Anatomy of a Killer (6 page)

She took the cup and Jordan held the small piece of doughnut he had left. He bit into it, moved the piece back and forth over his teeth, felt the dryness of it and how it lay in his mouth like something which did not belong there. It stayed dry. He would never be able to swallow it. He put his hand up, slowly like everything else, and let the piece drop out of his mouth and into his palm. He put the doughnut into his pocket and left his hand there, too. The doughnut was still dry like a stone but the inside of his hand was wet, and his face.

“It’s awful hot here,” said the girl and put the fresh coffee down in front of him.

Jordan’s shoulder and arm hurt and he would soon have to take his hand out of the pocket.

“Here,” she said. “Here’s a napkin.”

“What?”

“Here’s a napkin. Wipe your face.”

She put it next to his cup and left. Jordan felt upset with gratefulness for the napkin she had offered, and for leaving him. He got weak, which relaxed him.

Then he took a deep breath. It was not good and deep but better than before, sitting with his hand in his pocket. It was much better now and in a moment I’ll look at the man in the next seat and then leave.

The man next to him lit a cigarette and sighed the smoke out of his lungs. When he had chewed up the hamburger he had sighed the same way, to show how good it was. Jordan leaned away a little and looked.

This was Kemp. Same man as in the photo. Jordan looked at him as if he were a photo. The hair was coarse and tight-curled, one wire hair over the next wire hair. The temples were gray and white, but nothing distinguished. Creases ran out from Kemp’s eyes, as if he were squinting into the sun, or were laughing. Jordan did not look at anything else. Kemp was too close.

“Does Paul want anything?” asked the girl.

Kemp turned on his stool and his face swung past Jordan. “Anything for you?” said Kemp.

There was a man in the booth behind and he answered, “No. I’m fine.”

Somebody went by and out the door, and Jordan used that to turn and let his eyes go past the man in the booth.

The one in the booth looked at Jordan as if he had been looking at him all the time. Jordan swiveled back and stared into his coffee.

That was Kemp’s man. Jordan knew this without any thought, wasted no questions on it. And that blank look had been intentional. He looks that way to cover, or because he is waiting to be provoked….

“You aren’t sick, are you?” said the girl. “The way your face is wet.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not sick.”

“Maybe it’s the coffee. You been drinking a lot of coffee today?”

“Yes. A lot,” said Jordan.

“Listen,” said Kemp. He leaned closer so that his elbow touched Jordan. “There’s no hangover that’s been took care of with coffee yet,” and he looked into Jordan’s face and smiled.

“I just drank too much coffee,” said Jordan. He put his hand into his pocket to pay.

“Or you might have something coming on,” said Kemp. “All those things feel the same, when they first come on.”

“Nothing,” said Jordan. “I’m all right.”

“But like that doughnut,” Kemp kept at it. “Something does ail you, I figured. You spat it out, didn’t you?”

When I kill him, thought Jordan, I’ll kill him for this.

Just the drunk was left now, and Kemp with his man in the booth.

“You been driving all day?” asked Kemp.

“Yes.”

“I thought so. I thought you looked like it. Salesman?”

“Yes. Traveling salesman.”

“What you selling?”

“I have various lines,” said Jordan.

“Like what?”

“Buttons.”

The drunk down the counter laughed. “I couldn’t help hearing that,” he said. “Did I hear buttons?”

“Yeah, he said buttons,” said Kemp across Jordan’s face. “You got something against buttons?”

The drunk just laughed.

“You know something?” Kemp said to Jordan. “If there’s anything I can’t abide it’s a bastard like that laughing like that.”

“Now you hush up,” said the girl to the drunk.

“I don’t care what a man’s doing,” said Kemp, “long as he does his job right and is good at it. That’s how I feel.”

The drunk laughed again.

“Listen,” said Kemp close to Jordan’s face. “Go over there and clip him one.”

“No,” said Jordan. “I don’t care if he laughs.”

“Go ahead. If there’s anything I can’t abide….”

“No,” said Jordan. “Besides, he’s drunk.”

“Maybe that’s why you should hit him now. While he’s drunk.”

Paul said this from the booth, where Jordan could not see him. But he’s looking straight at my neck, thought Jordan. He’s sitting very still, waiting, the punk talking, waiting for a fight that won’t cost him any effort.

“Harry’s leaving right now,” said the girl. She walked over to the drunk and said, “He’s leaving right now. You hear me, Harry?”

“Well, mam, I was done anyhow, Betty, but if the button gentleman over there….”

“Please, Harry. I don’t want trouble. Why does there always have to be trouble—”

The drunk got up and gave Betty’s arm a pat. He laughed again when he walked past Jordan and then he went out the door. Nobody said anything after that and Jordan got up and put a bill on the counter. He could hear the sound the bill made when the girl picked it up and behind him was a sound from the booth, Paul scratching. Kemp sighed and watched Jordan stand at the counter.

“Good rest tonight,” he said, “and you’ll be all right.” If he doesn’t stop talking to me, thought Jordan, if he doesn’t—

“You got a place yet?”

“No.”

“Listen. Don’t go to the hotel. That hotel….”

“There’s two,” said Paul.

“Don’t go to any of them.”

The girl said thank you when Jordan gave her a tip.

“You want a nice room?” said Kemp. “How long you going to be here?”

“Couple of days,” said Jordan. He thought about it and said, “Week, at the most.”

“I tell you about a nice room,” said Kemp. “Now this here, this is Third.”

“Yes.”

“Next block that way is Fourth. You go to Fourth and the up-and-down sort of catticorner from where I live—I live right there, see the building?”

“Yes,” said Jordan. “Right there.”

“Well, catticorner from there on the Fourth block is this up-and-down with a sign says Rooms. You go there and ask for Mrs. Holzer and tell her I sent you. My name’s Kemp.”

“Kemp,” said Jordan. “Yes.”

Kemp held out his hand and Jordan had to take it. He had to shake the hand and then had to give a name. He said his name was Smith. He wanted to give a better name than Smith but shaking the other man’s hand was making him stiff and dull.

“You go tell her I sent you, Smith,” and then Kemp and his man got up and walked out of the diner.

When the diner was empty Jordan stood there and wished nothing had happened and he could start now. The girl was at the sink and her back was turned; she wore a white dress but with skin tone showing through where it lay close on her skin. Jordan watched the stretch folds move in the cloth and then he turned away. Jinx job, he thought. I met him and nothing gained.

When Jordan opened the door, the girl looked up and said good night. Face empty, he thought. Doesn’t want anything.

7

There was always a half-hour slump that time of night when she would sit down for a moment and do nothing. If I smoked, she thought, I would now smoke a cigarette. She drank a glass of water and listened to the neon sign hiss in the window. The red, which was a beer-bottle shape, flickered. Then she finished her water, cleared the counter, washed the dishes. Next she swept the alley between booth row and stools which was always the time when Mr. Wexler came in.

He came in without saying hello because he was the owner. He looked wrinkled under the light of the ceiling and all his joints looked like big knots of bone. This showed on his hands, wrists, down the bumpy bend of his back.

The first thing he did was to walk by the girl too close. The side of his hip, like a shovel, pressed along her buttocks. He always did this and she said nothing. He went around to the back of the counter and drew black coffee for himself. He sat down and watched the girl sweep.

“You got crap on your uniform.”

She looked down at herself and there was a coffee stain near her belly. She nodded and swept again.

“I want this place clean. That includes you.”

“Yes, Mister Wexler.”

He watched her belly and sucked coffee over his gums. “You working here, girl, I don’t want those Rabbit Town habits to show.”

Wexler was born in Penderburg and so was the girl. An outsider would say the girl was born in Penderburg, but Wexler, and more like him, said she was from Rabbit Town—where the families had nine children, where the chickens lived under the porch, where the coal truck never went in the wintertime because the shale hill ran down to the backyards. In Rabbit Town they used pickings from among the shale.

I hope he burns his gums, she thought. He knows I don’t live there any more.

“You call the man about the neon sign?”

“Yes. He wasn’t in, Mister Wexler.”

“He wasn’t in.” Wexler held his cup as if he were drinking, and watched. He could see her back and wished she would turn around. “I thought you know him personal,” he said.

There was nothing for her to answer. He thinks Rabbit Town when he looks at me and that means one thing to him. He tries it out every night.

“You see him around, don’t you? Next time, tell him about the sign.” Wexler slurped. “Or ain’t there absolutely no time at all for talk?”

“I don’t want you to talk like that, Mister Wexler, please,” she said.

Wexler laughed. She had turned around now and he just sat for a while.

“How’s your sister?”

She wanted to say, which one, stalling him, but that had never worked before and only helped him along.

“The one in Pittsburgh,” he said. “She still doing all right?”

“Yes. I guess so.”

“I mean she’s getting on, I mean older than you. That’s a point in her business, no?”

She hit the broom on the edge of a booth and on the next sweep caught it again. She felt awkward; she felt she could do nothing, and she felt in her throat that she wanted to cry. He was old and filthy and worse than any of the other things he always talked about.

“You didn’t clean the grill,” said Wexler. “When you’re done sweeping, do the grill before rushing out of here.”

She worked the sweepings into the dustpan, and after she had gotten rid of that came around to the back of the counter to clean the grill.

“Where you going to rush to when you rush out of here, Betty?”

“I’m going home to sleep,” she said. “I’m tired.” She worked the pumice stone back and forth on the grill and the scrape covered just some of Wexler’s laugh. His laugh and the scrape went into each other as if they were the same thing.

She heard him cough and get up. Every night.

“You got to turn the gas off when you pumice the grill,” he said.

Other times it was: You’re leaning into the gas cocks and pushing them open, or, You’re leaning into them and pushing them shut. Every night.

Then he came over where she worked on the grill and put his hand on the gas cocks and left it there. He left it there, waiting for her to get close to his hand.

“I’m going to get a bigger fan put into that flue here,” he said. He stood and looked up into the hood over the grill and let his hand wait. The girl saw little sweat dots on Wexler’s scalp.

“That’s enough with the stone,” he said. “You can wipe it now.”

When she reached for the rag she felt his hand, the bones in it, on her thigh.

“Mister Wexler, please—”

“What please, what?”

That was his mouth talking and his face looking smily but the hand was something else, was a secret between him and her, and she should respect the rule of that game.

She moved back with his hand staying on, clamping a little.

“This don’t get you pregnant,” he said.

Then he always let go at that point and laughed a chicken sound.

She moved back to finish the grill and kept her head down and away so she could not see him. That, she thought, is a horrible thing to say to me. A horrible thing, period. And I’m not going to listen to that much longer. I won’t have to listen to that once I leave and it won’t be much longer.

The thought was nothing angry, nothing with threat tone in it, because she thought this often and it was really a plan. It was where this side of the horizon and the mythology on the other side ran into each other. She would leave Penderburg sometime, which would leave Wexler and so forth behind. This made sense and absorbed her.

There was more, of course, but vaguely. To get married. To stop working in a while and then just husband and home. But this part was certain and ordained and did not need hoping.

“When you open up tomorrow,” said Wexler, leaving, “call the dairy and cancel the sherbet order. Nobody around here eats sherbet.”

She said, yes, Mister Wexler, and went to the closet where the bucket was, and the brooms and her dress. She squeezed in there to take off her uniform. And when I leave I can say I wasn’t just a waitress but had other responsibilities. Orders, and so on. So that part doesn’t worry me, but I first got to leave.

She changed and looked forward to the walk home. Slow, because tired, slow, to make a nice walk. Outside, the night hung warm. She liked that.

When he walked away from the diner he thought the air might change and feel lighter the farther he went. He walked fast, walked by his car at the curb, towards the square with the closed stores. Nothing changed. It’s like glue sticking to me. Jinx job. I’ll start over. Tomorrow…. But the thought of waiting that long gave him no comfort and there had to be something he could do so it would not be as if he were delaying the job. I’ll walk back and look at the building. Then I check the mailbox position in the hall or maybe the number on the box in the hall and what have I done today then—I’ve found out where Kemp lives in that building. And nothing else happened today. Let’s say that.

But if I had walked out with them when they left the diner, walked across with them and up to Kemp’s room…. He dropped that thought with a great deal of satisfaction, reminding himself he had not been carrying a gun. He didn’t work that way. He only carried a gun by plan, not by habit.

Jordan walked back, away from the square. It got darker down the street and he noticed there were no longer the leaf sounds overhead. Unimportant. Where does Kemp sleep? He looked at the building on the other side of the street and the same, and as bad, as sitting with him again, and what was he like? Nice. Tepid word which left out a great deal, but Kemp, sitting and talking, you might say was nice. Not if he knew who I was. Or worse yet: not if I were working for him, did this work for him, not then either. Would he say, go to that rooming house and mention my name to Mrs. Holzer?

Jordan looked at the building on the other side of the street and imagined nothing. Building with Kemp inside, Kemp-target.

“I think he’ll be in bed by now,” he heard.

Jordan held very still, waiting for more. Or, if I moved now, it would be so wild I could tell nothing ahead of time about what might come next….

When he did not turn, the girl Betty stepped around so that she could see him better. “I mean Mister Kemp,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “I guess so.”

The girl did not know what to say next. He talked so little. Or when he talked, he said nothing to invite a reply.

“I just meant,” she said, “you were standing here, I saw you standing here, looking, and I thought you were looking for him because of that room. I thought maybe you had forgotten where Mrs. Holzer lives.”

She made it very easy for him. I don’t have to open my mouth and she helps, he thought.

“You want me to show you?” she asked.

“That’s all right,” he said. “No. I’ll wait till tomorrow.”

“Oh. You were just walking.”

“Yes, back and forth.”

“Ah,” she said. “Yes. It’s nice out. Better than daytime even.”

He looked at her and her face struck him the way it had done once before. It holds still, he thought. The way a view out of a window holds still for you. There is a landscape and you look away and when you look back again, it is still there.

“I myself like it very much,” she said. “Walking. This time of year.”

The most harmless thing he did that day, he started to walk, knowing she would walk along. They went down the street.

“I just want to tell you,” she said. “I think you were very nice before.”

“What?”

“When you didn’t take it up with that drunk, that Harry I’m talking about. I noticed that.”

“Oh,” he said. “What else was there to do.”

“No, you were nice about it, not making trouble. I noticed that and I think you were very decent.”

He did not react to this but instead thought quickly of a very good reason for this walk with the girl. Ask about Kemp and his habits. End of the jinx day, starting over like this. She’s easy and I feel no effort. She is effortless like a view from a window. And I’m Smith, which leaves no problem between us.

Jordan felt invisible, a very fine, powerful feeling, invisible except to the girl next to him, and there was no harm in that.

“Your name’s Betty?”

“Yes. Elizabeth. But that’s too long, to write on the pocket.”

“Yes.” He looked at her, at the front where the name had been, and when she noticed it she put her hand up for a moment, feeling self-conscious.

“You got far to go?” he asked her.

“No. Just that way, past the square, maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Of course, I walk slow. I like it, in this kind of weather. You like it?”

“Yes I do.”

They walked past his car but he did not want to say anything about it. He took a cigarette out and put it into his mouth. He said, “You have to walk fifteen minutes?”

“But I don’t mind it. I just mind it when I’m very tired or when the weather is bad and then I just wish I had a car. Why don’t you light that cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke much. Just hold it like this sometimes. You want one?”

“But then, if I had a car, I wouldn’t go home, I mean straight home either, you know? I’d take a drive. I don’t smoke, thank you.”

“I have a car,” said Jordan. “Back there.”

“You do?” and she looked back where he had pointed. Then she said, “Of course you would. You’re a traveling salesman, I forgot.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

“You must be sick of driving.”

He took the cigarette out of his mouth and then put it back in and gave a little bite on the filter. “Would you like a ride, a short ride?”

She nodded and said yes, she’d like that. She didn’t want to go home yet but ride with the window open, and did he have any idea what it’s like working in that diner and none of the windows open ever. They got into the car and she told him which way to drive out of town where the country was the nicest. He knew the way because he had checked it so carefully during the day though he did not remember about the country being so nice.

He leaned across her, pushing at her a little, and rolled the window down for her and then straightened up again. She smiled at him and thought, if I knew him better now I would like to say something to him but I would hate to be wrong, saying something nice, and would not want to hear him answer with something clever. She knew about one kind of clever talk, having heard it often, and what it meant, a time-killer before the hands on her and then sex. As if she were stupid and did not know what came next and needed leading around by the nose first, with the sex work suddenly upon her like an accident or a total surprise. And that was stupid too and added a false haste to everything, something she did not like.

When it seemed Jordan had forgotten about the window already and was driving out of town, she said, “That was very nice of you, thank you, about the window.”

“What?”

“About remembering I like the window open, a ride with the window open,” and felt awkward after saying it.

There was a roadhouse ahead on the highway and Jordan slowed.

“You want to go in there?” she said.

“No. But I thought some beer—I’d bring out some cans and we can have it in the car. Driving.”

“Yes,” she said, “that would be nice.” She thought it was fine of him to remember that she liked to ride but said nothing this time.

He got a six-pack and a key and, when he came back into the car, put all of it in her lap. Then he drove again.

“If it were always like this it would be all right, you know that?” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“Here’s your can. Watch the foam.”

“Thank you.”

“Warm like this, I mean. Like this evening. You know where it’s warm like this all the time?”

“Where?”

“In Florida. My girl friend in Florida she’s been writing me. And she mentions it too. You ever been in Florida?”

“Yes,” he said. “Once.”

“You mean on business?”

“Yes. That.”

“What’s your name?” she said. “I don’t mean Smith, I mean the other one.”

He held the can awkwardly and spilled beer on his pants. “Sam,” he said after a while.

“What a Bible name you have. You know, I can’t picture anyone buying buttons in Palm Beach, can you?”