Until You Are Dead (32 page)

Mrs. Darby smiled toothily. "Is that necessary?"

"It is the way I conduct business," Bennet said with dignity. "Sealed bids make for frayed nerves all the way around, not to mention lower bids. I believe in the end you'll agree that this way is much preferable; everyone knows where they stand."

Crossing spindly legs, Mrs. Darby said, "All right — twenty thousand dollars."

Bennet nodded. "More reasonable, Mrs. Darby, but I must say that few but the semiprofessionals in my business would act for much less."

The very expensive teacup in Mrs. Darby's hand began to chatter against its saucer. "Damn it, it's five thousand more than Dwayne bid! I expect you'll extend to me the same opportunity he'll get to raise the price!"

"Of course. That's my method."

"But this could go on and on! . . ."

"It never does, Mrs. Darby. It works on the bidders until one of them finally says 'enough!' and refuses to bid. Oh, they think they can run, travel, even sometimes evade me by changing their name or their appearance. Nothing has worked for them so far. My work is guaranteed."

"All right, all right! . . ." Mrs. Darby said, setting down her empty teacup.

"I'll see Mr. Darby first thing in the morning," Bennet assured her, rising to leave.

"T
wenty thousand dollars! . . . My God, I didn't think she hated me that much!" Dwayne Darby sat red-faced and shocked in his desk chair and stared at Bennet. "The little -"

"I take it you intend to up the bid," Bennet interrupted.

"You take it damned correct!" Darby said "Make it twenty-two five!"

"Things are beginning to tighten up," Bennet said, admiring the etchings on the wall behind Darby's desk.

Darby gave a short laugh, more like a snort. "Why not? You said we were engaged in competitive bidding. Won't I have a chance to top whatever offer Agnes makes?"

"Indeed you will, Mr. Darby. My bidding is every bit as honest and open as the competitive bidding in which your company engages."

"I'm sure," Darby said, looking suddenly worried.

A
gnes Darby lit a cigarette from the still glowing ember of one smoked halfway down, then extinguished the shorter cigarette brutally in the ashtray beside her. "Who does that idiot think gave him his start?" she asked, as if Bennet could answer. "If he hadn't married into my money he'd be nowhere! He's got the ruthlessness to stay where he's at, but he'd never have gotten there on his own!"

"No point getting into personalities," Bennet said, trying to sooth her.

"No point hell! Personality is the reason one person
wants to kill another! It's what your business is all about!"

Bennet nodded. "You have something there."

"Dwayne hasn't spent a night here in over a week. Probably carrying on with one woman or another in one city or another. If he thinks absence has made my heart grow fonder he's wrong!"

"Of course he is," Bennet agreed. "Absence hasn't made his heart grow fonder."

"Twenty-five thousand!" Mrs. Darby said.

W
hen Bennet walked into Dwayne Darby's office the next day he saw an impressive stack of crisp green bills in the center of the polished desk top.

"There's 27,500 dollars there," Darby said with authority. He seemed to be stuck on the odd numbers. "It's yours to carry out of here if it's the final bid."

"That," Bennet said, seating himself and lacing his fingers over a knee, "would hardly be honest."

"But
murder's
not honest!" Darby said in a suddenly frustrated voice. "This is a lot of money for anyone! How much more do you want!"

"Whatever the traffic will bear. That's the basis of capitalism."

"You talk like some kind of damned politician!" Darby got a bottle of Scotch from a desk drawer, poured himself a drink without offering one to Bennet. "Listen, suppose we make 35,000 the top bid, a secret bid. That's more than either Agnes or I can afford to pay, but I can get it from company funds. There's no sense taking a month to bid up to it. I'm sure it doesn't make any difference to you which of the two of us you . . . remove. Hell, you're a businessman like me . .
 
."

"Apparently not like you," Bennet said with distaste.

"Oh, a killer with integrity!" Darby said, tossing down that portion of his drink he didn't spill.

"Exactly," Bennet said. "Is that your bid? Thirty-five thousand?"

"Hell no!" Darby almost shouted, raising his eyebrows. "Not if it's no deal! I offer 27,500 dollars, and that's my final bid!"

"'Final' is probably the correct choice of words," Bennet said, standing and walking toward the door.

"That's my final bid for today!" Darby managed to say before the door closed.

T
he tiny teacup shattered into an amazing number of fragments as it struck the wall near the French windows. "In a way it's almost an affront to my womanhood!" Agnes Darby said, pacing and tossing the saucer carelessly onto the thick carpet. "Can I be that bad? Is it worth
 
36,000 to have
anybody
killed?"

"You must remember that wasn't your husband's initial bid," Bennet told her reassuringly.

"We
were
happy at one time!"

"All things come to an end. One of you will shortly be convinced of that."

"How could it have come to this? How could he have changed so!"

"Mr. Darby says almost exactly the same thing about you," Bennet lied.

"I bid 36,000!" Mrs. Darby cried. "I'll get it somehow — if I have to steal for it!"

"Now don't consider doing anything rash," Bennet cautioned.

When Bennet arrived at Dwayne Darby's office early the next morning they were both waiting for him. Agnes Darby sat in her husband's large desk chair, appearing very small and frail in contrast, while her husband stood behind her with his hands resting on the chair back.

"We decided to talk to you together," Dwayne Darby said.

Bennet sat opposite him. "Obviously."

Dwayne Darby scowled at him. "We're retracting our bids."

"Retracting? . . ."

"Yes," Agnes Darby chimed in, exchanging glances with her husband, "neither of us bids a dime to have the other removed. We've talked it over."

Bennet looked offended, flicked lint off his trouser leg. "Then things weren't irreconcilable between you."

"You can hire a good marriage counselor 36,000," Dwayne Darby said.

"The blond, one-armed man told me when I hired him years ago that success in anything couldn't always be assured. This has happened before, when the bidding has gotten too high."

"Apparently," Dwayne Darby said in a gloating manner, "it became more than the traffic would bear."

Bennet sighed and stood. "If you change your mind," he said, laying two of his business cards on the desk, "call that number and let whoever answers know you want to see me. Or if you have any friends who aren't getting along with their husband or wife . . . you know, word of mouth advertising . . ."

"I'll repeat a suggestion I made earlier," Dwayne Darby said. "Leave my office."

Mrs. Darby smiled at her husband then looked at Bennet with complete disdain on her boney face.

"I'm sorry you both feel that strongly about me," Bennet said, turning and walking to the door, the picture of humble defeat. They couldn't see the smile on his face.

I
t was Mrs. Darby who phoned first. The women usually did. Less than three days after the confrontation in Dwayne Darby's office, Bennet again sat across from Mrs. Darby in her exquisitely furnished living room.

"Ten thousand," she said, exposing her long, even teeth. "Ten thousand and that's that. There's no reason for you to go away empty-handed."

"Speaking of 'handed', don't you think it's a bit under same to contact me without your husband's knowledge?"

Agnes Darby wrung her skeletal hands, two large diamond rings glittering. "I didn't want to, at first. Then I
began to think. . . what if Dwayne contacts you?
. . .
I'd never know, never have a chance to up his offer." She looked at Bennet, her blue eyes widening. "Well, what if he
did
talk to you before I had the chance? It wouldn't be fair! Not fair at all! Can you blame me for wanting to talk to you first?"

"As a matter of fact, your husband has already talked to me," Bennet said to make her feel better. "His offer was fifteen thousand."

"T
wenty thousand!" Dwayne Darby roared in his office the next morning. "She bid 20,000 for your services after we'd agreed? . . ."

"It was more of an offer than a bid," Bennet told him. "My divulging the information to you puts it into the classification of a bid."

Darby touched his desk lighter to one of his greenish cigars, puffed smoke furiously in his best dragon-like manner. "So we're back on the escalator! Why of all the! . . .
 
Who does she think she
is?
. . ."

"Women are the deadliest of the sexes," Bennet said. "Devious and not to be trusted."

Darby was pacing now, clenching and unclenching his huge hands, threatening to bite his cigar completely in half. "To go sneaking behind my back like that! . . . "

"Doubtless not the first time."

"I ought to kill her!"

"That," Bennet said, "is a matter best left to professionals."

Backed into their previous corner, Dwayne and Agnes Darby had a long discussion that evening. It was the next evening that Dwayne Darby entered the house and, standing imperially just inside the door, smiled at his wife.

Mrs. Darby threw out an angular right hip and advanced bonily on him. Dwayne took her famished form directly into his arms, and for the first time in over a year Mr. Darby kissed Mrs. Darby.

"No need for either of us to worry ever again about Mr. Bennet," Dwayne Darby said, petting his wife reassuringly and marveling at the sharpness of her shoulder blade. "His game is over. He won't be back, ever! . . ."

"You're so supremely clever, darling," Agnes Darby cooed, snuggling against Dwayne and beginning already to forget about Bennet. She believed in what her husband said. Hadn't he clawed his way in five years to the vice presidency of Argoth Industries? A man like that never said anything definite unless he knew he was right.

A
t that same moment Bennet looked up from his newspaper as the door to his apartment opened. The blond, one-armed man who entered smiled and reached inside his coat pocket.

"I've got something for you, Bennet."

"Got something? . . ."

"Sure. Something you should have been expecting." The plain brown envelope hit Bennet squarely in the lap. "I managed to get them up to forty thousand dollars,"
the blond man said. "There's your twenty."

"Forty thousand . . ."

"Darby gave it to me at Tenth and Market today. You must have done some good work on them. He practically begged me to take the job."

"It worked again," Bennet said with his usual wonder, laying the envelope on the table beside his chair.

"Of course it worked," the blond man said, unstrapping his left arm from behind his back and flexing his fingers. "It's worked every year for nineteen years. It will always work."

"Human nature being what it is," Bennet added, somewhat sadly. "I'll have to admit again, you were right."

"I had a hard enough time convincing you of that in the beginning," the blond man said with a chuckle.

"I'll have to admit you were right about something else," Bennet said. "You told me nobody would get hurt, and you were right. In nineteen years, nobody has ever been hurt."

H
arold Lamb stumbled into the bathroom. He twisted the chrome handle to run hot tap water and leaned with both hands on the washbasin, looking at himself in the mirror. There seemed to be more wrinkles beneath his eyes; his straight brown hair seemed to be a bit thinner; he seemed to be fading away, morning by morning, before himself in the mirror.

He pushed the absurd thought from his mind and splashed some now-warm water over his face, running wet fingers through his hair. His throat was dry and he felt slightly nauseous, but he always felt like that in the mornings until his coffee had worked its chemical magic. After drying his face with a coarse towel and arranging his hair with a comb, Lamb returned to the bedroom.