The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales

Trade Secret

I was sitting in one of the canvas chairs on the back deck, adjusting the drag on my Daiwa fishing reel, when I heard the car grinding uphill through the woods. My cabin is on a backcountry lake, pretty far off the beaten track, and the gate across the private road has a No Trespassing sign. The only visitors I get are occasional tradespeople from the little town a dozen miles away, by invitation only, and I wasn’t expecting anybody today.

I got up, slow — now that the cool early fall weather had set in, my arthritis was acting up — and shuffled inside for my 30.06. Then I went out front to find out who it was. The car that rolled out of the pines was a shiny new silver Lincoln I’d never seen before. Illinois plates — that told me something right there. The driver was a man and he was alone; the angle of the sun let me see that much. But I didn’t get a good look at his face until the Lincoln swung to a stop alongside my Jeep and he opened the door.

Surprise. Easy Ed Malachi.

He hadn’t changed much. A little less of the dyed black hair, a few extra wrinkles in his jowly face and another ten pounds or so bulging his waistline. Dressed same as in the old days, like an Armani ad in a magazine — silk shirt, Bronzini tie, a suit that must’ve set him back at least three grand. But the outfit was all wrong for a trip into this wilderness country. That told me something, too.

Malachi was smiling when he got out, one of those ear to ear smiles of his that had always made me think of a shark. I leaned the rifle against the wall next to the stacked firewood, moved over to meet him when he came up onto the porch.

“Hey, Griff,” he said, and grabbed my hand and pumped it a couple of times. Sunlight glinted off his gold baguette diamond ring, the platinum Philippe Patek watch on his left wrist. “Hope you don’t mind me just showing up like this, but you’re a hard man to get hold of. Long time, huh? Must be, what, six years?”

“More like seven and a half.”

“Some place you got here. Middle of nowhere, not easy to find.”

“That’s the way I like it.”

“Sure, you always were your own man. But I never figured you’d turn into a hermit.”

“People change.”

“Sure they do. Sure. You’re looking good, though, fit as ever. Retirement agrees with you.”

“You didn’t come all the way up here to make small talk,” I said. “What do you want, Ed?”

“How about a drink for starters? I been on the road five hours, I can use one. You still drinking Irish?”

“Now and then.”

“Spare a double shot for an old friend?”

We’d never been friends, but there was no point in making an issue of it. I led him inside, poured his drink and a dollop for myself while he looked around at the knotty pine walls, the furniture and bookcases I’d built myself, the big native stone fireplace. “Some place,” he said again.

“Suits me.”

“You get cell phone reception up here?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. I couldn’t find a number. But I see you got a landline.”

“Unlisted and blocked. I don’t use it much.”

“What about TV reception? Pretty bad?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a television. Or want one.”

“Yeah? So what do you do nights, winters?”

“Read, mostly. Work puzzles, listen to CB radio. Fall asleep in front of the fire.”

“The quiet life.” Malachi’s expression said what he meant was boring life. He couldn’t imagine himself living the way I did, without luxuries and all the glitz he was used to. “What about women?”

“What about them?”

“You always had one around in the old days.”

“That was the old days. Now I like living alone.”

“But you don’t always sleep alone, right? I mean, you’re not even seventy yet.”

“One more year.”

“Hell, sixty-nine’s not old. I’m sixty-five and I still get my share.” His laugh sounded forced. “Good old Viagra.”

“Let’s take our drinks out on the deck,” I said.

We went out there. Malachi carried his glass over to the railing, stood looking down at the short wooden dock with my skiff tied up at the end, then out over the mile and a half of glass-smooth lake, the pine woods that hemmed it on three sides, the forested mountains in the near distance.

“Some view,” he said. “Anybody else live on this lake?”

“No. Nearest neighbors are six miles from here and they’re only around in the summer.”

“You do a lot of fishing?”

“Fair amount. Mostly catch and release.”

“No fun in that. What about deer? Catch and release them too?”

“I don’t hunt as much as I used to.”

“How come? Still got your eye, right?”

“My eye’s fine. Arthritis is the problem.”

“But you can still shoot? Your hand’s still steady?”

“Steady enough. Why don’t you get to the point, Ed, save us both some time?”

He took a swallow of his Irish, coughed, drank again. He was still smiling, but it looked as forced now as his laugh had been. “I got a problem,” he said. “A big problem.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. And you wouldn’t’ve come alone.”

“I don’t know who to trust anymore, that’s the thing. I’m not even sure of my bodyguards, for Christ’s sake. Things’ve gotten dicey in the business, Griff. Real dicey.”

“Is that right?”

“Might as well tell you straight out. Me and Frank Carbone, we’re on the outs. Big time.”

“What happened?”

“Power struggle,” Malachi said, “and it’s none of my doing. Frank’s gotten greedy in his old age, wants to expand operations, wants full control.”

“Why come to me about it?”

“Why do you think? Do I have to spell it out?”

“Contract offer? After all these years?”

“Sure, a contract. Best one you ever had.”

“I’m an old man. Why not bring in some young shooter from out of town? Detroit, Miami, L.A.”

“I got to have somebody I know, somebody I can trust. I could always trust you, Griff. You never took sides, never rocked the boat. Just took the contracts we gave you and carried them out.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said. “I’ve been out of the business almost eight years.”

“Not such a long time. I’m betting you’re as good as you ever were. The best. Not one screw-up, not one miss. And you always had an angle nobody else thought of. Like the time the cops stashed that fink Jimmy Conlin in the safe house with half a dozen guards, and still you found a way to make the hit. How’d you manage it, anyway? I always wondered.”

“Trade secret,” I said.

Another forced laugh. He gulped the rest of his drink before he said, “Fifty K was the most you ever got in the old days, right? For Jimmy Conlin? I’ll pay you seventy-five to hit Frank Carbone.”

“I’m not interested.”

“What? Why the hell not? Seventy-five’s a lot of money.”

“Sure it is. But I don’t need it.”

“Everybody needs money. Sooner or later.”

Well, he was right about that. I was down to only a few thousand stashed in the strongbox under the bedroom floor, and the cabin could use a new roof, a new hot water heater. I could use a bigger skiff, too, with a more reliable outboard. But money and the things it could buy weren’t important to me anymore. I could make do with what I had, make it last as many years as I had left.

“No sale, Ed.”

“Come on, don’t play hard to get. Seventy-five’s all I can afford. Think what that much green’ll buy you. Round the world cruise. Trips to Europe, South America, anywhere you want to go.”

“There’s no place I want to go,” I said. “Everything I want is right here. I haven’t been away from this wilderness in five years, not even for one day, and I don’t intend to leave again for any reason or any amount of money. I’m staying put for the rest of my life.”

“Bullshit, Griff. Can’t you see how desperate I am?”

“I see it, but the answer is still no.”

Malachi’s fat face was a splotchy red now — anger, fear, the whiskey. “Goddamn you, I done plenty for you in the old days. Plenty. You owe me.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t owe you or anybody else. I paid all my debts before I retired.”

“You better take this contract,” he said. He pointed an index finger at me, cocked his thumb over it. “You hear me? You know what’s good for you, you take it and you do it right and fast.”

“You threatening me, Ed? I don’t like to be threatened.”

“I don’t care what you like. You got to do this for me, you got to hit Frank, that’s all there is to it. If you don’t and I have to take a chance on somebody else—”

“Then that somebody hits me too. That what you’re saying?”

“Don’t make me do this the hard way, that’s what I’m saying. I like you, Griff, I always have, you know that. But you got to take this contract.”

I gave him a long look. His words had been hard, but his eyes were pleading and he was sweating into the collar of his expensive silk shirt. I said, “I guess I don’t have much choice.”

“Neither of us has. So you’ll take it?”

“Yeah. I’ll take it.”

“Good! Good man! I knew you’d come around.” Malachi’s big smile was back, crooked with relief. He used a monogrammed handkerchief to wipe off his sweat, then clapped me on the arm. “How about we have another drink,” he said, “seal the bargain?”

I said that was fine with me and went inside to refill our glasses. Before I took them out to the deck, I made a quick detour into the bedroom.

“What’s that you got there?” Malachi asked when I handed him his drink. He was looking at the wicker creel I’d slung over my shoulder.

“Creel. I’m going fishing after you leave. Let’s take our drinks down to the dock.”

“The dock? What for?”

“Nice by the water this time of day, good place to talk. There’re a few things I’ll need to know about Frank and his habits. Besides, there’s something I want to show off, something I pulled out of the lake.”

“Sure, okay, what the hell.”

We went down the back steps, across to the dock, out along it to where the skiff was tied at the end.

Malachi said, “So what’s this thing you want to show me?”

“Down there, in the skiff.”

When he turned and bent to look, I took the silenced.38 out of the creel and shot him twice point blank. He fell over into the skiff’s stern, just as I’d intended him to. Neat and clean like in the old days.

I climbed down and made sure he was dead. Then I stripped off his diamond ring and the Philippe Patek watch, put them in my pocket, and covered him up with the tarp. Later I’d run the body out to the middle of the lake and weight it and drop it overboard. I’d have to get rid of the Lincoln, too, but in rugged mountain country like this it wouldn’t be too much of a chore, even for an old guy like me.

Back in the cabin, I put in a long distance call that got picked up right away. “I changed my mind,” I said. “I’ll take you up on that contract offer after all. But it’ll cost you seventy-five.”

“For you I don’t argue,” Frank Carbone said. “Seventy-five it is. But how come you changed your mind? You told me before you’re never leaving that retirement place of yours.”

I didn’t have to, now. Didn’t have to worry about having enough money to last me the rest of my life, either. But all I said was, “Send somebody up with the cash in a couple of days. I’ll have proof the job’s done in exchange.”

“A couple of days? How you going to do it that quick?”

“That’s my business.”

“Sure, sure. Same old Griff. Trade secret, huh?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Trade secret.”