100 Malicious Little Mysteries

It Could Happen to You by John Lutz

I never dreamed something like this could happen; or rather, I’d always thought something like this could happen only in a dream. But looking back on it piece by piece, it’s easy to understand how it did happen. It was just a chance combination of circumstances, none of those circumstances so unbelievable by itself. It’s the sort of thing that could happen to anybody; to you.

There’d been some mix-up in the flight schedule, so here I was with a six-hour layover in a city a thousand miles from home. It was a big city, and a nice summer night, so I decided to take a little walk around the downtown area, just to look things over.

That was at eleven o’clock, maybe too late for that kind of walk on a week night. And there wasn’t much happening downtown, only a few night spots here and there open; or maybe I’d just picked the wrong part of town.

I strolled innocently along, my light raincoat slung over my arm against any threat of rain. I’d stopped in a few places that looked fairly respectable, staying in each for only one drink and a few words of conversation before going back outside and resuming my wandering. Walking around and sort of taking in the atmosphere of strange cities is a habit of mine. My job keeps me traveling just enough not to get bored with it, so I’m usually interested in new places. And I knew I’d probably never get back to this city.

It was almost one o’clock when I noticed my wallet was missing. I was on Nineteenth Street at the time, idly walking along and looking in the windows of the closed shops.

A lost wallet. Nothing so unusual about that. You’ve probably lost your wallet at some time and felt that sudden rush of helplessness. Well, that feeling’s even stronger in a strange city, in case you’ve never had the experience. Everything that gave me a sense of identity or security was in that wallet — my driver’s license, my folding money, my credit cards...

For a moment I stood in bewilderment, checking my other pockets, but of course the wallet wasn’t in any of them. A wallet’s the sort of thing you automatically return to the right pocket. I hurried back along the almost-deserted streets toward the Posh Parrot on Twelfth Avenue, the last cocktail lounge I’d been in, all the time keeping my eyes to the ground on the off-chance I might see the wallet where it had fallen from my pocket.

The Posh Parrot was closed, the neon sign in its window dull and lifeless, the window itself throwing back a pale reflection of my worried self.

I told myself it didn’t matter. If I had lost the wallet in the lounge and someone had picked it up, he’d probably taken it with him. But I distinctly remembered sliding the wallet back into my hip pocket after paying for my drink; I even remembered folding the corner of a fifty-dollar bill to mark it from the smaller denominations. I began retracing my route back to Nineteenth Street, figuring the wallet must have slipped out of my pocket somewhere along the way.

No luck. What was I going to do? What would you do?

Even the ticket for the last leg of my trip home was in that wallet. I felt suddenly like a vagrant, a trespasser. I realized what a difference a dozen credit cards and a few hundred dollars’ cash make in our society.

The only thing I could do was phone Laurie, my wife, and get her to wire me some money. I felt in my other pockets, and among keys, comb, and ballpoint pen, could muster only a nickel and two pennies. So much for that inspiration.

To make me feel worse, a light drizzle began to fall. I hurriedly slipped on my raincoat and turned up the collar.

I was walking forlornly, head down, hands jammed in my coat pockets, so I didn’t see the man walking the poodle toward me until we were only about a hundred feet from each other.

My awkwardness and embarrassment about trying to borrow money from a stranger, combined with the short period of time I had to come up with what I was going to say, made my throat suddenly dry. You’d feel the same way.

I stopped directly in front of the man, a little guy with wire-framed glasses and a droopy mustache, and he stood staring at me with alarm.

“Would it be possible for you to lend a stranger some money?” is what I meant to say, and then I was going to explain the reason to him. I was ill at ease, as nervous as the little man appeared, and my voice croaked so I guess he only heard the last part of my sentence, the word “money.” He backed up a step, and his poodle sensed his fear and my nervousness and began to growl.

The man’s droopy mustache trembled. “I don’t have much...” he said, “honest...” I saw his eyes dart down to the bulge of my right hand in my raincoat pocket, and I understood.

“Wait a minute,” I started to say, but I saw him glance off to his right and his eyes grew wider behind his thick glasses. I looked and saw the cop almost on us.

“Trouble?” the cop asked. He was young and rangy, built more like a cigarette-ad cowboy than a cop.

“In a way, Officer,” I said.

“He was trying to hold me up!” the little man almost screamed, and his poodle started growling again.

“I thought so,” the cop said. “I was watching from across the street.”

I felt my heart fall like a meteor. “Hey, no, wait a minute!” I was shoved roughly so that I had to support myself against the side of a building with both hands.

“Be careful!” I heard the little man shout. “He’s got a gun in his right coat pocket!”

The cop’s hands searched me the way they’d been trained in the police academy, and I knew by his unsteadiness that he was nervous. All three of us were standing there frightened. Even the dog was frightened.

“He was bluffing you,” the cop said. “They do that.” He jerked me up straight and held onto my arm.

“Bluffing?... I was only trying to borrow some money!..”

The young cop let out a sharp laugh. “A polite mugger, huh?”

“This is insane!” I said.

The cop shrugged. “So plead that way in court.”

“I’ll press charges!” the little man kept saying. “You can be sure of that!”

But the cop was ignoring him now, reciting my rights in a low monotone. He was even ignoring me somewhat as he droned on about my “right to remain silent.” He was really going to do it! I might really be going to jail! And even if I wasn’t convicted, what would the arrest mean to my family, my friends, and my job?

I panicked then, and in what seemed at the time a lucky break, a bus turned the corner and lumbered toward us. I remember one headlight was out and the wiper blades were swinging back and forth out of rhythm. The bus was only doing ten or fifteen miles an hour, and when it was almost even with us I jerked out of the cop’s grip and darted in front of it, around it. The front bumper even brushed my pants leg, but I didn’t care.

Now the bus was between me and the law, and I had a few precious seconds to run for freedom. The bus driver helped me by slamming on his brakes, probably stopping the bus directly in front of the cop so he had to run around it. I was running down an alley, not looking back or even thinking back, when I heard the shot. In my state, the bark of the gun only made me run faster. I turned the corner, flashed across the rain-slick street and cut through another alley. That alley led to a parking lot, and I ran through there to the next street. I slowed then, listening, but hearing no footsteps behind me. I knew I wouldn’t have much time, though. The cop was probably calling in for help right now.

I walked for three more blocks before I saw a cab. It scared me at first; I’d thought the lettering on the door signified a police car. Then I saw that the light atop the car was blue, and there was a liquor advertisement on the trunk. I waved to the cab and climbed in with deliberate casualness when it stopped to pick me up.

“Regent Hotel,” I said, trying to keep my breathing level. Didn’t every city have a Regent Hotel?

“Torn down,” the cabby said, glancing over his shoulder. “You mean the Regency?”

“That’s it,” I said, and we drove on in silence.

After about ten minutes I saw an all-night drugstore ahead of us, and I had the cabby pull over.

“I’ll only be a minute,” I told him. “I want to see if they’ll fill an out-of-town prescription for insulin.”

“Sure.” He settled back in his seat and stared straight ahead.

It was a big drugstore, with a few other customers in it. The pharmacist behind the counter gave me a funny look, and I smiled and nodded at him and walked over to the magazine rack. After leafing through a news magazine, I replaced it in the rack and walked over to a display of shaving cream as if it interested me. From there I walked out the side door.

I walked until I was clear of the drugstore’s side display window and ran for three or four blocks. I turned a corner then and started walking at a fast pace, but slow enough so that my breathing evened out.

I must have walked over a mile, trying to think things out, trying to come up with some kind of an idea. The agonizing thing was that nothing that had happened was really my fault. You could be in this same kind of mess sometime, just like me. Anybody could.

If only I had some money, I thought, I could get a plane or bus ticket. The police didn’t watch bus terminals or airports for every fleeing street-corner bandit. If I could get out of this city, get back home a thousand miles away, I’d be safe. After all, no one had my name or address. The cop hadn’t gotten any identification from me when he searched me because I wasn’t carrying any. It would be as if none of this had ever happened. Eventually Laurie and I would joke about it. You and your spouse joke about that kind of thing.

Right now, though, things were a far cry from a joke! If I didn’t get out of town fast, I might well wind up ruined, in prison!

I was in more of a residential part of town now, wide lawns, neat ranch houses, and plenty of trees. The moon was out and it had stopped raining, and I saw the man walking toward me when he was over a block away, on the other side of the street. The desperation surged up in me, took control of me. You can understand how I felt. There was no time to make phone calls or wait for money. I had to get away fast, and to get away fast I needed money. I stooped and picked up a white grapefruit-sized rock from alongside someone’s driveway.

Crossing the street diagonally toward the man, I squeezed the rock concealed in my raincoat pocket, smiling when I got close enough for the man to see my face.

He was carrying enough money for a plane ticket to a nearby city, where I had Laurie send me enough to get home. At home, though, where I’d thought I’d be safe, I still think about it all the time.

I’d never had any experience in hitting someone’s head with a rock, so how was I to know? I was scared, like you’d be, scared almost out of my senses, so I struck harder than I’d intended — much harder.

Think about it and it’s kind of frightening. I mean, here’s this stranger, on his way home from work on the late shift, or from his girl-friend’s house, or maybe from some friendly poker game. Then somebody he’s never seen before walks up and for no apparent reason smashes his skull with a rock. It could happen to you.