Mostly Murder: A Short Story Collection

Watch for It

Eric’s first one. The very first.

And it went up early.

If I’d been in my apartment on Durant, with the window open, I probably would have heard it. And probably, at 4:30 in the morning, would have thought like any straight that it had been a truck back-fire. But I’d spent the night balling Elizabeth over in San Francisco while Eric was placing the bomb in Berkeley. With her every minute, I’d made sure, because whatever else you can say about the federal pigs, they’re thorough. I’d known that if anything went wrong, they’d be around looking.

Liz and I heard it together on the noon news, when we were having breakfast before her afternoon classes. She teaches freshman English at SF State.

“God, that’s terrible,” Liz said with a shudder. She’d been in a number of upper-level courses with both Eric and me. “What could have happened to him, Ross, to make him do... something like that?”

“I guess... Well, I haven’t seen much of him since graduation last June...” I gestured above the remains of our eggs and bacon.

“‘Student revolutionary’ — it’s hard to think of Eric that way.” Then I came up with a nice touch. “Maybe he shouldn’t have gone beyond his M.A. Maybe he should have stopped when we did — before he lost touch.”

When I’d recruited Eric without appearing to, it had seemed a very heavy idea. I mean, nobody actually expects this vocal, kinky, Rubin-type radical to go out and set bombs; because they don’t. We usually avoid Eric’s sort ourselves: they have no sense of history, no discipline. They’re as bad as the Communists on the other side of the street, with their excessive regimentation, their endless orders from somewhere else.

I stood up. “Well, baby, I’d better get back across the Bay...”

“Ross, aren’t you... I mean, can’t you...”

She stopped there, coloring; still a lot of that corrupting Middle America in her. She was ready to try anything at all in bed, but to say right out in daylight that she wanted me to ball her again after class — that still sort of blew her mind.

“I can’t, Liz,” I said all aw-shucksy, laughing down inside at how straight she was. “I was his roommate until four months ago, and the police or somebody might want to ask me questions about him.”

I actually thought that they might, and nothing brings out pig paranoia quicker than somebody not available for harassment when they want him. But nobody showed up. I guess they knew that as long as they had Eric they could get whatever they wanted out of him just by shooting electricity into his balls or something, like the French pigs in Algeria. I know how the fascists operate.

Beyond possible questions by the pigs, however, I knew there’d be a strategy session that night in Berkeley. After dark at Zeta Books, on Telegraph south of the campus, is the usual time and place for a meet. Armand Marsh let me in and locked the door behind me; he runs the store for the Student Socialist Alliance as a cover. He’s a long skinny redheaded cat with ascetic features and quick nervous mannerisms, and is cell-leader for our three-man focal.

I saw that Danzer was in the mailing room when I got there, as was Benny. I didn’t like Danzer being there. Sure, he acted as liaison with other Bay Area focals, but he never went out on operations and so he was an outsider. No outsider can be trusted.

“Benny,” said Armand, “how badly is Whitlach really hurt?”

Benny Leland is night administrator for Alta Monte Hospital. With his close-trimmed hair and conservative clothes he looks like the ultimate straight.

“He took a big splinter off the table right through his shoulder. Damned lucky that he had already set it and was on his way out when it blew. Otherwise they’d have just found a few teeth and toes.”

“So he’d be able to move around?”

“Oh, sure. The injury caused severe shock, but he’s out of that now; and the wound itself is not critical.” He paused to look pointedly at me. “What I don’t understand is how the damned thing went off prematurely.”

Meaning I was somehow to blame, since I had supplied Eric with the matériel for the bomb. Armand looked over at me too.

“Ross? What sort of device was it?”

“Standard,” I said. “Two sticks of dynamite liberated from that P.G. and E. site four months ago. An electric blasting cap with a small battery to detonate it. Alarm clock timer. He was going to carry the whole thing in a gift-wrapped shoe box to make it less conspicuous. There are several ways that detonation could—”

“None of that is pertinent now,” interrupted Danzer. His voice was cold and heavy, like his face. He even looked like a younger Raymond Burr. “Our first concern is this: Will the focal be compromised if they break him down and he starts talking?”

“Eric was my best friend before I joined the focal,” I said, “and he was my roommate for four years. But once we had determined it was better to use someone still a student than to set this one ourselves, I observed the standard security procedures in recruiting him. He believes the bombing was totally his own idea.”

“He isn’t even aware of the existence of the focal, let alone who’s in it,” Armand explained. “There’s no way that he could hurt us.”

Danzer’s face was still cold when he looked over at me, but I had realized he always looked cold. “Then it seems that Ross is the one to go in after him.”

“If there’s any need to go at all,” said Benny quickly. I knew what he was thinking. Any operation would entail the hospital, which meant he would be involved. He didn’t like that. “After all, if he can’t hurt us, why not just...” He shrugged.

“Just leave him there? Mmmph.” Danzer publishes a couple of underground radical newspapers even though he’s only twenty-seven, and also uses his presses to run off porn novels for some outfit in L.A. I think he nets some heavy bread. “I believe I can convince you of the desirability of going in after him. If Ross is willing...”

“Absolutely.” I kept the excitement from my voice. Cold. Controlled. That’s the image I like to project. A desperate man, reckless, careless of self. “If anyone else came through that door, Eric would be convinced he was an undercover pig. As soon as he sees me, he’ll know that I’ve come to get him away.”

“Why couldn’t Ross just walk in off the street as a normal visitor?” asked Danzer.

“There’s a twenty-four hour police guard on Whitlach’s door.” Benny was still fighting the idea of a rescue operation. “Only the doctors and one authorized nurse per shift get in.”

“All right. And Ross must not be compromised. If he is, the whole attempt would be negated, worse than useless.” Which at the moment I didn’t understand. “Now let’s get down to it.”

As Danzer talked, I began to comprehend why he had been chosen to coordinate the activities of the focals. His mind was cold and logical and precise, as was his plan. What bothered me was my role in that plan. But I soon saw the error in my objections. I was Eric’s friend, the only one he knew he could trust — and I had brought him into it in the first place. There was danger, of course, but that only made me feel better the more I thought of it. You have to take risks if you are to destroy a corrupt society, because like a snake with a broken back it still has venom on its fangs.

It took three hours to work out the operational scheme.

Alta Monte Hospital is set in the center of a quiet residential area off Ashby Avenue. It used to be easy to approach after dark; just walk to the side entrance across the broad blacktop parking lot. But so many doctors going out to their cars have been mugged by heads looking for narcotics that the lot is patrolled now.

I parked on Benvenue, got the hypo kit and the cherry bombs from the glove box, and slid them into my pocket. The thin strong nylon rope was wound around my waist under my dark blue windbreaker. My breath went up in gray wisps on the chilly wet night air. After I’d locked the car, I held out my hand to look at it by the pale illumination of the nearest street lamp. No tremors. The nerves were cool, man. I was cool.

3:23 a.m. by my watch.

In seven minutes, Benny Leland would unlock the small access door on the kitchen loading dock. He would relock it three minutes later, while going back to the staff coffee room from the men’s lavatory. I had to get inside during those three minutes or not at all.

3:27

I hunkered down in the thick hedge rimming the lot. My palms were getting sweaty. Everything hinged on a nurse who came off work in midshift because her old man worked screwy hours and she had to be home to babysit her kid. If she was late...

The guard’s voice carried clearly on the black misty air. “All finished, Mrs. Adamson?”

“Thank God, Danny. It’s been a rough night. We lost one in post-op that I was sure would make it.”

“Too bad. See you tomorrow, Mrs. Adamson.”

I had a cherry bomb in my rubber-gloved hand now. I couldn’t hear her soft-soled nurse’s shoes on the blacktop, but I could see her long thin shadow come bouncing up the side of her car ten yards away. I came erect, threw, stepped back into shadow.

It was beautiful, man; like a sawed-off shotgun in the silent lot. She gave a wonderful scream, full-throated, and the guard yelled. I could hear his heavy feet thudding to her aid as he ran past my section of hedge.

I was sprinting across the blacktop behind his back on silent garage attendant’s shoes, hunched as low as possible between the parked cars in case anyone had been brought to a window by the commotion. Without checking my pace, I ran down the kitchen delivery ramp to crouch in the deep shadow under the edge of the loading platform.

Nothing. No pursuit. My breath ragged in my chest, more from excitement than my dash. The watch said 3:31. Beautiful.

I threw a leg up, rolled onto my belly on the platform. Across to the access port in the big overhead accordion steel loading door. It opened easily under my careful fingertips. Benny was being cool, too, producing on schedule for a change. I don’t entirely trust Benny.

Hallway deserted, as per the plan. That unmistakable hospital smell. Across the hall, one of those wheeled carts holding empty food trays ready for the morning’s breakfasts. Right where it was supposed to be. I put the two cherry bombs on the front left corner of the second tray down, turned, went nine quick paces to the firedoor.

My shoes made slight scuffing noises on the metal runners. By law, hospital firedoors cannot be locked. I checked my watch: in nineteen seconds, Benny Leland would emerge from the men’s room and, as he walked back to the staff coffee room, would relock the access door and casually hook the cherry bombs from the tray. I then would have three minutes to be in position.

It had been 150 seconds when I pulled the third-floor firedoor a quarter-inch ajar. No need to risk looking out: I could visualize everything from Benny’s briefing earlier.

“Whitlach’s room is the last one on the corridor, right next to the fire stairs,” he’d said. “I arranged that as part of my administrative duties — actually, of course, in case we would want to get to him. The floor desk with the night duty nurse is around an ell and at the far end of the corridor. She’s well out of the way. The policeman will be sitting beside Whitlach’s door on a metal folding chair. He’ll be alone in the hall at that time of night.”

Ten seconds. I held out my hand. No discernible tremor.

Benny Leland, riding alone in the elevator from the basement to the fourth floor administrative offices, would just be stopping here at the third floor. As the doors opened, he would punch four again; as they started to close, he would hurl his two cherry bombs down the main stairwell, and within seconds would be off the elevator and into his office on the floor above. The pig could only think it had been someone on the stairs.

Whoomp! Whump!

Fantastic, man! Muffled, so the duty nurse far down the corridor and around a corner wouldn’t even hear them; but loud enough so the pig, mildly alert for a possible attempt to free Whitlach, would have to check...

I counted ten, pulled open the firedoor, went the six paces to Eric’s now unguarded door. Thirty feet away, the pig’s beefy blue-clad back was just going through the access doors to the elevator shaft and the main stairwell.

A moment of absolute panic when Eric’s door stuck. Then it pulled free and I was inside. Sweat on my hands under the thin rubber gloves. Cool it now, baby.

I could see the pale blur of Eric’s face as he started up from his medicated doze. His little night light cast harsh, antiseptic shadows across his lean face. Narrow stubborn jaw, very bright blue eyes, short nose, wiry, tight-curled brown hair. I felt a tug of compassion: he was very pale and drawn.

But then a broad grin lit up his features. “Ross!” he whispered. “How in the hell—”

“No time, baby.” My own voice was low, too. I already had the syringe out, was stabbing it into the rubber top of the little phial. “The pig will be back from checking out my diversion in just a minute. We have to be ready for him. Can you move?”

“Sure. What do you want me to—”

“Gimme your arm, baby.” I jammed the needle into his flesh, depressed the plunger as I talked. “Pain-killer. In case we bump that shoulder getting you out of here, you won’t feel anything.”

Eric squeezed my arm with his left hand; there were tears in his eyes. How scared that poor cat must have been when he woke up in the hands of the fascist pigs!

“Christ, Ross, I can’t believe...” He shook his head. “Oh, Jesus, right out from under their snouts! You’re beautiful, man!”

I got an arm around his shoulders, as the little clock in my mind ticked off the seconds, weighing, measuring the pig’s native stupidity against his duty at the door. They have that sense of duty, all right, the pigs: but no smarts. We had them by the shorts now.

“Gotta get you to the window, cat,” I breathed. Eric obediently swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

“Why... window...” His head was lolling.

I unzipped my jacket to show him the rope wound around my waist. “I’m lowering you down to the ground. Help will be waiting there.”

I slid up the aluminum sash, let in the night through the screen. Groovy. Like velvet. No noise.

“Perch there, baby,” I whispered. “I want the pig to come in and see you silhouetted, so I can take him from behind, dig?”

He nodded slowly. The injection was starting to take effect. It was my turn to squeeze his arm.

“Hang in there, baby.”

I’d just gotten the night light switched off, had gotten behind the door, when I heard the pig’s belatedly hurrying steps coming up the hall. Too late, you stupid fascist bastard, much too late.

A narrow blade of light stabbed at the room, widened to a rectangle. He didn’t even come in fast, gun in hand, moving down and to the side as he should have. Just trotted in, a fat old porker to the slaughter. I heard his sharp intake of breath as he saw Eric.

“Hey! You! Get away from—”

I was on him from behind. Right arm around the throat, forearm grip, pull back hard while the left pushes on the back of the head...

They go out easily with that grip, any of them. Good for disarming a sentry without using a knife, I had been taught. I hadn’t wasted my Cuban sojourn chopping sugar cane like those student straights on the junkets from Canada. I feel nothing but contempt for those cats: they have not yet realized that destroying the fabric of society is the only thing left for us.

I dragged the unconscious pig quickly out the door, lowered his fat butt into his chair and stretched his legs out convincingly. Steady pulse. He’d come around in a few minutes; meanwhile, it actually would have been possible to just walk Eric down the fire stairs and out of the building.

For a moment I was tempted; but doing it that way wasn’t in the plan. The plan called for the maximum effect possible, and merely walking Eric out would minimize it. Danzer’s plan was everything.

Eric was slumped sideways against the window frame, mumbling sleepily. I pulled him forward, letting his head loll on my shoulder while I unhooked the screen and sent it sailing down into the darkness of the bushes flanking the concrete walk below. I could feel the coils of thin nylon around my waist, strong enough in their synthetic strength to lower him safely to the ground.

Jesus, he was one sweet guy. I paused momentarily to run my hand through his coarse, curly hair. There was sweat on his forehead. Last year he took my French exam for me so I could get my graduate degree. We’d met in old Prof Cecil’s Western Civ course our junior year, and had been roomies until the end of grad school.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I told his semiconscious, sweat-dampened face.

Then I let go and nudged, so his limp form flopped backward through the open window and he was gone, gone instantly, just like that. Three stories, head-first, to the concrete sidewalk. He hit with a sound like an egg dropped on the kitchen floor. A bad sound, man. One I won’t soon forget.

The hall was dark and deserted as I stepped over the pig’s outstretched legs. He’d be raising the alarm soon, but nobody except the other pigs would believe him. Not after the autopsy.

The first round of sirens came just after I had stuffed the thin surgical gloves down a sewer and was back in my car, pulling decorously away from the curb. The nylon rope, taken along only to convince Eric that I meant to lower him from the window, had been slashed into useless lengths and deposited in a curb-side trash barrel awaiting early morning collection.

On University Avenue, I turned toward an all-night hamburger joint that had a pay phone in the parking lot. I was, can you believe it, ravenous; but more than that, I was horny. I thought about that for a second, knowing I should feel sort of sick and ashamed at having a sexual reaction to the execution. But instead I felt... transfigured. Eric had been a political prisoner anyway; the pigs would have made sure he wouldn’t have lived to come to trial. By his necessary death, I would be changing the entire history of human existence. Me. Alone.

And there was Liz over in the city, always eager, a receptacle in which I could spend my sexual excitement before she went off to teach. But first, Armand. So he could tell Danzer it was all right to print what we had discussed the night before.

Just thinking of that made me feel elated, because the autopsy would reveal the presence of that massive dose of truth serum I had needled into Eric before his death. And the Establishment news media would do the rest, hinting and probing and suggesting before our underground weeklies even hit the street with our charge against the fascists.

Waiting for Armand to pick up his phone, I composed our headline in my mind:

Oh yes, man. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Watch for it.