Lawrence Block - This Crazy Business of Ours

From: The Collected Mystery Stories

The elevator, swift and silent as a garotte, whisked the young man eighteen stories skyward to Wilson Colliard's penthouse. The doors opened to reveal Colliard himself. He wore a cashmere smoking jacket the color of vintage port. His flannel slacks and broadcloth shirt were a matching oyster white. They could have been chosen to match his hair, which had been expensively barbered in a leonine mane. His eyes, beneath sharply defined white brows, were as blue and as bottomless as the Caribbean, upon the shores of which he had acquired his radiant tan. He wore doeskin slippers upon his small feet and a smile upon his thinnish lips, and in his right hand he held an automatic pistol of German origin, the precise manufacturer and calibre of which need not concern us.

"My abject apologies," Colliard said. "Of course you're Michael Haig. I regret the gun, Mr. Haig, even as I regret the necessity for it. It's inconsistent greeting a guest with gun in hand and bidding him welcome, but I assure you that you are welcome indeed. Come in, come in. Ah, yes." The doors swept silently shut behind Haig. "This thing," Colliard said distastefully, looking down at the gun in his hand. "But of course you understand."

"Of course, Mr. Colliard."

"This crazy business of ours. Always the chance, isn't there, that you might turn out to be other than the admiring youngster you're purported to be. And surely there's a tradition of that sort of thing, isn't there? Just look at the Old West. Young gunfighter out to make a name for himself, so he goes up against the old gunfighter. Quickest way to acquire a reputation, isn't it? Why, it's a veritable clich‚ in the world of Western movies, and I daresay they do the same thing in gangster films and who knows what else. Now I don't for the moment think that's your game, you see, but I've learned over the years never to take an unnecessary chance. And I've learned that most chances are unnecessary. So if you don't mind a frisk-"

"Of course not."

"You'll have to assume an undignified posture, I'm afraid. Over that way, if you don't mind. Now reach forward with both hands and touch the wall. Excellent. Now walk backwards a step and another step, that's right, very good, yes. You'll hardly make any abrupt moves now, will you? Undignified, as I said, but utilitarian beyond doubt."

The old man's hand moved expertly over the young man's body, patting and brushing here and there, making quite certain that no weapon was concealed beneath the dark pinstripe suit, no gun wedged under the waistband of the trousers, no knife strapped to calf or forearm. The search was quick but quite thorough, and at its conclusion Wilson Colliard sighed with satisfaction and returned his own weapon to a shoulder holster where it reposed without marring in the least the smooth lines of the smoking jacket. "There we are," he said. "Once again, my apologies. Now all that's out of the way and I have the opportunity to make you welcome. I have a very nice cocktail sherry which I think you might like. It's bone dry with a very nutty taste to it. Or perhaps you might care for something stronger?"

"The sherry sounds fine."

Colliard led his guest through rooms furnished as impeccably as he himself was dressed. He seated Michael Haig in one of a pair of green leather tub chairs on opposite sides of a small marble cocktail table. While he set about filling two glasses from a cutglass decanter, the younger man gazed out the window.

"Quite a view," he said.

"Central Park does look best when you're a good ways above it. But then so many things do. It's a great pleasure for me, sitting at this window."

"I can imagine."

"You can see for miles on a clear day. Pity there aren't more of them. When I was your age the air was clearer, but then at your age I could never have afforded an apartment anything like this one." The older man took a chair for himself, placed the two glasses of sherry on the table. "Well, well," he said. "So you're Michael Haig. The most promising young assassin in a great many years."

"You honor me."

"I merely echo what I've been given to understand. Your reputation precedes you."

"If I have a reputation, I'm sure it's a modest one. But you, sir. You're a legend."

"That union leader was one of yours, wasn't he? Head of the rubber workers or whatever he was? Nice bit of business the way you managed that decoy operation. And then you had to shoot downhill at a moving target. Very interesting the way you put all of that together."

Haig bared his bright white teeth in a smile that gave his otherwise unremarkable face a foxlike cast. "I patterned that piece of work on a job that went down twenty years ago. An Ecuadorian minister of foreign affairs, I think it was."

"Ah."

"One of yours, I think."

"Ah."

"Imitation, I assure you, is definitely the sincerest form of flattery in this case. If I do have a reputation, sir, I owe not a little of it to you."

"How kind of you to say so," Colliard said. His fingers curled around the stem of his glass. "The occasion would seem to call for a toast, but what sort of toast? No point in honoring the memory of those we've put in the ground. They're dead and gone. I never think about them. I've found it's best not to."

"I agree."

"We could drink to reputations and to legends."

"Fine."

"Or we could just drink to the line of work we're in. It's a crazy business, Lord knows, but it has its points."

They raised their glasses and drank.

*******

"When I was young," Colliard was saying, "I drank whiskey on occasion. A highball or two in the evening, say. And I often had a martini before dinner. Not when I was working, of course. I've never had alcohol in any form when I was on a job. But between jobs I'd have spirits now and then. But I stopped that altogether."

"Why was that?"

"I decided that they are damaging. I'm not talking about what they might do to one's liver so much as what they do to one's brain. I think they dull one's edge like a file drawn across a knife blade. Wine's another matter entirely. In moderation, of course."

"Of course."

"But I'm rambling, Michael. You don't want to hear all of this. I've been talking for an hour now."

"And I've been hanging on every word, sir. This is the sort of thing I want to hear."

"You're just taking this all in and filing it all away, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am," Haig admitted. "Everything you can tell me about the way you operate and...and even the way you live, your whole style. If there were fan clubs in our profession I guess I'd be the president of yours."

"You flatter me."

"It's not flattery, sir. And it's not entirely unselfish, believe me." Haig lowered his eyes. He had long lashes, the older man noted, and his hands, one of them now in repose upon the little marble table, were possessed of a certain sensitivity. The fellow had no flair, but then he was young, unfinished. He himself had been relatively undefined at that age.

"I know I can learn from you," Michael Haig went on. "I've already learned a good deal from you, you know. Oh, it's hard to separate hard fact from legend, but I've picked up a lot from what I've heard about your career. Even though we've never met before, what I've known about you has helped form my whole attitude toward our profession."

"Really."

"Yes. Some months ago I had a problem, or at least it seemed like a problem to me. The, uh, the target was a woman."

"The client's wife?"

"Yes. You don't know the case?"

Colliard smiled, shook his head. "It's almost always the client's wife," he said. "But do continue. I gather this was the first time you had a woman for a target?"

"Yes, it was."

"And I gather further that it bothered you?"

Haig frowned at the question. "I think it bothered me," he said. "The idea of it seemed to bother me. I certainly wasn't afraid that I couldn't do it. If you pull a trigger, why should it matter to you what's standing in front of you? But, oh, I had difficulty with self-image, I guess you might say. It's one thing putting the touch to some powerful man who ought to be able to look out for himself and another thing entirely doing the same to a defenseless woman."

"The weaker sex," Colliard murmured.

"But then I asked myself, 'What about Wilson Colliard? How would he feel about a situation like this?' And that straightened me out, because I knew you'd killed women in your career, and I suppose what I told myself was that if it was all right for you to do, well, it was all right for me."

"And you went ahead and fulfilled the assignment."

"Yes."

"With no difficulty?"

"None." Michael Haig smiled, and Colliard felt there was pride in the smile. Proud as a puppy, he thought, and every bit as eager. "I killed her with a knife," he said. "Made it look like a burglary."

"And it felt no different than if she had been a man?"

"No different at all. There was that thrilling moment when I did it, that sensation that's always there, but it was no different from the way it always was."

Then a shadow flickered on the younger's man face, and Colliard, amused, left him wondering for a moment before rescuing him. "Yes," he said, "that little shiver of delight and triumph and something more. It's always there for me, too, Michael. In case you were wondering."

"I was, sir."

"The best people always get a thrill out of it, Michael. We don't do it for the thrill, of course. We do it for the money. But there's a touch of excitement in the act and it would be puerile to deny it. Don't bother worrying about it."

"I don't know that I was worried, exactly. But thank you, sir."

Colliard smiled. Now of whom did this young man remind him? The eagerness, the sincerity-God, the almost painful sincerity. It all held a sense of recognition, but recognition of whom? His own younger self? The son he had never sired? Those were the standard echoes one got, weren't they?

Yet he didn't really think he'd been very much like Michael Haig in his own younger days, not really. Had there been a veteran hand at the game whom he'd idolized? Certainly not. Could he ever, at his most callow, have been capable of playing the role Haig was playing in this conversation? No. God, no.

Nor would he have wanted a son like this youth, or indeed any sort of son at all. Women were a pleasure, certainly, like good food and good wine, like anything beautiful and luxurious and costly. But they were to be enjoyed and discarded. One didn't want to own one, and one surely wouldn't care to breed with them, to produce offspring, to litter the landscape with Xerox copies of oneself.

And yet he could not deny that he was enjoying this afternoon. The younger man's company was refreshing in its way, there was no denying that, and the idolatry he provided was pleasant food for the ego.

And it was not as if he had any pressing engagements.

"So you'd like to hear me talk about...what? My life and times? My distinguished career?"

"I'd like that very much."

"Anecdotes and bits of advice? The perspective gained through years at the top of this crazy business? All that sort of thing?"

"All of that. And anything else you'd care to tell me."

Wilson Colliard considered for a moment, then rose to his feet. "I'm going to smoke a cigar," he announced. I allow myself one or two a day. They're Havanas, not terribly hard to get if you know someone. I acquired a taste for them, oh, it must be twenty years ago. I did a job of work down there, you see. But I suppose you know the story."

"I don't, and I'd love to hear it."

"Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will, Michael. But first may I bring a cigar for you?"

Michael Haig accepted the cigar. Somehow this did not surprise Wilson Colliard in the least.

*******

As the afternoon wore on, Colliard found himself increasingly at ease in the role of reminiscent sage. Never before had he trotted out his memories like this for the entertainment and education of another. Oh, in recent years he had become increasingly inclined to sit at this window and look back over the years, but this had heretofore been a silent and solitary pursuit. It was quite a different matter to be giving voice to one's memories and to have another person on hand, worshipful and attentive, to utter appropriate syllables and draw out one's own recollections. Why, he was telling young Haig things he hadn't even bothered to think about in years, and in so doing he was making mental connections and developing perceptions he'd never had before.

With the cigars extinguished and fresh glasses of sherry poured, Colliard leaned back and said, "Now how far are we with our Assassin's Credo, Michael? Point the first-minimize risk. And point the second-seize the moment, strike while the iron is hot, all those banalities. Is that all we've established so far? It's certainly taken me a great many words to hammer out those two points. You know, I think the third principle is more important than either of them."

"And what is that, sir?"

"Look to your reputation."

"Ah."

"Reputation," Colliard said. "It's all one has going for oneself in this business, Michael. We have no bankable assets, you and I. We have only our reputations. And what reputations we possess are underground matters. We can't hire public relations men or press agents to give us standing. We have to depend wholly upon word of mouth. We must make ourselves known to those who might be inclined to engage our services, and they have to be supremely confident of our skill, our reliability, our discretion."

"Yes."

"We are paid in advance, Michael. Our clients must be able to take it for granted that once a fee has been passed to us the target is as good as dead. And, because the client himself is a party to criminal homicide, he must be assured that whatever fate befalls the assassin, the client will not be publicly involved. Skill, reliability, discretion. Reputation, Michael. It's everything to us."

They were silent for a moment. Wilson Colliard aimed his eyes out the window at the expanse of green far below. But his gaze was not focused on the park. He was looking off into the middle distance, seeing across time. Tentatively Haig said, "I suppose if a man does good work, sooner or later he develops a good reputation."

"Sooner or later."

"You make it sound as though there's a better way to go about it."

"Oh, there is," Colliard agreed. "Sometimes circumstances are such that you can be your own advertising man, your own press agent, your own public relations bureau. Now and then you will find yourself with the opportunity to act with a certain flair that captures the public imagination so dramatically, so vividly, that it will go on to serve as the very cornerstone of your professional reputation for the remainder of your life. When such a chance comes to you, Michael, you have to take hold of it."

"I think-"

"Yes?"

"I think I know the case you mean, sir."

"It's quite possible that you do."

"I was wondering if you would mention it. I almost brought it up myself. I don't know how many times I've heard the story. It's at the very heart of the legend of Wilson Colliard."

"Indeed. 'The Legend of Wilson Colliard.'"

"But you are a legend, sir. And the story-I hope you'll tell me just what did and didn't happen. I've heard several versions and it's hard to know where the truth leaves off."

Colliard smiled indulgently. "Suppose you tell me what you've heard. If I'm to tell you the truth it wouldn't hurt me to know first how the legend goes. If the legend's better than the truth I'd probably be well advised to leave well enough alone."

"Well, from what I've heard, you accepted two assignments at about the same time. A businessman in New Jersey, I believe in Camden-"

"Trenton, actually," Colliard said. "Not that it makes any substantial difference. Neither city has ever been possessed of anything you might be inclined to call charm. Of course, this was some time ago and the urban blight was less pronounced then, but even so, both Trenton and Camden were towns no one ever went to without a good reason. My client manufactured bicycle tires. The business is long gone now, of course. I believe some bicycle manufacturer bought up the firm and absorbed it. My client's name-well, names don't really matter, do they?"

"And he wanted you to murder his wife."

"Indeed he did. Men so often do. If they want their mistresses killed they're apt to perform the deed on their own, but they call a professional when they want an instant divorce."

"And before you could conclude the assignment, a woman hired you to kill her husband."

"It's an interesting thing," Colliard said. "When a woman wants her husband done away with she's very much apt to hire help, but what's odd is she more often than not engages the services of a rank amateur. The newspapers are full of that sort of thing. Typically the woman works it all out with her lover, who's likely to be some rough-diamond type out of a James M. Cain novel. And the paramour knows someone who went to jail once for passing bad checks, and the bad-check artist knows somebody who served time for assault, and ultimately an exceedingly sloppy operation is mounted, and either the woman is swindled out of a couple of thousand dollars by a man who hasn't the slightest intention of killing anybody or else the husband is indeed killed and the police have everybody in custody before the body's had time to go cold. Interesting how often women operate in that fashion."

"Well, after you'd accepted both assignments, and of course you'd been paid in front by both clients-"

"A matter of personal policy."

"-Then you discovered that your two clients were husband and wife, and each had engaged you to murder the other."

"And what did I do?"

"According to what I've heard, the husband hired you first, and so the first thing you did was murder the wife."

Wilson Colliard nodded, smiling gently at a memory. "The husband had to go to Chicago on business. We scheduled the affair for that time. I called him at his hotel there to make very certain that he was indeed out of town. Then I went to his home. He and his wife shared an enormous Victorian pile of a house in the heart of Trenton. It was still a decent neighborhood at the time. By now the old house has probably been partitioned into a half dozen apartments. But that's off the point, isn't it? I went there and did what I was supposed to do. Made it look like a burglary, left some signs of forced entry, overturned dresser drawers and added a few professional flourishes. I killed the bitch with a knife from her very own kitchen. I thought that was a nice touch."

"And of course the police figured it as a burglary."

"Of course they did. A burglary for gain followed by a murder on impulse. There was never the slightest suspicion of my client. He was rid of a wife and home free."

The younger man was breathing more quickly and his face was slightly flushed. "And then," he said.

"Yes?"

"Then you killed him."

"Indeed. Why would I do a thing like that?"

"Because the wife had hired you and once you accepted a fee the target was as good as dead. Of course you didn't have to kill the man. The only person who knew you'd been hired to kill him was the woman who hired you, and she was already dead. You could have kept the fee she paid you and done nothing to earn it and no one would ever have known the difference. But you were true to the ethics of the profession, true to your own personal ethics, and so you killed him all the same."

"I waited almost a month," Colliard said: "I didn't want his death to look like murder, and I didn't even want it to take place in Trenton, so I waited until he made another trip, this time a short one to Philadelphia. I followed him there, stole a car off the street, dogged his footsteps until they led off a curb, and then performed vehicular homicide. He turned in my direction just as the car was about to remove him from this life, and do you know, I can still see the expression on his face. I don't know whether he recognized my face through the windshield or whether he simply recognized that he was about to be struck down and killed. Facial expressions at such times are distressingly ambiguous, you see. Be that as it may, the car did the job and I had no trouble making a clean getaway."

"So it really happened that way," Haig said, eyes shining. "And then your reputation was made. Everyone knew that when Colliard took an assignment the target was a dead man."

"Yes. They all knew."

"So the legend is true."

"The Legend of Wilson Colliard," Colliard intoned. "It is an effective legend, isn't it? And now do you see what I meant when I said a man can see to the growth of his own reputation?"

"I certainly do. But isn't it really just a question of being true to your professional standards and ethics? Oh, I can see how you must have functioned as your own press agent and all that, because you would have had to be the source of the legend. Only the man and the woman knew they'd hired you, and even they didn't know that you were hired by both of them, so the story could never have gotten out if you hadn't done something to spread it in the first place. But as far as what you did, well, that was a matter of behaving professionally."

"Do you think so?" Colliard raised his prominent white eyebrows. "Don't you think it might have been more professional to keep the woman's fee and not kill her husband? After all, she was in the grave and was thus certain to remain silent. The only reason to kill her husband was for publicity purposes. Otherwise Michael, I'd have been better advised to adhere to the first principle of minimizing risk. But by performing the second murder I assured myself of a reputation."

"Of course," Haig said. "You're absolutely right. I should have realized that."

Colliard made a tent of his fingertips. "Ah, Michael," he said, "there's more to it then you could possibly realize. It's interesting that the legend is incomplete. You know, I think this is really one of those rare occasions wherein the truth is more dramatic than the legend."

"How do you mean?"

"This crazy business of ours. Wheels within wheels, complexities underlying complexities. I wonder, Michael, if you have a sufficiently Byzantine mind to distinguish yourself in your chosen profession."

"I don't understand."

"The woman never hired me."

Michael Haig stared.

"Never hired me, never knew of my existence as far as I know. She and I didn't set eyes one upon the other until the night I stuck a carbon-steel Sabatier chef's knife between her ribs. For all I know the poor woman adored her husband and never would have harmed him for the world."

"But-"

"So I killed her and went on my way, Michael, and then about a month later I happened to be in Philadelphia for reasons I can't at the moment recall, not that they matter, and whom did I chance to see emerging from Bookbinder's after a presumably satisfying lunch than the Bicycle Tire King of Trenton. Do you know, the mind is capable of extraordinary quantum leaps. All at once I saw the whole thing plain, saw just the shape the entire legend would take. All I had to do was kill the fool and my place in my profession was assured. It was the sort of thing people would talk about forever, and everything they said could only redound to my benefit. I followed him, I stole a car, and-" he spread his hands "-and the rest is history. Or legend, if you prefer."

"That's...that's incredible."

"I saw an opportunity and I grasped it before it could get away."

"You just killed him for-"

"For the benefit that could not help but accrue to my reputation. Killed him without a fee, you might say, but there's no question but that his death paid me more handsomely in the long run than any murder I ever undertook for immediate gain. Overnight I became the standard of the profession. I stood head and shoulders above the competition as far as potential clients were concerned. I had an edge over men with infinitely more distinguished careers, men who had far more years in the business than I. And what gave me this advantage? An elementary hit-and-run killing of a former client, an act that but for the ensuing publicity would have been pointless beyond belief. Remarkable, isn't it?"

"It's better than the legend," Michael Haig said. There was a film of perspiration on his upper lip and he wiped at it with his forefinger. "Better than the legend. If people knew what you actually did-"

"I think it's ever so much better that they don't, Michael. Oh, if I were to write memoirs for posthumous publication it's the sort of material I'd be inclined to include, but I'm not the sort to write my memoirs, I'm afraid. No, I think I'd rather let the legend go on as it stands. It wouldn't do me much good if my public knew that Wilson Colliard was a man who once killed one of his clients for no reason at all. My reputation has been carefully designed to build a client's confidence and that's the sort of revelation that might have the opposite effect entirely."

"I don't know what to say."

"Then don't say anything at all," Colliard advised. "But let me just pour us each one final tot of sherry."

"I've had quite a bit already."

"It's very light stuff," Colliard said. "One more won't hurt you." And, returning with the filled glasses, he added, "We ought to drink to legends. May the truth never interfere with them."

The younger man took a sip. Then, when he saw his host toss off his drink in a single swallow, he imitated his example and drank off the rest of his own sherry. Wilson Colliard nodded, satisfied with the way things had gone. He could scarcely recall a more pleasant afternoon.

"Minimize your risks," he said. "Seize the moment. And look to your professional reputation."

"The three points of the Assassin's Credo," Haig said.

"Three of the four points."

"Oh?" The younger man grinned in anticipation. "You mean there's a fourth point?"

"Oh, yes." Colliard studied him, paying close attention to his guest's eyes. "A fourth point."

"Are you going to tell me what it is?"

"Squash the competition."

"Oh?"

"When it's convenient," Colliard said. "And when it's useful. There's no point doing anything about the bunglers. But when someone turns up who's talented and resourceful and not without a sense of the dramatic, and when you have the opportunity to wipe him out, why, it's just good business to do so. There are only so many really top jobs available every year, you know, and one doesn't want them spread too thin. Of course when you eliminate a competitor you don't noise it around. That sort of thing's kept secret. But there have been eight times over the years when I've had a chance to put the fourth principle into play."

"And you've seized the opportunity?"

"I could hardly do otherwise, could I?" Colliard smiled. "You're number nine, Michael. That last glass of sherry had poison in it, I'm afraid. You can probably feel the numbness spreading. It already shows in your eyes. No, don't even try to get up. You won't be able to accomplish anything. Don't blame yourself. You were doomed from the start, poor boy. I shouldn't have agreed to see you this afternoon if I hadn't decided to, uh, purge you from the ranks."

The younger man's face was a study in horror. Colliard eyed him equably. Already he was beginning to feel that familiar sensation, the excitement, the thrill.

"You were quite good," he said charitably. "For as long as you lasted you were quite good indeed. Otherwise I'd not have bothered with you. Oh, Michael, it's a crazy business, isn't it? Believe me, lad, you're lucky to be getting out of it."

The End