“Ralph, this is my father, Justin.”
I shook old Justin Kilgo’s hand. “My son has told me how well you are fitting in the business,” he said, smiling.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s an easy place to fit in.” I stifled the urge to rub my palm on my trousers. Shaking his hand had been like holding a cold, slick fish.
“In fact,” I said, turning to Sid Kilgo, “I like this town a lot. I like the people. I like the way Sid runs his business, his honest, upstanding attitude.”
Chaplain, I ain’t kidding — I got just the right inflection in my tone. It even made Sid Kilgo redden a little in embarrassment.
I paused, laughed nervously like I was flustered. “I’m no good at making speeches, but I been waiting to meet a guy like Sid Kilgo a long time. I... I knew that first day in the office — well, we know each other a lot better now. I think Sid thought I had ideas that first day.” That nervous laugh again. Both of them joined in.
“But you know me now, Sid,” I said, “and that’s really what I wanted to talk to you about tonight. I want to buy in with you. I want to keep this thing going the way you’ve started.” I fished in my pocket, and hauled out two grand I’d been hoarding for a rainy day.
“I’ve been saving years for this,” I said, “for this very moment. I didn’t know exactly what I was saving the money for. I just knew I wanted to be in business sometime. Now I know which business.”
They looked sharply at each other. Sid handed me a drink and we sat down. The old man coughed rattlingly in the silence.
“Let me get this straight,” Sid said. “You want to buy a share of the company?”
“Right the first time! Look,” I went on quickly, “maybe you’ve never had the idea of having a partner — but a good partner who knows his job as well as I’ve shown you I know mine never hurt any man. And think of this — when liquor becomes plentiful again, the business is going to grow. This two grand will help.
“We’ll put our heads together, knock out ideas. When we can get merchandise again, we’ll make real money. You, Sid, can handle the executive end. I’ll take care of distribution. It’ll be a mighty sweet team, pal.”
His eyes began to get thoughtful, and I knew I had him, I painted a wonderful picture. I really painted it. When I left there that night, Sid Kilgo had my two grand to put in the bank tomorrow and I had his John Hancock on a piece of paper. I was his partner. In the event of his death, I controlled the business. He’d just put his John Hancock on his own death warrant.
After that, Chaplain, I got pretty thick with the guy. I learned what had put all that misery in his face. He’d married a blonde from Chicago. They’d stayed married about two months and she had suddenly run away. He went to Chicago and found her — on a slab at the morgue.
She’d had a boy friend before she’d married Sid. She’d gone back to the boy friend, stayed with him in Chicago a few days, then decided to hightail it back to the husband. They’d had a violent argument, and the boy friend had knocked her off.
It was as simple and sordid as that — a crime of passion, the papers called it. The guy was a fellow named Alonzo Threkkle, and this Alonzo Threkkle got away clean.
But that wasn’t all that was bothering Sid Kilgo. I was at his house the night the doctor told old man Justin Kilgo that he couldn’t last over a couple of months. I watched Sid Kilgo’s face go white as the doctor left his father’s room. And do you know, Chaplain, I began to hate to have to kill Sid. There was the blonde, the crime of passion, Alonzo Threkkle, a father who couldn’t live more than a couple of months.
I lay and tossed all night, thinking of it. But I set my teeth against the pity. Business is business, and I knew I was going to knock him off.
Well, Chaplain, I had my own ideas about knocking a guy off. Nothing elaborate for me. I’d read the case histories of over a hundred murders by that time. I’d seen how guys had built elaborate schemes only to overlook some tiny detail that tossed them in the death cell.
I read how one guy rigged up an alarm clock with a razor blade on the hour hand which would cut a string and ignite a fire with a fancy contraption. He was going to roast his wife, while he had an airtight alibi at the time of the fire — but they found the alarm clock and some trick of fate had kept the razor blade from burning off the hour hand. So the guy walked the last mile.
None of that for me. I was going to be like the guy who shot a woman on a busy street with sixty-seven witnesses watching. The guy got off scot-free. Each one of the witnesses had become so excited at seeing murder done, he had told a different story from all the others.
Now I wasn’t going to get no sixty-seven witnesses together, but I was going to keep it that simple.
I began inquiring into the private life of a Big Name. Sure now, I’m a pretty smart boy, Chaplain. I got the lowdown on a business deal the Big Name had turned. I had dope enough on him to shoot him in the pen for the rest of his life. And he had such a lovely home and a wife and kid he’d go through hell for. Which was just perfect.
The Big Name cursed and started to throw me out of his house. Then he begged and pleaded. Finally he sat down as if his short, fat legs could hold him no longer. His eyes shot wildly about his library. Then he said with a sort of groan:
“All right, Smith. I’ll be at your house tonight at nine o’clock,”
I fired a smoke, tossed the match on his Oriental rug and said, “Thanks, old top. I’ll do you a favor sometime.”
I left his house, drank in the sight of his wide lawn and shrubbery that must have cost a couple grand. That calmed my nervousness a little. It wouldn’t be long now ’til I’d have a joint like a palace with a lawn landscaped like this one.
The Big Name knocked on my door at exactly nine o’clock. I’d come up in the town by this time and was living in a small, neat cottage. I gave my housekeeper the night off. The Big Name and myself were alone.
He took the drink I offered him, his hand shaking so that he almost spilled it. “Take it easy,” I said. “We’re going to play some rummy. For one hour. Then I’ll leave for a few minutes. But you’re gonna tell the cops — if any ask you — that I didn’t leave at all. Catch?”
He caught. He swallowed three drinks in quick succession. I laughed and dealt the cards.
No one had seen me. I was sure of that when I eased up on Sid Kilgo’s front porch. I glanced at my watch in the moonlight. Ten minutes after ten.
I knocked on the door. Sid opened it. I don’t believe he ever saw who shot him. But somehow I could see his face plainer than as if it were day. I saw his eyes widen as the gun in my hand roared once. I saw the blood spurt out of his forehead. I could almost see life itself washing out of him.
He clutched the door jamb, made a gulping noise. All the pain that his wife and Alonzo Threkkle and Justin Kilgo’s swiftly approaching death had put in his face went away. His eyes rolled up in his head, closed, and his face relaxed. I had already wiped the gun — which I’d picked up years back and which wasn’t registered — and I dropped it at his feet just as he began to crumple.
He hit the porch as his father began hobbling down the stairs. With the old man’s faltering footsteps in my ears, I faded in the darkness.
So that was that. Nothing to it, Chaplain. Murder is easy. Sure, I’m one smart boy. I kept the Big Name at my house until after midnight. No one could ever doubt the Big Name’s testimony. I had enough stuff on him to know absolutely without a doubt that he’d swear I hadn’t left my house from nine o’clock on. And when he swore that, he would be, of course, accessory after the fact. He could never go back on it.