“So that would be two hundred dollars even as opposed to what, two-sixteen?”
100
Lawrence Block
“A few dollars more than that, actually. If you want I could look it up for you, so you’ll know to the penny how much you’re saving.”
“But what I’d be paying,” he says, “is two hundred dollars.”
“And in return you’d be getting a piece of history.”
“It’s always nice to get a piece”—just the slightest pause here—“of history.” Has she even noticed the pause? This would seem to be a woman who doesn’t miss much, and his sense is that she took it in and decided to overlook it, all without any of this registering on her face.
He frowns, has another look at the bas-relief, notes the steadfast determination of both the hounds and their quarry. It would be the work of a moment, he thinks, to wrap his hand around the handle, to strike without warning. He visualizes the act, the underhand thrust, the sharpened bronze tip entering just below the lowest rib and reaching up for the heart. Visualizes himself turning and moving to the door before she slips to the floor behind the counter, even before the life fades from her eyes.
But he’s touched things. His prints are all over the top surface of the showcase, and nothing holds a print better than glass.
“I think I’d like to have it.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Besides, it would be too quick. It would be over before she knew it, and that can be very satisfying sometimes, the quick kill, but in this instance he’d want her to see it coming, want to watch her lose that confidence, that irritating self-possession.
His loins stir at the thought of what he’ll do to her, when the time comes.
But none of this shows in his face as he sighs with resignation and counts bills from his wallet. She takes the money, wraps the letter opener in tissue paper, tucks it into a paper bag. He tells her he won’t need a receipt, then slips his purchase into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.
“Thanks,” she says. “Just so you know, I don’t think you paid too much.
They’d ask something like five hundred in a shop on Madison Avenue.” He smiles, murmurs something, heads for the door. But oh, Christ, how he wants to kill her! He doesn’t want to wait. He wants to kill her right now.
12
I didn’t much want to give my client a report of the night’s proceedings, and not just because it might leave her wondering if she’d hired an incompetent. More to the point, any suggestion that her Mr.
Thompson had given me the slip would imply that he was not what he appeared, that he had something to hide. That’s how it felt to me, but it would be premature to pass that perception to Louise.
“Nothing conclusive,” I told her. “I should be able to tell you more in a day or so.”
I found Thompson’s number in my notebook, called him on my cell phone. I hoped he wouldn’t answer and felt relieved when I got his Voice Mail. “Hey, man,” I said. “We sent you a check, payment in full, and I’ve got it right here in front of me. It came back, we’ve got the wrong address for you. Oh, shit, I’ve got to take that. Listen, ring me back, if I don’t answer just leave your address on my voice mail. And while you’re at it—oh, hell, never mind. Later.” I’d tried to sound rushed, like some middle-management guy with everything happening at once, and I couldn’t tell if I’d pulled it off. I’d know more when he did or didn’t call me back.
I had my cell phone in my pocket when I left the house, but I paused on the sidewalk to turn it off. I was on my way to a meeting, and you have to turn off cell phones and pagers there; at most groups they make an announcement to that effect. But I wanted mine off, 102
Lawrence Block
meeting or no meeting, because the last thing I wanted was to answer a call and have David Thompson on the other end of the line. The first thing he’d do was ask who I was and what company the check was from, and I’d be stuck for an answer. If he got my voice mail there’d be nobody to ask, and he’d figure somebody owed him money and he might as well collect it, and he’d leave his address.
This was assuming that at least a portion of his story was true, that he was in some sort of business in the course of which companies sent him checks. It might or might not be direct marketing, and his name might or might not be David Thompson, which was why I’d been as vague as I had in my message to him.
It ought to work. And if it failed, it would simply have succeeded in another direction. If he was that suspicious, then he really did have something to hide.
I walked up to the Y on West Sixty-third and caught the noon meeting of the Fireside group. The speaker told an abbreviated drinking story and spent most of her time talking about her current dilemma, which was whether or not to face that acting wasn’t working for her, that two lines in a Rolaids commercial and a few dozen days as an extra, along with nonpaying roles in showcase productions that nobody came to, wasn’t all that much to show for five years of devotion to the profession.
“I’m not an actress, I’m a waitress,” she said, “and that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a respectable way to make a living, but I’m not sure it’s what I want to do with my life. I’m not even so sure anymore that acting’s what I want to do with my life, as if anyone’s going to give me a chance to do it.”
Abie was there; I hadn’t seen him since Ray Gruliow spoke at St.
Paul’s, and he said he’d been mostly going to noon meetings lately, plus one night he’d been booked to speak out in Middle Village. I had lunch around the corner with him and two women, an office temp named Rachel and a sharp-faced young woman who worked as a substitute teacher when she worked at all, which I gathered wasn’t very often. I never did catch her name.
Whoever she was, she didn’t waste any time taking the speaker’s inAll the Flowers Are Dying
103
