A man’s voice, that one. He walked to the cold bin door and put his face to the one-inch opening. When they came into view he stiffened. She was with a man, a young man. He had a gun in one hand. She went into his arms and he kissed her hard.
Vicki, he thought! God!
They were coming back now. He moved away, moved back into the cold bin, waiting. The door opened and the man was pointing a gun at him and he shivered. The pain came, like a sword, and he was shaking. Vicki mistook it for fear and grinned at him.
She said, “Wait, Jay.”
The gun was still pointing at him. Vicki had her hand on the man’s arm. She was smiling. Evil, Brad thought. Evil.
“Don’t shoot him,” she was saying. “It was a lousy idea anyway. Killed in a robbery—who the hell robs a butcher shop? You know how much dough he takes in during a day? Next to nothing.”
“You got a better way, Vicki?”
“Yes,” she said. “A much better way.”
And she was pulling Jay back, leading him away from the door. And then she was kicking the wooden wedge aside, and laughing, and shutting the door. He heard her laughter, and he heard the terribly final sound the door made when it clicked shut, and then he did not hear anything at all. They were leaving the shop, undoubtedly making all sorts of sounds. The cold bin was soundproof. He heard nothing.
He took a deep, deep breath, and the pain in his chest knocked him to his knees.
You should have waited, he thought. One more minute, Vicki, and I could have done it myself. Your hands would be clean, Vicki. I could have died happy, Vicki. I could have died not knowing.
You’re a bitch, Vicki.
Now lie down, he told himself. Now go to sleep, just the way you planned it yourself. Nothing’s different. And you can’t get out, because you planned it this way. You’re through.
Double indemnity. The bitch was going to collect double indemnity!
No, he thought. No.
It took him fifteen minutes to think of it. He had to find a way, and it wasn’t easy. If they thought about murder they would have her, of course. She’d left prints all over the cold-bin door. But they would not be looking for prints, not the way things stood. They’d call it an accident and that would be that. Which was the trouble with setting things up so perfectly.
He could make it look like suicide. That might cheat her out of the insurance. He could slash his wrists or something, or—
No.
He could cheat her out of more than the insurance.
It took awhile, but he worked it out neatly. First he scooped up his cigarette butt and stuck it in his pants pocket. Then he scattered the ashes around. Step one.
Next he walked to the rear of the cold bin and took a meat cleaver from the peg on the wall. He set the cleaver on top of a hanging side of beef, gave the meat a push. The cleaver toppled over and plummeted to the floor. It landed on the handle and bounced.
He tried again with another slab of meat. He tried time after time, until he found the piece that was just the right distance from the floor and found just the spot to set the cleaver. When he nudged the meat, the cleaver came down, turned over once, and landed blade-down in the floor.
He tried it four times to make sure it would work. It never missed. Then he picked the cleaver from the floor, wiped his prints from the blade and handle with his apron, and placed the cleaver in position on top of the hunk of meat. It was a leg of lamb, the meat blood-red, the fat sickly white. He sat down on the floor, then stretched out on his back looking up at the leg of lamb. Good meat, he thought. Prime.
He smiled, tensed with pain from his chest and stomach, relaxed and smiled again. Not quite like going to sleep this way, he thought. Not painless, like freezing. But faster.
He lifted a leg, touched his foot to the leg of lamb. He gave it a gentle little push, and the cleaver sliced through the air and found his throat.
HATE GOES COURTING
I SHOULD HAVE FIGURED IT the second day. By that time you have to see it unless you shut your eyes, and if you shut your eyes you just