Night Gallery 2 Read online

  Rod Serling's

  Night Gallery 2

  Collector's Items

  Augie Kolodney sat in a corner booth of Schirrappa's Italian Gardens, obliquely lined up with the window so as not to be targeted from the street. Even as he attacked the manicotti, the rigatoni with meat balls, and the linguine with clam sauce, he would occasionally lift his drooping frog eyes to stare across the empty room toward the front door. Intermittently he would drop either his spoon, fork, or chunk of bread and touch the bulge of his shoulder holster, feeling its uncomfortable comfort. Augie Kolodney worshiped two patron saints. One was pasta; the other was the blue-steeled, snub-nosed little revolver that he wore, as if grafted to him, night and day.

  The sad-faced waiter watched him through the window of the kitchen door and listened to the noises. Augie's dining had a symphony of its own. There were the smacking, wet sounds of his big lips accompanied by the timpani noises of silverware; then the basso profundo of sporadic belching followed by extraneous stomach grunts and rumbles. There was a brief silence, then the gurgling sound of wine, and then there was quiet.

  Augie leaned back, picked his teeth with a thumbnail, belched, dabbed ineffectually at a greasy stain on his lapel, then stared at the door again. It was after a dinner that a hit would come, if indeed a hit were planned. The victim must be comfortable, slowed down by food, dulled by wine; the cutting edge of wariness blunted. But fat Augie, conditioned by fifty-one years of gluttony and by an even dozen attempts to violently take him off the earth, had an almost computerized awareness of his own vulnerability. Two hundred and eighty-six fleshy pounds, most of it horizontal—a broken-arched, flat-footed, snail slowness that made him a sitting duck even when he was moving. And sitting there, gorged and distended, he knew his worst vulnerability. He had enemies. An army of enemies. For every commodity he dealt in—drugs, numbers, women—there was a throat-cutting competitor, wily, dangerous, and dedicated to turning Augie Kolodney into dog meat.

  Cued by the silence, the waiter came in from the kitchen and took soft, diffident steps over to Augie's booth. He noted the finger of wine remaining in the bottle on the table, picked it up, and poured it into Augie's glass.

  Augie looked briefly and disinterestedly at the waiter's face, then watched him as he put the bottle down. The waiter's hands were shaking.

  As he started to turn away, Augie pointed a finger at him.

  "You," Augie said.

  The waiter froze.

  "You got a name?"

  The waiter cleared his throat. "Sir?"

  "I asked you if you got a name."

  There were little droplets of sweat on the waiter's forehead. He nodded.

  Augie sipped at the remainder of wine. "What do I have to do to learn it—get up a petition?"

  The waiter swallowed and blinked at him. "Blockman, sir. My name is Blockman."

  Augie's bland, moon face seemed reposed, but his hard-nugget eyes darted left and right and up and down. "Blockman," he said, nodding. "Mr. Blockman. Now, lemme ask you another question, Mr. Blockman . . ." He pointed to his wine glass. "You keep filling this like it was water. Why?"

  Again the waiter blinked at him. "Why?" he repeated.

  "Why."

  "It's . . . it's the house wine, sir."

  Again Augie picked at his teeth. "That's an answer, Mr. Blockman. Not a good answer—but an answer." He looked around the silent, empty room. "You always this busy?"

  The waiter made a funny, wheezing sound from deep in his throat. "Sir?"

  "Are you always this busy, Mr. Blockman?" Augie's voice exploded into the silence.

  The waiter winced. "Yes, sir. I mean . . . it's a little slow tonight."

  Augie swallowed the last sip of wine. "It's a little slow tonight," he repeated, mimicking Blockman's soft, strained voice. Then he looked around the room again, letting his eyes rest on the small, three-stooled bar. "One empty bar," Augie said, "eighteen empty tables, two empty johns, and an empty kitchen." He turned toward Blockman. "And that's what you call 'a little slow'? What's it like when it's really slow?"

  "I wouldn't know, sir," Blockman answered. "I'm new here."

  Augie nodded. "You wouldn't know, Mr. Blockman. So we'll just have to go along with that. Mr. Blockman doesn't know." He pointed to the bar. "Where's Schirrappa?"

  "Home, sick."

  "Home, sick," Augie repeated as he narrowed his eyes and once again let them traverse the room. It wasn't registering right. It wasn't adding up. Augie could sense trouble, the way his nostrils could smell out fettuccine. He looked up at the waiter. "I'll tell you what I want you to do for me, Mr. Blockman. I want you to walk out the front door and check out a black car at the curb. Come back here and tell me who's in it and what the license number is."

  Blockman took a little side step, as if getting ready to run; and his fluttering, nervous hands yanked at his coat.

  "You want me to shout that out for you, Mr. Blockman?" Augie asked, raising his voice.

  "No, sir," Blockman responded. He turned and moved across the room to the door, opened it, and went outside.

  Augie reached under his coat, pulled the gun two inches from the holster, and with surprisingly deft hands for a fat man, quickly and surely released the safety catch.

  Blockman came back in through the door, his thin, sallow face colored by the raw night wind. "Two men in the front seat," he said.

  "Doing what?"

  "Doing what?" Blockman parroted the words dully.

  "You know something, Mr. Blockman," Augie said, resting his elbows on the table, "if you ever have to leave the restaurant business, you could always sign up as an echo at the Grand Canyon." One hand smoothed out the lapel on his gun side. "I asked you what they were doing. The two guys in the car. Sleeping, talking, playing cards—what?"

  "Just . . . just sitting there, sir."

  "The license number of the car."

  The waiter half-closed his eyes. "I . . . I couldn't see it, sir. Too dark. The last three numbers were 004, I think."

  Augie nodded, satisfied. "That's close enough." He studied the waiter's face. "You got kids, Mr. Blockman?"

  For the first time Blockman smiled. "Yes, sir. I got a boy who's twelve and I got a girl who's—"

  "Don't run it down for me, Mr. Blockman. I'm not taking a census. I just asked you if you had any."

  Blockman looked miserable and sounded apologetic. "I got two, sir."

  Augie looked disgusted. "Chips off the old Blockman." He reached into his pocket, took out a wad of bills, and peeled off two fives, handing them to the waiter. "Give 'em these," Augie said disdainfully, "with my compliments. Tell 'em it's compensation for having to get a dummy for a father!"

  The waiter looked down at the bills and swallowed. "Thanks very much, Mr. Kolodney." He turned and started to walk toward the bar.

  Alarm bell inside Augie Kolodney's mind. Not only weren't the numbers adding up—they were going "tilt."

  Blockman saw Augie's reflection in the mirror over the bar. He had risen from the booth and was standing there.

  "You . . . you want some dessert?" Blockman asked, turning to him, his face a death-white, the perspiration now rolling down his cheeks in rivulets.

  Augie had a hand under his coat. "No, Mr. Blockman," he said in a very still voice. "I don't want any dessert. I don't want any more wine. I don't want any more manicotti or meat balls or clam sauce or anything else. I just want to find out something from you."

  Blockman's mouth tried to form a smile, the corners arched upward, but failed. And he looked like a small boy beginning to cry. His voice was full of a sick, despairing fear. "What . . . what do you want to know?"

  "I want to know how you knew my name," Augie said.

  "Your name? Why . . .
why I recognized you." Augie left the booth and walked over to him, suddenly lashing out with a beefy right hand that lifted the waiter off his feet. "Now, Mr. Blockman," he said through his teeth, "don't get cute with me. You've never seen me before, and I've never seen you, and a half-hour ago I heard you tell a couple at the door that the kitchen was closed." He gave a sharp yank at the waiter's tie, loosened his grip, but held on to him. "And you know what that adds up to in my book, Mr. Blockman? It adds up this way. Somebody told you to keep me here—keep filling my plate and my glass—and see that the place was empty. Now, what I want to know is—who told you to do it, and why? I'll give you fifteen seconds to come up with the information. And then I'm gonna shred you like ravioli."

  Blockman swallowed and gasped. "Honest . . . honest, Mr. Kolodney . . . I don't know who you are. I don't know nothin' about anything. I swear! I just—"

  Augie heard the kitchen door squeak thinly, the explosion of a gun, then two dull thuds that Augie could feel plowing into the back of Blockman, first causing a spasmodic jerk, then leaving him inert, slumping into Augie's arms.

  Augie let Blockman's weight propel him backward, giving him time to take out his gun. He fired twice toward the kitchen door. One bullet richocheted against a metal hinge. It went screaming around the room, hitting ceiling, walls, and finally smashing into the bar mirror. The next bullet went through a circular kitchen door window, and the face behind it burst into an unrecognizable red mask.

  Augie didn't wait for whoever was left to make the next move. He shoved Blockman's body off to one side, then ran across the room, tucking his head down, then dove through the plate-glass window. He felt first the red-hot agony of his arm being ripped open, then the shocking jolt of his head hitting the sidewalk. But even then he forced his heavy body to continue its momentum. On hands and knees and then on his feet, he lurched and stumbled like a hippo out of breath, each truncated wheeze a plea for air. At the next intersection he spotted a taxi and ran toward it, arms waving wildly in the air. The cab swerved and screeched to a stop. The driver took one look at the bleeding, sweating fat man advancing on him and would have continued on if Augie had not taken the roll of bills out of his pocket and started waving the green paper in the air.

  Augie flung himself into the back seat, panting and dead to the world.

  "Where to?" the driver asked, looking into the rear-view mirror.

  Augie threw a fifty-dollar bill onto the front seat. "Head north," he commanded, "and keep going till I tell you to stop."

  The driver took one look at the fifty, then stepped on the gas.

  Moments later, in the cold clarity of aftershock, it all started to add up in Augie's mind. His black limo with Angelo and Carmine had left the curb. Conclusion: Angelo and Carmine had been paid off. Then other people got into the act. His girl, Molly, had pleaded a headache and begged off accompanying him to dinner. Frank Digby, his lawyer, had canceled their appointment for cocktails.

  He leaned back in the seat and for the first time was able to reconstruct everything that had happened. And then the fear came. It flooded into him and through him and washed his inner jeopardy-warning computer off its base along with all of his other strengths and will and resolve. With it came an awareness that each time he'd been set up as the pigeon, the call had gotten closer; the odds had shortened for his survival. But for the semiparalyzed scarecrow of a waiter, he would now be back inside that restaurant, face first in a plate of spaghetti with a couple of holes in his back.

  When the cab reached his apartment on Sixty-fourth Street, Augie Kolodney stepped out into an entire world that was Death Row. He was doomed, and he knew it. Any wall he built could be breached; any underling he could hire could be bought off; and any woman, no matter a daily legacy of diamonds and currency, could be seduced away. Everything, Augie realized, everything had a price tag.

  He walked past the doorman of his apartment, who looked at him with shock, and continued through the lobby to the elevator. He was hazily aware of soft indirect lights and Muzak; thick, heavy-piled carpet underfoot; and the almost noiseless hum of the paneled elevator as it ascended. Then the thought came back to him. It could happen at any moment and in any place.

  The elevator reached his floor, the doors slid soundlessly open. Augie stood in the corner for a moment, his body ice cold, wondering if the someone, the anyone, were waiting to puncture his body with the red-hot tacks of a machine gun. But there was silence.

  Augie stepped warily out of the elevator and headed toward his apartment door. It occurred to him then that he had left his keys with Molly. He rang the bell and could hear the chimes roll melodiously through the room on the other side of the door.

  There were footsteps. The door opened. The six-inch width of a night-latch chain, and Molly's face appeared, first impatient, then pale. "Augie," she whispered.

  "Yeah, it's Augie. And now we're gonna have a contest. We'll see how fast it'll take this door to buckle if I kick at it long enough."

  She hurriedly removed the night latch as he bulled his way through, slamming the door behind him. She looked at his blood-caked right arm and the furrowed bruise on the side of his face near the temple.

  "You're lookin', Molly," he said. "What do you see?"

  "You . . . you've been hurt, Augie—"

  He moved past her down into the sunken living room. "I got slowed down, Molly . . . but I didn't get stopped." He turned to her. "So I'll ask you, Molly. I'm not in the wrong place, am I? It is Molly Mitchell, isn't it?"

  She had big, luminous green eyes, and they stared at him, childlike. "What's the gag, Augie?"

  "I'll give you the build-up—you give me the punch line. I asked you to have dinner with me tonight. You told me you had a headache. You wanted to get to bed early."

  "That's true, Augie," she began.

  He cut her off. "I don't think so. You know what I think, Molly? I think there was a contract on me tonight, and I think you were part of it."

  He waited for a denial, a tearful protest, a last-ditch defense, some slender straw to be plucked out of the rubble. But the girl just stood there, staring at him. Molly Mitchell, age twenty-eight. She was of a breed of preordained losers. From age sixteen to the present, a beautifully put-together punching bag for all the Johns on the East Coast—to be used and misused in bars, on yachts, and in fancy apartments; a decorative piece with a short life span. Like a good fighter, or a center fielder, she went over the hill after the briefest of spans. From luxury to limbo—that was the breed. The first fleshy crease around the thighs, the first little crow's-feet under the eyes—and obsolescence set in. Too old to swing and too young for a nunnery—so limbo it was. It was as if she realized this, facing the squat, ugly, frog-faced man in front of her whose bloodstained right fist clenched and unclenched.

  He waited, and still she didn't answer, still she didn't say anything. "I go to Schirrappa's tonight," Augie finally said. "It's empty. Tuesday night, nine o'clock, and it's empty. Just one skinny waiter—so scared, he's unglued. Somebody paid him off to keep the place empty. And you know what else, Molly? My two trusted, loyal, high-paid bodyguards—supposed to wait for me in a car out front, to keep their eyes open—they took off like it was a federal law to be off the streets after sundown. Or it's Indianapolis and somebody waved the flag."

  Molly looked up and pointed to his arm. "How bad off are you? . . ."

  "Forget it," he said to her through his teeth. "That's gonna cure a helluva lot faster than my feelings. Not only did I get fingered at the other end of a hit—Molly, my darling—but a whole lot of people were in the act. Two bodyguards, a couple of business associates, a restaurant owner"—he moved across the room, up the two steps to the foyer, and grabbed her roughly—"and a Kewpie-doll-faced chick who sells both sides of the street and who gets headaches only when it's convenient."

  She put her head back as if awaiting a blow. No fear—just a sad, quiet resignation. Had she struggled, had she cried, Augie would have torn her head off
. But that dead, defeated look on her face somehow punctured his anger.

  "What are you going to do, Augie?" she asked him.

  He shook his head back and forth. "Nothing. I'm not gonna do anything."

  He released her and moved back down into the living room, then took a cigaret out of an ornate onyx box. When he looked up, she was standing alongside with a lit match. He put his cigaret to the flame, then blew it out.

  "You get off cheap, love," he said to her. "That's the last thing you have to do for me. Now, go into the bedroom, pack a bag, and try Pennsylvania, Texas, or the Caribbean. But pick a place outside of walking distance from here."

  She stared at him as if uncomprehending. "You're giving me the boot?"

  Augie sat down; his voice was softer. "I'm giving you about one-fiftieth of what you deserve—and for this you should light a candle. Now, get the hell out of here, Molly."

  She stood there indecisively. "Augie," she began, "it wasn't my idea."

  His smile was grim. "That's for damned sure. You don't have any ideas that go past a shopping list."

  "What about . . . what about another chance?'

  "For what? Next time I'm eating oysters on Second Avenue—somebody gets me with a fish hook." He shook his head. "No, baby—all you have to do is tell whoever was in on this that I'm alive, well, and I got my head on."

  He watched her turn and move into the bedroom, feeling an incredible sadness. She was a beautiful redheaded doll, one of the few women who seemed to ignore his ugliness, his squat animal fat, the ungainly, perpetually sweating torso that no expensive cloth could really cover. He shook his head as if dispelling an image, rose, and went to a phone, then dialed a number. A voice answered at the other end.

  "Tony," Augie said, trying to keep his voice level and in an undertone, "this is Augie. One question—one answer. And make it quick and believable. I got hit tonight. I want to know if you were in on it."

  The voice at the other end exploded into decibel counts of protestations of undying devotion, brotherly love, and perpetual loyalty. The words were like the lapping of a pet's tongue, and even as he heard them, Augie knew that from this second on he could trust no one—not even the slavish and obsequious Tony.