Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

Or he could go home right now and forget about her. There were plenty of women out there, and most of them never asked you to kill anybody. How hard would it be to find somebody else?

Not like her, though. Never anybody like her. Never had been, and he somehow knew there never would be.

Never an afternoon like the one he’d just spent. Never. Drained him, emptied him out — and, even so, just remembering it was getting him stirred up again.

He was at the window now. It was open a few inches, as she’d said it would be, and through it he could hear the voices of the baseball announcers, the crack of the bat, the subdued roar of the crowd. The mindless prattle of the commercial. “Bud.” “Wei.” “Ser.”

He strained to hear more. Movement from the man. The husband.

The monster.

He got up on his toes, hooked his hands under the bottom edge of the window. He was standing in a bed of shrubbery, and it struck him that he was leaving footprints. Have to get rid of the shoes, too, he thought, along with the rest of his clothes.

Unless he gave it up and went home right now.

But how much better he’d feel if he went home in triumph, with the monster slain and the maiden won!

Besides, he realized, he wanted to do it. Wanted to thrust with the dagger, to flail away with the war club. God help him, he couldn’t wait.

He took a full breath and eased the window all the way open.

She hadn’t beenable to eat. Now, upstairs in the bedroom she shared with her husband, she found herself unable to sit still. Her pulse was rapid, her mouth dry, her palms damp.

Any minute now...

She stripped to her skin, let her clothes lie where they fell. She sat up in bed and gazed down at her naked body, as if with a lover’s eyes. And touched herself, as if with a lover’s hands.

Remembering:

Crouching over him, she’d reached to probe with a finger, felt him stiffen and resist. Probed again, not to be denied, and felt him open up reluctantly to her. Unwilling to respond, unable to keep from responding...

Her own excitement was mounting now. He was at the window now, he had to be, she was sure of it. But she was stuck up here, unable to know what was happening downstairs in the den. His den, George’s den, and her lover was at the window, must be at the window, had to be at the window...

She looked down at her hands, then closed her eyes, remembering:

“God, Rita, what you do to me.”

“I had two fingers in you.”

“God.”

“First one and then two.”

“I wasn’t expecting that.”

“You liked it.”

“It was... interesting.”

“You didn’t want to like it, but you liked it.”

“Well, the novelty.”

“Not just the novelty. You liked it.”

“Well.”

“Next time I’ll use my whole hand.”

“Rita, for God’s sake—“

She made a fist, opened it and closed it, opened it and closed it, watching the expression on his face.

“You’ll like it,” she said.

And he was down there now. She knew he was, she could tell, she could feel him there. She cupped her breasts, felt their weight, then let her hands slide lower. Let her fingers move, let her fantasies build, let her excitement mount...

She was close, very close. Hovering there, not wanting to go any further, wanting to stay there, right on the brink—

A shot rang out.

God!

She stayed there, stayed right there, right on the edge, right on the fucking edge, trembling, trembling, hot and wet and trembling, and waiting, God, waiting, Christ, waiting—

Another shot. No louder than the first, how could it be louder than the first, but God, it seemed louder—

She cried out with joy and fell back onto the bed.

She was wearinga blue satin robe. Her feet were bare. She stepped carefully into the den and gasped at the sight of the man lying there. He was dressed all in black and lay sprawled on his back like a rag doll discarded by a spoiled child. One hand was at his side, the fingers splayed. The other still gripped the hilt of a foot-long dagger.

She drew back involuntarily, then forced herself to take a closer look. “Yes,” she said, turning from the corpse. “Yes, that’s the man.”

“James Beckwith,” the detective said.

“Is that his name?”

“According to the ID in his wallet.”

“I never knew his name,” she said. “When I reported him to the police, I didn’t have a name to give them. Because I never knew it.”

“You gave them a good description,” the detective said. “When I called in just now, they read it back to me, and it was all right on the money. Height, weight, age, hair color, everything down to the mole on his right cheek. That was what, four days ago that you reported him?”

She nodded. “Can we go in the other room now? Seeing him there like that...”

In the living room the detective said, “You did the right thing, filing the report. He was stalking you and you reported it. It’s a shame we couldn’t have done anything that might have prevented this, but—”

“You didn’t have a name,” her husband said. “You couldn’t have him picked up, not if you didn’t know who he was.”

“No, but we could have staked out your house, and we would have if we’d had reason to believe he was planning anything like this. But we get so many complaints of this nature it’s hard to know which ones to take seriously. So we wait and see if the guy takes it to a new level, and then we do something.”

“It’s a shame it came to this,” her husband said. “Possibly, with professional help—”

The detective was shaking his head. “My opinion,” he said, “a guy’s got this particular kind of a screw loose, there’s not a whole lot anybody can do for him. You can say it’s a shame he got hurt, but the thing to focus on is nobody else got hurt, not you and not your wife. That dagger he was holding, in fact he’s still holding it, well, I don’t think he was planning on using it for a toothpick. It’s a damn good thing you had the gun handy.”

“It’s usually locked in a desk drawer. Ever since Rita told me about this fellow, about the remarks and the threats—”

“And I believe he assaulted you physically, ma’am?”

“My breasts,” she said, and lowered her eyes. “He ran up and took hold of my breasts. It was the most awful violation.”

The detective shook his head. “You can call him a sick man,” he said, “and say he was emotionally disturbed, but another way of looking at it is he got pretty much what he deserved.”

“He’s gone,” shesaid.

“He’s gone, and the rest of them are gone, and the body’s gone.”

“The body.”

“And they took my gun, but your friend swears I’ll get it back.”

“My friend?”

“He’d certainly like to be your friend. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you. When he wasn’t trying for a glimpse of your tits he was looking at your little pink toes.”

“I guess I should have put slippers on.”

“And fastened the top button of your robe. But I think you were just fine the way you were. Quite fetching, and the detective thought so, too.”

“And now he’s gone, and we’re alone. So tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

‘Tell me everything, George. I was going crazy, sitting up there and not knowing what was going on down here.”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“How could I know? Maybe he’d chicken out. Maybe you actually would fall asleep—”

“Small chance of that.”