The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

The Ehrengraf Experience Lawrence Block

Of the many series characters created by Lawrence Block (1938–), perhaps the least well-known is Martin Ehrengraf, the lawyer who appears in only a dozen short stories but makes a lasting impression. Eight of the stories were collected in Ehrengraf for the Defense (1994); the complete stories were published as Defender of the Innocent (2014).

He is a fussy, meticulous little man who has never lost a case, mainly because most of his clients never have to go to trial. His mantra is “All my clients are innocent. That’s what makes my work so gratifying. That and the fees, of course.” He knows perfectly well that few, if any, of his clients are innocent, but his position is if they are not found guilty then, de facto, they are innocent.

Ehrengraf is strongly reminiscent in style to Randolph Mason, the superb character created by Melville Davisson Post. When the first Ehrengraf story was submitted to Frederic Dannay (half of the Ellery Queen writing team and the founder of the eponymous magazine), he pointed out that Mason clearly was the inspiration, but Block admitted that he’d never heard of the nineteenth-century lawyer. Still, there is no denying that both criminal defense attorneys employ a methodology that has no boundaries to how far they will go to protect their clients.

Block is one of the most honored mystery writers of all time; a small sampling of his awards include the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America, four Edgars, four Shamus awards, the Japanese Maltese Falcon (twice), and the Nero Wolfe award. He was proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir in France, and is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America.

“The Ehrengraf Experience” was originally published in the August 1978 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in Block’s The Collected Mystery Stories (London, Orion, 1999).

“Innocence,” said Martin Ehrengraf. “There’s the problem in a nutshell.”

“Innocence is a problem?”

The little lawyer glanced around the prison cell, then turned to regard his client. “Precisely,” he said. “If you weren’t innocent you wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, really?” Grantham Beale smiled, and while it was hardly worthy of inclusion in a toothpaste commercial, it was the first smile he’d managed since his conviction on first-degree murder charges just two weeks and four days earlier. “Then you’re saying that innocent men go to prison while guilty men walk free. Is that what you’re saying?”

“It happens that way more than you might care to believe,” Ehrengraf said softly. “But no, it is not what I am saying.”

“Oh?”

“I am not contrasting innocence and guilt, Mr. Beale. I know you are innocent of murder. That is almost beside the point. All clients of Martin Ehrengraf are innocent of the crimes of which they are charged, and this innocence always emerges in due course. Indeed, this is more than a presumption on my part. It is the manner in which I make my living. I set high fees, Mr. Beale, but I collect them only when my innocent clients emerge with their innocence a matter of public record. If my client goes to prison I collect nothing whatsoever, not even whatever expenses I incur on his behalf. So my clients are always innocent, Mr. Beale, just as you are innocent, in the sense that they are not guilty.”

“Then why is my innocence a problem?”

“Ah, your innocence.” Martin Ehrengraf smoothed the ends of his neatly trimmed mustache. His thin lips drew back in a smile, but the smile did not reach his deeply set dark eyes. He was, Grantham Beale noted, a superbly well-dressed little man, almost a dandy. He wore a Dartmouth green blazer with pearl buttons over a cream shirt with a tab collar. His slacks were flannel, modishly cuffed and pleated and the identical color of the shirt. His silk tie was a darker green than his jacket and sported a design in silver and bronze thread below the knot, a lion battling a unicorn. His cufflinks matched his pearl blazer buttons. On his aristocratically small feet he wore highly polished seamless cordovan loafers, unadorned with tassels or braid, quite simple and quite elegant. Almost a dandy, Beale thought, but from what he’d heard the man had the skills to carry it off. He wasn’t all front. He was said to get results.

“Your innocence,” Ehrengraf said again. “Your innocence is not merely the innocence that is the opposite of guilt. It is the innocence that is the opposite of experience. Do you know Blake, Mr. Beale?”

“Blake?”

“William Blake, the poet. You wouldn’t know him personally, of course. He’s been dead for over a century. He wrote two groups of poems early in his career, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Each poem in the one book had a counterpart in the other. ‘Tyger, tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ Perhaps that poem is familiar to you, Mr. Beale.”

“I think I studied it in school.”

“It’s not unlikely. Well, you don’t need a poetry lesson from me, sir, not in these depressing surroundings. Let me move a little more directly to the point. Innocence versus experience, Mr. Beale. You found yourself accused of a murder, sir, and you knew only that you had not committed it. And, being innocent not only of the murder itself but in Blake’s sense of the word, you simply engaged a competent attorney and assumed things would work themselves out in short order. We live in an enlightened democracy, Mr. Beale, and we grow up knowing that courts exist to free the innocent and punish the guilty, that no one gets away with murder.”

“And that’s all nonsense, eh?” Grantham Beale smiled his second smile since hearing the jury’s verdict. If nothing else, he thought, the spiffy little lawyer improved a man’s spirits.

“I wouldn’t call it nonsense,” Ehrengraf said. “But after all is said and done, you’re in prison and the real murderer is not.”

“Walker Murchison.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The real murderer,” Beale said. “I’m in prison and Walker Gladstone Murchison is free.”

“Precisely. Because it is not enough to be guiltless, Mr. Beale. One must also be able to convince a jury of one’s guiltlessness. In short, had you been less innocent and more experienced, you could have taken steps early on to assure you would not find yourself in your present condition right now.”

“And what could I have done?”

“What you have done, at long last,” said Martin Ehrengraf. “You could have called me immediately.”

“Albert Speldron,” Ehrengraf said. “The murder victim, shot three times in the heart at close range. The murder weapon was an unregistered handgun, a thirty-eight-caliber revolver. It was subsequently located in the spare tire well of your automobile.”

“It wasn’t my gun. I never saw it in my life until the police showed it to me.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Ehrengraf said soothingly. “To continue. Albert Speldron was a loan shark. Not, however, the sort of gruff-voiced neckless thug who lends ten or twenty dollars at a time to longshoremen and factory hands and breaks their legs with a baseball bat if they’re late paying the vig.”

“Paying the what?”

“Ah, sweet innocence,” Ehrengraf said. “The vig. Short for vigorish. It’s a term used by the criminal element to describe the ongoing interest payments which a debtor must make to maintain his status.”

“I never heard the term,” Beale said, “but I paid it well enough. I paid Speldron a thousand dollars a week and that didn’t touch the principal.”

“And you had borrowed how much?”

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

“The jury apparently considered that a satisfactory motive for murder.”

“Well, that’s crazy,” Beale said. “Why on earth would I want to kill Speldron? I didn’t hate the man. He’d done me a service by lending me that money. I had a chance to buy a valuable stamp collection. That’s my business, I buy and sell stamps, and I had an opportunity to get hold of an extraordinary collection, mostly U.S. and British Empire but a really exceptional lot of early German States as well, and there were also — well, before I get carried away, are you interested in stamps at all?”

“Only when I’ve a letter to mail.”

“Oh. Well, this was a fine collection, let me say that much and leave it at that. The seller had to have all cash and the transaction had to go unrecorded. Taxes, you understand.”

“Indeed I do. The system of taxation makes criminals of us all.”

“I don’t really think of it as criminal,” Beale said.

“Few people do. But go on, sir.”

“What more is there to say? I had to raise fifty thousand dollars on the quiet to close the deal on this fine lot of stamps. By dealing with Speldron, I was able to borrow the money without filling out a lot of forms or giving him anything but my word. I was quite confident I would triple my money by the time I broke up the collection and sold it in job lots to a variety of dealers and collectors. I’ll probably take in a total of fifty thousand out of the U.S. issues alone, and I know a buyer who will salivate when he gets a look at the German States issues.”

“So it didn’t bother you to pay Speldron his thousand a week.”

“Not a bit. I figured to have half the stamps sold within a couple of months, and the first thing I’d do would be to repay the fifty thousand dollars principal and close out the loan. I’d have paid eight or ten thousand dollars in interest, say, but what’s that compared to a profit of fifty or a hundred thousand dollars? Speldron was doing me a favor and I appreciated it. Oh, he was doing himself a favor too, two percent interest per week didn’t put him in the hardship category, but it was just good business for both of us, no question about it.”

“You’ve dealt with him before?”

“Maybe a dozen times over the years. I’ve borrowed sums ranging between ten and seventy thousand dollars. I never heard the interest payments called vigorish before, but I always paid them promptly. And no one ever threatened to break my legs. We did business together, Speldron and I. And it always worked out very well for both of us.”

“The prosecution argued that by killing Speldron you erased your debt to him. That’s certainly a motive a jury can understand, Mr. Beale. In a world where men are commonly killed for the price of a bottle of whiskey, fifty thousand dollars does seem enough to kill a man over.”

“But I’d be crazy to kill for that sum. I’m not a pauper. If I was having trouble paying Speldron all I had to do was sell the stamps.”

“Suppose you had trouble selling them.”

“Then I could have liquidated other merchandise from my stock. I could have mortgaged my home. Why, I could have raised enough on the house to pay Speldron off three times over. That car they found the gun in, that’s an Antonelli Scorpion. The car alone is worth half of what I owed Speldron.”

“Indeed,” Martin Ehrengraf said. “But this Walker Murchison. How does he come into the picture?”

“He killed Speldron.”

“How do we know this, Mr. Beale?”

Beale got to his feet. He’d been sitting on his iron cot, leaving the cell’s one chair for the lawyer. Now he stood up, stretched and walked to the rear of the cell. For a moment he stood regarding some graffito on the cell wall. Then he turned and looked at Ehrengraf.

“Speldron and Murchison were partners,” he said. “I only dealt with Speldron because he was the only one who dealt in unsecured loans. And Murchison had an insurance business in which Speldron did not participate. Their joint ventures included real estate, investments, and other activities where large sums of money moved around quickly with few records kept of exactly what took place.”

“Shady operations,” Ehrengraf said.

“For the most part. Not always illegal, not entirely illegal, but, yes, I like your word. Shady.”

“So they were partners, and it is not unheard of for one to kill one’s partner. To dissolve a partnership by the most direct means available, as it were. But why this partnership? Why should Murchison kill Speldron?”

Beale shrugged. “Money,” he suggested. “With all that cash floating around, you can bet Murchison made out handsomely on Speldron’s death. I’ll bet he put a lot more than fifty thousand unrecorded dollars into his pocket.”

“That’s your only reason for suspecting him?”

Beale shook his head. “The partnership had a secretary,” he said. “Her name’s Felicia. Young, long dark hair, flashing dark eyes, a body like a magazine centerfold and a face like a Chanel ad. Both of the partners were sleeping with her.”

“Perhaps this was not a source of enmity.”

“But it was. Murchison’s married to her.”

“Ah.”

“But there’s an important reason why I know it was Murchison who killed Speldron.” Beale stepped forward, stood over the seated attorney. “The gun was found in the boot of my car,” he said. “Wrapped in a filthy towel and stuffed in the spare tire well. There were no fingerprints on the gun and it wasn’t registered to me but there it was in my car.”

“The Antonelli Scorpion?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“No matter.”

Beale frowned momentarily, then drew a breath and plunged onward. “It was put there to frame me,” he said.

“So it would seem.”

“It had to be put there by somebody who knew I owed Speldron money. Somebody with inside information. The two of them were partners. I met Murchison any number of times when I went to the office to pay the interest, or vigorish as you called it. Why do they call it that?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Murchison knew I owed money. And Murchison and I never liked each other.”

“Why?”

“We just didn’t get along. The reason’s not important. And there’s more, I’m not just grasping at straws. It was Murchison who suggested I might have killed Speldron. A lot of men owed Speldron money and there were probably several of them who were in much stickier shape financially than I, but Murchison told the police I’d had a loud and bitter argument with Speldron two days before he was killed!”

“And had you?”

“No! Why, I never in my life argued with Speldron.”

“Interesting.” The little lawyer raised his hand to his mustache, smoothing its tips delicately. His nails were manicured, Grantham Beale noted, and was there colorless nail polish on them? No, he observed, there was not. The little man might be something of a dandy but he was evidently not a fop.

“Did you indeed meet with Mr. Speldron on the day in question?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I did. I made the interest payment and we exchanged pleasantries. There was nothing anyone could mistake for an argument.”

“Ah.”

“And even if there had been, Murchison wouldn’t have known about it. He wasn’t even in the office.”

“Still more interesting,” Ehrengraf said thoughtfully.

“It certainly is. But how can you possibly prove that he murdered his partner and framed me for it? You can’t trap him into confessing, can you?”

“Murderers do confess.”

“Not Murchison. You could try tracing the gun to him, I suppose, but the police tried to trace it to me and found they couldn’t trace it at all. I just don’t see—”

“Mr. Beale.”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Beale. Here, take this chair, I’m sure it’s more comfortable than the edge of the bed. I’ll stand for a moment. Mr. Beale, do you have a dollar?”

“They don’t let us have money in here.”

“Then take this. It’s a dollar which I’m lending to you.” The lawyer’s dark eyes glinted. “No interest, Mr. Beale. A personal loan, not a business transaction. Now, sir, please give me the dollar which I’ve just lent to you.”

“Give it to you?”

“That’s right. Thank you. You have retained me, Mr. Beale, to look after your interests. The day you are released unconditionally from this prison you will owe me a fee of ninety thousand dollars. The fee will be all inclusive. Any expenses will be mine to bear. Should I fail to secure your release you will owe me nothing.”

“But—”

“Is that agreeable, sir?”

“But what are you going to do? Engage detectives? File an appeal? Try to get the case reopened?”

“When a man engages to save your life, Mr. Beale, do you require that he first outline his plans for you?”

“No, but—”

“Ninety thousand dollars. Payable only if I succeed. Are the terms agreeable?”

“Yes, but—”

“Mr. Beale, when next we meet you will owe me ninety thousand dollars, plus whatever emotional gratitude comes naturally to you. Until then, sir, you owe me one dollar.” The thin lips curled in a shadowy smile. “ ‘The cut worm forgives the plow,’ Mr. Beale. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow.’ You might think about that, sir, until we meet again.”

The second meeting of Martin Ehrengraf and Grantham Beale took place five weeks and four days later. On this occasion the lawyer wore a navy two-button suit with a subtle vertical stripe. His shoes were highly polished black wing tips, his shirt a pale blue broadcloth with contrasting white collar and cuffs. His necktie bore a half-inch wide stripe of royal blue flanked by two narrower strips, one gold and the other a rather bright green, all on a navy field.

And this time Ehrengraf’s client was also rather nicely turned out, although his tweed jacket and baggy flannels were hardly a match for the lawyer’s suit. But Beale’s dress was a great improvement over the shapeless gray prison garb he had worn previously, just as his office, a room filled with jumbled books and boxes, a desk covered with books and albums and stamps in and out of glassine envelopes, two worn leather chairs and a matching sagging sofa — just as all of this comfortable disarray was a vast improvement over the spartan prison cell which had been the site of their earlier meeting.

Beale, seated behind his desk, gazed thoughtfully at Ehrengraf, who stood ramrod straight, one hand on the desk top, the other at his side. “Ninety thousand dollars,” Beale said levelly. “You must admit that’s a bit rich, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

“We agreed on the price.”

“No argument. We did agree, and I’m a firm believer in the sanctity of verbal agreements. But it was my understanding that your fee would be payable if my liberty came about as a result of your efforts.”

“You are free today.”

“I am indeed, and I’ll be free tomorrow, but I can’t see how it was any of your doing.”

“Ah,” Ehrengraf said. His face bore an expression of infinite disappointment, a disappointment felt not so much with this particular client as with the entire human race. “You feel I did nothing for you.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Perhaps you were taking steps to file an appeal. Perhaps you engaged detectives or did some detective work of your own. Perhaps in due course you would have found a way to get me out of prison, but in the meantime the unexpected happened and your services turned out to be unnecessary.”

“The unexpected happened?”

“Well, who could have possibly anticipated it?” Beale shook his head in wonder. “Just think of it. Murchison went and got an attack of conscience. The bounder didn’t have enough of a conscience to step forward and admit what he’d done, but he got to wondering what would happen if he died suddenly and I had to go on serving a life sentence for a crime he had committed. He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his liberty while he lived but he wanted to be able to make amends if and when he died.”

“Yes.”

“So he prepared a letter,” Beale went on. “Typed out a long letter explaining just why he had wanted his partner dead and how the unregistered gun had actually belonged to Speldron in the first place, and how he’d shot him and wrapped the gun in a towel and planted it in my car. Then he’d made up a story about my having had a fight with Albert Speldron, and of course that got the police looking in my direction, and the next thing I knew I was in jail. I saw the letter Murchison wrote. The police let me look at it. He went into complete detail.”

“Considerate of him.”

“And then he did the usual thing. Gave the letter to a lawyer with instructions that it be kept in his safe and opened only in the event of his death.” Beale found a pair of stamp tongs in the clutter atop his desk, used them to lift a stamp, frowned at it for a moment, then set it down and looked directly at Martin Ehrengraf. “Do you suppose he had a premonition? For God’s sake, Murchison was a young man, his health was good, and why should he anticipate dying? Maybe he did have a premonition.”

“I doubt it.”

“Then it’s certainly a remarkable coincidence. A matter of weeks after turning this letter over to a lawyer, Murchison lost control of his car on a curve. Smashed right through the guard rail, plunged a couple of hundred feet, exploded on impact. I don’t suppose the man knew what had happened to him.”

“I suspect you’re right.”

“He was always a safe driver,” Beale mused. “Perhaps he’d been drinking.”

“Perhaps.”

“And if he hadn’t been decent enough to write that letter, I might be spending the rest of my life behind bars.”

“How fortunate for you things turned out as they did.”

“Exactly,” said Beale. “And so, although I truly appreciate what you’ve done on my behalf, whatever that may be, and although I don’t doubt you could have secured my liberty in due course, although I’m sure I don’t know how you might have managed it, nevertheless as far as your fee is concerned—”

“Mr. Beale.”

“Yes?”

“Do you really believe that a detestable troll like W. G. Murchison would take pains to arrange for your liberty in the event of his death?”

“Well, perhaps I misjudged the man. Perhaps—”

“Murchison hated you, Mr. Beale. If he found he was dying his one source of satisfaction would have been the knowledge that you were in prison for a crime you hadn’t committed. I told you that you were an innocent, Mr. Beale, and a few weeks in prison has not dented or dulled your innocence. You actually think Murchison wrote that note.”

“You mean he didn’t?”

“It was typed upon a machine in his office,” the lawyer said. “His own stationery was used, and the signature at the bottom is one many an expert would swear is Murchison’s own.”

“But he didn’t write it?”

“Of course not.” Martin Ehrengraf’s hands hovered in the air before him. They might have been poised over an invisible typewriter or they might merely be looming as the talons of a bird of prey.

Grantham Beale stared at the little lawyer’s hands in fascination. “You typed that letter,” he said.

Ehrengraf shrugged.

“You — but Murchison left it with a lawyer!”

“The lawyer was not one Murchison had used in the past. Murchison evidently selected a stranger from the Yellow Pages, as far as one can determine, and made contact with him over the telephone, explaining what he wanted the man to do for him. He then mailed the letter along with a postal money order to cover the attorney’s fee and a covering note confirming the telephone conversation. It seems he did not use his own name in his discussions with his lawyer, and he signed an alias to his covering note and to the money order as well. The signature he wrote, though, does seem to be in his own handwriting.”

Ehrengraf paused, and his right hand went to finger the knot of his necktie. This particular tie, rather more colorful than his usual choice, was that of the Caedmon Society of Oxford University, an organization to which Martin Ehrengraf did not belong. The tie was a souvenir of an earlier case and he tended to wear it on particularly happy occasions, moments of personal triumph.

“Murchison left careful instructions,” he went on. “He would call the lawyer every Thursday, merely repeating the alias he had used. If ever a Thursday passed without a call, and if there was no call on Friday either, the lawyer was to open the letter and follow its instructions. For four Thursdays in a row the lawyer received a phone call, presumably from Murchison.”

“Presumably,” Beale said heavily.

“Indeed. On the Tuesday following the fourth Thursday, Murchison’s car went off a cliff and he was killed instantly. The lawyer read of Walker Murchison’s death but had no idea that was his client’s true identity. Then Thursday came and went without a call, and when there was no telephone call Friday either, why the lawyer opened the letter and went forthwith to the police.” Ehrengraf spread his hands, smiled broadly. “The rest,” he said, “you know as well as I.”

“Great Scott,” Beale said.

“Now if you honestly feel I’ve done nothing to earn my money—”

“I’ll have to liquidate some stock,” Beale said. “It won’t be a problem and there shouldn’t be much time involved. I’ll bring a check to your office in a week. Say ten days at the outside. Unless you’d prefer cash?”

“A check will be fine, Mr. Beale. So long as it’s a good check.” And he smiled his lips to show he was joking.

The smile chilled Beale.

A week later Grantham Beale remembered that smile when he passed a check across Martin Ehrengraf’s heroically disorganized desk. “A good check,” he said. “I’d never give you a bad check, Mr. Ehrengraf. You typed that letter, you made all those phone calls, you forged Murchison’s false name to the money order, and then when the opportunity presented itself you sent his car hurtling off the cliff with him in it.”

“One believes what one wishes,” Ehrengraf said quietly.

“I’ve been thinking about all of this all week long. Murchison framed me for a murder he committed, then paid for the crime himself and liberated me in the process without knowing what he was doing. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow.’ ”

“Indeed.”

“Meaning that the end justifies the means.”

“Is that what Blake meant by that line? I’ve long wondered.”

“The end justifies the means. I’m innocent, and now I’m free, and Murchison’s guilty, and now he’s dead, and you’ve got the money, but that’s all right, because I made out fine on those stamps, and of course I don’t have to repay Speldron, poor man, because death did cancel that particular debt, and—”

“Mr. Beale.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I fear I must. You are more of an innocent than you realize. You’ve paid me handsomely for my services, as indeed we agreed that you would, and I think perhaps I’ll offer you a lagniappe in the form of some experience to offset your colossal innocence. I’ll begin with some advice. Do not, under any circumstances, resume your affair with Felicia Murchison.”

Beale stared.

“You should have told me that was why you and Murchison didn’t get along,” Ehrengraf said gently. “I had to discover it for myself. No matter. More to the point, one should not share a pillow with a woman who has so little regard for one as to frame one for murder. Mrs. Murchison—”

“Felicia framed me?”

“Of course, Mr. Beale. Mrs. Murchison had nothing against you. It was sufficient that she had nothing for you. She murdered Mr. Speldron, you see, for reasons which need hardly concern us. Then having done so she needed someone to be cast as the murderer.

“Her husband could hardly have told the police about your purported argument with Speldron. He wasn’t around at the time. He didn’t know the two of you had met, and if he went out on a limb and told them, and then you had an alibi for the time in question, why he’d wind up looking silly, wouldn’t he? But Mrs. Murchison knew you’d met with Speldron, and she told her husband the two of you argued, and so he told the police in perfectly good faith what she had told him, and then they went and found the murder gun in your very own Antonelli Scorpion. A stunning automobile, incidentally, and it’s to your credit to own such a vehicle, Mr. Beale.”

“Felicia killed Speldron.”

“Yes.”

“And framed me.”

“Yes.”

“But — why did you frame Murchison?”

“Did you expect me to try to convince the powers that be that she did it? And had pangs of conscience and left a letter with a lawyer? Women don’t leave letters with lawyers, Mr. Beale, anymore than they have consciences. One must deal with the materials at hand.”

“But—”

“And the woman is young, with long dark hair, flashing dark eyes, a body like a magazine centerfold and a face like a Chanel ad. She’s also an excellent typist and most cooperative in any number of ways which we needn’t discuss at the moment. Mr. Beale, would you like me to get you a glass of water?”

“I’m all right.”

“I’m sure you’ll be all right, Mr. Beale. I’m sure you will. Mr. Beale, I’m going to make a suggestion. I think you should seriously consider marrying and settling down. I think you’d be much happier that way. You’re an innocent, Mr. Beale, and you’ve had the Ehrengraf Experience now, and it’s rendered you considerably more experienced than you were, but your innocence is not the sort to be readily vanquished. Give the widow Murchison and all her tribe a wide berth, Mr. Beale. They’re not for you. Find yourself an old-fashioned girl and lead a proper old-fashioned life. Buy and sell stamps. Cultivate a garden. Raise terriers. The West Highland White might be a good breed for you but that’s your decision, certainly. Mr. Beale? Are you sure you won’t have a glass of water?”

“I’m all right.”

“Quite. I’ll leave you with another thought of Blake’s, Mr. Beale. ‘Lilies that fester smell worse than weeds.’ That’s also from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, another of what he calls Proverbs of Hell, and perhaps someday you’ll be able to interpret it for me. I never quite know for sure what Blake’s getting at, Mr. Beale, but his things do have a nice sound to them, don’t they? Innocence and experience, Mr. Beale. That’s the ticket, isn’t it? Innocence and experience.”

Quarry’s Luck Max Allan Collins

Quarry (no first name) is a laconic hit man who appears in thirteen books, beginning with Quarry (also published as The Broker) in 1976, every one of which is highly readable and less predictable than one might expect of a series of adventures about a man hired to kill people.

After he returns from the Vietnam War, Quarry finds his wife has been cheating on him. When he locates the guy, tinkering under his car, Quarry kicks the jack out, crushing him. Unhappy and largely unemployable, Quarry is hired by a man known only as the Broker to be a contract killer. He is careful, methodical, and conscience-free, regarding the hits as nothing more than jobs. “A paid assassin isn’t a killer, really,” he says. “He’s a weapon. Someone has already decided someone else is going to die, before the paid assassin is even in the picture, let alone on the scene. A paid assassin is no more a killer than a nine millimeter automatic or a bludgeon.”

Although in a successful series, Quarry is not the best-known character created by the versatile Max Allan Collins (1948–), an honor that falls to Nate Heller, a Chicago private eye whose cases were mainly set in the 1930s and 1940s. Many involve famous people of the era, including Al Capone, Frank Nitta, and Eliot Ness in the first book, True Detective (1983), as well as such famous cases as the kidnapping of Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s baby in Stolen Away (1991), the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in Flying Blind (1998), and the Black Dahlia murder in Angel in Black (2001).

Collins is also the author of the graphic novel Road to Perdition (1998), the basis for the 2002 Tom Hanks film; numerous movie and television tie-in novels; and the Dick Tracy comic strip after Chester Gould retired. He coauthored many books and stories with Mickey Spillane, completing works that were left unfinished when Spillane died.

“Quarry’s Luck” was originally published in Blue Motel (Stone Mountain, Georgia, White Wolf, 1994); it was first collected in Quarry’s Greatest Hits (Unity, Maine, Five Star, 2003).

Once upon a time, I killed people for a living.

Now, as I sit in my living quarters looking out at Sylvan Lake, its gently rippling gray-blue surface alive with sunlight, the scent and sight of pines soothing me, I seldom think of those years. With the exception of the occasional memoirs I’ve penned, I have never been very reflective. What’s done is done. What’s over is over.

But occasionally someone or something I see stirs a memory. In the summer, when Sylvan Lodge (of which I’ve been manager for several years now) is hopping with guests, I now and then see a cute blue-eyed blond college girl, and I think of Linda, my late wife. I’d retired from the contract murder profession, lounging on a cottage on a lake not unlike this one, when my past had come looking for me and Linda became a casualty.

What I’d learned from that was two things: the past is not something disconnected from the present — you can’t write off old debts or old enemies (whereas, oddly, friends you can completely forget); and not to enter into long-term relationships.

Linda hadn’t been a very smart human being, but she was pleasant company and she loved me, and I wouldn’t want to cause somebody like her to die again. You know — an innocent.

After all, when I was taking contracts through the man I knew as the Broker, I was dispatching the guilty. I had no idea what these people were guilty of, but it stood to reason that they were guilty of something, or somebody wouldn’t have decided they should be dead.

A paid assassin isn’t a killer, really. He’s a weapon. Someone has already decided someone else is going to die, before the paid assassin is even in the picture, let alone on the scene. A paid assassin is no more a killer than a nine millimeter automatic or a bludgeon. Somebody has to pick up a weapon, to use it.

Anyway, that was my rationalization back in the seventies, when I was a human weapon for hire. I never took pleasure from the job — just money. And when the time came, I got out of it.

So, a few years ago, after Linda’s death, and after I killed the fuckers responsible, I did not allow myself to get pulled back into that profession. I was too old, too tired, my reflexes were not all that good. A friend I ran into, by chance, needed my only other expertise — I had operated a small resort in Wisconsin with Linda — and I now manage Sylvan Lodge.

Something I saw recently — something quite outrageous really, even considering that I have in my time witnessed human behavior of the vilest sort — stirred a distant memory.

The indoor swimming pool with hot tub is a short jog across the road from my two-room apartment in the central lodge building (don’t feel sorry for me: it’s a bedroom and spacious living room with kitchenette, plus two baths, with a deck looking out on my storybook view of the lake). We close the pool room at ten P.M., and sometimes I take the keys over and open the place up for a solitary midnight swim.

I was doing that — actually, I’d finished my swim and was letting the hot tub’s jet streams have at my chronically sore lower back — when somebody came knocking at the glass doors.

It was a male figure — portly — and a female figure — slender, shapely, both wrapped in towels. That was all I could see of them through the glass; the lights were off outside.

Sighing, I climbed out of the hot tub, wrapped a towel around myself, and unlocked the glass door and slid it open just enough to deal with these two.

“We want a swim!” the man said. He was probably fifty-five, with a booze-mottled face and a brown toupee that squatted on his round head like a slumbering gopher.

Next to him, the blonde of twenty-something, with huge blue eyes and huge big boobs (her towel, thankfully, was tied around her waist), stood almost behind the man. She looked meek. Even embarrassed.

“Mr. Davis,” I said, cordial enough, “it’s after hours.”

“Fuck that! You’re in here, aren’t you?”

“I’m the manager. I sneak a little time in for myself, after closing, after the guests have had their fun.”

He put his hand on my bare chest. “Well, we’re guests, and we want to have some fun, too!”

His breath was ninety proof.

I removed his hand. Bending the fingers back a little in the process.

He winced, and started to say something, but I said, “I’m sorry. It’s the lodge policy. My apologies to you and your wife.”

Bloodshot eyes widened in the face, and he began to say something, but stopped short. He tucked his tail between his legs (and his towel), and took the girl by the arm, roughly, saying, “Come on, baby. We don’t need this horseshit.”

The blonde looked back at me and gave me a crinkly little chagrined grin, and I smiled back at her, locked the glass door, and climbed back in the hot tub to cool off.

“Asshole,” I said. It echoed in the high-ceilinged steamy room. “Fucking asshole!” I said louder, just because I could, and the echo was enjoyable.

He hadn’t tucked towel ’tween his legs because I’d bent his fingers back: he’d done it because I mentioned his wife, who we both knew the little blond bimbo wasn’t.

That was because (and here’s the outrageous part) he’d been here last month — to this very same resort — with another very attractive blonde, but one about forty, maybe forty-five, who was indeed, and in fact, his lawful wedded wife.

We had guys who came to Sylvan Lodge with their families; we had guys who came with just their wives; and we had guys who came with what used to be called in olden times their mistresses. But we seldom had a son of a bitch so fucking bold as to bring his wife one week, and his mistress the next, to the same goddamn motel, which is what Sylvan Lodge, after all, let’s face it, is a glorified version of.

As I enjoyed the jet stream on my low back, I smiled and then frowned, as the memory stirred... Christ, I’d forgotten about that! You’d think that Sylvan Lodge itself would’ve jogged my memory. But it hadn’t.

Even though the memory in question was of one of my earliest jobs, which took place at a resort not terribly unlike this one...

We met off Interstate 80, at a truck stop outside of the Quad Cities. It was late — almost midnight — a hot, muggy June night; my black T-shirt was sticking to me. My blue jeans, too.

The Broker had taken a booth in back; the restaurant wasn’t particularly busy, except for an area designated for truckers. But it had the war-zone look of a rush hour just past; it was a blindingly white but not terribly clean-looking place and the jukebox — wailing “I Shot the Sheriff” at the moment — combated the clatter of dishes being bused.

Sitting with the Broker was an oval-faced, bright-eyed kid of about twenty-three (which at the time was about my age, too) who wore a Doobie Brothers T-shirt and had shoulder-length brown hair. Mine was cut short — not soldier-cut, but businessman short.

“Quarry,” the Broker said, in his melodious baritone; he gestured with an open hand. “How good to see you. Sit down.” His smile was faint under the wispy mustache, but there was a fatherly air to his manner.

He was trying to look casual in a yellow Ban-Lon shirt and golf slacks; he had white, styled hair and a long face that managed to look both fleshy and largely unlined. He was a solid-looking man, fairly tall — he looked like a captain of industry, which he was in a way. I took him for fifty, but that was just a guess.

“This is Adam,” the Broker said.

“How are you doin’, man?” Adam said, and grinned, and half-rose; he seemed a little nervous, and in the process — before I’d even had a chance to decide whether to take the hand he offered or not — overturned a salt shaker, which sent him into a minor tizzy.

“Damn!” Adam said, forgetting about the handshake. “I hate fuckin’ bad luck!” He tossed some salt over either shoulder, then grinned at me and said, “I’m afraid I’m one superstitious motherfucker.”

“Well, you know what Stevie Wonder says,” I said.

He squinted. “No, what?”

Sucker.

“Nothing,” I said, sliding in.

A twentyish waitress with a nice shape, a hair net and two pounds of acne took my order, which was for a Coke; the Broker already had coffee and the kid a bottle of Mountain Dew and a glass.

When she went away, I said, “Well, Broker. Got some work for me? I drove hundreds of miles in a fucking gas shortage, so you sure as shit better have.”

Adam seemed a little stunned to hear the Broker spoken to so disrespectfully, but the Broker was used to my attitude and merely smiled and patted the air with a benedictory palm.

“I wouldn’t waste your time otherwise, Quarry. This will pay handsomely. Ten thousand for the two of you.”

Five grand was good money; three was pretty standard. Money was worth more then. You could buy a Snickers bar for ten cents. Or was it fifteen? I forget.

But I was still a little irritated.

“The two of us?” I said. “Adam, here, isn’t my better half on this one, is he?”

“Yes, he is,” the Broker said. He had his hands folded now, prayerfully. His baritone was calming. Or was meant to be.

Adam was frowning, playing nervously with a silver skull ring on the little finger of his left hand. “I don’t like your fuckin’ attitude, man...”

The way he tried to work menace into his voice would have been amusing if I’d given a shit.

“I don’t like your fuckin’ hippie hair,” I said.

“What?” He leaned forward, furious, and knocked his water glass over; it spun on its side and fell off my edge of the booth and we heard it shatter. A few eyes looked our way.

Adam’s tiny bright eyes were wide. “Fuck,” he said.

“Seven years bad luck, dipshit,” I said.

“That’s just mirrors!”

“I think it’s any kind of glass. Isn’t that right, Broker?”

The Broker was frowning a little. “Quarry...” He sounded so disappointed in me.

“Hair like that attracts attention,” I said. “You go in for a hit, you got to be the invisible man.”

“These days everybody wears their hair like this,” the kid said defensively.

“In Greenwich Village, maybe. But in America, if you want to disappear, you look like a businessman or a college student.”

That made him laugh. “You ever see a college student lately, asshole?”

“I mean the kind who belongs to a fraternity. You want to go around killing people, you need to look clean-cut.”

Adam’s mouth had dropped open; he had crooked lower teeth. He pointed at me with a thumb and turned to look at Broker, indignant. “Is this guy for real?”

“Yes, indeed,” the Broker said. “He’s also the best active agent I have.”

By “active,” Broker meant (in his own personal jargon) that I was the half of a hit team that took out the target; the “passive” half was the lookout person, the back-up.

“And he’s right,” the Broker said, “about your hair.”

“Far as that’s concerned,” I said, “we look pretty goddamn conspicuous right here — me looking collegiate, you looking like the prez of a country club, and junior here like a roadshow Mick Jagger.”

Adam looked half bewildered, half outraged.

“You may have a point,” the Broker allowed me.

“On the other hand,” I said, “people probably think we’re fags waiting for a fourth.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Adam said, shaking his greasy Beatle mop. “I don’t want to work with this son of a bitch.”

“Stay calm,” the Broker said. “I’m not proposing a partnership, not unless this should happen to work out beyond all of our wildest expectations.”

“I tend to agree with Adam, here,” I said. “We’re not made for each other.”

“The question is,” the Broker said, “are you made for ten thousand dollars?”

Adam and I thought about that.

“I have a job that needs to go down, very soon,” he said, “and very quickly. You’re the only two men available right now. And I know neither of you wants to disappoint me.”

Half of ten grand did sound good to me. I had a lake-front lot in Wisconsin where I could put up this nifty little A-frame prefab, if I could put a few more thousand together...

“I’m in,” I said, “if he cuts his hair.”

The Broker looked at Adam, who scowled and nodded.

“You’re both going to like this,” the Broker said, sitting forward, withdrawing a travel brochure from his back pocket.

“A resort?” I asked.

“Near Chicago. A wooded area. There’s a man-made lake, two indoor swimming pools and one outdoor, an ‘old town’ gift shop area, several restaurants, bowling alley, tennis courts, horse-back riding...”

“If they have archery,” I said, “maybe we could arrange a little accident.”

That made the Broker chuckle. “You’re not far off the mark. We need either an accident, or a robbery. It’s an insurance situation.”

Broker would tell us no more than that: part of his function was to shield the client from us, and us from the client, for that matter. He was sort of a combination agent and buffer; he could tell us only this much: the target was going down so that someone could collect insurance. The double indemnity kind that comes from accidental death, and of course getting killed by thieves counts in that regard.

“This is him,” Broker said, carefully showing us a photograph of a thin, handsome, tanned man of possibly sixty with black hair that was probably dyed; he wore dark sunglasses and tennis togs and had an arm around a dark-haired woman of about forty, a tanned slim busty woman also in dark glasses and tennis togs.

“Who’s the babe?” Adam said.

“The wife,” the Broker said.

The client.

“The client?” Adam asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Broker said edgily, “and you mustn’t ask stupid questions. Your target is this man — Baxter Bennedict.”

“I hope his wife isn’t named Bunny,” I said.

The Broker chuckled again, but Adam didn’t see the joke.

“Close. Her name is Bernice, actually.”

I groaned. “One more ‘B’ and I’ll kill ’em both — for free.”

The Broker took out a silver cigarette case. “Actually, that’s going to be one of the... delicate aspects of this job.”

“How so?” I asked.

He offered me a cigarette from the case and I waved it off; he offered one to Adam, and he took it.

The Broker said, “They’ll be on vacation. Together, at the Wistful Wagon Lodge. She’s not to be harmed. You must wait and watch until you can get him alone.”

“And then make it look like an accident,” I said.

“Or a robbery. Correct.” The Broker struck a match, lighted his cigarette. He tried to light Adam’s, but Adam gestured no, frantically.

“Two on a match,” he said. Then got a lighter out and lit himself up.

“Two on a match?” I asked.

“Haven’t you ever heard that?” the kid asked, almost wild-eyed. “Two on a match. It’s unlucky!”

“Three on a match is unlucky,” I said.

Adam squinted at me. “Are you superstitious, too?”

I looked hard at Broker, who merely shrugged.

“I gotta pee,” the kid said suddenly, and had the Broker let him slide out. Standing, he wasn’t very big: probably five seven. Skinny. His jeans were tattered.

When we were alone, I said, “What are you doing, hooking me up with that dumb-ass jerk?”

“Give him a chance. He was in Vietnam. Like you. He’s not completely inexperienced.”

“Most of the guys I knew in Vietnam were stoned twenty-four hours a day. That’s not what I’m looking for in a partner.”

“He’s just a little green. You’ll season him.”

“I’ll ice him if he fucks up. Understood?”

The Broker shrugged. “Understood.”

When Adam came back, Broker let him in and said, “The hardest part is, you have a window of only four days.”

“That’s bad,” I said, frowning. “I like to maintain a surveillance, get a pattern down...”

Broker shrugged again. “It’s a different situation. They’re on vacation. They won’t have much of a pattern.”

“Great.”

Now the Broker frowned. “Why in hell do you think it pays so well? Think of it as hazardous duty pay.”

Adam sneered and said, “What’s the matter, Quarry? Didn’t you never take no fuckin’ risks?”

“I think I’m about to,” I said.

“It’ll go well,” the Broker said.

“Knock on wood,” the kid said, and rapped on the table.

“That’s formica,” I said.

The Wistful Wagon Lodge sprawled out over numerous wooded acres, just off the outskirts of Wistful Vista, Illinois. According to the Broker’s brochure, back in the late ’40s, the hamlet had taken the name of Fibber McGee and Molly’s fictional hometown, for purposes of attracting tourists; apparently one of the secondary stars of the radio show had been born nearby. This marketing ploy had been just in time for television making radio passe, and the little farm community’s only remaining sign of having at all successfully tapped into the tourist trade was the Wistful Wagon Lodge itself.

A cobblestone drive wound through the scattering of log cabins, and several larger buildings — including the main lodge where the check-in and restaurants were — were similarly rustic structures, but of gray weathered wood. Trees clustered everywhere, turning warm sunlight into cool pools of shade; wood-burned signs showed the way to this building or that path, and decorative wagon wheels, often with flower beds in and around them, were scattered about as if some long-ago pioneer mishap had been beautified by nature and time. Of course that wasn’t the case: this was the hokey hand of man.

We arrived separately, Adam and I, each having reserved rooms in advance, each paying cash up front upon registration; no credit cards. We each had log-cabin cottages, not terribly close to one another.

As the back-up and surveillance man, Adam went in early. The target and his wife were taking a long weekend — arriving Thursday, leaving Monday. I didn’t arrive until Saturday morning.

I went to Adam’s cabin and knocked, but got no answer. Which just meant he was trailing Mr. and Mrs. Target around the grounds. After I dropped my stuff off at my own cabin, I wandered, trying to get the general layout of the place, checking out the lodge itself, where about half of the rooms were, as well as two restaurants. Everything had a pine smell, which was partially the many trees, and partially Pinesol. Wistful Wagon was Hollywood rustic — there was a dated quality about it, from the cowboy/cowgirl attire of the waiters and waitresses in the Wistful Chuckwagon Cafe to the wood-and-leather furnishings to the barnwood-framed Remington prints.

I got myself some lunch and traded smiles with a giggly tableful of college girls who were on a weekend scouting expedition of their own. Good, I thought. If I can connect with one of them tonight, that’ll provide nice cover.

As I was finishing up, my cowgirl waitress, a curly-haired blonde pushing thirty who was pretty cute herself, said, “Looks like you might get lucky tonight.”

She was re-filling my coffee cup.

“With them or with you?” I asked.

She had big washed-out blue eyes and heavy eye make-up, more ’60s than ’70s. She was wearing a 1950s style cowboy hat cinched under her chin. “I’m not supposed to fraternize with the guests.”

“How did you know I was a fraternity man?”

She laughed a little; her chin crinkled. Her face was kind of round and she was a little pudgy, nicely so in the bosom.

“Wild stab,” she said. “Anyway, there’s an open dance in the ballroom. Of the Wagontrain Dining Room? Country swing band. You’ll like it.”

“You inviting me?”

“No,” she said; she narrowed her eyes and cocked her head, her expression one of mild scolding. “Those little girls’ll be there, and plenty of others. You won’t have any trouble finding what you want.”

“I bet I will.”

“Why’s that?”

“I was hoping for a girl wearing cowboy boots like yours.”

“Oh, there’ll be girls in cowboys boots there tonight.”

“I meant, just cowboy boots.”

She laughed at that, shook her head; under her Dale Evans hat, her blonde curls bounced off her shoulders.

She went away and let me finish my coffee, and I smiled at the college girls some more, but when I paid for my check, at the register, it was my plump little cowgirl again.

“I work late tonight,” she said.

“How late?”

“I get off at midnight,” she said.

“That’s only the first time,” I said.

“First time what?”

“That you’ll get off tonight.”

She liked that. Times were different, then. The only way you could die from fucking was if a husband or boyfriend caught you at it. She told me where to meet her, later.

I strolled back up a winding path to my cabin. A few groups of college girls and college guys, not paired off together yet, were buzzing around; some couples in their twenties up into their sixties were walking, often hand-in-hand, around the sun-dappled, lushly shaded grounds. The sound of a gentle breeze in the trees made a faint shimmering music. Getting laid here was no trick.

I got my swim trunks on and grabbed a towel and headed for the nearest pool, which was the outdoor one. That’s where I found Adam.

He did look like a college frat rat, with his shorter hair; his skinny pale body reddening, he was sitting in a deck chair, sipping a Coke, in sunglasses and racing trunks, chatting with a couple of bikinied college cuties, also in sunglasses.

“Bill?” I said.

“Jim?” he said, taking off his sunglasses to get a better look at me. He grinned, extended his hand. I took it, shook it, as he stood. “I haven’t seen you since spring break!”

We’d agreed to be old high-school buddies from Peoria who had gone to separate colleges; I was attending the University of Iowa, he was at Michigan. We avoided using Illinois schools because Illinois kids were who we’d most likely run into here.

Adam introduced me to the girls — I don’t remember their names, but one was a busty brunette Veronica, the other a flat-chested blond Betty. The sound of splashing and running screaming kids — though this was a couples hideaway, there was a share of families here, as well — kept the conversation to a blessed minimum. The girls were nursing majors. We were engineering majors. We all liked Credence Clearwater. We all hoped Nixon would get the book thrown at him. We were all going to the dance tonight.

Across the way, Baxter Bennedict was sitting in a deck chair under an umbrella reading Jaws. Every page or so, he’d sip his martini; every ten pages or so, he’d wave a waitress in cowgirl vest and white plastic hot pants over for another one. His wife was swimming, her dark arms cutting the water like knives. It seemed methodical, an exercise work-out in the midst of a pool filled with water babies of various ages.

When she pulled herself out of the water, her suit a stark, startling white against her almost burned black skin, she revealed a slender, rather tall figure; tight ass, high, full breasts. Her rather lined leathery face was the only tip-off to her age, and that had the blessing of a model’s beauty to get it by.

She pulled off a white swim cap and unfurled a mane of dark, blond-tipped hair. Toweling herself off, she bent to kiss her husband on the cheek, but he only scowled at her. She stretched out on her colorful beach towel beside him, to further blacken herself.

“Oooo,” said Veronica. “What’s that ring?”

“That’s my lucky ring,” Adam said.

That fucking skull ring of his! Had he been dumb enough to wear that? Yes.

“Bought that at a Grateful Dead concert, didn’t you, Bill?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah,” he said.

“Ick,” said Betty. “I don’t like the Dead. Their hair is greasy. They’re so... druggie.”

“Drugs aren’t so bad,” Veronica said boldly, thrusting out her admirably thrustworthy bosom.

“Bill and I had our wild days back in high school,” I said. “You shoulda seen our hair — down to our asses, right Bill?”

“Right.”

“But we don’t do that anymore,” I said. “Kinda put that behind us.”

“Well I for one don’t approve of drugs,” Betty said.

“Don’t blame you,” I said.

“Except for grass, of course,” she said.

“Of course.”

“And coke. Scientific studies prove coke isn’t bad for you.”

“Well, you’re in nursing,” I said. “You’d know.”

We made informal dates with the girls for the dance, and I wandered off with “Bill” to his cabin.

“The skull ring was a nice touch,” I said.

He frowned at me. “Fuck you — it’s my lucky ring!”

A black gardener on a rider mower rumbled by us.

“Now we’re really in trouble,” I said.

He looked genuinely concerned. “What do you mean?”

“A black cat crossed our path.”

In Adam’s cabin, I sat on the brown, fake-leather sofa while he sat on the nubby yellow bedspread and spread his hands.

“They actually do have a sorta pattern,” he said, “vacation or not.”

Adam had arrived on Wednesday; the Bennedicts had arrived Thursday around two P.M., which was check-in time.

“They drink and swim all afternoon,” Adam said, “and they go dining and dancing — and drinking — in the evening.”

“What about mornings?”

“Tennis. He doesn’t start drinking till lunch.”

“Doesn’t she drink?”

“Not as much. He’s an asshole. We’re doing the world a favor, here.”

“How do you mean?”

He shrugged; he looked very different in his short hair. “He’s kind of abusive. He don’t yell at her, but just looking at them, you can see him glaring at her all the time, real ugly. Saying things that hurt her.”

“She doesn’t stand up to him?”

He shook his head, no. “They’re very one-sided arguments. He either sits there and ignores her or he’s giving her foul looks and it looks like he’s chewing her out or something.”

“Sounds like a sweet guy.”

“After the drinking and dining and dancing, they head to the bar. Both nights so far, she’s gone off to bed around eleven and he’s stayed and shut the joint down.”

“Good. That means he’s alone when he walks back to their cabin.”

Adam nodded. “But this place is crawlin’ with people.”

“Not at two in the morning. Most of these people are sleeping or fucking by then.”

“Maybe so. He’s got a fancy watch, some heavy gold jewelry.”

“Well that’s very good. Now we got ourselves a motive.”

“But she’s the one with jewels.” He whistled. “You should see the rocks hanging off that dame.”

“Well, we aren’t interested in those.”

“What about the stuff you steal off him? Just toss it somewhere?”

“Hell, no! Broker’ll have it fenced for us. A little extra dough for our trouble.”

He grinned. “Great. This is easy money. Vacation with pay.”

“Don’t ever think that... don’t ever let your guard down.”

“I know that,” he said defensively.

“It’s unlucky to think that way,” I said, and knocked on wood. Real wood.

We met up with Betty and Veronica at the dance; I took Betty because Adam was into knockers and Veronica had them. Betty was pleasant company, but I wasn’t listening to her babble. I was keeping an eye on the Bennedicts, who were seated at a corner table under a Buffalo head.

He really was an asshole. You could tell, by the way he sneered at her and spit sentences out at her, that he’d spent a lifetime — or at least a marriage — making her miserable. His hatred for her was something you could see as well as sense, like steam over asphalt. She was taking it placidly. Cool as Cher while Sonny prattled on.

But I had a hunch she usually took it more personally. Right now she could be placid: she knew the son of a bitch was going to die this weekend.

“Did you ever do Lauderdale?” Betty was saying. “I got so drunk there...”

The band was playing “Crazy” and a decent girl singer was doing a respectable Patsy Cline. What a great song.

I said, “I won a chug-a-lug contest at Boonie’s in ’72.”

Betty was impressed. “Were you even in college then?”

“No. I had a hell of a fake I.D., though.”

“Bitchen!”

Around eleven, the band took a break and we walked the girls to their cabins, hand in hand, like high school sweethearts. Gas lanterns on poles scorched the night orangely; a half-moon threw some silvery light on us, too. Adam disappeared around the side of the cabin with Veronica and I stood and watched Betty beam at me and rock girlishly on her heels. She smelled of perfume and beer, which mingled with the scent of pines; it was more pleasant than it sounds.

She was making with the dimples. “You’re so nice.”

“Well thanks.”

“And I’m a good judge of character.”

“I bet you are.”

Then she put her arms around me and pressed her slim frame to me and put her tongue half-way down my throat.

She pulled herself away and smiled coquetishly and said, “That’s all you get tonight. See you tomorrow.”

As if on cue, Veronica appeared with her lipstick mussed up and her sweater askew.

“Good night, boys,” Veronica said, and they slipped inside, giggling like the school girls they were.

“Fuck,” Adam said, scowling. “All I got was a little bare tit.”

“Not so little.”

“I thought I was gonna get laid.”

I shrugged. “Instead you got screwed.”

We walked. We passed a cabin that was getting some remodeling and repairs; I’d noticed it earlier. A ladder was leaned up against the side, for some re-roofing. Adam made a wide circle around the ladder. I walked under it just to watch him squirm.

When I fell back in step with him, he said, “You gonna do the hit tonight?”

“No.”

“Bar closes at midnight on Sundays. Gonna do it then?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “Good.”

We walked, and it was the place where one path went toward my cabin, and another toward his.

“Well,” he said, “maybe I’ll get lucky tomorrow night.”

“No pick-ups the night of the hit. I need back-up more than either of us needs an alibi, or an easy fuck, either.”

“Oh. Of course. You’re right. Sorry. ‘Night.”

“ ’Night, Bill.”

Then I went back and picked up the waitress cowgirl and took her to my cabin; she had some dope in her purse, and I smoked a little with her, just to be nice, and apologized for not having a rubber, and she said, Don’t sweat it, pardner, I’m on the pill, and she rode me in her cowboy boots until my dick said yahoo.

The next morning I had breakfast in the cafe with Adam and he seemed preoccupied as I ate my scrambled eggs and bacon, and he poked at his French toast.

“Bill,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m worried.”

“What about?”

We were seated in a rough-wood booth and had plenty of privacy; we kept our voices down. Our conversation, after all, wasn’t really proper breakfast conversation.

“I don’t think you should hit him like that.”

“Like what?”

He frowned. “On his way back to his cabin after the bar closes.”

“Oh? Why?”

“He might not be drunk enough. Bar closes early Sunday night, remember? ”

“Jesus,” I said. “The fucker starts drinking at noon. What more do you want?”

“But there could be people around.”

“At midnight?”

“It’s a resort. People get romantic at resorts. Moonlight strolls...”

“You got a better idea?”

He nodded. “Do it in his room. Take the wife’s jewels and it’s a robbery got out of hand. In and out. No fuss, no muss.”

“Are you high? What about the wife?”

“She won’t be there.”

“What are you talking about?”

He started gesturing, earnestly. “She gets worried about him, see. It’s midnight, and she goes looking for him. While she’s gone, he gets back, flops on the bed, you come in, bing bang boom.”

I just looked at him. “Are you psychic now? How do we know she’ll do that?”

He swallowed; took a nibble at a forkful of syrup-dripping French toast. Smiled kind of nervously.

“She told me so,” he said.

We were walking now. The sun was filtering through the trees and birds were chirping and the sounds of children laughing wafted through the air.

“Are you fucking nuts? Making contact with the client?”

“Quarry — she contacted me! I swear!”

“Then she’s fucking nuts. Jesus!” I sat on a bench by a flower bed. “It’s off. I’m calling the Broker. It’s over.”

“Listen to me! Listen. She was waiting for me at my cabin last night. After we struck out with the college girls? She was fuckin’ waitin’ for me! She told me she knew who I was.”

“How did she know that?”

“She said she saw me watching them. She figured it out. She guessed.”

“And, of course, you confirmed her suspicions.”

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

“You dumb-ass dickhead. Who said it first?”

“Who said what first?”

“Who mentioned ‘killing.’ Who mentioned ‘murder.’ ”

His cheek twitched. “Well... me, I guess. She kept saying she knew why I was here. And then she said, I’m why you’re here. I hired you.”

“And you copped to it. God. I’m on the next bus.”

“Quarry! Listen... this is better this way. This is much better.”

“What did she do, fuck you?”

He blanched; looked at his feet.

“Oh God,” I said. “You did get lucky last night. Fuck. You fucked the client. Did you tell her there were two of us?”

“No.”

“She’s seen us together.”

“I told her you’re just a guy I latched onto here to look less conspicuous.”

“Did she buy it?”

“Why shouldn’t she? I say we scrap Plan A and move to Plan B. It’s better.”

“Plan B being...?”

“Quarry, she’s going to leave the door unlocked. She’ll wait for him to get back from the bar, and when he’s asleep, she’ll unlock the door, go out and pretend to be looking for him, and come back and find him dead, and her jewels gone. Help-police-I-been-robbed-my-husband’s-been-shot. You know.”

“She’s being pretty fucking helpful, you ask me.”

His face clenched like a fist. “The bastard has beat her for years. And he’s got a girl friend a third his age. He’s been threatening to divorce her, and since they signed a pre-marital agreement, she gets jackshit, if they divorce. The bastard.”

“Quite a sob story.”

“I told you: we’re doing the world a favor. And now she’s doing us one. Why shoot him right out in the open, when we can walk in his room and do it? You got to stick this out, Quarry. Shit, man, it’s five grand apiece, and change!”

I thought about it.

“Quarry?”

I’d been thinking a long time.

“Okay,” I said. “Give her the high sign. We’ll do it her way.”

The Bar W Bar was a cozy rustic room decorated with framed photos of movie cowboys from Ken Maynard to John Wayne, from Audie Murphy to the Man with No Name. On a brown mock-leather stool up at the bar, Baxter Bennedict sat, a thin handsome drunk in a pale blue polyester sportcoat and pale yellow Ban-Lon sportshirt, gulping martinis and telling anyone who’d listen his sad story.

I didn’t sit near enough to be part of the conversation, but I could hear him.

“Milking me fucking dry,” he was saying. “You’d think with sixteen goddamn locations, I’d be sitting pretty. I was the first guy in the Chicago area to offer a paint job under thirty dollars — $29.95! That’s a good fucking deal — isn’t it?”

The bartender — a young fellow in a buckskin vest, polishing a glass — nodded sympathetically.

“Now this competition. Killing me. What the fuck kind of paint job can you get for $19.99? Will you answer me that one? And now that bitch has the nerve...”

Now he was muttering. The bartender began to move away, but Baxter started in again.

“She wants me to sell! My life’s work. Started from nothing. And she wants me to sell! Pitiful fucking money they offered. Pitiful...”

“Last call, Mr. Bennedict,” the bartender said. Then he repeated it, louder, without the “Mr. Bennedict.” The place was only moderately busy. A few couples. A solitary drinker or two. The Wistful Wagon Lodge had emptied out, largely, this afternoon — even Betty and Veronica were gone. Sunday. People had to go to work tomorrow. Except, of course, for those who owned their own businesses, like Baxter here.

Or had unusual professions, like mine.

I waited until the slender figure had stumbled half-way home before I approached him. No one was around. The nearest cabin was dark.

“Mr. Bennedict,” I said.

“Yeah?” He turned, trying to focus his bleary eyes.

“I couldn’t help but hear what you said. I think I have a solution for your problems.”

“Yeah?” He grinned. “And what the hell would that be?”

He walked, on the unsteadiest of legs, up to me.

I showed him the nine millimeter with its bulky sound suppresser. It probably looked like a ray gun to him.

“Fuck! What is this, a fucking hold-up?”

“Yes. Keep your voice down or it’ll turn into a fucking homicide. Got me?”

That turned him sober. “Got you. What do you want?”

“What do you think? Your watch and your rings.”

He smirked disgustedly and removed them; handed them over.

“Now your sports coat.”

“My what?”

“Your sports coat. I just can’t get enough polyester.”

He snorted a laugh. “You’re out of your gourd, pal.”

He slipped off the sports coat and handed it out toward me with two fingers; he was weaving a little, smirking drunkenly.

I took the coat with my left hand, and the silenced nine millimeter went thup thup thup; three small, brilliant blossoms of red appeared on his light yellow Ban-Lon. He was dead before he had time to think about it.

I dragged his body behind a clump of trees and left him there, his worries behind him.

I watched from behind a tree as Bernice Bennedict slipped out of their cabin; she was wearing a dark halter top and dark slacks that almost blended with her burnt-black skin, making a wraith of her. She had a big white handbag on a shoulder strap. She was so dark the white bag seemed to float in space as she headed toward the lodge.

Only she stopped and found her own tree to duck behind. I smiled to myself.

Then, wearing the pale blue polyester sports coat, I entered their cabin, through the door she’d left open. The room was completely dark but for some minor filtering in of light through curtained windows. I quickly arranged some pillows under sheets and covers, to create the impression of a person in the bed.

And I called Adam’s cabin.

“Hey, Bill,” I said. “It’s Jim.”

His voice was breathless. “Is it done?”

“No. I got cornered coming out of the bar by that waitress I was out with last night. She latched onto me — she’s in my john.”

“What, are you in your room?”

“Yeah. I saw Bennedict leave the bar at midnight, and his wife passed us, heading for the lodge, just minutes ago. You’ve got a clear shot at him.”

“What? Me? I’m the fucking lookout!”

“Tonight’s the night and we go to Plan C.”

“I didn’t know there was a Plan C.”

“Listen, asshole — it was you who wanted to switch plans. You’ve got a piece, don’t you?”

“Of course...”

“Well, you’re elected. Go!”

And I hung up.

I stood in the doorway of the bathroom, which faced the bed. I sure as hell didn’t turn any lights on, although my left hand hovered by the switch. The nine millimeter with the silencer was heavy in my right hand. But I didn’t mind.

Adam came in quickly and didn’t do too bad a job of it: four silenced slugs. He should have checked the body — it never occurred to him he’d just slaughtered a bunch of pillows — but if somebody had been in that bed, they’d have been dead.

He went to the dresser where he knew the jewels would be, and was picking up the jewelry box when the door opened and she came in, the little revolver already in her hand.

Before she could fire, I turned on the bathroom light and said, “If I don’t hear the gun hit the floor immediately, you’re fucking dead.”

She was just a black shape, except for the white handbag; but I saw the flash of silver as the gun bounced to the carpeted floor.

“What...?” Adam was saying. It was too dark to see any expression, but he was obviously as confused as he was spooked.

“Shut the door, lady,” I said, “and turn on the lights.”

She did.

She really was a beautiful woman, or had been, dark eyes and scarlet-painted mouth in that finely carved model’s face, but it was just a leathery mask to me.

“What...” Adam said. He looked shocked as hell, which made sense; the gun was in his waistband, the jewelry box in his hands.

“You didn’t know there were two of us, did you, Mrs. Bennedict?”

She was sneering faintly; she shook her head, no.

“You see, kid,” I told Adam, “she wanted her husband hit, but she wanted the hitman dead, too. Cleaner. Tidier. Right?”

“Fuck you,” she said.

“I’m not much for sloppy seconds, thanks. Bet you got a nice legal license for that little purse pea-shooter of yours, don’t you? Perfect protection for when you stumble in on an intruder who’s just killed your loving husband. Who is dead, by the way. Somebody’ll run across him in the morning, probably.”

“You bitch!” Adam said. He raised his own gun, which was a .38 Browning with a home-made suppresser.

“Don’t you know it’s bad luck to kill a woman?” I said.

She was frozen, one eye twitching.

Adam was trembling. He swallowed; nodded. “Okay,” he said, lowering the gun. “Okay.”

“Go,” I told him.

She stepped aside as he slipped out the door, shutting it behind him.

“Thank you,” she said, and I shot her twice in the chest.

I slipped the bulky silenced automatic in my waistband; grabbed the jewel box off the dresser.

“I make my own luck,” I told her, but she didn’t hear me, as I stepped over her.

I never worked with Adam again. I think he was disturbed, when he read the papers and realized I’d iced the woman after all. Maybe he got out of the business. Or maybe he wound up dead in a ditch, his lucky skull ring still on his little finger. Broker never said, and I was never interested enough to ask.

Now, years later, lounging in the hot tub at Sylvan Lodge, I look back on my actions and wonder how I could have ever have been so young, and so rash.

Killing the woman was understandable. She’d double-crossed us; she would’ve killed us both without batting a false lash.

But sleeping with that cowgirl waitress, on the job. Smoking dope. Not using a rubber.

I was really pushing my luck that time.

The Partnership David Morrell

Born in Kitchener, Ontario, David Morrell (1943–) was still a teenager when he decided to become an author. He was inspired by the Route 66 television scripts written by Sterling Silliphant and encouraged by Philip Young (also known as the science fiction writer William Tenn), the Hemingway scholar at Penn State University, where Morrell eventually received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. In 1970, he took a job as an English professor at the University of Iowa, and produced his initial novel, First Blood, two years later.

Reviewers described First Blood (1972) as “the father of the modern adventure novel.” It introduced the world to Rambo, who has gone on to become one of the most famous fictional characters in the world, largely through the movies that starred Sylvester Stallone. John Rambo (the famous name came from a variety of apple said to have been planted by Johnny Appleseed) is a Vietnam War vet, a troubled, violent, former Green Beret warrior trained in survival, hand-to-hand combat and other special martial skills; he was loosely based on World War II hero Audie Murphy. The film series began with First Blood (1982), and has continued with Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988), and Rambo (2008).

Morrell has enjoyed numerous other bestsellers in various genres of his novels, including four volumes in the series that began with The Brotherhood of the Rose (1984), which became a popular TV miniseries starring Robert Mitchum in 1989; four volumes about the notorious Thomas De Quincey, set in the middle of the nineteenth century; stand-alone international thrillers; comic books; nonfiction; and highly popular horror fiction, notably Creepers (2005), which won the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. He is also the cofounder of the International Thriller Writers Association.

“The Partnership” was originally published in the May 27, 1981, issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Sure, it was cold-blooded, but there didn’t seem another way. MacKenzie had spent months considering alternatives. He’d tried to buy his partner out but Dolan had refused.

Well, not exactly. Dolan’s first response had simply been to laugh and say, “I wouldn’t let you have the satisfaction.” When MacKenzie kept insisting, Dolan’s next response was, “Sure I’ll let you buy me out. It only takes a million dollars.”

Dolan might as well have wanted ten. MacKenzie couldn’t raise a million, even half a million or a quarter — and he knew Dolan knew that.

It was typical. MacKenzie couldn’t say “Good morning” without Dolan’s disagreeing. If MacKenzie bought a car, Dolan bought a bigger, more expensive one and, just to rub it in, bragged about the deal he got. If MacKenzie took his wife and children on vacation to Bermuda, Dolan told him that Bermuda wasn’t anything compared to Mazatlan, where Dolan had taken his wife and kids.

The two men argued constantly. They favored different football teams. Their taste in food was wildly different — mutton versus corned beef. When MacKenzie took up golf, Dolan suddenly was playing tennis, pointing out that golf was just a game while tennis was good exercise. But Dolan, even with his so-called exercise, was overweight. MacKenzie, on the other hand, was trim, but Dolan always made remarks about the hairpiece MacKenzie wore.

It was impossible — a Scotsman trying to maintain a business with an Irishman. MacKenzie should have known their relationship would never work. At the start, they had been rival builders, each attempting to outbid the other for construction jobs and losing money in the process. So they’d formed a partnership. Together they were more successful than they had been independently. Trying to outdo each other, one would think of ways to turn a greater profit and the other would feel challenged to be twice as clever. They cut costs by mixing too much gravel with the concrete, by installing low-grade pipes and sub-spec insulation. They kept special books for Uncle Sam.

MacKenzie-Dolan Enterprises. The two of them were enterprising, all right, but they couldn’t bear to talk to one another. They had tried to solve that problem by dividing the work so that MacKenzie ran the office and let Dolan go out troubleshooting.

For a time that did the trick. But they still had to meet to make decisions and though they were seeing each other less, they seemed to save their tension up and aggravate each other more when they met.

To make things worse, their wives became good friends. The women were constantly organizing barbecues and swimming parties. The men tried not to argue at these get-togethers. When they did, they heard about it from their wives.

“I hate the guy,” MacKenzie would tell his wife after a party. “He bugs me at the office and he made me sick tonight.”

“You just listen to me, Bob — Vickie Dolan is my friend and I won’t have your childish antics breaking up our friendship. I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.”

So both men braced themselves while their wives exchanged recipes.

What finally caused the big trouble was when Dolan started making threats.

“I wonder what the government would do if they knew about your special way of keeping books.”

“What about the sub-spec plumbing and the extra gravel in the concrete?” MacKenzie had replied. “You’re responsible for that, Dolan.”

“But that’s not a criminal offense — the judge would simply fine me,” Dolan answered. “The IRS is quite a different kettle. If they knew you were keeping separate books, they’d lock you in a dungeon where I’d never have to see your ugly puss again.”

MacKenzie stared at Dolan and decided there was no other choice. He’d tried to do the right thing, but his partner wouldn’t sell. There wasn’t any way around it. This was self-defense.

The man was waiting at the monkey cage, a tall, thin, friendly-looking fellow, young and blond. He wore a tailored light-blue jogging suit and he was eating peanuts.

At the water fountain, bending down to drink, MacKenzie glanced around. The zoo was crowded. It was noon on a sunny weekday, and people on their lunch breaks sat on benches munching sandwiches or strolled among the cages. There were children, mothers, old folks playing checkers. He heard tinny music from an organ grinder, muffled conversations, strident chattering and chirping. He was satisfied that no one was paying any attention to him, so he wiped water from his mouth and walked over.

“Mr. Smith?” he said.

The young man didn’t turn — he just chewed another peanut — and MacKenzie was afraid he’d spoken to the wrong man. After all, the zoo was crowded and there were other men in jogging suits. Besides, no matter what the papers said, it wasn’t easy finding someone who would do this kind of work. MacKenzie had spent several evenings haunting low-life bars before getting a lead. Once someone thought he was a cop and threatened to break both his legs. But hundred-dollar bills had eventually paid off and at last he’d arranged this meeting on a pay phone. But the man, apparently afraid of a trap, either had not arrived for the appointment or was playing possum.

As MacKenzie moved to leave, the young blond fellow turned to him. “Just a second, Bob,” he said.

MacKenzie blinked. “Your name is Smith?”

“Just call me John.” The young man’s smile was brilliant. He was holding out the bag. “You want a peanut?”

“No, I don’t think so—”

“Go on and have a peanut, Bob.” The young man gestured with the bag.

MacKenzie took a peanut. He ate it, but he didn’t taste it.

“That’s right, relax, live a little. You don’t mind if I call you Bob?”

“I don’t care what you call me as long as we get this matter settled. You’re not quite what I expected.”

The young man nodded. “You were counting on George Raft and instead you got Troy Donohue. I know it’s disappointing.” He was frowning sympathetically. “But nothing’s what it seems today. Would you believe I was a business major? But with the recession I couldn’t get a job in management, so I’m doing this.”

“You mean you’re not experienced?”

“Take it easy, Bob. I didn’t say that. I can handle my end. Don’t you fret about a thing. You see these monkeys? Just watch this.” He threw some peanuts. All the monkeys scrambled, fighting for them.

“See — they’re just like us, Bob. We’re all scrambling for the peanuts.”

“Well, I’m sure that’s very symbolic—”

“All right, you’re impatient. I’m just trying to be sociable.” He sighed. “No one takes the time any more. So what’s your problem, Bob?”

“My business partner.”

“Is he stealing from the kitty?”

“No.”

“He’s fooling with your wife then?”

“No.”

The young man nodded. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“Of course. It’s very simple. What I call the marriage syndrome.”

“What?”

“It’s like you’re married to your partner, but you hate him and he won’t agree to get divorced.”

“Why, that’s incredible!”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re right. That’s it.”

The young man shrugged and threw a peanut. “Bob, I’ve seen it all. My specialty is human nature. So you don’t care how I do it?”

“Just as long as it’s—”

“An accident. Precisely. You recall my price when we discussed this on the phone?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

“Half now, half later. Did you bring the money?”

“It’s in my pocket.”

“Don’t give it to me yet. Go over and put the envelope inside that waste container. In a moment I’ll walk over and stuff this empty bag in. When I leave I’ll take the envelope.”

“His name is Patrick Dolan.”

“The particulars are with the money?”

“As you asked.”

“Then don’t worry. I’ll be in touch.”

“Hey, wait a minute. Afterward, I don’t have any guarantee that—”

“Blackmail? You’re afraid I’ll extort you? Bob, I’m surprised at you! That wouldn’t be good business!”

Dolan walked out of the hardware store. The afternoon was glaring hot. He wiped his brow and squinted. There was someone in his pickup truck, a young guy eating corn chips. Blond, good-looking, in a jogging suit.

He stalked across the parking lot, reached the truck, and yanked open the door. “Hey, buddy, this is my truck you’re—”

The young man turned. His smile was disarming. “Hi there, Pat. You want some corn chips?”

Dolan’s mouth hung open. Sweat was trickling from his forehead. “What?”

“The way you’re sweating, you need salt. Have some corn chips.”

Dolan’s jaw went rigid. “Out!”

“Excuse me?”

“Get out before I throw you out.”

The young man sighed. Tugging down the zipper on his sweatshirt, he revealed the big revolver bulging from a shoulder holster.

Dolan’s stomach lurched. He blanched and stumbled backward, gaping.

“What the—?”

“Just relax,” the young man said.

“Look, buddy, all I’ve got is twenty dollars.”

“You don’t understand. Climb on up here and we’ll talk a little.”

Dolan glanced around in panic. No one seemed to notice him. He wondered if he ought to run.

“Don’t try to run, Pat.”

Relieved of that decision, Dolan quickly climbed inside the truck. He ate the corn chips the blond offered a second time but he couldn’t taste the salt. His shirt was sticking to the back of the seat. All he could think of was the bulging object underneath the jogging suit.

“Here’s the thing,” the young man told him. “I’m supposed to kill you.”

Dolan sat up so hard he bumped his head against the ceiling. “What?”

“Your partner hired me. For two thousand dollars.”

“If this is a joke—”

“It’s business, Pat. He paid a thousand down. You want to see it?”

“But that’s crazy!”

“I wish you hadn’t said that.” The young man reached inside his sweatshirt.

“No, wait a minute! I didn’t mean that!”

“I only want to show the note your partner gave me. Here. You’ll recognize his handwriting.”

Dolan glared down at the note. “It’s my name and address.”

“And your physical description and your habits. See, he wants your death to seem like an accident.”

Dolan finally accepted this wasn’t any joke. His stomach burned with sudden rage. “That dirty—”

“Temper, Pat.”

“He wants to buy me out — but I won’t let him have the satisfaction!”

“I understand. It’s like the two of you are married and you want to make him suffer.”

“You’re damn right I want to make him suffer! I’ve put up with him for twenty years! So now he figures he can have me killed and take the business for himself? That sneaky, rotten—”

“Bob, I’ve got bad news for you.”

MacKenzie almost spilled his Scotch. He turned. The young man had come up beside him without warning and was eating popcorn at the bar.

“Don’t tell me you botched the job!” MacKenzie’s eyes went wide with horror. He glanced quickly around as if expecting to be arrested.

“Bob, I never even got the chance to start.” The young man picked at something in his teeth.

“My God, what happened?”

“Nearly broke a tooth. These kernels aren’t all popped.”

“I meant with Dolan!”

“Keep your voice down, Bob. I know you meant with him. No one cares if someone else breaks a tooth. They only care about themselves. Do you believe in competition?”

“What?”

“Do you support free enterprise, the thing that made this country great?”

MacKenzie felt his knees go weak. He clutched the bar and nodded weakly.

“Then you’ll understand. When I went to see your partner—”

“Oh, my God, you told him!”

“Bob, I couldn’t simply kill him and not let him have a chance to make a bid. That wouldn’t be fair.”

MacKenzie started trembling. “Bid? What kind of bid?”

“Don’t get excited, Bob. We figured he could pay me not to kill him. But you’d just send someone else. So what we finally decided was that he’d pay me to come back and kill you. He offered double — two grand now and two when you were shoveled under.”

“He can’t do that!”

“But he did, Bob. Don’t go simple on me now. You should have seen his face. I mean to tell you, he was angry.”

“You accepted what I offered! You agreed to take my contract!”

“A verbal contract isn’t binding. Anyhow, you’re in a seller’s market. What I’m selling is worth more now.”

“You’re a crook!”

The young man’s face looked pained. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“No, wait. Don’t leave. I didn’t mean it.”

“Bob, you hurt my feelings.”

“I apologize. I don’t know what I’m saying. Every time I think about that guy—”

“I understand, Bob. You’re forgiven.”

“Pat, you’ll never guess what Bob did.”

At the railing, Dolan shuddered. He was watching as the horses thundered toward the finish line. He turned. The young man stood beside him, chewing on a hot dog.

“You don’t mean you told him?”

“Pat, I had to. Fair is fair. He offered double our agreement. Four grand now, four later.”

“And you’ve come to me to raise the price?”

“They’re at the stretch!” the track announcer shouted.

“It’s inflation, Pat. It’s killing us.” The young man wiped some mustard from his lips.

“You think I’m stupid?” Dolan asked.

The young man frowned.

“That I’m a moron?” Dolan said.

“Excuse me, Pat?”

“If I pay more, you’ll go to him and he’ll pay more. Then you’ll come back to me and I’ll pay more. Forget it! I’m not paying!”

“Fine with me, Pat. Nice to see you.”

“Wait a minute!”

“Is something wrong?”

“Of course there’s something wrong! You’re going to kill me!”

“Well, the choice is up to you.”

“The winner is number three, Big Trouble—” the track announcer shouted.

Horses rumbled by, their jockeys standing up to slow them. Dust was drifting.

“Damn it, yes. I’ll pay you,” Dolan muttered. “But do it this time! I can’t sleep. I’m losing weight. I’ve got an ulcer.”

“Pat, the race is over. Did you have a bet?”

“On number six to win.”

“A nag, Pat. She came in last. If you had asked me, I’d have told you number three.”

“You’ll never guess what Pat did, Bob.”

MacKenzie stiffened. Dolan stopped beside him, looked around and sighed, then sat down on the park bench. “So you figured you’d have me killed,” Dolan said.

MacKenzie’s face was gaunt. “You weren’t above the same temptation yourself.”

Dolan shrugged. “Self-defense.”

“I should sit back while you sic the IRS on me?”

“That was just a joke.”

“Some joke. It’s costing me a fortune.”

“It’s costing me too.”

“We’ve got a problem.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Dolan said. “The only answer I can see—”

“—is for both of us to kill him.”

“Only way.”

“He’ll bleed us dry.”

“But if we pay someone else to kill him, the new guy might try something cute too.”

“We’ll do it together. That way you can’t point the blame at me.”

“Or vice versa.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me?”

They were glaring at each other.

“Hi there, Bob. How are you, Pat?”

The young man smiled from behind their files. He was munching a taco as he went through their records.

“What the hell is this now?” MacKenzie said.

“He claimed you expected him,” the secretary said.

“Just shut the door,” Dolan told her.

“Hey, fellas, your records really are a mess. This skimping on the concrete. And this sub-spec insulation. I don’t know, guys — we’ve got lots of work ahead of us.”

A drop of taco sauce fell on a file folder.

“Us?”

“Well, sure — we’re partners now.”

“We’re what?”

“I took the money you gave me and invested it.”

“In what?”

“Insurance. You remember how I said I was a business major? Well, I decided this sideline doesn’t suit me, so I went to see a specialist. The things a graduate is forced to do to get a job these days!”

“A specialist?”

“A hit man. If the two of you decide to have me killed, you’ll be killed as well.”

MacKenzie’s chest began to stab. Dolan’s ulcer started burning.

“So we’re partners. Here, I even had some cards made up.”

He handed one across to each of them. MACKENZIE-DOLAN-SMITH, it read. And at the bottom: CONTRACTORS.

Blackburn Sins Bradley Denton

It is tricky to define Jimmy Blackburn as a villain. Yes, he does kill people with disquieting regularity but, then, they really do deserve it. Bradley Denton (1958–) has essentially given his character carte blanche to eliminate bad people from the face of the Earth — and who among us hasn’t wanted to do the same? True, we haven’t actually done it but, then, we’re not fictional characters.

Denton was raised in rural Kansas before attending the University of Kansas, receiving a B.A. degree in astronomy and an M.A. in English, then moved to Austin, Texas. Virtually all of his work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres. Even Blackburn (1993), his single foray into book-length crime fiction, has elements of dark fantasy, being nominated for a Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writers Association. Generally described as a novel, it is, in fact, a collection of connected short stories. Denton has admitted that he has found the nature of his character to be disturbing. “Basically,” Denton said, “what I’m doing is taking a character who is more or less a normal human being but gets pushed in one direction just a little too far and does what I think any one of us could do under those circumstances.”

Although not prolific, with only eight books to his credit in the thirty years since Wrack and Roll (1986), his first book, was published, Denton has received more than his share of honors, including for The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians and A Conflagration Artist (1994), which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, and Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede (1991), which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

“Blackburn Sins” was first published in Blackburn (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

The deadbolt wasn’t set, so Blackburn broke into the apartment with a six-inch metal ruler. A lamp was on inside. He scanned the living room, but wasn’t interested in the TV or stereo. This was a second-story apartment with outside stairs, so he couldn’t take anything big. The VCR was small enough, but he decided against it anyway. He wasn’t proud that he had turned to thievery, so he preferred to steal only those things that were of no use or pleasure to their owners. But that rule tended to limit him to class rings and junk, so he didn’t always stick to it.

He didn’t bother with the kitchen. Apartment dwellers didn’t own silver. He pulled his folded duffel bag from his coat and stepped into the hallway that led to the bedroom. Bedrooms were good for jewelry. Houston pawn shops paid cash for gold chains and silver earrings.

The bedroom door opened, and a man stepped out. Blackburn froze.

The man closed the door behind him. He was tall. His face and most of his body were shadowed. His right hand was empty, but Blackburn couldn’t see his left. It might be holding a weapon.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked. His voice was of moderate pitch. He didn’t sound upset.

Blackburn was confused. He had watched this building for three days, noting the occupants of each apartment and their schedules. This unit’s occupant was a woman who had left for her night shift at Whataburger twenty minutes ago. He was sure that she lived alone. The man at the end of the hall should not exist.

“Don’t be afraid,” the man said. “I just want to know why you’re here.”

Blackburn took two steps backward. His Colt Python was in its pouch in his coat, but he couldn’t reach for it without dropping the duffel bag from his right hand. Then it would take two or three seconds to reach into the left side of his coat, open the Velcro flap, and pull out the pistol. If the shadowed man had a gun or knife, Blackburn might be dead before getting off a shot. So his best option was to leave, but he had to do it without turning his back.

“Tell me why you’re here,” the shadowed man said, “and I won’t hurt you. But if you don’t stand still, I will.”

Blackburn stopped. “I was going to steal things,” he said, “but I’m not going to now.”

“What things were you going to steal?”

“Jewelry. Rings, necklaces. Maybe a musical instrument, like an old trumpet or an out-of-tune guitar.”

“Why out of tune?” the shadowed man asked.

“A guitar that’s in tune is in use,” Blackburn said. “I don’t like to steal things people use.”

The shadowed man gave a short chuckle, almost a grunt. “A burglar with a moral code,” he said. “But people use jewelry too, you know.”

“It just hangs there,” Blackburn said. “It’s stupid.”

“In your opinion.”

Blackburn started to relax his grip on the duffel bag. He had decided to try for the Python. “Yes,” he said. “In my opinion.”

“And that’s the only opinion that counts.”

“Yes.” The duffel began to slip from Blackburn’s fingers.

“Don’t reach for your pistol, Musician,” the shadowed man said.

“I don’t have a pistol.”

“You have a lump in your coat. It’s big, but the wrong shape for an automatic. I’m guessing a three fifty-seven. A forty-four would be awfully heavy.”

Blackburn tightened his grip on the duffel bag again. “All right. I won’t reach for it.”

“Good. If you did, I’d have to kill you. And that would be a shame, because I agree with you. Your opinion is the only one that matters. My opinion is the only one that matters too.”

“That’s a contradiction,” Blackburn said.

“Why? You create your world, I create mine. Contradictions only exist for people who aren’t bright enough to do that. When they come up against someone who is, it’s matter and antimatter. Know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“I knew you would,” the shadowed man said. “I’m going to come toward you now so we can see each other. I’ll move slowly, and you won’t move at all. All right?”

“All right.”

A smell of deodorant soap preceded the man as he stepped from the shadows. He had long dark hair, shot through with gray. It was pulled back from his face. His skin was sallow, his eyes a greenish brown. He was wearing a hooded black pullover sweatshirt, black sweatpants, and gray running shoes. His left hand held a small paper bag. There was no visible weapon.

Blackburn dropped his duffel and brought out the Python. He cocked it and pointed it at the man’s face.

The man stopped. “You agreed not to move,” he said.

“I lied.”

“That doesn’t seem consistent with a moral code.”

“I’ve created my own world,” Blackburn said. “In here, it’s moral.” He stepped backward.

“You don’t have to leave empty-handed,” the man said. He shook the paper bag, and its contents clinked. “See, I’m a burglar too. I don’t know that I’m as moral as you, but I’m willing to split the take.”

Blackburn paused. He eyed the paper bag. “I was watching this place. How’d you get in?”

“Through a window in the bathroom. On the back side of the building.”

“Someone might see your ladder.”

The man shook his head. “I climbed the wall. Plenty of space between the bricks.” He turned the paper bag upside down. Rings, necklaces, and earrings fell to the carpet. “This has to be fifty-fifty, so don’t cheat.”

“Why let me have any of it?” Blackburn asked.

The man knelt on the floor and bent over the tangle of jewelry. His ponytail hung down over his shoulder. “So you won’t turn me in.” He looked up and smiled. “And so if we’re caught, I can plea-bargain the punishment over your way.”

Blackburn replaced the Python in its pouch. “I’ll take that class ring.”

The man flicked it toward him. “You can call me Roy-Boy.”

“I don’t need to call you anything,” Blackburn said, squatting to pick up the ring. “I won’t be seeing you again.”

“The best laid plans, Musician.”

“I’m not a musician.”

“In your world, maybe not. In mine, you play electric guitar. You want to sound like Hendrix, but you’re too white and you don’t do enough drugs.”

Blackburn said nothing. He took the ring and three gold chains, then picked up his duffel bag and left. He crossed the street and hid behind a dumpster to watch the apartment building. He wanted to see if Roy-Boy left too.

A few minutes later Roy-Boy appeared under a streetlight and looked across at the dumpster. He pointed his right finger and waggled his thumb to mimic a pistol. Then he walked away.

Blackburn waited until Roy-Boy was out of sight before walking the four blocks to his Plymouth Duster. The back of his neck tingled. He looked in all directions, but saw no one. He thought he smelled deodorant soap, but decided it was his clothes. Maybe he had used too much detergent.

Two nights later, on Friday, Blackburn stuffed his pockets with cash and drove to The Hoot, a bar near the Rice University campus. His coat felt light without the Python, which he had hidden in his closet. He wouldn’t need a gun tonight. His goal was to seduce one of the college girls he had met at The Hoot the week before, preferably the thin brunette who was a flute player in the marching band. The last time he’d had sex had been behind a barbecue pit at a Labor Day picnic, and here it was almost Christmas. He was afraid the top of his head might blow off.

The Hoot was crowded. It smelled of moist flesh and beer, and throbbed with canned rock ’n’ roll. The flute player was there. Blackburn went to her and made the comment that the Rice football team could have had more success the previous weekend had it used the band’s woodwind section in place of its defensive line. The flute player laughed. She remembered him and called him Alan, the name he was using now. Her name was Heather. It seemed to Blackburn that at least half of the twenty-year-old women in the world were named Heather, but he didn’t tell her that. He liked her. She had a fine sense of humor. It had been her idea, she said, for the Marching Owl Band to cover their uniforms with black plastic trash bags and lie down on the football field at halftime to simulate an oil slick.

Heather was a steady drinker, and Blackburn felt obliged to match her. After half an hour he had to excuse himself for a few minutes. When he came out of the men’s room, he saw that someone had taken his place at the bar and was leaning close to Heather. Blackburn couldn’t see this person’s head, but he could tell from the way the jeans fit across the hips that it was a male.

Heather saw Blackburn and waved. “Hey!” she called. “Everything come out okay?”

The man beside her raised his head, and Blackburn saw that it was Roy-Boy.

Roy-Boy smiled as Blackburn approached. “Musician,” he said. His ponytail was wet. It glistened in the neon glow.

Heather looked from Blackburn to Roy-Boy. “You guys know each other?”

“We’re in the same business,” Roy-Boy said. He turned on his bar stool so that his knee touched Heather’s thigh.

Blackburn’s teeth clenched. The sharp scent of Roy-Boy’s deodorant soap was cutting through the other smells.

“Really?” Heather said. “What do you do?”

“We sell discount merchandise,” Roy-Boy said. “We’re competitors, actually.”

Heather looked concerned. “Does that mean you don’t like each other?”

“No,” Roy-Boy said. “In fact, we can help each other.”

“I’m thinking of getting into another line of work,” Blackburn said. But if he stopped stealing, he would have to take a job at yet another fast-food restaurant. It was the only legal work he was qualified to do. He had fried burgers or chicken, or stuffed burritos, in every city he had ever stayed in more than a few days. He was sick of it.

“I’d be sorry if you did that, Alan,” Roy-Boy said.

Blackburn looked at Heather. “Did you tell him my name?” He realized after he said it that it sounded like an accusation. The beer had made him stupid.

“No,” Heather said, frowning. “Why would I? You know each other, right?”

“We’ve never exchanged names,” Roy-Boy told her, “but I got curious and asked around about him. Has he told you he’s a guitar player? He plays a left-handed Telecaster.”

Heather’s frown vanished. “You in a band?” she asked Blackburn.

“No,” he said. “I mean, not right now.”

“He was in three bands at once when he lived in Austin,” Roy-Boy said. “He even played with Stevie Ray a couple of times.”

Heather was gazing at Blackburn. “Why’d you quit?”

“No money in it,” he said.

Roy-Boy got off the bar stool. “That reminds me,” he said. “I have some work to catch up on.” He dropped a five-dollar bill on the bar. “Next round’s on me.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Heather said.

“Yeah,” Blackburn said.

Roy-Boy clapped Blackburn on the shoulder. “Happy to do it,” he said. “Us old guys got to stick together.” He headed for the door.

Blackburn imagined making Roy-Boy eat his own eyes.

“Bye, Steve!” Heather called. Then she grinned at Blackburn. “How old are you, anyway?”

Blackburn sat down on the empty stool. It was warm from Roy-Boy, so he stood up again.

“Twenty-seven,” he said. “How about you?”

Heather raised her beer mug. “Twenty-one, of course. You don’t think I’d come into a bar if I wasn’t, do you?”

“Guess not.”

“I’d love to hear you play sometime.”

Blackburn’s tongue tasted like soap. “I don’t have a guitar now,” he said.

Heather shrugged. “Okay, I’ll play for you instead. You like flute music?”

“You bet,” Blackburn said. The back of his neck tingled, and he turned.

Roy-Boy was standing outside, looking in through the cluster of neon signs in the front window. He pointed his finger at Blackburn and waggled his thumb.

“So, you want to have another beer?” Heather asked. “Or would you like to hear some flute?”

Blackburn turned back to her. “Flute,” he said.

They stood to leave. Roy-Boy was gone from the window. Blackburn left the five-dollar bill on the bar.

In the morning Blackburn awoke with Heather’s rump against his belly. Since the end of his marriage, it was rare that he spent an entire night with a woman, and even rarer that he let it happen at his place. But as he and Heather had left The Hoot, she had said that her apartment was off-limits for sex because her roommate was a born-again Christian. So they had decided to put off the flute recital, and Blackburn had taken Heather to his studio crackerbox in the Heights. After a few hours they had fallen asleep together.

He slid out of bed and went into the bathroom. He didn’t flush, because he didn’t want to wake Heather. When he came out, he saw that she had rolled onto her back. Her mouth was open, and strands of her hair were stuck to her face. She wasn’t a beauty, as Dolores had been, but she was fun. Blackburn didn’t remember ever having laughed in bed before.

He dressed and went out. His plan was to bring Heather a surprise for breakfast. In the night, she had told him a story about a Rice fraternity that had been getting noise complaints from the sorority next door. One morning the sorority women had received a box of donuts from the fraternity, along with a note saying that the donuts were the men’s response to the complaints. The women had eaten the donuts for breakfast and then had received another delivery from the fraternity. It was a photograph of all seventy-two men in their dining room, each one naked except for the donut on his penis. Heather thought the story was hilarious, so Blackburn wanted to have a box of donuts waiting for her when she awoke.

The sun had risen, but the air had the sting of a winter night. Blackburn hadn’t thought Houston ever got so cold. He breathed deep, and the chill cut into his throat. When he exhaled, his breath was white. He hurried across the parking lot to the Duster, hoping it would start. Its windows were opaque with frost. Blackburn didn’t have an ice scraper, but maybe the defroster would do. He unlocked the driver’s door and got inside, letting the door slam shut after him. The interior smelled of deodorant soap.

Roy-Boy was sitting in the passenger seat. He was wearing the black sweatsuit again. The sweatshirt’s hood was up over his head, and his hands were inside the pouch.

“Morning, Musician,” he said, peering out from the hood. “Happy Pearl Harbor Day.”

Blackburn was annoyed. “Get out,” he said, “and don’t come near me again. If you do, you won’t do anything else.”

“Now, come on,” Roy-Boy said. “You’re a moral guy, and I haven’t done anything to you. You wouldn’t whack me for looking at you wrong, would you?”

“You broke into my car,” Blackburn said. “In Texas, it’s legal to shoot people who break into your car.”

“But I didn’t break in. This door was unlocked.”

“Doesn’t matter. You didn’t have my permission to enter. So I can shoot you.”

“But you don’t have your gun.”

“I can get it.”

Roy-Boy took his hands from his sweatshirt pouch. His right hand held a .22-caliber revolver. “You can try,” he said.

Blackburn saw that the .22 was a cheap piece of crap. But at this range, it could kill him just as dead as a .357.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Right now, to get warm,” Roy-Boy said. “Then I want to talk a little. Let’s drive, and crank the heater.”

Blackburn put the key into the ignition. The Duster whined for a while, then started. The engine sputtered, and the car shook.

“Sounds like ice in the fuel line,” Roy-Boy said. “Put a can of Heet in the tank. If you can find it in this city.” He opened his door. “Hang on and I’ll scrape your windows.” He got out, leaving the door open.

Blackburn considered trying to run him over, but decided against it. A bullet might make it through the windshield. So he waited while Roy-Boy scraped. Roy-Boy’s scraper was a long, pointed shard of glass with white cloth tape wrapped around one end. Roy-Boy had pulled it from his sweatshirt pouch. He was scraping with his left hand. His right hand, with the pistol, was in the pouch. Blackburn could see the muzzle straining against the fabric. It was pointing at him.

When the windows were clear, Roy-Boy got back inside and closed the door. He licked ice crystals from the glass shard, then replaced it in his pouch and looked at Blackburn. “What’re you waiting for?” he asked. He pulled out the .22.

Blackburn drove onto the street and headed for I-10. He would wait for his chance. It would come. It always did.

“So, how was she?” Roy-Boy asked as the Duster entered the freeway.

“Fine.”

“I’m glad. I was afraid I’d ruined things for you at The Hoot, so I tried to fix them before I left. Guess I did. What’re you gonna do with her now?”

Blackburn glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“Are you gonna fuck her again, kill her, or what?”

“Why would I kill her?”

“Because you’re a killer, boy. That’s what you do, right?”

Blackburn’s neck tingled. “What makes you think so?”

Roy-Boy leaned close. When he spoke, his breath was hot on Blackburn’s face.

“Takes one to know one,” he said.

Blackburn flinched away, bumping his head on the window.

Roy-Boy returned to his previous position. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I promise not to stick my tongue in your ear or bite through your cheek.” He pointed outside. “You just passed a Day-Lite Donut store. If you take the next exit you can cut back to it.”

Blackburn stared at him.

“Watch the road,” Roy-Boy said.

Blackburn took the next exit. He parked at the donut shop, then put his keys into his coat pocket and clenched his fist. Two keys jutted out between his knuckles. He watched Roy-Boy.

Roy-Boy smiled. “You want to kill me now. You’re hoping I won’t notice your hand in your pocket.”

“You seem to know me pretty well,” Blackburn said.

“Oh, yeah. I know you, Musician.” Roy-Boy put his pistol into his sweatshirt pouch, then held up his empty hands. “So I also know that if you think about it, you’ll decide not to kill me after all. I pulled a gun on you, but only because you pulled a gun on me Wednesday night. I figure we’re even.”

That made some sense to Blackburn, but it only went so far. “How did you know I was going for donuts?”

“Well, I was shooting the shit with Heather last night,” Roy-Boy said. “You know, at The Hoot, while you were in the can. She was telling me about this donut gag some frat pulled. Then you came out this morning with a shit-eating grin on your face, so I thought: donuts. A dozen glazed be okay?” He got out of the car and went into the shop.

Blackburn waited. There was no point in leaving. Roy-Boy knew where he lived.

Roy-Boy returned with a white cardboard box. “I got a few extras,” he said, exhaling steam as he entered the car. “Some jelly and some creme. Want one?”

“No.”

Roy-Boy opened the box and took out a filled donut. Chocolate creme oozed when he bit into it. He gestured at the Duster’s ignition switch. “Don’t let me hold you back,” he said around a mouthful of pastry. “We can talk while you drive.”

“I’d like to sit here awhile,” Blackburn said. “If that’s all right.”

“Sure,” Roy-Boy said. He reached up and pushed his sweatshirt hood from his head. “I’m warm now. I just thought you might want to get home to your three fifty-seven. Why’d you take it out of your coat, anyway? Were you afraid Heather might feel it when she hugged you? Or did you shoot her and then leave it in her hand to make it look like suicide?”

“I wouldn’t kill a woman.”

Roy-Boy’s eyebrows rose. “How come? Haven’t you run across any who deserved it?”

Blackburn thought of Dolores. “It’s just a rule I have.”

Roy-Boy shook his head. “Sexist,” he said.

“Maybe. But a man’s got to have his rules.”

Roy-Boy stuffed the rest of the chocolate-creme donut into his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, his voice muffled. “If you say so.”

“Have you ever killed a woman?” Blackburn asked. His fist tightened around his keys. The windows had fogged. No one could see in.

“No,” Roy-Boy said, chewing. His eyes were steady, fixed on Blackburn’s. “In fact, I’ve never killed anyone. But I’m still a killer, because I’d do it if I had to. If it was me or him. Or her.”

“Why’d you think I killed Heather?”

“I didn’t. I just thought it was a possibility. See, she’s got a rep for screwing guys over. Narking on them, taking their money, leaving teeth marks, shit like that. I figured if she did it to you, you’d fix her.” Roy-Boy swallowed. “But I was unaware of your rule.”

Blackburn didn’t know whether to believe what Roy-Boy said about Heather. He sounded like he was telling the truth, but some people were good at that. And Heather didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would screw over a lover. On the other hand, Dolores hadn’t seemed like that kind either.

“Any other probing questions before you decide whether to poke holes in me with your car keys?” Roy-Boy asked.

“One,” Blackburn said. “Why are you bugging me?”

Roy-Boy grinned. There were chocolate smears on his teeth. “Am I bugging you? That’s not my intention. I just think we can help each other, like we did Wednesday. I take half, you take half. See, if we hit places together we’ll have less chance of trouble, because we’ll both be watching for it. And we could carry the big stuff. You see the advantages?”

“Yes.”

Roy-Boy held out his hand. “Then it’s a partnership.”

“No. I can see the advantages, but I don’t want them.”

Roy-Boy lowered his hand. “Why not? Because you don’t want to take ‘things people use’? Man, people use everything. They just don’t need all of it. If it’ll make your moral code happy, then I promise we won’t steal any insulin kits or dialysis machines. But a TV set ought to be fair game.”

“My moral code doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Blackburn said. “The problem is that I’m leaving town.” It wasn’t really a lie. He hadn’t been planning to leave, but he hadn’t been planning to stay either.

Roy-Boy looked surprised. “How come?”

“I never stay anywhere more than a few months.” That was most often because he had no choice, but Roy-Boy didn’t need to know that. “And I’ve been here since August, so another week and I’m gone. By Christmas for sure.”

“Where to?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Roy-Boy looked away and sighed. “Ain’t that the way it goes. I find a partner with morals, and he’s no sooner found than lost.” He opened the door and got out, leaving the box of donuts on the seat. “No hard feelings, though, hey?”

Blackburn said nothing.

“You don’t still want to kill me, do you?” Roy-Boy asked. His hand went into his sweatshirt pouch.

“No,” Blackburn said.

Roy-Boy stooped and peered in at him. “You should grow your hair into a ponytail,” he said. “All of the great statesman-philosophers had ponytails. Thomas Jefferson, for example, who philosophized about independence and freedom, and owned slaves. What a great world he created.” Roy-Boy straightened. “Have a good trip, Musician, and enjoy the donuts. I’m gonna get some more for myself. See, I only have one testicle, so I have to eat twice as much as most men in order to manufacture enough jism for my needs.” He turned and walked toward the donut shop.

Blackburn leaned over to pull the door shut, then wiped the fog from the windshield and watched Roy-Boy enter the shop. He still had the feeling that he should kill Roy-Boy, but he couldn’t think of a good reason why. All Roy-Boy had done was pester him. That might have been enough to warrant death, had it cost Blackburn anything, but it had cost him nothing but a little time. And now he had a free box of donuts, which pushed Roy-Boy’s behavior even further into a gray area.

He started the Duster. No matter what he felt, he would not kill someone for behavior that fell into a gray area. He required a clear reason. If he started killing people without such reasons, he would be in violation of his own ethics. It was bad enough that he had become a burglar. A man had to have his rules.

On the way home, he stopped at a convenience store and bought a can of Heet, which he poured into the Duster’s tank. Then he drove to his apartment and carried the box of donuts inside. Heather was in the bathroom with the door shut.

When she emerged, Blackburn was lying on the bed wearing nothing but a donut. Heather stayed two more hours, then said she had to get home to study for finals. Blackburn was going to drive her, but the Duster refused to start. So Heather took a cab. After she had gone, Blackburn realized that he didn’t have her phone number or address. He might be able to find her at The Hoot again, but he wasn’t sure that he should. He liked her a lot, and he knew what that could lead to.

Blackburn was still in Houston the next Friday evening, watching a three-story apartment building in Bellaire. He had decided to leave the city by Christmas, but he needed traveling money. He had also decided that he had to stop breaking into houses and apartments, even if it meant working in fast food again. If he found some worthwhile items tonight, this would be his last day as a burglar.

He had not returned to The Hoot to look for Heather, and she had not come by his apartment to look for him. That was all right. They’d had twelve good hours together, which was twelve more than he’d had with most people, and he had the sense to leave well enough alone. It didn’t feel good, but good feelings had nothing to do with good sense.

The sun had set, and lights in some of the apartments had come on. Blackburn, sitting across the street in the Duster, noted the number of cars in the building’s lot and the number of apartments that were lit. He compared these numbers to those he had counted at other times since midafternoon, when he had started watching. He had been careful — sometimes driving by, sometimes parking a few blocks away and walking, and now parked under a broken streetlight — but he hadn’t observed this building for two or three entire days, as was his habit. He had figured that some of the residents would have already left for Christmas vacations, and their apartments would be easy to spot. He had been right. Two apartments on the top floor were staying dark, as were three on the second floor, and one on the first. Two other apartments had lights that had been on since he’d started watching, and he didn’t think anyone was home. He would wait a few more hours to be sure. He could turn on the radio now and then to keep from getting bored.

He was listening to a ZZ Top song when the back of his neck tingled. He looked around and saw a man standing under a streetlight in front of the apartment building. The man was wearing a black sweatsuit, and his hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He was pointing at Blackburn and waggling his thumb. It was Roy-Boy.

Blackburn turned off the radio. He gave Roy-Boy a violent sidearm wave, trying to tell him to go away. But Roy-Boy stayed put, still pointing. Someone would drive by and notice him before long. Blackburn changed his wave to a “come here” gesture, then unzipped his coat and reached inside. He opened the Velcro flap over the Python’s pouch.

Roy-Boy jogged across the street, his ponytail bouncing. He had put his hands into his sweatshirt pouch, so Blackburn had to take his own hand out of his coat to let him into the car. The smell of deodorant soap was even stronger than before. Blackburn wondered what Roy-Boy was trying to cover up.

“Evening, Musician,” Roy-Boy said. “Happy Friday the thirteenth.”

“I was here first,” Blackburn said.

Roy-Boy shook his head. “I’ve been watching that building since last Saturday. It’s mine.” He grinned. His teeth looked as if they were still stained with chocolate creme from the week before. “Unless you want to share. Two of the apartments on the top floor are rented by college students who’ve taken off for winter break. I’ve heard their stereos, and they sound expensive. They probably have VCRs and Sony Trinitrons too. We could clean ’em both in fifteen minutes, hit my fence in the morning, and be done.”

“I don’t use fences,” Blackburn said. “They’re crooks. And I already told you I’m not interested in teamwork. If you’ve been planning on this place for a week, you can have it. I’ll leave.”

Roy-Boy gave his gruntlike chuckle. “But don’t you see, Musician? That won’t work now. If you take off with nothing, I’ll be afraid that you’ll call the cops on me. So in self-defense, I’ll make a call of my own after I’ve done the job. I’ll describe you and your car, and when the cops ask the neighbors, some of them’ll remember seeing you hanging around. And we’ve got the same situation in reverse if you stay and I go. One or both of us gets screwed. You know where that leaves us?”

Blackburn was keeping his eyes on Roy-Boy’s, but his right hand was creeping back into his coat. He didn’t want to shoot Roy-Boy while they were inside the Duster, but he would if he had to.

“Where?” he asked.

“MAD,” Roy-Boy said. “As in mutual assured destruction.” His right hand came out of the sweatshirt pouch with the .22. He pointed it at Blackburn’s face.

Blackburn froze with his hand on the Python’s butt.

“This is how I see it,” Roy-Boy said. “I have the advantage, but I’d have to waste you instantly, with one shot, or suffer retaliation. In other words, although you might be mortally wounded, you could still do me with your superior weapon. So our only choices are to work together or be destroyed. You feel like being destroyed?”

“No,” Blackburn said. He saw Roy-Boy’s point. “I’ll work with you this one time, but I can’t promise anything else. I still want to leave town.”

Roy-Boy nodded. “Fair enough. We’ve achieved diplomatic relations. Now comes the disarmament phase. Take out your pistol, slow. You can point it at me if you want, but I’ll be watching your hand. If the fingers start to flex, I’ll shoot. MAD, get it?”

Blackburn pulled out the Python and held it so that it pointed down at his own crotch.

“Careful or you’ll wind up like me,” Roy-Boy said. “A one-ball wonder. Of course, mine’s the size of an orange.”

“Mine aren’t. I’d just as soon keep them both.”

“Then put your gun on the seat between us. I’ll do the same. Our hands should touch, so we’ll each know if the other doesn’t let go of his weapon. This is known as the verification phase.” Roy-Boy turned his pistol so that it pointed downward. “Begin now.”

They moved as slow as sloths. The pistols clicked together on the vinyl seat. The men’s hands touched. Blackburn waited until he felt Roy-Boy’s hand begin to rise, and then he lifted his own hand as well.

“So far so good,” Roy-Boy said. “Where’s your tote bag?”

“Under the seat.”

Roy-Boy clucked his tongue. “I can’t have you reaching under there. We’ll have to find a grocery sack or something in the apartment. That acceptable to you?”

“I suppose so.”

“In that case,” Roy-Boy said, “we can get out of the car. Doors open at the same time.”

“We can’t leave the guns on the seat,” Blackburn said. “Someone’ll see them.”

“No, they won’t. Once we’re outside, take off your coat and throw it back inside to cover them. That’ll also assure me that you aren’t packing another piece.”

“What’s to assure me that you aren’t?”

“Good point. Okay, as you take off your coat, I’ll take off my sweatshirt. The pants too, if you want. I’m just wearing shorts and a T-shirt underneath.”

Blackburn took his keys from the ignition. “All right,” he said. “Lock your door on the way out.” He and Roy-Boy opened the doors and got out. Blackburn took off his coat while watching Roy-Boy pull off his sweatshirt on the other side of the car. It was like a weird dance. Cars going by on the street illuminated the performance with their headlights. Roy-Boy’s face went from light to dark to light again, and then disappeared as the sweatshirt came up over his head. But even while Roy-Boy’s head was inside the sweatshirt, the eyes were visible through the neck opening. They didn’t blink.

Blackburn tossed his coat into the car, covering the pistols. Roy-Boy tossed his sweatshirt in on top of the coat. Then they closed the doors. The Duster shuddered.

“What’s in your shirt pocket?” Roy-Boy asked.

“Penlight.”

“Okay. It’s a tool of the trade, so keep it. Now put your keys away, and we can meet at the rear bumper. It’ll be our Geneva.”

Blackburn put his keys into a jeans pocket, and he and Roy-Boy walked behind the car. Blackburn was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but he was cold. He crossed his arms for warmth. Roy-Boy’s gray T-shirt was cut off at the midriff, but he seemed comfortable. His bare arms swung at his sides. When the two men met at the bumper, Roy-Boy held out his right hand. Blackburn kept his arms crossed.

“Pants,” he said.

Roy-Boy shucked off his sweatpants and turned around to show Blackburn that he was unarmed. His legs were pale and hairless. They looked shaved.

“That’s enough,” Blackburn said, suppressing revulsion.

Roy-Boy pulled his sweatpants back on, then held out his hand again. “Ratify our treaty,” he said, “and I won’t ask you to take off your pants too. I’ll believe that your moral code won’t allow you to hide a second weapon from me. That ruler in your back pocket I’ll let go, since it’s a tool of the trade too.”

They shook hands. Roy-Boy’s was dry and cold. He held on too long. Blackburn pulled free.

Roy-Boy looked across the street at the apartment building. “Top floor, second unit,” he said. It was one of the apartments that had stayed dark. “Two bedrooms. Its collegiate occupants have gone home to Daddy for Jesus’s birthday and left all their shit behind.”

“Jewelry first,” Blackburn said. “Then I’ll help you carry one big thing, and that’s all. Once I’m out, I’m not going back in. And my car’s not for hire to haul freight. You have a vehicle?”

“Yeah. That black Toyota in the lot. Yesterday its former owner rode away in a car with snow skis on top. So it’s mine now.”

Blackburn couldn’t object. He had stolen cars himself, and didn’t think he was in any position to cast a stone.

Blackburn and Roy-Boy crossed the street and climbed the stairs that zigzagged up the face of the building. It was almost midnight, but TVs and stereos were turned up loud in some of the lighted apartments. Blackburn was glad. Two burglars would make more noise than one, but the ambient sound might cover it. And every apartment’s drapes were closed, so none of the residents would see them.

They reached the top balcony and apartment 302. “You’re the front-door specialist,” Roy-Boy whispered.

Blackburn tried the knob. The door had a half inch of play. As at his last burglary, the deadbolt hadn’t been set. People who didn’t set their deadbolts were asking to be robbed. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the metal ruler. In a few seconds the door popped open, and Blackburn and Roy-Boy went inside.

Blackburn took the penlight from his shirt pocket and turned it on. The pale circle of light revealed that the apartment was well furnished. A thick carpet muffled the men’s footsteps.

“Ooh, lookee here,” Roy-Boy said. “A Sony Trinitron. Tell you what — I have great night vision, so I don’t need the light. I’ll unhook the TV cable and look around in here, and you see what you can find in the other rooms.”

Blackburn couldn’t think of a reason against the plan, so he went into the blue-tiled kitchen and took a black plastic trash bag from a roll under the sink. Then he stepped into the hall. Here the penlight revealed four doors, two on each side. The first door on the right was open, and he saw more blue tile. The bathroom. He opened the door across from it and found a linen closet stacked with towels. It smelled like a department store, so he leaned inside and breathed deep. It wasn’t a smell he was crazy about, but it cleared his head of Roy-Boy’s deodorant-soap stink.

He continued down the hall and opened the next door on the right. This was a small bedroom, as clean as a church. There was a brass cross on the wall and stuffed animals on the dresser. The window was open, and Blackburn’s neck tingled from the cold. White curtains puffed out over the narrow bed. The bed had a white coverlet with a design of pink and blue flowers.

A jewelry box on the dresser contained only a small silver cross on a chain. It was worth maybe thirty dollars at a pawn shop, but Blackburn left it. He himself had given up on Jesus while still a child, having seen more evidence of sin than of salvation, but he didn’t want to mess with someone else’s devotion. He found nothing else of value in the room, so he started back into the hall. Then he paused in the doorway.

The window was open. Even the screen was open. But no one was home.

He looked at the closed door across the hall and turned off his penlight. Then he stepped across, dropping the trash bag, and turned the doorknob. He moved to one side as the door swung inward, and caught a whiff of rust and vanilla. He stood against the wall and listened for a few seconds, but heard only Roy-Boy rummaging in the living room and the dull thumping of a stereo in another apartment.

Then he looked around the doorjamb. Except for the gray square of a curtained window, the room was black. He turned the penlight back on and saw the soles of two bare feet suspended between wooden bars. The toes pointed down. He shifted the penlight and saw that the wooden bars were at the foot of a bed.

A nude woman lay on the bed face-down, spread-eagled, her wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts with electrical cords. She was bleeding from cuts on her back, buttocks, and thighs. Strands of her brunette hair were stuck to her neck and shoulders. Her legs moved a little, pulling at their cords with no strength.

Blackburn sucked in a breath, then entered the room and closed the door. He dropped his penlight, found the wall switch, and turned on the ceiling light. He began to tremble. What he had smelled was blood and semen, and sugared pastry. There was a white cardboard box on the floor, and half-eaten donuts on the floor and the bed.

He stepped closer and saw a long shard of glass on the bed between the woman’s knees. One end of the shard was wrapped in white cloth tape. The glass and the tape were smeared with blood.

On the woman’s back, in thin red lines, were the words HI MUSICIAN.

Blackburn went to the head of the bed on the left side and knelt on the floor. The woman’s wrists were tied so that her arms angled upward. Her face was in her pillow. Even this close, he couldn’t hear her breathing. But he saw her back moving. There were teeth marks on her shoulders.

He lifted her head and turned her face toward him. The face was Heather’s. Her eyes opened, and they widened as she recognized him. Her mouth was covered with duct tape. He pulled the tape away and then saw that a donut had been stuffed into her mouth. She tried to cough it out, but couldn’t.

Blackburn lowered her head to the pillow and dug out the donut with his fingers. The smell was thick and sweet. His trembling became violent. He tried to untie the cord around Heather’s left wrist, but his fingers were clumsy and numb. He was worthless, useless, a sissy, a pussy. Little Jimmy, dropping his pants and grabbing the rim of the wheel well. He could hear the fiberglass rod cutting the air. Its hiss became a scream, and it bit into his flesh. His skin caught fire.

Then his hands spasmed, and his fingers sank in. It wasn’t the rim of a wheel well. It was the edge of a mattress.

He wasn’t little Jimmy anymore. He had learned better. He had no father, no mother, no sister, no friends. His only trust was in himself. He could see not only what was, but what should be. He was Blackburn.

And Blackburn always knew what to do, and how to do it.

He tried the cord again. Heather’s left wrist came free, and her arm fell to the bed. Her fingernails scratched his face on the way down. The pain was sharp and pure. His trembling stopped.

“Nasty,” a voice said. “But maybe she didn’t mean it.”

Blackburn looked up. The bedroom door was open, and Roy-Boy was standing in the doorway. He was holding a small silver pistol. He gave his chuckle, his piglike grunt.

“Look what somebody left behind the TV,” he said. “A twenty-five-caliber semiautomatic. Who woulda thought?”

Blackburn stood. “This is what comes of committing a sin of omission,” he said.

Roy-Boy’s expression became quizzical. “Omission of what?”

“Your death,” Blackburn said. “I could see its place in the pattern of my world, but I left it out because I didn’t understand why it needed to be there. Now I see that the reason was obvious. Maybe even to you. Do you know why I should have killed you?”

“Beats me,” Roy-Boy said. “But now you can make up for it with a surrogate. I was grooming her for myself, but when I saw you watching the place, I decided to save her for you. See, you need to become aware of the superiority of my world, and to do that you’ve got to live in it a while. In your world you’ve got your stud attitude, and she’s got her bouncy little ass... but when you try to pull that shit on me, it’s a different story. I’m Thomas Jefferson, and you’re slaves.”

Blackburn took a step toward him. “So command me.”

“Stop,” Roy-Boy said. He pointed the pistol at Blackburn’s face. “And pick up my ice scraper.”

Blackburn stopped. He was at the foot of the bed, four feet from Roy-Boy. He reached down between Heather’s knees and picked up the glass shard.

“Now cut her,” Roy-Boy said. “Anywhere you like. But cut deep, or I’ll shoot you.”

“You’ll shoot me anyway.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. I’m a moral guy too.”

Blackburn gripped the taped end of the shard with both hands. The sharp end was pointed up.

“Why should I have killed you?” Blackburn asked again.

“Maybe because I threaten your masculinity,” Roy-Boy said. “So stick the glass between her butt cheeks. That should make you feel like a stud again.”

Blackburn placed the point of the shard under his own chin and began to push upward. It hurt, but like Heather’s fingernails on his face, the pain was pure, cleansing. He thought again of Dad’s fiberglass rod. No matter how much he had hated it, it had contributed to his creation. This new pain reminded him of that truth.

Roy-Boy grimaced. “Not you, Musician,” he said. He took a step toward Blackburn and pointed the silver pistol at Heather. “Her. Just turn around and—”

Blackburn thrust his fists out and down, cutting his chin, and slashed Roy-Boy’s right wrist.

Roy-Boy shrieked. He swung his pistol toward Blackburn again.

But Blackburn was already lunging. He sank his teeth into Roy-Boy’s slashed wrist. With his left hand he grabbed the silver pistol and tried to yank it away. With his right hand he used the shard to rip and stab. Roy-Boy stumbled backward. He was screaming things that might have been words, but Blackburn didn’t listen to them. The only voice he listened to now was his own, the voice that told him what needed to be done.

They fell to the floor in the hall. Blackburn kept his teeth clamped and his left hand on the pistol, but concentrated on driving the shard into Roy-Boy’s eyes, throat, belly, and groin. The odor of soap was overwhelmed by stronger smells. Before long the pistol came free.

Blackburn rolled off Roy-Boy and squatted beside him. He threw the shard into the living room. Then he looked down at what remained of Roy-Boy’s face.

“You’d like to believe you’re evil,” Blackburn said. “But you’re only stupid. Anyone who’s done it seriously knows there’s only one good way to kill: a bullet to the head. Of course, with the smaller calibers, it might take more than one.” He placed the muzzle of the silver pistol against Roy-Boy’s forehead. “Do you know the answer to my question yet?”

One of Roy-Boy’s hands flopped aimlessly.

“It’s simple,” Blackburn said.

He cocked the pistol.

“Because I felt like it.”

He squeezed the trigger until the gun was empty.

Blackburn dropped the pistol on Roy-Boy’s chest and stood. He was dizzy for a moment and steadied himself against the wall, leaving a handprint. He was a mess. There had been a lot of blood some of the other times, but never this much. He wanted to brush his teeth and take a shower. He wanted to scrub and burn incense until Roy-Boy’s stink was gone.

On the floor, the carcass twitched. Its ponytail had come loose, and the hair was spread out like a fan on the trash bag Blackburn had dropped. The plastic was keeping most of the hair off the wet carpet. Blackburn thought of taking the scalp, then rejected the idea. He didn’t want a trophy. He wasn’t proud of the way things had gone with Roy-Boy.

He heard a noise in the bedroom and turned to look. Heather was up on her knees. She had managed to free her right wrist and was now trying to loosen the cords around her ankles. She wasn’t having any success. She was unsteady, swaying.

Blackburn went to her. “I can do that,” he said.

She looked up at him and tried to say something, or to scream. All that came out was a moan.

Blackburn wiped his hands on his shirt. It didn’t help. His shirt was wet. “This is mostly his,” he said.

Heather looked away as Blackburn untied the cords around her ankles. When she was free, he tried to help her up, but she pulled away and got off the bed on the other side. She stumbled into the hall.

Blackburn pulled the top sheet from the bed. The apartment was cold, and he thought Heather should cover herself. He went into the hall and saw her step over Roy-Boy’s body. She didn’t seem to notice it. He followed her into the kitchen and turned on the light. Then he draped the sheet over her shoulders, and she didn’t even glance at him.

He saw that she was no longer the Heather who had slept with him, and he knew that he was responsible. For the first time in his life, he was horrified at himself. Not for what he had done, but for what he had failed to do. In that failure, he had become an accessory to torture and rape. Killing was not always murder, and stealing was not always a crime... but torture and rape were absolutes.

Heather lifted the receiver from a wall telephone and pushed 911. Blackburn heard the dispatcher answer the call, but Heather didn’t put the receiver to her ear. She stared at it as if trying to figure out why it was making noise.

“Let me,” Blackburn said. He reached for the receiver.

Heather jerked it away, then hit him in the face with it.

His eyes filled with tears. The receiver had struck his nose hard. “Let me talk to them,” he said. “You’re hurt. You need to go to the hospital.”

Heather dropped the receiver and yanked the telephone from its wall jack. The sheet fell away, and Blackburn saw the red lines that her wounds had left on it.

She swung the telephone and hit his head. Then she hit him again, and again. The telephone clanged, and the receiver bounced on its cord, thunking against the floor.

Blackburn backed up against the refrigerator and then stood there, letting Heather hit him. He should never have begun stealing for a living. That moral slip had led to the next one, and that in turn had led to this. So he would take his punishment. It was the only punishment he had ever received that made sense.

“I’m sorry,” he told Heather. She had become a blur. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The telephone clanged. Heather began to grunt with each clang, and then to shout. There were no words. Only the voice of her rage.

Blackburn heard it and knew it was just. He slid to the floor. The tiles were like cool water against his cheek.

And so the State of Texas took him, and healed his face, and charged him with rape and murder. He let the rape charge stand. Murder, however, he could not accept. He had killed, but he had never committed murder. This went double in the case of Roy-Boy.

His court-appointed attorney said that this was not a suitable defense.

Homicide investigators from across the nation came to Houston to question Blackburn, but he was only able to help two of them. Most of the others were trying to track down serial killers of women, and Blackburn had nothing to tell them about that sort of thing — except to say that there were a lot of bastards out there, and he should know, having killed a number of them.

Then the State of Texas charged him with murder again.

He was told that on the night that he and Roy-Boy had met, there had been a woman in the bedroom from which Roy-Boy had emerged. Blackburn had not known of her existence because she had been sick in bed for a week. She had been the sister of the apartment’s other occupant, the woman who worked the night shift at Whataburger.

The sick woman had been tortured, raped, and killed.

And since Blackburn admitted that he had been in her apartment on the night of her death, he was accused of the crime.

Blackburn was astonished. “I’ve never killed a woman,” he told his interrogators.

“Yet you’ve confessed to raping a woman,” one of them said.

Blackburn shook his head. “No. What I confessed to was responsibility for that rape. And I won’t let you use that as grounds to blame me for something else.” He turned to his attorney. “You have to make them see my point.”

“What point is that?” an interrogator asked.

Blackburn looked at him.

“One sin,” he said, “is more than enough.”

The Black Spot Loren D. Estleman

Both versatile and prolific, Loren D. Estleman (1952–) began his writing career as a journalist but soon turned to fiction and became one of the most significant mystery writers to emerge in the 1970s, while also producing Western novels of such distinction that he was given the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature, the highest honor given by the Western Writers of America. Other awards include the Eye, the lifetime achievement award of the Private Eye Writers of America, from which he has also received four Shamus Awards, an Edgar nomination from the Mystery Writers of America, a nomination for a National Book Award, and nearly twenty additional honors.

Among his more than seventy published books, it is Estleman’s series about Detroit private eye Amos Walker for which he is best known. Beginning with Motor City Blue (1980), this hard-boiled series has been praised by fans as diverse as Harlan Coben, Steve Forbes, John D. MacDonald, John Lescroart, and the Amazing Kreskin. Fans are equally enthusiastic about the wise-cracking P.I. and Estleman’s depiction of his much-loved but decaying Detroit, where “the American Dream stalled and sat rusting in the rain.” His next most successful series character is Peter Macklin, a professional hit man whose victims are worse than he is. The five Macklin novels are Kill Zone (1984), Roses Are Dead (1985), Any Man’s Death (1986), Something Borrowed, Something Black (2002), and Little Black Dress (2005).

“The Black Spot” was first published in the March/April 2015 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places (Blue Ash, Ohio, Tyrus Books, 2016).

They said Leo Dorfman had forgotten more about the law than most lawyers ever knew.

A couple of his clients, currently serving as guests of the federal government, agreed.

He’d been eighty for as long as Peter Macklin could remember, a stopped clock now in semiretirement, working out of his Redford Township dining room in one of the three-piece suits he continued to wear every day. Mrs. Dorfman, brown and wrinkled in a woven sun hat, sleeveless blouse, and yellow shorts, knelt in her flower garden outside. Macklin glanced at her from his seat opposite the lawyer’s at the round table.

“Don’t worry about Lyla,” Dorfman said. “She can’t hear herself fart.”

But Macklin kept his voice low. “Laurie’s divorcing me.”

“I’m sorry. Being a criminal attorney, I can’t help you. But I can recommend some good divorce men.”

“I’m going to settle. I can’t afford to have experts performing archaeology on the source of my finances.”

“That’s wise. Do you have a figure in mind?”

“Half a million should do it. Another hundred for incidentals.”

“Have that much?”

“No. That’s why I’m here. I need to work.”

“What about your legitimate business?”

“I should have sold out ten years ago. No one goes to camera stores any more. Any prospects?”

“I may have something, but you won’t like it.”

“A name?”

“Sal Malavaggio.”

Macklin didn’t like it.

“I didn’t know he was out,” he said.

“He’s in a halfway house in the Irish Hills. Next week he’ll be back in Detroit. One of his people called. I said I didn’t have those contacts any more. I thought you were out of it.”

Macklin said nothing. He never wasted time on regrets.

The lawyer said, “Your timing couldn’t be better — if you want the job. He wants six guys dead, and he wants it fast. I know you like groundwork, but you’ll have to scramble on this one. I think we can get him up to a hundred a pop.”

“I need a hundred up front.”

“I don’t know if he’ll agree to that.”

“He will. This isn’t a job for Costco.”

Since he’d moved out of the house in Toledo, Peter Macklin was renting a house in Pontiac, thirty miles northwest of Detroit. When he got back from Redford, he switched on the TV for company. Somebody had blown up something in the Middle East. It seemed to be a big deal.

He wasn’t thrilled about working for Salvatore Malavaggio. The man was as Sicilian as they came — his family tree didn’t branch — and had done fifteen years on a RICO rap he might have beaten if he’d gone into Witness Protection; but he was an old-school Omerta man, buried so deep in the foundations of the Mafia he flossed his teeth with a garrote.

Macklin had thought to leave that all behind many years ago. After his first divorce he’d gone independent, demanding that prospective clients come up with income tax forms and bank statements detailing everything they owned, which was what he charged for committing murder. This policy weeded out the frivolous. It was amazing how many people were willing to take a vow of poverty just to tip someone the black spot.

Then he’d met Laurie, a beautiful, intelligent woman half his age, and retired on his legitimate investments; but eventually the truth of his past had come out, and that was the end of that.

Now here he was, in his forties, separated, forced to fall back on the only skill he had to survive.

When the FedEx package arrived he took out a small rounded rectangle of plastic.

“Expect it,” Dorfman had said. “It’s a burn phone, anonymous and untraceable. Throw it in the river when you’re through with it. The money will be electronically deposited in the following banks, first the advance, then an additional payment each time you score; nine thousand in each account, so it won’t be reported to the IRS. My ten percent comes off the top.”

A series of names and account numbers followed, all prearranged for just such a situation. Macklin had written them all down. “We don’t meet face-to-face after today. Wait for instructions by text.”

No room for bargaining on the fee. Leo Dorfman was the only lawyer in the country who’d go near the case. It had made him a millionaire many times over, but the other side of the coin was he’d installed a remote starter in his car in case of detonation.

The first text came in ten minutes after Macklin finished charging the phone. Something buzzed, he pressed a key, and looked at the screen. It provided a name, address, vital statistics, and a photo. A second text informed him that ninety thousand dollars had been deposited in his name, spread out among ten separate accounts. It was really amazing what technology had done for crime.

Nikolai Kobolov lived in Bloomfield Village, where a house smaller than 5,000 square feet was considered a starter. When the Berlin Wall fell and the KGB temporarily lost interest in the Russian Mafia, he’d emigrated to the U.S. and invested his Swiss bank accounts in the insurance business, selling protection to expatriate Communists from their enemies, and occasionally from his own people, who respected such things as Molotov cocktails.

He hung his bullet-shaped body in good tailoring and in the wintertime wore a long belted overcoat and a fur hat, like Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago. He was part Ukrainian, descended from Cossacks.

When he left his house, riding in the back of a stretch Lincoln driven by a chauffeur in livery, two cars followed, one containing four men licensed to carry firearms in defense of his life. Two FBI agents rode in the other. It was almost four o’clock, the time appointed for his daily shaving. He liked a clean head.

The shop downtown, which called itself a salon, was all glistening glass, chrome, and tile. He took a seat in his customary chair while his bodyguards read newspapers in the waiting area and the two FBI men sat in their car outside. A man Kobolov didn’t recognize covered him in crisp white linen. He wore a white jacket fastened at one shoulder with buttons.

“Where’s Fred?” the customer asked.

“Sick today.”

He shook a thick finger at the man. “No nicks. I’m going out with a young lady tonight.”

“Yes, sir.” The barber removed a towel from the warmer and wrapped it turbanlike around Kobolov’s head. The Russian sighed, lulled into a doze, as always, by the heat. He barely shuddered when the ice pick entered the top of his spinal column. The bodyguards were still reading when the barber went out through the back room.

Sanders Quotient was a third-round draft choice for the Detroit Lions, but he’d been drummed out of the league for unsportsmanlike conduct. He’d sued on the basis of discrimination; however, the NAACP had refused him use of its counsel. He’d invested the proceeds from his first year’s contract in one of the biggest drug operations in the Midwest, dealing in cocaine and heroin. Some of it was too strong for the clientele, who’d died of OD.

He lived in an original Frank Lloyd Wright house in St. Clair Shores. The open plan, and the unobstructed view through big windows, appealed to him.

He had no bodyguards. At thirty-five, in excellent condition, he could take care of himself. If that was overoptimistic, he had two DEA agents watching his house in eight-hour shifts, hoping to catch him in an illegal transaction.

He got up around 2:00 A.M., leaving a fine young woman in his round bed, to crack open a bottle of imported beer. In the kitchen, he heard a thump coming from his deck.

On the way through the rec room he selected a Glock nine from the rack and went to the sliding glass door to investigate. Gripping the weapon tightly and hugging the wall, he reached for the lock. It was open. He always made sure everything was sealed tight before bed.

He was turning from the door, pistol in hand, when his head exploded.

The coroner assigned cause of death to a blow that caved in his skull, pieces of which clung by blood and gray matter to a blackjack, discarded without fingerprints.

Zev Issachar controlled most of the illegal gambling between Chicago and the East Coast. At seventy-two, he was retired, but there wasn’t an underground casino or unsanctioned high-stakes poker game that didn’t pay him tribute. He’d changed his name legally from Howard Needleman before applying for residency in Israel to avoid arrest. Tel Aviv had turned him down.

He was awaiting trial for violation of the laws of interstate commerce. It was a rap he could beat, but he considered the electronic ankle tether humiliating, and it aggravated his arthritis.

On Saturday, he boarded a van belonging to the Justice Department, bound from his modest home in Highland Park to synagogue, in the company of two U.S. deputy marshals. Inside the temple, as his manacles were being removed, a man dressed as a Hassidim shot him three times in the chest before vanishing into the crowd waiting for the inner doors to open. Zev died instantly. The marshals gave chase, but found only a coat, hat, wig, and false whiskers in a pile by the fire exit.

“I thought we’d moved beyond all this after nine-eleven.”

Inspector Deborah Stonesmith commanded the Detroit Major Crimes Unit, which was helping to coordinate the efforts of the three major homicide divisions involved. She was a tall, handsome black woman with reddish hair, dressed conservatively in tweeds. The only touch of femininity in her office at 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police Headquarters, was a spray of peonies in a vase on her desk.

“That’s just it.” Wes Crider, a homicide lieutenant, lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “These mobsters think we’re too busy looking for Islamic Fascists to bother with them.”

“They never heard of multitasking? If this is the Russian Mafia taking on the black Mafia, or the Jewish Mafia taking on either of the others, it’s a turf war. Targeting all three makes it something else.”

“A synagogue, yet; a place of worship. Is nothing sacred?”

“As opposed to plain murder? Who else we got?”

Crider took out a notebook with scraps of ragged paper sticking out of the edges at every angle, like Grandma’s cookbook. “Kim Park? Got all the massage parlors nailed down; prostitution, with a little shiatsu on the side. Korean Cosa Nostra.”

“He’s a maybe. What about Sal Malavaggio? He’s a sitting duck in that halfway house. Security there’s to keep them in, not others out.”

“He’s strictly a Mustache Pete. Those Sicilians went out with Pet Rocks.”

“Let’s put a car out front, just in case. Who else?”

Flip, flip. “Vittorio Bandolero, runs the best restaurant in Mexicantown. Smuggles illegals into the country. Last time his people thought they were being tailed, they machine-gunned the carload.”

“Next.”

“Jebediah Colt: Jeb the Reb, on the street. Dixie Mafia, Stolen Goods Division. Fences everything from bellybutton rings to catalytic converters.”

Stonesmith smiled. “I’ve seen his file. Sweetbreads in his freezer is what he’s got for brains. What else?”

“That’s the kit. All the Mafias: Russian, black, Jewish, Asian, Mexican, Dixie, and the Sicilian original. You know, if they’d just trademarked the name—”

“They’d be Microsoft.”

“Sí, I understand. I, too, would exit the driver’s seat of a truck when a helicopter flew overhead; however, I might have waited until a searchlight came on, just to make sure it wasn’t a traffic vehicle from a radio station.”

Vittorio Bandolero hung up and scowled at the man seated across the desk. They were in the back room of the Mexicantown restaurant whose income he reported to the federal government for taxation purposes. “I am losing patience with Immigration. Not all of my people have the slightest interest in overthrowing the government. I merely want muchachos who can fry a tortilla and cut the occasional throat. Is that too much to ask?”

Bandolero’s segundo, a small man with scars on both cheeks and black hair swept back from his temples — longer than those on top, like the fenders of a 1949 Mercury — moved his shoulders, paring his nails with a switchblade. “There are people to grease, jefe. We should meet with them.”

“Dónde?”

“The Alamo; ten o’clock, so I am told.”

The Alamo Motel stood on East Jefferson facing the river, a dump that rented rooms by the hour. Bandolero knocked at the door he’d been directed to. It opened at the pressure of his fist. He stepped inside.

Something swooped, tightened around his throat. He couldn’t get his hands under it. He thrashed, crooked his elbows, made no contact. His tongue slid out of his mouth just before he lost consciousness.

The first officer on the scene reported a deceased male, apparently strangled to death with nylon fishline.

Deborah Stonesmith stood over the body of Vittorio Bandolero, dragged into a sitting position against the wall of the motel room. The fishline was embedded two inches into his neck.

“No more Mr. Nice Guy,” she said. “Someone’s moving in.”

Lieutenant Crider said, “We need to open a tip line. An army of hit men can’t go unnoticed for long.”

“So it’s an army.”

“We got us an ice pick, a bludgeon, a gun, and a garrote. Heavy-lifters specialize. Nobody uses this much variety.”

“One does,” she said, smoothing her tweed skirt. “I thought he was dead, or moved — or hoped so; but wishful thinking never got nobody nothing but thinking wishful.”

Kim Park had come to the U.S. with a dollar eighty-seven in his pocket; also three hundred thousand dollars in Krugerrands in the false bottom of his suitcase, belonging to a Detroit politician who died before taking delivery. Park had invested this windfall in a string of massage parlors. He found America truly to be the Land of Opportunity.

The girls were skilled. What did it matter if their trained hands were joined by their bodies, so long as they split the tips with the management? But then an undercover cop had found a girl willing to testify that she’d been sold into slavery by her parents. She’d managed to stumble into a number of Dumpsters between Detroit and Flint: her torso here, a leg there, and her head and hands who knew where. A man couldn’t be held responsible for the bad choices of all his employees.

In any case, Kim Park never went anywhere without a train of vice officers making note of where he stopped and whom he spoke to. It pleased him to think of them stuck in their cars while he took a steam in one of his own places in Detroit.

He’d just poured a dipper of water over the heated rocks when the door opened, stirring the thick vapor. He grinned, expecting a half-naked Korean girl ready to escort him to the table. His head was still wearing the grin when it rolled out of the steam room, cut off with a hunting knife found in a towel hamper, its handle wiped clean.

Sal Malavaggio selected a cigar from the humidor on his desk, rustled it next to his ear, dropped it back into the box, and shut the lid. “Remind me to order fresh cigars. I kept better than these did.”

“Way ahead of you,” Miriam Brewster said. “A colleague in Key West has a standing order of Montecristos. Two boxes on the way.”

Malavaggio, short and stout, with a glossy head of dyed-black hair, had chosen Brewster out of vanity; she was an inch shorter than he was, and fatter yet in a tailored suit. But she had turned out to be a double blessing as one of the country’s foremost Constitutional scholars.

“Tell me again about overturning RICO.” He settled himself in the upholstered leather chair, taking in the comforts of home for the first time in fifteen years.

She sat facing the desk and crossed her chubby legs. “It will take years, and maybe a change or two on the Supreme Court, but anyone can tell you it’s a jump-wire around the Bill of Rights. The government couldn’t get your people legally, so it crooked the system. In a way it was a victory for you.”

“Yeah. That brought me comfort in stir, while them animals took over the works. Russian Mafia, black Mafia, Jewish Mafia, Asian Mafia. They couldn’t even come up with a name of their own. But I’m changing that.”

He looked at his Rolex, lifted a remote off the desk, and snapped it at the new flatscreen TV mounted on the wall opposite. A local reporter stood in front of one of Kim Park’s rub-a-dub parlors, chattering breathlessly as morgue attendants carried a body bag on a stretcher out the door. “Trouble with whacking a chink,” Malavaggio said, “an hour later you want to whack another one.”

“I didn’t hear that.” Brewster’s lips were tight. “Be patient, Sal, I beg you. What good’s winning our point when you’re doing life for murder?”

“What murder’s that, Counselor? I was checking out of the halfway house when some feccia made that improvement in Jackie Chan’s looks. Same place I was when the Russky bought it, and the porch monkey and the Hebe. Sounds like the start of a joke, don’t it? They go into a bar?”

“Sure, Sal. You’re clean.”

“Cleaning house,” he said. “When I’m through, everybody’ll know there’s only one Mafia.”

Colt’s Ponies sold campers, travel trailers, and motor homes from four locations in the Detroit metropolitan area. The business provided an income Jebediah Colt could declare on his taxes and a neat bit of camouflage: Who’d look for a trailer containing hot transmissions on a trailer lot?

He’d declared his independence at fourteen, when he cold-cocked his father with a meat hammer, stole a car, and drove north to assemble Mustangs at Ford River Rouge. He was fired for stealing tools and parts, but by then he’d put enough away to open his own full-time business at twenty. He dealt in jewelry, rare coins, copper plumbing, and genuine factory auto parts, all stolen.

He hadn’t much overhead. All you needed was a roof, preferably one with wheels; that way, when you got the tip a raid was coming, all you had to do was hitch up and move to another lot. Now he owned a fleet of Mustangs he hadn’t had a thing to do with in the manufacture and a house in Grosse Pointe, down the street from the Ford family itself.

“Mr. Colt? Deborah Stonesmith. I’m an inspector with the Detroit Police Department.” The tall black woman who’d rung his doorbell showed him a shield.

“You got a warrant?”

“I’m not here to arrest you. I assume you’ve heard about the recent gangland killings.”

He grinned his baggy grin, scratched the tattoo on his upper left arm. “No shit, you’re here to protect me?”

“We’ve got a car on this block, an early response team in radio contact, and a man on each side of the house. I’m going to ask you to stay in tonight. Since this business started, no more than two nights have passed between killings. This is the third since Kim Park’s.”

His smile vanished. “That pimp? What’s the connection?”

“We think someone’s out to eliminate the competition in organized crime in the area. You and Salvatore Malavaggio are the only honchos left. My lieutenant is at Sal’s place in Birmingham, explaining these same arrangements.”

“Well, I’m expecting delivery of an Airstream at my lot in Belleville, straight from the factory. I like to be there when something new comes in.”

“You can inspect your swag another time, Jeb. Either that, or we’ll send a car to follow you; for your own safety, of course.”

Macklin spotted the early response van first thing. The panels advertised a diaper service, a stork in a messenger’s cap with a little bundle of joy strung from its beak. There wasn’t a playset or a bicycle or anything else on the block that indicated a resident young enough to have small children. He drove past, located the unmarked car containing two plainclothesmen drinking Starbucks across the street from Colt’s house, and saw flashlight beams prowling the grounds.

A big-box department store stood near downtown, connected with a service station. He bought a two-gallon gasoline can, put in a quart from the pump, stashed it in his trunk, and entered the store. In the liquor section he put a liter bottle of inexpensive wine into his basket. Browsing in entertainment, he came upon a James Brown retrospective on CD and a cheap player. He bought them at the front counter, along with a package of batteries and a disposable lighter from the impulse rack.

The restrooms were located inside the foyer. Finding the men’s room empty, he unscrewed the cap from the wine bottle and dumped the contents down the sink. In the parking lot he opened his trunk, the lid blocking the view from the security camera mounted on a light pole, filled the bottle with gasoline, replaced the cap, wrapped it in an old shirt he used for a rag, tucked the bundle under his arm inside his jacket, slammed the trunk, got into the car, and drove away.

Three blocks from Jebediah Colt’s house, a FOR SALE sign stood in the yard of a brick split-level on a corner. The inside was dark except for a tiny steady red light.

There were no security cameras visible. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell; a househunter, hoping to catch someone at home. When no one answered after the second ring, he produced the CD player from under his coat, placed it on the doorstep, and switched it on, turning up the volume until James Brown’s lyrics were distorted beyond comprehension. He returned to the car, moving quickly now, drove around the corner, opened the gasoline-filled bottle, spilled a little onto a piece he’d torn off the old shirt, stuffed the rag into the neck, and lit it with the disposable lighter. When it was burning, he opened the driver’s window and slung the bottle at the nearest window. The security alarm went off shrilly.

The bottle exploded with a whump and the flame spread. He drove away at a respectable speed, hearing the Godfather of Soul screaming at the top of his lungs from the direction of the burning house.

Police on stakeout might ignore a house fire, expecting local units and the fire department to take care of it; but someone screaming in the flames was another story. The early response team reported the hysterical noises over the radio, and within five minutes Jeb “the Reb” Colt was a man alone.

The sirens started up with a whoop, loud enough to make him jump up from in front of the NASCAR channel and draw aside his front curtains. The noises were fading away. He got his nunchuks from the drawer, turned off the lights to avoid being framed in the doorway, and stepped onto his front porch.

He saw an orange glow three blocks away and lights going on in his neighbors’ houses. Shrugging, he swung the chuks together in his fist and turned to go inside. Someone stood between him and the doorway. The heel of a hand swept up, driving bone splinters from his nose into his brain.

Miriam Brewster switched off the flatscreen and turned to Malavaggio, leaning back in his desk chair with his pudgy hands folded across his broad stomach and his lids drifted nearly shut. He looked like a toad. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this.”

“The arson? Insurance job, probably. Guy can’t keep up his mortgage, he torches the place for case dough.”

“I mean Jeb Colt.”

“One cracker more or less don’t mean much to the world.”

“You must have squirreled away plenty before you went to prison. Six hits in ten days, all professionally done. That doesn’t come cheap, even on double-coupon days.”

“Even so, I arranged a discount. Why pay for finished work? What’s he going to repossess?”

She made him stop before sharing any details.

Macklin had several ways of knowing when someone had entered his house when he was gone. Whoever it was, cop or killer, had stumbled on the one least subtle, forgetting which lights he’d left on and which he’d turned off. He didn’t even have to stop his car. The windows told him everything.

In the crowded parking lot of a cineplex, he used his burn phone one last time to call Leo Dorfman.

“How’d he know where I live?” he asked.

The lawyer didn’t ask who. “I never told him; but his outfit’s got its thumbs in lots of places, why not realty agencies?”

“I need to have been somewhere else when most of those packages were delivered.”

“Most, or all?”

“All would look like planning. I can tell ’em I went to the movies for the others.”

“Okay.”

The parking lot exit passed over an ornamental bridge leading to the highway. Macklin threw the phone out the window into the swift little stream.

Dorfman would take care of the cops; if it was cops. If it was a killer, all he had to do was cut off the source of income.

Salvatore Malavaggio snipped the end off a crisp Montecristo, got it going with a platinum lighter, and blew a smoke ring at the acoustical ceiling in his home office. It had been a good first week out of stir. The Russian, the black, the Jew, the Mexican, the chink, and the hillbilly were gone, leaving a void only an experienced don could fill. His former associates would know the truth. There would be some resistance, but he’d struck too fast and too deep not to have put the fear of Sal into them all. Even Miriam, as cold-blooded a dame as he’d known, had looked at him with new respect after the mug shots of all six rivals appeared on the TV report capping recent events.

There was only one Mafia. There was no room in it for Slavs, coloreds, kikes, greasers, chinks, or inbred morons. Those outsiders only got such big ideas when the Sicilians became careless and gave incriminating orders direct to unreliable street soldiers instead of going through buffers. Malavaggio had used Dorfman, never laying eyes on this Macklin, who was familiar by reputation. The law, too, would know what happened, but it could never prove a connection, no matter what the chump said when he was arrested.

Which was how they’d done things in the old country. Omerta was for equals only.

From now on, if you couldn’t point at that island off the toe of the boot and name the birthplace of every one of your ancestors, you’re just the guy we send out for coffee. Napolitano? Ha! Calabrese? As if! Sola Siciliana, per sempre.

Something clinked in the next room: Miriam, setting down the latest of who knew how many glasses of his best grappa. He hoped she wasn’t turning into a lush. She needed all her senses to get the Supreme Court to act and return La Cosa Nostra to its days of glory.

And he’d saved himself a hundred grand.

Something stirred in the connecting doorway.

“Counselor? Thought you went home.”

“She did. I waited to make sure she didn’t come back for something she forgot.”

Malavaggio didn’t recognize the man coming in carrying a revolver. They’d never met face-to-face.

Car Trouble Jas. R. Petrin

James Robert (Jim) Petrin (1947–) ranks among the most popular and prolific writers of recent years to appear in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, where his first story, “The Smile,” appeared in 1985. Since that time he has contributed more than seventy stories to the publication.

He does find time to write for other magazines and for anthologies, for which he has written a broad range of crime fiction. Much of his work has been produced for audio books and television films. Petrin’s stories have been short-listed for numerous awards and he has won several others, most notably the Arthur Ellis Award (the Canadian equivalent of the Edgar) for Best Short Crime Fiction on two occasions.

Although many of his stories are stand-alone tales of crime and mystery, often with a humorous undertone, one of Petrin’s most popular series characters is Leo Skorzeny, known to his friends (and others) as “Skig.” He is a Shylock, a moneylender at usurious rates, who is so tough that no one dares to fail to pay him what he’s owed. There is a bit of softness to him, however, that puts him into the rogue category rather than filling the role of villain.

Born in Saskatchewan, Petrin now lives with his wife, Colleen, at Mavillette Beach, on the Gulf of Maine, in southwest Nova Scotia.

“Car Trouble” was originally published in the December 2007 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

“This time,” Skig said, “tell you what. Try not to make it stand up at the back, some kind of antenna sticking outta my head.”

“It’s just the way your hair goes, dear. Nothing I can do. You should be glad to have hair on the top of your head. Some men your age are ready for a comb-over.”

“When I’m ready for it, shoot me.”

Every month they exchanged this banter. Leo Skorzeny sitting on a straight-back chair in Eva Kohl’s kitchen, a sheet around him, snippets of his stiff, iron-gray hair on the floor. Eva, retired from hairdressing maybe ten, twelve years now, click-clicking away with her scissors.

“Tell me about that new car you’re buying,” Skig said. He shifted his weight, trying to ease the pain in his gut.

She laughed. Took a playful snip at the empty air.

“Not buying — leasing. The way they explained it to me, Mr. Skorzeny, it’s cheaper.”

“Smaller payments.”

“That’s right.”

“That don’t mean it’s cheaper. The long run.”

“For me it is. It really is. The salesman told me I’m perfect for a lease. I put on hardly any mileage — mostly just shopping.”

“You bargain down the suggested retail?”

“The what?” She stopped snipping, puzzled.

“The price.”

“No. I thought I explained. I’m not buying, I’m leasing.”

Skig closed his eyes, held them shut a second, opened them.

“You got a good trade?”

The snipping started again. “My old car still runs well. They’re giving me two thousand dollars for it.”

“Your old car’s like new. Why not keep driving it?”

“It isn’t all that good. And I feel like a change. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind. I’m signing the papers this afternoon.” She ran the trimmer over his neck, cold steel humming against his skin, then handed him a fan-shaped hand mirror. She held a second mirror behind his head, left, then right. “How’s that?”

“Perfect,” Leo said, “as always. That’s why I come to you.”

“Don’t kid. You come here because I’m cheap. And I’m only just down the street from you.”

Before he left, Skig got the name of her dealership.

He trudged heavily back along the sidewalk, one hand under his billowing sports coat to brace the pain there low in his gut. He would get his car out of the garage, head down to the quack’s office, and collect the bad news sure to be waiting for him. All those tests last week. The quacks liked to tell him how lucky he was, that he should be dead by now. Yeah, right. How lucky could you get?

Skig lived in an old made-over filling station, bought years ago as an investment. He’d converted the office area to a few livable rooms after Jeanette died — couldn’t stay in the house and didn’t know why. Or maybe he did. Sensing her presence there was still too much for him, and at other times it was just too empty.

He crossed the large graveled lot, his front yard, fumbled a key out, and heaved open the repair bay door, all blistering paint: no power assist on this baby, built before the friggin’ flood. He backed the Crown Vic into the lot, got out, and hauled the big door down, locked it, then eased back in behind the wheel. He rolled off along Railway Avenue at a sedate five clicks under the limit, windows open to blow the stink off. The Crown Vic still reeked after running off the jetty into the harbor one time, but Skig had no interest in replacing it. Why bother if you were one church service shy of a planting, the way he saw it.

The clock on the dash said two fifteen. Time enough for that one small matter before he had to be at his appointment.

He found the lot on Robie, not a first-rate dealership, but not too scuzzy a place. The showroom supported a colossal roof-mounted sign that said HAPPY DAN DUCHEK’S AUTO WORLD, with two sculpted Ds each the size of a grand piano. Another, smaller, sign said WE’RE NOT HAPPY UNTIL YOU ARE! “Right,” Skig muttered as he turned in. He rolled slowly between two rows of gleaming new cars. Bigger than it looked from the street. There was even a detailing shop at the back for well-heeled car enthusiasts, Happy Dan covering all the angles. Skig saw movement in the next row over. An extremely pretty young woman, dressed for the office, talking heatedly with her hands to a young man in sagging-butt pants who stared back at her with lifeless eyes.

“Don’t argue with that one, dear,” Skig cautioned her under his breath, looking for a place to park. Something familiar about the guy.

He found Happy Dan in the manager’s office. Shiny hair. Smile on him like it was wired there. Dan had just unwrapped a tuna sub on his desk and was holding out a coffee mug to the extremely pretty young woman Skig had seen a moment ago. She must have nipped inside while he was parking, now in the process of pouring Dan a fill of seriously black joe from a steaming Pyrex pot. Dan didn’t look too happy with her. The guy with the sagging pants was nowhere in sight.

As he stepped into the room, Happy Dan met Skig’s gaze, his open face brightening in cheery lines. “Good afternoon, sir. Welcome. Time for a new car?” He showed even white teeth.

“Name’s Leo Skorzeny,” Skig said flatly. “You heard of me?”

Happy Dan raked his memory. Concentrated. Then something clicked and his smile wilted. He set his mug down. “Yes, I’ve heard of you.”

“We need to talk.”

Leo then stared at the extremely pretty young woman until she took the hint and stalked out of the room, carafe in hand, trailing an aroma of burnt coffee.

Happy Dan edged around a filing cabinet and took up a defensive position behind his desk.

“We were trading stories about vacation resorts,” Happy Dan said, with a nervous stab at affability. Silk tie. Gel in his hair like it was spooned on. “You see, I just got back from Aruba, and—”

“What I really come to see you about was the hose job you’re planning to do on a nice old lady, Mrs. Eva Kohl, supposed to come in here later today an’ sign some papers.”

“Mr. Skorzeny, we don’t—”

“Sit down,” Skig said.

Happy Dan looked uncertain for a second, then sat. Skig lowered himself into the visitors’ chair. Jeez, his gut hurt.

“The lady’s a friend of mine. I want her treated right.”

“Mr. Skorzeny, I assure you—”

Skig’s shoulders moved, his big hands on the heavy desk, trapping Happy Dan against the wall. Dan’s jaw sagged. Disbelief on his face.

Skig said, “There’s not a car salesman alive wouldn’t hose a woman like that, unless he’s a saint, and you got no halo floatin’ over your head.” He watched Happy Dan turn purple. “Here’s what you do. You come down fifteen hundred on the MSRP — cash-back covers that — an’ you give her three, not two, for the trade, which is more what it’s worth. That’s forty-five hunnerd, good for ninety bucks off the monthly payment, an’ you still do okay. An’ don’t suck it all up with some BS prepping fees, like you polished the mirrors or something, or I’ll be back here for more negotiating. You getting all this?”

Sweat droplets gleamed along the hairline of Dan’s spiffy do. He managed a bob of his head. Skig held him there a few more seconds, scrutinizing the Aruban tan for signs of perfidy. Satisfied that there were none, he yanked the desk back and heaved himself to his feet.

“An’ make sure she gets the free gap insurance the leasing company likes you to forget about,” Skig said, not looking back, moving on out the door.

The clinic’s parking lot was jammed as usual, the waiting room packed with distressed humanity. But there had been a cancellation, and Skig’s name came up quickly. Shown to a room the size of a large closet, he waited until the quack breezed in. Not his usual quack. A specialist. Like most specialists, this guy had the charm of a forensic pathologist.

“Just tell me,” Skig said, “am I still gonna die?”

The quack hunched over a child-sized table, briskly flipping through some arcane-looking charts. “We’re all going to die, Mr. Skorzeny.”

A pathologist and a philosopher. Skig crossed his brawny arms above his thick belly, waiting to hear the bad news.

Finally the quack glanced up. Jeez, he was young. How much could a kid this age know about diseases of the colon? Plenty, judging by the framed degrees, diplomas, and certificates tacked to the wall. But Skig wasn’t impressed. Paper was paper.

“The tests were inconclusive,” the quack said.

“What!”

“The tests were inconclusive. We’ll have to run them again.”

“Somebody screwed up, you mean.”

“There’s no need for acrimony.”

“There’s a need for something. You think it’s happy days goin’ through all that?”

“You’re overwrought.”

“No, I’m underwrought. When I get overwrought, you’ll know it.”

The quack was unintimidated. That impressed Skig. With cool detachment, the young man insisted Skig leave another sample for the lab. The Styrofoam container looked just like the kind the Greek at the corner sold his chili burgers in.

When Skig got home, there was company waiting. An unmarked car with two watchful dicks in it, parked in the front yard where the gas pumps used to be. In his younger years he might have cruised on by, circled the block, gave some thought as to how he would handle things. Now he just rolled in and stopped right beside them. What were they after? Someone to shoot? Pick me, Skig thought.

They got out of their car slowly and purposefully, an air of menace hovering about them. Something they learned at the academy: how to get out of your vehicle with an air of menace. Skig got out too. As he straightened, the pain darted inside him like the tip of a cork puller he’d ingested by accident somehow, and he steadied himself.

The dicks were focused, professionally intense. The older one moved in. He was going to fat, wore an old loose-fitting suit, and showed salt-and-pepper hair around his ears. The one who’d been driving was younger, tall and lanky, and dressed like he was going to a job interview.

“You guys collecting for underprivileged cops?” Leo said. “I gave at the office,” thinking of the container he had left with the quack. He brushed past the dicks, jangling his keys, and unlocked the repair bay door. When he heaved it up he thought his stomach would bust open and dump some major organ right there on the ground. He swayed.

“Mr. Skorzeny?” the fat one said.

“You know it.”

“Are you all right?”

“Top shelf. Right up there with the chips and cheesies.”

The dick studied him, taking his measure.

“We’ve got a few questions. Think we could go inside?”

“No.”

The dick held his gaze. Then he shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He took a pen and notebook out of his pocket, flipped pages, glanced up again. “You know a man named Dwight Keevis?”

“No.”

“Owns a car dealership. Also goes by the name of Dan Duchek. Happy Dan.”

“Oh, that Dwight Keevis.”

“Then you do know him.”

“No.”

The dick pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right. Let’s go about this another way. An employee says you dropped by to see Mr. Keevis earlier today, unannounced. You didn’t come to buy a car, and you weren’t very friendly. We’d like to know what you talked about.”

“You asked if I knew the guy. I don’t.” Skig looked the two dicks over again. A mulish-looking couple of plugs. Stubborn as dirt. Better give them something. The truth was best. “I did stop by about a car. I been told I should trade up.”

Behind the fat dick, the lanky one stooped over the window of the Vic. He made a sour face. “That might be a plan. This one stinks.”

“Funny,” Skig said, “it smelt good till you showed up.”

The lanky dick’s face tightened, and the older one reined him in with his eyes. Then the older one turned back to Skig.

“The employee claims you threatened Mr. Keevis when you left his office today.”

“Is that what this is about? I said an unkind word to somebody?” Skig remembered the extremely pretty young woman, the acid look on her puss as she trip-trapped out of the room.

“Well,” the dick said, “whether you did or you didn’t, Mr. Keevis now happens to be dead. Died of gunshot wounds at the QE Emergency” — he glanced at his watch — “going on two hours ago.”

“You don’t tell me.”

“I do tell you. And after what the employee said, and seeing as you’re not exactly a stranger to us—”

“Got a sheet on you like the Yellow Pages,” the lanky dick put in with venom.

“—we thought,” the older dick continued, determined to finish, “that it might be a good idea to come by and hear what you had to say about it.”

“An’ you did. An’ I answered you,” Skig said. “So take off.”

“You won’t get far with that attitude.”

“I only need to get through that door to my bottle of scotch. You want to arrest me because some rip-off artist stopped a long overdue slug, go ahead. But my doctor may have something to say about that. And my lawyer will cut you off at the knees.”

Skig got back in the Vic, dropped it in gear, and let the fast idle roll the smelly old car inside.

In the gloom of the kitchen, he rinsed a glass in the sink, rattled some ice into it, and topped it up with Teacher’s. He pushed the news about Happy Dan around in his head. Not all that surprising. Probably tried to screw the wrong sap, that’s all. The sap got wise, dug his howitzer out of a shoebox, and returned to the lot, bent on revising the terms of their understanding. The fat monthly payment and, oh yeah, a little something else.

Skig glanced at the clock. Solly Sweetmore was late. If he didn’t show, Skig would have to go to him, give him a slap or two to get his attention.

He sat down in his ratty recliner — collapsed into it, was more like it. Switched on the TV, jabbed the mute button, took a quick slug from his glass. The liquor did what it was supposed to do, burned for a moment, then mellowed him, but it didn’t help his gut. He shook out two of the big fat brown capsules the quack had slipped him — samples, he’d said, take one before eating — and washed them down with a swallow of booze.

Then he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, there were shadows in the room, the afternoon sun dying fast behind the fly-specked window over the sink. The light from the silent television winked and gamboled on the walls.

A TV news lady was doing a location shot. The background looked vaguely familiar. Skig frowned as two giant double Ds reared up on the screen — Dan Duchek’s rip-off center. It was an earlier tape, sunlight beating down in the background where a bagged stiff was being rolled out on a gurney. He poked the mute button. The TV lady, brushing a sweep of lustrous hair out of her eyes, said, “...all police would reveal was that the owner of this downtown dealership was shot dead in his office by an unidentified assailant.” Skig wondered if Dan still wore his grin. “CTV has learned that at least one person has been taken into custody...” The canned shot changed. And to Skig the monologue faded as a jerky camera lens zoomed in on a gray-haired woman being bundled into a police patrol car. The woman looked dazed. It was Eva Kohl.

“Ah jeez,” Skig said.

He made a call to his lawyer Saul Getz, then rolled down to the cop shop in the Vic. Saul was there waiting for him. A thin man with patient eyes, he was thoughtfully stroking his trim, white goatee.

“You talk to her?” Skig asked.

“Yeah, I talked to her. They didn’t arrest her. That woman wouldn’t shoot a pop-gun at a plastic monkey to win a coconut.”

“You got that right. You pry her loose?”

“Oh sure. She’s an unhappy lady, though. Forensics impounded her car. Seems Happy Dan was about to drive it into the shop when the shooter stepped in and popped him. Two hits, one miss. Quite a mess.” He smiled. “She’s feisty. She says if the police take people’s cars away, then they ought to provide loaners. I sent her home in a cab.”

Skig said, “They recover the gun?”

“No. But they think it belonged to the victim. He kept a Smith in the desk, according to an employee, and the cops can’t find it anywhere.”

That helpful employee again. “Anything else?”

“One slug was recovered in pretty good shape. Went into the headrest. When they find the gun they’ll do their ballistics thing, and that’ll be it.”

“They think.”

“They’re pretty sure. One of the techs took a quick look. He said it ought to be a slam dunk, far as the gun is concerned.”

“Meantime, Eva doesn’t get her car back.”

“Oh, it gets worse. When I showed up and started speaking for her, the detectives figured out the connection pretty quick. I mean, from me to you, then Eva. They brightened a little. The younger one grinned and said maybe they’d bring her back in for more questioning.”

“They’re outta their minds.”

“They seem a little miffed at you, Leo. Did you yank their chains or something?”

He told them how he had been at the lot for a few minutes and how the fat cop and the thin cop had stopped by and braced him later.

“Buying a new car, Skig? Hey, that’s a plan.”

“Don’t start. I was there at the lot just before the guy got it, an’ because I’m me, they made a little too much of it.” Skig eyeballed a policeman stepping by them in the hall. “I ran them off.”

Saul stroked his goatee, thinking. “No, there’s more to it. They got that witness. That employee. We don’t know what she saw, or what she says she saw. She could be fingering you and your friend.” He puffed his cheeks out, gave his head a shake. “Did you rub her the wrong way too?” When Skig didn’t answer, he added, “Why would she finger a nice old doll like that?”

“I dunno,” Leo said, “but I’m gonna find out.”

He had just caught a glimpse of the extremely pretty young woman being ushered out of an interview room down the hall.

The sun had gone down fast. Wisps of pink-bellied clouds lingered way out low over the Arm.

Skig sat in the Crown Vic with the blower on and the windows all the way down. The car smelled especially rank today. The sludge at the bottom of the harbor wasn’t violets, that was a fact. But minutes later the night breeze was buffeting through the car again, as he trailed the extremely pretty young woman’s taillights down Gottingen Street. She drove fast. She tailgated. She yapped into her cell nonstop.

She drove out to Clayton Park, sped north on Dunbrack, then turned in at a block of apartments that sprawled above the slope to the basin. Shot down the ramp into the underground parking with the phone still glued to her head. Skig found a slot outside in the visitors’ lot, angled so that he could watch for an apartment light to go on. He knew he had about a fifty percent chance, and his number came up. Tenth floor, northwest corner.

“Bang,” Skig said.

He kept waiting. Imagined the cell phone burning. Minutes later, headlights lit the Vic from behind, a car coming up fast, flashing by him into the visitors’ lot, subwoofer pumping out some irritating hip-hop crap. Nice car. A yellow Audi.

“Boom,” Skig said.

Skig knew the vehicle. He’d seen it around. A car like that, you might as well have a neon sign over your head jabbing blinking arrows at you. And seeing it here now, Skig suddenly realized who the kid at the car lot had been, the one with the eyes.

The name he went by was Caesar DeLuca. His real tag? Probably not. He was Filipino. Smart with the ladies. Though what young women saw in guys who looked like extras from Night of the Living Dead, Skig had never been able to figure out. And DeLuca was mean. He liked to hurt people. It wasn’t just an unavoidable part of doing business with him, he enjoyed it. Beyond that, Skig didn’t know much about the guy and didn’t want to. He couldn’t care less what turned DeLuca’s crank, but that would change fast if the guy had his rat’s nose buried in this business somehow.

DeLuca swaggered from his car to the building, gold chains, body ink, and attitude. Skig considered the setup so far.

A car dealer shot dead. In his proximity, four people: a gentle unassuming older lady, the extremely pretty young woman, and rat boy here, Caesar DeLuca. And himself. Which of these was most likely to have had something to do with it? Since the cops apparently didn’t know about DeLuca, Skig was number one on the list. But he had an alibi with the quack. The cops had probably discovered that. Which left the girl — and the older lady, of course, according to Fatty and Skinny. They had sherlocked it out.

Of course, they hadn’t seen DeLuca nosing around the car lot earlier, but on the other hand they didn’t seem too interested in finding out about him either. Had they asked Skig if he’d seen anybody else there? No. Had the girl volunteered the information? Skig didn’t think so.

Upstairs, the window darkened. Somebody had pulled the drapes. After about half an hour, DeLuca sauntered out of the building and squealed away in his thumping pimp mobile. Skig eased out of the old Vic, locked the door, and followed a tenant and his fuzzy white dog in through the front entrance.

The apartment door on the tenth floor had a spray of dried flowers on it and a ceramic plaque that said RUSSELL. The girl pulled open her door and stared at him.

“Name’s Leo Skorzeny, Ms. Russell,” Skig said. “Remember me?”

Her face paled in alarm, she started to close the door, and he put his foot in the way.

“Tired of talking about what happened to your boss today?”

That stopped her. She hesitated, found that hissy look somewhere inside herself, then stood back and let him in. She waggled her fingers at a chair and flounced down on the sofa, one leg tucked up, lips clamped together tight. Skig didn’t like the idea of fighting his way back out of the overstuffed bucket she had consigned him to, so he dragged a kitchen chair out of the ell and sat down gingerly on it. Jeez.

She shot a meaningful look at a table clock, something modern in plastic and glass. “You’ve got five minutes.” She had a harsh voice. He hadn’t been expecting that.

“I’ll take it. I can use all the time I can get, according to my proctologist.”

“Are you trying to be crude?”

“I’m trying to be accurate. You were pretty accurate yourself when you put those holes in your boss.”

She brought one foot down hard on the rug, shoving forward at him. “Don’t you dare imply I had anything to do with that!”

“I’m not implying it. I’m saying it. You shot him, all right, you or your boyfriend did. An’ when you couldn’t frame me, you had to settle for the old lady.”

She jumped to her feet. “Get out!”

“I could do that. An’ I could head back down to Gottingen Street and lay it all out for the dicks.”

She stood there breathing, dainty nostrils flaring, considering her options. Then she plumped down on the sofa again and gnawed at her lip. He knew he was on the right track then.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s hear your delusional idea.”

“I got two, three of ’em,” Skig said, ignoring the dramatics. “I been thinking down there in the car. First one is, you were cozy with Happy Dan, shining his cars for him, only somethin’ went wrong. He took off to Aruba without you, had a good time in the sun, an’ when he got back you tore a strip off of him.”

She gave a short, barking laugh.

“That’s insane. You don’t know anything. What makes you think I wasn’t with him?”

“Where’s your tan?”

It stopped her. But just for a moment.

“Dwight was married. He flew down there with his wife. He couldn’t have taken me along if he’d wanted to.”

“Oh, there’s ways. But we’ll put that on hold. Here’s delusion number two, coming at it from the other side. The guy was hitting on you, you finally lost it with him, an’ you pegged him.”

“Oh puh-lease!” She made her eyes go round. “Why would I do that? I could have walked away if what you’re saying is true. Do you think I’m out of my mind?”

Skig looked at her. She was struggling. A pretty bundle of raw nerves curled up there on the couch.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think that. I think your boyfriend’s got a loose connection someplace. What’s his part? He came to your rescue?”

“My boyfriend? Now what are you talking about?”

“The little weasel I just saw scuttling out of here.”

She rolled her eyes again. “I don’t even have a boyfriend. Nobody left here.”

“He was in this building.”

“It’s a big place.”

“Yeah,” Skig said. He wasn’t ready to mention he’d seen the two of them arguing earlier under the big double Ds at Happy’s place. “Where can I find him?”

She studied Skig a moment. Worked on that lip again. She really didn’t want to get going on DeLuca, that was obvious, and suddenly a miracle occurred. Her face turned all sweetness and light. Just like that.

“Look, we can be friends, you know.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t think I’m cute?”

“Puppies are cute. So are Kewpie dolls. You’re in there somewhere, I guess.”

She threw her drink at him, the glass tumbling past his ear, splatting against the heavy drapes, then falling to the rug, miraculously unbroken. The drapes hadn’t fared so well, a broad stain running down them. A few drops darkened Leo’s sleeve.

He got up painfully. “Nice to have met you, Ms. Russell.”

Two things he’d gotten out of this. Number one, she was scared of the cops. Number two, she was protecting rat boy.

Skig opened his eyes next morning and wondered where the hell he was. Found he was stretched flat out in his recliner. Last night after taking three of the big fat free samples, he had tumbled into Never-Never Land as if someone had batted him with a jack handle. He yanked the chair lever, sat up, and explored his side with his stubby fingers.

Not too bad this morning. The pain was still there, but it was biding its time. Sometimes it did that. Went away to a seminar on how to really rip a guy’s innards apart, then came back and practiced on him. The respite would be short.

He showered, ran his razor over his face, and went out the door without bothering to eat. He stopped at a drive-through for a coffee, double milk, no sugar, which he drank in the Vic at the edge of the lot. There was a contest on. Win a TV. Coffee cups had the good news hidden on them. A kid rooting through the trash can by the doors for a winning cup glanced up as Skig held his out the window. He edged over suspiciously and took it from him. “Jeez, mister. Don’t you want to win a plasma TV?” Skig started up the Vic. “I already got a TV. I could prob’ly use the plasma, though.”

Skig drove to the recycling depot out past Lakeside. A big Loadmaster trash truck was grunting up to the dock, spewing diesel fumes, and a bunch of cars stood around, engines idling while people hauled out bags filled with beer cans, newspapers — bags filled with bags, for crying out loud — to get their four or five bucks. Save the ozone layer. He found Solly Sweetmore in his upstairs office under the corrugated sheet-metal roof.

Skig was overweight. He needed to drop forty pounds. But Solly had such a colossal gut on him he had to straighten his arms to reach his desk. His face, tracked with broken blood vessels, showed alarm when he saw who his visitor was. He set down the can of Coke he was nursing.

“You were supposed to drop by yesterday,” Skig said, wincing. The pain was back. The steep stairs killed him.

“I know, Leo, I know.” The trashman leaned away from his desk, moving his hands around. “I just got busy. This place is a nuthouse. You can see—”

“Fine with me, Solly,” Skig said, “you want to pay another day’s juice. Go for it. Only next time tell me, okay? That’s what the phone is for.”

“About that, Skig, listen—”

“No, you listen. This is how things get outta hand. You keep taking more time, more time, you run outta time pretty fast. Then I got to lean on you. I don’t like that, Solly.”

“I know. I should’ve phoned you, Skig, but listen—”

A gaunt man in a knit cap interrupted, thrusting his small balding head in the door. “That compactor crapped out again, boss, the old green one, so maybe—”

Solly surged up and screamed at him. “Will you get outta my face?” He threw his pop at the man, the half filled can smashing into the doorframe, cola fizzing and splattering over a calendar and running down the cheap paneling in streams. The head withdrew.

“Lots of people throwing drinks these days,” Skig said, shaking his head. “People need to relax.” He tapped the book in his breast pocket. “Six-five, Solly, plus another half a point for today. Pay me now an’ that’s an end to it.”

“But I got other bills.”

“Not like mine you don’t.”

Solly threw his head back and let out an anguished moan. Then he jerked open a cashbox. Counted the six-five out right there on the desk.

“An’ the half a point, don’t forget,” Skig said. Then he held up his hand. “Or maybe this’ll work.” He leaned in. “You know a guy named Caesar DeLuca? Drives a car like a birthday cake?” Warily, Solly nodded. Skig said, “Tell me about him.”

Solly looked even more stressed out, if that was possible.

“What’s to tell? I see him on Argyle there, Hollis Street, sometimes down at the casino. He’s trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

When Skig drove away fifteen minutes later, he had his money, and more information on Caesar DeLuca than he needed. The kid was also in the car business. He and Happy Dan had that in common. He did custom work, prime merchandise only, a certain kind of car, a special customer. He got an order, shopped around till he filled it. Then — this part Solly was shaky on — he delivered the wheels out in Sackville, a guy with a long-haul business there. It got loaded on a semi, other stuff packed around it, and a day later it was in New York or Montreal, on its way to the special client.

Skig had said to Solly, “Rat boy. Where does he live?”

“I dunno. Nobody knows. He keeps that to himself.”

“This merchandise. Always a special order?”

“Prob’ly not. He wouldn’t walk away from something.”

Skig thought a minute. “Get a message to him. There’s an old Vette, one a them Sting Rays, been parking on the street all night behind the Armories. You don’t know why. But you seen it there, an’ you want a spotting fee.”

Solly had shaken his fleshy face. “Jeez, I dunno, Leo.”

“Just do it.” Skig shifted his weight. “Do it an’ we’ll call it square on the point.”

“Fine. But I don’t like it,” Solly said. “I’m telling you that guy is a crazy man.”

Back home, Skig dialed Saul Getz. “They pick her up? Eva Kohl?”

“No, of course not. What case have they got? But they’re thinking about it.”

“Why?”

“Something about her being a suicide risk.”

“They’re full of it.”

“I’m with you. She doesn’t look the type. A little bewildered maybe, but who wouldn’t be?”

“Whatever happened to a free country?”

“Things are relative, Leo.”

“Things are crap. Listen, do what you can for her. They pull her in, I want you there with her.”

“Leo, this is costing you. It’s adding up fast.”

“Just do it. An’ don’t bring me into it. She thinks she owes me, that’s bad for a friendship. It changes things.”

“Yeah, well, she is starting to wonder.”

“Just be there for her. Say you’re court appointed or something. Make somethin’ up, you’re a lawyer, for cryin’ out loud.”

“Fine, but I’ve got to bill you.”

“So cheer up.” Skig winced. The pain was back. “One more thing. I need to borrow your Vette.”

There was dead silence. Then Saul started breathing again.

“You what?”

“I know it’s your toy, you only drive it to church on Sunday, but tonight I want you to park it behind the Armories, take a cab home, an’ forget about it.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Anything happens to it, I’ll pay the shot. You know I’m good for it.”

There was a short pause. Then Saul said, “You’re up to something.”

“Go see Mrs. Kohl.”

Skig spent the rest of the day at the clinic. The lousy tests all over again. When he got home that evening he felt as if he was a sample of something himself. He ate beans, cold out of the can, and washed them down with scotch, both food items totally forbidden to him. To hell with it. Then he set his alarm clock — the blender plugged into the timed outlet on the stove — and fell into his recliner. He dreamed Fatty and Skinny, dressed like surgeons, were stooping over him, making a large incision in his belly and smiling about it.

The alarm was howling in the kitchen, the empty blender dancing around on the metal stovetop like it was going to explode. Midnight.

He limped out the door.

He parked one street over from the Armories where through the gap of a vacant lot he could eyeball Saul’s money-pit Vette — a ’65 fastback, Nassau Blue. Tilted the Vic’s power seat back until only his eyes showed above the dash.

He dozed a few times, and then something woke him. The clock read one fifteen. A tow truck was backing toward Saul’s ride. It stopped and rat boy got out, gold chains flashing under the sodium streetlamp. He held something down low at his side that looked for a second like a long-barreled handgun. It was a cordless drill with a foot-long bit in it. Rat boy put the bit to the fiberglass fender and sank a hole into the Vette’s engine compartment. An old trick. Drain the battery. That way the alarm wouldn’t sound unless there was a backup.

There wasn’t. Something to mention to Saul. The guy hooked up the Vette and dragged it away. Elapsed time, three minutes. Skig readjusted his seat and took off after him.

Rat boy would have places to store his cars, places where he could keep them out of sight for a while. Rented garages here and there, probably. After a ten minute drive out to Spryfield, the tow truck halted before an old swayback shed. The kid was good with the boom and the winch, and the Vette was tucked out of sight in no time.

The rat dropped off the truck — another darkened house a few blocks south — hopped in the Audi, and beat it out of town along Purcell’s Cove Road, stereo thumping all the way, a good night’s work behind him. Skig gave him room, not wanting to spook him. Maybe too much room. He came over a hill near Herring Cove, overshot the place, and had to double back. Good thing he’d been watching the drives on either side, and caught a flash of brake lights and yellow paint.

The rat appeared to be doing all right for himself. It was a modern chalet in bleached cedar, overlooking the ocean. In need of some TLC but pretty fine all the same. Skig took the Vic back up the hill to a market gardener’s he’d spotted, parked in the darkened lot by the greenhouse, got out, and walked back. A short stroll, no more than two hundred yards or so, but on a steep incline. His gut wasn’t happy about it.

Partway up the drive to the house, Skig stopped. There were two cars here. The Audi and, in front of it, the car he had followed from the cop-shop the previous night. He grunted. It was the car of the extremely pretty young woman.

“No boyfriend, huh?” Skig said.

He heard voices.

The house stood on a brutally unaccommodating chunk of granite, cantilevered over the cliff face to provide a picture-perfect view of the sea. A wide deck embraced it. In the quiet gaps when the surf wasn’t pounding, voices drifted from the seaward side.

Skig climbed three broad steps to the deck. Against the house were some sturdy-looking loungers, a plastic cooler filled with ice and beer. Skig helped himself to a beer and sat down on a bench. He pressed the cold can to his side. From here he could make out the voices better.

“...I brought the beer like you told me, but I didn’t think you’d be here this soon,” the girl’s voice said.

“I told you two, two thirty.”

“Yes, but you’re never early.”

“What’s the late-breaking news, it couldn’t wait till tomorrow?”

A wave heaved in. “A man came to see me.”

“What man?”

“The man I told the cops about — you know who I mean.”

“The guy who threatened your boss?”

“Yes.”

“So what did he want?”

“He accused me of killing Dwight.”

Another pause in the conversation. The guy deliberating. Down below the house a big wave thundered in. Skig could smell the salt.

“Lemme guess. He thinks he can blackmail you.”

“No. That’s the funny thing. He just made these crazy accusations, then left. I thought about it all day and finally decided I’d better tell you about it.”

“This happened yesterday?”

“Yeah. In the evening. Just after you left.” She hesitated. “I think...” Her voice trailed off.

“You think what?”

“I think he knows something about you. I mean, he asked me where he could find you, and — Stop that! You’re hurting me!”

“You waited all this time to tell me?”

“Let go of me!”

There was a scuffle, a muffled slap.

Skig swished his beer around, took another swallow. Then he got up. He walked around to the front of the house and saw him there, rat boy, staring down at the girl. She was crouched on the deck against the railing, one hand to the side of her face.

The guy must have seen her eyes move. He spun around in surprise.

“Name’s Leo Skorzeny,” Skig said. “You heard of me?”

“Where the hell’d you come from?”

“You heard of me?”

“Yeah, I hearda you. Some kinda shy. You heard of me?”

“Yeah. Some kinda rat.” Skig looked at the girl. There was a red welt blossoming along one side of her face. Her nose was bleeding. His eyes moved back to the rat, and he shook his head. “What’s the matter with you?”

The dead eyes narrowed, and Skig followed their quick shift to a pile of split wood near the door. A weapon on this guy’s mind. A hatchet, maybe.

“Don’t even think it,” Skig said, “ ’less you want to wear the thing. Walk around with it stickin’ outta you, some kinda new body piercing.”

“You talk tough.”

“It’s the mileage,” Skig said. “Want to hear what I got?” He finished the beer and set the can down carefully on the railing. “One part of Happy’s business, he had that detailing place out back of the lot. The way I figure it, somebody goes through the records there, they can find out who owns what in town. All the good stuff. The best rides. Cars you don’t see on the street too much. Practically a catalogue to a guy like you.”

“So what.”

“You come onto Ms. Russell here so you can get your nose in those records.” The girl was getting to her feet. Dawning realization on her face, eyes jumping from Skig to rat boy. “Pretty soon, Happy Dan’s customers lose a car or two. Maybe a string of them. Happy Dan is scratching his head. Then one day he finds you goin’ through his records, your rat’s nose twitching, an’ he calls you on it. Or no, more likely the girl’s doin’ it. He threatens to call the cops. You can’t have that.”

The dead eyes didn’t waver.

“There’s some shouting. Some more threats. He has to step out to start processing the old lady’s trade, an’ the girl calls you up, panicking. You panic too. She tells you where the gun is, or she told you about it before. You’re back in a minute, an’ you use it to make those big holes in the guy.”

The rat edged closer to the woodpile. A car started out back of the house. Skig looked for the girl again, but she was gone. He shrugged.

“What you gonna do? I think the girl figures it out. She remembers me sorting out her boss, an’ she’s thinking — some nutty idea in her head — that she can put the jacket on me. It’s a long shot, but it’s all you got. An’ it turns out I got an alibi. Then there’s the gun. You screwed that up too. Not likely I’d pop somebody with their own gun. Not my style. An’ bein’ a thief it’s really tough for you to give up a perfectly good Smith. I bet you still got it. The gun ties you to it.”

By this time DeLuca had sidled halfway across the deck, and now he dived for the open door. Skig moved to block him. He saw what DeLuca was reaching for — not the woodpile but something else, his hand thrusting into the room and coming out with the gun. It must have been on the kitchen counter.

Skig brought the heel of his fist down on the rat’s arm so hard he heard something pop and rat boy screamed. The gun clattered over the boards. The rat’s bony knee came up, and a huge pain shot through Skig’s belly. Skig reeled backward, left hand clenched in the rat’s shirt, pulling the rat with him as the knee came up again. A wave of nausea. Skig was going down. He grabbed handfuls of the rat’s baggy pants with both fists and heaved, putting his shoulders into it. The jolt hammered all the way up his spine when his butt struck the deck, and he sat there a moment, dazed, chunky legs splayed out, hand pressed to his side. There was one good thing though. Rat boy was gone. A flying header over the railing, sixty feet down to rocks and pounding surf.

Boom.

After a bit, Skig got up and put the gun back on the kitchen counter, careful how he touched it.

“You gonna be all right?” Skig asked Mrs. Kohl.

“I’ll be just fine, Mr. Skorzeny. Go ahead to your doctor’s appointment.”

“He can wait. I’m more worried about you. Somethin’ happens, who’s gonna cut my hair?”

Skig helped her settle into her glider rocker. She smiled up at him.

“That Mr. Getz is an awfully nice man. He’s helped me a lot. I was relieved when he told me the police figured out who killed Mr. Duchek. He was a nice man too.” Then she frowned. “Mr. Getz isn’t very happy with you, though. Something about a car?”

“Could be.”

“Cars are an awful lot of trouble.”

“They are for some people.”

“I’m going out again tomorrow to see if I can lease one.”

Skig was silent a moment, then said, “You want some company this time?”

A bright laugh. “You’re afraid I’ll get cheated. Men have an easier time of it at car lots than women do, is that it?”

“Lemme think about that one,” Skig said.

Keller on the Spot Lawrence Block

Okay, Keller is a professional hit man, killing people that he’s paid to eliminate, which leads one to think he’s a black-hearted sociopath. His stock doesn’t rise when we watch him get to know many of his targets, become friendly with them, and still coldly pull the trigger. On the other hand, he seems otherwise fairly normal, a man with a hobby (stamp collecting) who is easygoing, laid back, and friendly. He does not torture anyone, nor does he take any particular pleasure in killing his victims, though he does allow that “some people need killing.”

Keller’s creator, Lawrence Block (1938–) has produced such series characters as Matthew Scudder, an alcoholic ex-cop who accidentally shot and killed a little girl and now functions as an unofficial private eye, doing favors for friends; Bernie Rhodenbarr, a professional burglar and bookseller; Evan Tanner, a spy with a disorder that prevents him from sleeping — ever; Martin Ehrengraf, an amoral lawyer who charges a fortune but wins every case, no matter what it takes; and Chip Harrison, a teenager who thinks of little besides sex but works for Leo Haig, a private detective modeled after Nero Wolfe.

The Keller stories began in the pages of Playboy and proved so popular that a series of books followed; disguised as episodic novels, many of the murderous incidents had previously appeared as short stories. The first of the five Keller books was titled, perhaps not surprisingly, Hit Man (1998); it was followed by Hit List (2000), Hit Parade (2006), Hit and Run (2008), and Hit Me (2013).

“Keller on the Spot” was originally published in the November 1997 issue of Playboy; it was first collected in Hit Man (New York, William Morrow, 1998).

Keller, drink in hand, agreed with the woman in the pink dress that it was a lovely evening. He threaded his way through a crowd of young marrieds on what he supposed you would call the patio. A waitress passed carrying a tray of drinks in stemmed glasses and he traded in his own for a fresh one. He sipped as he walked along, wondering what he was drinking. Some sort of vodka sour, he decided, and decided as well that he didn’t need to narrow it down any further than that. He figured he’d have this one and one more, but he could have ten more if he wanted, because he wasn’t working tonight. He could relax and cut back and have a good time.

Well, almost. He couldn’t relax completely, couldn’t cut back altogether. Because, while this might not be work, neither was it entirely recreational. The garden party this evening was a heaven-sent opportunity for reconnaissance, and he would use it to get a close look at his quarry. He had been handed a picture in the old man’s study back in White Plains, and he had brought that picture with him to Dallas, but even the best photo wasn’t the same as a glimpse of the fellow in the flesh, and in his native habitat.

And a lush habitat it was. Keller hadn’t been inside the house yet, but it was clearly immense, a sprawling multilevel affair of innumerable large rooms. The grounds sprawled as well, covering an acre or two, with enough plants and shrubbery to stock an arboretum. Keller didn’t know anything about flowers, but five minutes in a garden like this one had him thinking he ought to know more about the subject. Maybe they had evening classes at Hunter or NYU, maybe they’d take you on field trips to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Maybe his life would be richer if he knew the names of the flowers, and whether they were annuals or perennials, and whatever else there was to know about them. Their soil requirements, say, and what bug killer to spray on their leaves, or what fertilizer to spread at their roots.

He walked along a brick path, smiling at this stranger, nodding at that one, and wound up standing alongside the swimming pool. Some twelve or fifteen people sat at poolside tables, talking and drinking, the volume of their conversation rising as they drank. In the enormous pool, a young boy swam back and forth, back and forth.

Keller felt a curious kinship with the kid. He was standing instead of swimming, but he felt as distant as the kid from everybody else around. There were two parties going on, he decided. There was the hearty social whirl of everybody else, and there was the solitude he felt in the midst of it all, identical to the solitude of the swimming boy.

Huge pool. The boy was swimming its width, but that dimension was still greater than the length of your typical backyard pool. Keller didn’t know whether this was an Olympic pool, he wasn’t quite sure how big that would have to be, but he figured you could just call it enormous and let it go at that.

Ages ago he’d heard about some college-boy stunt, filling a swimming pool with Jell-O, and he’d wondered how many little boxes of the gelatin dessert it would have required, and how the college boys could have afforded it. It would cost a fortune, he decided, to fill this pool with Jell-O — but if you could afford the pool in the first place, he supposed the Jell-O would be the least of your worries.

There were cut flowers on all the tables, and the blooms looked like ones Keller had seen in the garden. It stood to reason. If you grew all these flowers, you wouldn’t have to order from the florist. You could cut your own.

What good would it do, he wondered, to know the names of all the shrubs and flowers? Wouldn’t it just leave you wanting to dig in the soil and grow your own? And he didn’t want to get into all that, for God’s sake. His apartment was all he needed or wanted, and it was no place for a garden. He hadn’t even tried growing an avocado pit there, and he didn’t intend to. He was the only living thing in the apartment, and that was the way he wanted to keep it. The day that changed was the day he’d call the exterminator.

So maybe he’d just forget about evening classes at Hunter, and field trips to Brooklyn. If he wanted to get close to nature he could walk in Central Park, and if he didn’t know the names of the flowers he would just hold off on introducing himself to them. And if—

Where was the kid?

The boy, the swimmer. Keller’s companion in solitude. Where the hell did he go?

The pool was empty, its surface still. Keller saw a ripple toward the far end, saw a brace of bubbles break the surface.

He didn’t react without thinking. That was how he’d always heard that sort of thing described, but that wasn’t what happened, because the thoughts were there, loud and clear. He’s down there. He’s in trouble. He’s drowning. And, echoing in his head in a voice that might have been Dot’s, sour with exasperation: Keller, for Christ’s sake, do something!

He set his glass on a table, shucked his coat, kicked off his shoes, dropped his pants and stepped out of them. Ages ago he’d earned a Red Cross lifesaving certificate, and the first thing they taught you was to strip before you hit the water. The six or seven seconds you spent peeling off your clothes would be repaid many times over in quickness and mobility.

But the strip show did not go unnoticed. Everybody at poolside had a comment, one more hilarious than the next. He barely heard them. In no time at all he was down to his underwear, and then he was out of range of their cleverness, hitting the water’s surface in a flat racing dive, churning the water till he reached the spot where he’d seen the bubbles, then diving, eyes wide, barely noticing the burn of the chlorine.

Searching for the boy. Groping, searching, then finding him, reaching to grab hold of him. And pushing off against the bottom, lungs bursting, racing to reach the surface.

People were saying things to Keller, thanking him, congratulating him, but it wasn’t really registering. A man clapped him on the back, a woman handed him a glass of brandy. He heard the word “hero” and realized that people were saying it all over the place, and applying it to him.

Hell of a note.

Keller sipped the brandy. It gave him heartburn, which assured him of its quality; good cognac always gave him heartburn. He turned to look at the boy. He was just a little fellow, twelve or thirteen years old, his hair lightened and his skin lightly bronzed by the summer sun. He was sitting up now, Keller saw, and looking none the worse for his near-death experience.

“Timothy,” a woman said, “this is the man who saved your life. Do you have something to say to him?”

“Thanks,” Timothy said, predictably.

“Is that all you have to say, young man?”

“It’s enough,” Keller said, and smiled. To the boy he said, “There’s something I’ve always wondered. Did your whole life actually flash before your eyes?”

Timothy shook his head. “I got this cramp,” he said, “and it was like my whole body turned into one big knot, and there wasn’t anything I could do to untie it. And I didn’t even think about drowning. I was just fighting the cramp, ’cause it hurt, and just about the next thing I knew I was up here coughing and puking up water.” He made a face. “I must have swallowed half the pool. All I have to do is think about it and I can taste vomit and chlorine.”

“Timothy,” the woman said, and rolled her eyes.

“Something to be said for plain speech,” an older man said. He had a mane of white hair and a pair of prominent white eyebrows, and his eyes were a vivid blue. He was holding a glass of brandy in one hand and a bottle in the other, and he reached with the bottle to fill Keller’s glass to the brim. “ ‘Claret for boys, port for men,’ ” he said, “ ‘but he who would be a hero must drink brandy.’ That’s Samuel Johnson, although I may have gotten a word wrong.”

The young woman patted his hand. “If you did, Daddy, I’m sure you just improved Mr. Johnson’s wording.”

“Dr. Johnson,” he said, “and one could hardly do that. Improve the man’s wording, that is. ‘Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.’ He said that as well, and I defy anyone to comment more trenchantly on the experience, or to say it better.” He beamed at Keller. “I owe you more than a glass of brandy and a well-turned Johnsonian phrase. This little rascal whose life you’ve saved is my grandson, and the apple — nay, sir, the very nectarine — of my eye. And we’d have all stood around drinking and laughing while he drowned. You observed, and you acted, and God bless you for it.”

What did you say to that? Keller wondered. It was nothing? Well, shucks? There had to be an apt phrase, and maybe Samuel Johnson could have found it, but he couldn’t. So he said nothing, and just tried not to look po-faced.

“I don’t even know your name,” the white-haired man went on. “That’s not remarkable in and of itself. I don’t know half the people here, and I’m content to remain in my ignorance. But I ought to know your name, wouldn’t you agree?”

Keller might have picked a name out of the air, but the one that leaped to mind was Boswell, and he couldn’t say that to a man who quoted Samuel Johnson. So he supplied the name he’d traveled under, the one he’d signed when he checked into the hotel, the one on the driver’s license and credit cards in his wallet.

“It’s Michael Soderholm,” he said, “and I can’t even tell you the name of the fellow who brought me here. We met over drinks in the hotel bar and he said he was going to a party and it would be perfectly all right if I came along. I felt a little funny about it, but—”

“Please,” the man said. “You can’t possibly propose to apologize for your presence here. It’s kept my grandson from a watery if chlorinated grave. And I’ve just told you I don’t know half my guests, but that doesn’t make them any the less welcome.” He took a deep drink of his brandy and topped up both glasses. “Michael Soderholm,” he said. “Swedish?”

“A mixture of everything,” Keller said, improvising. “My great-grandfather Soderholm came over from Sweden, but my other ancestors came from all over Europe, plus I’m something like a sixteenth American Indian.”

“Oh? Which tribe?”

“Cherokee,” Keller said, thinking of the jazz tune.

“I’m an eighth Comanche,” the man said. “So I’m afraid we’re not tribal bloodbrothers. The rest’s British Isles, a mix of Scots and Irish and English. Old Texas stock. But you’re not Texan yourself.”

“No.”

“Well, it can’t be helped, as the saying goes. Unless you decide to move here, and who’s to say that you won’t? It’s a fine place for a man to live.”

“Daddy thinks everybody should love Texas the way he does,” the woman said.

“Everybody should,” her father said. “The only thing wrong with Texans is we’re a long-winded lot. Look at the time it’s taking me to introduce myself! Mr. Soderholm, Mr. Michael Soderholm, my name’s Garrity, Wallace Penrose Garrity, and I’m your grateful host this evening.”

No kidding, thought Keller.

The party, lifesaving and all, took place on Saturday night. The next day Keller sat in his hotel room and watched the Cowboys beat the Vikings with a field goal in the last three minutes of double overtime. The game had seesawed back and forth, with interceptions and runbacks, and the announcers kept telling each other what a great game it was.

Keller supposed they were right. It had all the ingredients, and it wasn’t the players’ fault that he himself was entirely unmoved by their performance. He could watch sports, and often did, but he almost never got caught up in it. He had occasionally wondered if his work might have something to do with it. On one level, when your job involved dealing regularly with life and death, how could you care if some overpaid steroid abuser had a touchdown run called back? And, on another level, you saw unorthodox solutions to a team’s problems on the field. When Emmitt Smith kept crashing through the Minnesota line, Keller found himself wondering why they didn’t deputize someone to shoot the son of a bitch in the back of the neck, right below his star-covered helmet.

Still, it was better than watching golf, say, which in turn had to be better than playing golf. And he couldn’t get out and work, because there was nothing for him to do. Last night’s reconnaissance mission had been both better and worse than he could have hoped, and what was he supposed to do now, park his rented Ford across the street from the Garrity mansion and clock the comings and goings?

No need for that. He could bide his time, just so he got there in time for Sunday dinner.

“Some more potatoes, Mr. Soderholm?”

“They’re delicious,” Keller said. “But I’m full. Really.”

“And we can’t keep calling you Mr. Soderholm,” Garrity said. “I’ve only held off this long for not knowing whether you prefer Mike or Michael.”

“Mike’s fine,” Keller said.

“Then Mike it is. And I’m Wally, Mike, or W. P., though there are those who call me ‘The Walrus.’ ”

Timmy laughed, and clapped both hands over his mouth.

“Though never to his face,” said the woman who’d offered Keller more potatoes. She was Ellen Garrity, Timmy’s aunt and Garrity’s daughter-in-law, and Keller was now instructed to call her Ellie. Her husband, a big-shouldered fellow who seemed to be smiling bravely through the heartbreak of male-pattern baldness, was Garrity’s son Hank.

Keller remembered Timothy’s mother from the night before, but hadn’t got her name at the time, or her relationship to Garrity. She was Rhonda Sue Butler, as it turned out, and everybody called her Rhonda Sue, except for her husband, who called her Ronnie. His name was Doak Butler, and he looked like a college jock who’d been too light for pro ball, although he now seemed to be closing the gap.

Hank and Ellie, Doak and Rhonda Sue. And, at the far end of the table, Vanessa, who was married to Wally but who was clearly not the mother of Hank or Rhonda Sue, or anyone else. Keller supposed you could describe her as Wally’s trophy wife, a sign of his success. She was young, no older than Wally’s kids, and she looked to be well bred and elegant, and she even had the good grace to hide the boredom Keller was sure she felt.

And that was the lot of them. Wally and Vanessa, Hank and Ellen, Doak and Rhonda Sue. And Timothy, who he was assured had been swimming that very afternoon, the aquatic equivalent of getting right back on the horse. He’d had no cramps this time, but he’d had an attentive eye kept on him throughout.

Seven of them, then. And Keller... also known as Mike.

“So you’re here on business,” Wally said. “And stuck here over the weekend, which is the worst part of a business trip, as far as I’m concerned. More trouble than it’s worth to fly back to Chicago?”

The two of them were in Wally’s den, a fine room paneled in knotty pecan and trimmed out in red leather, with Western doo-dads on the walls — here a branding iron, there a longhorn skull. Keller had accepted a brandy and declined a cigar, and the aroma of Wally’s Havana was giving him second thoughts. Keller didn’t smoke, but from the smell of it the cigar wasn’t a mere matter of smoking. It was more along the lines of a religious experience.

“Seemed that way,” Keller said. He’d supplied Chicago as Michael Soderholm’s home base, though Soderholm’s license placed him in Southern California. “By the time I fly there and back...”

“You’ve spent your weekend on airplanes. Well, it’s our good fortune you decided to stay. Now what I’d like to do is find a way to make it your good fortune as well.”

“You’ve already done that,” Keller told him. “I crashed a great party last night and actually got to feel like a hero for a few minutes. And tonight I sit down to a fine dinner with nice people and get to top it off with a glass of outstanding brandy.”

The heartburn told him how outstanding it was.

“What I had in mind,” Wally said smoothly, “was to get you to work for me.”

Whom did he want him to kill? Keller almost blurted out the question until he remembered that Garrity didn’t know what he did for a living.

“You won’t say who you work for,” Garrity went on.

“I can’t.”

“Because the job’s hush-hush for now. Well, I can respect that, and from the hints you’ve dropped I gather you’re here scouting out something in the way of mergers and acquisitions.”

“That’s close.”

“And I’m sure it’s well paid, and you must like the work or I don’t think you’d stay with it. So what do I have to do to get you to switch horses and come work for me? I’ll tell you one thing — Chicago’s a real nice place, but nobody who ever moved from there to Big D went around with a sour face about it. I don’t know you well yet, but I can tell you’re our kind of people and Dallas’ll be your kind of town. And I don’t know what they’re paying you, but I suspect I can top it, and offer you a stake in a growing company with all sorts of attractive possibilities.”

Keller listened, nodded judiciously, sipped a little brandy. It was amazing, he thought, the way things came along when you weren’t looking for them. It was straight out of Horatio Alger, for God’s sake — Ragged Dick stops the runaway horse and saves the daughter of the captain of industry, and the next thing you know he’s president of IBM with rising expectations.

“Maybe I’ll have that cigar after all,” he said.

—

“Now, come on, Keller,” Dot said. “You know the rules. I can’t tell you that.”

“It’s sort of important,” he said.

“One of the things the client buys,” she said, “is confidentiality. That’s what he wants and it’s what we provide. Even if the agent in place—”

“The agent in place?”

“That’s you,” she said. “You’re the agent, and Dallas is the place. Even if you get caught red-handed, the confidentiality of the client remains uncompromised. And do you know why?”

“Because the agent in place knows how to keep mum.”

“Mum’s the word,” she agreed, “and there’s no question you’re the strong silent type, but even if your lip loosens you can’t sink a ship if you don’t know when it’s sailing.”

Keller thought that over. “You lost me,” he said.

“Yeah, it came out a little abstruse, didn’t it? Point is you can’t tell what you don’t know, Keller, which is why the agent doesn’t get to know the client’s name.”

“Dot,” he said, trying to sound injured. “Dot, how long have you known me?”

“Ages, Keller. Many lifetimes.”

“Many lifetimes?”

“We were in Atlantis together. Look, I know nobody’s going to catch you red-handed, and I know you wouldn’t blab if they did. But I can’t tell what I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“Right. I think the spies call it a double cutout. The client made arrangements with somebody we know, and that person called us. But he didn’t give us the client’s name, and why should he? And, come to think of it, Keller, why do you have to know, anyway?”

He had his answer ready. “It might not be a single,” he said.

“Oh?”

“The target’s always got people around him,” he said, “and the best way to do it might be a sort of group plan, if you follow me.”

“Two for the price of one.”

“Or three or four,” he said. “But if one of those innocent bystanders turned out to be the client, it might make things a little awkward.”

“Well, I can see where we might have trouble collecting the final payment.”

“If we knew for a fact that the client was fishing for trout in Montana,” he said, “it’s no problem. But if he’s here in Dallas—”

“It would help to know his name.” She sighed. “Give me an hour or two, huh? Then call me back.”

If he knew who the client was, the client could have an accident.

It would have to be an artful accident too. It would have to look good not only to the police but to whoever was aware of the client’s own intentions. The local go-between, the helpful fellow who’d hooked up the client to the old man in White Plains, and thus to Keller, could be expected to cast a cold eye on any suspicious death. So it would have to be a damn good accident, but Keller had managed a few of those in his day. It took a little planning, but it wasn’t brain surgery. You just figured out a method and took your best shot.

It might take some doing. If, as he rather hoped, the client was some business rival in Houston or Denver or San Diego, he’d have to slip off to that city without anyone noting his absence. Then, having induced a quick attack of accidental death, he’d fly back to Dallas and hang around until someone called him off the case. He’d need different ID for Houston or Denver or San Diego — it wouldn’t do to overexpose Michael Soderholm — and he’d need to mask his actions from all concerned — Garrity, his homicidal rival, and, perhaps most important, Dot and the old man.

All told, it was a great deal more complicated (if easier to stomach) than the alternative.

Which was to carry out the assignment professionally and kill Wallace Penrose Garrity the first good chance he got.

And he really didn’t want to do that. He’d eaten at the man’s table, he’d drunk the man’s brandy, he’d smoked the man’s cigars. He’d been offered not merely a job but a well-paid executive position with a future, and, later that night, light-headed from alcohol and nicotine, he’d had fantasies of taking Wally up on it.

Hell, why not? He could live out his days as Michael Soderholm, doing whatever unspecified tasks Garrity was hiring him to perform. He probably lacked the requisite experience, but how hard could it be to pick up the skills he needed as he went along? Whatever he had to do, it would be easier than flying from town to town killing people. He could learn on the job. He could pull it off.

The fantasy had about as much substance as a dream, and, like a dream, it was gone when he awoke the next morning. No one would put him on the payroll without some sort of background check, and the most cursory scan would knock him out of the box. Michael Soderholm had no more substance than the fake ID in his wallet.

Even if he somehow finessed a background check, even if the old man in White Plains let him walk out of one life and into another, he knew he couldn’t really make it work. He already had a life. Misshapen though it was, it fit him like a glove.

Other lives made tempting fantasies. Running a print shop in Roseburg, Oregon, living in a cute little house with a mansard roof — it was something to tease yourself with while you went on being the person you had no choice but to be. This latest fantasy was just more of the same.

He went out for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He got back in his car and drove around for a while. Then he found a pay phone and called White Plains.

“Do a single,” Dot said.

“How’s that?”

“No added extras, no free dividends. Just do what they signed on for.”

“Because the client’s here in town,” he said. “Well, I could work around that if I knew his name. I could make sure he was out of it.”

“Forget it,” Dot said. “The client wants a long and happy life for everybody but the designated vic. Maybe the DV’s close associates are near and dear to the client. That’s just a guess, but all that really matters is that nobody else gets hurt. Capeesh?”

“ ‘Capeesh?’ ”

“It’s Italian, it means—”

“I know what it means. It just sounded odd from your lips, that’s all. But yes, I understand.” He took a breath. “Whole thing may take a little time,” he said.

“Then here comes the good news,” she said. “Time’s not of the essence. They don’t care how long it takes, just so you get it right.”

“I understand W. P. offered you a job,” Vanessa said. “I know he hopes you’ll take him up on it.”

“I think he was just being generous,” Keller told her. “I was in the right place at the right time, and he’d like to do me a favor, but I don’t think he really expects me to come to work for him.”

“He’d like it if you did,” she said, “or he never would have made the offer. He’d have just given you money, or a car, or something like that. And as far as what he expects, well, W. P. generally expects to get whatever he wants. Because that’s the way things usually work out.”

And had she been saving up her pennies to get things to work out a little differently? You had to wonder. Was she truly under Garrity’s spell, in awe of his power, as she seemed to be? Or was she only in it for the money, and was there a sharp edge of irony under her worshipful remarks?

Hard to say. Hard to tell about any of them. Was Hank the loyal son he appeared to be, content to live in the old man’s shadow and take what got tossed his way? Or was he secretly resentful and ambitious?

What about the son-in-law, Doak? On the surface, he looked to be delighted with the aftermath of his college football career — his work for his father-in-law consisted largely of playing golf with business associates and drinking with them afterward. But did he seethe inside, sure he was fit for greater things?

How about Hank’s wife, Ellie? She struck Keller as an unlikely Lady Macbeth. Keller could fabricate scenarios in which she or Rhonda Sue had a reason for wanting Wally dead, but they were the sort of thing you dreamed up while watching reruns of Dallas and trying to guess who shot J.R. Maybe one of their marriages was in trouble. Maybe Garrity had put the moves on his daughter-in-law, or maybe a little too much brandy had led him into his daughter’s bedroom now and then. Maybe Doak or Hank was playing footsie with Vanessa. Maybe...

Pointless to speculate, he decided. You could go around and around like that and it didn’t get you anywhere. Even if he managed to dope out which of them was the client, then what? Having saved young Timothy, and thus feeling obligated to spare his doting grandfather, what was he going to do? Kill the boy’s father? Or mother or aunt or uncle?

Of course he could just go home. He could even explain the situation to the old man. Nobody loved it when you took yourself off a contract for personal reasons, but it wasn’t something they could talk you out of, either. If you made a habit of that sort of thing, well, that was different, but that wasn’t the case with Keller. He was a solid pro. Quirky perhaps, even whimsical, but a pro all the way. You told him what to do and he did it.

So, if he had a personal reason to bow out, you honored it. You let him come home and sit on the porch and drink iced tea with Dot.

And you picked up the phone and sent somebody else to Dallas.

Because either way the job was going to be done. If a hit man had a change of heart, it would be followed in short order by a change of hit man. If Keller didn’t pull the trigger, somebody else would.

His mistake, Keller thought savagely, was to jump in the goddam pool in the first place. All he’d had to do was look the other way and let the little bastard drown. A few days later he could have taken Garrity out, possibly making it look like suicide, a natural consequence of despondency over the boy’s tragic accident.

But no, he thought, glaring at himself in the mirror. No, you had to go and get involved. You had to be a hero, for God’s sake. Had to strip down to your skivvies and prove you deserved that junior lifesaving certificate the Red Cross gave you all those years ago.

He wondered whatever happened to that certificate.

It was gone, of course, like everything he’d ever owned in his childhood and youth. Gone like his high school diploma, like his Boy Scout merit badge sash, like his stamp collection and his sack of marbles and his stack of baseball cards. He didn’t mind that these things were gone, didn’t waste time wishing he had them any more than he wanted those years back.

But he wondered what physically became of them. The lifesaving certificate, for instance. Someone might have thrown out his baseball cards, or sold his stamp collection to a dealer. A certificate, though, wasn’t something you threw out, nor was it something anyone else would want.

Maybe it was buried in a landfill, or in a stack of paper ephemera in the back of some thrift shop. Maybe some pack rat had rescued it, and maybe it was now part of an extensive collection of junior lifesaving certificates, housed in an album and cherished as living history, the pride and joy of a collector ten times as quirky and whimsical as Keller could ever dream of being.

He wondered how he felt about that. His certificate, his small achievement, living on in some eccentric’s collection. On the one hand, it was a kind of immortality, wasn’t it? On the other hand, well, whose certificate was it, anyway? He’d been the one to earn it, breaking the instructor’s choke hold, spinning him and grabbing him in a cross-chest carry, towing the big lug to the side of the pool. It was his accomplishment and it had his name on it, so didn’t it belong on his own wall or nowhere?

All in all, he couldn’t say he felt strongly either way. The certificate, when all was said and done, was only a piece of paper. What was important was the skill itself, and what was truly remarkable was that he’d retained it.

Because of it, Timothy Butler was alive and well. Which was all well and good for the boy, and a great big headache for Keller.

Later, sitting with a cup of coffee, Keller thought some more about Wallace Penrose Garrity, a man who increasingly seemed to have not an enemy in the world.

Suppose Keller had let the kid drown. Suppose he just plain hadn’t noticed the boy’s disappearance beneath the water, just as everyone else had failed to notice it. Garrity would have been despondent. It was his party, his pool, his failure to provide supervision. He’d probably have blamed himself for the boy’s death.

When Keller took him out, it would have been the kindest thing he could have done for him.

He caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for more coffee. He’d just given himself something to think about.

“Mike,” Garrity said, coming toward him with a hand outstretched. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Had a phone call from a fellow with a hankering to buy a little five-acre lot of mine on the south edge of town. Thing is, I don’t want to sell it to him.”

“I see.”

“But there’s ten acres on the other side of town I’d be perfectly happy to sell to him, but he’ll only want it if he thinks of it himself. So that left me on the phone longer than I would have liked. Now what would you say to a glass of brandy?”

“Maybe a small one.”

Garrity led the way to the den, poured drinks for both of them. “You should have come earlier,” he said. “In time for dinner. I hope you know you don’t need an invitation. There’ll always be a place for you at our table.”

“Well,” Keller said.

“I know you can’t talk about it,” Garrity said, “but I hope your project here in town is shaping up nicely.”

“Slow but sure,” Keller said.

“Some things can’t be hurried,” Garrity allowed, and sipped brandy, and winced. If Keller hadn’t been looking for it, he might have missed the shadow that crossed his host’s face.

Gently he said, “Is the pain bad, Wally?”

“How’s that, Mike?”

Keller put his glass on the table. “I spoke to Dr. Jacklin,” he said. “I know what you’re going through.”

“That son of a bitch,” Garrity said, “was supposed to keep his mouth shut.”

“Well, he thought it was all right to talk to me,” Keller said. “He thought I was Dr. Edward Fishman from the Mayo Clinic.”

“Calling for a consultation.”

“Something like that.”

“I did go to Mayo,” Garrity said, “but they didn’t need to call Harold Jacklin to double-check their results. They just confirmed his diagnosis and told me not to buy any long-playing records.” He looked to one side. “They said they couldn’t say for sure how much time I had left, but that the pain would be manageable for a while. And then it wouldn’t.”

“I see.”

“And I’d have all my faculties for a while,” he said. “And then I wouldn’t.”

Keller didn’t say anything.

“Well, hell,” Garrity said. “A man wants to take the bull by the horns, doesn’t he? I decided I’d go out for a walk with a shotgun and have a little hunting accident. Or I’d be cleaning a handgun here at my desk and have it go off. But it turned out I just couldn’t tolerate the idea of killing myself. Don’t know why, can’t explain it, but that seems to be the way I’m made.”

He picked up his glass and looked at the brandy. “Funny how we hang on to life,” he said. “Something else Sam Johnson said, said there wasn’t a week of his life he’d voluntarily live through again. I’ve had more good times than bad, Mike, and even the bad times haven’t been that godawful, but I think I know what he was getting at. I wouldn’t want to repeat any of it, but that doesn’t mean there’s a minute of it I’d have been willing to miss. I don’t want to miss whatever’s coming next, either, and I don’t guess Dr. Johnson did either. That’s what keeps us going, isn’t it? Wanting to find out what’s around the next bend in the river.”

“I guess so.”

“I thought that would make the end easier to face,” he said. “Not knowing when it was coming, or how or where. And I recalled that years ago a fellow told me to let him know if I ever needed to have somebody killed. ‘You just let me know,’ he said, and I laughed, and that was the last said on the subject. A month or so ago I looked up his number and called him, and he gave me another number to call.”

“And you put out a contract.”

“Is that the expression? Then that’s what I did.”

“Suicide by proxy,” Keller said.

“And I guess you’re holding my proxy,” Garrity said, and drank some brandy. “You know, the thought flashed across my mind that first night, talking with you after you pulled my grandson out of the pool. I got this little glimmer, but I told myself I was being ridiculous. A hired killer doesn’t turn up and save somebody’s life.”

“It’s out of character,” Keller agreed.

“Besides, what would you be doing at the party in the first place? Wouldn’t you stay out of sight and wait until you could get me alone?”

“If I’d been thinking straight,” Keller said. “I told myself it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around. And this joker from the hotel bar assured me I had nothing to worry about. ‘Half the town’ll be at Wally’s tonight,’ he said.”

“Half the town was. You wouldn’t have tried anything that night, would you?”

“God, no.”

“I remember thinking, I hope he’s not here. I hope it’s not tonight. Because I was enjoying the party and I didn’t want to miss anything. But you were there, and a good thing, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Saved the boy from drowning. According to the Chinese, you save somebody’s life, you’re responsible for him for the rest of your life. Because you’ve interfered with the natural order of things. That make sense to you?”

“Not really.”

“Or me either. You can’t beat them for whipping up a meal or laundering a shirt, but they’ve got some queer ideas on other subjects. Of course they’d probably say the same for some of my notions.”

“Probably.”

Garrity looked at his glass. “You called my doctor,” he said. “Must have been to confirm a suspicion you already had. What tipped you off? Is it starting to show in my face, or the way I move around?”

Keller shook his head. “I couldn’t find anybody else with a motive,” he said, “or a grudge against you. You were the only one left. And then I remembered seeing you wince once or twice, and try to hide it. I barely noticed it at the time, but then I started to think about it.”

“I thought it would be easier than doing it myself,” Garrity said. “I thought I’d just let a professional take me by surprise. I’d be like an old bull elk on a hillside, never expecting the bullet that takes him out in his prime.”

“It makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. Because the elk didn’t arrange for the hunter to be there. Far as the elk knows, he’s all alone there. He’s not wondering every damn day if today’s the day. He’s not bracing himself, trying to sense the crosshairs centering on his shoulder.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Neither did I,” said Garrity. “Or I never would have called that fellow in the first place. Mike, what the hell are you doing here tonight? Don’t tell me you came over to kill me.”

“I came to tell you I can’t.”

“Because we’ve come to know each other.”

Keller nodded.

“I grew up on a farm,” Garrity said. “One of those vanishing family farms you hear about, and of course it’s vanished, and I say good riddance. But we raised our own beef and pork, you know, and we kept a milk cow and a flock of laying hens. And we never named the animals we were going to wind up eating. The milk cow had a name, but not the bull calf she dropped. The breeder sow’s name was Elsie, but we never named her piglets.”

“Makes sense,” Keller said.

“I guess it doesn’t take a Chinaman to see how you can’t kill me once you’ve hauled Timmy out of the drink. Let alone after you’ve sat at my table and smoked my cigars. Reminds me, you care for a cigar?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, where do we go from here, Mike? I have to say I’m relieved. I feel like I’ve been bracing myself for a bullet for weeks now. All of a sudden I’ve got a new lease on life. I’d say this calls for a drink except we’re already having one, and you’ve scarcely touched yours.”

“There is one thing,” Keller said.

He left the den while Garrity made his phone call. Timothy was in the living room, puzzling over a chessboard. Keller played a game with him and lost badly. “Can’t win ’em all,” he said, and tipped over his king.

“I was going to checkmate you,” the boy said. “In a few more moves.”

“I could see it coming,” Keller told him.

He went back to the den. Garrity was selecting a cigar from his humidor. “Sit down,” he said. “I’m fixing to smoke one of these things. If you won’t kill me, maybe it will.”

“You never know.”

“I made the call, Mike, and it’s all taken care of. Be a while before the word filters up and down the chain of command, but sooner or later they’ll call you up and tell you the client changed his mind. He paid in full and called off the job.”

They talked some, then sat a while in silence. At length Keller said he ought to get going. “I should be at my hotel,” he said, “in case they call.”

“Be a couple of days, won’t it?”

“Probably,” he said, “but you never know. If everyone involved makes a phone call right away, the word could get to me in a couple of hours.”

“Calling you off, telling you to come home. Be glad to get home, I bet.”

“It’s nice here,” he said, “but yes, I’ll be glad to get home.”

“Wherever it is, they say there’s no place like it.” Garrity leaned back, then allowed himself to wince at the pain that came over him. “If it never hurts worse than this,” he said, “then I can stand it. But of course it will get worse. And I’ll decide I can stand that, and then it’ll get worse again.”

There was nothing to say to that.

“I guess I’ll know when it’s time to do something,” Garrity said. “And who knows? Maybe my heart’ll cut out on me out of the blue. Or I’ll get hit by a bus, or I don’t know what. Struck by lightning?”

“It could happen.”

“Anything can happen,” Garrity agreed. He got to his feet. “Mike,” he said, “I guess we won’t be seeing any more of each other, and I have to say I’m a little bit sorry about that. I’ve truly enjoyed our time together.”

“So have I, Wally.”

“I wondered, you know, what he’d be like. The man they’d send to do this kind of work. I don’t know what I expected, but you’re not it.”

He stuck out his hand, and Keller gripped it. “Take care,” Garrity said. “Be well, Mike.”

Back at his hotel, Keller took a hot bath and got a good night’s sleep. In the morning he went out for breakfast, and when he got back there was a message at the desk for him: Mr. Soderholm — please call your office.

He called from a pay phone, even though it didn’t matter, and he was careful not to overreact when Dot told him to come home, the mission was aborted.

“You told me I had all the time in the world,” he said. “If I’d known the guy was in such a rush—”

“Keller,” she said, “it’s a good thing you waited. What he did, he changed his mind.”

“He changed his mind?”

“It used to be a woman’s prerogative,” Dot said, “but now we’ve got equality between the sexes, so that means anyone can do it. It works out fine because we’re getting paid in full. So kick the dust of Texas off your feet and come on home.”

“I’ll do that,” he said, “but I may hang out here for a few more days.”

“Oh?”

“Or even a week,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice town.”

“Don’t tell me you’re itching to move there, Keller. We’ve been through this before.”

“Nothing like that,” he said, “but there’s this girl I met.”

“Oh, Keller.”

“Well, she’s nice,” he said. “And if I’m off the job there’s no reason not to have a date or two with her, is there?”

“As long as you don’t decide to move in.”

“She’s not that nice,” he said, and Dot laughed and told him not to change.

He hung up and drove around and found a movie he’d been meaning to see. The next morning he packed and checked out of his hotel.

He drove across town and got a room on the motel strip, paying cash for four nights in advance and registering as J. D. Smith from Los Angeles.

There was no girl he’d met, no girl he wanted to meet. But it wasn’t time to go home yet.

He had unfinished business, and four days should give him time to do it. Time for Wallace Garrity to get used to the idea of not feeling those imaginary crosshairs on his shoulder blades.

But not so much time that the pain would be too much to bear.

And, sometime in those four days, Keller would give him a gift. If he could, he’d make it look natural — a heart attack, say, or an accident. In any event it would be swift and without warning, and as close as he could make it to painless.

And it would be unexpected. Garrity would never see it coming.

Keller frowned, trying to figure out how he would manage it. It would be a lot trickier than the task that had drawn him to town originally, but he’d brought it on himself. Getting involved, fishing the boy out of the pool. He’d interfered with the natural order of things. He was under an obligation.

It was the least he could do.

Boudin Noir R. T. Lawton

After working as an undercover agent for the DEA for twenty-five years, Robert Thomas Lawton (1943–) devoted himself to writing mystery short stories in five different series, producing more than a hundred tales for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Easyriders, Outlaw Biker, and other magazines and anthologies.

One series of historical mysteries features an Armenian trader who solves crimes set in a dangerous region of tsarist Russia, one is set in the France of Louis the XIV with the despicable leader (self-proclaimed “king”) of the criminal underworld of Paris, and another sequence of stories features the Twin Brothers Bail Bond firm, which accepts only special clients who must put up very high-value collateral that may not be entirely legal. Oddly, its clients seem unusually accident prone and seldom claim their goods.

On his use of initials for his byline, the author tells this story: “Being named after both grandfathers, the R. stands for Robert and the T. stands for Thomas. I started going by my initials decades ago while working with state and local drug task forces and every outfit had their own radio call numbers which was too confusing, so we used first names for radio call signs. But we had too many Roberts and Bobs. The case agent would come on the radio to say the bad guy was leaving the house and for Bob to follow him. At that point, all the surveillance cars would leave. So, I became R.T.”

“Boudin Noir” was first published in the December 2009 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

I had loved Josette ever since she first showed me how to pick a fat merchant’s pocket on the busy streets of Paris. And no doubt she would have loved me in return, had it not been for that damned Chevalier, the one we called Remy. He was a thief, a trickster, and a well dressed popinjay, who had no right to deprive me of her affections. No matter that she was nineteen at the time, and I a mere several years younger. Someday, I swore, I would make an end to Remy for having robbed me of my dreams. I would find a way to turn the tables on this fallen son of nobility and see how he liked it. Then my sleep would be much more at ease. Or at least without his constant interruptions.

“Boy, you’re wanted.”

Ah, that voice again. The very devil himself calls me from my slumbers. No doubt he has new torments to inflict upon my young life. I thought to pretend sleep longer, but that never seemed to work. Better to answer and get it over with.

“Leave me alone. It’s barely morning.”

“Morning? The sun’s past midday. Get up.”

I soon felt the toe of Remy’s leather boot prodding through a ragged hole in my shirt, nudging several of my bare ribs as he continued with his tirade.

“King Jules requests your presence.”

King Jules, he says, as if this second devil in my life were the anointed ruler of France and all its holdings. Even the least of us knew this so-called king was nothing more than a base-born tyrant who had seen fit to crown himself with a lofty title. At most, he ruled our motley underworld of thieves, beggars, counterfeiters, and trollops, and did it through fear of his personal wrath. That, and his grim bodyguard of muggers and dark-faced assassins used to enforce his every dictate. All souls within his grasp paid tithes out of their hard earned coins that each managed, by one means or another, to separate from the unwary citizens of Paris. It seemed the compass of Jules’s fiefdom stretched from the old Roman ruins atop the Buttes Chaumont down to the River Seine, on across the bridges and deep into the shadowed backstreets of Paris. Even so, Jules was no king of royal blood like our young Louis the XIV, our Roi Soleil, our true Sun King.

To avoid another nudge in the ribs, I opened one eye and glared at Remy, but my tormentor was not one to be put off that easily.

“What, I wonder,” he mused aloud, “could Jules possibly want with an orphan pickpocket? Especially one who is so...”

“I pay my share at tithing time,” I quickly interrupted, “just like all the rest.”

“...so incompetent,” he finished. “One who barely graduated from Mother Margaux’s School for Orphan Pickpockets. I suspect that Mother threw you out rather than suffer further embarrassment from your lack of talent.”

“I can pick a pocket as well as any other.”

The Chevalier rubbed his chin. “The fact that you believe so troubles me.”

He shook his head slowly, then stepped out through the open doorway of our hovel, a simple structure consisting of nothing more than three remnant walls of a small storeroom in one of the villa’s outbuildings. A scrap of oiled canvas stretched overhead served to keep out rain and some of the wind. Just beyond the rubble doorway, the Chevalier paused long enough to give parting words.

“Tarry at your own peril, boy. Jules does not brook delays of his grandiose schemes, and it seems you are to have some involvement in his latest one.” Then he turned and started off.

“I’m not afraid of Jules,” I retorted as I threw a rock at the Chevalier’s back, but that meddling popinjay was already beyond my range. He had no idea how lucky he was. Bah, enough of him.

Now that I was fully awake, with no chance of returning to sleep, hunger pains gnawed at my belly. Pushing myself up into a sitting position, I scrounged through a leather pouch kept tied at my waist. Tucked somewhere in this bag, among all the other small objects of value to me, was a wrapped length of blood sausage recently liberated from a common laborer who had obviously intended it as part of yesterday’s noon meal. Had the man been more vigilant of his possessions, no doubt it would still be his. Of course, in thinking back on the incident, the lingering scent on the man’s lunch basket should have warned me that my victim spent his days toiling in the endless sewers of Paris. I had been better served to have found a victim with a less fragrant job and a more decent lunch.

Preparing now to break my morning fast, I almost bit deeply into this meat delicacy when its slightly off aroma tickled my nostrils. I held the sausage closer to my nose and sniffed. That one quick whiff warned I had waited too long in this autumn heat. The meat was slowly turning. Still, I was hungry and my next meal could be a ways off. I sniffed again. No, not good at all. My appetite fled. Wrapping the blood sausage back in its scrap of cloth, I returned the package to my leather pouch. If nothing else, I’d find a way to slip the tainted sausage into the Chevalier’s evening soup and let him be sick for a couple of days. It would serve him right for all the trouble he dealt me.

Still scheming on ways to even the score against Remy, I made my way to the enclosed yard where Jules usually held his private court. And there his majesty lounged upon his throne, a high-backed wooden chair that had seen grander times. Its cushioned seat of once-rich fabric was now threadbare and faded. Stuffing poked awkwardly out of rents in the cloth. Yet, Jules sat with his left leg resting over one arm of this declining chair as if the whole world were his. A wine goblet dangled from the fingers of his right hand.

“I am here as requested,” I blurted out with small attempt to restrain my sarcasm. My resulting bow was much exaggerated.

Jules’s eyes went narrow. He appeared to study me closely. I feared I’d gone too far this time, but then his face gradually creased in a smile, and I assumed I was safe after all. I grinned back.

“It was good of you to come so quickly,” said Jules. “I have a very important job for you.”

An important job. Ah yes, if no one else, Jules had a true appreciation for my light-finger talents.

“What would you have me do?”

Jules motioned me closer and lowered his voice. “I have it on good notice that the Abbess of the Benedictine Convent currently has a purse of gold coins in her possession.”

“I see,” I replied, but I really had no idea as to what he had in mind, other than he desired to somehow separate the Abbess from her gold and I was to play a part in this separation.

“The Abbess,” he continued, “has business matters to attend in the city. As such, she will walk along a certain street this afternoon. In doing so, she is always careful to let few men, other than the Monastery Door Keeper, get close to her person.”

Jules paused and appeared to have a weighty decision working on his mind. “What I need is a young boy, someone with a look of innocence, but one who has the proper skills to relieve her of her purse.” He spread his hands as if to embrace me. “Without her knowledge, of course.”

There came a long moment of silence between us. His eyes gazed into mine with a look of expectancy.

Oh.

Suddenly I realized this was my chance to prove myself to all in our little community. I moved quickly into the void. “I will not fail you.”

Jules smiled again, but I must admit such contortions of his facial muscles always seemed to give a wolfish cast to his countenance. I was tempted to remark to him on this aspect of his appearance, but he can sometimes be touchy about the slightest comment, and I had no wish to lose the prospect of earning a few gold coins.

“I know you won’t fail me,” he replied, “and as your payment for this job, you may keep one fourth of all you acquire from the Abbess.”

“One half is a better amount,” I bargained.

Jules raised his right hand, palm forward, and curled his fingers. Immediately Sallambier, a hulk of a man, appeared out of a nearby nook and stepped to the right of Jules’s throne. The hulk’s mangled nose had the appearance of having once collided with the sharp edge of a paving brick. It was said that Sallambier had afterward lost his sense of smell. No matter to me, he was merely one more of King Jules’s killers. I had no business with this man.

“One third to you for your services,” concluded Jules as he watched for my reaction, “and no more.”

Standing silently at Jules’s side, Sallambier removed a long knife from the leather belt at his waist, using its pitted blade to slice chunks off a large red apple held in his other hand, and then stuffing those chunks into his maw of a mouth. No emotions showed on his pockmarked face, but his eyes seemed to linger on the vicinity of my bare throat.

Ha. The meaning of that look came quite clear to me. Even I knew that further bargaining on my part was obviously at an end.

“Done,” I said, figuring I had already gotten more than I had hoped for when the day began.

“We are agreed then. Sallambier will take you to a place of advantage along the Abbess’s route. All you need do is acquire her purse and bring it to me.”

“And then we’ll divide the coins?”

“Of course.”

I waited to see if there was more, but my audience with King Jules was evidently over. Although I did notice him occasionally wrinkling his nose and glancing about as if something faint were in the wind.

Sallambier grabbed my elbow and led me onto the dirt path winding down from the Buttes Chamont and on past ancient stone quarries in the lower land. These open pits and underground tunnels from Roman times were now used as refuse pits by the citizens of Paris. A place for garbage and human outcasts. A hiding place for deserters from the army. I pulled my elbow free of Sallambier’s grasp and fell into step behind him. Twice, he looked back over his shoulder to be sure I still followed.

After a long walk, we crossed a stone bridge over the Seine and passed by the great chains which would be stretched across the road by the nightwatch when curfew fell. Moving deeper into the city, where we were mostly ignored by the throngs of farmers, wives, and tradesmen going about their daily business, we made our way to a house near the building where the Abbess had business to conduct. Here, we waited in a doorway shadowed from the sun by the building’s overhanging second story. Citizens crowded the street, parting once for a drover moving a few sheep to market, and once for a line of chained convicts being prodded along by stern-faced bailiffs. We averted our faces from the convicts lest one call out in recognition and ruin our scheme. Their passing gave a flutter to my stomach.

Hours dragged by. Gradually, I became bored and found myself nodding off in the autumn heat, when Sallambier suddenly reached over and flicked my ear with his thick index finger.

I started to yelp in protest but caught the warning in his face. He pointed at the doors to the building across the street. My gaze went to the Abbess and her Door Keeper descending upon the paving stones and proceeding in our direction. We waited until they passed. Then quickly, we stepped out of our doorway and moved into position, me behind the stout Abbess, while my newly appointed warden, the hulk with the mangled nose, edged closer to the elderly Door Keeper.

“Now,” whispered Sallambier in his grating voice which seemed seldom used.

“In a minute,” I muttered back.

I took a breath and prepared to steel myself.

“Now,” he whispered again.

“Not yet,” I murmured.

All would have gone well in the next couple of minutes, except Sallambier shoved me forward before I was truly ready. My right hand was barely reaching for the purse at her waist when his abrupt push from behind caused my left forearm to crash into her plump right hip.

She squawked in disgust and whirled in my direction.

My right hand had already lightly encircled her purse, but her sudden turn toward me drew the purse strings taut against her belt, and she felt the tugging at her waist. She quickly seized my right hand with both of hers, holding on with all the fervor of a drowning woman. And then she filled her lungs and screamed.

That high pitch split my eardrums.

Farmers and housewives, all the passing citizens of Paris, stopped their activities to see what was causing such a commotion.

I struggled to get free.

The Door Keeper rushed in to help his employer, but someone in the crowd jostled the old man, knocking him to the street. That’s when I saw Sallambier stepping forward to politely assist the Keeper up from the paving stones, brushing him off and apologizing for any mishap. Several times, the old man tried to break away from Sallambier’s helpful grasp, but he only succeeded in barely brushing the left shoulder of his Abbess with his outstretched fingertips.

At this new touch to her person, the Abbess paused in surprise, swiveled her head away from me, and drew in another deep breath.

I didn’t wait for the second shriek. Taking advantage of this distraction, I wrenched my hand loose from the Abbess’s clutch. Somehow, in all the turmoil, she managed to maintain hold on her precious purse still tied to her belt. No matter that, I ran for my very life, all the way to the Buttes Chamont.

At last, safely back at the ruined villa, I ducked into our hovel and collapsed on my bed, panting for breath. Sweat coursed down my heated face.

What to do now? I had escaped one trouble and was left confronting another. What could I tell King Jules? I’d obviously failed him. No purse to split two ways, even if my share was only to be a third. Of course, had I gotten the purse as planned, I could have lightened its contents a little before giving it to Jules for the agreed upon dividing. No chance of that now.

This whole mess of me being caught in the act was obviously all Sallambier’s fault, but since his intervention with the Door Keeper allowed me to escape from the Abbess, I needed to be careful laying any blame on him. He might take it wrong, plus I obviously knew who Jules would then side with. No, no, I’d have to come up with a very good story for Jules, a believable one.

Two hours later, I was still polishing the details of my excuse and wondering if maybe it might just be best to hide out in the quarries for several days, when someone quietly entered the hovel.

“You were lucky to get away.”

I quickly recognized the Chevalier’s voice behind me and tried not to flinch.

“That’s because Sallambier kept the Door Keeper from getting at me,” I muttered. “Otherwise, I’d been locked up in the prison for sure.”

“So, that gargoyle-faced assassin is now your hero?” inquired Remy in his know-it-all way.

“I didn’t say I liked him, only that he helped me out of a predicament. Unlike some who pretend to be my friend and then act otherwise when trouble comes.”

“Oh, he definitely helped you.”

I detected a faint hint of sarcasm.

“How would you know?”

Remy sat down at the far end of my bedding and faced me.

“I was curious as to Jules’s sudden interest in your pickpocket abilities, so I followed you and Jules’s assassin into the city.”

“I didn’t see you there.”

“Then you can say I did my job well. In any case, I watched Sallambier deliberately push you into the Abbess.”

“His timing was bad,” I freely admitted, but then I paused to consider Remy’s statement. This was a good turn for me, now I had the Chevalier as a witness to verify my excuse to Jules.

I continued with my narrative. “But then you also saw Sallambier help me by detaining the Door Keeper.”

“No, boy, the assassin did just as Jules no doubt instructed him to do.”

“How so? Jules gave no such instructions to the man in my presence.”

“I’m sure he didn’t, but when Sallambier helped the Door Keeper up from the street and dusted off his clothing, he was actually busy making wax impressions of keys hanging from the Keeper’s waist. You, my little friend, were supposed to be caught, a diversion to allow Sallambier to do as Jules intended. If necessary, you were expendable.”

“What?”

“Exactly, so I contemplated what purpose Jules would have for keys to the Benedictine Monastery.”

My feelings were still wrapped up in the betrayal of being taken for a fool. However, the Chevalier’s words did explain why the Abbess’s purse had felt lighter than Jules had led me to believe. That meant Jules had lied. He didn’t really believe in my stealing talents. Oh, he and that mangled-nose monstrosity of his were going to pay for their trickery just as soon as I found a means for revenge. But in the meantime, I couldn’t help being curious about the keys.

“And what did you decide about his purpose?” I inquired.

Remy gave me that arrogant smile of his. If he only knew how much I hated that look of having superior knowledge.

“The Door Keeper always carries at least two main keys on his person, one for the monastery itself, while the second key is rumored to fit the staircase door leading down from the interior of the Val-de-Grâce Church.”

“Stairs descending beneath the church?” This was new. I crossed myself. “You mean, down into the eternal fires for heretics and sinners?” For good measure, I made the sign a second time.

Remy laughed.

“There are some who would call it a staircase leading to sin, but most, like me, consider it merely to be a source of very worldly pleasure.”

I was confused. “What’s on the other end of this staircase?”

“Do you not listen to gossip in the marketplace, boy? Perhaps you are too young and it is a matter of history now.”

The Chevalier could be exasperating at times like these.

“Just tell me.”

“Very well. After our Sun King was born, his previously barren mother promised the Benedictine nuns that she would build them a church as thanks. But there was a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“When the original architect, François Mansart, started the foundation for Val-de-Grâce, he found a great emptiness beneath the ground.”

“An emptiness like the pits of Hell?” I tried again.

“No, this emptiness was one of the network of tunnels from the old Roman stone quarries. What better place for the Benedictine monks to store their alcoholic beverage of brandy, sugar, and aromatic herbs? Thus, the monks built a staircase from the church down to the tunnel. That second key supposedly fits the door that goes down. It’s my guess that Jules plans to steal the Benedictine liquor after Sallambier finds where it’s hidden.”

I nodded my head in understanding, but had no idea yet how to use this information to my own advantage.

Remy stood up to leave. To me, he seemed in a hurry.

“Where are you going?”

“To keep an eye on Sallambier while he makes his false keys from the wax molds. When he is almost finished, I will go before him and hide in the church to see if I am correct in my assumptions.”

I rose from my bed and headed for the door.

“I’ll go too.”

Remy blocked my way and sternly shook his head.

“No, boy, you’ve gotten yourself in enough trouble for today. You stay here, and away from Jules.”

I sat back down and played the role of reluctant, but obedient. Let Remy think what he would. For my part, the reluctance was real.

With a further warning to stay away, the Chevalier left me.

Of course I waited until he was out of sight. If he only knew that never would I force myself to be obedient to his demands. He had no claim on me.

My feet soon found the dirt path leading to the Valley of Grace. In my reasoning, if I went to Val-de-Grâce Church now, then I would be well hidden before either Sallambier or Remy arrived. And, since one must feed his stomach as well as his soul, I managed en route to acquire an unguarded crust of bread, two shriveled carrots, and a chunk of fairly fragrant cheese for my supper. By the time their shrill-voiced owner finished arguing with her husband, I doubted he would have much appetite for them anyway.

At the church, the door stood partly open with no one in sight, either outside or inside. Now the problem was to find a hiding place, one that Remy would not be likely to use for himself. As for Sallambier, he was probably busy making himself a key for the staircase door. He would come when the church was locked up and empty, assuming they locked the huge front doors at night. My knowledge of this and other facts about the actual workings of the church were sadly lacking. I felt a twinge of remorse in not having come here more often for the good of my soul, my very salvation. But, after my bread and cheese were gone, that feeling soon left me alone.

At the sound of leather scuffing on stone, I glanced hurriedly around. Someone was coming and I still had no good hiding place. I dived to the floor and crawled forward under one of the heavy wooden pews used by the rich folk. Incoming footsteps continued down the aisle. There was a pause, and then I heard the wood creak in a pew somewhere in front of my hiding place. A sinner no doubt, clicking his rosary and come to seek redemption. However, by the way this one kept sniffing loudly, I assumed he also had a bad cold and was praying for better health. For the time he took on his knees, his sins must have been many. Before his list of concerns with the Almighty had been completed, I nodded off into sleep on the stone floor.

I might have slept through until Morning Mass, but a cool chill on my backside and the grating squeak of opening and then closing door hinges brought me awake. Except for the flickering of candles set in rows along the walls, the light inside had a dim grayness to it. Still, it was good enough for me to watch the worn leather boots of a man as he proceeded down the aisle and across in front of the altar without a single drop to his knee as someone once told me you are supposed to do in a place like this. He then proceeded over to a door in the vestibule behind the altar.

This had to be Sallambier. I poked my head over the wooden pew and peeked, but the man had already unlocked the door and descended. As a precaution, I waited to see if anyone else followed. There was no other movement in the church. Remy’s plans must have gone awry, else he was somehow already in front of me down the staircase.

The partially open door beckoned.

With great stealth, I left my hiding place and crept to the top of the stairwell. From down in the tunnel came soft sounds and the yellow glow of a torch disappearing along a stone corridor. It was either hurry, or be left behind in eternal darkness. My feet flew down the stairs.

Having reached the cellar floor, I hurried forward to the first branching out of the tunnel. It was dark to my front and dark to the right. I pressed against the left wall and peered around that corner. The man with the torch had stopped at another intersection and was using a piece of chalk to mark one of the walls. After he finished, I waited while he continued walking straight ahead. Before I could follow, he returned to the intersection and erased the previous chalk mark he’d made. Then he turned and drew a white arrow on a different wall.

Ah, I told myself, he must have run into a dead end in the tunnel. This time, when the man started off in a new direction, I let him get farther out of sight before I stepped out to follow.

I only got three steps.

A large hand covered my mouth, stifling any attempt to cry out. I tried to bite the fingers of that hand, but then another strong hand grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and lifted me off my feet. At my ear, I heard a whispered voice.

“Be quiet and I’ll put you down.”

I tried to nod my head in compliance, but my entire body was suspended by the neck and I’m not sure anything above that point could move.

“I told you to stay behind,” continued the voice.

The ground felt good to be beneath my feet again. I rotated my neck to get the kinks out.

“Jules owes me for this afternoon’s purse stealing,” I retorted, “and this may be my only chance to collect my coins, one way or another.”

“You didn’t actually get the purse,” countered Remy in a whisper.

“That was Sallambier’s fault. You yourself saw him push me, and since an agreement is an agreement, Jules owes me. I won’t let him cheat me.”

Remy gave a grunt of exasperation, then we stood there in silence.

“Sallambier is leaving us behind,” I said at last.

The Chevalier turned the setting on a bull’s-eye lantern at his feet, and a single narrow ray of white pierced the tunnel’s dark.

“Don’t worry, boy, Sallambier will probably run into several filled tunnel shafts and other dead ends before he locates the monk’s cache of Benedictine. We don’t want to be too close in case he doubles back and finds us instead.”

“He’s marking the walls with chalk so he knows which corridors he’s already searched,” I volunteered.

“That’s good to remember,” Remy replied. “Now stay behind me.” He picked up the lantern and set off down the tunnel.

To my right, I distinctly heard the skittering of little rat claws on the stone floor and thus made sure I did not linger far behind the Chevalier.

“Stay farther back,” muttered Remy, “you’re stepping on my heels.”

Occasionally, we passed by iron torch brackets mounted on the walls. All brackets stood empty, but on the ceiling above them were soot and black scorch marks from previous torches over the years. At other twists and turns, we passed chiseled inscriptions in a foreign language.

“Those are Roman writings,” remarked the Chevalier.

Twice we came upon stone engravings, and these seemed to interest the Chevalier the most. At these, he whispered to me tales of ancient gods, emperors, the history of a long ago civilization.

Bah, what did I care? I was here to collect what was owed to me. The next time Remy started one of his lectures on history and old literature, I went off on my own. After all, I could see the glow of Sallambier’s torch reflected far down the corridor and it hadn’t seemed to move for some time now. Maybe he had found the Benedictine cellar. I would go see.

Advancing noiselessly down the tunnel, I at last came to the doorway where Sallambier’s torch, now set into an iron bracket, lit the roughly chiseled room beyond. I peered carefully around the edge of the stone entrance. Only a bare side wall was in view. I’d have to move over farther in order to see what was in this room.

Two steps sideways and my vision caught the rounded top of a wooden cask. Another step and I could see several barrels and casks stacked against the back wall. We’d found it. And then my view was suddenly blocked.

Sallambier.

Even in his surprise at seeing me, his reactions were faster than mine. For the second time this night, I was grabbed by the neck and lifted off the ground, only this time it was by the throat instead of the nape.

“I had wondered where you disappeared to after your escape from the Abbess,” Sallambier grated in that raspy voice of his.

He carried me deeper into the Benedictine cellar. Then his eyes noticed the small leather pouch swinging from my belt, a place where most citizens kept money or other valuables. He turned to cast more light from the torch onto my person.

“What did you bring me?”

When he drew his knife I thought I was dead, but he merely sliced through the leather thongs on my pouch. It dropped to the floor. His fingers tightened on my throat as he bent over to retrieve the bag. I began drifting into unconsciousness, but I first remembered Sallambier stuffing my leather pouch into a pocket of his jerkin. It was later that the sudden slamming of my hindquarters onto the stone floor jolted me partially awake.

“I told you to stay behind me,” growled Remy. His voice came to me through a fog.

At the moment, my brain had feathers in it and my throat too sore to reply. All I could do was stare at Sallambier’s body stretched out at my feet as if he were sleeping. However, upon seeing the growing lump on the side of Sallambier’s head, I was fairly sure that if the gargoyle were sleeping, then he’d had some assistance in the matter from Remy.

A strong hand grasped my shoulder.

“We’ll have to move him to another part of the tunnels. You grab his feet.”

I wanted to protest my condition, but soon found myself struggling with a pair of familiar looking worn boots. As much as my end of the hulk weighed, Sallambier must have stuffed himself with food during all his waking hours. In the end, I have no idea which part of the labyrinth we stashed his sleeping form in, nor where Remy left me while he cleaned up any evidence of our passing. I do remember Remy coming back with a canvas bag over his shoulder. His way was lighted by the bull’s-eye lantern, and the extinguished torch was under his arm. He also paused at each turning of the tunnels to erase any white chalk marks.

At the top of the stairs, the Chevalier locked the staircase door behind us. We slunk out of thechurch like thieves in the night and headed home.

Remy quickly roused Josette from her slumbers. For a celebration is how he termed it. For my part, I didn’t know what we had to celebrate. I had no coins for my efforts, and I vaguely remembered Remy tossing Sallambier’s key to the staircase door into one of the garbage pits on our way back to the villa. No cache of holy liquor for us to sell to tavern keepers on the back streets. When I’d inquired about the key, Remy replied, “No gentleman steals from the church.”

I could have believed him better, except for the clinking of glass bottles in the canvas bag he carried on his shoulder. Sure enough, to help us celebrate, Remy dragged a couple of bottles of Benedictine out of the bag and opened the tops. I reminded him about his statement concerning not stealing from the church.

“Stealing, my boy?” He laughed loud. “No, no, these few bottles are merely payment which I’m sure the monks, had they known, would have gladly given me for rescuing their entire Benedictine cellar from the greed of King Jules.”

As I grew older, I was beginning to realize how full-grown people rationalized their behavior based upon their desires of the moment. The only distinction among them being that different persons used varying degrees of ethics in their decision making, whether it was King Jules or the King of France. Still in my youth, I didn’t have this problem yet, but it meant I’d have to keep a closer eye on the Chevalier in future dealings. As for Jules, I’d left his chief assassin lost in the long twisting tunnels of the Roman quarries. That would serve as partial payment for Jules’s debt to me. Remy was another matter.

And then I remembered. My leather pouch. I reached desperately for my belt.

“What are you doing so in such a frantic manner?” inquired Remy. “You act as if you had lost something.”

“My pouch,” I exclaimed. “It contained all my valuables.”

“What could a poor pickpocket like you possibly have of value?”

“I had a length of blood sausage,” I retorted before I recalled what I was going to use it for.

Remy laughed.

“Boudin noir? In these hot autumn days? You’re lucky you didn’t eat it. Even the ancient Greeks knew this dark pudding became poisonous if it set in the heat too long. It’s pig’s blood, cereal, and seasonings stuffed into the intestines of an animal. Better you forgo this delicacy until cooler weather.”

Well, that did explain the lingering odor it had. But since Sallambier now had the blood sausage in his possession, that meant I’d not be able to slip it into Remy’s evening soup and get some measure of revenge on him.

Then I pictured Sallambier and his constant appetite. When he awoke in the dark and spent hours trying to feel his way out of the stone labyrinth, he would no doubt be hungry. And when he rooted through my leather pouch stuffed into his jerkin, he would recognize the feel of a length of sausage.

At least I wouldn’t have to worry about making amends to Sallambier and his pitted blade one dark night. No, years from now some Benedictine monk off course in the tunnels below Val-de-Grâce Church would probably find no more than rat-gnawed bones, a rusted knife, and some tattered clothes.

I was sure that the Chevalier wondered why the sudden smile on my face, but as I saw the situation, it was one down and two devils to go. I had all the time in the world to get even.

Like a Thief in the Night Lawrence Block

Many mystery writers have been described as prolific, but few have been as versatile and as accomplished as Lawrence Block (1938–), who has produced more than a hundred full-length books and countless short stories and articles, many on the art of writing. While most authors are happy to create one series character that is popular enough to engage a wide readership, Block has somehow managed to give literary birth to a half dozen, the second most successful (after his iconic private eye Matthew Scudder) being Bernie Rhodenbarr, a reasonably successful burglar and a slightly less successful bookseller.

Bernie owns the nice little bookshop called Barnegat Book on the border of New York City’s Greenwich Village on East Eleventh Street, between Broadway and University Place, not far from New York University. He is a mild-mannered fellow given to good-humored quips and observations about life’s foibles. He enjoys his bookshop but also enjoys breaking into people’s homes and stealing. Admittedly, he has been pressured into it for altruistic reasons on more than one occasion, but there’s no denying he’s proud of his skill. His bad luck is that on too many occasions he comes across murder as frequently as he does treasures.

His best friend is a lesbian dog groomer, Carolyn Kaiser, with whom he often shares a nice dinner and a bottle of wine. The first book in the series, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (1977), served as the basis for a dreadful film titled Burglar (1987) that starred Whoopi Goldberg as Bernie (I could not make this up) and Bobcat Goldthwait as Carl Hefler, her whacky dog groomer best friend.

“Like a Thief in the Night” was originally published in the May 1983 issue of Cosmopolitan; it was first collected in Block’s Sometimes They Bite (New York, Arbor House, 1983).

At 11:30 the television anchorman counseled her to stay tuned for the late show, a vintage Hitchcock film starring Cary Grant. For a moment she was tempted. Then she crossed the room and switched off the set.

There was a last cup of coffee in the pot. She poured it and stood at the window with it, a tall and slender woman, attractive, dressed in the suit and silk blouse she’d worn that day at the office. A woman who could look at once efficient and elegant, and who stood now sipping black coffee from a bone-china cup and gazing south and west.

Her apartment was on the twenty-second floor of a building located at the corner of Lexington Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street, and her vista was quite spectacular. A midtown skyscraper blocked her view of the building where Tavistock Corp. did its business, but she fancied she could see right through it with x-ray vision.

The cleaning crew would be finishing up now, she knew, returning their mops and buckets to the cupboards and changing into street clothes, preparing to go off-shift at midnight. They would leave a couple of lights on in Tavistock’s seventeenth floor suite as well as elsewhere throughout the building. And the halls would remain lighted, and here and there in the building someone would be working all night, and—

She liked Hitchcock movies, especially the early ones, and she was in love with Cary Grant. But she also liked good clothes and bone-china cups and the view from her apartment and the comfortable, well-appointed apartment itself. And so she rinsed the cup in the sink and put on a coat and took the elevator to the lobby, where the florid-faced doorman made a great show of hailing her a cab.

There would be other nights, and other movies.

The taxi dropped her in front of an office building in the West Thirties. She pushed through the revolving door and her footsteps on the marble floor sounded impossibly loud to her. The security guard, seated at a small table by the bank of elevators, looked up from his magazine at her approach. She said, “Hello, Eddie,” and gave him a quick smile.

“Hey, how ya doin’,” he said, and she bent to sign herself in as his attention returned to his magazine. In the appropriate spaces she scribbled Elaine Halder, Tavistock, 1704, and, after a glance at her watch, 12:15.

She got into a waiting elevator and the doors closed without a sound. She’d be alone up there, she thought. She’d glanced at the record sheet while signing it, and no one had signed in for Tavistock or any other office on seventeen.

Well, she wouldn’t be long.

When the elevator doors opened she stepped out and stood for a moment in the corridor, getting her bearings. She took a key from her purse and stared at it for a moment as if it were an artifact from some unfamiliar civilization. Then she turned and began walking the length of the freshly mopped corridor, hearing nothing but the echo of her boisterous footsteps.

1704. An oak door, a square of frosted glass, unmarked but for the suite number and the name of the company. She took another thoughtful glance at the key before fitting it carefully into the lock.

It turned easily. She pushed the door inward and stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her.

And gasped.

There was a man not a dozen yards from her.

“Hello,” he said.

He was standing beside a rosewood-topped desk, the center drawer of which was open, and there was a spark in his eyes and a tentative smile on his lips. He was wearing a gray suit patterned in a windowpane check. His shirt collar was buttoned down, his narrow tie neatly knotted. He was two or three years older than she, she supposed, and perhaps that many inches taller.

Her hand was pressed to her breast, as if to still a pounding heart. But her heart wasn’t really pounding. She managed a smile. “You startled me,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone would be here.”

“We’re even.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I wasn’t expecting company.”

He had nice white even teeth, she noticed. She was apt to notice teeth. And he had an open and friendly face, which was also something she was inclined to notice, and why was she suddenly thinking of Cary Grant? The movie she hadn’t seen, of course, that plus this Hollywood meet-cute opening, with the two of them encountering each other unexpectedly in this silent tomb of an office, and—

And he was wearing rubber gloves.

Her face must have registered something because he frowned, puzzled. Then he raised his hands and flexed his fingers. “Oh, these,” he said. “Would it help if I spoke of an eczema brought on by exposure to the night air?”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“I knew you’d understand.”

“You’re a prowler.”

“The word has the nastiest connotations,” he objected. “One imagines a lot of lurking in shrubbery. There’s no shrubbery here beyond the odd rubber plant and I wouldn’t lurk in it if there were.”

“A thief, then.”

“A thief, yes. More specifically, a burglar. I might have stripped the gloves off when you stuck your key in the lock but I’d been so busy listening to your footsteps and hoping they’d lead to another office that I quite forgot I was wearing these things. Not that it would have made much difference. Another minute and you’d have realized that you’ve never set eyes on me before, and at that point you’d have wondered what I was doing here.”

“What are you doing here?”

“My kid brother needs an operation.”

“I thought that might be it. Surgery for his eczema.”

He nodded. “Without it he’ll never play the trumpet again. May I be permitted an observation?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I observe that you’re afraid of me.”

“And here I thought I was doing such a super job of hiding it.”

“You were, but I’m an incredibly perceptive human being. You’re afraid I’ll do something violent, that he who is capable of theft is equally capable of mayhem.”

“Are you?”

“Not even in fantasy. I’m your basic pacifist. When I was a kid my favorite book was Ferdinand the Bull.”

“I remember him. He didn’t want to fight. He just wanted to smell the flowers.”

“Can you blame him?” He smiled again, and the adverb that came to her was disarmingly. More like Alan Alda than Cary Grant, she decided. Well, that was all right. There was nothing wrong with Alan Alda.

“You’re afraid of me,” she said suddenly.

“How’d you figure that? A slight quiver in the old upper lip?”

“No. It just came to me. But why? What could I do to you?”

“You could call the, uh, cops.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“And I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“I know you wouldn’t.”

“Well,” he said, and sighed theatrically. “Aren’t you glad we got all that out of the way?”

She was, rather. It was good to know that neither of them had anything to fear from the other. As if in recognition of this change in their relationship she took off her coat and hung it on the pipe rack, where a checked topcoat was already hanging. His, she assumed. How readily he made himself at home!

She turned to find he was making himself further at home, rummaging deliberately in the drawers of the desk. What cheek, she thought, and felt herself beginning to smile.

She asked him what he was doing.

“Foraging,” he said, then drew himself up sharply. “This isn’t your desk, is it?”

“No.”

“Thank heaven for that.”

“What were you looking for, anyway?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “You’d think I could come up with a decent story but I can’t. I’m looking for something to steal.”

“Nothing specific?”

“I like to keep an open mind. I didn’t come here to cart off the IBM Selectrics. But you’d be surprised how many people leave cash in their desks.”

“And you just take what you find?”

He hung his head. “I know,” he said. “It’s a moral failing. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Do people really leave cash in an unlocked desk drawer?”

“Sometimes. And sometimes they lock the drawers, but that doesn’t make them all that much harder to open.”

“You can pick locks?”

“A limited and eccentric talent,” he allowed, “but it’s all I know.”

“How did you get in here? I suppose you picked the office lock.”

“Hardly a great challenge.”

“But how did you get past Eddie?”

“Eddie? Oh, you must be talking about the chap in the lobby. He’s not quite as formidable as the Berlin Wall, you know. I got here around eight. They tend to be less suspicious at an earlier hour. I scrawled a name on the sheet and walked on by. Then I found an empty office that they’d already finished cleaning and curled up on the couch for a nap.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Have I ever lied to you in the past? The cleaning crew leaves at midnight. At about that time I let myself out of Mr. Higginbotham’s office — that’s where I’ve taken to napping, he’s a patent attorney with the most comfortable old leather couch. And then I make my rounds.”

She looked at him. “You’ve come to this building before.”

“I stop by every little once in a while.”

“You make it sound like a vending machine route.”

“There are similarities, aren’t there? I never looked at it that way.”

“And then you make your rounds. You break into offices—”

“I never break anything. Let’s say I let myself into offices.”

“And you steal money from desks—”

“Also jewelry, when I run across it. Anything valuable and portable. Sometimes there’s a safe. That saves a lot of looking around. You know right away that’s where they keep the good stuff.”

“And you can open safes?”

“Not every safe,” he said modestly, “and not every single time, but—” he switched to a Cockney accent “—I has the touch, mum.”

“And then what do you do? Wait until morning to leave?”

“What for? I’m well-dressed. I look respectable. Besides, security guards are posted to keep unauthorized persons out of a building, not to prevent them from leaving. It might be different if I tried rolling a Xerox machine through the lobby, but I don’t steal anything that won’t fit in my pockets or my attaché case. And I don’t wear my rubber gloves when I saunter past the guard. That wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t suppose it would. What do I call you?”

“ ‘That damned burglar,’ I suppose. That’s what everybody calls me. But you” — he extended a rubber-covered forefinger — “you may call me Bernie.”

“Bernie the Burglar.”

“And what shall I call you?”

“Elaine’ll do.”

“Elaine,” he said. “Elaine, Elaine. Not Elaine Halder, by any chance?”

“How did you—?”

“Elaine Halder,” he said. “And that explains what brings you to these offices in the middle of the night. You look startled. I can’t imagine why. ‘You know my methods, Watson.’ What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be frightened, for God’s sake. Knowing your name doesn’t give me mystical powers over your destiny. I just have a good memory and your name stuck in it.” He crooked a thumb at a closed door on the far side of the room. “I’ve already been in the boss’s office. I saw your note on his desk. I’m afraid I’ll have to admit I read it. I’m a snoop. It’s a serious character defect, I know.”

“Like larceny.”

“Something along those lines. Let’s see now. Elaine Halder leaves the office, having placed on her boss’s desk a letter of resignation. Elaine Halder returns in the small hours of the morning. A subtle pattern begins to emerge, my dear.”

“Oh?”

“Of course. You’ve had second thoughts and you want to retrieve the letter before himself gets a chance to read it. Not a bad idea, given some of the choice things you had to say about him. Just let me open up for you, all right? I’m the tidy type and I locked up after I was through in there.”

“Did you find anything to steal?”

“Eighty-five bucks and a pair of gold cuff links.” He bent over the lock, probing its innards with a splinter of spring steel. “Nothing to write home about, but every little bit helps. I’m sure you have a key that fits this door — you had to in order to leave the resignation in the first place, didn’t you? But how many chances do I get to show off? Not that a lock like this one presents much of a challenge, not to the nimble digits of Bernie the Burglar, and — ah, there we are!”

“Extraordinary.”

“It’s so seldom I have an audience.”

He stood aside, held the door for her. On the threshold she was struck by the notion that there would be a dead body in the private office. George Tavistock himself, slumped over his desk with the figured hilt of a letter opener protruding from his back.

But of course there was no such thing. The office was devoid of clutter, let alone corpses, nor was there any sign that it had been lately burglarized.

A single sheet of paper lay on top of the desk blotter. She walked over, picked it up. Her eyes scanned its half dozen sentences as if she were reading them for the first time, then dropped to the elaborately styled signature, a far cry from the loose scrawl with which she’d signed the register in the lobby.

She read the note through again, then put it back where it had been.

“Not changing your mind again?”

She shook her head. “I never changed it in the first place. That’s not why I came back here tonight.”

“You couldn’t have dropped in just for the pleasure of my company.”

“I might have, if I’d known you were going to be here. No, I came back because—” She paused, drew a deliberate breath. “You might say I wanted to clean out my desk.”

“Didn’t you already do that? Isn’t your desk right across there? The one with your name plate on it? Forward of me, I know, but I already had a peek, and the drawers bore a striking resemblance to the cupboard of one Ms. Hubbard.”

“You went through my desk.”

He spread his hands apologetically. “I meant nothing personal,” he said. “At the time, I didn’t even know you.”

“That’s a point.”

“And searching an empty desk isn’t that great a violation of privacy, is it? Nothing to be seen beyond paper clips and rubber bands and the odd felt-tipped pen. So if you’ve come to clean out that lot—”

“I meant it metaphorically,” she explained. “There are things in this office that belong to me. Projects I worked on that I ought to have copies of to show to prospective employers.”

“And won’t Mr. Tavistock see to it that you get copies?”

She laughed sharply. “You don’t know the man,” she said.

“And thank God for that. I couldn’t rob someone I knew.”

“He would think I intended to divulge corporate secrets to the competition. The minute he reads my letter of resignation I’ll be persona non grata in this office. I probably won’t even be able to get into the building. I didn’t even realize any of this until I’d gotten home tonight, and I didn’t really know what to do, and then—”

“Then you decided to try a little burglary.”

“Hardly that.”

“Oh?”

“I have a key.”

“And I have a cunning little piece of spring steel, and they both perform the signal function of admitting us where we have no right to be.”

“But I work here!”

“Worked.”

“My resignation hasn’t been accepted yet. I’m still an employee.”

“Technically. Still, you’ve come like a thief in the night. You may have signed in downstairs and let yourself in with a key, and you’re not wearing gloves or padding around in crepe-soled shoes, but we’re not all that different, you and I, are we?”

She set her jaw. “I have a right to the fruits of my labor,” she said.

“And so have I, and heaven help the person whose property rights get in our way.”

She walked around him to the three-drawer filing cabinet to the right of Tavistock’s desk. It was locked.

She turned, but Bernie was already at her elbow. “Allow me,” he said, and in no time at all he had tickled the locking mechanism and was drawing the top drawer open.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Oh, don’t thank me,” he said. “Professional courtesy. No thanks required.”

She was busy for the next thirty minutes, selecting documents from the filing cabinet and from Tavistock’s desk, as well as a few items from the unlocked cabinets in the outer office. She ran everything through the Xerox copier and replaced the originals where she’d found them. While she was doing all this, her burglar friend worked his way through the office’s remaining desks. He was in no evident hurry, and it struck her that he was deliberately dawdling so as not to finish before her.

Now and then she would look up from what she was doing to observe him at his work. Once she caught him looking at her, and when their eyes met he winked and smiled, and she felt her cheeks burning.

He was attractive, certainly. And unquestionably likable, and in no way intimidating. Nor did he come across like a criminal. His speech was that of an educated person, he had an eye for clothes, his manners were impeccable—

What on earth was she thinking of?

By the time she had finished she had an inch-thick sheaf of paper in a manila file folder. She slipped her coat on, tucked the folder under her arm.

“You’re certainly neat,” he said. “A place for everything and everything right back in its place. I like that.”

“Well, you’re that way yourself, aren’t you? You even take the trouble to lock up after yourself.”

“It’s not that much trouble. And there’s a point to it. If one doesn’t leave a mess, sometimes it takes them weeks to realize they’ve been robbed. The longer it takes, the less chance anybody’ll figure out whodunit.”

“And here I thought you were just naturally neat.”

“As it happens I am, but it’s a professional asset. Of course your neatness has much the same purpose, doesn’t it? They’ll never know you’ve been here tonight, especially since you haven’t actually taken anything away with you. Just copies.”

“That’s right.”

“Speaking of which, would you care to put them in my attaché case? So that you aren’t noticed leaving the building with them in hand? I’ll grant you the chap downstairs wouldn’t notice an earthquake if it registered less than seven-point-four on the Richter scale, but it’s that seemingly pointless attention to detail that enables me to persist in my chosen occupation instead of making license plates and sewing mail sacks as a guest of the governor. Are you ready, Elaine? Or would you like to take one last look around for auld lang syne?”

“I’ve had my last look around. And I’m not much on auld lang syne.”

He held the door for her, switched off the overhead lights, drew the door shut. While she locked it with her key he stripped off his rubber gloves and put them in the attaché case where her papers reposed. Then, side by side, they walked the length of the corridor to the elevator. Her footsteps echoed. His, cushioned by his crepe soles, were quite soundless.

Hers stopped, too, when they reached the elevator, and they waited in silence. They had met, she thought, as thieves in the night, and now they were going to pass like ships in the night.

The elevator came, floated them down to the lobby. The lobby guard looked up at them, neither recognition nor interest showing in his eyes. She said, “Hi, Eddie. Everything going all right?”

“Hey, how ya doin’,” he said.

There were only three entries below hers on the register sheet, three persons who’d arrived after her. She signed herself out, listing the time after a glance at her watch: 1:56. She’d been upstairs for better than an hour and a half.

Outside, the wind had an edge to it. She turned to him, glanced at his attaché case, suddenly remembered the first schoolboy who’d carried her books. She could surely have carried her own books, just as she could have safely carried the folder of papers past Eagle-eye Eddie.

Still, it was not unpleasant to have one’s books carried.

“Well,” she began, “I’d better take my papers, and—”

“Where are you headed?”

“Seventy-sixth Street.”

“East or west?”

“East. But—”

“We’ll share a cab,” he said. “Compliments of petty cash.” And he was at the curb, a hand raised, and a cab appeared as if conjured up and then he was holding the door for her.

She got in.

“Seventy-sixth,” he told the driver. “And what?”

“Lexington,” she said.

“Lexington,” he said.

Her mind raced during the taxi ride. It was all over the place and she couldn’t keep up with it. She felt in turn like a schoolgirl, like a damsel in peril, like Grace Kelly in a Hitchcock film. When the cab reached her corner she indicated her building, and he leaned forward to relay the information to the driver.

“Would you like to come up for coffee?”

The line had run through her mind like a mantra in the course of the ride. Yet she couldn’t believe she was actually speaking the words.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that.”

She steeled herself as they approached her doorman, but the man was discretion personified. He didn’t even greet her by name, merely holding the door for her and her escort and wishing them a good night. Upstairs, she thought of demanding that Bernie open her door without the keys, but decided she didn’t want any demonstrations just then of her essential vulnerability. She unlocked the several locks herself.

“I’ll make coffee,” she said. “Or would you just as soon have a drink?”

“Sounds good.”

“Scotch? Or cognac?”

“Cognac.”

While she was pouring the drinks he walked around her living room, looking at the pictures on the walls and the books on the shelves. Guests did this sort of thing all the time, but this particular guest was a criminal, after all, and so she imagined him taking a burglar’s inventory of her possessions. That Chagall aquatint he was studying — she’d paid five hundred for it at auction and it was probably worth close to three times that by now.

Surely he’d have better luck foraging in her apartment than in a suite of deserted offices.

Surely he’d realize as much himself.

She handed him his brandy. “To criminal enterprise,” he said, and she raised her glass in response.

“I’ll give you those papers. Before I forget.”

“All right.”

He opened the attaché case, handed them over. She placed the folder on the LaVerne coffee table and carried her brandy across to the window. The deep carpet muffled her footsteps as effectively as if she’d been wearing crepe-soled shoes.

You have nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. And you’re not afraid, and—

“An impressive view,” he said, close behind her.

“Yes.”

“You could see your office from here. If that building weren’t in the way.”

“I was thinking that earlier.”

“Beautiful,” he said, softly, and then his arms were encircling her from behind and his lips were on the nape of her neck.

“ ‘Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.’ ” His lips nuzzled her ear. “But you must hear that all the time.”

She smiled. “Oh, not so often,” she said. “Less often than you’d think.”

The sky was just growing light when he left. She lay alone for a few minutes, then went to lock up after him.

And laughed aloud when she found that he’d locked up after himself, without a key.

It was late but she didn’t think she’d ever been less tired. She put up a fresh pot of coffee, poured a cup when it was ready and sat at the kitchen table reading through the papers she’d taken from the office. She wouldn’t have had half of them without Bernie’s assistance, she realized. She could never have opened the file cabinet in Tavistock’s office.

“Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable. Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.”

She smiled.

A few minutes after nine, when she was sure Jennings Colliard would be at his desk, she dialed his private number.

“It’s Andrea,” she told him. “I succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. I’ve got copies of Tavistock’s complete marketing plan for fall and winter, along with a couple of dozen test and survey reports and a lot of other documents you’ll want a chance to analyze. And I put all the originals back where they came from, so nobody at Tavistock’ll ever know what happened.”

“Remarkable.”

“I thought you’d approve. Having a key to their office helped, and knowing the doorman’s name didn’t hurt any. Oh, and I also have some news that’s worth knowing. I don’t know if George Tavistock is in his office yet, but if so he’s reading a letter of resignation even as we speak. The Lily Maid of Astolat has had it.”

“What are you talking about, Andrea?”

“Elaine Halder. She cleaned out her desk and left him a note saying bye-bye. I thought you’d like to be the first kid on your block to know that.”

“And of course you’re right.”

“I’d come in now but I’m exhausted. Do you want to send a messenger over?”

“Right away. And you get some sleep.”

“I intend to.”

“You’ve done spectacularly well, Andrea. There will be something extra in your stocking.”

“I thought there might be,” she said.

She hung up the phone and stood once again at the window, looking out at the city, reviewing the night’s events. It had been quite perfect, she decided, and if there was the slightest flaw it was that she’d missed the Cary Grant movie.

But it would be on again soon. They ran it frequently. People evidently liked that sort of thing.

Too Many Crooks Donald E. Westlake

When writers of humorous crime fiction are judged, it is inevitable that they will be compared to Donald Edwin Westlake (1933–2008), inarguably the most consistently funny producer of laughs in the history of mystery fiction.

In Two Much (1975), the protagonist pretends to be twins in order to marry both twin heiresses; God Save the Mark (1967), winner of the Edgar for best novel, tells of the many people who try to cheat a man who wins a fortune; in Jimmy the Kid (1974), a gang tries to get rid of a monster child it kidnapped (much like O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief”); in Dancing Aztecs (1976), a large cast of criminals compete to learn which of sixteen statues is the real treasure. But it is with The Hot Rock (1970) that Westlake assured immortality, producing the first book about John Dortmunder, a mastermind thief for whom everything goes wrong — through no fault of his own. In the debut novel, he and his gang are hired to steal a priceless gem, and then are forced to steal it again. And again. They even have to break into prison. It was memorably released on film in 1972, starring Robert Redford and with a screenplay by William Goldman.

Westlake produced about a hundred books, both under his own name and as Richard Stark (very tough crime novels about Parker, a remorseless professional criminal); Tucker Coe (highly sensitive, Ross Macdonald — inspired novels about disgraced ex-cop Mitch Tobin); Curt Clark (science fiction); Alan Marshall (early soft-core sex stories); Samuel Holt (about an ex-actor named Samuel Holt, now so typecast from a popular television series that he can’t find work and turns to solving crimes), Timothy J. Culver (political thriller); Judson Jack Carmichael (a complex caper); and several others.

More than twenty of his books have been adapted for feature films, and he won an Edgar for writing the screenplay for The Grifters (1990), for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1993.

“Too Many Crooks” was originally published in the August 1989 issue of Playboy; it was first collected in Horse Laugh and Other Stories (Helsinki, Finland, Eurographica, 1990). It won the Edgar for best short story in 1990. TOO MANY CROOKS

“Did you hear something?” Dortmunder whispered.

“The wind,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder twisted around in his seated position and deliberately shone the flashlight in the kneeling Kelp’s eyes. “What wind? We’re in a tunnel.”

“There’s underground rivers,” Kelp said, squinting, “so maybe there’s underground winds. Are you through the wall there?”

“Two more whacks,” Dortmunder told him. Relenting, he aimed the flashlight past Kelp back down the empty tunnel, a meandering, messy gullet, most of it less than three feet in diameter, wriggling its way through rocks and rubble and ancient middens, traversing 40 tough feet from the rear of the basement of the out-of-business shoe store to the wall of the bank on the corner. According to the maps Dortmunder had gotten from the water department by claiming to be with the sewer department, and the maps he’d gotten from the sewer department by claiming to be with the water department, just the other side of this wall was the bank’s main vault. Two more whacks and this large, irregular square of concrete that Dortmunder and Kelp had been scoring and scratching at for some time now would at last fall away onto the floor inside, and there would be the vault.

Dortmunder gave it a whack.

Dortmunder gave it another whack.

The block of concrete fell onto the floor of the vault. “Oh, thank God,” somebody said.

What? Reluctant but unable to stop himself, Dortmunder dropped sledge and flashlight and leaned his head through the hole in the wall and looked around.

It was the vault, all right. And it was full of people.

A man in a suit stuck his hand out and grabbed Dortmunder’s and shook it while pulling him through the hole and on into the vault. “Great work, Officer,” he said. “The robbers are outside.”

Dortmunder had thought he and Kelp were the robbers. “They are?”

A round-faced woman in pants and a Buster Brown collar said, “Five of them. With machine guns.”

“Machine guns,” Dortmunder said.

A delivery kid wearing a mustache and an apron and carrying a flat cardboard carton containing four coffees, two decafs and a tea said, “We all hostages, mon. I gonna get fired.”

“How many of you are there?” the man in the suit asked, looking past Dortmunder at Kelp’s nervously smiling face.

“Just the two,” Dortmunder said, and watched helplessly as willing hands dragged Kelp through the hole and set him on his feet in the vault. It was really very full of hostages.

“I’m Kearney,” the man in the suit said. “I’m the bank manager, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”

Which was the first time any bank manager had said that to Dortmunder, who said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” and nodded, and then said, “I’m, uh, Officer Diddums, and this is Officer, uh, Kelly.”

Kearney, the bank manager, frowned. “Diddums, did you say?”

Dortmunder was furious with himself. Why did I call myself Diddums? Well, I didn’t know I was going to need an alias inside a bank vault, did I? Aloud, he said, “Uh-huh. Diddums. It’s Welsh.”

“Ah,” said Kearney. Then he frowned again and said, “You people aren’t even armed.”

“Well, no,” Dortmunder said. “We’re the, uh, the hostage-rescue team; we don’t want any shots fired, increase the risk for you, uh, civilians.”

“Very shrewd,” Kearney agreed.

Kelp, his eyes kind of glassy and his smile kind of fixed, said, “Well, folks, maybe we should leave here now, single file, just make your way in an orderly fashion through—”

“They’re coming!” hissed a stylish woman over by the vault door.

Everybody moved. It was amazing; everybody shifted at once. Some people moved to hide the new hole in the wall, some people moved to get farther away from the vault door and some people moved to get behind Dortmunder, who suddenly found himself the nearest person in the vault to that big, round, heavy metal door, which was easing massively and silently open.

It stopped halfway, and three men came in. They wore black ski masks and black leather jackets and black work pants and black shoes. They carried Uzi submachine guns at high port. Their eyes looked cold and hard, and their hands fidgeted on the metal of the guns, and their feet danced nervously, even when they were standing still. They looked as though anything at all might make them overreact.

“Shut up!” one of them yelled, though nobody’d been talking. He glared around at his guests and said, “Gotta have somebody to stand out front, see can the cops be trusted.” His eye, as Dortmunder had known it would, lit on Dortmunder. “You,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” Dortmunder said.

“What’s your name?”

Everybody in the vault had already heard him say it, so what choice did he have? “Diddums,” Dortmunder said.

The robber glared at Dortmunder through his ski mask. “Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh,” Dortmunder explained.

“Ah,” the robber said, and nodded. He gestured with the Uzi. “Outside, Diddums.”

Dortmunder stepped forward, glancing back over his shoulder at all the people looking at him, knowing every goddamn one of them was glad he wasn’t him — even Kelp, back there pretending to be four feet tall — and then Dortmunder stepped through the vault door, surrounded by all those nervous maniacs with machine guns, and went with them down a corridor flanked by desks and through a doorway to the main part of the bank, which was a mess.

The time at the moment, as the clock high on the wide wall confirmed, was 5:15 in the afternoon. Everybody who worked at the bank should have gone home by now; that was the theory Dortmunder had been operating from. What must have happened was, just before closing time at three o’clock (Dortmunder and Kelp being already then in the tunnel, working hard, knowing nothing of events on the surface of the planet), these gaudy showboats had come into the bank waving their machine guns around.

And not just waving them, either. Lines of ragged punctures had been drawn across the walls and the Lucite upper panel of the tellers’ counter, like connect-the-dot puzzles. Wastebaskets and a potted Ficus had been overturned, but fortunately, there were no bodies lying around; none Dortmunder could see, anyway. The big plate-glass front windows had been shot out, and two more of the black-clad robbers were crouched down, one behind the OUR LOW LOAN RATES poster and the other behind the OUR HIGH IRA RATES poster, staring out at the street, from which came the sound of somebody talking loudly but indistinctly through a bullhorn.

So what must have happened, they’d come in just before three, waving their guns, figuring a quick in and out, and some brownnose employee looking for advancement triggered the alarm, and now they had a stalemate hostage situation on their hands; and, of course, everybody in the world by now has seen Dog Day Afternoon and therefore knows that if the police get the drop on a robber in circumstances such as these circumstances right here, they’ll immediately shoot him dead, so now hostage negotiation is trickier than ever. This isn’t what I had in mind when I came to the bank, Dortmunder thought.

The boss robber prodded him along with the barrel of his Uzi, saying, “What’s your first name, Diddums?”

Please don’t say Dan, Dortmunder begged himself. Please, please, somehow, anyhow, manage not to say Dan. His mouth opened, “John,” he heard himself say, his brain having turned desperately in this emergency to that last resort, the truth, and he got weak-kneed with relief.

“OK, John, don’t faint on me,” the robber said. “This is very simple what you got to do here. The cops say they want to talk, just talk, nobody gets hurt. Fine. So you’re gonna step out in front of the bank and see do the cops shoot you.”

“Ah,” Dortmunder said.

“No time like the present, huh, John?” the robber said, and poked him with the Uzi again.

“That kind of hurts,” Dortmunder said.

“I apologize,” the robber said, hard-eyed. “Out.”

One of the other robbers, eyes red with strain inside the black ski mask, leaned close to Dortmunder and yelled, “You wanna shot in the foot first? You wanna crawl out there?”

“I’m going,” Dortmunder told him. “See? Here I go.”

The first robber, the comparatively calm one, said, “You go as far as the sidewalk, that’s all. You take one step off the curb, we blow your head off.”

“Got it,” Dortmunder assured him, and crunched across broken glass to the sagging-open door and looked out. Across the street was parked a line of buses, police cars, police trucks, all in blue and white with red gumdrops on top, and behind them moved a seething mass of armed cops. “Uh,” Dortmunder said. Turning back to the comparatively calm robber, he said, “You wouldn’t happen to have a white flag or anything like that, would you?”

The robber pressed the point of the Uzi to Dortmunder’s side. “Out,” he said.

“Right,” Dortmunder said. He faced front, put his hands way up in the air and stepped outside.

What a lot of attention he got. From behind all those blue-and-whites on the other side of the street, tense faces stared. On the rooftops of the red-brick tenements, in this neighborhood deep in the residential heart of Queens, sharpshooters began to familiarize themselves through their telescopic sights with the contours of Dortmunder’s furrowed brow. To left and right, the ends of the block were sealed off with buses parked nose to tailpipe, past which ambulances and jumpy white-coated medics could be seen. Everywhere, rifles and pistols jittered in nervous fingers. Adrenaline ran in the gutters.

“I’m not with them!” Dortmunder shouted, edging across the sidewalk, arms upraised, hoping this announcement wouldn’t upset the other bunch of armed hysterics behind him. For all he knew, they had a problem with rejection.

However, nothing happened behind him, and what happened out front was that a bullhorn appeared, resting on a police-car roof, and roared at him, “You a hostage?”

“I sure am!” yelled Dortmunder.

“What’s your name?”

Oh, not again, thought Dortmunder, but there was nothing for it. “Diddums,” he said.

“What?”

“Diddums!”

A brief pause: “Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh!”

“Ah.”

There was a little pause while whoever was operating the bullhorn conferred with his compatriots, and then the bullhorn said, “What’s the situation in there?”

What kind of question was that? “Well, uh,” Dortmunder said, and remembered to speak more loudly, and called, “kind of tense, actually.”

“Any of the hostages been harmed?”

“Uh-uh. No. Definitely not. This is a... this is a... nonviolent confrontation.” Dortmunder fervently hoped to establish that idea in everybody’s mind, particularly if he were going to be out here in the middle much longer.

“Any change in the situation?”

Change? “Well,” Dortmunder answered, “I haven’t been in there that long, but it seems like—”

“Not that long? What’s the matter with you, Diddums? You’ve been in that bank over two hours now!”

“Oh, yeah!” Forgetting, Dortmunder lowered his arms and stepped forward to the curb. “That’s right!” he called. “Two hours! More than two hours! Been in there a long time!”

“Step out here away from the bank!”

Dortmunder looked down and saw his toes hanging ten over the edge of the curb. Stepping back at a brisk pace, he called, “I’m not supposed to do that!”

“Listen, Diddums, I’ve got a lot of tense men and women over here. I’m telling you, step away from the bank!”

“The fellas inside,” Dortmunder explained, “they don’t want me to step off the curb. They said they’d, uh, well, they just don’t want me to do it.”

“Psst! Hey, Diddums!”

Dortmunder paid no attention to the voice calling from behind him. He was concentrating too hard on what was happening right now out front. Also, he wasn’t that used to the new name yet.

“Diddums!”

“Maybe you better put your hands up again.”

“Oh, yeah!” Dortmunder’s arms shot up like pistons blowing through an engine block. “There they are!”

“Diddums, goddamn it, do I have to shoot you to get you to pay attention?”

Arms dropping, Dortmunder spun around. “Sorry! I wasn’t — I was— Here I am!”

“Get those goddamn hands up!”

Dortmunder turned sideways, arms up so high his sides hurt. Peering sidelong to his right, he called to the crowd across the street, “Sirs, they’re talking to me inside now.” Then he peered sidelong to his left, saw the comparatively calm robber crouched beside the broken doorframe and looking less calm than before, and he said, “Here I am.”

“We’re gonna give them our demands now,” the robber said. “Through you.”

“That’s fine,” Dortmunder said. “That’s great. Only, you know, how come you don’t do it on the phone? I mean, the way it’s normally—”

The red-eyed robber, heedless of exposure to the sharpshooters across the street, shouldered furiously past the comparatively calm robber, who tried to restrain him as he yelled at Dortmunder, “You’re rubbing it in, are ya? OK, I made a mistake! I got excited and I shot up the switchboard! You want me to get excited again?”

“No, no!” Dortmunder cried, trying to hold his hands straight up in the air and defensively in front of his body at the same time. “I forgot! I just forgot!”

The other robbers all clustered around to grab the red-eyed robber, who seemed to be trying to point his Uzi in Dortmunder’s direction as he yelled, “I did it in front of everybody! I humiliated myself in front of everybody! And now you’re making fun of me!”

“I forgot! I’m sorry!”

“You can’t forget that! Nobody’s ever gonna forget that!”

The three remaining robbers dragged the red-eyed robber back away from the doorway, talking to him, trying to soothe him, leaving Dortmunder and the comparatively calm robber to continue their conversation. “I’m sorry,” Dortmunder said. “I just forgot. I’ve been kind of distracted lately. Recently.”

“You’re playing with fire here, Diddums,” the robber said. “Now tell them they’re gonna get our demands.”

Dortmunder nodded, and turned his head the other way, and yelled, “They’re gonna tell you their demands now. I mean, I’m gonna tell you their demands. Their demands. Not my demands. Their de—”

“We’re willing to listen, Diddums, only so long as none of the hostages get hurt.”

“That’s good!” Dortmunder agreed, and turned his head the other way to tell the robber, “That’s reasonable, you know, that’s sensible, that’s a very good thing they’re saying.”

“Shut up,” the robber said.

“Right,” Dortmunder said.

The robber said, “First, we want the riflemen off the roofs.”

“Oh, so do I,” Dortmunder told him, and turned to shout, “They want the riflemen off the roofs!”

“What else?”

“What else?”

“And we want them to unblock that end of the street, the — what is it? — the north end.”

Dortmunder frowned straight ahead at the buses blocking the intersection. “Isn’t that east?” he asked.

“Whatever it is,” the robber said, getting impatient. “That end down there to the left.”

“OK.” Dortmunder turned his head and yelled, “They want you to unblock the east end of the street!” Since his hands were way up in the sky somewhere, he pointed with his chin.

“Isn’t that north?”

“I knew it was,” the robber said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Dortmunder called. “That end down there to the left.”

“The right, you mean.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Your right, my left. Their left.”

“What else?”

Dortmunder sighed, and turned his head. “What else?”

The robber glared at him. “I can hear the bullhorn, Diddums. I can hear him say ‘What else?’ You don’t have to repeat everything he says. No more translations.”

“Right,” Dortmunder said. “Gotcha. No more translations.”

“We’ll want a car,” the robber told him. “A station wagon. We’re gonna take three hostages with us, so we want a big station wagon. And nobody follows us.”

“Gee,” Dortmunder said dubiously, “are you sure?”

The robber stared. “Am I sure?”

“Well, you know what they’ll do,” Dortmunder told him, lowering his voice so the other team across the street couldn’t hear him. “What they do in these situations, they fix a little radio transmitter under the car, so then they don’t have to follow you, exactly, but they know where you are.”

Impatient again, the robber said, “So you’ll tell them not to do that. No radio transmitters, or we kill the hostages.”

“Well, I suppose,” Dortmunder said doubtfully.

“What’s wrong now?” the robber demanded. “You’re too goddamn picky, Diddums; you’re just the messenger here. You think you know my job better than I do?”

I know I do, Dortmunder thought, but it didn’t seem a judicious thing to say aloud, so instead, he explained, “I just want things to go smooth, that’s all. I just don’t want bloodshed. And I was thinking, the New York City police, you know, well, they’ve got helicopters.”

“Damn,” the robber said. He crouched low to the littered floor, behind the broken doorframe, and brooded about his situation. Then he looked up at Dortmunder and said, “OK, Diddums, you’re so smart. What should we do?”

Dortmunder blinked. “You want me to figure out your getaway?”

“Put yourself in our position,” the robber suggested. “Think about it.”

Dortmunder nodded. Hands in the air, he gazed at the blocked intersection and put himself in the robbers’ position. “Hoo, boy,” he said. “You’re in a real mess.”

“We know that, Diddums.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “I tell you what maybe you could do. You make them give you one of those buses they’ve got down there blocking the street. They give you one of those buses right now, then you know they haven’t had time to put anything cute in it, like time-release tear-gas grenades or anyth—”

“Oh, my God,” the robber said. His black ski mask seemed to have paled slightly.

“Then you take all the hostages,” Dortmunder told him. “Everybody goes in the bus, and one of you people drives, and you go somewhere real crowded, like Times Square, say, and then you stop and make all the hostages get out and run.”

“Yeah?” the robber said. “What good does that do us?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “you drop the ski masks and the leather jackets and the guns, and you run, too. Twenty, thirty people all running away from the bus in different directions, in the middle of Times Square in rush hour, everybody losing themselves in the crowd. It might work.”

“Jeez, it might,” the robber said. “OK, go ahead and — What?”

“What?” Dortmunder echoed. He strained to look leftward, past the vertical column of his left arm. The boss robber was in excited conversation with one of his pals; not the red-eyed maniac, a different one. The boss robber shook his head and said, “Damn!” Then he looked up at Dortmunder. “Come back in here, Diddums,” he said.

Dortmunder said, “But don’t you want me to—”

“Come back in here!”

“Oh,” Dortmunder said. “Uh, I better tell them over there that I’m gonna move.”

“Make it fast,” the robber told him. “Don’t mess with me, Diddums. I’m in a bad mood right now.”

“OK.” Turning his head the other way, hating it that his back was toward this bad-mooded robber for even a second, Dortmunder called, “They want me to go back into the bank now. Just for a minute.” Hands still up, he edged sideways across the sidewalk and through the gaping doorway, where the robbers laid hands on him and flung him back deeper into the bank.

He nearly lost his balance but saved himself against the sideways-lying pot of the tipped-over Ficus. When he turned around, all five of the robbers were lined up looking at him, their expressions intent, focused, almost hungry, like a row of cats looking in a fish-store window. “Uh,” Dortmunder said.

“He’s it now,” one of the robbers said.

Another robber said, “But they don’t know it.”

A third robber said, “They will soon.”

“They’ll know it when nobody gets on the bus,” the boss robber said, and shook his head at Dortmunder. “Sorry, Diddums. Your idea doesn’t work anymore.”

Dortmunder had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t actually part of this string. “How come?” he asked.

Disgusted, one of the other robbers said, “The rest of the hostages got away, that’s how come.”

Wide-eyed, Dortmunder spoke without thinking: “The tunnel!”

All of a sudden, it got very quiet in the bank. The robbers were now looking at him like cats looking at a fish with no window in the way. “The tunnel?” repeated the boss robber slowly. “You know about the tunnel?”

“Well, kind of,” Dortmunder admitted. “I mean, the guys digging it, they got there just before you came and took me away.”

“And you never mentioned it.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, very uncomfortable, “I didn’t feel like I should.”

The red-eyed maniac lunged forward, waving that submachine gun again, yelling, “You’re the guy with the tunnel! It’s your tunnel!” And he pointed the shaking barrel of the Uzi at Dortmunder’s nose.

“Easy, easy!” the boss robber yelled. “This is our only hostage; don’t use him up!”

The red-eyed maniac reluctantly lowered the Uzi, but he turned to the others and announced, “Nobody’s gonna forget when I shot up the switchboard. Nobody’s ever gonna forget that. He wasn’t here!”

All of the robbers thought that over. Meantime, Dortmunder was thinking about his own position. He might be a hostage, but he wasn’t your normal hostage, because he was also a guy who had just dug a tunnel to a bank vault, and there were maybe 30 eyeball witnesses who could identify him. So it wasn’t enough to get away from these bank robbers; he was also going to have to get away from the police. Several thousand police.

So did that mean he was locked to these second-rate smash-and-grabbers? Was his own future really dependent on their getting out of this hole? Bad news, if true. Left to their own devices, these people couldn’t escape from a merry-go-round.

Dortmunder sighed. “OK,” he said. “The first thing we have to do is—”

“We?” the boss robber said. “Since when are you in this?”

“Since you dragged me in,” Dortmunder told him. “And the first thing we have to do is—”

The red-eyed maniac lunged at him again with the Uzi, shouting, “Don’t you tell us what to do! We know what to do!”

“I’m your only hostage,” Dortmunder reminded him. “Don’t use me up. Also, now that I’ve seen you people in action, I’m your only hope of getting out of here. So this time, listen to me. The first thing we have to do is close and lock the vault door.”

One of the robbers gave a scornful laugh. “The hostages are gone,” he said. “Didn’t you hear that part? Lock the vault door after the hostages are gone. Isn’t that some kind of old saying?” And he laughed and laughed.

Dortmunder looked at him. “It’s a two-way tunnel,” he said quietly.

The robbers stared at him. Then they all turned and ran toward the back of the bank. They all did.

They’re too excitable for this line of work, Dortmunder thought as he walked briskly toward the front of the bank. Clang went the vault door, far behind him, and Dortmunder stepped through the broken doorway and out again to the sidewalk, remembering to stick his arms straight up in the air as he did.

“Hi!” he yelled, sticking his face well out, displaying it for all the sharpshooters to get a really good look at. “Hi, it’s me again! Diddums! Welsh!”

“Diddums!” screamed an enraged voice from deep within the bank. “Come back here!”

Oh, no. Ignoring that, moving steadily but without panic, arms up, face forward, eyes wide, Dortmunder angled leftward across the sidewalk, shouting, “I’m coming out again! And I’m escaping!” And he dropped his arms, tucked his elbows in and ran hell for leather toward those blocking buses.

Gunfire encouraged him: a sudden burst behind him of ddrrritt, ddrrritt, and then kopp-kopp-kopp, and then a whole symphony of fooms and thug-thugs and padapows. Dortmunder’s toes, turning into high-tension steel springs, kept him bounding through the air like the Wright brothers’ first airplane, swooping and plunging down the middle of the street, that wall of buses getting closer and closer.

“Here! In here!” Uniformed cops appeared on both sidewalks, waving to him, offering sanctuary in the forms of open doorways and police vehicles to crouch behind, but Dortmunder was escaping. From everything.

The buses. He launched himself through the air, hit the blacktop hard and rolled under the nearest bus. Roll, roll, roll, hitting his head and elbows and knees and ears and nose and various other parts of his body against any number of hard, dirty objects, and then he was past the bus and on his feet, staggering, staring at a lot of goggle-eyed medics hanging around beside their ambulances, who just stood there and gawked back.

Dortmunder turned left. Medics weren’t going to chase him, their franchise didn’t include healthy bodies running down the street. The cops couldn’t chase him until they’d moved their buses out of the way. Dortmunder took off like the last of the dodoes, flapping his arms, wishing he knew how to fly.

The out-of-business shoe store, the other terminus of the tunnel, passed on his left. The getaway car they’d parked in front of it was long gone, of course. Dortmunder kept thudding on, on, on.

Three blocks later, a gypsy cab committed a crime by picking him up even though he hadn’t phoned the dispatcher first; in the city of New York, only licensed medallion taxis are permitted to pick up customers who hail them on the street. Dortmunder, panting like a Saint Bernard on the lumpy back seat, decided not to turn the guy in.

His faithful companion May came out of the living room when Dortmunder opened the front door of his apartment and stepped into his hall. “There you are!” she said. “Thank goodness. It’s all over the radio and the television.”

“I may never leave the house again,” Dortmunder told her. “If Andy Kelp ever calls, says he’s got this great job, easy, piece of cake, I’ll just tell him I’ve retired.”

“Andy’s here,” May said. “In the living room. You want a beer?”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said simply.

May went away to the kitchen and Dortmunder limped into the living room, where Kelp was seated on the sofa holding a can of beer and looking happy. On the coffee table in front of him was a mountain of money.

Dortmunder stared. “What’s that?”

Kelp grinned and shook his head. “It’s been too long since we scored, John,” he said. “You don’t even recognize the stuff anymore. This is money.”

“But— From the vault? How?”

“After you were taken away by those other guys — they were caught, by the way,” Kelp interrupted himself, “without loss of life — anyway, I told everybody in the vault there, the way to keep the money safe from the robbers was we’d all carry it out with us. So we did. And then I decided what we should do is put it all in the trunk of my unmarked police car in front of the shoe store, so I could drive it to the precinct for safekeeping while they all went home to rest from their ordeal.”

Dortmunder looked at his friend. He said, “You got the hostages to carry the money from the vault.”

“And put it in our car,” Kelp said. “Yeah, that’s what I did.”

May came in and handed Dortmunder a beer. He drank deep, and Kelp said, “They’re looking for you, of course. Under that other name.”

May said, “That’s the one thing I don’t understand. Diddums?”

“It’s Welsh,” Dortmunder told her. Then he smiled upon the mountain of money on the coffee table. “It’s not a bad name,” he decided. “I may keep it.”