Of
course
a hitter would have a gun. Z
just wanted to see what he would say.

"
Everybody's
got a gun!"
.......

And that made sense, too. This was
America, after all, where more people had guns than health
insurance to pay for gun related tragedies.

But to return to the
problem, how
could
someone have warned Smith? Z hadn't told anyone he was
coming. And as cautious as the woman was, surely
she
hadn't confided in
anyone else. Yet, Z and the woman were the only two who could have
known about Z's plans.
Who
called?"

"I ... don't know."

"Don't know?"

"It was a voice I didn't recognize.
High. A high voice."

"Disguised?"

"I ... don't know."

"The exact words?"

The man thought about that as best he
could in his agitated state. (Grudgingly, Z had to admire Smith's
fortitude. Some people Z had "talked to" had become completely
incoherent by this stage in the process.)

"I think the words were, 'A man is
coming to kill you. Tonight. At 9:00.'"

"A high voice?"

"Yes."

"Could be a woman?"

The man would have shrugged -- if he
hadn't been tied so tight.

"Your wife?"

"Maybe."

Who else? And yet, why would Mrs.
Smith warn her husband?

Z shook his head. Whatever had gone
wrong, it was Z's own fault. If he'd been more careful to check on
his client, he wouldn't be so uncertain at this stage of the
game.

That being the case ....

Z stepped over to Smith. Bent down.
And carefully removed the Roman candle from the man's pant
leg.

Smith sighed. Sagged into the lumpy
divan, seeming even smaller than he'd looked before.

Seeing that quick work was necessary,
Z hurriedly untaped the fuse from the punk's rapidly approaching
ember, then unfastened the punk from the candle.

Glancing about the small room, finding
a glass of what looked like water on a shaky end table, Z sizzled
out the punk in the water, then returned the shortened stick and
candle to the case. Waste not, want not.

All the while, the man sat there,
following Z with frightened eyes. As if Smith was afraid of saying
something that would give offense.

Embarrassing.

All Z's fault.

Moving quickly to the case again, Z
got out the straight razor and, with a flick of the wrist, snicked
it open, the whetted blade glittering wickedly in the apartment's
subdued light.

Approaching the man -- who, for some
reason, was again showing signs of extreme agitation, a thin scream
ululating from the man's scrawny throat -- Z reached behind the man
and cut one of the nylon cords.

There. With that line cut, the man
would be able to free himself eventually. In about ten minutes, Z
estimated. Plenty of time for Z to make an unseen exit.

Retrieving the gag/tape from where
he'd tossed it on the divan, Z pressed the tape back on Smith's
reddened cheeks. Smith could also remove the tape when he got
free.

Without another word, Z folded the
razor and put it in the satchel, at the same time taking out a soft
black cloth to wipe the doorknob free of prints.

After listening at the door for
possible sounds outside in the hall, Z returned to his case.
Shutting the satchel, grabbing up its handle, using the cloth to
ease open the apartment door, Z stepped out into the hall and eased
the door shut behind him.

In the dimly lit hallway, Z pulled off
the hood, pocketed it, wiped the door knob, pocketed the cloth, and
trotted down the stairs.

Driving through scattered, Sunday
evening traffic, headed for the Antioch Shopping Center to phone
Mrs. Smith, Z thought this whole business through.

The man had gotten a call. Seeing Z
enter the building, Smith had retrieved his gun from the drawer to
wait for Z's arrival. At least, that was the man's
story.

A poor excuse for a gun: the sort of
handgun a macho-man kept by the bedside to defend his family, good
for little except the panic shooting of a "prowler", the imagined
"cutthroat" turning out to be the he-man's son or daughter, home
from a late night date.

Too many facts were drifting through
Z's brain. All, as yet, unrelated.

1. Someone had warned Smith. Someone
with a high voice, leading Z to ask himself who, but a woman, had a
high voice?

2. The top drawer of the man's bureau
was open when Z arrived.

3. There was no tape on the inside of
the man's door.

4. The man was an actor -- making
everything about him -- what he said, what he did, his emotional
outbursts -- suspect. If actors could cry on command, they could
also babble when they wished.

5. The wife had said her husband was a
bopper -- no confirming evidence in the hubby's digs.

Facts? Fictions? Exaggerations? Down
right lies? All leading somewhere, if only Z could sort them
out.

* * * * *

It was nine forty-five, the Antioch
Shopping Center staying open until ten on weekends to see if a
later closing hour would attract more business. Late shoppers were
hurrying past him as Z headed for the black metal phone cylinder at
the south end of the shopping center: an older couple in matching,
flowered shirts; a blond-haired boy and a pretty, black-haired
girl, the boy carrying a small brown sack from Nuts-a-Plenty.
Around the trade center's perimeter, two sets of hardened oldsters
in expensive tennis shoes were race-walking each other to see which
team would win the last "mall circuit" of the day. Farther down the
red-tiled corridor, past the fountain, to this side of the "feeding
frenzy" eateries, a black-garbed security officer fiddled with the
walkie-talkie on his belt.

Z was here on the outside chance the
hitter had bugged his wife's phone -- maybe using sophisticated
electronics that could trace incoming calls -- Z deciding to play
it safe by calling her from a shopping center pay phone.

As people bustled past to disappear
thorough the double glass doors leading to the parking lot, Z
thought about what had happened to public phones lately. From what
Z had been reading (mostly detective fiction set in New York City,)
gangs had just about put pay phones out of business. And not by a
little, innocent stealing of phone books, either. But by smashing
into coin boxes. Swiping receivers.

It hadn't come to that in Kansas
City.

Yet.

Here, the
phone company
was
ripping off the
public
by going in for cutesy, open-air phone stations, placed in
the middle of shopping malls where it was impossible to have a
private conversation.

The pay phone in the south T of the
shopping center was one of these, a two-foot in diameter,
five-foot-tall cylinder of flat black metal, the phone recessed
into the kind of whitened wedge an offended lumberjack might ax out
of a spotted owl-producing tree.

Z unhooked the receiver. Fed in a
quarter. Poked the buttons.

Ring.

"Yes?" Mrs. Smith, breathless with
anticipation.

"Me."

"Oh. ... You. ..... Is he
dead?"

A totally unexpected
question!

"I believe ... he won't ... threaten
you again," Z stammered.

"I'm eager to hear all about it. But I
know you don't want to say too much over the phone. I also got to
pay you. Not much in money, but ....

"Can you come over right
away?"

"No."

"I understand. Tomorrow night? I'll
make it worth your while. I promise."

"I'll ... call."

"Do that. And until I can thank you
... properly .... " The smacking noise that followed had to be a
kiss blown at the phone. "Goodbye for now."

Click.

Leaving Z feeling like a robot with
its steel umbilical not yet severed from the metal
mother-pole.

Realizing he still held the receiver,
Z replaced it, the phone clicking its satisfaction with Z's
digested quarter.

And still, Z continued to hide behind
the metallic tree; as if needing the protection of what, in the old
days, would have been an enclosed booth.

The lady had asked if her
husband was dead. (A question many woman would like answered in the
affirmative.) After that -- probably mistaking Z's answer
for
yes
-- had
given Z an unmistakable "come-on."