Oh Lord, the briefcase.
Surely it was in the room and he had overlooked it.
He rushed out of the bar, across the street, and into the room. It wasn’t on the chair or the bed; it wasn’t on the floor under the luggage rack; it wasn’t under the bed. He considered the awful possibility that the briefcase was with the automobile-gone-and went back into the bathroom for another bout of expurgation.
Then he saw the note on the bed.
There was no phone in the room, so he had to go to the booth on the street. His hand shook as he dialed the number. He let it ring about twenty times before he concluded that no one was going to answer, then he leaned against the glass, feeling sick for five minutes before he dialed again.
Never send to ask for whom the bell tolls, Withers thought. It tolls for thee.
After thirty-five rings, he decided that this earthly existence was a dark endless cycle of meaningless despair.
In something like eighteen hours, he thought, I have misplaced the subject, a car, $20,000-give or take-and my toothbrush. Whoever said that God takes care of fools and drunks was wrong on both counts.
He checked his wallet and saw that God had taken care of him to the tune of a couple of hundred bucks.
A two-dime stake, Walter thought. There was only one place in the world where he could build that back up. Now if only the Deity will make a bus run from here to Las Vegas.
Overtime had overslept.
The sun was up well before he was and that made him mad at himself. He’d wanted a few more hours of darkness to drive in but had been too exhausted.
Last night was too close, he thought. He’d barely reached the car ahead of the snapping dog and then had switched vehicles again in such a hurry that he hadn’t had time to change clothes until he’d pulled the car off a dirt road east of town.
The car was clean; that was not the problem. The problem was his distinctive wounds. If he was stopped for any reason, the dog bites would clearly mark him as the attempted killer. Attempted murder, Overtime thought. Hardly a charge for a professional. He’d be laughed at.
The thought hurt almost as much as his wounds, and he couldn’t decide which of those hurt most. His back felt as if someone had laced it with a baseball bat. The bitch. The Amazonian bull dyke bitch. As he arched his back to try to stretch the muscles, he regretted not killing her.
He unwrapped the gauze bandage he’d hastily applied last night. The dried blood stuck to the bandage and he could still feel the stinging pain as he’d poured hydrogen peroxide onto the raw flesh and into the puncture wounds. It always surprised him how many professionals didn’t carry a basic first-aid kit as a standard part of their equipment. It was a serious oversight, because once you went to a doctor or an ER you were entered into the information network, and that could be extremely disadvantageous.
He opened his kit and removed a small pair of scissors. It was difficult with his left hand, but he carefully snipped away the shreds of loose flesh and neatened the wounds. Then he daubed them with a cotton swab soaked in peroxide and applied a topical antibacterial ointment. He threaded surgical filament into a needle and slowly stitched the cuts that needed closure. The pain made sweat pop out on his forehead, but he controlled his breathing, relaxed, and concentrated on the task.
Pain is ephemeral, he told himself. Infection can be permanent.
When he was done, he wrapped the wrist in fresh gauze, tore the edge in half with his teeth, and tied it off.
He treated the puncture wounds on his shoulder as best he could, but by using the rearview mirror, he could see that one was especially deep and would need attention soon.
He popped a couple of codeine tablets and pulled out on the road. He didn’t dare take a pass back through town. The risk didn’t justify the gain.
No, he thought, the bird saw the dog, the bird flew, and the dog got me.
Now he would have to contact the client, inform him that the target had escaped before he’d had a good chance to execute, and start again. Bad for the reputation.
A reputation is like glass, he thought. Once it’s chipped, it shatters easily.
If the real story ever gets out, I’m finished. No one paid Overtime’s kind of fee for anything less than success. The legendary Overtime, “Sudden Death” himself, trashed by a dog and a woman.
Problem: damaged reputation reduces marketability.
Analysis: Revenge, although a personal indulgence, will restore said reputation. As will a spectacular two- for-one execution.
Solution: Locate targets and dispatch both. Polly Paget and the woman with the baseball bat.
But now he needed to reorganize. Find a good crooked doctor and a safe place to sleep. He pulled the car onto Highway 376 and headed south for the one place that could provide what he needed: Vegas.
15
Breakfast didn’t taste good to Jack Landis, even though it was the breakfast that Candice would never let him eat. He had taken advantage of her absence to order Pedro to fix him his “Early Retirement Heart Attack Special”- three fried eggs, bacon and sausage, rye toast dripping with real butter, a pot of strong coffee, a cinnamon roll, and a big old cigar.
Pedro balked at first, whining something about “Mrs. Landis wouldn’t want me to,” but Jack reminded him that Mrs. Landis wasn’t there to rescue his wetback ass if Jack started feeling vengeful about the Alamo, so he’d better shut his mouth and fix breakfast or he’d be frying tortillas in Nuevo Laredo by lunchtime.
That seemed to do it. Jack got his artery clogger, but somehow he couldn’t enjoy it. He ate it all right, but it didn’t taste as good as it usually did. Pedro said that maybe he was tense.
Well shit, Jack thought, I don’t know what I have to be tense about. My former girlfriend is accusing me of rape, that prick Hathaway is about to take my network from me, I’m neck-deep into an amusement park more labor-intensive than the Great Wall of China, a lunatic mobster is hitting me up for money, I got about three days of canned shows left before 50 million members of the viewing public start wondering where my loving wife is, and that same lady is about to cut off my balls, stuff them in my mouth, and parade me bare-assed down Broadway as an object lesson to any other husband who might be thinking about unleashing his hound outside the sacred confines of the old home place. Tense? Why, I’m as tranquil as one of them crazy monks when they pour gas all over themselves and strike a match.
Jack lighted the cigar and walked all over the big mansion, puffing as much smoke as he could into every room. He paid particular attention to Candy’s personal bathroom, on the odd chance that if the ice sculpture did come home, it would really piss her off. She’d probably get the house anyway, the cars, half the restaurants, and half of what was left of the TV stations after Hathaway was finished sucking the meat off the bones.
The worst thing, the absolutely worst thing, was that the old ball and chain was gone and yet Jack couldn’t do the one thing he really wanted to do. The breakfast was okay, so were the whiskey and cigars and boxing matches on cable, the ones where two skinny Mexicans you couldn’t tell apart beat the guacamole out of each other. All just fine. But, thanks to the recent publicity, he couldn’t do the one thing he really wanted to do.
Jack Landis couldn’t get laid.
Nope, Jack thought. Here I am with more money than brains, my hound dog straining at the leash, and I absolutely, positively cannot let it hunt.
For the first time in a lifetime spent in the relenting pursuit of the dollar, Jack Landis asked himself what all that money was worth, anyway. He was rich, but he was a lot less free than he was back in the days when he went door-to-door selling vacuum cleaners and giving away hoses.
He had a shitload of money stowed away in the Cayman Islands, anyway…oh, peanuts compared to his aboveboard net worth in the old U.S. of A., but more than enough to live out a long retirement in the Caribbean. He didn’t know if they made chicken-fried steak down there, but given enough long green, they could probably learn. And he could probably learn to like rum, and the women… well, he had heard that the women down there hadn’t even heard of Gloria Germaine Greer Steinem or whatever the hell that uppity broad’s name was.
