Just a Kill in the Dark...

Chapter One

If she hadn’t gotten that edge in her voice and hadn’t started to think she had certain rights around the establishment; if she had just kept on as she started — placid, dumb, sultry and willing — she wouldn’t have ended up beside me in the front seat of the Cad, out cold, her head bobbing against the inside door handle, her long pretty legs outstretched like the legs of a rag doll. When the street lights shone in through the window on her side, I noticed that her wool skirt had a long rip in the hem. Mike had probably caught it on something when he had carried her down into the drive and heaved her into the seat. I remembered how he had stepped back, grinning and dusting his palms together before he waved me off.

I knew the place for it. A patch of woodland beyond Concord. She moaned and shifted and from then on every exhalation made a bubbling sound in the corner of her mouth.

She didn’t come out of it until I turned off the two-lane concrete onto the rutted dirt road, the headlights turning the scrub brush silver in front of the car. Suddenly she sat up, moaned again and felt tenderly of the lump over her ear. A little blood clotted the pale blonde hair.

I stopped, cut the lights and the motor, leaving the dash lights on. In the dim glow she looked almost as pretty as she had when she had met Mike a year before.

She was sore. “What the hell goes on, Al?” she demanded.

“Take it easy, Helen. Relax. Cigarette?”

She pushed the pack aside. “Where’s Mike?”

“Better have a cigarette, Helen,” I said, extending the pack again. She took one, bent over the flare of the lighter. The flame light wasn’t kind to her. It made the shadows under her eyes look soft and pulpy.

She sucked the smoke deep into her lungs and exhaled it in a long plume that bounced off the inside of the windshield. The night was very still. The nights hadn’t been cold enough to kill off the last of the bugs. They cheeped in a lonesome way.

I let the silence and the night go to work on her. Finally she asked, “What is this, Al? A necking party or something? Mike wouldn’t like that.” Her voice was beginning to tighten up.

Softly I said, “Mike doesn’t like you any more, Helen. Mike doesn’t care any more.”

I saw the glowing end of the cigarette begin to tremble.

“What are you trying to tell me, Al? What is it? Tell me!”

Softly I said, “Mike, you might say, is fini. Tonight is kissoff night, lambie.” I put an edge in my voice. “Get out of the car!”

Her heels weren’t made for woodland sprinting. I caught her in my fourth running stride. The new moon was pale bright. She made soft little whimpering sounds in her throat. I let her see the glint of moonlight on the blued steel barrel. Her voice turned into something that couldn’t have been made by anything human.

She hacked at my face with her nails, but I pushed her away before she could do any damage. She stumbled and fell, crouching at the base of a big tree.

“Where do you want it, Helen? In the head?” I asked conversationally.

She was blubbering, “Anything, Al. I’ll do anything. Please... please, Al.” She saw me aim the gun at her face and there weren’t any words any more. Just the animal sounds. The saliva ran down her chin.

I let her wait for a moment and then I lowered the gun. “Guess I can’t do it, Helen. Maybe if you make a promise?”

“Anything, Al. I told you. Anything!”

“I’ll give you fifty bucks and drop you off at a bus terminal on the Worcester Road. You go just as far from Boston as you can get and don’t ever come back and never mention that you ever heard of Mike Muriak. If you do, Mike will find out and somebody will come chasing after you.”

Half an hour later I let her off a hundred yards from the place where the Worcester busses stopped. In the glare of the headlights she looked frail and pathetic, her face streaked, her shoulders slumped.

She was the third pigeon of Mike’s that I’d had to brush.

When I ran the Cad into the stall and walked back up to the big colonial house in Dedham, Mike was in the study, brandy on the table beside him. He grinned up at me, the floor lamp beside his chair making a harsh glare on his broad features.

“Scare the hell out of her, kid?” he asked.

“I ought to join a straw hat theater next summer, Mike.”

I sat in a chair opposite him. Mike is a man who looks about seven feet tall when he’s sitting down. His shirts and clothes have to be made special to fit the thick expanse of shoulder and the tan, strong column of his neck. He’s about five and a half feet tall when he stands. His legs are bowed and his hands seem to hang below his knees. Anthropoid is the word for Mike Muriak. And with a great ape’s sly, shrewd brain.

I yawned and stretched. “You never burn a bridge unless you’ve got a new bridge lined up, Mike. Who’s the lucky lady?”

Mike’s face went soft. “This different, kid. Real different.”

“That ought to be refreshing,” I said.

He looked at me sharply. Mike doesn’t understand and doesn’t care for sarcasm. He said, “Name is Ferris. Jane Ferris. But not plain Jane. Not plain any way you take a look. But no deal like with Helen. This has got to be creep up job. She comes to work day after tomorrow. She helps you.”

“Oh, fine,” I said wearily. “Can she type?”

“She says so.”

“I hope she hasn’t got an active curiosity, Mike. Some of the business details may fool her a little — or intrigue her.”

He scowled. “That’s your job. Harmless stuff I want her to do. Make up some work if you got to.”

Michael Muriak is a businessman. His home area is Boston, and thus it is one of the few places in the country where the long arm of Michael Muriak does not rake in the cabbage. His business deserves a few words of explanation.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue would very much like to have proof of these facts. They have had creeps watching Mike for years. Mike does a cash business.

I am his confidential secretary and go-between. He has three division heads. Rush Morson runs the little factory in Chicago where we make the machines and the equipment. The machines and equipment are sold at a surprisingly low percentage of profit, but always with an unwritten clause calling for a fat under-the-table bonus, or a percentage of future gross — in cash.

Gunner Kline is contact man. He has a flock of salesmen who not only install the equipment, but also give advice to management about how to turn over the biggest amount on all the machines, right from the one arm bandits up to the fancy roulette layouts with the steel heart in the ivory ball. Kline even locates good spots and interests local talent and capital so as to provide a market for the stuff Rush Morson manufactures.

Moke Andresa is enforcement. He sees that the payoffs are complete once the merchandise is installed. As a sideline, he cuts little slices to the local law to keep the houses in operation.

At the last estimate, there were, in operation throughout the country, three and a half million dollars worth of equipment. As a rough rule of thumb, you can figure that each item returns four times the capital investment each year. Thus, the total take all over the country runs about fourteen million a year, of which four million reverts to Mike’s organization. Of this amount, expenses, of which I am one, eat up three million. The remaining million dollars is hauled in by Michael Muriak with great glee and even greater finesse. To be on the safe side, large hunks of cash have been planted in various South American banks and business enterprises.

As visible assets there are only the two places, the house in Dedham with the two Cads in the garage and the big summer place near Marblehead.

I have been with Mike for eight years. Ever since I quit college by request when a crooked roommate framed me for a theft in the football locker room. A month later I got in a saloon brawl in Memphis and was baled out by Gunner Kline who, at that time, was looking for new blood for the sales organization.

I can’t explain what went on in my head to make me such a good man at placing the crooked equipment. Figure it this way. I had been decent, honest and earnest and one of the clean young men, when suddenly, for no fault of my own, I was on the outside and the others were on the inside. Something inside me turned lean and raw. It seemed as though by planting the machines, I was getting back at that smug world I’d been booted out of.

The war came along and Mike could have kept me out of it, but I went in. I decided one starry night on the beach at Iwo Jima that when it was all over, I’d go straight.

Six months after discharge, while working hard at a job that paid forty bucks a week, my employer tried to bond me and the old school record caught up with me. After a four-day drunk I was back working for Mike as his confidential secretary. And at a forty-buck taxable income, plus two hundred a week expenses on the side. Cash money.

I had a brandy with Mike and then went up to my room. It’s a hell of a penalty to like nice things. I liked the fabric of the hundred-and-fifty buck suit when I took it off. I liked the sheen of the twenty-five dollar shoes, the feel of the silk underwear against my hide. I put the gold ribbed lighter, the gold bill clip, the gold fountain pen on top of the bureau. The bill clip was a little fatter. Mike had given me a hundred to kiss her off with. I figured fifty would take her plenty far. Mike doesn’t like whining women that can’t take the brush. He likes the brush to be good.

My room has a private bath adjoining. I took a long shower, singing softly to myself and then climbed into the sack with a book. I heard his lumbering step downstairs, and knew that he was making his usual checkup on our very complicated system of burglar alarms. They are his pride and joy.

The Dedham house is like a fortress. Besides Mike and myself, there is Hiram Kelly, an excellent cook, George Janocki, the chauffeur and Anna, our very capable housekeeper. The four of us boys can all shoot. George and Hiram have done time. They are out because Mike wanted them out.

Mike’s heavy step came up the stairs. He shoved my door open. I looked up from the book. “Al,” he said. “I forgot to tell you. Jane Ferris is going to stay here. It’s more convenient than traveling back and forth. You move out of this room. Give it to her.”

“Where do I go?”

“In the east wing with George and Hiram.”

He pulled the door shut. I threw the book across the room, yanked out the light and pounded the pillow into shape angrily. Mike and his ideas. I decided that I’d better move George Janocki out of his setup. It was the most comfortable layout in the east wing. I began to go over in my mind the affairs of the morrow. Moke would be in town with funds and I’d have to arrange a transfer spot. Mike didn’t like Gunner’s latest idea about a subsidy for some outfit in St. Louis and I’d have to get off a doubletalk letter to him. Rush Morson was plagued with increasing production costs and Mike wanted the price kept the same. I wanted to argue with Mike about allowing Rush to make a boost.

There was a stinging place on my cheek. I wondered whether Helen had really gotten me with her claws. I padded into the bathroom and pulled on the light. One little nick. There was enough alcohol in the after-shave lotion to kill any bugs I might have picked up.

The summer tan was burned deep and brown into my shoulders. Part of my job was the regular workouts with Mike in the cellar gym. I was huskier than I had been in the army. I studied my face in the mirror. Not a bad face. A face on a guy around thirty. Not much expression. Expression is a handicap. Two grey eyes, a nose with just the smallest tilt toward left field — a memento of the sales days with Kline. Mouth a shade loose. I firmed it up and made a promise that I’d remember to keep it a little firmer.

I crawled back into bed and lit a cigarette. Somehow smoking in the dark never gives you much unless there are two cigarettes glowing. I stubbed it out and went to sleep.

The next day Mike was full of the joy of spring. Even with winter coming on. He gave me a bad time down in the cellar. We use the sixteen-ounce pillows. I wear a face guard. You can’t hurt Mike with an Irishman’s pick. He whistled, sang and bounced me off the ropes with the greatest of glee. I took a great many, rolling with a lot of them, blocking and slipping and weaving.

There are no bells and no rounds. I began to feel the small hot glow inside me and I kept it under as long as I could. Finally he bounced me off the ropes and I came back with a short choppy right that I hung on his button. His knees sagged and his eyes glazed. I knew I ought to bring the left across, but something stopped me. Seconds later a pretty green pinwheel went off in my head, and I followed it as it roared down into darkness. When I sat up Mike was leaning on the ropes, grinning at me.

He had his gloves off. He touched his jaw and said, “You get ambitions, hey, Al?”

“Not for long,” I said, climbing up onto hollow legs.

“Funny thing, Al. I hit you over the ear.”

“Ha, ha,” I said sullenly.

“You mad, Al?”

I was pulling the gloves off. I pointed my thumb at my chest, eyebrows raised. “Who? Me! Mad?”

He walked over and slapped me on the shoulder so hard my knees bent. He doubled a big fist and tapped me gently on the chin. It was all I could do to keep from lifting my knee into his gut. When he bent over I could chop him across the back of the neck and walk out of the lousy job. Walk into an early grave. I remembered the pale blue eyes on the Moke. A very early grave.

He bellowed hoarse laughter into my ear. “This too fine a day for to be mad, Al.” He patted his hairy belly. “Come on, boy. I buy us biggest seafood dinner you ever see.”

I sighed. I knew what that meant. Two drinks for Al and spend the rest of the day keeping Mike out of trouble. Cart him home, roll him into the sack and then have a free evening — maybe. And the next day the girl was going to show.

George Janocki had the black car out in the drive at four. I had on my steel-grey gabardine, a Sulka tie, one of the hand-made shirts. I held the door open and Mike climbed heavily into the back and sat down.

George was sore at me. I’d made him move out of the room he had. He had a room without a bath and with only one window. I could see the knot of muscle at the corner of his jaw as he gunned the big black job out into traffic. Big Mike laced his frankfurt-sized fingers across his hard gut and hummed softly.

Another day, another dollar. I yawned and wondered if I needed a haircut and wondered how long Mike would last before I had to drag him home, and wondered what kind of a girl would agree to work at the Dedham house.