The Contract  

I never had a better friend than Benjamin Neil. You know a friend when you test the limits of their loyalty and they understand. Friendship cannot be greater than understanding.
I think Benny was one of those men whom university people call polymaths. He knew and could do many things well, except pretension. A teacher had told him many years before, that he would not amount to much because he had not learned how to lie, nor how to posture. Don't tell me that your life can be more than your thoughts and the thoughts of people who surround you. You won't make me believe you.
The evening I met Benny, I had just finished a concert with the Houston Symphony, the old Houston Symphony of Sir John Barbirolli. The good old Maestro had little insight but he could pretend with the best of them. Here was success for you. Benny was waiting at the stage door and just happened to catch me by the arm to ask if perhaps the soloist might be coming out soon - that would be the violinist Milstein, Nathan Milstein. I said that perhaps he was, even though I knew it would be a while, since Milstein was entertaining some of the musicians in the orchestra with tricks he used to do on his violin, as was his custom. He had closed the concert with the Brahms Concerto and now he was doing fiddle tricks. What a nice paradox. I would have been there myself, except I had to meet my girlfriend at the Hilton for a friend's wedding.
His voice had a Scottish tenacity and my conjecture proved right, though he looked Hungarian to me, with piercing eyes, straight dark brown hair and a serious, thick mustache. He was talking animatedly, like a man with no time to lose, and, in this hurried way, he told me he played the violin himself, although he was an architect by profession. I observed his hands and told myself these were not the hands of a violinist. As if reading my mind, he started tossing off names of several teachers he had studied with in Brooklyn years before. These were men I knew, so there my doubting stopped. He had been an officer in the Air Force and had joined a boxing team while in the service and his hands were rough as a result. He had even boxed professionally for more than two years, all very plausible. But, how does one get from music, to the military, to boxing, to architecture? That was not all. Benny had served at the U.N. right after the war. He was fluent in four languages - fluent and engaging and fascinating.
I was twenty minutes late getting to the wedding, but she forgave me. I told Christine about Benny and she thought I made the whole thing up. Maybe someday you'll meet him, I said, thinking that I myself would probably never see him again.
Two months passed before I saw Benny again. I was doing a little research at the library when a grin with a face on it caught my eye. I forgot to tell you, Benny was a man with an easy laugh about him, and an easy smile, as well - a man to whom well-being and peace of mind are second nature. He invited me for a cup of coffee, and we strolled over to the Island Grill on Main and Washington. He looked somewhat rumpled, but that didn't bother me one bit. I had been brought up to be rather fastidious about my appearance, but I could tolerate a degree of messiness in others, especially if I liked them.
Benny told me about his early years in New York. He had never been to Scotland. His wife had left him while he was in his late twenties, after he took to boxing. She had taken their only son. Their son had died of a violent pneumonia after his mother had locked him out for three hours on a very cold night in December. She was punishing him for going to school without his jacket, he said. He blamed himself for his son’s death and I saw the hurt in his eyes. After a while, he got back to the present. He was laughing and telling funny stories from his days in New York. He told me he was working on several projects all at once, making lots of money. I could not tell, but I took his word for it. He showed me several renderings he had just completed, and I was dumbstruck by the beauty of these things. I made him promise he would design my house when I had enough money for it. We exchanged phone numbers after we both had to go, and I paid for our coffee and rolls.
Over the next several months, I got to know Benny pretty well. He had a knack for seeing absurdities in life, just as I did. He appreciated beauty, and music, and art, as I did. He took men at their word, as did I. We talked about religion only once. He said religion was invented by men who needed to tell God what to think and what to say. I did not know him to have a bad temper, but he had an intense dislike for poor workmanship and hated affectation in any guise. Although he always said he had a lot of work, to me, he looked as though he was perpetually down on his luck. We met regularly for lunch and sometimes for a late round of coffee and biscuits. Others might tell you he looked like a man who was recovering from several nights of hard drinking, but I never knew him to drink.
Benny eventually got to know most of the players in the orchestra and they got to liking him as well since he would frequently come to rehearsals. Sometimes, several would join us for lunch and we would stay two or three hours talking about everything there is to talk about. If we got a foreign waiter, Benny would entertain us by speaking nothing but German or French or Italian to them. Those were memorable and honest days.
It was after an October concert. I had just left the hall and was about to get in my car when I saw someone approaching. It was Benny, and he looked a little rushed - more than usual. He asked me how the thing had gone and I said it had been very good. He said he had just killed a man. He had to tell someone and I could turn him in if I chose. I said I didn't even know who, or when, or where, or anything. He would tell me, he said.
Not more than an hour ago, he had disposed of the body and nobody would ever find it. The guy would be reported missing and that would be the end of it. He was sure, absolutely sure. I asked him why.
He deserved it, he said. He had cheated him one time too many, but he hadn't killed him for money alone. This man had always done business with him without a contract and Benny liked it that way. He often shorted him thousands of dollars because Benny was not particularly hung up on money, and, because he couldn't prosecute anyway, he let it go again and again.
Benny had fallen in love with this man's daughter and his client had given Benny his word that the couple had his blessing. The client had kept Benny away from his office and his house for the last three weeks until Benny finally confronted him this evening. The client admitted that his daughter was now safe from him in Europe. Yes, he had lied to her about him in order to get her to forget all about their impractical plans. Benny was not good enough for her or anybody else. He could forget any future business with him, too.
Was he justified? Was I still his friend? He had rid the world of an immoral, oppressive, intimidating animal. Benny always said, if you want to know what a man's made of, give him your cash in exchange for his word.
Just to be on the safe side, I asked him if the dead man was hidden really well, and he said they wouldn't even find his bones. Knowing that Benny operated within a very wide spectrum of human activity, as he himself once said, I knew he had the means to do just as he said he had.
I saw Benny only three more times after that. Last I heard, he was working in Paris for an international design firm. I will always treasure the very fine violin he sent me. I've had it for over fifteen years. It's on permanent loan, and he will send for it some day, after I retire. I don't doubt he will.