Manhunt. Volume 6, Number 4, June, 1958

Pro by Joe Gores

He was a pleasant-looking guy, this Falconer. He even looked pleasant when he murdered...

The stewardess came by checking reservations.

“Your name please, sir.”

“Simmons,” said Falkoner. He was lean and dark, with long-fingered hands shaped like a piano player’s and cool grey eyes that observed almost everything. A thin white scar running across his chin made his otherwise pleasant face sullen. In his shoulder holster was a .357 magnum on a cut-down frame and in his bleak heart was death. Falkoner was a professional murderer.

During the thirty-five minute flight from Los Angeles the lone woman huddled across the aisle aroused his melancholy contempt. She wore a cheap brown hat and had an old straw purse on the seat next to her. Updrafts over the rim of the desert made her tight fists whiten with strain and her eyes burn with fear. She was disgusting: he knew dying was swift and easy.

A slight sandy-haired man took his arm as he left the plane at Palm Springs and said: “Did Mr. David send you down?” His voice was soft and intimate and he wore a red and green sports shirt, khaki pants, and open sandals.

Looking him over, Falkoner nodded coolly. Little men who did not deal in the two great realities of life and death held scant interest for him.

“Fine. I’m Langly. My car’s over here in the lot.”

It was a blue and white 1957 Chrysler. On the blacktop road beyond the airport the sun was warm but the air dry and fresh; scraggly clumps of dusty green vegetation spotted the flat desert like regimented billiard balls on a giant yellow table. They passed a man and woman on horseback, wearing riding breeches, who waved gaily. A Cadillac Eldorado roared by like an escaped rocket, manned by two bleached blondes goggled with bright-rimmed sun glasses.

“Where’s the woman?” asked Falkoner.

“She’s got a shack in a date grove near Rancho Mirage — it’s a new section this side of Palm Desert.”

“Works?”

“Mex place in Palm Desert. She tells fortunes, goes to work at five — she’ll be home now.” Langly’s voice tingled and his bright eyes sparkled ripely. “I guess Mr. David wants her pretty bad, huh? I just notified Los Angeles last night, and you’re here from ’Frisco today to—”

“Let’s go out to her place.”

Langly drove swiftly as if stung by Falkoner’s abruptness. They passed the plush Thunderbird Club and turned left on to a dirt road before the Shadow Mountain Club. Dry clouds of tan dust swirled out behind them.

“When word came she’d left Scottsdale I thought she might try it here — the country’s a lot the same. Then I spotted her at the Mex place from her photo and—”

“Are we close?”

Langly drove across an old wash beyond which the date groves started.

“Next road to the right, first house on the left,” he said. His voice was sharp and piqued. “Only house.”

“Okay. Drive past.”

Down the narrow roadway Falkoner saw the tail of a black Mercury station wagon protruding from behind a palm tree. The shack was hidden by trees.

“That her Merc?”

“Yes. A ’55 Monterey with wood panelling. A beauty.”

After a moment of thought Falkoner said: “Turn around up here and let me off at the roadway. Then you go back to town.”

As he followed directions the other’s actions had a slightly feminine quality. Falkoner got out, walked around the car, and dropped a sealed envelope through the window into Langly’s lap. The envelope crinkled.

“What sort of work do you do?” Falkoner asked.

“I’ve been parking cars at one of the clubs.” Then the voice got malicious; excitement made it almost lisp. “But I did good work on this and I’m going to make sure Mr. David knows about it and about how you’ve treated me.”

“Stick to parking cars, nance,” Falkoner replied. Leaning very close he added confidentially: “You’ve got a leaky face.”

In his steady eyes Langly saw death’s cold scrutiny. He rammed the drive button hurriedly and the Chrysler swept him away down the dusty road.

Palm fronds tickled the roof drily and something gnawed with cautious haste under the sagging wooden porch. Falkoner’s shoes made cat-sounds as he crossed to the screen door. After knocking on the frame he cupped his eyes to peer into the living room. The linoleum was so old it was worn almost white. Across the room sagged a beaten-down green couch, in one corner a red easy chair that looked almost new. There were three straight-backed chairs and one leg of the wooden table in the center of the floor had been cracked and stapled. A plaque reading GOD BLESS OUR HOME decorated one wall.

Before he could call, Genevieve came through the inner doorway. She was as tall as he, nearly six feet, her face fine-featured: straight nose, high cheekbones, thin hungry lips. A red silk scarf was knotted loosely around her neck and her striking figure was displayed by a tight black dress. There were three hairpins in her mouth and her hands were smoothing her hair.

“Yes?” Her voice was husky.

The screen door was unlocked so Falkoner stepped in. When the light touched his features she went stark white and her mouth dropped the hairpins. She ran against him, slanted dark eyes smoky with terror, but he pushed her back.

“Rather a come-down, Genevieve,” he said.

He went through the inner doorway to see a small dirty kitchen with dishes piled in the sink, and a bedroom with a double bed that looked as if two large animals had been fighting on it. The room had a close, intimate smell. As he donned a pair of thin grey gloves he let Genevieve’s voice draw him back to the front room.

“What does he want with me? He... whoever killed Max... I didn’t see who killed Max.”

“If you hadn’t left Arizona he might have believed you.”

“I got tired of the stinking desert and the stinking men with only one thing on their stinking minds.”

Falkoner raised his eyebrows. “The men at the Mex place are different? The desert here is different?”

“I had to eat.” Her mouth made the next word a curse. “Men. You and Mr. David and all the rest. Money and power and women, that’s all you want.” Then the strength left her and her hands crawled up the black dress like broad white spiders to her bosom.

“Isn’t he ever going to let me live in peace?” she whispered.

Falkoner asked: “Did you really think he could let you live at all?” His quick hands closed around her throat like an act of love.

She scrabbled wildly at the iron-hard forearms, reached for his eyes, tried to kick him. She was strong, but the piano-player fingers possessed all the immeasurable strength of evil. A chair was overturned. They went around the table in a slow grotesque dance like cranes mating. He drove her down on the couch and kneed her viciously. The thrashing body, the smell of sweat and perfume aroused him: it was a pity there was no time to have her before she died. A great pity.

Her face darkened, her movements became erratic, lost volition, ceased. Finally her tongue, pink as a baby’s thumb, came out of one corner of her mouth and spittle ran down her cheek. There was a muted sound like cloth tearing. She sprawled under him in a lewd doll-pose of surrender, eyes staring beyond him into the infinite horror of death.

From the pay phone at a gas station on South Palm Drive, Falkoner reversed the charges to a Tuxedo exchange number in San Francisco. While awaiting his connection he placidly smoked a cigarette. The operator said:

“I have a collect call for anyone from a Mr. Simmons in Palm Springs. Will you accept the charges?”

A flat voice answered: “Put him on.”

Falkoner ground out his cigarette against the window of the booth and said “Yes” into the receiver. There was no response so he hung up, paid for his gas, and left Palm Springs, driving west across the desert on U.S. 101. At U.S. 99 he went north to Colton, cut across to U.S. 66 on a dirt road, and again pointed the Mercury at the far thin glow of Los Angeles. He counted bugs as they squashed against the windshield, and at nine o’clock ate Mexican food in a small adobe diner. It had been a clean hit: her body, wrapped in a blanket, was stuffed in the spare tire well under the floor section of the Mercury, and a suitcase full of her personal things rode beside him. Yet he lacked the usual drained empty peace. Around midnight some instinct made him pull in at a motel near Glendora, two hours from the city.

The single row of white cottages was neat and freshly painted; each unit had a covered carport with a door leading directly inside. Above the first cabin a large red neon sign proclaimed MOTEL with vacancy underneath in smaller pink letters. After he had rung the bell twice the office light went on and an old man with a sour face like the taste of lemon came out of the back room rubbing his eyes. An old-fashioned nightshirt covered bowed legs.

“Is your last unit in the line empty?”

Clicking his false teeth together he leaned past Falkoner as if to make sure there was a last unit. He smelled sourly of sleep.

“Yep.”

“Fine. I have trouble sleeping if I can hear traffic passing. How much?”

“Five bucks.”

“Commercial rates.”

“Well... four, then.”

Falkoner did the other careful things the years had taught him: wrote ‘Simmons’ on the register in a slanting backhand script that was not his own, mixed up the license number in a way that could have been accidental, and took Genevieve’s suitcase with him before locking the car. Opening the motel room door he breathed deeply; orange groves flanking the highway made the air faintly sweet. Maybe it was getting to him. Five years ago he’d never considered the possibility of anything going wrong. Tomorrow I’ll dump her with Dannelson, he thought, and maybe get lined up with a little piece. I’ve been living like a monk lately.

“Let me talk to Danny,” Falkoner said, rubbing his eyes and cursing the grey fingers of smog reaching out from Los Angeles. Sunday morning traffic made it difficult to hear.

“Who’s calling?”

“Falkoner.”

“Falkoner? I’m sorry, Mr. Dannelson is out.”

Falkoner squeezed the receiver tightly. The palm of his hand had gone sweaty.

“Is Dannelson out or did he say he was out?” he asked.

“Mr. Dannelson is out.”

There were muttered angry words, a click, and Dannelson’s voice came jovially over the wire.

“Hello, Jack? That damn fool didn’t get your name right. Listen, boy, S.F. said you have a parcel for us. Where in hell are you?”

Falkoner hung up abruptly, returned to the car, and tuned the radio to a ten o’clock newscast. It carried the item for which Dannelson’s clumsiness had prepared him.

Palm Springs police were investigating the disappearance and possible murder of Genevieve Ostroff, fortune-teller at the Green Cactus bar in Palm Desert. Two boys playing near her house had seen a man carrying what looked like a blanket-wrapped body to her black station wagon. Investigating police had found no sign of violence and her clothes had been gone, but there had been over seven hundred dollars in small bills under the paper lining of a dresser drawer. After the first newscast Chester Langly, parking lot attendant at the Blue Owl, had furnished the description of a man who had hitched a ride with him from the airport to a point near Genevieve’s house. A man who had called himself Simmons.

Damn that fairy Langly, Falkoner thought. The police were easy, but Mr. David had given him the contract for Genevieve personally... now he was too dangerous to live. The word was already out: lucky Danny’d been so anxious. Los Angeles and Las Vegas and San Diego — probably Tucson and El Paso, too, because they’d figure him to try for Mexico. No place to run: and to run would mean admitting to himself he was afraid. Suddenly his pale morose face cleared. What if he went back to San Francisco after Mr. David? That was it. It was what they should expect of Jack Falkoner.

The maid had finished his room. He paid at the office for a week in advance, then carried the heavy un-wieldly package that was Genevieve in through the side entrance and dumped it on the bed.

A light blue 1955 Ford pulled out behind him on the traffic circle at Bakersfield. The tail job was clumsy. Falkoner drove fast: this boy mustn’t have time to get to a phone. On the new freeway north of Delano he suddenly floored the accelerator and squealed into the right-angle turn for the Earlimart overpass, swung over to old U.S. 99, and pulled up in front of a little general store he had remembered. It was the run-down country crossroads sort of place occasionally surviving in the San Joaquin valley. The sort of place to do what had to be done.

A short man wearing dirty overalls and chewing a large cud of tobacco came out.

“Fill it up — regular,” said Falkoner.

He waited in the store by the vegetable counter. Three dirty bare-footed children slammed through the screen door and began noisily clamouring at the candy counter like puppies worrying a bone. A tall faded lady in a washed-out dress came from the bowels of the store to scream harsh threats at them.

When the blue Ford rounded the corner and braked sharply, Falkoner went out the door and around behind the store to the primitive outdoor restrooms. Lattice works into which thick vines had grown flanked the entrance. He slammed the lean-to door loudly, stepped out of sight behind the vines, and took the magnum from its shoulder holster. Feet scuffed in the dust and foliage rustled. Door hinges squeaked cautiously.

The young red-haired man had freckles and a homely face and a switchblade knife in one broad paw. As he turned from the empty shanty, puzzled, Falkoner stepped around the lattice work and slammed the magnum down on his hand. Pimples of sweat popped out on his hard young face. The knife fell. He snatched clumsily for the magnum with his left hand, breathing hoarsely, his eyes already sick with the sure frightful knowledge of defeat.

Falkoner’s gun rammed him in the stomach, bending him over; then it clipped him across the back of the neck and knocked him to his knees. A knee driven into his freckled face upset him against the wall. The magnum struck his bright hair with a sound like a wet rag slapping concrete. He tipped forward on his face and was still.

Falkoner dragged him around the corner of the shanty and killed him.

The short man was still cleaning bugs from the Mercury’s windshield when the blue Ford dug out and sped past the gas pumps.

Night had darkened San Francisco when Jack Falkoner took the down ramp off the freeway at Seventh, crossed Market, and went up Larkin. He drove over the hill to Pacific, turned right, crossed over the Broadway tunnel on Mason, and parked the Ford. His hands shook a little as he checked the magnum: going after Mr. David was something like going up against God.

Turning downhill at Glover, a narrow one-block alley, he walked on the right-hand side, crossed over, and came up the other side breathing heavier from the incline. There were no cars he knew, no people at all, so he turned in at an ornate wooden gate and climbed a series of stone steps. In less than a minute he had opened the heavy oak door with a small metal pick and was prowling the five-room apartment. His rubber soles made no sound on the polished floors and thick carpets. On Sundays Mr. David and the girl he kept there usually watched Ed Sullivan, but tonight the apartment was empty.

I can wait, Falkoner thought as he returned to the Ford, and slid in behind the wheel.

A round hard object poked the base of his neck and a smooth voice said:

“Hands on the head, Sweets, and slide over slow.”

Strangely, he thought of his first hit. It had been in a car like this and the man had said: ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ He did not say anything. A dark figure came erect in the back seat and another crossed the street swiftly to get in under the wheel and hold a gun on Falkoner while the first one took the magnum. Later the man had cried and babbled and even prayed. Falconer had been much younger then and had laughed before shooting him in the back of the head.

A long black sedan drifted around the corner and crawled up behind them. It was remarkably like an undertaker’s car. When the man at the wheel flipped his lights twice the Ford pulled out. The sedan followed. They took Pine to Presidio, cut over to Balboa, and drove out through the dark still Avenues decorously, like a funeral procession. Falkoner’s head ached and he felt sick to his stomach. When he looked at the unfamiliar face of the driver the man in the back seat said “Don’t try it, Sweets.” The driver stayed hunched over with both hands on the wheel. They would not let him smoke a cigarette.

Surf grumbled against the cement breakwaters as the Ford turned left onto the Great Highway at Playland on the Beach. Only a few rides and stalls were open, for a chill March mist had rolled in off the Pacific. The wipers monotonously sucked haze from the windshield. After several miles they swung in facing the ocean on a wide dirt lot where neckers parked on moonlit nights. The sedan drew up behind them, parallel to the highway, with dimmed lights. There were no other cars. A tangled hedge of dark twisted cypress, bent and gnarled by the incessant wind, screened them from the houses beyond the highway.

The doorhandle felt cold and slippery to Falkoner’s fingers. Bitter words flooded his mouth like bile and his lips bled keeping them in: Jack Falconer is not afraid, Jack Falkoner is not afraid... He flung open the door and threw himself at the opening. Behind him something plopped twice. Eyes staring in disbelief, he fell dizzily out of the half-open door and crashed down on one shoulder. He tried to say something, he wanted to say it, it was important: the whole significance of his life had been only death. He had meant no more than a casual accident or a mild epidemic that snuffs out a few people by blind chance. If they would just give him a little time for change, another month for living... Before he could ask, orange flame spurted and lead ripped his throat, slamming his head into the dirt with an ineluctable finality.

“Pay me,” chortled Mr. David in high good humor. The sedan had turned by Fleishaker Zoo and was threading through an expensive residential district on broad Sloat Avenue.

The man in the back seat with him was dressed in a camel’s hair coat and had crisp wavy hair receding from his forehead. He had once been a lawyer but had been disbarred. With obvious reluctance he took a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to his employer.

“I still don’t see how you knew he’d come up here. I thought one of the boys along the border would tag him.”

Mr. David chuckled richly. He wore too much cologne in a vain effort to disguise the constant odor of perspiration that clung to his obese body like the smell of bad cooking. His heavy features were shadowed by his hatbrim.

“Psychology, Norman, psychology. Jack wasn’t afraid of me or the Organization or Old Nick himself. It was his sort of stunt, to try and take me with him. I’m sorry about Red, though. I told him to be careful but you know how kids are.”

“How can you be so sure Falkoner got him?”

“The Ford. Jack would never have had that car if Red was alive, that for sure. And Jack was a bad one, at that.”

“I like ’em bad,” put in the man in the middle of the front seat. He was removing a steel cylinder from the muzzle of his .32, his deadly hands fondling the revolver with the quick and supple movements of a musician fingering his guitar. “And you can’t tell me Sweets wasn’t scared. I saw his face when he went under.”

Mr. David delicately shifted his ponderous bulk and belched. His weight made the seat coils creek slightly.

“We’ll never know now, will we?” he demanded with unction. As the car stopped for the light on 19th Avenue he added: “Take a left here, Freddie. I’ve got a date with a new girl.”

Down toward Playland a motorcycle siren whined thinly, like a short-haired mongrel in cold weather. The chilled huddle of people could see the flat pink glow of its close-set red eyes coming up at them through the fog. Moaning wind tore their breaths away in grey tatters. Occasional cars whipped past, wet tires hissing on the shiny pavement. By the white empty glare of their prowl car spotlight, two wet-tunicked policemen resembled grave robbers rolling bodies as they lifted Falkoner’s corpse by one shoulder to see if it bore any life. On his face, almost ferocious in its intensity, was frozen an immutable expression of pure terror.