Good Lord, Deliver Us (17 page)

"OK," she said, falling back on the
mattress, sweeping her legs up and over Z's head, stretching out
behind him. "Come to bed. I won't bother you."

"I'm sorry if I ...." He turned;
touched her shoulder gingerly.

"Forget it." She rolled
over on her side, facing away from him. "And one more thing I can
say, this time from experience." With her back to him, he had to
strain to hear her. "Though you're too old for Susan and
way
too old for me,
Susan's a lucky girl. You're a terrific fuck -- when you can get it
up. Good night."

Suddenly, she turned back. Grinned her
impish grin. "Good night. ....... For now."

* * * * *

It was 10 o'clock in the morning on
Sunday the 26th when Z began the miserable job he'd agreed to do
for Ted. After a sleepless night -- his "talk" with the contract
killer hanging over his head for later that night -- he decided to
spend the afternoon with the "work for food" folks. (Something that
might even be helpful to Addison.)

As Z stood under the overpass, leaden
clouds weighting down a rainy sky, Z counted eight more days until
he could celebrate the Fourth -- assuming he was still
alive.

The sounds of tire-swish on damp
pavement came and went, as did the squeal/slide of cars brought to
heel by traffic lights turned unexpectedly red.

Green, prompted the occasional,
impatient tapping of horns to nudge a granny driver forward, always
too late to keep from sticking the last car in line with another
change of light.

The wet air under the overpass was a
halitosis of exhaust and scorched rubber.

Summer.

In the city.

Earlier that morning, Z had borrowed
an empty medical supply box from his diabetic landlady, using the
box's cardboard to make his hand-lettered "Work For Food" sign. Had
nailed the two-proud-to-beg sign to a piece of lath he found in the
garage.

Parking his car a couple of blocks
down a side street, Z had walked ... here ... where he stood
beneath the I-35 overpass, holding his crude placard.

Z had positioned himself on the east
side of the intersection, near the traffic light that either slowed
or stopped all cars winding down from I-35. As a bonus, he was in
plain sight of everyone driving past on the extension of
Antioch.

Since this was where two Northland
arterials joined to have a coronary, it was no accident that
destitute men had picked this spot to try to get a little help. No
way anyone could miss seeing a pathetically dressed man like Z,
holding up his even more pathetic sign.

Cars and more cars. Some American.
Most Japanese. (If the Nips had today's industrial capacity in the
40s, they'd have won the war).

Z felt ... miserable.

To make matters worse, the climate was
stuck in what TV weathermen said was a "tropical pattern": on
again, off again showers. It seemed to Z -- and not for the first
time -- that the universe was a mournful child, no longer
remembering why it cried but powerless to stop.

In part, Z felt wretched
because he hadn't slept much for
several
nights, activities
associated with the ghost house continuing to drain his
strength.

Mostly, though, Z felt heartsick just
to be where he was; doing what he was doing.

Nor did it help that he
was only
pretending
he'd been reduced to begging for table scraps. (Z's
identification with the homeless was a natural outgrowth of his
work, he supposed, his hand-to-mouth existence never leaving him
more than a couple of hundred dollars short of ... this overpass.
And
that
was
scary
.)

Z had been standing here for an hour,
by this time feeling so weak he doubted he could do the easiest job
a motorist might offer him, even the corrugated cardboard in his
hand getting heavy.

Drifts of mist on his
short, turning grey, hair condensed into drops that bumped down the
grooves a hard life had chiseled in his forehead, his
worst
feeling was that
he had become ... invisible. Cars came down the I-35 ramp to slow
on green -- stop on red. Starting up again, they must turn directly
in front of Z, either to hook back under the overpass to the
shopping center or turn right on Antioch toward the only prominent
places in that part of the Northland: North Kansas City Hospital
and North Kansas City proper. Stop lights also halted cross traffic
going both ways on Antioch.

Though Z was in plain view, drivers
looked everywhere but at him. Looked under him. Over him. Around
him. Through him.

No one --
no
one ...
noticed
him.

Of course they
saw
him, just did their
best to pretend he wasn't there -- Z the ghost of poverty
present.

Only two emotions were possible when
you'd lost everything. Feeling poor, and feeling too proud to admit
to being poor, the latter reaction afflicting Z's Mom. After the
insurance company defaulted on his Father's policy, his Mom had
refused to seek aid of any kind. Not from the government. Not from
the Red Cross. Nor from the Salvation Army. She'd done the most
menial jobs instead, like sewing for people who took advantage of
her helplessness, taking in wash for pennies, doing ironing for
people's peanuts.

That was back in the
supposedly "good old days" when shame was attached to being poor,
even
more
shame
heaped on those
admitting
they were poor. Back in the days when receiving
aid made you "a charity case." Back when, on holidays like
Christmas and Thanksgiving, the church group or the lady's sewing
circle or the wealthy women's sorority practiced periodic charity
by bringing turkeys to the run-down houses of the "less fortunate,"
the festiveness of the food sacks enhanced by packets of dry
beans.

His Mom had a Sister who'd taken
self-righteous help like that.

His Mother never would.

And that was what had killed her. Even
when his Mom was sick, she'd refused to see a "charity doctor";
even at death's door, rejected the hospital's "charity ward." She'd
died too soon because do-gooder benevolence had putrefied "good
will toward men."

Z found he was breathing heavily. Felt
... shaky. ... Weak. If he was catching something, standing out
here wouldn't help, Z's frayed cotton shirt so fog-damp it stuck to
his chest and back. Water was also leaking through a hole in his
shoe and wetting up his sock.

He'd had an early morning call from
Susan, Susan trying to make a time they could be together. And once
more, Z had fended her off with the excuse of working
nights.

Though it might be his
overtired imagination, Z thought he'd detected a note of
desperation in Susan's voice. Or was it what Calder would have
called repressed sexuality? (There was certainly no
repressed
anything
in the excuse
Z
was using to beg off seeing her.) Thinking about how badly
he'd been treating Susan, Z resolved to make time to take her out
to lunch. (If he was still alive after tonight's brush with the
button man.)

The truth was, Z was
increasingly ashamed of himself for continuing to take advantage of
the situation with Jamie; was also unhappy about letting Jamie make
use of
him
.
His
mind
wanted
Susan, he had no doubt of that. It was his
body
that kept voting for the
delightfully naked girl beside him on the turned-out sleeping
bag.

Z was alerted by a car coming down
Antioch from the south! Slowing, the driver leaned across the
passenger's side to give Z the once over.

A woman?

Z bent down to get a better look. ...
Could it be a man -- dressed like a woman? A man with a wig pulled
low over his forehead ...?

Z didn't think so.

The person looked more like the Smith
woman than a maniac with a magnetic skull, the "Smith look" to be
attributed to Z's thinking about tonight's rendezvous with the
woman's hitter husband.

There was a roar!, the car revving up,
taking off, tires squealing, back end fish-tailing, Z too surprised
to notice the car's make and model, to say nothing of the license
number. All Z was left with was the impression that the car was
American. Big, dark and ... disappearing like a dragster down the
track. The only certainty, that the driver had slowed to get a look
at Z.

The verdict?

That Z was too big and ugly to hire
for the lowest of jobs.

Another half-hour of cursing Ted
Newbold had Z deciding to gave up his "career" as poverty-stricken
worker. Permanently!

Sign shoved in a storm sewer, slogging
back to his car, Z could now concentrate on tonight's job, Z near
the neighborhood where the Smith woman's husband was alleged to be
holed up. Time for a little recon before going home.

Cranking up his little car, cleaning
the windshield as best he could -- wipers outside, palm of his hand
inside -- veering left at Antioch and Vivion, he was hot on the
trail of the address Mrs. Smith had given him.

No risk-taking. No derring-do. All he
wanted was to glide past the target house, mostly to make sure he'd
be able to find a quiet parking spot tonight, the building coming
up fast, the structure turning out to be an elderly, three-story
apartment. Dark red brick. Substantial.

Good -- was Z's first
thought. Good, because they built thick walls between apartments in
those days, solid walls helping to damp down any noise Z's
interrogation techniques might drag from the bopper. Z even thought
he may have checked out an apartment in that building, a
considerable while ago. If it
was
the same building, the place had a central
stairwell with a short hall at the back of every landing --
apartment doors at either end of each hall, apartments too
expensive for Z, but affordable for people with a steady income.
(Could a professional killer's pay be described as
steady
?)

A single drive-by and Z
was headed home, confident that the
location
of Smith's "safe house"
would be the
least
of this evening's worries.

* * * * *

Home at last from his debilitating
hours under the overpass, shucking off his soggy clothes, taking a
hot bath, sneezing once or twice, Z felt more ... human.

As alert as he was going to get, Z
spent the next hour preparing, packing and repacking his satchel
until he was sure he had what he needed, particularly his
pyrotechnics.

Not the blowtorch.

No need for that -- yet.

Z had told the Smith woman he'd have a
talk with her husband: technically, the truth. It was just that Z's
"talks" were compelling; nothing as persuasive as fire, for Z's
money.

Z thought again about having told
Jamie Stewart he might not be at the "ghost house" tonight, Jamie
clearly unhappy not to find her own priorities on Z's
list.

Reviewing the conduct of
young Jamie, while he couldn't keep his mind (body?) off her, the
girl's kind of sex was too complicated for a man of Z's generation.
She liked ... everything ... except the old standby, the
"missionary position" -- Z's favorite. Then too, something else was
wrong with the girl's approach. After the first few love/death
struggles, (more than a few to be honest,) Z began to feel less ...
loved ... than like a piece of ... meat, recalling a punch line
from a joke that had a Swedish girl saying: "Ya, but ve put
more
meat
into
it!")

Considering Jamie-sex, Z
thought that if a goat could address her unusual needs, a goat
would do. When she made love, it was not so much to
Z
as to his body parts
(part). And that wasn't all that ... satisfying.

Z might be ugly. And too
old for her. But he was ... a person;
more
than the sum of all his ...
part.

Susan understood that. Loved him for
himself as well as for his body, Z just having to hope his girl
would never discover the ins-and-outs of this ghost house
business!

Z looked at his watch. Six o'clock.
Time to eat a peanut butter sandwich. More importantly, build a
fire in his fireplace to "settle" his mind before arriving at Mr.
Smith's apartment by 9:00. (An honest, early Sunday evening knock
would cause less suspicion than an unexpected noise at
midnight.)

The trick was to get up the stairs
unnoticed. Or, if he did run into someone, appear to be a recent
tenant.

The target was on
the
top
floor,
apartment 302, the upper floor a benefit, the only "extra" people
on third, those occupying that floor's other apartment.