Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Right.”

“So maybe nobody else even knows that there were three homicides involving Ackermans. Maybe you and me are the only people in the city who happened to notice this little coincidence.”

“So?”

“So maybe there’s something we didn’t notice,” Freitag said. He got to his feet. “Maybe there have been more than three. Maybe if we pull a printout of deaths over the past few weeks we’re going to find Ackermans scattered all over it.”

“Are you serious, Jack?”

“Sounds crazy, don’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s how it sounds, all right.”

“If there’s just the three it don’t prove a thing, right? I mean, it’s a common name and you got lots of people dying violently in New York City. When you have eight million people in a city it’s no big surprise that you average three or four murders a day. The rate’s not even so high compared to other cities. With three or four homicides a day, well, when you got three Ackermans over a couple of weeks, that’s not too crazy all by itself to be pure coincidence, right?”

“Right.”

“Suppose it turns out there’s more than the three.”

“You’ve got a hunch, Jack. Haven’t you?”

Freitag nodded. “That’s what I got, all right. A hunch. Let’s just see if I’m nuts or not. Let’s find out.”

“A fifth ofCourvoisier, V.S.O.P.” Mel Ackerman used a stepladder to reach the bottle. “Here we are, sir. Now will there be anything else?”

“All the money in the register,” the man said.

Ackerman’s heart turned over. He saw the gun in the man’s hand and his own hands trembled so violently that he almost dropped the bottle of cognac. “Jesus,” he said. “Could you point that somewhere else? I get very nervous.”

“The money,” the man said.

“Yeah, right. I wish you guys would pick on somebody else once in a while. This makes the fourth time I been held up in the past two years. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, wouldn’t you? Listen, I’m insured, I don’t care about the money, just be careful with the gun, huh? There’s not much money in the register but you’re welcome to every penny I got.” He punched the No Sale key and scooped up bills, emptying all of the compartments. Beneath the removable tray he had several hundred dollars in large bills, but he didn’t intend to call them to the robber’s attention. Sometimes a gunman made you take out the tray and hand over everything. Other times the man would take what you gave him and be anxious to get the hell out. Mel Ackerman didn’t much care either way. Just so he got out of this alive, just so the maniac would take the money and leave without firing his gun.

“Four times in two years,” Ackerman said, talking as he emptied the register, taking note of the holdup man’s physical appearance as he did so. Tall but not too tall, young, probably still in his twenties. White. Good build. No beard, no mustache. Big mirrored sunglasses that hid a lot of his face.

“Here we go,” Ackerman said, handing over the bills. “No muss, no fuss. You want me to lie down behind the counter while you go on your way?”

“What for?”

“Beats me. The last guy that held me up, he told me so I did it. Maybe he got the idea from a television program or something. Don’t forget the brandy.”

“I don’t drink.”

“You just come to liquor stores to rob ’em, huh?” Mel was beginning to relax now. “This is the only way we get your business, is that right?”

“I’ve never held up a liquor store before.”

“So you had to start with me? To what do I owe the honor?”

“Your name.”

“My name?”

“You’re Melvin Ackerman, aren’t you?”

“So?”

“So this is what you get,” the man said, and shot Mel Ackerman three times in the chest.

“It’s crazy,” Freitagsaid. “What it is is crazy. Twenty-two people named Ackerman died in the past month. Listen to this. Arnold Ackerman, fifty-six years of age, lived in Flushing. Jumped or fell in front of the E train.”

“Or was pushed.”

“Or was pushed,” Freitag agreed. “Wilma Ackerman, sixty-two years old, lived in Flatbush. Heart attack. Mildred Ackerman, thirty-six, East Eighty-seventh Street, fell from an eighteenth-story window. Rudolph Ackerman, that’s the Transit Authority cop, killed his wife and kids and shot himself. Florence Ackerman was stabbed, Samuel Ackerman fell down a flight of stairs, Lucy Ackerman took an overdose of sleeping pills, Walter P. Ackerman was electrocuted when a radio fell in the bathtub with him, Melvin Ackerman’s the one who just got shot in a holdup—” Freitag spread his hands. “It’s unbelievable. And it’s completely crazy.”

“Some of the deaths must be natural,” Poolings said. “Here’s one. Sarah Ackerman, seventy-eight years old, spent two months as a terminal cancer patient at St. Vincent’s and finally died last week. Now that has to be coincidental.”

“Uh-huh. Unless somebody slipped onto the ward and held a pillow over her face because he didn’t happen to like her last name.”

“That seems pretty far-fetched, Jack.”

“Far-fetched? Is it any more far-fetched than the rest of it? Is it any crazier than the way all these other Ackermans got it? Some nut case is running around killing people who have nothing in common but their last names. There’s no way they’re related, you know. Some of these Ackermans are Jewish and some are gentiles. It’s one of those names that can be either. Hell, this guy Wilson Ackerman was black. So it’s not somebody with a grudge against a particular family. It’s somebody who has a thing about the name, but why?”

“Maybe somebody’s collecting Ambroses,” Poolings suggested.

“Huh? Where’d you get Ambrose?”

“Oh, it’s something I read once,” Poolings said. “This writer Charles Fort used to write about freaky things that happen, and one thing he wrote was that a guy named Ambrose had walked around the corner and disappeared, and the writer Ambrose Bierce had disappeared in Mexico, and he said maybe somebody was collecting Ambroses.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah. But what I meant—”

“Maybe somebody’s collecting Ackermans.”

“Right.”

“Killing them. Killing everybody with that last name and doing it differently each time. Every mass murderer I ever heard of had a murder method he was nuts about and used it over and over, but this guy never does it the same way twice. We got — what is it, twenty-two deaths here? Even if some of them just happened, there’s no question that at least fifteen out of twenty-two have to be the work of this nut, whoever he is. He’s going to a lot of trouble to keep this operation of his from looking like what it is. Most of these killings look like suicide or accidental death, and the others were set up to look like isolated homicides in the course of a robbery or whatever. That’s how he managed to knock off this many Ackermans before anybody suspected anything. Ken, what gets me is the question of why. Why is he doing this?”

“He must be crazy.”

“Of course he’s crazy, but being crazy don’t mean you don’t have reasons for what you do. It’s just that they’re crazy reasons. What kind of reasons could he have?”

“Revenge.”

“Against all the Ackermans in the world?”

Poolings shrugged. “What else? Maybe somebody named Ackerman did him dirty once upon a time and he wants to get even with all the Ackermans in the world. I don’t see what difference it makes as far as catching him is concerned, and once we catch him the easiest way to find out the reason is to ask him.”

“ If we catch him.”