The Erection Set

“They’re guards in his other plant. They seem to have a project in mind.”

“Why haven’t they hit me then? I haven’t been hiding.”

“That’s what I can’t figure out. Yet. But I will.”

“Very nice, Officer. Just remember that you’re here to protect your constituency.”

“Go piss up a stick, Mr. Kelly.”

I said, “I tried that once, but it all ran down on my hand.”

When he left, Leyland said, “I didn’t get that.”

“I didn’t either,” I said. “Let’s go back to the meeting. The raid ought to be about over.”

The legal language sounded like a papal encyclical and it all boiled down to one thing. Cross McMillan owned Barrin Industries and Cross McMillan was committed to destroying Barrin Industries and there was no possible hope of keeping Barrin or Linton alive. The current contracts would be honored, but executed in other factories, leaving Barrin a shell without even a hermit crab to take occupancy.

Inside the building the machines were humming and the operators were smiling, but the crunch was on the way and the lunch buckets and thermos bottles would be just another nostalgic memory of days that almost were. How many times could a guy say “shit!” ... so that it was an expletive like saying something when you bashed your finger with a hammer?

Screw the money. They all had their social security, their guaranteed pension, and if the government kept up its comlib policies, they could get even more, except these weren’t the ones to ask for it.

All they had was a hope and I smashed it.

There sure would be a lot of people at my funeral.

Everyone would be laughing.

I lit a cigarette and lounged back against the wall until he came out and when I saw him I said, “Hello, Cross. I hear you want to kill me.”

He stopped, told the two with him to go on and pulled a cigar from his pocket, accepting my light. When he blew the smoke away he said, “Your semantics is lousy, Dog. I merely said I was going to have you killed.”

“No guts, Cross?”

“Plenty, nithead, but why should I pay the big bill when I could have it done for me.”

“Your tense stinks, if you want to play semantics. The shooters should be here now. Have trouble recruiting them?”

Cross smiled and I felt myself stiffen up. If they have to smile, I don’t want any friendly overtones in the way a mouth twists because it means your back isn’t clear like you thought it was and you made the biggest mistake of all. I had my hand on the .45 without taking it out of my jacket and nothing happened except McMillan smiled again and gave me a small pathetic look. “Come on outside,” he said.

I let him get way ahead of me, and when the entrance was clear I followed him out and stood there in the big doorways of Barrin Industries with the man who had just destroyed it, looking out at all the smiling faces who thought the world had come home to roost and they had the lunch pails to collect the eggs in and I knew what I felt like ... the stuff you put five pounds of in a two pound bag.

“I called them off,” Cross said.

Hell, I didn’t even pay any attention to him. I heard words and not intent. I took a drag on my butt, flipped it out into the rain and looked right past him when I asked, “Who?”

“The ones that were going to kill you.”

“Balls.”

“Got a cigarette?”

I shook one out of my pack, lit it for him and stepped back. His cigar was still smoldering on the step.

“They could have done it, you know,” he stated.

“Maybe.”

“I could pay for a lot of them.”

“They’d get tired after a while. Expecially after I knocked off their gold mine.”

“Not quite, Dog.”

“Then let them go.” I blew a stream of smoke in his face and he didn’t even blink.

“I like to return favors, my canine compatriot.”

“Talk sense.”

“You get your life ... because you gave me a wife.”

“Buddy, you ain’t no Ogden Nash. Stop rhyming.”

He smiled again. His teeth showed too and his head flushed a little so I saw the scar across the bald spot where I had creamed him with the brick. But that was years ago and all I was interested in was the smile. “You’ll live, Dog. But that’s all. Absolutely all. You gave me back something I wanted all my fucking life ... a wife I loved who could love me sexually. You knew she was frigid, didn’t you?”

I couldn’t figure where the hell he was driving in this weather. “I thought everybody knew it,” I said. All I wanted was to put a permanent crease in his head and he didn’t know how close he was coming to getting one.

“So they did,” Cross smiled. He took another puff on the cigarette and reached in his pocket. He took out a fat manilla envelope folded carelessly in four sections and handed it to me. “Sheila loves me, Dog. I finally got really laid for the first time. Laid. Hell, that’s not even the term. I got everything out of her I ever wanted and it took you to shake her out of whatever the hell was wrong with her.” He sucked on the cigarette again and let it fall at his feet. “Care to tell me what it was?”

“No.”

I wished all the guys standing out there in the rain would get the hell home.

“How many times did she go down on you, Dog?”

“Not too many.”

Make your play, stupid. I haven’t got time for games. It’s getting dark.

“Fuck her a lot?”

“Enough to round out the evening.”

“Was she good?”

“I had better. She was extremely prolific. Quite a comer.”

Cross nodded.

He was very close to being shot and he still stood there watching the day grow darker and I couldn’t see anybody around who could put me down. I was buried in the deep shadows with one hand on an army-style .45 with a round in the chamber, the hammer cocked and a clip in the handle. Two more full clips were in my pocket and it was going to be a ball when it started. Only nothing wanted to start.

“Sheila finally loved me, you prick. You gave her to me. She always loved me, now she loves me all the way.” The rain suddenly came down in a slashing stream, driving into our faces and neither one of us could care less. “Funny,” he continued, ”having you do it. The doctors couldn’t. The headshrinks couldn’t. Nobody could. Then you came along and sexed the hell out of my wife and you did it. You gave me the thing I was never able to buy.”

I just looked at him.

“Pretty silly, isn’t it, but you damn well knew what you were doing, you bastard.”

“Don’t die for wrong words, Cross.”

“Shut up, you silly bastard. I’m not afraid of you. Open that fucking envelope.”

I unfolded the manila packet and thumbed the top back.

“You own all of Barrin, my dick-happy neighbor. My fucking almost-shareholder. I give you a worthless pile of brick, a damn pack of old men trying to extrude aluminum, a house full of horse’s ass relatives, some contracts already assigned to my other companies, a dead city ... and your life.”

I threw my cigarette away and put the folder in my pocket. “Maybe I will bust your balls, friend.”

“Don’t try.” Cross said. “You’re in the shadows, but there are two of mine out there waiting too. They’ll kill you before or after. Your choice.”

Hell, I wasn’t even worried about them. I let my hand fall away from my jacket. It was starting to get dark.

Cross McMillan stepped back into the light and looked at the big old-fashioned clock in the tower above him,