7
BERNARD POMEROY LOOKED himself over in the rearview mirror. His skin was dry and itchy along the side of his nose and flaking where he had shaved that morning. He dabbed on moisturizing cream and rubbed it in carefully, then worked a little drop of cream over each eye. He took out his pocket comb and smoothed his eyebrows. Hard to believe it was only an hour ago that he’d parted company with Mr. Ackroyd. He had made a quick decision, but if you hesitated you were lost in this business. And there’d been no question that the old man’s mind was made up. He wasn’t going to move unless he was pushed.
Pomeroy’s face was blemish free, the flesh almost translucent, his nose small and straight. Overall his appearance was perfectly bland. A woman had told him that once. She had said that he looked like someone out of a composite drawing by a police artist, facial features copied from a book of common noses and eyebrows and ears.
Actually, it had been a fairly clever thing to say, under the distressing circumstances. Since then he had realized that a bland man is very nearly an invisible man, and the idea didn’t bother him at all. Through the windshield he could just see the creek through the trees. Bushes on the hillsides jerked and shuddered in the wind. That was what screwed up his skin—this damned wind dried everything out. He put the vial away and began fastidiously to brush his hair back. Then he opened the leeward window of the car, took a travel-sized bottle of hair spray out of his toiletries kit, and sprayed his hair until it was stiff. He checked his smile in the mirror, hauled a container of mint-flavored string out of the kit and flossed his teeth, then threw the used floss out the open window.
One thing he had learned selling cars was that people naturally liked a well-groomed man. It sounded superficial, but that didn’t make a bit of difference. Grooming was essential to success. People understood it to be a sign of quality. He had business cards that read, “Quality, an American way of life.” One of his other cards displayed a fish symbol along with chapter and verse numbers from the Bible. He could scope a customer out in half a second and give them the right card nearly every time.
Another thing he knew from selling cars is that you don’t let up on people. You don’t take no for an answer. If there’s any hesitation, you’ve got to tell them what they want. He had miscalculated with old Ackroyd, though, when he talked to him this morning. He knew the man was a Christian—he had learned that much from Klein—but the fish card hadn’t worked on him. It had only seemed to irritate him. Pomeroy had read him for a tough nut right then and there. Nothing that couldn’t be cracked, though, if you knew where to squeeze.
He opened the door, stepped out into the weeds of the little turnout, and locked up the rented Thunderbird. Then he opened the trunk and pulled out a white plastic garbage bag. Carrying the bag, he set out up the road, dressed in a pair of Jordache jeans and Reebok tennis shoes and with a cashmere sweater draped casually over his shoulders. He cocked his head as he walked so that the wind kept his hair pressed flat.
Ten feet from the car, the wind abruptly yanked the sweater off his shoulders and threw it onto the dirt road. Pomeroy grabbed at it with his free hand, but the wind was quicker, and the sweater cartwheeled backward into the side of the Thunderbird, crucifying itself momentarily against the red paint of the fender. Dropping his trash bag onto the side of the road, he lunged after the sweater just as the wind snatched it up again and dragged it under the chassis, trapping a sleeve beneath a tire.
He tried to yank the sweater loose, but the sleeve wedged itself tighter, and he had to get down onto his hands and knees to wiggle it out. He stood up, shaking dirt out of the sweater and dusting off the knees of his jeans. There was a dirty oil smear across the chest of the sweater. He’d have to get the damned thing cleaned now. Trying to pull himself together again, he reopened the trunk, dropped the sweater in, and then checked his hair in the window reflection. Not a strand had moved. He looked professional
A partly decomposed rat had fallen out of the open trash bag on the road. Pomeroy found a piece of stick and shoved the thing back inside, where there were two other rats, more recently dead. They stank like hell in the hot plastic bag. Pomeroy hated to touch it, but the morning was wearing on. There would be people around soon.
The old man wasn’t home—Pomeroy had seen him leave, driving into town for his weekend grocery run. He glanced around quickly, making double sure that there was no car beside the house, nobody walking along the road, and then he walked to the rear door, where he wouldn’t be easily seen. For safety’s sake he knocked before he tried the knob. There was no answer, and the door was dead-bolted tight. The windows were latched, too. It would be easy enough to break one, climb in, and just tear the place up, but then Ackroyd would know that someone had been screwing around there, and that might blow the whole deal. Pomeroy would save that for later, if it was necessary. Breaking and entering wasn’t in the cards today. And anyway, Klein would have a coronary over it.
Pomeroy laughed out loud. Klein was a high-blood-pressure type. His face got red like a sunburn when he was mad. Telling him about this morning might just be the last straw for him. His circuits would fry and he’d drop dead.
The water tank was up on the hill behind the house, mostly hidden from below. He hiked up toward it, carrying the bag of dead rats along a little overgrown trail slippery with loose rock. The rats stank to high heaven, and the smell nearly made him sick. He looked behind him down the steep hillside, and right then a Siamese cat darted across the yard below. It stopped outside the back door of the house and sat staring into the trees, then started to wipe its face with a paw.
Pomeroy hesitated, struck with his second brilliant idea that morning.