Hunter/Victim Read online

  Hunter/Victim

  Robert Sheckley

  To my children

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  I would like to thank these people for their assistance:

  Norman Schwarz of the Hotel Norman, Miami Beach, Florida

  Agustin “Augie” Enriquez of Combat Corner in Portland, Oregon

  Sergeant Ed Kirsch of Beaverton, Oregon

  With special thanks to N. Lee Wood

  PART ONE

  THE MAKING OF A HUNTER

  1

  Frank Blackwell and his wife, Claire, spent most of the last day of their Paris trip in the hotel room having one of those interminable arguments in which neither side remembers exactly what the subject of discussion is any longer, but each knows that the other is deeply wrong and should be made to understand that.

  The argument had reached the stage of long silences, with Blackwell shaking his head frequently, as though commenting to an invisible audience on the strange intractability of women, and Claire, for her part, stared into the middle distance in the manner of heroines from all times and ages.

  Outside the curtained windows, Paris stewed in its miasma of self-congratulation and diesel fumes.

  “And what about yesterday, in the Metro?” Claire said, suddenly remembering why she was angry at Frank.

  “The Metro? What about the Metro?” Blackwell said.

  “The girl you gave your seat to. That tart with the black stockings and those big boobs you couldn’t keep your eyes off of. That girl.”

  “Oh, that one,” Blackwell said. “But what was wrong with my giving her my seat?”

  “The Metro wasn’t even crowded!” Claire cried. “She could have sat anywhere in the goddam car!”

  “She just didn’t seem to realize that,” Blackwell said. “She struck me as very naive.”

  “Naive! Oh, you bastard!” Claire said.

  She stared at him with loathing.

  He stared back with incomprehension.

  And the funny thing was, neither of them liked to fight. Both felt that one of the worst things about their relationship was the way the other always insisted on quarreling.

  Like many couples, they had a regular anthology of unpleasant topics, and one invariably led to another.

  Nonetheless, they were very much in love.

  Blackwell was a man of medium height with moments of tallness. Straight, mouse-brown hair. Receding hairline. Steel-rimmed glasses through which glinted the mild hazel eyes of the intelligent myopic.

  Claire was a good-looking chunky blonde of the Greenwich Village waitress variety with a taste for Turner’s watercolors and foreign films, as long as they weren’t dubbed. She was a loving woman with a lot of class, which she showed now by saying, contrary to expectation, “Oh, Frank, this really is silly, isn’t it? What do you say we put this argument on hold and go down and get some lunch?”

  Their Paris trip had not been entirely a success.

  First of all, it had rained steadily for the first three days.

  Second, Claire had gotten an upset stomach from the rich and unfamiliar cuisine. That took care of days four and five.

  Then Frank’s traveler’s checks were stolen from his jacket pocket, probably while negotiating the crowds between Montparnasse and St.-Germain. Luckily he had recorded their numbers. But he still had to waste the better part of a day getting a refund. Now Claire carried the money and their passports in the leather shoulder bag that she never released her grip on.

  Their hotel, Le Cygne, was a quaint little place just a few streets from Notre Dame. It was charming in that rundown ratty way the French have perfected. You entered a small lobby lit by fifteen-watt light bulbs. The concierge, a bulky woman dressed in black bombazine, had her own quarters just off the lobby. Her door was always open, so that she could watch everybody coming and going and gossip about them to the neighbors or the police. After identifying you, she gave you your key, which was attached to a large rubber ball by a brass fixture to prevent you from slipping it into your pocket and walking off with it. Key in hand, you turned left and went up a curving staircase, pitched at a perilous angle, to your room, probably on the fifth floor. Once inside, by walking across the quaintly tilted floor and opening the tall white-curtained french windows, you could look out over the rooftops of Paris. And that moment, unduplicated anywhere else in the world, made it all worthwhile.

  Frank and Claire now descended the shaky stairs and returned their keys to Madame. Frank had already paid the bill. Their suitcases were safely locked away in a storage room until it was time to put them into a taxi and go to the airport. There remained just enough time for lunch and a final drink in their favorite little outdoor café just around the corner.

  Their café, Le Sélect, occupied one side of a little cobblestoned square surrounded by buildings of five or six stories. It was an oasis of tranquillity hidden away from the rush and clamor of the city. There were about a dozen tables, most of them occupied by other tourists who had also heard about the charms of this secret little place. The headwaiter in black tuxedo and small waxed mustache was able to seat them at once. After enjoying a white wine whose modesty was well deserved, they ordered the prix-fixe lunch: salad, steak, pommes frites, and pâté, the immemorial repast of the Gallic people. And just to make it perfect, a strolling accordionist in a striped shirt played the sort of minor-keyed lament that keeps French popular music a local phenomenon.

  Frank Blackwell felt peace pervade his soul. He was experiencing a sensation of connection with an ancient, more gracious world.

  He took Claire’s hand. “Honey,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m not absolutely sure what I did wrong, but I’m really sorry I hurt you.”

  Claire’s smile could still move him. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know what gets into me.”

  They heard music coming faintly from the street beyond their cobblestoned square. It grew louder, the sound of guitars and mandolins and singing voices. Then the musicians came into the restaurant courtyard. There were four of them. They were dressed in medieval costumes of hose and puffed trousers and long cloaks. They were singing what Blackwell took to be an old ballad. They were young men, sallow-skinned and bearded, not particularly musical.

  “Who are those guys?” Claire asked.

  “Students, probably,” Blackwell said, knowledgeable from his previous visits to the City of Light. “They sing in cafés and people give them change.”

  “What language are they singing in?”

  Blackwell didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t English or French or German. He knew there were a lot of South American students in Paris, but the songs weren’t in Spanish, either.

  They Finished the song, and Frank fumbled in his pocket for some change. Then one of the students flipped back his cloak, revealing a small automatic weapon slung across his chest.

  Blackwell just had time to remark to Claire, “You know, that guy’s got a gun!” Then the students had thrown back their cloaks, unslung automatic weapons, and begun firing into the café.

  Frank grabbed Claire’s hand and pulled her down under the table. Bullets hailed through the courtyard, ricocheted off the gray-black cobblestones, and pocked the dark yellow walls of the surrounding buildings. A cry of outrage and alarm came from the diners as they scrambled for cover. Bodies began to tumble around like leaves pummeled in an autumn storm. The accordionist dived for the entrance of the café, and just made it, a swarm of bullets following him like steel-jacketed hornets spawned in a munitions factory. The accordion, left behind, let out a long quavering high-pitched scream as bullets smashed into it.

  Blackwell, crouching behind an overturned table, felt Claire’s hand pulled violently out of his grasp. He looked around shaking with
fear and anger, and saw her lying five feet away. She seemed to have come apart. The part of her with the plaid skirt had been torn away from the part of her with the nice little jacket from Bloomingdale’s. He stared at her. For a little while he could make out five distinct circles of blood, where she must have been struck. But then the bloodstains widened and ran into one another.

  The courtyard was blue with cordite fumes. Eight other people also seemed to be dead. The students, or whatever they were, had left. They were a Balkan terrorist group demonstrating for a free Montenegro. They had picked Le Sélect to make their point because they thought (erroneously) that the Yugoslavian ambassador and his wife were having lunch there. They were caught two days later by the French police, in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean, where they were trying to catch a boat to Africa. In the ensuing gun battle, all four men were killed.

  Blackwell learned that later. Now he just stood around, miraculously untouched, carnage on all sides of him, Claire’s shoulder bag in his lap.

  The police arrived and took statements. Photographers arrived and took pictures. Reporters arrived and recorded for posterity the banal indignation of the survivors. A hearse arrived and attendants took away the dead, after zipping each of them into his or her own bodybag. Claire had to go with them, of course.

  A man from the American embassy arrived, expressed his regrets, and gave Frank his card. He said he would let Frank make all necessary arrangements to repatriate Claire’s remains. Blackwell thanked him.

  Finally they were all gone. All except Blackwell, who didn’t really have any place to go and was more or less at loose ends.

  The waiter had also survived. He asked Frank if he would like a drink.

  Frank did, but couldn’t think what to order. The waiter suggested champagne, the best in the house. It wasn’t every day that your life gets shattered, your wife killed, and the course of your destiny changed forever.

  When the waiter went to get it, Frank tried to open Claire’s tag. His passport and traveler’s checks were in there, along with the plane tickets.

  The bag wouldn’t open. Frank saw that two of Claire’s severed fingers were still clutched tightly around the clasp.

  He looked around. No one was watching.

  He tugged at the fingers, gently at first, then with more force. The fingers opened suddenly and fell to the cobblestones.

  The waiter was returning with his drink.

  Frank found a handkerchief, wrapped it around the fingers, put them in his pocket. Then he started to cry.

  The waiter put his hand on Blackwell’s shoulder.

  “Courage,” he said.

  Blackwell said to the waiter, his voice choked, “Somebody’s going to pay for this.”

  It’s what victims always say.

  2

  Frank Blackwell left Paris with his wife’s ashes in a simple metal urn.

  At De Gaulle, the security people wouldn’t let the urn go through until Blackwell showed them a certificate from the Prefecture of Police attesting that the urn contained the remains of a victim, not the means of making others.

  Blackwell flew into Newark International, and had a three-hour wait for the bus to South Lake, New Jersey. The trip to South Lake took another three hours. Blackwell stared out the window the whole time looking at nothing, which is to say, New Jersey.

  Claire’s parents were waiting for him at the hardware store which also served as the town’s bus station. Mr. Niestrom was a natty little man who always carried a bamboo walking stick. This was the first time Frank had ever seen him in a suit. Mr. Niestrom’s eyes were red. Mrs. Niestrom was a large woman with a faint mustache. She started crying as soon as she saw Frank.

  “Who did it, Frank?” Mr. Niestrom said, as soon as they were in the car.

  “Four young men. They were Montenegrin terrorists.”

  “That’s what they said on the news,” Mr. Niestrom said. “But I missed it when they explained what a fucking Montenegrin was.”

  “It’s a country,” Blackwell said. “Or it was a country once. I’m not too sure.”

  “One of them nigger countries?”

  “No, it’s in the Balkans. Between Albania and Yugoslavia. Or was. If it ever was an independent country, I mean.”

  “I just thought, what with a name like that, they’d be Africans.”

  “Well, it’s a natural mistake,” Blackwell said. He was having a little trouble handling Claire’s father’s mixture of sincere grief and sincere bigotry. But, as Claire had told him, you get to choose your wife, but not your in-laws.

  “They killed the bastards, though,” Mr. Niestrom said. “That’s right, isn’t it, Frank?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “In a way, I’m sorry they done that. You know why, Frank?”

  “No, Mr. Niestrom. Tell me why,” Frank said, for what he hoped would be the last time in his life.

  “Because I woulda wanted to kill them myself.”

  Claire had told him how the old man used to beat her when she was a kid. Mrs. Niestrom would hold Claire’s glasses and the old man would beat her with a strap. For being bad, whatever that was. “You wouldn’t believe that skinny little man could be so strong.” And she’d laughed.

  “She was my baby,” Mrs. Niestrom said, and burst into tears.

  Dinner that evening was subdued.

  Frank stayed over at a motel on the edge of town so he could attend the special service for Claire at the Lutheran church to which she was no longer affiliated.

  He couldn’t help but feel a little resentful that it was Claire who had gotten killed and left him to bury her and deal with her parents and then try to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. Rather than the other way around.

  Not that he wasn’t glad to be alive.

  Basically.

  3

  After the church service Blackwell rented a car at the local Rent-a-Wreck agency and started back to New York. As he turned onto Route 101, he remembered Minska’s Tavern, just down the highway between the Mobil Flying A and the Ethan Allen furniture outlet. He used to go there a lot with Claire. He decided to have a last one for old times’ sake.

  Minska looked the same as ever, a big man, hairy up to his ears, bald after that. He had a handlebar mustache and a potbelly the size and shape of a bowling ball, but not the color, since Minska was of Polish descent. He had pop eyes and walked with his feet splayed out like Donald Duck. He was a funny-looking man, and people in South Lake used to take him lightly, even contemptuously, until the night he and Tommy Trambelli, who they used to call Tommy Trouble, had it out.

  That was two years ago. Tommy Trouble was a warehouseman at the big Sears five miles east of Netcong on Route 123, and that night he had just won the annual Garibaldi Day arm-wrestling contest at Saddle River and was pretty filled with himself. He started making fun of Minska. Imitated his walk. Imitated his sort of slow Slavic way of pronouncing things.

  Minska just smiled and continued polishing glasses. If you live in New Jersey, you have to get used to loudmouthed warehousemen.

  Then Tommy insulted the kielbasa sausage Minska always served, cut into sections and speared with toothpicks decorated with red frizzled cellophane, for the delectation of clients during Happy Hour. Minska got a little red in the face but let it pass.

  Then Tommy asked Minska when his ancestors had come down out of the trees, was it before or after World War II? And Minska sighed and wiped his big red hands on his apron and said, in his mild high-pitched voice, “All right, Tommy, you say enough now, so just shut up before I breaka your face.”

  Tommy was a little taller than average, but he looked short because he was muscled like a goddam bear or something. He was a weightlifter, too, a karate black belt, and had been a dandy shortstop in high school.

  He said, “Well, Minska, if you’d ast me nice maybe I’d of eased up on you. But you can’t give me no orders, know what I mean, man?”

  “I’m giving you an order,” Min
ska said. “Get out of my tavern and don’t come back until you can keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  Tommy put down his Miller High Life, straightened his Bruce Springsteen T-shirt, and said, “You gonna make me?”

  “Yeah,” Minska said, “that’s what I’m going to do.”

  He took off his apron and came out from behind the bar. Everyone moved away to give them plenty of room. Incongruously, the jukebox was playing Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” a super golden oldie.

  Tommy danced up and down on his toes and came in jabbing. He had been a pretty good middleweight in reform school and might have gone somewhere as a pro if it hadn’t been for trouble with the Mafia. But that is no part of this story.

  Minska stood flatfooted, arms dangling at his sides. Tommy jabbed hard at his forehead and Minska took the punch and stepped forward, coming down hard on Tommy’s instep with his big yellow Georgia boots. Tommy made a noise somewhere between a scream and a grunt and doubled over, and Minska clubbed him across the back of the neck with both hands interlaced and that was the end of the fight.

  Some people wondered after that where Minska got those moves. There was one story that he’d been a sumo wrestler in Warsaw’s Japanese quarter, but everybody knew the communists don’t permit professional wrestling. Joe Duggan, who drove an eighteen-wheeler for Exxon, set everybody straight. He had seen Minska’s name and photo in an old issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Minska had been chosen as Mercenary of the Month.

  So what was he doing now, operating a tavern in South Lake, New Jersey? Nobody knew. Nobody asked.

  Blackwell, driven by an alcoholic impulse rarely encountered in so normally abstemious a man, threw back his second double bourbon, controlled his desire to retch, and ordered another. Minska brought over the bottle, but didn’t pour.

  “Listen, Frank,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse and vaguely Polish, “none of my business, but this doing you no good.”