Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“It sure does. You’re about as crazy as a fox. Then we kill Ray and make it appear to be me.”

She nodded. “I thought of a way we could do it. I can’t believe it’s really me saying all of this! I thought we could do it that same night. You would come over to the house and I would let you in. We could get Ray in his sleep. Press a pillow over his face or something like that. I don’t know. Then we could load him into your car and drive somewhere and...”

“And put him over a cliff.” His eyes were filled with frank admiration. “Beautiful, just beautiful.”

“Do you really think so?”

“It couldn’t be better. They’ll have a perfect note, in my handwriting. They’ll have my car over a cliff and a burned body in it. And they’ll have a good motive for suicide. You’re a wonder, honey.”

She managed a smile. “Then your company won’t be hunting you, will they?”

“Not me or their money. Gambled every penny away — that’ll throw ’em a curve. I haven’t bet more than two bucks on a horse in my life. But your sweetheart of a husband will be gone, and somebody might start wondering where he is. Oh, wait a minute...”

“What?”

“This gets better the more I think about it. He’ll take my place in the car and I’ll take his on that plane to Europe. We’re the same build, his passport is in good order, and the reservations are all made. We’ll use those tickets to take the Grand Tour, except that we won’t come back. Or if we do, we’ll wind up in some other city where nobody knows us, baby. We’ll have every bridge burned the minute we cross over. When are you scheduled to take that trip?”

She closed her eyes, thought it through. “A week from Friday,” she said. “We fly to New York in the morning, and then on to Paris the next afternoon.”

“Perfect. You can expect company Thursday night. Slip downstairs after he goes to bed and let me into the house. I’ll have the note written. We’ll take care of him and go straight to the airport. We won’t even have to come back to the house.”

“The money?”

“I’ll have it with me. You can do your packing Thursday so we’ll have everything ready, passports and all.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I always knew you were wonderful, Marcia. I didn’t realize you were a genius.”

“You really think it will work?”

He kissed her and she clung to him. He kissed her again, then grinned down at her. “I don’t see how it can miss,” he said.

The days crawled. They couldn’t risk seeing each other until Thursday night, but Bruce assured Marcia that it wouldn’t be long.

But it was long. Although she found herself far calmer than she had dared to expect, Marcia was still anxious, nervous about the way it might go.

Oh, it was long, very long. Bruce called Wednesday afternoon to make final plans. They arranged a signaling system. When Ray was sleeping soundly, she would slip out of bed and go downstairs. She would dial his phone number. He would have the note written, the money stowed in the trunk of his car. As soon as she called he would drive over to her house, and she would be waiting downstairs to let him in.

“Don’t worry about what happens then,” he said. “I’ll take care of the details.”

That night and the following day consumed at least a month of subjective time for her. She called him, finally, at twenty minutes of three Friday morning. He answered at once.

“I thought you weren’t going to call at all,” he said.

“He was up late, but he’s asleep now.”

“I’ll be right over.”

She waited downstairs at the front door, heard his car pull to a stop, had the door open for him before he could knock. He stepped quickly inside and closed the door.

“All set,” he said. “The note, everything.”

“The money?”

“It’s in the trunk, in an attaché case, packed to the brim.”

“Fine,” she said. “It’s been fun, darling.”

But Bruce never heard the last sentence. Just as her lips framed the words, a form moved behind him and a leather-covered sap arced downward, catching him deftly and decisively behind the right ear. He fell like a stone and never made a sound.

Ray Danahy straightenedup. “Out cold,” he said. “Neat and sweet. Take a look outside and check the traffic. This is no time for nosy neighbors.”

She opened the door, stepped outside. The night was properly dark and silent. She filled her lungs gratefully with fresh air.

Ray said, “Pull his car into the driveway alongside the house. Wait a sec, I think he’s got the keys on him.” He bent over Farr, dug a set of car keys out of his pocket. “Go ahead,” he said.

She brought the car to the side door. Ray appeared in the doorway with Bruce’s inert form over one shoulder. He dumped him onto the backseat and walked around the car to get behind the wheel.

“Take our buggy,” he told Marcia. “Follow me, but not too close. I’m taking Route Thirty-two north of town. There’s a good drop about a mile and a half past the county line.”

“Not too good a drop, I hope,” she said. “He could be burned beyond recognition.”

“No such thing. Dental x-rays — they can’t miss. It’s a good thing he didn’t have the brains to think of that.”

“He wasn’t very long on brains,” she said.

“Isn’t,” he corrected. “He’s not dead yet.”

She followed Ray, lagging about a block and a half behind him. At the site he had chosen, she stood by while he took the money from the trunk and checked Farr’s pockets to make sure he wasn’t carrying anything that might tip anybody off. Ray propped him behind the wheel, put the car in neutral, braced Farr’s foot on the gas pedal. Farr was just beginning to stir.

“Good-bye, Brucie,” Marcia said. “You don’t know what a bore you were.”

Ray reached inside and popped the car into gear, then jumped aside. The heavy car hurtled through an ineffective guard rail, hung momentarily in the air, then began the long fast fall. First, there was the noise of the impact. Then there was another loud noise, an explosion, and the vehicle burst into flames.

They drove slowly away, the suitcase full of money between them on the seat of their car. “Scratch one fool,” Ray said pleasantly. “We’ve got two hours to catch our flight to New York, then on to Paris.”

“Paris,” she sighed. “Not on a shoestring, the way we did it last time. This time we’ll do it in style.”

She looked down at her hands, her steady hands. How surprisingly calm she was, she thought, and a slow smile spread over her face.

There is asilence that is just stillness, just the absence of sound, and there is a deeper silence that is more than that. It is the antithesis, the aggressive opposite, of sound. It is to sound as antimatter is to matter, an auditory black hole that reaches out to swallow up and nullify the sounds of others.

My mother can give off such a silence. She is a master at it. That morning at breakfast she was thus silent, silent as she cooked eggs and made coffee, silent while I spooned baby oatmeal into Livia’s little mouth, silent while Dan fed himself and while he smoked the day’s first cigarette along with his coffee. He had his own silence, sitting there behind his newspaper, but all it did was insulate him. It couldn’t reach out beyond that paper shield to snatch other sounds out of the air.

He finished and put out his cigarette, folded his paper. He said it was supposed to be hot today, with rain forecast for late afternoon. He patted Livia’s head, and with his forefinger drew aside a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead.