button and stood back in the car as the woman selected her own floor. Then she moved to one side as Willy joined them. It was a second or two before he thought to press a button himself, which more or less confirmed Dave's suspicion that the big guy had been waiting to follow Dave up to his room. But the question of motive still eluded him. Not a cop, that much was certain. A cop would have pinched him in the lobby. And for what? Suspicion Grand Theft Auto? As the doors slid shut, Dave turned toward Willy Barizon and held out his left wrist to display the watch he had bought in the Bal Harbor Mall that same
afternoon.
'You see this watch, man?'
'What?'
'Not what. Watch. This watch is a Breitling Chronometer. Best watch in the world.'
Baby Doll was pretending that he didn't exist.
'Forget Rolex. I mean, that's just for the movies. And National Geographic. This. This is a goddamn quality timepiece. Cost me $5,000.'
'So fuckin' what?' snarled Willy.
'Wait, I haven't finished. You wanna see my wallet?' Dave took out his wallet and flipped it open. 'See that? Coach leather. Isn't that beautiful? And there's $1,000 in cash too.'
'You're nuts.'
The elevator chimed as it reached Baby Doll's floor.
'Really,' she said, stepping smartly out on her high heels. 'Some people just don't know how to handle it, do they?'
'You're so right, lady,' agreed Willy.
Dave returned the wallet to the coat pocket of his linen suit and took out his new fountain pen as the doors closed again.
'Then there's this fountain pen.'
'Fuck you pal, and fuck your fountain pen,' said Willy, and instinctively patted one of the two pieces he was carrying under his waistband.
Dave's prison-sharp eyes took in the tell-tale bulge at a glance. 'I'm telling you all this for a reason,' he explained coolly. 'I'm telling you this so you'll know how high I rate your fucking chances of robbing me.'
'You've got the wrong guy, Delano. Who said anything about robbing your dipshit ass?'
Dave took a step back in the car. The tongue almost fell out of the guy's mouth when he talked. Dave had felt the spittle on his face like early rain. His eyes lingered on the tongue, momentarily fascinated by its grotesque aspect. At best it looked like the record label for the Rolling Stones that Andy Warhol had designed. Sticky Fingers. He still had the album in his record collection. If his sister hadn't sold it. At worst the tongue looked like some kind of hideous pink jellyfish that lived inside a ring of yellow coral. The elevator chimed again as it reached Willy's chosen floor, only he paid it no attention.
The guy had used his name. He was carrying a piece and he had followed him into the elevator. What else did Dave need to know? He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen.
'Are you finished giving me a guided tour of your personals?'
'There's one more thing,' insisted Dave. 'There's this pen. This pen is a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck. It's called Mont Blanc because the fourteen-carat nib tells you the height of Mont Blanc, should you want to know. That's the highest mountain in France. Go ahead and take a look.' Dave held the pen up for Willy's inspection. 'Four thousand eight hundred and ten meters high. Go ahead and look because I'm gonna give you this pen as a gift.'
Willy looked.
Dave hardly hesitated, stabbing the big man in the white of his eye with the mitre-shaped point of the Cohiba-sized pen, simultaneously spattering Willy's face, neck and shirt collar with a galaxy of ink-spots.
Willy howled with pain, pressing both hands to his injured eye, leaving Dave free to hit him hard with a punch to each kidney as if was working the heavy bag in the prison gym. He finished a trio of blows with a low arcing hook to Willy's balls that had his whole shoulder behind it and felt as cruel as if he'd tugged pieces of Willy's flesh from his body with red-hot pincers. The elevator doors opened with a gasp of air that echoed the sound from Willy's misshapen mouth. Crouched down on his haunches, one hand on his balls, the other on his eye, Willy looked more dwarfish now and easily manageable. Dave could see that there was no need to hit him again. But he had questions that needed to be answered. And placing the all-leather sole of a smart new loafer in the small of Willy's back, Dave launched him into the hallway. Willy belly-flopped onto the thick-pile carpet, hit his head against a fire extinguisher attached to the wall, and then passed out.
Dave collected his pen off the floor of the elevator and stepped quickly out of the car before the doors closed. A glance both ways. No one about. He took hold of Willy's legs and dragged him down the hallway and into his suite.
Safely through the door, Dave frisked Willy carefully, relieving him of a Ruger Security-Six, worn on a belt inside his pants, that he figured was mostly for show; and, underneath a belly band, a smaller, quieter-looking .22 automatic that was probably what usually got the job done. Dave unloaded the big revolver and kept the .22 handy for when the guy came round. The name on the driver's license he found in the sweat-dampened wallet was Willy Barizon. Dave had never heard of him. There was a Mastercard, eighty dollars, a ticket from the Sheraton's valet- parking service, a slip for a dog at Hollywood, and a hooker's business card with a 305 area number: 'Foxy Blonde. Young voluptuous beauty. I visit you.' On the back was written a name. 'Tia.' Dave flicked the card into the trash.
'I don't think you'll be visiting Willy for a while,' he said, recalling the ferocity of his blow to the big man's balls. Dave ducked into the bathroom and returned with the cords from the two bathrobes with which he bound Willy's hands behind his back and then his ankles. He fixed himself a drink and gathered some matchbooks from his bar area as Willy groaned his way back to consciousness. Dave squatted down on the backs of Willy's thighs, facing his feet, and began to remove the big guy's shoes and socks. He glanced over his shoulder and said:
'How are you doin' there, Moose? Ready to have a little Socratic dialogue yet? That means I say one thing, you say another, and I get to reach a conclusion.' Dave flung away Willy's socks with distaste and sipped some of his drink. 'Ever hear of Socrates, Moose? He was a Greek philosopher, who was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. This was before television of course. Kids today, they've got cable, so they're probably already corrupted, right? This Socrates was obliged to take hemlock. That's a kind of poison. Related to the parsley family of plants, as a matter of small interest, so be careful how you garnish. Anyhow, when I read about this, in a book by Plato, I got to wondering just how the fuck do you go about obliging someone to take poison of his own volition. I mean it's not like they strapped him down on a gurney for a lethal injection like they do in the can. No, he just sat around with a few of his good friends and drank it himself. No shit. And I asked myself, why?'
'Fugg you,' groaned Willy.
'Well now, it turns out that those ancient Greeks -- nasty bastards -- gave you an alternative to letting you poison your own self. You know what that was? A guy would come along and torture you to death. How he did it was like this. He'd tie you down and give you some kind of drug to help your ass relax. Amyl nitrate, or its ancient equivalent most probably. Same as those S&M gays do. Those guys do all kinds of shit to each other that I can't figure. When the executioner figured you were ready, he would stick his whole fucking arm up your ass, Robert Mapplethorpe style, and just keep on going until he got a hold of your heart. When he did -- and this was the most exquisite part of the torture -- he would slowly crush your heart in his hand, like it was a fucking sponge or something. Can you imagine that? Talk about pains in your chest. Jesus. The real experts could make it last a while, like experienced lovers. And that -- that was the alternative to poison, I kid you not. A fatal fist-fuck. No wonder old Socrates elected to off himself, right?'
'Gee-zuzz greist...'
'Precisely. Another writer -- you're gonna hear me refer to a lot of literary figures, you spend any time with me, Moose. The last five years, I've done nothing but read. And work out. But that part you already know, I guess. Sorry I had to hit you so hard. But you're a big guy, Moose. Anyway, this other writer, name of Samuel Johnson, said that the prospect of being hanged helps concentrate a man's mind wonderfully. And my guess is that so does torture.'
'Vugg ovv... my eye... zayin' nuthin'... azzhole...'
Dave drew Willy's feet toward him.
'Moose, Moose, you wanna do something about these feet of yours. Worst case of athlete's foot I ever saw.
