The Erection Set

“Oh, there are plenty of copies,” Dennie said. “Cross McMillan has a set too. These went with the property sale. Now he has you earmarked for a grave. Unfortunately, since you are illegitimate, the burial site will remain unmarked. Something like your mother’s.”

When I hit him his whole face exploded into a shower of blood and teeth and before he was able to fall I caught him with a right to the ribs that make them crackle like broken sticks under my fist. Dennie’s skull bounced off the wood, but he was still conscious when I hauled him up again and tore one ear off the side of his head and he tried to scream through his shattered mouth, but all that came out was a faint squeak before he fainted. I let him drop and turned around to the rest. ,

They weren’t looking at me. The solitary ear, still bleeding from the shards of skin surrounding it took all their attention and I said, “My time bomb was better than yours.”

Alfred got sick to his stomach.

Pam said something about getting a doctor, but the phone was on the desk and they had to pass me to get it. Nobody wanted to.

Then Marvin Gates said, “I took the pictures, Dog.”

He thought he was going to die and wondered why I didn’t bother killing him right then. I said, “Why, Marv?”

He gave me a mute shrug, waited a few second and finished his glass. “I’m a weak character. I talk too much, I give in too easily.” He twirled the glass in his fingers, staring at it. “I don’t give a damn what you do to me.”

“Forget it,” I said.

Veda got sick then too. She didn’t heave. The vomit just dribbled out of her mouth. Very slowly her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out, bubbling through her own lunch.

Marvin looked up from the empty glass, for a moment or two his eyes clear. “Cross is going to kill you, Dog. He has to. Everybody knows about you and his wife now.”

I waved a thumb toward the family. “You get paid enough for the job, buddy?”

“My checking account has been fattened considerably by a cash gratuity. If I live, I can live the life of a fat, grubby worm. But independent.”

“You’ll live,” I informed him. “Stay happy.”

“Not knowing I helped kill you.”

My face must have looked pretty weird because he seemed to draw back into his stupor again. “Don’t wipe me off the list until you see me autopsied, my friend.”

I heard Leyland Hunter gathering up the papers and stuffing them into his attaché case. He followed me outside and took his coat and hat from the butler in the foyer. Harvey looked at me with the same enigmatic smile and said, “I’ve already called the doctor, sir. I hear they can do wonders with detached extremities if the parts are rejoined in time.”

When we were back in the car we drove two blocks before we stopped. Leyland Hunter decided the time had come for him to get sick too. When he finished, he wiped his mouth and watched me a full minute before he said,

“Where can you go now, Dog?”

That grin came back and I swung the wheel at the next comer. “Why, to see Cross McMillan, of course.”

The little VW pulled out of a driveway a block farther on and stayed behind us another quarter mile before it turned off. It wasn’t a killer’s type of car, but I wondered why one just like it picked me up at the intersection just a short way from the plant. It hung back there, then it was gone again. The afternoon was gray and wet, almost like dusk, but nighttime was still a long way off.

Arnold Bell liked to work at night.

So did I.

XXIV

Five days. In that length of time all the interior and exterior shots of the Barrin complex would be completed and the Fruits of Labor cast and crew could go on to other locations and into their rented studios to wind up the intricate slot structure of the story with closed sets for the nudie scenes and galleries of exuberant spectators for the wide-open stuff. The story was all Barrin-oriented and the local facilities of Linton were enjoying a time of prosperity as if it had never happened before.

Publicity and public relations are terrible professional mind benders, and the smiling faces of the reborn never knew what was happening to them. Barrin Industries were alive again. They thought they knew that. Their talents were needed and they were there. The beehive was open. Suck the flowers, store the honey. The queen was laying her eggs, the drones were in attendance, and they didn’t know the beekeeper was ready with the insecticide.

He didn’t like the taste of the honey.

Someplace the stockholders were home all nestled snug in their beds and the little room was sprinkled with the men carrying the briefcases and folders of efficiency reports. The chair was held by the guy with the scar on his skull who had to kill me and he kept looking down the long table at me with a benign expression I couldn’t quite comprehend, but he had the money to buy the kill if Arnold Bell missed, and even if it never happened, to pay for destruction piece by piece.