Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Hockey’s my game.”

“Hockey,” Freitag said. “Well, the Rangers stink, too. Only they stink on ice.” He leaned back in his chair and laughed at his own wit and stopped thinking of two murder victims who both happened to be named Ackerman.

Mildred Ackerman layon her back. Her skin was slick with perspiration, her limbs heavy with spent passion. The man who was lying beside her stirred, placed a hand upon her flesh and began to stroke her. “Oh, Bill,” she said. “That feels so nice. I love the way you touch me.”

The man went on stroking her.

“You have the nicest touch. Firm but gentle. I sensed that about you when I saw you.” She opened her eyes, turned to face him. “Do you believe in intuition, Bill? I do. I think it’s possible to know a great deal about someone just on the basis of your intuitive feelings.”

“And what did you sense about me?”

“That you would be strong but gentle. That we’d be very good together. It was good for you, wasn’t it?”

“Couldn’t you tell?”

Millie giggled.

“So you’re divorced,” he said.

“Uh-huh. You? I’ll bet you’re married, aren’t you? It doesn’t bother me if you are.”

“I’m not. How long ago were you divorced?”

“It’s almost five years now. It’ll be exactly five years in January. That’s since we split, but then it was another six months before the divorce went through. Why?”

“And Ackerman was your husband’s name?”

“Yeah. Wallace Ackerman.”

“No kids?”

“No, I wanted to but he didn’t.”

“A lot of women take their maiden names back after a divorce.”

She laughed aloud. “They don’t have a maiden name like I did. You wouldn’t believe the name I was born with.”

“Try me.”

“Plonk. Millie Plonk. I think I married Wally just to get rid of it. I mean Mildred’s bad enough, but Plonk? Like forget it. I don’t think you even told me your last name.”

“Didn’t I?” The hand moved distractingly over Millie’s abdomen. “So you decided to go on being an Ackerman, huh?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Why not indeed.”

“It’s not a bad name.”

“Mmmm,” the man said. “This is a nice place you got here, incidentally. Been living here long?”

“Ever since the divorce. It’s a little small. Just a studio.”

“But it’s a good-sized studio, and you must have a terrific view. Your window looks out on the river, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, sure. And you know, eighteen flights up, it’s gotta be a pretty decent view.”

“It bothers some people to live that high up in the air.”

“Never bothered me.”

“Eighteen floors,” the man said. “If a person went out that window there wouldn’t be much left of her, would there?”

“Jeez, don’t even talk like that.”

“You couldn’t have an autopsy, could you? Couldn’t determine whether she was alive or dead when she went out the window.”

“Come on, Bill. That’s creepy.”

“Your ex-husband living in New York?”

“Wally? I think I heard something about him moving out to the West Coast, but to be honest I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

“Hmmm.”

“And who cares? You ask the damnedest questions, Bill.”

“Do I?”

“Uh-huh. But you got the nicest hands in the world, I swear to God. You touch me so nice. And your eyes, you’ve got beautiful eyes. I guess you’ve heard that before?”

“Not really.”

“Well, how could anybody tell? Those crazy glasses you wear, a person tries to look into your eyes and she’s looking into a couple of mirrors. It’s a sin having such beautiful eyes and hiding them.”

“Eighteen floors, that’s quite a drop.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” he said, and smiled. “Just thinking out loud.”

Freitag looked upwhen his partner entered the room. “You look a little green in the face,” he said. “Something the matter?”

“Oh, I was just looking at the Post and there’s this story that’s enough to make you sick. This guy out in Sheepshead Bay, and he’s a policeman, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

Poolings shrugged. “It’s nothing that doesn’t happen every couple of months. This policeman, he was depressed or he had a fight with his wife or something, I don’t know what. So he shot her dead, and then he had two kids, a boy and a girl, and he shot them to death in their sleep and then he went and ate his gun. Blew his brains out.”

“Jesus.”

“You just wonder what goes through a guy’s mind that he does something like that. Does he just go completely crazy or what? I can’t understand a person who does something like that.”

“I can’t understand people, period. Was this somebody you knew?”

“No, he lives in Sheepshead Bay. Lived in Sheepshead Bay. Anyway, he wasn’t with the department. He was a Transit Authority cop.”

“Anybody spends all his time in the subways, it’s got to take its toll. Has to drive you crazy sooner or later.”

“I guess.”

Freitag plucked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket, tapped it on the top of his desk, held it between his thumb and forefinger, frowned at it, and returned it to the pack. He was trying to cut back to a pack a day and was not having much success. “Maybe he was trying to quit smoking,” he suggested. “Maybe it was making him nervous and he just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“That seems a little far-fetched, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? Does it really?” Freitag got the cigarette out again, put it in his mouth, lit it. “It don’t sound all that far-fetched to me. What was this guy’s name, anyway?”

“The TA cop? Hell, I don’t know. Why?”

“I might know him. I know a lot of transit cops.”

“It’s in the Post. Bluestein’s reading it.”

“I don’t suppose it matters, anyway. There’s a ton of transit cops and I don’t know that many of them. Anyway, the ones I know aren’t crazy.”

“I didn’t even notice his name,” Poolings said. “Let me just go take a look. Maybe I know him, as far as that goes.”

Poolings went out, returning moments later with a troubled look on his face. Freitag looked questioningly at him.

“Rudy Ackerman,” he said.

“Nobody I know. Hey.”

“Yeah, right. Another Ackerman.”

“That’s three Ackermans, Ken.”

“It’s six Ackermans if you count the wife and kids.”

“Yeah, but three incidents. I mean it’s no coincidence that this TA cop and his wife and kids all had the same last name, but when you add in the schoolteacher and the faggot, then you got a coincidence.”

“It’s a common name.”

“Is it? How common, Ken?” Freitag leaned forward, stubbed out his cigarette, picked up a Manhattan telephone directory and flipped it open. “Ackerman, Ackerman,” he said, turning pages. “Here we are. Yeah, it’s common. There’s close to two columns of Ackermans in Manhattan alone. And then there’s some that spell it with two n ’s. I wonder.”

“You wonder what?”

“If there’s a connection.”

Poolings sat on the edge of Freitag’s desk. “How could there be a connection?”

“Damned if I know.”

“There couldn’t, Jack.”

“An old schoolteacher gets stabbed by a mugger in Washington Heights. A faggot picks up the wrong kind of rough trade and gets tied up and tortured to death. And a TA cop goes berserk and kills his wife and kids and himself. No connection.”

“Except for them all having the same last name.”

“Yeah. And the two of us just happened to notice that because we investigated the one killing and read about the other two.”