Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“It’s better than the legend,” Michael Haig said. There was a film of perspiration on his upper lip and he wiped at it with his forefinger. “Better than the legend. If people knew what you actually did—”

“I think it’s ever so much better that they don’t, Michael. Oh, if I were to write memoirs for posthumous publication it’s the sort of material I’d be inclined to include, but I’m not the sort to write my memoirs, I’m afraid. No, I think I’d rather let the legend go on as it stands. It wouldn’t do me much good if my public knew that Wilson Colliard was a man who once killed one of his clients for no reason at all. My reputation has been carefully designed to build a client’s confidence and that’s the sort of revelation that might have the opposite effect entirely.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything at all,” Colliard advised. “But let me just pour us each one final tot of sherry.”

“I’ve had quite a bit already.”

“It’s very light stuff,” Colliard said. “One more won’t hurt you.” And, returning with the filled glasses, he added, “We ought to drink to legends. May the truth never interfere with them.”

The younger man took a sip. Then, when he saw his host toss off his drink in a single swallow, he imitated his example and drank off the rest of his own sherry. Wilson Colliard nodded, satisfied with the way things had gone. He could scarcely recall a more pleasant afternoon.

“Minimize your risks,” he said. “Seize the moment. And look to your professional reputation.”

“The three points of the Assassin’s Credo,” Haig said.

“Three of the four points.”

“Oh?” The younger man grinned in anticipation. “You mean there’s a fourth point?”

“Oh, yes.” Colliard studied him, paying close attention to his guest’s eyes. “A fourth point.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“Squash the competition.”

“Oh?”

“When it’s convenient,” Colliard said. “And when it’s useful. There’s no point doing anything about the bunglers. But when someone turns up who’s talented and resourceful and not without a sense of the dramatic, and when you have the opportunity to wipe him out, why, it’s just good business to do so. There are only so many really top jobs available every year, you know, and one doesn’t want them spread too thin. Of course when you eliminate a competitor you don’t noise it around. That sort of thing’s kept secret. But there have been eight times over the years when I’ve had a chance to put the fourth principle into play.”

“And you’ve seized the opportunity?”

“I could hardly do otherwise, could I?” Colliard smiled. “You’re number nine, Michael. That last glass of sherry had poison in it, I’m afraid. You can probably feel the numbness spreading. It already shows in your eyes. No, don’t even try to get up. You won’t be able to accomplish anything. Don’t blame yourself. You were doomed from the start, poor boy. I shouldn’t have agreed to see you this afternoon if I hadn’t decided to, uh, purge you from the ranks.”

The younger man’s face was a study in horror. Colliard eyed him equably. Already he was beginning to feel that familiar sensation, the excitement, the thrill.

“You were quite good,” he said charitably. “For as long as you lasted you were quite good indeed. Otherwise I’d not have bothered with you. Oh, Michael, it’s a crazy business, isn’t it? Believe me, lad, you’re lucky to be getting out of it.”

They were teasingme Friday at the office. Sharon told me to be sure and send her a postcard, the way she always does, and I said what I always say, that I’d be back before the postcard reached her. And Warren asked which airline I was flying, and when I told him he very solemnly pulled out a quarter and handed it to me, telling me to buy some flight insurance and put him down as beneficiary.

Lee said, “Where’s it going to be this time, Dennis? Acapulco? Macao? The south of France?”

“Tulsa,” I said.

“Tulsa,” he said. “Would that be Tulsa, Spain, on the Costa Brava? Or do you mean Tulsa, Nepal, gateway to the Himalayas?”

“This will come as a shock to you,” I said, “but it’s Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

“Tulsa, Oklahoma,” he marveled. “So the Gold Dust Twins are going to glamorous Tulsa, Oklahoma. I suppose Harry is up to it, but are you sure your heart can handle the excitement?”

“I’ll try to pace myself,” I said.

Harry and I are not twins, Gold Dust or otherwise. He’s my brother, two years older than I, and aside from our vacations we actually see very little of each other. Harry, who has never married, still lives in the row house in Woodside where we grew up. After college he helped in the store and took over the business when Dad retired. The house was left to both of us when our parents died, but we worked out a way for him to buy my share.

I was married for several years, but I’ve been divorced for longer than I was married, and I doubt I’ll marry again. I have a nice apartment on East Eighty-third Street. It’s small but it suits me, and it’s rent-controlled. Work is a short bus ride away, a walk in good weather.

I had taken the bus that morning, although the weather was nice, because I had my suitcase with me. I worked right through lunch hour and then took the rest of the afternoon off and caught a cab to the airport. I got there over an hour before flight time and Harry was already there, his bag checked. “Well,” he said, punching me affectionately on the shoulder. “You ready for the Tulsa experience, Denny?”

“I sure am,” I said.

I’ve been at Langford Corporation for almost seventeen years. I had another job for a year and a half when I first got out of college, and then I came to Langford, and I’ve been with the company ever since. So for the past five years I’ve been entitled to four weeks of paid vacation a year. I take a week in the spring, a week in the summer, a week in the fall, and a week in the winter, and Harry arranges to close his store during those weeks. When we first started doing this he let his employees take over, but that didn’t work out so well, and it’s simpler and easier just to lock the doors for a week.

And that’s really about the only time we see each other. Each season we pick a city, somewhere right here in the United States, and we take rooms in a nice hotel and make sure we experience the place to the hilt.

Boston was the third city we visited together, or maybe it was the fourth. I could stop and figure it out, but it doesn’t matter; the point is that there was one of those multiscreen presentations in a theater near Quincy Market, giving you the history of the city and an armchair tour of the area. The Boston Experience, they called it, and ever since we’ve used that phrase to describe our travels to one another. After Boston we had the Atlanta experience. Now we were going to have the Tulsa experience, and three months ago, give or take a week, we were having the San Diego experience.

I can understand why Lee teases me. I have never been to London or Paris or Rome, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get out of this country at all. We’ve talked about it, Harry and I, but whenever it comes time to plan a trip we always wind up choosing an American city. I guess it’s not glamorous, and maybe we’re missing something, but we always have a great time, so why change?

Founded in 1879,Tulsa has a population of 360,919, and is the second-largest city in Oklahoma. (Oklahoma City, the capital, is larger by about forty thousand; we have not yet had the Oklahoma City experience.) Tulsa is 750 feet above sea level, located in the heart of a major oil- and gas-producing area. More than six hundred energy-oriented firms employ upward of thirty thousand people.