He hurried to his garage. He had his first con-
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tract 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
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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 "Güligan's Island" deserved to die, Elmo thought.
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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 question-ingly 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.
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"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.
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stairs, where he found a gang of federal officers and local police milling around the front bedroom.