Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“I couldn’t bear to look at him. Before I had been unable to take my eyes off him, and now I found myself averting my gaze. I felt betrayed. I fell in love with a Greek god, and watched as he turned into a Roman emperor.”

“And you killed him for that?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

I looked at him.

“Oh, I suppose I was, really. I’d been drinking, we’d both been drinking, and we’d had an argument, and I was angry. I don’t suppose I was too far gone to know that he’d be dead when I was done, and that I’d have killed him. But that wasn’t the point.”

“It wasn’t?”

“He passed out,” he said. “He was lying there, naked, reeking of the wine seeping out of his pores, this great expanse of bloated flesh as white as marble. I suppose I hated him for having thus transformed himself, and I know I hated myself for having been an agent of his transformation. And I decided to do something about it.”

He shook his head, and sighed deeply. “I went into the kitchen,” he said, “and I came back with a knife. And I thought of the boy I’d seen that first night in Madison, and I thought of Michelangelo. And I tried to be Michelangelo.”

I must have looked puzzled. He said, “Don’t you remember? I took the knife and cut away the part that wasn’t David.”

It was afew days later in Rome when I recounted all this to Elaine. We were at an outdoor café near the Spanish Steps. “All those years,” I said, “I took it for granted he was trying to destroy his lover. That’s what mutilation generally is, the expression of a desire to annihilate. But he wasn’t trying to disfigure him, he was trying to re figure him.”

“He was just a few years ahead of his time,” she said. “Now they call it liposuction and charge the earth for it. I’ll tell you one thing. As soon as we get back I’m going straight from the airport to the gym, before all this pasta becomes a permanent part of me. I’m not taking any chances.”

“I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”

“That’s reassuring. How awful, though. How godawful for both of them.”

“The things people do.”

“You said it. Well, what do you want to do? We could sit around feeling sorry for two men and the mess they made of their lives, or we could go back to the hotel and do something life-affirming. You tell me.”

“It’s a tough one,” I said. “How soon do you need my decision?”

When the phonecall came I was parked in front of the television set in the front room, nursing a glass of bourbon and watching the Yankees. It’s funny what you remember and what you don’t. I remember that Thurman Munson had just hit a long foul that missed being a home run by no more than a foot, but I don’t remember who they were playing, or even what kind of a season they had that year.

I remember that the bourbon was J. W. Dant, and that I was drinking it on the rocks, but of course I would remember that. I always remembered what I was drinking, though I didn’t always remember why.

The boys had stayed up to watch the opening innings with me, but tomorrow was a school day, and Anita took them upstairs and tucked them in while I freshened my drink and sat down again. The ice was mostly melted by the time Munson hit his long foul, and I was still shaking my head at that when the phone rang. I let it ring, and Anita answered it and came in to tell me it was for me. Somebody’s secretary, she said.

I picked up the phone, and a woman’s voice, crisply professional, said, “Mr. Scudder, I’m calling for Mr. Alan Herdig of Herdig and Crowell.”

“I see,” I said, and listened while she elaborated, and estimated just how much time it would take me to get to their offices. I hung up and made a face.

“You have to go in?”

I nodded. “It’s about time we had a break in this one,” I said. “I don’t expect to get much sleep tonight, and I’ve got a court appearance tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll get you a clean shirt. Sit down. You’ve got time to finish your drink, don’t you?”

I always had time for that.

Years ago, thiswas. Nixon was president, a couple of years into his first term. I was a detective with the NYPD, attached to the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village. I had a house on Long Island with two cars in the garage, a Ford wagon for Anita and a beat-up Plymouth Valiant for me.

Traffic was light on the LIE, and I didn’t pay much attention to the speed limit. I didn’t know many cops who did. Nobody ever ticketed a brother officer. I made good time, and it must have been somewhere around a quarter to ten when I left the car at a bus stop on First Avenue. I had a card on the dashboard that would keep me safe from tickets and tow trucks.

The best thing about enforcing the laws is that you don’t have to pay a lot of attention to them yourself.

Her doorman rang upstairs to announce me, and she met me at the door with a drink. I don’t remember what she was wearing, but I’m sure she looked good in it. She always did.

She said, “I would never call you at home. But it’s business.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Maybe both. I got a call from a client. A Madison Avenue guy, maybe an agency vice-president. Suits from Tripler’s, season tickets for the Rangers, house in Connecticut.”

“And?”

“And didn’t I say something about knowing a cop? Because he and some friends were having a friendly card game and something happened to one of them.”

“Something happened? Something happens to a friend of yours, you take him to a hospital. Or was it too late for that?”

“He didn’t say, but that’s what I heard. It sounds to me as though somebody had an accident and they need somebody to make it disappear.”

“And you thought of me.”

“Well,” she said.

She’d thought of me before, in a similar connection. Another client of hers, a Wall Street warrior, had had a heart attack in her bed one afternoon. Most men will tell you that’s how they want to go, and perhaps it’s as good a way as any, but it’s not all that convenient for the people who have to clean up after them, especially when the bed in question belongs to some working girl.

When the equivalent happens in the heroin trade, it’s good PR. One junkie checks out with an overdose and the first thing all his buddies want to know is where did he get the stuff and how can they cop some themselves. Because, hey, it must be good, right? A hooker, on the other hand, has less to gain from being listed as cause of death. And I suppose she felt a professional responsibility, if you want to call it that, to spare the guy and his family embarrassment. So I made him disappear, and left him fully dressed in an alley down in the financial district. I called it in anonymously and went back to her apartment to claim my reward.

“I’ve got the address,” she said now. “Do you want to have a look? Or should I tell them I couldn’t reach you?”

I kissed her, and we clung to each other for a long moment. When I came up for air I said, “It’d be a lie.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Telling them you couldn’t reach me. You can always reach me.”

“You’re a sweetie.”

“You better give me that address,” I said.

I retrieved mycar from the bus stop and left it in another one a dozen or so blocks uptown. The address I was looking for was a brownstone in the East Sixties. A shop with handbags and briefcases in the window occupied the storefront, flanked by a travel agent and a men’s clothier. There were four doorbells in the vestibule, and I rang the third one and heard the intercom activated, but didn’t hear anyone say anything. I was reaching to ring a second time when the buzzer sounded. I pushed the door open and walked up three flights of carpeted stairs.