One thousand dollars a word.
The phrase popped into his mind, stunning in its simplicity, and before he was aware of it his fingers had typed the words on the page before him. He sat and looked at it, then worked the carriage return lever and typed the phrase again.
One thousand dollars a word.
He studied what he had typed, his mind racing on ahead, playing with ideas, shaking itself loose from its usual stereotyped thought patterns. Well, why not? Why shouldn’t he earn a thousand dollars a word? Why not branch out into a new field?
Why not?
He took the sheet from the typewriter, crumpled it into a ball, pegged it in the general direction of the wastebasket. He rolled a new sheet in its place and sat looking at its blankness, waiting, thinking. Finally, word by halting word, he began to type.
Trevathan rarely rewrote his short stories. At a nickel a word he could not afford to. Furthermore, he had acquired a facility over the years which enabled him to turn out acceptable copy in first draft. Now, however, he was trying something altogether new and different, and so he felt the need to take his time getting it precisely right. Time and again he yanked false starts from the typewriter, crumpled them, hurled them at the wastebasket.
Until finally he had something he liked.
He read it through for the fourth or fifth time, then took it from the typewriter and read it again. It did the job, he decided. It was concise and clear and very much to the point.
He reached for the phone. When he’d gotten through to Jukes he said, “Warren? I’ve decided to take your advice.”
“Wrote another story for us? Glad to hear it.”
“No,” he said, “another piece of advice you gave me. I’m branching out in a new direction.”
“Well, I think that’s terrific,” Jukes said. “I really mean it. Getting to work on something big? A novel?”
“No, a short piece.”
“But in a more remunerative area?”
“Definitely. I’m expecting to net a thousand dollars a word for what I’m doing this afternoon.”
“A thousand—” Warren Jukes let out a laugh, making a sound similar to the yelp of a startled terrier. “Well, I don’t know what you’re up to, Jim, but let me wish you the best of luck with it. I’ll tell you one thing. I’m damned glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
Trevathan looked again at what he’d written. “I’ve got a gun. Please fill this paper sack with thirty thousand dollars in used tens and twenties and fifties or I’ll be forced to blow your stupid head off.”
“Oh, I’ve still got my sense of humor,” he said. “Know what I’m going to do, Warren? I’m going to laugh all the way to the bank.”
Passport in Order
Marcia stood up, yawned, and crushed out a cigarette in the round glass ashtray. “It’s late,” she said. “I should be getting home. How I hate to leave you!”
“You said it was his poker night.”
“It is, but he might call me. Sometimes, too, he loses a lot of money in a hurry and comes home early, and in a foul mood, naturally.” She sighed, turned to look at him. “I wish it didn’t have to be secretive like this — hotel rooms, motels.”
“It can’t stay this way much longer.”
“Why not?”
Bruce Farr ran a hand through his wavy hair, groped for a cigarette, and lit it. “Inventory is scheduled in a month,” he said. “It won’t be ten minutes before they discover I’m into them up to the eyes. They’re a big firm, but a quarter of a million dollars worth of jewelry can’t be eased out of the vaults without someone noticing it sooner or later.”
“Did you take that much?”
He grinned. “That much,” he said, “a little at a time. I picked pieces no one would ever look for, but the inventory will show them gone. I made out beautifully on the sale, honey; peddled some of the goods outright and borrowed on the rest. Got a little better than a hundred thousand dollars, safely stowed away.”
“All that money,” she said. She pursed her lips as if to whistle. “A hundred thousand—”
“Plus change.” His smile spread and she thought how pleased he was with himself. Then he became serious. “Close to half the retail value. It went pretty well, Marcia, but we can’t sit on it. We have to get out, out of the country.”
“I know, but I’m afraid,” Marcia said.
“They won’t get us. Once we’re out of the country, we don’t have a thing to worry about. There are countries where you can buy yourself citizenship for a few thousand U.S. dollars, and beat extradition forever. They can’t get us.”
She was silent for a moment. When he took her hand and asked her what was wrong, she turned away, then met his eyes. “I’m not that worried about the police. If you say we can get away with it, well, I believe you.”
“Then what’s scaring you?”
“It’s Ray,” she said, and dropped her eyes. “Ray, my sweet loving husband. He’ll find us, darling. I know he will. He’ll find us, and he won’t care whether we’re citizens of Patagonia or Cambodia or wherever we go. He won’t try to extradite us. He’ll—” her voice broke, “he’ll kill us,” she finished.
“How can he find us? And what makes you think—”
She was shaking her head. “You don’t know him.”
“I don’t particularly want to. Honey—”
“You don’t know him,” she repeated. “I do. I wish I didn’t, I wish I’d never met him. I’m one of his possessions, I belong to him, and he wouldn’t let me get away from him, not in a million years. He knows all kinds of people, terrible people. Criminals, gangsters.” She gnawed her lip. “Why do you think I never left him? Why do you think I stay with him? Because I know what would happen if I didn’t. He’d find me, one way or another, and he’d kill me, and—”
She broke. His arms went around her and held her, comforted her.
“I’m not giving you up,” he said, “and he won’t kill us. He won’t kill either of us.”
“You don’t know him.” Panic rose in her voice. “He’s vicious, ruthless. He—”
“Suppose we kill him first, Marcia?”
He had to go over it with her a long time before she would even listen to him. They had to leave the country anyway. Neither of them was ready to spend a lifetime, or part of it, in jail. Once they were out they could stay out. So why not burn an extra bridge on the way? If Ray was really a threat to them, why not put him all the way out of the picture?
“Besides,” he told her, “I’d like to see him dead. I really would. For months now you’ve been mine, yet you always have to go home to him.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” she said.
“You wouldn’t have to do a thing, baby. I’d take care of everything.”
She nodded, got to her feet. “I never thought of — murder,” she said. “Is this how murders happen? When ordinary people get caught up over their heads? Is that how it starts?”
“We’re not ordinary people, Marcia. We’re special. And we’re not in over our heads. It’ll work.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “I’ll — I’ll think about it.”
Marcia called Bruce two days later. She said, “Do you remember what we were talking about? We don’t have a month anymore.”