Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“No, but—”

“But it was supposed to be a present, from him to you. But forget that for the time being. You could pay half. Still, that’s too much. What you do is you offer him two thousand dollars. I have a feeling he’ll take it.”

“God,” she said. “I can’t even talk to him. How am I going to offer him anything?”

“You’ll have someone else make the offer.”

“You mean like a lawyer?”

“Then you owe the lawyer. No, I was thinking I could do it.”

“Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t. I think if I was to make the offer he’d accept it. I wouldn’t be threatening him, but there’s a way to do it so a guy feels threatened.”

“He’d feel threatened, all right.”

“I’ll have your check with me, two thousand dollars, payable to him. My guess is he’ll take it, and if he does you won’t hear any more from him on the subject of the ten grand.”

“So I’m out of it for two thousand. And five hundred for you?”

“I wouldn’t charge you anything.”

“Why not?”

“All I’d be doing is having a conversation with a guy. I don’t charge for conversations. I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a guy owns a couple of parking lots.”

“And reads thick novels by young Indian writers.”

“Oh, this? You read it?”

She shook her head.

“It’s hard to keep the names straight,” he said, “especially when you’re not sure how to pronounce them in the first place. And it’s like if you ask this guy what time it is he tells you how to make a watch. Or maybe a sun-dial. But it’s pretty interesting.”

“I never thought you’d be a reader.”

“Billy Parking Lots,” he said. “Guy who knows guys and can get things done. That’s probably all Tommy said about me.”

“Just about.”

“Maybe that’s all I am. Reading, well, it’s an edge I got on just about everybody I know. It opens other worlds. I don’t live in those worlds, but I get to visit them.”

“And you just got in the habit of reading? The way you got in the habit of working out?”

He laughed. “Yeah, but reading’s something I’ve done since I was a kid. I didn’t have to go away to get in that particular habit.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“Anyway,” he said, “it’s hard to read there, harder than people think. It’s noisy all the time.”

“Really? I didn’t realize. I always figured that’s when I’d get to read War and Peace, when I got sent to prison. But if it’s noisy, then the hell with it. I’m not going.”

“You’re something else,” he said.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. The way you look, of course, but beyond the looks. The only word I can think of is class, but it’s a word that’s mostly used by people that haven’t got any themselves. Which is probably true enough.”

“The hell with that,” she said. “After the conversation we just had? Talking me out of doing something I could have regretted all my life, and figuring out how to get that son of a bitch off my back for two thousand dollars? I’d call that class.”

“Well, you’re seeing me at my best,” he said.

“And you’re seeing me at my worst,” she said, “or close to it. Looking to hire a guy to beat up an ex-boyfriend. That’s class, all right.”

“That’s not what I see. I see a woman who doesn’t want to be pushed around. And if I can find a way that helps you get where you want to be, then I’m glad to do it. But when all’s said and done, you’re a lady and I’m a wiseguy.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Yes, I guess I do.”

He nodded. “Drink up,” he said. “I’ll run you back to the city.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can take the PATH train.”

“I’ve got to go into the city anyway. It’s not out of my way to take you wherever you’re going.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” he said. “Or here’s another idea. We both have to eat, and I told you they serve a good steak here. Let me buy you dinner, and then I’ll run you home.”

“Dinner,” she said.

“A shrimp cocktail, a salad, a steak, a baked potato—”

“You’re tempting me.”

“So let yourself be tempted,” he said. “It’s just a meal.”

She looked at him levelly. “No,” she said. “It’s more than that.”

“It’s more than that if you want it to be. Or it’s just a meal, if that’s what you want.”

“But you can’t know how far it might go,” she said. “We’re back to that again, aren’t we? Like what you said about the gorilla, and you stop when the gorilla wants to stop.”

“I guess I’m the gorilla, huh?”

“You said the violence was the gorilla. Well, in this case it’s not violence, but it’s not either of us, either. It’s what’s going on between us, and it’s already going on, isn’t it?”

“You tell me.”

She looked down at her hands, then up at him. “A person has to eat,” she said.

“You said it.”

“And it’s still foggy outside.”

“Like pea soup. And who knows? There’s a good chance the fog’ll lift by the time we’ve had our meal.”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” she said. “I think it’s lifting already.”

Paul kept itvery simple. That seemed to be the secret. You kept it simple, you drew firm lines and didn’t cross them. You put one foot in front of the other, took it day by day, and let the days mount up.

The state didn’t take an interest. They put you back on the street with a cheap suit and figured you’d be back inside before the pants got shiny. But other people cared. This one outfit, about two parts ex-cons to one part holy joes, had wised him up and helped him out. They’d found him a job and a place to live, and what more did he need?

The job wasn’t much, frying eggs and flipping burgers in a diner at Twenty-third and Eighth. The room wasn’t much, either, seven blocks south of the diner, four flights up from the street. It was small, and all you could see from its window was the back of another building. The furnishings were minimal — an iron bedstead, a beat-up dresser, a rickety chair — and the walls needed paint and the floor needed carpet. There was a sink in the room, a bathroom down the hall. No cooking, no pets, no overnight guests, the landlady told him. No kidding, he thought.

His shift was four to midnight, Monday through Friday. The first weekend he did nothing but go to the movies, and by Sunday night he was ready to climb the wall. Too much time to kill, too few ways to kill it that wouldn’t get him in trouble. How many movies could you sit through? And a movie cost him two hours’ pay, and if you spent the whole weekend dragging yourself from one movie house to another...

Weekends were dangerous, one of the ex-cons had told him. Weekends could put you back in the joint. There ought to be a law against weekends.

But he figured out a way around it. Walking home Tuesday night, after that first weekend of movie-going, he’d stopped at three diners on Seventh Avenue, nursing a cup of coffee and chatting with the guy behind the counter. The third time was the charm; he walked out of there with a weekend job. Saturday and Sunday, same hours, same wages, same work. And they’d pay him off the books, which made his weekend work tax-free.

Between what he was saving in taxes and what he wasn’t spending on movies, he’d be a millionaire.

Well, maybe he’dnever be a millionaire. Probably be dangerous to be a millionaire, a guy like him, with his ways, his habits. But he was earning an honest dollar, and he ate all he wanted on the job, seven days a week now, so it wasn’t hard to put a few bucks aside. The weeks added up and so did the dollars, and the time came when he had enough cash socked away to buy himself a little television set. The cashier at his weekend job set it up and her boyfriend brought it over, so he figured it fell off a truck or walked out of somebody’s apartment, but it got good reception and the price was right.