Barney sighed philosophically. “Well, there’s always that one percent that doesn’t laugh at me. You might not believe it, but some dames really dig us ugly guys! Sure! I figure it’s got something to do with the mother instinct. Anyhow, when you work for something, really work, you appreciate it* more. Keeps you right on your toes, too.” He tapped his forehead. “Keeps you using the old bean.”
A few nights later when he was with Clarissa, Greg thought of what the bartender had said. They had dinner, then went to one of the cheap roadhouses Clarissa insisted on frequenting and danced and had a few drinks. A man like Barney could probably solve this, MacNeel thought. Maybe I’m rusty. Maybe I’ve been operating in the same old rut too long.
“My, it must be serious,” Clarissa said with a little laugh.
He realized he had been frowning. “It is serious. I was thinking about us — you and me.”
She nodded and began turning her glass slowly, thoughtfully, on the table. Then she said, “Harry’s talking about moving south, Greg.”
His frown deepened.
“He’s starting to liquidate some of his active interests. He’s planning a sort of semi-retirement now that he’s made it. We’d go to Miami, or maybe the west coast, Sarasota.”
Inside, he began to panic. She was the one he’d waited for. “You — you can’t let him do that, Clarissa. We love each other, doesn’t that mean anything?”
She laughed, without humor. “Well, what can I do? Unless... unless you want me to leave him.”
“I—” Suddenly, he was trapped. “It wouldn’t be fair to you. I haven’t got any dough. You know that.”
“I do know that, my sweet.” She reached out and touched his hand. “Maybe we’ll think of something. Right now, I think I’d like to dance.”
There were others, he told himself at that point. But where was there one potentially worth four or five million? Clarissa would marry him, if he asked her to, of that he was certain. She’d walk out on Harry Melton and his millions and take pot luck with him. He could visualize it, a cold water flat someplace with a view of the air shaft, and after a few years a bunch of kids screaming around the place, while the great Greg MacNeel grew fat drinking beer while he watched ball games on television. It made his blood run cold.
As usual, the next afternoon he went into Barney’s place. Barney could always buck him up with a little enlightening conversation and a fine dry martini or two.
Barney prepared the drink then leaned on the bar with a newspaper before him. There was only one other customer at the bar. “Whatdya think of that creep down in Florida?”
“Who’s that, Barney?”
“I been keeping up with it in the papers. It sort of goes back in a way to what we was talking about the other day. Now, if it had been me, I’d have done it all different. And I’d have had a mighty good chance of getting away with it. Like it stands, the guy’ll get the chair.”
MacNeel turned the paper on the bar. There was a picture of a sulky young man and a police officer.
“Maybe you ain’t been watching it,” Barney said.
MacNeel shook his head.
“Well, this kid wanted to marry this rich guy’s daughter out there in Chicago, but the old man spotted him for a kind of fortune hunter, which he was, and the old man told the girl if she saw this guy any more he’d cut her off without a dime. So, this kid goes and knocks the old man off, figuring the girl’ll get the loot and the two of ’em can go and live happily ever after.”
“And?” MacNeel said.
“Ahhh, this kid pulls this off about as smooth as a idiot chimpanzee. All he’ll get is some free voltage from the state.”
“And you would have done it some other way?”
“Right! And you know why? Because nothing ever came easy to me!” He touched his forehead. “Always had to work for every thing. The kid went off half-cocked. I’d of been all cocked or not at all!”
“Yeah?”
“Wait around, that’s what he shoulda done. Make it look like he gave up and moved off. Meanwhile, case the old man, maybe find out if he goes somewhere regular, like on a business trip. He could follow him somewhere, maybe, disguise himself, knock off the old man so’s it looks like a robbery, you know, and after things cool off, he slips the girl a wedding ring and...” Barney shrugged, “Simple.”
It had been in his mind, just under the surface. MacNeel knew that. The idea that Harry Melton had to go was basic to the whole thing. But it had been so appalling that up until now he had kept it buried. The electric chair had an awful finality about it.
Still, there was a lot in MacNeel’s favor. The affair with Clarissa had certainly been kept under wraps; she had insisted on that.
The afternoon business began to build up and Greg had another martini and watched Barney move around expertly behind the bar. A great deal of untapped wisdom lies inside the skulls of bartenders, he thought. From the mouths of babes — and bartenders...
He had to think a great deal about this. Here was something he had never even considered before. Killing a man. You don’t explain your way out of that if you’re caught. But why would he get caught? People get away with murder all the time.
He remembered suddenly something that Clarissa had said, “Maybe we’ll think of something.” Had she been getting at this? Maybe she had been hinting at it, not wanting to say it in so many words, but trying to put it across to him nevertheless. It stood to reason that if a woman started talking to a man about killing her husband, and this same man was in line as her next husband, mightn’t he be a little nervous when she brought him his morning coffee, or met him in the afternoon with a martini? So she’d leave it up to him. Maybe hint at it, but that was all.
The next time MacNeel met Clarissa she said, “Harry’s coming back from Los Angeles tomorrow; then he’s going on to Atlanta for the rest of the week. He’s definitely going through with what he was talking about, Greg. He’s selling off some of his interests now. He wants to move to Florida as soon as possible.”
“How soon? A month? Six months?”
“Maybe even less than a month. He’s leased a place in Miami Beach and he says he can operate out of there until things are settled the way he wants them.”
MacNeel picked up his drink, looked at it. “But he’s going to Atlanta first, is that it?”
“I confirmed his plane and hotel reservations myself. He’ll be at the Imperial Plaza, and he’s leaving on the six-fifteen Eastern flight, straight through on Friday.”
There it was again. It could have been a perfectly innocent remark. Still, why would she give him the name of the hotel and the exact time of the flight, unless she was inviting him to do something about the dilemma in which they found themselves?
He picked up the menu and studied it intently. “The lobster should be good. And perhaps a bottle of Liebfraumilch?” He let his tongue touch his Ups. “Six fifteen? Delta?”
“Six-fifteen. Friday. Eastern Air Line. And the lobster and wine sound delicious.” Clarissa looked up and smiled and laid the menu aside.
MacNeel recognized Harry Melton immediately, from the pictures of him that he had seen in the newspapers from time to time. He was a big, bluff man who, strangely, did not look quite as old as MacNeel had imagined he would.
MacNeel, who had booked passage on the same flight under the name of Clarence Smith, sat four seats behind Melton on the big Super Constellation. Disembarking in Atlanta, MacNeel took a cab into the city and checked into a small, second-rate hotel close by the Imperial Plaza. He was very nervous when he took the revolver from the suitcase and put it under his belt. This was the dangerous part, this was the part he had to handle with the utmost of care.