Resume Speed and Other Stories

Whatever It Takes

“Testify against Ben Billig,” the fat man said. “You gotta be kidding, asking me to do that.”

“Your testimony could put him away,” Dattner said.

“Ha,” the fat man said. “Put me away is more like it. Why don’t you make it easy on me? Why don’t you say, ‘Cooperman, we got a favor we want you to do for us, would you please go and drink a can of Drano.’ Then I can just drink it an’ roll around on the floor an’ die, save us all a lot of aggravation.”

“We can relocate you, Mel.”

“Billing can relocate me,” Cooperman said. “Look at all the guys he relocated over the years. This one under the Jersey Turnpike, this one under the Garden State. Planted a couple in the Meadowlands, every time Lawrence Taylor sacks the quarterback he’s running over a couple of unmarked graves. I don’t want nobody to relocate me, thanks just the same. I like my present location just fine.”

“We can give you a new name and a new face, Mel,” Keith Harling said. “You know how the program works.”

“ ’Deed I do. You give me a new face and Ben Billig sends somebody to rip it off. What I’ll do, I’ll keep the one I got. It’s not pretty but I’m used to it, you know what I mean?”

“If we could get him to testify,” Harling said, “we could put Ben Billig away for some three or four consecutive life sentences. But he won’t do it.”

“He’s got to,” Dattner said. “What does he want? There’s got to be something he wants. Whatever it is, let’s give it to him. I’ll do whatever it takes to nail Billig.”

“What do I want?” Cooperman thought about it. “I want lots of things. I want to be able to eat whatever I want, never gain an ounce. You figure you can help me with that one?”

“What else do you want?”

“Oh, the usual. World peace, cure for cancer. You know what else’d be nice? A special mute button on the remote control for the TV, you use it for Monday Night Football, it shuts up the announcers but you still hear the crowd noise. You got your lab guys working on something like that?”

“Seriously, Mel.”

“Seriously, quit wasting everybody’s time. You can’t give me nothing’s gonna make up for what Billig’d give me. You give me a Rolls-Royce, how’s I gonna drive it with my throat cut? If I talk I’m dead.”

“If you don’t talk you’re going to jail.”

“So? They feed you, they give you a bed to sleep in, even teach you a trade. Beats dying.”

“Here’s the problem,” Harling said. “He’s more afraid of Billig than he is of us. And can you blame him?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Dattner said.

“Very decent of you,” Cooperman said. “If I don’t agree to testify, you’ll put the word on the street, let everybody know I did agree to testify. Say I call your bluff. What good’s it do you? He kills me, how can I testify for you? I think you’re bluffing.”

“Can you afford to call?”

“Gimme a phone.” He lifted the receiver, dialed. “It’s Mel. Can I talk to Ben, please? Ben, it’s Mel. Couple of feds are trying to hammer me, say they’ll put the word out I’m gonna rat you out. Case you hear it, remember I told you in front it was crap.” He hung up, smiled at the two men. “So? You want, put the word out. If you don’t, you’ll be making me look like a liar.”

“We may have made a mistake,” Harling said. “He was real cute on the phone, but Billig might decide not to take any chances. He could take Mel Cooperman out just to play it safe.”

“I don’t care about Cooperman,” Dattner said.

“He’s a human being.”

“He’s pond scum,” Dattner said. “But Billig is liver cancer. He’s the kind of guy who gives criminal psychopaths a bad name. I don’t care if I put Mel Cooperman under the gun. I’d do anything to get Billig.”

“If only there was something to do.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Dattner said.

“I don’t get it,” Cooperman said. “Don’t you guys ever give up? Didn’t I tell you what I told you?”

“What happened to your windows?”

“Over there? The glass was old. I figured let’s do it right, replace it all in one shot.”

“I understand someone drove by and shot up the front of your house.”

“You heard that, huh?”

“Billig just tried to kill you, you damned fool. Why not put him away before he does the job right?”

Cooperman shook his head. “If somebody shot up my living room windows,” he said, “that don’t mean anybody was trying to kill me. That’s what you call a warning. That’s just Ben making sure it don’t slip my mind that I got no cause to testify against him. So I got to replace a little broken glass, putty up a few bullet holes in the far wall. You think that’s so terrible? I don’t think that’s so terrible.”

“You said something the other day about having an idea,” Harling said. “Whatever it is, you’d better not wait too long. The other day some of Billig’s goons shot out Cooperman’s living room windows.”

“I heard about that.”

“And this morning,” Harling said, “Cooperman found a bomb under the hood of his car.”

“Some bomb,” Cooperman said. “A clock and some wires and two sticks of dynamite. What do you need a clock for if you’re wiring the thing to the ignition? And nothing was hooked up right, and there was no cap to set the dynamite off. It was another warning, that’s all.”

“If he trusts you,” Dattner said, “why would he keep warning you? One of these times he’s going to take you out.”

Cooperman shook his head. “He’s got no cause,” he said, “and he knows that. I’m not worried.”

That was the trouble, Dattner thought. The son of a bitch remained unworried. He’d done what he could to scare him, shooting up the front of his house, then attaching the fake bomb beneath the hood of his car. Of course he hadn’t wired the bomb correctly. With his luck Cooperman would have neglected to check under the hood, and the bomb would have wiped out the best hope they had for putting Ben Billig where he unquestionably belonged.

A near miss was no good. A near miss would just be written off as a warning. The only way to scare Cooperman, the only way to make him believe Billig was trying to kill him, was to wing the bastard.

Cooperman was in his backyard now, grilling steaks on a charcoal fire. Dattner, perched on the back porch of a vacant house two hundred yards away, studied the fat man through the scope sight of a Czech-made rifle. One in the arm, he decided, but which arm? Cooperman seemed to be righthanded, he held the barbeque fork in his right hand. No sense incapacitating him any more than necessary, he thought, and he centered the crosshairs on Cooperman’s fleshy upper arm.

Just as his finger settled on the trigger, the man moved. Dattner made a face and took careful aim again. He braced himself against the rifle’s recoil and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet was wide to Cooperman’s right. The report of the rifle reached him and he spun around wildly, trying to determine where the shot had come from. Dattner tried to center the gun’s sights upon the now-moving target. He squeezed off a shot and missed again, and Cooperman dropped to the ground and rolled himself in a ball, artfully presenting no inconsequential portions of his anatomy to Dattner. Through the telescope sight all Dattner could see was the back of Cooperman’s head and the slope of his upper back.

“Oh, hell,” Dattner said. He aimed right into the middle of Cooperman, set himself, and kept squeezing the trigger until the clip was empty.

“He’ll never testify now,” Harling said. “But don’t let it get you. He wasn’t going to anyway. And now Billig has sealed his lips forever.”

“Maybe we can get the shooter,” Dattner suggested, “and link him to Billig.”

“No point even trying.” He laid a hand on Dattner’s shoulder. “I know how much this one meant to you,” he said. “But sometimes there’s nothing you can do. Billig’s the kind of man who never leaves you an opening. As scared as Cooperman was of him, Billig had him taken out anyway. There’s nothing we can do.”

Dattner went home and cleaned his rifle. He remembered how the gun had felt in his hands, how all his anger and all his determination had sent those bullets ripping into Mel Cooperman. But it hadn’t been Cooperman he’d been angry at.

He thought, Nothing we can do? Nothing?

He loaded a fresh clip into the rifle and carried it out to his car.