Over Exposure Part 5

"You want to pay more, I got some phone numbers, guys'll be glad to take your cash."

On his prehistoric Motorola Jeopardy was playing. Some red-haired twerp was getting everything right, been winning for a solid month, like they were feeding him the answers. Trying to draw in a larger audience. Mason wouldn't put it past the TV a.s.sholes. That's how it worked. Couldn't trust anything that came out of that box. Which didn't keep him from having it on twenty-four hours a day. Playing in the background like Muzak with pictures. Kept him company, kept him from drifting off into memories, bad dreams, regrets or worse.

Mason sat in his green corduroy chair. One lamp on. Lighting up the over-sized oil painting of Jesus with his hands upraised like he was calling a heavenly touchdown.

The painting belonged to his wife, long dead. He kept it as a reminder of her and her ridiculous faith.

"Do they know what you do, your relations?" The guy motioned toward the front house where his son lived with his anorexic wife and three brats.

Mason shrugged, and the guy took a deep breath and blew it out.

"So how'm I doing so far?" Mason said.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You're interviewing me, how'm I doing?"

"Hey, I'm just trying to get a feel for this thing. Who you are, what I'm getting into. How much danger I'm putting myself in. You're so nonchalant, cause yeah, you do this all the time. But this is a big deal for me."

"I just told you," said Mason. "I never been in jail. Never arrested, or seen the inside of a courtroom. Nothing like that. If that isn't good enough, take a hike."

"But I found you. A normal guy like me. What's to keep the cops from doing the same thing? Sniffing you out."

Mason just smiled. The people Mason got rid of, s.h.i.t almighty, the cops should give him the keys to the city.

"All I'm saying, the kind of reputation you've got, if I were you, I'd charge more." The executive dug his hands in the pockets of his nicely tailored trousers. "I'd raise it to two, three thousand at least."

"So buy a gun," Mason said. "Hang out a shingle."

The guy turned away from Mason, glanced at Jesus, at the TV, at the empty bird cage. The cage was another leftover from his wife. Mason hated birds. How could anybody love a bird? Like loving a radish with feathers. But his wife had adored the thing. Broke her heart when the chirping, s.h.i.tting, pecking creature died. Wept for weeks, stayed in bed. Mason kept the cage for the same reason he held onto the Jesus picture. Something from that other time, that life when she fussed over that bird, fussed over Mason, fussed over their boy. The boy who now lived in the ten thousand square foot mansion and let Mason stay rent free in the pool house.

"Just so you know," the executive said. "I got your name from a shoe shine guy in the lobby of my building downtown."

"I'm supposed to be surprised? That's how it works."

"It's amazing," the guy said. "I sort of hinted around I wanted a person removed, made it sound like a joke. Just said it to this one guy, kind of a shady character. Made it sound like I was fooling around. Then yesterday he gives me your name and address. Whispers it while he's putting a shine on."

"Word of mouth," Mason said. "A killer's best friend."

"So I guess you want to know who I want dead."

"Either that, or I go shoot somebody at random."

The guy tried a smile but after a nervous second it curdled and slipped off his lips. He lowered his b.u.t.t to the arm of a chair and watched Jeopardy for a minute. The executive had a name, Arnold Chalmers, an old-fashioned moniker like the name of some loser from a black and white Bogart movie.

In the backyard one of the brats, his grandson, was playing with a neighbor kid. They were pa.s.sing a football back and forth, getting p.i.s.sed off over something. Squawking at each other. Always with the squawking. His son and the anorexic, not the greatest parents.

Truth be told, Mason hadn't been either. A downright s.h.i.tty father. Moody and irritable. Feeling low a good percentage of the time. Nothing much to celebrate, a professional hitter with a busy schedule. Leaving the child rearing to his wife, giving her something to do while Mason flew in and out of Miami all the time. Two hundred bucks plus expenses. Which had been a decent wage in the early sixties when he started out.

But Chalmers was right. Mason should ask a thousand at least, more likely five or ten. But he stuck with the two hundred out of stubborn habit. Funny thing was, these days since it was such a ridiculous amount, and since Mason was such a withered up old fart, an oddity in this age of bleached blond punks from Odessa and Gdansk, covered in tattoos and flashing their chrome nine millimeters, Mason had acquired a certain status. A retro celebrity. His name getting around in circles he'd never cracked before. Becoming a minor legend. Funny. A thing like he did, requiring no skills whatsoever, all of a sudden people treating him like he's Babe Ruth.

Not that he was ever a second-rater. Back in the old days when Miami Beach was the mob's winter playground, Mason had more business than he could handle. Things getting so routine at one point, he even had a regular commute. Up and back to New York. Some Goomba wanted his son-in-law whacked, guy had been cheating on the Goomba's daughter or maybe it was a bookie skimming receipts. Next week a Miami dog track boss calls up and gives Mason the address of somebody to clip in Long Islanda"retaliation and more retaliation. Back and forth, back and forth, Miami International to Newark or LaGuardia. Mason working both sides. Though he had to admit, he got more of a zing from doing the New York a.s.sholes. Their loud-mouth arrogance annoyed him. The way they treated Miami like a b.u.mpkin patch. Their bus station urinal. Miami was Mason's town. Had been since birth. As bad as it was turning out with the Cubans and the Nicaraguans and the Haitians and the Russians crowding the roads and stinking up the evening news, he'd take Miami over New York any day of the week. A paradise. As good a place as there was to get old and wait to die.

Chalmers dug out his wallet. He fingered through the bills and extracted two fifties. Held them out to Mason.

"On top of the TV," Mason said.

He aimed the remote and flicked through the channels, looking for what he watched after Jeopardy. Lately he'd been on a Seinfeld binge. Reruns. Those four kooks hanging out in Jerry's apartment or the diner downstairs. The goofball with the big hair always sliding into Jerry's apartment like it was an ice rink. The goony faces he made. And the fat little schmuck who reminded Mason of his own son. Such a loser he was actually funny.

"So there it is," Chalmers said. "Aren't you going to count it?"

The guy smirked at him. Proud of his stupid joke.

When Mason didn't smile back, Chalmers walked over to the bird cage and peered inside the bars. Everything was still exactly like the day the bird died. Same newspaper on the floor. Hulls, bird s.h.i.t, little plastic swing.

"Okay," the guy said. "There's the money. Now what's the catch?"

"The catch," Mason said.

"There is one, isn't there?"

Mason watched Jerry spooning cereal into his smug New Yorker mouth while Elaine yakked about some new boyfriend. George on the couch clipping his toenails. Gross and a annoying as usual. Annoying and oblivious. He could picture shooting them, one by one, make the remaining ones watch what was coming. They made him laugh though. Funny but irritating.

Mason said, "Well, I wouldn't call it a catch exactly."

"Christ, I knew it," Chalmers said. "Two hundred dollars, there had to be a catch."

"I'm not a sociopath," Mason said. "That's the catch."

"Yeah, okay? What's that supposed to mean?"

"I got a sense of shame. I'm not some robot, wind him up, he goes and shoots a guy, then comes home makes a plate of spaghetti and sleeps his eight hours. I used to be that guy, but I'm not anymore."

"I still don't get it."

Seinfeld's latest girlfriend comes strutting out of the back bedroom, making a grand entrance. She's tall and wearing a super tight low cut blouse which naturally shows off her mammoth b.o.o.bs. Jerry introduces her to Elaine and Elaine looks at her and slips up and says something about knockers. She can't help herself. For the next minute everything out of her mouth is about t.i.ts. All tasteful enough for TV, but still a little on the raunchy side. Seinfeld was a TV show his wife would never sit still for. The morals of America were in steep decline, that was her view. From the time she was born in some redneck coal town in West Virginia, American morals had been sliding downhill. For seventy-two years, everywhere the woman looked, everything she saw confirmed it. America was going to h.e.l.l. Their entire married life the woman thought Mason sold medical supplies.

"Okay, so you got a conscience. How's that change things?"

"It means you gotta convince me."

"Convince you to murder this person?"

"Something like that. I gotta hear what he did. I got to see this from your point of view, be converted."

"Jesus Christ."

"You don't like the rules, take your money and go."

"You want me to plead with you, grovel, is that it? Get on my knees."

"What I'm saying is, I got scruples. Only way I can do what I do, I gotta be convinced it's necessary."

The executive stared at Mason for half a minute then sighed and walked to the door. He opened it, gave Mason a parting look, and headed out into the dusky light and shut the door behind him.

Todd, the bratty grandson, screamed at his little brat friend and the two of them came whooping over to the pool house. A few seconds later, Todd threw open the door, stuck his fat sweaty head inside and screeched for a full five seconds then slammed the door and ran back into the yard. His little game. Scream at the boogeyman. That's what he called his grandfather. Not Granddad. Not some cute goo-goo name left over from when he couldn't p.r.o.nounce. No, Mason was boogeyman.

A minute later Mason was back with Seinfeld. The show was almost over and he'd only caught the basic outline. The bosomy girlfriend, Elaine's breast jokes. George and Kramer in awe of the woman, falling all over themselves as she approached. Not the funniest one Mason had seen.

As the final commercial came on, the door opened again and Chalmers walked back in. He was shaking his head like he couldn't believe he'd returned to this nut house.

"It's my son," the guy said. "I want you to kill my son."

"Okay, that's a start."

The man's neat haircut look rumpled now. Like he'd been grinding his head in his hands. Giving him a wretched look.

"You're not shocked. A man wanting his own son dead."

"Wouldn't be my first," Mason said. "Wouldn't be my second or third."

The brats were practicing their banshee yells outside Mason's bathroom window. Cranking up the volume, trying to outdo each other. Hateful little t.u.r.ds.

"Here's a picture," Chalmers said.

He dug a snapshot out of his jacket pocket and held it out. Mason told him to put it on the arm of his chair. Not like he was obsessive compulsive about fingerprints or any of that DNA bulls.h.i.t. He just didn't want to touch things if he didn't have to.

Chalmers set the photo on the chair arm, nudged it around so Mason had a good view, then he stepped back.

Chalmers was wearing bathing trunks and had his arm around the shoulder of the boy. There was a lake behind them, other swimmers. The boy was maybe thirty, thirty-three. Wearing shorts and a Budweiser T-shirt that fit tight enough to show the hump of his belly. Wide simple face, bad haircut, blunt features, too much forehead.

"r.e.t.a.r.ded?" Mason said.

"Learning disabled." Chalmers turned his back on Mason and watched the commercials jabbering on and on.

"So cause he's dumb, he's got to die?"

Chalmers came around slowly. A look forming on his face, going from the gloomy dread he'd been wearing to something with more edge. His business face. Take it or leave it, that's my best offer. A bully boy look.

"You trying to p.i.s.s me off?"

Mason reached into the crack of the cushion and extracted Ruger .22 auto with the long silencer cylinder.

He lay the pistol on his lap and watched Chalmers' face drain of harda.s.s. The same effect the Ruger usually hada"making the lungs tighter, the eyes more focused.

"He's r.e.t.a.r.ded," Mason said. "For thirty years you put up with it, now enough's enough. Is that it? He's cramping your style. Your bachelor ambitions. The girls find out about him, it turns them off?"

"f.u.c.k this," Chalmers said and headed for the door again. Then remembered the photo and about-faced and came over and plucked it off the chair.

"So help me," Mason said. "What changed? What made it suddenly intolerable to live with this pitiful creature? Your son."

"He raped a girl."

Mason gave it a few seconds' thought then nodded.

"Okay. That would change things."

"Raped her and then threw her off a bridge."

"Here in Miami?"

"In Lauderdale."

"I didn't see it on the news," Mason said. "I watch the news and there wasn't anything about a rape and a girl off a bridge."

"I got there in time," Chalmers said.

"And you covered it up," said Mason. "You buried the girl."

Chalmers took a deep breath and looked at the photo, at himself and his son. Same blood b.u.mping through their veins. But Mason knew that didn't count for s.h.i.t. Look at his own flesh and blood son. Look at his grandson. They might as well be from Gdansk themselves, for all he knew them, understood them, cared about them. Or vice versa.

"His name is Julius," Chalmers said. "I call him Jules."

"And you buried the girl. The two of you."

"I did it," Chalmers said. "I dug a hole and put her in it and Jules stood there the whole time complaining about his p.e.c.k.e.r. How it itched. He raped this girl, killed her and he's grumbling about how she gave him some disease. Crabs or something. While I was digging out in the dark, he's going on about feeling p.r.i.c.kly between his legs."

"You wanted to hit him with the shovel. Smack him in the face."

Chalmers raised his eyes and gave Mason a level look.

"Is this some kind of game you play?"

Mason said, "Yeah, it's a game. That's right. You enjoying it?"

He picked up the Ruger, unscrewed the suppressor a couple of turns then tightened it back down.

"Okay, so we're at the bridge. You're digging and Jules is whining about crabs."

"That's all," Chalmers said.

Mason shook his head.

"I said that's all. That's all there is. He killed a girl. And, I don't know, maybe he knew what he was doing, maybe he didn't. Maybe he has a guilty conscience. But I don't think so. I'm afraid he found out he liked it, raping girls and killing them, and he's going to do it again and then again after that, and one of those times I won't be able to cover it up."

"So?" Mason lay the Ruger across his lap. "So the kid gets caught, goes to jail, problem solved. You save two hundred bucks, don't have to live with the guilt you killed your own boy."

Out in the yard the brats were splashing in the pool. School night, but they might be going at it till ten, eleven o'clock before the anorexic or Mason's fat, sloppy son called them in to bed.