Walter Withers shook his head. He looked so confused that even Sammy had to laugh this time.
“Walter?” Sammy asked. “Walter? Are you still with us?”
Withers looked at him seriously. “The game just isn’t played this way, Sammy. When I lose, I pay. But I didn’t lose.”
“Yeah, you did,” Sammy said. “You lost, Walter.”
Chick stood up and loomed over Withers.
Withers nodded slowly. Then he set the briefcase on the bar, opened it, and walked away.
Sammy and Chick stood up and leaned over the briefcase.
“Holy crow, Walter,” Chick said.
Sammy grabbed the money and started to count it.
Withers turned around, pulled his revolver from his jacket, and shot Chick in the back of the head. Sammy whirled just in time to the see Withers pull the trigger into his face.
Arthur ran in at the sound of the blasts, then stood frozen in the middle of the room. Withers took the bar towel, wiped the blood off the briefcase, carried it to the far end of the bar, and sat down.
“Am I too late for last call, Arthur?” he asked calmly.
“No,” Arthur answered, staring at the bodies slumped over the bar stools. He let himself behind the bar, shook a shot of Jameson’s in a glass, and slid it to Withers.
“The damnedest thing just happened, Arthur,” Walt said.
“What’s that, Walt?”
“Some guy just walked in here and shot Sammy Black and his goon.”
Withers swallowed his whiskey and smiled mildly. Then he put a thousand dollars on the bar and walked out.
Overtime was thinking about the night he died.
It gave him a lot of pleasure. Few other men, and no one he knew, could have jumped off the Newport Bridge into the swirling currents of Narragansett Bay and survived the impact, never mind swim to shore and then walk twenty miles before morning.
To be reborn as “Overtime.” He didn’t even know who had given him the nickname. It had to have been one of his clients, maybe an island dictator who had hired him to eliminate a political rival, or a security chief who needed plausible deniability. Probably it was one of the dons who needed an absolutely guaranteed clean hit.
Overtime prided himself on working clean. Nobody took pride in their work anymore. It was one of the reasons the country was going downhill so fast. People were content to do sloppy work and customers were prepared to accept it.
Overtime was the proud exception. He worked quickly and cleanly: one shot, just in, just out. Professional.
Not for him the showy hit in a restaurant, spraying bullets all over the place and leaving behind pools of blood and posthumous photo opportunities. Not for him the bomb in the car with its innocent bystanders. Overtime killed only what he got paid to kill. If the client wanted innocent bystanders, the client could pay for them. No group rates, no discounts. This philosophy had made him rich-cash in his pocket, and a bank account in Grand Cayman.
What he didn’t have was a woman.
Overtime was lying in his bed in an expensive hotel room in New Orleans and feeling the disquieting stirrings of lust. Not that he was going to indulge in a woman, although one phone call would have sent the cream of a very creamy crop up to his room. Comped, on the house, whatever he wanted-black, white, yellow, all of the above. Anything for Overtime.
But he never indulged in a woman when he was on the job. Women talked. Women could identify you.
Problem: sexual tension.
Analysis: said tension is a distraction.
Solution: auto-gratification.
Overtime pulled the plastic cover off a copy of Top Drawer magazine and flipped through the pages, looking for a sufficiently erotic photograph. Self-sufficiency was one of the foundational tenets of Overtime’s life, something he shared with Ralph Waldo Emerson. It would be nice to get back to the beach and read some Emerson.
Overtime never carried the same author around with him for more than one trip. That would be a pattern, and patterns, like women, could identify you. And he hadn’t jumped off that bridge to be defeated by a paperback book.
He found a picture: a tall, thin brunette with tight features and a cruel, intelligent mouth. He hated the stupid-looking blond cows that overpopulated these magazines. The brunette looked smart. She would do.
It’s silly, he thought as he developed a stimulating mental image, how some men balked at killing women: such a sexist attitude. If women have the right to play, they have the right to lose. The downside potential of liberation. The Equal Last Rites Amendment.
Overtime was an equal-opportunity button man. A Title Nine killer. The first person he had ever killed, and the last person he had ever killed for free, had been a woman. But she had been his wife, and that was personal, so it didn’t count.
And a very unprofessional job it was, he thought with some chagrin. He had slashed her maybe a hundred times, maybe more. Sloppy, emotional. Messed it up so badly that he’d had to drive his car to the bridge, leave the suicide note, and do a perfect forward, twisting one-and-a-half gainer into the bay.
“Med student kills wife and self. Film at eleven.”
The phone rang. He picked it up but said nothing. The voice on the other end sounded nervous.
“Uhhh, we think we got it locked.”
You think?
“Call me when you know,” Overtime said. “Where’s the staging area?”
“Vegas.”
Not good news. Overtime hated Vegas. There was nothing to do but gamble, and Overtime didn’t gamble. Basic mathematics precluded an activity in which the odds were against you.
“Is the dog in yet?” he asked.
“He’s on his way.”
“I want pictures. Current ones, please.”
Overtime hung up and turned his concentration back to the photograph. He needed to achieve release. Sexual tension was a distraction. Not that he had much to do but wait. Let the dog catch up to the bird. The bird worries about the dog, and doesn’t think about the hunter.
Then bang.
One shot, just in, just out. Professional.
Release.
6
I think there are three trees,” Neal said for the fiftieth time that morning.
“Oi tink dere aaw tree trees,” Polly repeated for the fiftieth time.
“Three trees.”
“Tree trees,” Polly said. “The hell we talking about trees, anyway? Nobody’s gonna ask me about one tree, never mind tree trees. They’re going to ask me about doing ih.”
“Doing it,” Neal said. “There’s a t at the end of the word. Pronounce it. I’m begging you.”
“And we never did ih in a tree,” Polly said. “Ih, ih, IH!”
Neal dropped his head down on the kitchen table and moaned softly.
Six days. Count them, Lord, six days. Six days of “I think there are three trees,” and “Park the car and go the party with Barbara,” and “I like my bike.” Five days of trying to get her to respond to a simple question with a simple answer instead of a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy that would have made James Joyce reach for a nice drink of Drano. Israel won an entire war in six days, and I can’t get one woman to pronounce it.
Neal raised his eyes and looked up at her.
Today’s costume consisted of black toreador pants, a black tube top, and enough black jewelry to dress Scarsdale in mourning for a week.
She made a face at him, lifted her bare foot onto the table, and started to paint her toenails.
Neal watched her make careful, precise strokes until he realized he was being mesmerized by her almost Zen-like concentration.
“Say it,” he said.
“Take me to dinnuh,” she answered without taking her eyes off her task.
“I can’t take you to dinner,” he said, stressing the r. “You’d be seen.”
“I want to go out to dinnuh,” she whined. “Anyways, nobody in this dog-shit town is going to recanize me.”