Nightmares & Geezenstacks Page 9

  Down the corridor a drunk with d.t.’s was yelling like hell because tarantulas were after him. Stinky Evans shivered.

  They gave him probation on the tire theft.

  Before that was up, though, he got in trouble again and this time took six months at the reformatory. That was a good six months; he learned plenty there. Without boring you with the unpleasant details, let’s count it as lessons three to five, inclusive, and consider ourselves conservative.

  He was fifteen when he got out, but he looked older. He felt older. He’d decided not to go home. Going home meant he’d have to take a job and keep reporting to the juvenile authorities how he was getting along in it. They’d keep checking on him all the time. The hell with that.

  He went home only long enough to sneak out some clothes and get the rent money out of the chipped teapot. Twenty-five bucks, it was.

  He hopped a rattler and got off when he saw the shacks working along the train at Springfield, the divison point.

  He took a cheap room in Springfield and cased the town. When most of his money was gone, he went back where there’d been a BOY WANTED sign in a poolroom window.

  It was the Acme Pool Parlor, run by Nick Chester. Maybe you’ve heard of Nick Chester. You’d know of him, all right, if you ever lived in Springfield.

  A swarthy little guy, but smooth. He wore two-hundred-dollar suits and smoked fifty-cent cigars. Lived in a swank mansion out at the edge of town and drove a custom-made car. All the trimmings, if you know what I mean. All out of a little poolroom that maybe took in twenty or thirty dollars a week.

  Nick tilted his twenty-dollar fedora back on his head and looked Stinky Evans over with eyes that didn’t miss any tricks.

  “How old ya, kid?” he said.

  “Twenty.”

  “Been in stir, huh?” Nick didn’t wait for an answer to that one. “Okay by me if y’ain’t hot.”

  Stinky shook his head.

  “What’s ya name?” Nick asked.

  Stinky’d decided that. “Duke,” he said. “Duke Evans.”

  “Okay, Duke. You rack balls for a while,” Nick said. “When I get to know you better, maybe I can give you something else. We’ll get along.”

  Duke went back by the pool tables. He watched Nick Chester, and he knew now what he was going to be. That was for him; a two-C suit with a white carnation in the lapel, expensive cigars, a blank but knowing pair of eyes and a pocketful of hay.

  Power. That was for him. He’d work for it; he’d steal for it; he’d even commit…

  Maybe there was rejoicing in hell. I mean, of course, if there is any such place. Things were going swimmingly. It was all too obvious that the Little Red Devil was on the job.

  “He’s coming along fine, Boss,” said the L.R.D. “Just had the sixth lesson, you might say. Another year—”

  “Not so soon. Let him ripen. Be sure of him.”

  “He’ll graduate, Boss, cum laude. But you mean I got to wait two or three years yet?”

  “Let him ripen. Five or six years.”

  The L.R.D. gulped and looked aghast. “That long? Oh, Heaven!”

  So they had to wash his mouth out with brimstone.

  Call it the seventh lesson, at eighteen. Duke Evans was beginning to look like Duke Evans. He wore only a thirty-dollar suit but the trousers had a razor edge to them.

  He wasn’t racking balls now; he was making collections. Small ones, but lots of them. That was Nick’s system and his strength—a finger in a thousand small pies. One at a time, Duke was learning about those pies.

  He went into the florist’s shop on Grove Street, walked briskly on through and found the little florist alone in the back room making up a wreath. Duke grinned at him. “Hi, Larkin. Your dues; forty bucks.”

  The little man didn’t smile back. “I—I can’t afford it; I told Mr. Wescott of your association. Talked to him on the phone this morning. I’ve been losing money since I started paying—”

  Duke quit grinning and his eyes got hard. “I got orders to get it. See?”

  “But look, I haven’t even got forty dollars. I haven’t paid all the rent yet. I can’t—”

  He’d stepped backward and there was fear in his face. That was a mistake. Nobody had ever before shown fear of Duke Evans. And the florist was a little guy, too. The little mark was scared stiff.

  It wasn’t Duke’s job; he could have gone back and reported. One of the muscle boys would have been sent around. But it was so easy.

  He gave Larkin the back of his hand across the left side of his face and knocked his glasses off, then smashed the palm of his hand across the other side of the face, stepping in as the florist stepped back.

  Then again, rocking the little man’s head back and forth before he stepped in with a hard jab to the pit of the stomach. Larkin doubled over and retched.

  Duke stepped back. “That was a sample. Still think you can’t rake up forty bucks?”

  Duke got the forty bucks. On the way back to headquarters, he bought himself a cigar. He didn’t like the taste of it as well as cigarettes, but from now on he was going to smoke them. On his lapel was a white rosebud he’d taken from a vase on his way out of Larkin’s.

  He got his shoes shined, too, although they didn’t really need it. He felt pretty good.

  Nick Chester looked at the white rosebud. His left eyebrow went up half a millimeter, which wasn’t enough for Duke to notice.

  Duke got friendly with Tony Barria—as nearly as anyone could ever get to being friendly with Tony.

  Tony was a little guy, too, like Larkin had been, but Tony wasn’t the kind of little guy that you shoved around. Tony was a torpedo.

  He was cold and tense and he moved with a smooth grace that seemed jerky because it was so fast. Nobody ever felt at ease with Tony, really; you sort of got the idea that if you clapped him on the back, he’d explode. Maybe they tailored that word torpedo just to fit Tony Barria. But shoot a couple of snooker games with him and then you could loosen his tongue with Chianti, which is an expensive word for Italian red wine. And because Duke wanted to learn something that Tony could teach him, he kept Chianti in his room. He took a lesson from Tony in things an ambitious young man should know.

  Like: “Look, if you’re going to use it on somebody, a forty-five automatic’s the thing. Don’t monkey with a little gun. A forty-five, because if you hit the shoulder or the leg or somewhere with a little gun, it don’t mean nothing. Got to hit the head or the heart. In the guts’ll kill him, but he’ll live a while first. Maybe long enough to talk, see? But a big slug wherever it hits knocks ’em down like a baseball bat.

  “But if you’re carrying a rod just in case, a thirty-two automatic’ll do. Light and don’t bulge your coat…”

  Oh, sure, those were elementary things, but Duke dug in and got some fine points, too. Like how to beat a paraffin test; and if you don’t know that, you’re better off not to. I’m not giving lessons; just telling about them.

  Tony was a gunman all the way. He thought shivs were effeminate, fists were for gorillas, tommies were for morons who couldn’t learn to shoot straight with a heater. “Why, any day I’d go up against a typewriter, with a forty-five. One shot I’d need and there’d be time for three while he was getting that damn’ thing swung around and pointed—”

  Duke Evans picked up quite a bit from Tony. One thing he didn’t learn: how not to be afraid of Tony. But when he moved in, he thought Tony would be on his side. Tony didn’t like Nick, and Duke worked on that…

  Duke let a couple of years go by. He grew in evil, in stature, and in favor with himself and the gang. He bought himself two pistols, obtaining them in such a manner that they could not be traced back to him. He bought himself a rifle, too, but he purchased that openly and talked about it. His occasional hunting trips were for the purpose of finding secluded spots in the woods where he could practice shooting an automatic. Nobody knew about the pistols or his practice with them.

  For a while, he took over runnin
g the strong-arm squad. Just telling them whom to see and how much of a job to do on him. He got a kick out of that.

  Once he planted a pineapple himself that blew the guts out of a cigar store run by a man named Perelman who’d decided, against advice, not to job a book on the ponies. That was why the pineapple was put in his store. But the reason Duke Evans did the job in person was that Perelman had said, “Get out of here, punk,” to Duke Evans.

  Duke Evans wasn’t a punk any more.

  He heard the explosion from several blocks away and thought, “Punk huh?” He wished Perelman had been in the store when the bomb went off. He pictured it vividly. Because he was standing in a dark alley and didn’t have to stay dead-pan, the look on his face wasn’t nice.

  Not nice at all. But then Duke Evans wasn’t a nice guy. I warned you about that.

  Then after a while, he was ready. Ready for the takeover and the gravy train.

  He’d worked it out, and he wasn’t going to be crude and use a gun after all. That was for cheap torpedoes like Tony.

  There were reasons why it would be better if Nick’s death looked like a hit-run.

  He stole a car one day and kept it under wraps until late at night, after Nick had gone home. Then he made his phone call. He’d worked out the angles on that. It was important he saw Nick right away; something had come up. And since Nick wouldn’t ever allow any of his men to come to his home, would Nick please—

  Well, the details don’t matter; it worked out that Nick would get dressed and go out to walk about two blocks, too short a distance to bother getting his car out of the garage. And Nick would have to cross at a certain corner.

  Duke parked the stolen car with the lights out and the engine turning over lightly, at just the right spot. He could start up when Nick was a third of the way across, and get him whether he tried to go ahead or duck back.

  There was a light down at the corner, but it was dark where the car was parked. It was darker than he thought. Nick would be coming along any minute now. All of Duke’s attention was concentrated on watching for him.

  He didn’t hear the two men coming afoot from the opposite direction until they were at the car and one opened a door on either side. One of them was Tony Barria, the other was the Swede.

  Tony got in beside him and held the forty-five in his ribs. Duke remembered what a forty-five did to a man. Duke began to sweat. He said, “Listen, Tony, I—”

  The gun prodded. “Shut up. Drive north.”

  “Tony, I’ll give you—”

  Swede, in the back seat, raised the butt of his pistol and brought it down in a short vicious arc.

  But it wasn’t until near dawn (in Springfield; not in hell) that the Little Red Devil came running into the main office, grinning triumphantly and lashing his arrow-tipped tail in high glee.

  “Just graduated him, Boss,” he chortled. “Just gave him the final lesson. He knows all about murder now. Got kayoed, but he came to before they got to the bay and took it all in while they were putting the cement tub on his feet. You shoulda heard him beg till they had to gag him. But he took it all in; he knows all about it, plenty. Yep, he sure graduated. He sure—”

  “Good. You brought him along, of course.”

  “Yep,” said the L.R.D. “I brought him along, all right; I sure brought him along…”

  DARK INTERLUDE

  (in collaboration with Mack Reynolds)

  Sheriff Ben Rand’s eyes were grave. He said, “Okay, boy. You feel kind of jittery; that’s natural. Hut if your story’s straight, don’t worry. Don’t worry about nothing. Everything’ll be all right, boy.”

  “It was three hours ago, Sheriff,” Allenby said. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get into town and that I had to wake you up. But Sis was hysterical awhile. I had to try and quiet her down, and then I had trouble starting the jalopy.”

  “Don’t worry about waking me up, boy. Being sheriff’s a full-time job. And it ain’t late, anyway; I just happened to turn in early tonight. Now let me get a few things straight. You say your name’s Lou Allenby. That’s a good name in these parts, Allenby. You kin of Rance Allenby, used to run the feed business over in Cooperville? I went to school with Rance… Now about the fella who said he come from the future…”

  The Presidor of the Historical Research Department was skeptical to the last. He argued, “1 am still of the opinion that the project is not feasible. There are paradoxes involved which present insurmountable—”

  Doctr Matthe, the noted physicist, interrupted politely. “Undoubtedly, sir, you are familiar with the Dichotomy?”

  The Presidor wasn’t, so he remained silent to indicate that he wanted an explanation.

  “Zeno propounded the Dichotomy. He was a Greek philosopher of roughly five hundred years before the ancient prophet whose birth was used by the primitives to mark the beginning of their calendar. The Dichotomy states that it is impossible to cover any given distance. The argument: First, half the distance must be traversed, then half of the remaining distance, and so on. It follows that some portion of the distance to be covered always remains, and therefore motion is impossible.”

  “Not analagous,” the Presidor objected. “In the first place, your Greek assumed that any totality composed of an infinite number of parts must, itself, be infinite, whereas we know that an infinite number of elements make up a finite total. Besides—”

  Matthe smiled gently and held up a hand. “Please, sir, don’t misunderstand me. I do not deny that today we understand Zeno’s paradox. But believe me, for long centuries the best minds the human race could produce could not explain it.”

  The Presidor said tactfully, “I fail to see your point, Doctr Matthe. Please forgive my inadequacy. What possible connection has this Dichotomy of Zeno’s with your projected expedition into the past?”

  “I was merely drawing a parallel, sir. Zeno conceived the paradox proving that it was impossible to cover any distance, nor were the ancients able to explain it. But did that prevent them from covering distances? Obviously not. Today, my assistants and I have devised a method to send our young friend here, Jan Obreen, into the distant past. The paradox is immediately pointed out—suppose he should kill an ancestor or otherwise change history? I do not claim to be able to explain how this apparent paradox is overcome in time travel; all I know is that time travel is possible. Undoubtedly, better minds than mine will one day resolve the paradox, but until then we shall continue to utilize time travel, paradox or not.”

  Jan Obreen had been sitting, nervously quiet, listening to his distinguished superiors. Now he cleared his throat and said, “I believe the hour has arrived for the experiment.”

  The Presidor shrugged his continued disapproval, but dropped the conversation. He let his eyes scan doubtfully the equipment that stood in the corner of the laboratory.

  Matthe shot a quick glance at the time piece, then hurried last-minute instructions to his student.

  “We’ve been all over this before, Jan, but to sum it up—you should appear approximately in the middle of the so-called twentieth century; exactly where, we don’t know. The language will be Amer-English, which you have studied thoroughly; on that count you should have little difficulty. You will appear in the United States of North America, one of the ancient nations—as they were called—a political division of whose purpose we are not quite sure. One of the designs of your expedition will be to determine why the human race at that time split itself into scores of states, rather than having but one government.

  “You will have to adapt yourself to the conditions you find, Jan. Our histories are so vague that we can help you but little in information on what to expect.”

  The Presidor put in, “I am extremely pessimistic about this, Obreen, yet you have volunteered and I have no right to interfere. Your most important task is to leave a message that will come down to us; if you are successful, other attempts will be made to still other periods in history. If you fail—”

  “He won’t fail,�
�� Matthe said.

  The Presidor shook his head and grasped Obreen’s hand in farewell.

  Jan Obreen stepped to the equipment and mounted the small platform. He clutched the metal grips on the instrument panel somewhat desperately, hiding to the best of his ability the shrinking inside himself.

  The sheriff said, “Well, this fella—you say he told you he came from the future?”

  Lou Allenby nodded. “About four thousand years ahead. He said it was the year thirty-two hundred and something, but that it was about four thousand years from now; they’d changed the numbering system meanwhile.”

  “And you didn’t figure it was hogwash, boy? From the way you talked, I got the idea that you kind of believed him.”

  The other wet his lips. “I kind of believed him,” he said doggedly. “There was something about him; he was different. I don’t mean physically, that he couldn’t pass for being born now, but there was… something different. Kind of, well, like he was at peace with himself; gave the impression that where he came from everybody was. And he was smart, smart as a whip. And he wasn’t crazy, either.”

  “And what was he doing back here, boy?” The sheriff’s voice was gently caustic.

  “He was some kind of student. Seems from what he said that almost everybody in his time was a student. They’d solved all the problems of production and distribution, nobody had to worry about security; in fact, they didn’t seem to worry about any of the things we do now.” There was a trace of wistfulness in Lou Allenby’s voice. He took a deep breath and went on. “He’d come back to do research in our time. They didn’t know much about it, it seems. Something had happened in between—there was a bad period of several hundred years—and most books and records had been lost. They had a few, but not many. So they didn’t know much about us and they wanted to fill in what they didn’t know.”