Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

We went to the shopping mall and prowled around there for a while, but we didn’t find what we were looking for. Then we drove to the hospital and waited in the parking lot for twenty minutes or so without any success. We went back to the University of Tulsa campus and came very close there, but we aborted the mission at the last minute and drove to a supermarket we had researched the day before.

We parked where we could watch people entering and leaving. We were there twenty minutes or so when Harry nudged my arm and pointed to a woman getting out of a Japanese compact. We watched as she walked past us and into the market. I nodded, smiling.

“Bingo,” he said.

He parked our car right next to her. She wasn’t in there long, maybe another ten minutes, and she came out carrying her groceries in a plastic bag.

Harry had the window rolled down, and he called her over. “Miss,” he said, “maybe you can help me. Would you know where this address is?”

She came over for a look. I was by the side of the car and I stepped up behind her and got her in a chokehold and clapped my other hand over her mouth so she couldn’t make a sound. I dragged her into the shadows and kept the pressure on her throat and Harry got out of the car and hurried over and hit her three times, once in the solar plexus and twice in the pit of the stomach.

We’d bought supplies yesterday, including a roll of tape. She was pretty much unconscious from the chokehold so it was easy to tape her mouth shut and get her hands behind her back and tape her wrists together. Harry opened the back door and I got in back with her and he got behind the wheel and drove. I had her groceries in the back of the car with me, and her purse.

Harry headed for Mohawk Park and we drove right out onto the golf course. She came to in the car but she was all trussed up and there wasn’t a thing she could do. When he stopped the car we dragged her outside and got her clothes off, and we took turns having fun with her. We both had a really wonderful time with her, we really did.

Finally Harry asked me if I was done and I had to say I was, and he told me in that case to go ahead and finish up. I told him it was his turn, but then he reminded me that he had done the nurse in San Diego. Don’t ask me how I’d managed to forget that.

So it was my turn after all, and I got the belt out of my pants and strangled her with it. Then I took her arms and Harry took her legs and we carried her off the fairway and left her deep in the rough. You’d have to hook your tee shot real bad to get anywhere near her.

We threw her purse in a Dumpster outside a restaurant on Lewis Avenue. There was a Goodwill Industries collection box a few blocks away, and that’s where we left her clothes. I would have liked to keep something, an intimate garment of some sort, but we never did that. Take no snapshots, leave no footprints — that’s the National Park Service motto as we’ve adapted it for our own use.

I’d bought a Dustbuster the day before and I used it to go over the interior of the Olds very thoroughly. They’d vacuum the car after we turned it in, but you don’t want to leave anything to chance. The Dustbuster went in another Dumpster, along with the roll of tape. And her bag of groceries, except for a box of Wheat Thins. I was pretty hungry, so I took those back and ate them in the room.

Saturday we prettymuch took it easy. I went back for a second visit to the Gilcrease Institute but Harry passed that up and hung around the hotel pool instead. We were planning on another concert that evening but we spent a long time over dinner and wound up taking in a movie instead. Then back to the hotel for a quick brandy in the bar, and then up to bed.

And Sunday morning we flew back to New York.

Monday morning I was at my desk by nine, which was more than some of my fellow workers could claim. Sharon said she hadn’t received my postcard, and as always I told her to keep watching the mailbox. Of course I hadn’t sent one. Warren breezed in at a quarter to ten and said he guessed he’d wasted another twenty-five cents on flight insurance. I told him he could try again in August. “I’ll have to,” he said. “I can’t quit now, I’ve got too much money invested.”

Lee asked me where I’d be going in August. “Baghdad? Timbuktu? Or someplace really exotic, like Newark?”

I’m not sure. Buffalo, possibly. I’d like to see Niagara Falls. Or maybe Minneapolis — St. Paul. It’s the right time of year for either of those cities. It’s my turn to plan the trip, so I’ll take my time and make the right decision.

In the meantime I go to my office every morning and read guidebooks evenings and weekends. Sometimes when I sit at my desk I’ll think about the T-shirt I’m wearing, invisible under my dress shirt. I’ll remember which one it is, and I’ll take a moment to relive the Denver experience, or the Baltimore experience, or the Tulsa experience. Depending on what shirt I’m wearing.

Lee can tease me all he wants. I don’t mind. Tulsa was wonderful.

We hadn’t beenin the house more than five minutes when Pete called. We were in the living room and I was trying to get Roz to calm down when the phone rang. I put her on the couch and went over to answer it.

“I can’t talk to you,” I told him. “We just this minute walked in and we got a little shock. It seems we had company.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean somebody came calling while we were spending the weekend at the lake. Forced the front door and turned the place upside down. Everything’s a mess and Roz is hysterical and I’m not too happy myself.”

“That’s terrible, Eddie. They get much?”

“I don’t even know what’s missing. I told you, we just walked in. I have to run around now and start taking inventory and they left such a mess I don’t even know where to start. You know, drawers upside down, that kind of thing.”

“That’s terrible, it really is. Look, you got things to do and I don’t want to keep you. I just called to check that we’re set for tonight.”

I glanced over at the couch. “She’s pretty shaky,” I said, “but what the hell, she can always stay with friends if it bothers her to stay here alone.”

“How about if I pick you up around nine-thirty?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be waiting.”

I was waitingout in front when he drove up in a large white panel truck. He pulled over to the curb and I opened the door and swung up onto the seat beside him.

“Well, you look real good,” he said. “A few days in the sun didn’t hurt you any. Roz all brown and beautiful?”

“She got a burn the first day and after that she kept out of the sun. Me, I never burn. I just lie there and soak it up like a storage battery or something. We had a great time, but what a shock to come home to the house and find some yo-yos turned the place inside out.”

“They make much of a score?”

I shrugged. “They didn’t get much cash because I never keep cash around the house. I generally have a couple of hundred dollars down at the bottom of my tobacco humidor and it’s still there. Let’s see. They took Roz’s jewelry, except for what she had with her, and how much jewelry do you take to the lake? The insurance floater covers her jewelry up to ten thousand dollars, and I’d guess what she lost was probably worth two to three times that. So in that sense we took a beating, but on the other hand I didn’t pay anywhere near fair market value for her stuff, so it’s not that bad.”

“Still, those were pieces she was crazy about. They get those ruby earrings?”

“Yeah, they went.”

“That’s a hell of a thing.”