The Erection Set

Veda got sick then too. She didn’t heave. The vomit just dribbled out of her mouth. Very slowly her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out, bubbling through her own lunch.

Marvin looked up from the empty glass, for a moment or two his eyes clear. “Cross is going to kill you, Dog. He has to. Everybody knows about you and his wife now.”

I waved a thumb toward the family. “You get paid enough for the job, buddy?”

“My checking account has been fattened considerably by a cash gratuity. If I live, I can live the life of a fat, grubby worm. But independent.”

“You’ll live,” I informed him. “Stay happy.”

“Not knowing I helped kill you.”

My face must have looked pretty weird because he seemed to draw back into his stupor again. “Don’t wipe me off the list until you see me autopsied, my friend.”

I heard Leyland Hunter gathering up the papers and stuffing them into his attache case. He followed me outside and took his coat and hat from the butler in the foyer. Harvey looked at me with the same enigmatic smile and said, “I’ve already called the doctor, sir. I hear they can do wonders with detached extremities if the parts are rejoined in time.”

When we were back in the car we drove two blocks before we stopped. Leyland Hunter decided the time had come for him to get sick too. When he finished, he wiped his mouth and watched me a full minute before he said,

“Where can you go now, Dog?”

That grin came back and I swung the wheel at the next comer. “Why, to see Cross McMillan, of course.”

The little VW pulled out of a driveway a block farther on and stayed behind us another quarter mile before it turned off. It wasn’t a killer’s type of car, but I wondered why one just like it picked me up at the intersection just a short way from the plant. It hung back there, then it was gone again. The afternoon was gray and wet, almost like dusk, but nighttime was still a long way off.

Arnold Bell liked to work at night.

So did I.

XXIV

Five days. In that length of time all the interior and exterior shots of the Barrin complex would be completed and the Fruits of Labor cast and crew could go on to other locations and into their rented studios to wind up the intricate slot structure of the story with closed sets for the nudie scenes and galleries of exuberant spectators for the wide-open stuff. The story was all Barrin-oriented and the local facilities of Linton were enjoying a time of prosperity as if it had never happened before.

Publicity and public relations are terrible professional mind benders, and the smiling faces of the reborn never knew what was happening to them. Barrin Industries were alive again. They thought they knew that. Their talents were needed and they were there. The beehive was open. Suck the flowers, store the honey. The queen was laying her eggs, the drones were in attendance, and they didn’t know the beekeeper was ready with the insecticide.

He didn’t like the taste of the honey.

Someplace the stockholders were home all nestled snug in their beds and the little room was sprinkled with the men carrying the briefcases and folders of efficiency reports. The chair was held by the guy with the scar on his skull who had to kill me and he kept looking down the long table at me with a benign expression I couldn’t quite comprehend, but he had the money to buy the kill if Arnold Bell missed, and even if it never happened, to pay for destruction piece by piece.

The Farnsworth Aviation report was brief. Barrin couldn’t handle its projected output, but certain McMillan plants could.

And the raid was on.

Until the recess when the Farnsworth vice-president asked me over a cup of coffee if I had full title to a certain piece of arid desert land and I told him I did ... acres and acres of it. In fact, quite a few square sections of the damn snake-infested place where the tourists took photographs.

Would I sell?

Conditionally, yes.

Leyland Hunter liked to have had a shit hemorrhage.

The picture of the old man was smiling more broadly now. I was taking the big run prior to leaping the chasm and he was waiting for me to fall in because I didn’t quite get up enough speed. All the dirty slob wanted was for me to hit the side and carom down into total disaster knowing I almost made it. And almost isn’t enough.

Pathos didn’t become the old lawyer. Sympathy wasn’t his bag at all, even when it came to me. He could purse his lips and remember the two broads in bed and even old Dubro, but legal sympathy he couldn’t afford. He shook his head politely, took a bite of his tuna fish salad and said, “It isn’t enough to save Barrin, Dog.”

“What do they need?”

“A miracle,” he suggested.

“Money won’t do it?”

“Didn’t a certain Roland Holland tell you the pros and cons of the great fiscal situation?”

“Somewhat, Mighty Hunter, but I’m no mathematician. Numbers come hard to me.”

“Only your dick comes hard to you.”

“Save the dirty talk for the dolls.”

“Your land sale can keep Barrin alive for a month, and that’s only because the public spotlight is on the scene. The minute it’s off ... good-bye.”

“You sound depressed,” I said.

“Naturally. I lived through an era. No, an epoch. I hate to see it destroyed. You opened the Pandora’s box and let them all take a peek. They went for the bait and now the world collapses around them.” He paused, looked at me intently, then asked, “How much are you worth in cash?”

“A few million left.”

“Forget it, unless you feel like playing Santa Claus in a town of unbelieving kids. In one day they’re all going to know and go home to broken dreams. I told you the worst thing to do was come back.”

“Horseshit.”

“You’ve lost, Dog.” The way he said it was adamant.

This time I had to fake it. “Bullshit.”

“No matter what animal drops it, the stuff is still feces,” he told me. “I’ll never know why you did it.”

“All I wanted was to come home.”

“You see what happened when you did?”

“Shit.”

“What happened to the animals?”

“Look behind you.”

Bennie Sachs hitched his gun belt up, nodded and took a seat beside my lawyer, but he didn’t bother to even look at him. “We traced the car.”

“I could have told you it was mine,” I said

“Plastics.”

“Uh-huh. On the exhaust pipe. Heat sensor.”

“Pretty smart, aren’t you?”

“Right, friend.”

“I had a call from New York.”

“To be expected.”

“I don’t like you, Mr. Kelly.”

“And I didn’t ask for any admiration, either. What’s your problem now?”

“Certain McMillan personnel are in town.”

“Good for them.”