Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Very close,” Mowbray admitted.

“Well, I’ll tell you something that’ll tip the balance. You’ll really want to believe it’s all a pack of lies.” He lowered his eyes. “The fact of the matter is you’ll lose any respect you may have had for me when you hear the next.”

“Then why tell me?”

“Because I feel the need.”

“I don’t know if I want to hear this,” Mowbray said.

“I want you to. No fish and it’s getting dark and you’re probably anxious to get back to wherever you’re staying and have a drink and a meal. Well, this won’t take long.” He had been reeling in his line. Now the operation was concluded, and he set the rod deliberately on the grass at his feet. Straightening up, he said, “I told you before about my attitude toward fish. Not killing what I’m not going to eat. And there this young man was, all laid open, internal organs exposed—”

“Stop.”

“I don’t know what you’d call it, curiosity or compulsion or some primitive streak. I couldn’t say. But what I did, I cut off a small piece of his liver before I buried him. Then after he was under the sand I lit my cookfire and — well, no need to go into detail.”

Thank God for that, Mowbray thought. For small favors. He looked at his hands. The left one was trembling. The right, the one gripping his spinning rod, was white at the knuckles, and the tips of his fingers ached from gripping the butt of the rod so tightly.

“Murder, cannibalism, and robbing the dead. That’s quite a string for a man who never got worse than a traffic ticket. And all three in considerably less than an hour.”

“Please,” Mowbray said. His voice was thin and high-pitched. “Please don’t tell me any more.”

“Nothing more to tell.”

Mowbray took a deep breath, held it. This man was either lying or telling the truth, Mowbray thought, and in either case he was quite obviously an extremely unusual person. At the very least.

“You shouldn’t tell that story to strangers,” he said after a moment. “True or false, you shouldn’t tell it.”

“I now and then feel the need.”

“Of course, it’s all to the good that I am a stranger. After all, I don’t know anything about you, not even your name.”

“It’s Tolliver.”

“Or where you live, or—”

“Wallace P. Tolliver. I was in the retail hardware business in Oak Falls, Missouri. That’s not far from Joplin.”

“Don’t tell me anything more,” Mowbray said desperately. “I wish you hadn’t told me what you did.”

“I had to,” the big man said. The smile flashed again. “I’ve told that story three times before today. You’re the fourth man ever to hear it.”

Mowbray said nothing.

“Three times. Always to strangers who happen to turn up while I’m fishing. Always on long lazy afternoons, those afternoons when the fish just don’t bite no matter what you do.”

Mowbray began to do several things. He began to step backward, and he began to release his tight hold on his fishing rod, and he began to extend his left arm protectively in front of him.

But the filleting knife had already cleared its sheath.

We met forthe first time on a handball court in Sheridan Park. It was a Saturday morning in early summer with the sky free of clouds and the sun warm but not yet unbearable. He was alone on the court when I got there and I stood for a few moments watching him warm up, slamming the little ball viciously against the imperturbable backstop.

He didn’t look my way, although he must have known I was watching him. When he paused for a moment I said, “A game?”

He looked my way. “Why not?”

I suppose we played for two hours, perhaps a little longer. I’ve no idea how many games we played. I was several years younger, weighed considerably less, and topped him by four or five inches.

He won every game.

When we broke, the sun was high in the sky and considerably hotter than it had been when we started. We had both been sweating freely and we stood together, rubbing our faces and chests with our towels. “Good workout,” he said. “There’s nothing like it.”

“I hope you at least got some decent exercise out of it,” I said apologetically. “I certainly didn’t make it much of a contest.”

“Oh, don’t bother yourself about that,” he said, and flashed a shark’s smile. “Tell you the truth, I like to win. On and off the court. And I certainly got a workout out of you.”

I laughed. “As a matter of fact, I managed to work up a thirst. How about a couple of beers? On me, in exchange for the handball lesson.”

He grinned. “Why not?”

We didn’t talkmuch until we were settled in a booth at the Hofbrau House. Generations of collegians had carved combinations of Greek letters into the top of our sturdy oak table. I was in the middle of another apology for my athletic inadequacy when he set his stein down atop Zeta Beta Tau and shook a cigarette out of his pack. “Listen,” he said, “forget it. What the hell, maybe you’re lucky in love.”

I let out a bark of mirthless laughter. “If this is luck,” I said, “I’d hate to see misfortune.”

“Problems?”

“You might say so.”

“Well, if it’s something you’d rather not talk about—”

I shook my head. “It’s not that — it might even do me good to talk about it — but it would bore the daylights out of you. It’s hardly an original problem. The world is overflowing these days with men in the very same leaky boat.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve got a girl,” I said. “I love her and she loves me. But I’m afraid I’m going to lose her.”

He frowned, thinking about it. “You’re married,” he said.

“No.”

“She’s married.”

I shook my head. “No, we’re both single. She wants to get married.”

“But you don’t want to marry her.”

“There’s nothing I want more than to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her.”

His frown deepened. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me think. You’re both single, you both want to get married, but there’s a problem. All I can think of is she’s your sister, but I can’t believe that’s it, especially since you said it’s a common problem. I’ll tell you, I think my brain’s tired from too much time in the sun. What’s the problem?”

“I’m divorced.”

“So who isn’t? I’m divorced and I’m remarried. Unless it’s a religious thing. I bet that’s what it is.”

“No.”

“Well, don’t keep me guessing, fella. I already gave up once, remember?”

“The problem is my ex-wife,” I said. “The judge gave her everything I had but the clothes I was wearing at the time of the trial. With the alimony I have to pay her, I’m living in a furnished room and cooking on a hotplate. I can’t afford to get married, and my girl wants to get married — and sooner or later she’s going to get tired of spending her time with a guy who can never afford to take her anyplace decent.” I shrugged. “Well,” I said, “you get the picture.”

“Boy, do I get the picture.”

“As I said, it’s not a very original problem.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” He signaled the waiter for two more beers, and when they arrived he lit another cigarette and took a long swallow of his beer. “It’s really something,” he said. “Meeting like this. I already told you I got an ex-wife of my own.”

“These days almost everybody does.”

“That’s the truth. I must have had a better lawyer than you did, but I still got burned pretty bad. She got the house, she got the Cadillac and just about everything else she wanted. And now she gets fifty cents out of every dollar I make. She’s got no kids, she’s got no responsibilities, but she gets fifty cents out of every dollar I earn and the government gets another thirty or forty cents. What does that leave me?”