Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Or Trenholmes. But there are plenty of Emilys, aren’t there?”

“Huh?”

“Well, he doesn’t have to pick his next victims by last name. In fact, he’d probably avoid that because the police would pick up on something like that in a minute after this business with the Ackermans. He could establish some other kind of category. Men with beards, say. Oldsmobile owners.”

“Oh, my God.”

“People wearing brown shoes. Bourbon drinkers. Or, uh, girls named Emily.”

“That’s not funny, Bill.”

“Well, no reason why it would have to be Emily. Any first name — that’s the whole point, the random nature of it. He could pick guys named Bill, as far as that goes. Either way it would probably take the police a while to tip to it, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“You upset, Emily?”

“Not upset, exactly.”

“You certainly don’t have anything to worry about,” he said, and slipped an arm protectively around her waist. “I’ll take good care of you, baby.”

“Oh, will you?”

“Count on it.”

They walked together in silence for a while and after a few moments she relaxed in his embrace. As they waited for a light to change he said, “Collecting Emilys.”

“Pardon?”

“Just talking to myself,” he said. “Nothing important.”

When she heardhis car in the driveway she hurried at once to the door and opened it. Her first glimpse of his face told her all she wanted to know. She’d grown used to that expression over the years, the glow of elation underladen with exhaustion, the whole look foreshadowing the depression that would surely settle on him in an hour or a day or a week.

How many times had he come home to her like this? How many times had she rushed to the door to meet him?

And how could he go on doing this, year after year after year?

She could see, as he walked toward her now, just how much this latest piece of work had taken out of him. It had drawn new lines on his face. Yet, when he smiled at her, she could see too the young man she had married so many years ago.

Almost thirty years, and she treasured all those years, every last one of them. But what a price he’d paid for them! Thirty years in a dangerous, draining business, thirty years spent in the company of violent men, criminals, killers. Men whose names were familiar to her, men like Johnny Speed and Bart Callan, men he had used (or been used by) on and off throughout his career. And other men he would work with once and never again.

“It’s finished,” she said.

“All wrapped up.” His smile widened. “You can always tell, can’t you?”

“Well, after all these years. How did it go?”

“Not bad. It’s gone better, but at least it’s finished and I got out of it alive. I’ll say this for it, it’s thirsty work.”

“Martini?”

“What else?”

She made a pitcher of them. They always had one drink apiece before dinner, but on the completion of a job he needed more of a release than came with one martini. They would drain the pitcher, with most of the martinis going to him, and dinner would be light, and before long they would be in bed.

She stirred at the thought. He would want her tonight, he would need her. Their pleasure in each other was as vital as ever after almost thirty years, if less frequently taken, and they both lived for nights like this one.

She handed him his drink, held her own aloft. “Well,” she said.

“Here’s to crime,” he said. Predictably.

She drank without hesitating, but later that evening she said, “You know, I like our toast less and less these days.”

“Well, get a new toaster. We can afford it. They have models now that do four slices of bread at a time.”

“I mean Here’s to crime. You knew what I meant.”

“Of course I knew what you meant. I don’t know that I like it much myself. Here’s to crime. Force of habit, I guess.”

“It takes so much out of you, darling. I wish—”

“What?”

She lowered her eyes. “That you could do something else.”

“Might as well wish for wings.”

“You’re really that completely locked in?”

“Of course I am, baby. Now how many times have we been over this? I’ve been doing this my whole life. I have contacts, I have a certain reputation, there are some people who are kind enough to think I’m good at what I do—”

“You’d be good at anything you did.”

“That’s a loyal wife talking.”

“It’s still true.”

He put his hand on hers. “Maybe. Sometimes I like to think so. And other times it seems to me that I was always cut out for this line of work. Crime and violence and sudden death.”

“You’re such a gentle, gentle man.”

“Don’t let the word get out, huh? Not that anyone would be likely to believe you.”

“Oh, baby—”

“It’s not such a bad life, kid. And I’m too old to change now. Isn’t it funny how I get older all the time and you stay the same? It’s my bedtime already, an old man like me.”

“Some old man. But I guess you’re tired.”

“I said bedtime. I didn’t say anything about being tired.”

But in thedays that followed she knew just how tired he was, and there was a brooding quality to his exhaustion that frightened her. Often at such times he liked to get away, and they would flee the city and spend a couple of weeks unwinding in unfamiliar terrain. This time, when his depression failed to pass, she suggested that they go away for a while. But he didn’t want to go anywhere. He didn’t even want to leave the house, and he passed the daytime hours sitting in front of the television set or turning the pages of books and magazines. Not watching the television, not reading the books and magazines.

At one point she thought he might want to talk about his work. In their first years together he had been excited about what he did, and at times she had felt herself a participant. But with the passage of time and with his growing discontent about his profession he tended to keep more and more of it to himself. In a sense she was grateful; it alienated her, the corruption and violence, the wanton killing, and it was easier for her to love him if she let herself dissociate the man from his work. And yet she wondered if this didn’t make the burden on his shoulders that much heavier for the lack of anyone to share it.

So she made an effort. “You’ve hardly talked about it,” she said one afternoon. “It went well, you said.”

“Well enough. Won’t make us rich, but it went quite smoothly. Hit a couple of snags along the way but nothing serious.”

“Who was in this one? Johnny Speed?”

“No.”

“Callan?”

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to use Callan anymore. No, none of the regulars came into it this time. Let’s say I put it together with a cast of unknowns. And there was nobody in it I’d care to work with again.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Hardly anybody got out of it alive, as a matter of fact.”

“Then it was very violent.”

“You might say that.”

“I thought so. I can tell, you know.”

“You’ve said that before. It’s hard to believe, but I guess I believe you.”

“If there were just a way to avoid the violence, the awful bloodshed—”

He shook his head. “Part of the game.”

“I know, but—”

“Part of the game.”

She let it go.

His mood lifted,of course. The depression had been deeper than usual and had lasted longer than usual, but it was not nearly so deep or so enduring as some he — and she — had been forced to live through in the past. Some years previously drinking had become a problem. Alcoholism was virtually an occupational illness in his profession, and of course it made efficient functioning impossible.