Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“I wonder if that could be true.”

“It’s not impossible, is it? And we had to let him go.”

“We’ll never have to do that again.”

“No,” Grodin agreed. “One good thing’s come of this. The new law is not perfect, God knows. Instant trials and speedy hangings are not what democracies ought to aspire to. But it is comforting to know that we will not be in this position again. Gershon?”

“Yes?”

“Stop the car, please. Pull off on the shoulder.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. But there is something I’ve decided to tell you. Good, and turn off the engine. We’ll be here a few moments.” Grodin squeezed his eyes shut, put his hand to his forehead. Without opening his eyes he said, “Anselmo said he and I would meet again. I told you the other day that he was wrong.”

“I remember.”

“He’ll never return to Israel, you see. He’ll meet his friends, if one calls such people friends, and he’ll go wherever he has it in mind to go. And in two weeks or a month or possibly as much as two months he will experience a certain amount of nervousness. He may be mentally depressed, he may grow anxious and irritable. It’s quite possible that he’ll pay no attention to these signs because they may not be very much out of the ordinary. His life is disorganized, chaotic, enervating, so this state I’ve discussed may be no departure from the normal course of things.”

“I don’t understand, Nahum.”

“Then after a day or so these symptoms will be more pronounced,” Grodin went on. “He may run a fever. His appetite will wane. He’ll grow quite nervous. He may talk a great deal, might even become something of a chatterbox. You recall that he said he sleeps like a baby. Well, he may experience insomnia.

“Then after a couple of days things will take a turn for the worse.” Grodin took a pinseal billfold from his pocket, drew out an unfolded sheet of paper. “Here’s a description from a medical encyclopedia. ‘The agitation of the sufferer now becomes greatly increased and the countenance now exhibits anxiety and terror. There is marked embarrassment of the breathing, but the most striking and terrible features of this stage are the effects produced by attempts to swallow fluids. The patient suffers from thirst and desires eagerly to drink, but on making the effort is seized with a violent suffocative paroxysm which continues for several seconds and is succeeded by a feeling of intense alarm and distress. Indeed the very thought of drinking suffices to bring on a choking paroxysm, as does also the sound of running water.

“ ‘The patient is extremely sensitive to any kind of external impression — a bright light, a loud noise, a breath of cool air — anything of this sort may bring on a seizure. There also occur general convulsions and occasionally a condition of tetanic spasm. These various paroxysms increase in frequency and severity with the advance of the disease.’ ”

“Disease?” Gershon Meir frowned. “I don’t understand, Nahum. What disease? What are you driving at?”

Grodin went on reading. “ ‘The individual experiences alternate intervals of comparative quiet in which there is intense anxiety and more or less constant difficulty in respiration accompanied by a peculiar sonorous exhalation which has suggested the notion that the patient barks like a dog. In many instances—’ ”

“A dog!”

“ ‘In many instances there are intermittent fits of maniacal excitement. During all this stage of the disease the patient is tormented with a viscid secretion accumulating in his mouth. From dread of swallowing this he constantly spits about himself. He may also make snapping movements of the jaws as if attempting to bite. These are actually a manifestation of the spasmodic action which affects the muscles in general. There is no great amount of fever, but the patient will be constipated, his flow of urine will be diminished, and he will often feel sexual excitement.

“ ‘After two or three days of suffering of the most terrible description the patient succumbs, with death taking place either in a paroxysm of choking or from exhaustion. The duration of the disease from the first declaration of symptoms is generally from three to five days.’ ”

Grodin refolded the paper, returned it to his wallet. “Rabies,” he said quietly. “Hydrophobia. Its incubation period is less than a week in dogs and other lower mammals. In humans it generally takes a month to erupt. It works faster in small children, I understand. And if the bite is in the head or neck the incubation period is speeded up.”

“Can’t it be cured? I thought—”

“The Pasteur shots. A series of about a dozen painful injections. I believe the vaccine is introduced by a needle into the stomach. And there are other less arduous methods of vaccination if the particular strain of rabies virus can be determined. But they have to be employed immediately. Once the incubation period is complete, once the symptoms manifest themselves, then death is inevitable.”

“God.”

“By the time Anselmo has the slightest idea what’s wrong with him—”

“It will be too late.”

“Exactly,” Grodin said.

“When you gave him the pentothal—”

“Yes. There was more than pentothal in the needle.”

“I sensed something.”

“So you said.”

“But I never would have guessed—”

“No. Of course not.”

Gershon Meir shuddered. “When he realizes what you did to him and how you did it—”

“Then what?” Grodin spread his hands. “Could he be more utterly our enemy than he is already? And I honestly don’t think he’ll guess how he was tricked. He’ll most likely suppose he was exposed to rabies from an animal source. I understand you can get it from inhaling the vapors of the dung of rabid bats. Perhaps he’ll hide out in a bat-infested cave and blame the bats for his illness. But it doesn’t matter, Gershon. Let him know what I did to him. I almost hope he guesses, for all the good it will do him.”

“God.”

“I just wanted to tell you,” Grodin said, his voice calmer now. “There’s poetry to it, don’t you think? He’s walking around now like a time bomb. He could get the Pasteur shots and save himself, but he doesn’t know that, and by the time he does—”

“God.”

“Start the car, eh? We’d better be getting back.” And the older man straightened up in his seat and rubbed the throbbing knuckles of his right hand. They ached, but all the same he was smiling.

They grabbed CaroleButler a few minutes before midnight just a block and a half from her own front door. It never would have happened if her father had let her take the car. But she was six months shy of eighteen, and the law said you had to be eighteen to drive at night, and her father was a great believer in the law. So she had taken the bus, got off two blocks from her house, and walked half a block before a tall thin man with his hat down over his eyes appeared suddenly and asked her the time.

She was about to tell him to go buy his own watch when an arm came around her from behind and a damp cloth fastened over her mouth and nose. It smelled like a hospital room.

She heard voices, faintly, as if from far away. “Not too long, you don’t want to kill her.”

“What’s the difference? Kill her now or kill her later, she’s just as dead.”

“You kill her now and she can’t make the phone call.”

There was more, but she didn’t hear it. The chloroform did its work and she sagged, limp, unconscious.

At first, whenshe came to, groggy and weak and sick to her stomach, she thought she had been taken to a hospital. Then she realized it was just the smell of the chloroform. Her head seemed awash in the stuff. She breathed steadily, in and out, in and out, stayed where she was, and didn’t open her eyes.