Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“I can see how that might happen.”

“But if he gets knocked around a little the first time, enough so he’s gonna feel it for the next four, five days, he’s too scared to get angry. That’s what you want.”

“Okay.”

He sipped his drink, looked at her over the brim. His eyes were appraising her, assessing her. “There’s things I need to know about the guy.”

“Like?”

“Like what kind of shape is he in?”

“He could stand to lose twenty pounds, but other than that he’s okay.”

“No heart condition, nothing like that?”

“No.”

“He work out?”

“He belongs to a gym,” she said, “and he went four times a week for the first month after he joined, and now if he goes twice a month it’s a lot.”

“Like everybody,” he said. “That’s how the gyms stay in business. If all their paid-up members showed up, you couldn’t get in the door.”

“You work out,” she said.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Weights, mostly, a few times a week. I got in the habit. I won’t tell you where I got in the habit.”

“And I won’t ask,” she said, “but I could probably guess.”

“You probably could,” he said, grinning. He looked like a little boy for an instant, and then the grin faded and he was back to business.

“Martial arts,” he said. “He ever get into any of that?”

“No.”

“You’re sure? Not lately, but maybe before the two of you started keeping company?”

“He never said anything,” she said, “and he would. It’s the kind of thing he’d brag about.”

“Does he carry?”

“Carry?”

“A gun.”

“God, no.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“He doesn’t even own a gun.”

“Same question. Do you know this for a fact?”

She considered it. “Well, how would you know something like that for a fact? I mean, you could know for a fact that a person did own a gun, but how would you know that he didn’t? I can say this much — I lived with him for three years and there was never anything I saw or heard that gave me the slightest reason to think he might own a gun. Until you asked the question just now it never entered my mind, and my guess is it never entered his mind, either.”

“You’d be surprised how many people own guns,” he said.

“I probably would.”

“Sometimes it feels like half the country walks around strapped. There’s more carrying than there are carry permits. A guy doesn’t have a permit, he’s likely to keep it to himself that he’s carrying, or that he even owns a gun in the first place.”

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t own a gun, let alone carry one.”

“And you’re probably right,” he said, “but the thing is you never know. What you got to prepare for is he might have a gun, and he might be carrying it.”

She nodded, uncertain.

“Here’s what I’ve got to ask you,” he said. “What you got to ask yourself, and come up with an answer. How far are you prepared for this to go?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“We already said it’s gonna be physical. Manhandling him, and a couple of shots he’ll feel for the better part of a week. Work the rib cage, say.”

“All right.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s great, if that’s how it goes. But you got to recognize it could go farther.”

“What do you mean?”

He made a tent of his fingertips. “I mean you can’t necessarily decide where it stops. I don’t know if you ever heard the expression, but it’s like, uh, having relations with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you decide. You stop when the gorilla decides.”

“I never heard that before,” she said. “It’s cute, and I sort of get the point, or maybe I don’t. Is Howard Bellamy the gorilla?”

“He’s not the gorilla. The violence is the gorilla.”

“Oh.”

“You start something, you don’t know where it goes. Does he fight back? If he does, then it goes a little farther than you planned. Does he keep coming back for more? As long as he keeps coming back for it, you got to keep dishing it out. You got no choice.”

“I see.”

“Plus there’s the human factor. The boys themselves, they don’t have an emotional stake. So you figure they’re cool and professional about it.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“But it’s only true up to a point,” he went on, “because they’re human, you know? So they start out angry with the guy, they tell themselves how he’s a lowlife piece of garbage, so it’s easier for them to shove him around. Part of it’s an act but part of it’s not, and say he mouths off, or he fights back and gets in a good lick. Now they’re really angry, and maybe they do more damage than they intended to.”

She thought about it. “I can see how that could happen,” she said.

“So it could go farther than anybody had in mind. He could wind up in the hospital.”

“You mean like broken bones?”

“Or worse. Like a ruptured spleen, which I’ve known of cases. Or as far as that goes there’s people who’ve died from a bare-knuckle punch in the stomach.”

“I saw a movie where that happened.”

“Well, I saw a movie where a guy spreads his arms and flies, but dying from a punch in the stomach, they didn’t just make that up for the movies. It can happen.”

“Now you’ve got me thinking,” she said.

“Well, it’s something you got to think about. Because you have to be prepared for this to go all the way, and by all the way I mean all the way. It probably won’t, ninety-five times out of a hundred it won’t.”

“But it could.”

“Right. It could.”

“Jesus,” she said. “He’s a son of a bitch, but I don’t want him dead. I want to be done with the son of a bitch. I don’t want him on my conscience for the rest of my life.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“But I don’t want to pay him ten thousand dollars, either, the son of a bitch. This is getting complicated, isn’t it?”

“Let me excuse myself for a minute,” he said, rising. “And you think about it, and then we’ll talk some more.”

While he wasaway from the table she reached for his book and turned it so she could read the title. She looked at the author’s photo, read a few lines of the flap copy, then put it as he had left it. She sipped her drink — she was nursing this one, making it last — and looked out the window. Cars rolled by, their headlights slightly eerie in the dense fog.

When he returned she said, “Well, I thought about it.”

“And?”

“I think you just talked yourself out of five hundred dollars.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“Because I certainly don’t want him dead, and I don’t even want him in the hospital. I have to admit I like the idea of him being scared, really scared bad. And hurt a little. But that’s just because I’m angry.”

“Anybody’d be angry.”

“But when I get past the anger,” she said, “all I really want is for him to forget this crap about ten thousand dollars. For Christ’s sake, that’s all the money I’ve got in the world. I don’t want to give it to him.”

“Maybe you don’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think it’s about money,” he said. “Not for him. It’s about sticking it to you for dumping him, or whatever. So it’s an emotional thing and it’s easy for you to buy into it. But say it was a business thing. You’re right and he’s wrong, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth to fight it out. So you settle.”

“Settle?”

“You always paid your own way,” he said, “so it wouldn’t be out of the question for you to pay half the cost of the cruise, would it?”