Actually, this whole problem with choking girls wasn’t so much Greyboar’s philosophical obsession. It was really on account of his sister Gwendolyn. She was purely furious when he and I told her, years before, that we were quitting our jobs in the packing plant to move on to more lucrative work. Right nasty she got: “cold-blooded killer,” “murdering bastard,” “nothing but a cheap thug with a fancy label”—those were the terms she used that weren’t just plain obscene. Anybody else’d said stuff like that they’d be pushing up daisies, but the truth is Greyboar was afraid of his sister.
Couldn’t say I blamed him. Woman terrified me. She wasn’t as strong as he was, but when she was in the mood she was the meanest person who ever lived. Anyway, Greyboar and she went back and forth about it for hours. I kept my mouth shut. I’m normally on the talkative side, but around Gwendolyn in the mood I kept my mouth shut, shut, shut, shut.
Finally, Gwendolyn gave up. But she made Greyboar swear two things: One, he’d never work for a boss as a strikebreaker. Two, he’d never choke a woman except in self-defense—and then the way she defined “self-defense” he’d have to have some harpy drive three stakes into his heart before he could lift a finger!
The strikebreaking stuff was no problem. Greyboar and I wouldn’t have done it, anyway. I mean, it’s not like both of us hadn’t been good union men since we were kids.
The woman question, now—that was a little stickier. Lots of money in choking women. Truth to tell, it was the bread and butter of the trade. So Greyboar tried to make a compromise—he’d only choke purely evil women, she-devil types. But Gwendolyn wouldn’t budge. Said that, first, she’d trust him to tell a good woman from a bad one about as far as she’d trust a wolf to pick between saint and sinner rabbits. Second—she’d always been unreasonable when it came to women!—she said: “Besides, I don’t care if the woman’s as foul as a demon. There’s just something about men hiring other men to kill women that makes me cross. Really, really, really cross.” Then she’d looked him straight in the eye and said if she ever heard he’d choked a woman, she’d track him down and kill him. Yeah, just like that. Cold as ice.
So the two of them stared at each other for about a minute. Ever been a squirrel trapped in a cage with two tigers about to square off? That’s how I felt—but I kept my mouth shut, shut, shut, shut. And then suddenly they were hugging each other and crying like babies.
I felt pretty bad, actually. The career move was my idea in the first place—not that Greyboar wasn’t willing! We were both sick of that slaughterhouse—work your life away for nothing and die in the poorhouse. But they were all the family each other had, and I guess I’d sort of put something between them. Between her and me, too, for that matter.
So then Greyboar swore, all choked up, that he’d never harm a woman no matter who else he squeezed. He stuck to the promise, too. Never even bent it a little.
Yeah, I thought it was going to be a simple, neat little job. Five hundred quid, easy as pie.
There was no point in dawdling, so we decided to do the job that very night. Following directions I’d gotten from “the jilted one,” we found ourselves in a part of town we weren’t very familiar with. Not surprising, of course. I know this city as well as anyone, but nobody really knows all that much about New Sfinctr, the place is such a mess. But we were surprised, because the area where “the rival” was to be found wasn’t much better than a slum.
Odd, that. Your typical “alienated affectionee” usually wound up in a part of town that was at least as posh as the one she fled. Usually quite a bit more posh. Natural feature of the “alienation of affection process,” don’t you know? Upward social mobility, I mean.
“You should have seen the Baron’s—what’d he call it?—oh, yeah, his ‘modest townhouse,’ ” I commented to Greyboar. “His girl dumped him in that palace for this place? This ‘rival’ has got to be hung like a moose.”
Greyboar made a sour face. After that I tried to keep the quips to a minimum. He really did hate jealousy jobs. I wasn’t too fond of them myself, when it came down to it. Made the slaughterhouse seem like a spa, disgust-wise.
Eventually we found the address. It was a small two-story house, nestled in between a couple of classic tenements. Shabby, but poor-shabby rather than sloppy-shabby, if you know what I mean. Cleanest, best-kept place on the block.
“You sure?” asked Greyboar quietly.