Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 8, No. 11, November 1963

Vendetta by Max Van Derveer

It has been said that, when you sell a man a book, you sell him a whole new life. Logically then, it must be necessary to deprive him of the old one.

Waldo Raines saw the man from his vantage behind the short counter. He had a commanding view of the street through a plate glass window, and the man had hesitated outside that window. Now, though, the man was coming through the front door and Waldo felt his heart flutter with recognition, felt the anticipation leap alive and pulse through his limbs, for the man was as incongruous to Waldo’s small bookshop as a prostitute to a church pew.

The man paused for a few seconds just inside the door, tipped a black hat back on a head much too large for his body, and critically inventoried everything except Waldo from eyes that were like shiny marbles.

Waldo didn’t move.

The man did.

He turned into an aisle of eight foot high bookshelves and went halfway down the aisle before stopping again. His actions were quick now. Sure. He took down a thick volume and blocked Waldo’s view with his body. Seconds later, the volume was back in its place on the shelf and the man was continuing down the aisle. He went around the bookstall and out the street door.

When Waldo removed the five thousand dollars in worn bills from the hollowed interior of the special volume he laughed softly. It was to be a good day. Any day Harrison James, juice man, underworld loan shark, laid out five thousand bills it was a good day.

“Father?”

Waldo stuffed the fold of bills into the coat pocket of a baggy tweed suit quickly and turned on his daughter.

Had she observed his movements?

She came to him, a tall, lean girl of twenty-three with a thick mass of black hair worn long, and a hint of sensuality in a protruding upper lip, a girl who looked like the unexpected would always startle, sometimes upset her a little.

“Father, the new shipment of books has arrived.”

Waldo’s smile spread as he promptly discarded the thought that she might have seen Harrison James’ offering. “Can you handle it, my dear?”

“Certainly.”

“I have to go out for an hour or so. Shouldn’t be longer than that.”

“All right.”

Myra’s incurious acceptance triggered a familiar warmth in him and he reached out and patted her shoulder as they turned down the aisle together. Father and daughter. Theirs was an unspoken bond, secret and deep, an esoteric friendship born on an unforgettable day sixteen years previous, the day he had become a widower and Myra had become the only woman in their house.

Waldo felt good when he left his shop that February afternoon and there was a smile on his savant face as he walked unhurriedly to the end of the block and cut into the parking lot. The day was clear, bright and brittle. He liked the cold. And he took a few seconds to draw the clean air deep into his lungs appreciatively before he moved between two cars and stepped into the cleared center of the lot. The parked vehicles before him gleamed in the sunshine. Outwardly, he appeared at ease with the world, but this was a casualness that belied the pounding of the blood through his veins. For Waldo Raines, a small, unobtrusive sham of fifty-one years, was predatory by nature and now he could smell a kill.

The blue sedan was about a hundred feet away, and he could see through the rear window as he moved with almost delicate steps across the macadam surface. Sitting behind the steering wheel, Harrison James lifted a half-smoked cigarette to his mouth jerkily and coughed when Waldo opened the door and plopped into the front seat beside him.

Their exchange of pleasantries was an exchange of names and then Waldo asked bluntly, “Who?”

Harrison James flicked the end of a hawk nose with a forefinger. “Sonny Blue.”

Waldo’s smile became fixed. Harrison James’ appearance had always made him think of a galliwasp. And now he was sure of something else. The man had the mind of a lizard, too.

Waldo removed the five thousand dollars from his pocket and extended it.

“What’s the matter?” Harrison James asked quarrelsomely.

“Do you have to ask?”

“Tobiah? You afraid of him?”

“Are you?”

“It ain’t Tobiah. It’s Sonny Blue.”

“There’s a difference?”

The two men measured each other with their eyes for several seconds before Harrison James suddenly banged a fist against the steering wheel. “All right, Waldo,” he rasped. “How much?”

“Double,” Waldo said without hesitation. “Ten thousand.”

“It’s at six o’clock this afternoon, man! All set up! I can’t get another five before...”

Waldo’s movement to leave the sedan stopped the words. “Okay, okay,” Harrison James said vehemently. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Where?” Waldo asked with a confident smile spreading across his face.

Harrison James rattled off an address and Waldo got out of the sedan. He was laughing quietly. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind. Harrison James would dig up another five thousand dollars in time.

He did.

Thursday afternoon went slowly for Waldo. His hands were busy with the new shipment of books but his thoughts were far from the automatic indexing and he didn’t even pay any particular attention when Harrison James came into the shop again and took down the special volume.

Waldo removed the additional five thousand dollars from the book absently.

Sonny Blue. Tobiah. You could hear stories about those two if you wanted to listen. And he had listened. Tobiah Andresco: underworld kingpin, the city’s biggest live mobster. Sonny Blue: young, maybe Myra’s age. Tobiah’s son? There was speculation, even though all of the records compiled on Tobiah Andresco failed to include a marriage or a blood beneficiary. You could guess, of course; somewhere along the line Tobiah had sired an offspring. Sure. Guess. It was your prerogative. But what did you know? Only that Tobiah Andresco and Sonny Blue were as close as any father-son relationship in existence might remotely hope to be.

“Aren’t you going to rest, father?”

Myra’s words chased the thoughts from Waldo’s mind and brought a gentle smile to his face. “Is it that time already, my dear?”

“Four-thirty.”

“All right. Yes, I think I will take few winks. Are you going out this evening? With Johnny?”

“Not until nine.”

“I like Johnny.”

His daughter’s grin was genuinely warm. “So do I, father?

Waldo nodded his approval of Johnny Simcox as he retired to the

small office, his private sanctuary, at the rear of the bookshop. Johnny Simcox had a sense of direction, a sense of value. He would be a good husband to Myra. And she, of course, would be a good wife to him.

Waldo closed the office door behind him and locked it.

Seconds later, he was a flurry of calculated and methodical motion. He took one of the records from a secreted slot under the ancient oak desk and put it on the player. The records were his prizes; they had required hours to make. Music filled the office. In moments there would be the sound of himself singing off key, then humming, then whistling, then the music recorded from a myriad of radio programs again. It would continue for three hours if necessary. Today it would not be necessary. He would complete his task in just slightly over two hours.

Lifting the tilted head rest of the worn leather couch against the far wall, he removed the self-designed copy of the Holy Bible, put on his coat and hat and stepped out the back door of the office into the alley.

Fifteen minutes later, the Bible locked securely under his arm, he was on the subway and going across town.

He arrived at the swanky East Side address Harrison James had given him at exactly three minutes to six. Entering the lobby of the apartment building, he rode a whispering self-service elevator up to the fourth floor and found the door he wanted. The corridor was empty. He placed a thumb against the door bell. Sweat prickled his body. His teeth came down on his lower lip. His palms were wet. But he felt incredibly alive as he adjusted the Bible in his hands. He pointed the carved-out open end of the book toward the door. His finger went into the slot on the bottom cover.

The door opened. And for just an instant an intense young man of medium construction, and nattily attired in a soft gray suit, appeared in the opening.

Then Waldo squeezed the trigger of the silenced 38 inside the Holy Bible.

Pffft.

Sonny Blue jerked up on his toes and seemed to hang in the door opening, his face caught in incredible surprise. Blood gushed from his heart through the hole in his chest, spattering the wall.

It was twenty minutes before seven o’clock in the evening when Waldo stepped through the alley door and into his office again. The record was playing. He heard himself humming a catchy little tune and he smiled. There was plenty of time, another full forty-five minutes of playing time if he had needed it.

He sat at his desk, cleaned the .38, and returned the Holy Bible to its slot under the head rest of the couch. Then he went to a tiny sink and washed his hands and face thoroughly. Finally he removed the record, secreted it, and walked into the bookshop.

The paunchy uniformed policeman at the bookshelf to his right produced an instant of anxiety before he realized that Bert Parker, beat patrolman, was only browsing.

Waldo had a pleasant smile for the patrolman and for Myra as she came to him. Myra’s eyes glistened with fondness. “Have a good rest, father?”

“Excellent.”

“Beats all how some people get away with things these days,” Bert Parker said from the bookshelf.

“That right?” Waldo asked, disguising the animalistic caution that was suddenly a bright flame inside him, bright but concealed.

“Yeah,” Barker said. “I’d like to see me sneak in some sack time while I’m on the job.”

His grin was wide.

Friday morning sparkled in its own crisp brilliance and there was a bouncy spring in Waldo’s step. He arrived at the bookshop at exactly ten o’clock, the same hour he had arrived every morning for the past twenty-four years. Taking the key from his pocket, he paused to smile benignly on the street and then he inserted the key in the door lock.

The wave of apprehension didn’t strike him until he was inside the shop and he heard himself whistling the gay tune. He became rooted, tight as a tympani, his eyes fixed on the closed door of his small office. The whistling sound came from behind that door.

Had he forgotten to put away the record the previous afternoon?

No!

He turned back to the street door soundlessly.

“Waldo?”

Panic swept through him like a blizzard wind.

“Are you leaving, Waldo? I wanted to see you.”

The voice was quiescent but the words knife into him. He felt like someone was repeatedly puncturing his body with a poniard, yet he was drawn around by an invisible force until he was looking on the mountainous man filling the open doorway of his office. Behind the man, the music from the record was louder.

Tobiah Andresco was expensively immaculate, the image of a man who had just stepped from a fashion advertisement. He probably was around sixty, but he looked an indolent forty. He stood there smiling carefully and looking very much at ease. Yet Waldo knew him for what he was, a megalomaniac with a mind as keen as a saber’s edge. And there was fear in Waldo now, a deep-seated fear that filled him with trepidation.

How had Tobiah entered the shop? It wasn’t important, really. The important thing was how did Tobiah know? The corridor had been empty. No one had seen Sonny Blue open the apartment door. No one had seen the look of incredulous surprise that had spread across his face as the bullet went into his heart. So how did Tobiah know...

“Coming in, Waldo?”

Tobiah Andresco stepped back out of the doorway and waited with the same patience of his constant companion, the large black labrador at his side.

Waldo was confused and badly shaken. His thoughts were jumbled. He didn’t remember going into the office, moving past the man who smelled subtly of pomade, but suddenly he was there, sitting rigidly on the edge of the worn couch while Tobiah seated himself behind the scarred oak desk and dropped his hand almost carelessly, it seemed, to the head of the black labrador.

“You shouldn’t have, Waldo,” he said reproachfully. “You shouldn’t have hit Sonny. You know what the boy meant to me.”

“Sonny? Hit?” Waldo attempted to make the words come out garnished with surprise, but his voice broke and he knew the attempt was sour. “Not me, Tobiah. You know I wouldn’t—”

“There isn’t another hit man in town who has the guts, friend. And it had your trademark. The quick kill. Open a door. Boom.”

“I... I hadn’t heard...”

“Don’t lie to me, Waldo.”

“So help me, I never... Hey, you wanna ask a beat cop? Bert Parker, the beat cop, or there’s my daughter, Myra. Myra will be here soon. They know, Tobiah... they know I was never outside my shop all day—”

“How do they know, Waldo? This?”

He smiled down on the record coldly. And Waldo knew fresh panic. His heart was beating so hard he thought it might jump out of his chest. Or maybe he was going to have a coronary. Things like that happened. You could read about it any day in a newspaper. People got excited, the heart couldn’t take the pace and...

“The record is clever, Waldo. Very clever. I’ve been playing this one since eight-thirty this morning. That’s almost two hours now. And there’s more to come. Make it three hours total. Very good. Plenty of time for a man to go to almost any point in the city and return.”

“Look, Tobiah, so help me—”

“You know what I want, Waldo?”

Does a traitor standing blindfolded before a firing squad know what’s coming next?

“Revenge,” Tobiah said flatly. “A favor. A hit.”

“A... hit?”

Harrison James? Waldo thought quickly. Eye for an eye?

“I set it up. You’re the executioner. No questions. No cash. No quibbling. No—”

“Sure, Tobiah! Anything!”

“Now you’re getting off the dime, friend. I like that much better.”

Waldo began to rally. “For you, Tobiah, a favor. You name it. Harrison James. Anyone. But it doesn’t mean I hit your boy. I want you to understand that. I want you to—”

“I understand just one thing, Waldo. You be available.”

By the fifth day after Tobiah Andresco’s visit to his shop, Waldo was his old self again. Composed and alert. Safe and secure. No longer afraid. And he liked himself much better that way. There was peace of mind and a feeling of being on top of things once again.

He whistled a soft, tuneless sound as he moved around the bookshop.

The phone rang at five o’clock in the afternoon.

Tobiah said, “Tonight, Waldo. Eight-thirty.” He gave an address.

“Check,” Waldo said perfunctorily.

But the hour couldn’t come fast enough, and he was restless with an inner excitement biting at him. At seven-thirty, Myra kissed his cheek and smiled down on him. “Johnny’s waiting.”

“Johnny is always waiting, isn’t he?” Waldo said approvingly.

“Every night,” Myra grinned.

Waldo watched her leave the flat over the bookshop. He gave her twenty minutes to meet Johnny Simcox and get out of the neighborhood. Then he took the Holy Bible from the couch in his office and headed for the address Tobiah had given him.

Soon his debt to the underworld kingpin would be paid.

The turn-of-the-century apartment building loomed large and lumpy in the black night There seemed to be a light in every window. Waldo took in those lights speculatively for a few moments before turning inside. Flipping the collar of his coat down, he climbed the worn steps to the second floor. The door he wanted was across the corridor at the top of the steps. Behind that door, he would find Harrison James. It wasn’t important how Tobiah had lured the loan shark to this death trap.

Waldo inventoried the lighted corridor. It was empty. He rapped vigorously on the door and lifted the Bible. He would make this one double fast and get out.

The door opened partially, but the person inside remained in shadow.

He triggered the silenced .38.

Pffft.

The girl screamed and fell back into the apartment.

And Waldo let out an ear-splitting, treble howl.

Tobiah Andresco had his vendetta.

For dead at Waldo’s feet, the hole in her angular face oozing blood, was his daughter, Myra. Across the room, Johnny Simcox stared at him with horror in his eyes.