Midnight Man

CHAPTER THREE

ELMO WIMPLER HAD BEEN frightened of becoming a burglar but he was more frightened of starving to death penniless, unknown, friendless.

He had waited until late night, and then had donned his black uniform. He turned out the lights over his front door, then stepped out into his yard.

He looked down at himself. He could barely see the outline of his feet and legs. He understood that he was slightly visible in silhouette because of the lights reflecting around the street. He would have to remember that he was most effective in pitch darkness.

He cut through backyards, behind houses, once passing only inches from a sleeping German Shepherd who did not stir as Wimpler walked by. With each step, Elmo felt the power growing in him.

He knew what house he would hit. It was in the Park Slope section only a few blocks from his home. He had often walked by the house, a big brick and stucco English Tudor design with a long, black Cadillac parked out front.

Elmo slipped around the back of the house and waited on the darkened porch, trying to calm his nerves and still the thumping of his heart. He might be invisible but his heart was making so much noise he could be heard a block away.

Finally, he tapped lightly on the doorbell and moved off to the side. A few moments later, a young black woman dressed in a maid’s uniform came to the door and looked out.

“Who’s there?” he could hear her ask through the glass.

He held his breath. Finally, she opened the storm door and stepped out on the porch, holding the door open behind her. He slipped through the door as he heard her mutter, “Damn fool kids.”

Inside, he moved quickly into a darkened corner and waited for the maid to come back inside. His heart was racing. Suddenly he was overcome by terror.

What if he was caught?

If the maid turned on a light, he would be as visible as if he had been dressed in neon.

In the future, he would have to plan his jobs more carefully.

But the maid walked by him without turning on a light. She went on and stepped into the living room.

“Who was that, Flo?” a man’s voice asked.

Wimpler moved quietly along the hall, as he heard the maid say, “Just some kids, Mr. Mason.”

“I hope they didn’t wake Mrs. Mason.”

As Wimpler reached the door, he peered in from the shadows. The man was getting up from the sofa. He was fortyish, well-fed, and prosperous looking. “I have to go out, Flora,” the man said. “Don’t wake Mrs. Mason.”

“Yes sir. You’ll be back soon?”

Mr. Mason put his hands around the maid’s rump and pulled her to him. He kissed her heavily on the mouth. “Soon enough,” he said. “Soon enough.”

Flora giggled as Mason walked toward a coat rack near the door. Wimpler slipped quickly upstairs. If they had jewels, they would probably be in the master bedroom.

Only one of the upstairs doors was closed. Waiting outside, Wimpler could hear the sound of soft breathing. He opened the door, stepped inside, and saw a figure on the bed. He caught his breath.

Mrs. Mason slept atop the covers, in the nude. She wasn’t as full-figured as Phyllis, his next door neighbor, but she would do. She was in her thirties and well-kept, with large breasts and long slim legs.

Wimpler found himself starting to get excited, imagining the things he could do to her while she slept. And if she awoke and saw no one in the room, she would probably think she had been dreaming.

Some dream.

Wimpler almost laughed.

But first things first. With an effort, he turned away from the woman and began searching the room. He found what he was looking for in a top drawer of the dresser. A jewelry box was filled with necklaces and bracelets and rings. He took them all and put them in a small, cloth bag he had brought with him. Then he secreted the bag under his invisible clothing.

He turned back to the sleeping, nude form of Mrs. Mason.

But fear overcame his lust. It was time to leave. He reached down and playfully stroked one of Mrs. Mason’s breasts. She smiled in her sleep. Then he whispered in her ear, “Your husband and your maid are making it, dear.”

The smile slid off her face and Wimpler went quickly to the door and went down the stairs.

When he finally got back to his own house, he heaved a sigh of relief. He removed his black night suit and dumped his take out on the bed.

The diamonds sparkled and shone and he let them wash through his fingers as he played with them on the bed. How much, he wondered. Ten thousand? Twenty?

He’d find out tomorrow, when he went to 47th Street in Manhattan to sell them.

As he got off the subway at 47th Street and Avenue of the Americas, he was surprised to realize his heart was pounding again.

What if someone called the police?

He took a deep breath and walked into the first wholesale jeweler he saw.

“May I help you?” a clerk asked. Was that suspicion in the man’s eyes, Wimpler wondered. He almost backed out, but then cleared his throat and said, “I want to… er… sell some jewelry. It was… my mother’s. She’s dead now.”

“May I see it?”

Wimpler dumped the contents of his cloth bag on the counter. He could feel the sweat running in rivulets under his arms.

“Lovely pieces,” the clerk said.

“Mmmmmm,” said Wimpler, afraid to say more because his throat was so dry that he might not be able to get any words out.

The clerk looked at them for interminable seconds.

“I’ll have to call the manager,” he said.

“Why?” Wimpler sputtered out. “What’s…”

“He has to appraise them,” the clerk said with a suspicious smile. As Wimpler watched the man’s retreating back, he knew what was going to happen. In the back room, the clerk was going to pick up a telephone and call the police. Inside of thirty seconds, the store would be surrounded.

Wimpler turned and ran from the store, racing down 47th Street to the subway station and down the steps.

He got off the subway at 42nd Street where he realized that he had left the jewels behind. So much for his burglary career.

He walked the streets. He passed six hot dog venders, eight pizza shops, two McDonalds, a Burger King, Chinese take-out food shops, food stores by the dozen, noticed and counted only because he was starving.

He fished in his pocket. He had fifty cents. In New York, it wasn’t even enough for a sidewalk hot dog. And besides, he wanted to go home. He went down to the subway platform, took the train back to Brooklyn, got off at Atlantic Avenue and walked down to the docks.

His father had always told him that a man should know when to cut his losses. That is what Wimpler had in mind. Life had been a loss for him, a total loss, and now he was going to cut those losses. He stood staring at the filthy water, wondering if he would have the nerve to throw himself in and end his misery. He walked along the dock, trying to build up his nerve, when suddenly he heard voices. For some reason, he darted behind a large packing crate and listened.

“He’s got to be iced, Jack,” he heard one man say. “There’s no way around it. If Romeo testifies, we’re all cooked.”

“Yeah, sure,” the other man said with disgust. “But try to do it with all that freaking federal security around him.”

“If he testifies…”

“Don’t tell me what I know already, Tony. Shit. I offered this hit to everyone in town. Nobody wants to touch it. I think we’re gonna have to put together a squad and go up there and take the whole place out.”

“The man won’t like that, Jack. Too much bad press. A lot of blood, a lot of bodies, a lot of reporters, and a lot of feds.”

“You know another way?”

Suddenly, Elmo Wimpler knew that he was not going to take his own life. Suddenly, he knew that his days as a wimp were over. Suddenly, he felt power. Power over life and death.

He took a deep breath and stepped out into the view of the two men.

“What? the… ?” one yelled.

“Who are you?” the other snarled.

“The answer to your problem,” Wimpler said with confidence and a sureness he had never felt before. “Whoever it is you want iced, I can do it.”

“Wha… ?” said Jack.

“You?” Tony asked, unbelievingly. Elmo knew what they were thinking: that he was a clown. He had been called all those names: clown, nerd, wimp. But he wasn’t. Not any more. What he was now was the best hit man money could hire.

“Don’t let appearances deceive you,” he said. “I can do what you want done.”

The two men looked at each other. Tony shrugged.

“What’ve we got to lose, Jack?” he finally said.

Jack sighed, then nodded. He looked at Wimpler. “How much?”

Elmo cleared his throat. He hadn’t thought about money.

“Would a thousand dollars be too much?” he asked.

“You do the job, you get ten thousand dollars,” Jack said.

“This person will be dead tomorrow night,” Wimpler said. “Tell me who he is and where he is.”

They told him. He was a big-time gangster, now a federal witness, testifying to save his own skin. He was being hidden out on a large, private estate in Westchester County, surrounded by cops, FBI agents, and who knew what else.

“Be here tomorrow night. Two A.M.,” Wimpler said. “And bring the money.”

“All right,” said Jack.

“I need an advance,” said Wimpler.

“How much?” Jack asked, reaching into his pocket.

All Wimpler could think of was a steak dinner. He decided to think big. “Twenty dollars,” he said.

Jack leafed through the hundred dollar bills in his roll until he found a lone twenty and handed it over.

“Thank you. Tomorrow night. Two A.M.,” Wimpler said.

“Sure, pal,” Jack said. Elmo turned and walked away. He stopped at the first cheap steak place he saw, ordered two steak dinners and devoured them both. With his change, he took a cab home.

He hurried to his garage. He had his first contract but how would he carry it out? What would he use to kill his victim?

He searched through his garage, overturning useless inventions until he found the item he wanted.

Wimpler had worked it out as a revolutionary new nutcracker, but it hadn’t sold. It was a small hand-held compressor. After fitting it with a long slide arm that would allow it to hold something bigger than walnuts, Elmo tried it out on an old bowling ball in the garage. The compressor’s arms reached around the ball, and when he pressed the trigger, the two arms closed together with a hiss. The bowling ball broke up into hundreds of pieces that fell to the floor.

Done. All he would have to do would be to spray paint it, and the invisible man would have his invisible weapon.

And then he went to sleep. The first good night’s sleep he had had in months.

The next morning, he cleaned the black paint from the windshield and windows of his old car parked in the garage. Then he quickly painted over the invisible, black paint with a light-blue, spray enamel, letting the paint run in drippy, gooey masses, not caring how the paint job looked, but just wanting to make the car visible again, presentable for riding around the street.

Then he drove up to White Plains and rode past the large estate where the federal witness was being held. In the gathering dusk, he could see guards stationed near the door of the house and lounging about on the lawn.

But for some reason, he was no longer afraid.

Wimpler drove around for a while and when it was fully dark, he parked about a half-mile from the estate. Inside the auto, he changed into his invisible clothing, treated with what he now didn’t mind calling WIMP—Wimpler’s Invisible Metallic Paint.

The edge of the road was lined with trees and Elmo walked behind the trees in the dark, toward the estate.

He moved through the shadows toward the house. Once he passed within two feet of a guard who was looking right at him but didn’t see him. Wimpler was tempted to play games, to tap one on the shoulder or to whisper in one’s ear, but he decided to stick to business.

It was all business. There was no panic, no fear. Just a cold sense that this was what he had been put on earth to do. To kill.

He entered the house through a side French door. Two men were in the darkness of the room, but they did not see him.

“The door’s open,” one said.

“Must have been the wind,” the other said, and got up to close the door.

Wimpler scouted through the house, hiding in shadows, listening to conversations. The police, it seemed, liked the federal witness no better than the mob did. Everybody seemed to wish someone would just blow him away and save everybody a lot of trouble.

Elmo Wimpler was going to save them a lot of trouble.

He found his victim in an upstairs bedroom, sitting in a chair, watching television in the darkened room. Anybody who watched reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” deserved to die, Elmo thought.

He quietly walked up behind the man, opened up the arms of his compressor device, quickly clapped it to both sides of the man’s head, and before the man could move, depressed the trigger.

There was a sharp hiss, the crack of bones, and a man with a head in pieces.

Wimpler went out through a window and climbed carefully down a trellis to the dark side of the house. Without looking back, he cut across the field, passing near guards, heading for his car parked down the street. He had to resist the urge to shout exultantly. He had done it. He had done it.

He did not change from his WIMP invisible outfit, but merely took off the hood for his drive back to Brooklyn.

He reached the docks early, but so had Jack and Tony, and standing in the shadows, Wimpler heard their conversation.

“The guy did it, Tony. He did it. I heard it on the radio.”

“It’s too bad we have to ice him, Jack. He’s got style.”

“I know. But if the man found out we farmed this out to an amateur… forget it, baby.”

Elmo watched as each checked his gun, then slid it back into its shoulder holster.

“You gentlemen are not very honest,” he said.

Jack’s head snapped around. He looked questioningly into the dark, seeing nothing.

“Who said that?” Tony demanded.

“I did,” Wimpler said. As Tony reached for his gun, Wimpler slid the invisible compressor over the man’s head. A moment later, Tony was dead.

Jack threw up on what was left of his body.

“You can’t see me, Jack, but I can see you,” Wimpler said.

“What do you want?” Jack gasped.

“My money, Jack. That’s what I want.”

“Ten grand.”

“Make it twenty for my extra trouble. Go and get it. And bring it here. And if you try anything funny, you’ll join your friend.”

Pale and shaking, Jack nodded. Wimpler watched him walk to his car, talking to himself. He knew the man would be back.

He was, in less than half an hour, holding twenty thousand dollars in cash in his hand. He saw it plucked from his hand, hanging in the air, seemingly of its own power. But before he had a chance to marvel too long, he joined his friend Tony in death.

As he left the dock on Atlantic Avenue, Wimpler thought that not only were Jack and Tony dead. There was another body back on that dock too.

The Wimp was dead.