“I guess we both have some explaining to do,” he said. His smile was natural, for a change; and he looked older, now, less like Andy Hardy and more like the nearly forty his wife said he was.
“Why don’t you start,” I suggested.
“I thought you might say that. Suppose I tell you some of it. And then you can tell me who you really are, and how you’ve come to be here.”
“Fair enough.”
He leaned back in the chair, looked toward the television. The second Cagney movie had begun, a western of some sort, from the 1950s, with Cagney looking heavy and somewhat long-in-the-tooth, and the sound was still on, and it made it a little difficult to hear what Castile was saying. But it was worth the effort.
“Six months ago I received a phone call,” he said. “Three o’clock in the morning, give or take a few minutes. As it happens I was up, working on one of my films, using a Movieola to check on some editing problems… a Movieola is a… well, never mind what it is. That’s not important. What’s important is the phone call.”
He paused. Swallowed. Went on.
“It was a man’s voice, on the other end. Very average sounding. Perhaps a little on the high-pitched order. And there was a tremor in the voice, but it wasn’t nervousness… it was something else. Something else.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry to wake you.’
“I said, ‘You didn’t. I was up already. Who is this?’
“He said, ‘I’m nobody you know. And we’ll never meet.’
“I didn’t know what to make of that. I said, ‘I’m hanging up…’
“He said, ‘Don’t. I have something to say that you’ll find… noteworthy.’
“I said, ‘What is it, then?’ Impatient.
“He said, ‘I killed you this afternoon.’
“And I said, ‘What?’ And then I said I was hanging up again.
“‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s true… I killed you. I arranged to have you killed, I should say. Took a contract out, just like the movies, just like TV. Hitmen. All of that.’
“I was frightened now. There was something in the voice that was.. real. It wasn’t a crank call. It was real. ‘Who is this?’ I said.
“And he laughed at me. I asked again, ‘Who is this?’
“‘My name is Meyers. You’ll see my name in the papers, tomorrow, perhaps.’
“‘I don’t know any Meyers,’ I said.
“‘I’m nobody. But I’m big enough a nobody to get my name in the papers, when I kill myself.’
“I didn’t say anything: I felt like somebody had hit me in the stomach. Hard.
“‘You heard right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to kill myself, tonight. In just a little while. I’ll still be on the phone with you, when I do it.’
“‘Please,’ I said. Not knowing what else to say.
“‘You’ll be dead, too, soon. The men I hired will kill you, one of these days. But you won’t know when. Tomorrow maybe. A week from tomorrow. A year from Christmas. One of these days. You’ll be dead. They’ll kill you. And I’ll be dead. We’ll all be dead.’
“‘Why?’ I asked. Out of breath, hardly getting it out. ‘Who am I to you? What have I done to you?’
“And he said, ‘I’m cutting my wrists now…’ and I heard him make little sounds in his throat; sounds of pain but it was weird, because they were sounds of contentment, too, and he said, ‘I’m bleeding now. I’ll be dead soon. Like you.’”
And Castile sat staring at the television, where Cagney was shouting at a ranch hand, the images on the screen making shadows on Castile’s face, putting emotion on a face that was otherwise a mask, at the moment, though his eyes flickered, moved, with something. Something.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Then he hung up.”
“I see. Was he in the papers, next day?”
“Yes. Boston papers. He was a mob guy. Fairly high-up. In his fifties. Glorified bookkeeper. He’d cut his wrists, all right. Story even said he was found with the phone receiver in his hands… they assumed he’d changed his mind, at the last moment, tried to call for help.”
“And he never said why? He never told you why he hired the contract?”
“No. But I found out. I put some people on it. I have a few connections, myself. My father was involved with mob people, peripherally, and I have some friends in those circles. New Jersey and New York people, but they could find things out for me, about Boston. They found out why the contract was taken out. They also found out it would be impossible to stop what Meyers put in motion. Or damn near impossible.”
“What was the reason, then?”
“For the contract? I’d prefer not to go into that. Not until I’ve heard something from you.”
It was my turn, and since he’d given me what was apparently the truth, I gave him the truth back… somewhat edited, of course.
“I’m here,” I said, “because I followed a man named Turner here. He’s the back-up for the person who’s going to hit you. Try to hit you, at any rate. With my help, you might be able to avoid that.”
Castile thought about that a second.
Then he said, “Where’s this Turner now?”
“Holed up in one of the farmhouses near here, I’d guess. The snowstorm caught him as much by surprise as it did us.”
“And how’d you happen to be following this Turner?”
“I used to be in the business.”
“What business?”
“Turner’s.”
He thought about that, too, but longer than a second.
Then he said, “I see.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
“But you aren’t in that business any longer.”
“Not exactly. Now I’m in the business of offering my services to the prospective victims… the targets of people like Turner.”
“So you followed Turner to this… job… and ascertained that I was the victim, the target, and now you’re making contact with me, to do what?”
“To save your life. To stop Turner. And his partner. Usually I make an attempt to find out who took the contract out, as well, since the real threat is the person who sent the hitmen, not the hitmen themselves… in most cases, that is. In your case the guy who bought the hitmen is already known to you, and, better yet, is dead. So once the hitmen are taken out, you can rest easy.”
“This is pretty bizarre.”
“So are phone calls at three in the morning from guys who slit their wrists as they say they’re having you killed.”
“But you believed that story.”
“Yes. And you believe mine.”
“Yes. Bizarre as it is, or possibly because it is so bizarre, I believe you. I do have some questions, though… first, what’s your fee?”
“Eight thousand dollars.”
“How did you arrive at that figure?”
“It’s about what I’m guessing Turner and his partner were paid.”
He nodded, as if to say, “Fair enough,” then said, “Do you have any idea who the partner is?”
“Yes. I think the partner is in this lodge. Right now.”
“What, in hiding…?”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s one of your crew.”
“What? But that’s…”
“Possible. Very possible. Not your wife. Probably not Janet, either… though lady hitmen do exist, believe me. But more likely one of the boys… Frankie Waddsworth, Richie Hudson, or Harry.. ”
“Not Waddsworth. I’ve worked with him before.”
“That would make it less likely. But not impossible. Most people in the murder business have other jobs, for a cover, for extra income, or both. Waddsworth might have been assigned this because you’ve worked with him, and he’d make a good inside man. Did you go after him, for this film, or did he approach you?”
“His agent approached me.”
“There… you see. Waddsworth is a possibility.”
“I’ve never worked with the others before… Hudson or Janet Stein or Harry…”
“Did you approach them?”
“I put feelers out to try and find people, in the Chicago area, who could do the quality of work I need, and who were willing to do porno. It was Richie who contacted me, told me about his agency. Janet I just picked up recently, when our original soundman backed out. She was a friend of a friend of somebody at the Geneva Playboy Club.”
“The soundman backing out could’ve been arranged. That makes even Janet a possibility. What about the actors who finished filming and left yesterday? Had you worked with them, before?”
“Yes, and we drove them into Chicago, to O’Hare, last night… I saw them board a plane, to go back to New York. So it isn’t one of them… waiting behind, lurking in the snow or something. Jesus. This is crazy.”
“Naturally. Let me ask you a question. Who would logically be the last to leave this place, once filming is done?”
“Why, me, of course. I’m the director. I’m in charge.”
“Well, then, that’s when it was supposed to happen. Just you alone here, with that last remaining person, who’d then do you in. Or it’s possible Turner would be the one to do you in. It’s possible, come to think of it, that Turner is the hitter, and the inside man is the back-up person, the stakeout guy. Very possible. Anyway, that’s when it would be done: when nobody else was here. Except you. And your wife, who might also get taken out.”
“No!”
“That’s the facts of life. But this snowstorm… it’s gummed up the works for Turner and company. As long as we’re snowbound here, nobody’s going to die. Not unless Turner and his partner are willing to snuff all of us, and that’s not likely… people in this line of work don’t kill unnecessarily. Only when they are paid to kill somebody is somebody in danger, and you’re the only one in this place that has a contract out on him.”
“But you said my wife…”
“Yeah, she’d probably get her lights put out, too, because she’d be in the way. But that would be a necessary killing, and anyway, with a husband and wife, it would be easy to rig something, easy to make it look like they took each other out.”
“God! You make it sound so clinical… like a goddamn textbook.”
“Maybe I ought to write one. So. Now it’s your turn.”
“What?”
“About the contract. About why the guy took the contract out on you.”
And he told me.