He was cowering back, holding a double-barrelled leopard trained on my chest!
TORPEDO FIACCOLA! The sniper Bury had used to try to hit Heller at the Brewster Hotel, the very hood that Heller had sent crashing off the Elevated Highway last fall. Oh, this was good! He'd have a grudge to settle!
"Hello, Torpedo," I said.
His gray face went grayer. "How come you know me? I don't know you."
"I saw you working for Mr. Bury," I said.
"Jesus!" he said. "Don't tell Bury where to find me. He thinks I falsified the evidence and collected the hit money without making that contract! I didn't! The (bleepard) trapped me and must have collected it himself. And believe me, if I knew where to find him, I'd hit him for nothing! The (bleeper) didn't even carry out the threat to waste my mother!"
Better and better. "Put down the gun, Torpedo. Razza sent me here to offer you a job."
"Then it must be a pretty risky hit or Razza wouldn't have thought of me. That (bleepard) wants me killed."
"It's an easy job," I said soothingly. I sat down on a box. Torpedo, gradually reassured, laid the leopard aside and sat on the edge of the dusty, grimy bed. "I'm listening," he said.
"I'll pay the bill collectors and give you another $5,000 when the job is done."
"Another $10,000 plus expenses," he said. "I ain't even got a rifle anymore."
"I pay the bills you owe, $5,000 and expenses, and that's as high as I go, Torpedo."
He shook his head. It was all the money I had– more, actually, if the expenses came to much.
It was an impasse.
"I'd get in trouble with the union if I cut rates on a hit," he said.
"You're getting $4,900 plus $5,000 plus expenses," I said. "Since when did hits go higher than $10,000?"
"There's insurance. A hit man is high-risk insurance. It costs a thousand a day. My God (bleeped) mother wouldn't let me leave this house again unless I was insured. She keeps yelling down the stairs to go out and get a job but I know her. She's treacherous. You'll have to up the ante."
I shook my head. Impasse. We sat there. I don't like uncomfortable silences. I said, "Why don't they like to hire you, Torpedo?"
He shrugged, "Oh, it's nothing really. Silly prejudice. Mr. Bury was the only one who didn't mind. And since he won't employ me anymore, I been out of work. Word gets around, you know."
"About what?" I said.
"Well, they think it's a twist. But it ain't. It's perfectly normal and I been told so on good authority. In fact, it was good authority that started it."
"Started what?"
"Oh, I might as well tell you if you haven't been told already. It's the sex thing."
Oho! Maybe I could use this. "You better level," I said.
"Well, no reason not to. It began about six years ago when I was doing a stretch in the Federal pen. I underwent behavior modification therapy. Great stuff. The
prison psychologist in charge of organizing the gang rapes was a great guy. I was in for consultation with him one day and he said he'd noticed I never joined the rape line in the showers and he was worried about me.
"He said how could he modify behavior to greater criminality if I wouldn't participate in group therapy? He said the prisoners ran the prisons but the psychologists ran the prisoners and if I wouldn't cooperate, he'd have to turn me over to the prisoner committee as un-reformable. He was a nice guy, very understanding, and he said he didn't want to do that. So I cooperated.
"He worked and worked with me-the usual prison psychology treatments: having me (bleep) him and him (bleeping) me in the (bleep). And that's when he discovered what was really wrong with me.
"I had never been able to get an erection and even couldn't with him. He felt sorry for me. He really did. Here he had all these other prison cases to modify and he even took time off from (bleeping) them to talk to me. Real nice guy.
"I confessed to him I'd never been able to do it at all to a girl or a guy or anything. He asked me if I ever wanted to (bleep) my mother and was pretty shocked when I said that, what with her beatings and all, it just had never occurred to me. I had to tell him right out that when you've got somebody beating you and screaming about philandering, it's almost impossible to get your mind onto (bleeping) the person.
"Well, he thought and thought and finally he came up with a solution. Had I ever (bleeped) a dead woman? Well, I flat-out had to confess I'd never done that. So he told me I better get a dead one and make sure she was still warm. He said it was just basic psychology, a perfectly normal thing. And he told me how to do it in
detail. There was a hitch, though. It was a male pen and there were no dead women around. But he stamped my parole card to show my behavior had been modified anyway and he recommended they let me out on the public. So I got out of prison. Really a fine fellow.
"So, anyway, I never thought much about it until six months later. The mob didn't have any hits at the moment and Personnel sent me down to New Mexico as a gunner on a dope run. One night in the desert the truck convoy was hit by hijackers and in the shootout all the rest of the guys run off. A lot of lead had been flying around and I heard this moaning and I crawled over, and (bleeped) if there wasn't a Mexican woman lying there with slugs in her.
"She gave a couple of kicks and died. And suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to test this basic psychology out. So I pulled up the skirts on this stiff and, Jesus Christ, I'll be (bleeped) if I didn't get an erection. So I got it into the corpse and carried on full blast. I (bleeped) like crazy. It was something about her dead eyes staring at me. And she couldn't say a single word about how no good I was, her lips all pulled back like that from the death agony.
"Man, I really poured it in. Six God (bleeped) times! But then she had cooled off and begun to stiffen and it wasn't any good anymore. The corpse has got to be warm yet to really do it right. But while it lasts, you can call them anything you want and they don't say a word. They just lie and let you pour it in. The best part is the dead eyes."
I was totally engrossed. That master psychologist in the prison had created a real, honest-to-Gods necrophile!"Did you ever write the psychologist to tell him of the success?" I said.
"Well, no. You see, there's a part of it I don't understand. When the others come back from wiping out the hijackers, they seen me standing over the dead woman with my (bleep) hanging out and they added up what I'd been doing and the (bleepards) first wanted to shoot me and then not a single one of them would ever talk to me again. Word got around and not even the Faustino mob would hire me. Only Mr. Bury laughed about it and would use me on jobs. But now he's off of me, too."
"Let's talk about this job," I said.
"No more to say. I got to have my bills paid, $10,000 and expenses. I'd be in real trouble if I took less."
I got ready to deliver my shot. "This contract," I said, "is on a woman!"
An electric shock seemed to go through him. He stared at me, jaws going slack.
"A young and beautiful woman," I said.
His breath was suddenly rapid and his mouth began to quiver. Then he said, "And as soon as I kill her I can (bleep) the corpse?"
"Absolutely," I said.
His eyes were blazing with excitement. When he could master his emotion, he said, "Mister, you got a deal. You pay my bills, you pay me $5,000 and expenses and I get to do what I want with the corpse."
"You can (bleep) her to your heart's content," I said.
Oh, but he was eager and excited.
As I left the house, his mother said to me, "Can't you arrange to get that (bleeping) (bleepard) killed on this job?"
"Not on your life," I said. "He's priceless." And I took from her the hospital bills so I could pay them.