I was beginning to get the idea. “—and then the hand-brake on the car froze, the night Troy got drunk!”
“Mavis told us earlier today that the brake didn’t work because Troy ‘forgot’ to have it repaired. It might be interesting to know whether there were other instances of Troy’s ‘absent-mindedness’ before they left New York, or whether his need to be rid of his incubus crystallized only after they came here. But the point is — the third time Troy tried to murder his wife, he was successful.”
“Anne, what was it you moved?”
“Remember, you told them of the superstition about hanging a fishnet in the house?”
“Sure. Mavis ordered Troy to take it down. And he tossed it—” I looked with horror at the steps down which Mavis had tumbled to her death.
“Yes,” Anne said. “I removed the net.”
Before I could say anything Troy stirred, and we heard him groan.
Then the ambulance arrived.
Payment in Full
by Dion Henderson
It is only fair to warn you that Dion Henderson’s “Payment in Full” is an uncommon story indeed, written in an unusual style. But we earnestly suggest that you stick with it, and once the author’s individualistic style gets under your skin, you will feel its great power and impact. This is a tough ’tec about a tough guy, and in the genuinely realistic tradition of tough stories; indeed, it may be one of the toughest ’tecs about a tough character you have ever read — and without the slightest help from the kind of sex, sadism, or sensationalism that so many contemporary hardboiled tales suffer from. This is a story of violence, yes — but not violence for the sake of shock alone; the violence stems from credible circumstances and characters. Murder, you will discover, can be a matter of mathematics.
The author is a mysterious personage. Three times we tried to get in touch with him, and were unable to elicit a single response. We know nothing whatever of the man who calls himself Dion Henderson. Obviously, he prefers to remain in total obscurity, and surely that is his privilege. But after reading “Payment in Full,” we’d bet he has an interesting back: ground or interesting ideas...
While they were waiting for “the man called Numbers” to be brought up from Security, the reporter tried to find out more about him from the warden. It did not work out very well, mostly because of the two police officers from the city who were there with them. The warden was especially formal when police officers were present. His whole career was built on trouble, and since the law was at the bottom of it all he sometimes felt about the law the way a professional soldier feels about war.
Later, when the officers were in the administration office, the reporter tried again to learn something about the man called Numbers. “What do you expect of a man,” he asked the warden, “who has killed a cop and served seven years for it?”
The warden looked wry and said, “That is a pretty good question, but I have a better one: what do you expect of a man who did not kill a cop but has served seven years anyway?”
The reporter suddenly became very tense, but they were in the kitchen of the prison and before he could ask for the answer to such an important question, the chief cook came toward them wiping his hands on his apron. “Have a cup of coffee, Warden?” he asked, and a thick white mug of steaming coffee materialized out of nowhere. Once the chef had been an amateur cook and a professional magician; now his activities were reversed, but he still liked to do tricks for the warden. As a result, the reporter lost his biggest opportunity to find out something important about the man called Numbers, coming just close enough to understand that there was something important. The reporter was so vexed by the cook-magician that he did not realize until much later that the magician part was important too. As it was, a messenger reached them before the warden finished his coffee and they left the kitchen.
On the way down the corridor the warden said, “You mustn’t worry; maybe I don’t know the answer.”
A guard brought the man called Numbers into the visitors’ reception room. The reporter had not seen him for seven years. He did not look tough — at least, not until he looked at the police officers and recognized the one who was a sergeant. His face did not change much, but enough to see that he was tough all right.
The sergeant said, “Hello, cop-killer.”
The warden did not like that, but soon they would be “outside” where he couldn’t do anything about it, so he did not make an issue of it. He said to the man called Numbers, “I can’t help you any more once you’re through the gate.”
“You can’t help me anyway,” Numbers said. “It’s a matter of mathematics.”
The warden started to say something, then hesitated, and in the pause the sergeant said harshly, “All right, let’s go.” Something was pushing the sergeant hard and it showed in his harshness: his partner had been killed in a gunfight — the same gunfight that put the man called Numbers in prison for seven years. No cop would ever forgive Numbers: seven years were not enough to pay for a dead cop. They had only got Numbers for second degree and when he had become eligible for parole the week before, they had promptly filed a burglary detainer on him. Cops could forget the little things — the easy ones like burglary that you can hang on any big loser; but they would never forget the man called Numbers, because there is no degree of being a dead cop.
The warden did not go out with them. He wanted no more of this. A guard on the other side of the inner gate turned a big old-fashioned key, and they went through, stopped, and waited until he had locked the gate again and put the key away; then the guard took another key and opened the outer gate. They did not let you forget it was a prison.
They were now out of the administration building and going down the walk between the lawns that were very beautiful, both as lawns and as fields of fire for the riflemen in the towers on the Wall. At the main gate they waited again while the guard inside opened the first door, closed it, and locked it behind them. After that he opened the last door and the detective who drove for the sergeant went out to get the car. The guard locked the gate behind him.
All this while the reporter was trying to think of an answer to the question about the man called Numbers. A few answers occurred to him and he thought perhaps he was close to something when suddenly the sergeant took the manacles out of his pocket.
“Stick ’em out, cop-killer.”
Numbers said evenly, “You better lock them behind me. There’ll be only two of you with me.”
He said that, and the next instant there was a welt rising on his face from the handcuffs, and rising with the welt was the wild naked look you do not often see unless you watch men wanting to kill other men.
Recollection of his job moved up closer in the reporter’s mind and he said, “Now look, I have to write a story about this trip.”
“You don’t want to do that,” the sergeant said.
“The hell you say.” The reporter did not have to remind the sergeant that cops do not tell reporters what to write about.
“Every week—” and the sergeant’s voice was quite different now, “— every week I stop around and see Joe’s widow and one of the kids got polio and she was crying and what she said to me was ‘Why did Joe ever want to be a cop?’ ” Then after a moment the sergeant said, “She never asked me nothing like that before, not the whole seven years.”