Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Don’t even say that.”

“Why not? That’s the best policy anyway, and it’s part of the fun, isn’t it? If it weren’t so much fun there wouldn’t be so many people doing it, would there?”

“Stop.”

“ ‘Stop, stop, stop.’ You don’t look very strong. I bet you’d be easy to kill.”

“Why kill me?”

“Why not?”

“The police would be after you. People don’t get away with murder.”

“Are you kidding? People get away with murder every day. And they wouldn’t have any idea who to look for.”

“You’d leave evidence behind. They have these new techniques, matching the DNA.”

“Maybe I’ll practice safe sex.”

“Even so, there’s always physical evidence.”

“They could use it to convict me after they caught me, but it wouldn’t help them catch me. And I don’t intend to be caught. They haven’t caught me so far.”

“What?”

“Did you think you were the first?”

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe evenly, regularly. Her heart was racing. Evenly she said, “All right, you’ve got me frightened. I suppose that’s what you wanted.”

“It’s part of it.”

“Are you satisfied now?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say I was satisfied,” he said. “I wouldn’t use that word. I won’t be satisfied until I’ve got you raped and strangled and lying in a ditch. And incidentally there’s not a lot of physical evidence unless they find you fairly quickly, and I’m pretty good at hiding things. They may not find you for months.”

“Oh, don’t do this to me—”

“By then you’ll be nothing but a memory to me,” he said. “That’s all I’ll have of you, that and your little finger.”

“My little finger?”

“The little finger of your left hand.” He shrugged. “I’m the kind of sentimental fool who likes to take a souvenir. I won’t cut it off until afterward. You won’t feel a thing.”

“My God,” she said. “You’re crazy.”

“Do you really think so? Maybe this is just a joke.”

“It’s not a funny one.”

“We could argue the point. But if it’s not a joke, if I’m serious, does that necessarily mean I’m crazy? And what act would serve to identify me as crazy? Am I crazy if I rape you? Crazy if I kill you? Or only crazy if I cut off your finger?”

“Don’t do this.”

“I don’t see anything fundamentally wacko in wanting a souvenir. Something to remember you by. Remember the song?”

“Please. Please.”

“Now I’ll ask you a question I asked you before. What do you think’s in the pouch?”

“The pouch?”

He took it from the dashboard, held it in the palm of his hand. “Guess the contents,” he said, “and you win the prize. What’s in the bag?”

“Oh, God. I’m going to be sick.”

“Want to see for yourself?”

She shrank from it.

“Suit yourself,” he said, returning it to the dashboard. “Because of our conversation, because of a chance remark about little fingers, you’ve jumped to the conclusion that the pouch contains something grisly. It could be full of cowrie shells, or horse chestnuts, or jelly beans, but that’s not what you think, is it? I think it’s time to stop and pull off the road, don’t you think?”

“No!”

“You want me to keep driving?”

“Yes.”

“Then take off your sweater.” She stared at him. “Your choice,” he said. “Take off the sweater or I put on the brakes. Come on. Take it off.”

“Why are you making me do this?”

“The same reason some people make other people dig their own graves. It saves time and effort. First unhook your seat belt, make it easier for yourself. Oh, very pretty, very pretty. You’re terrified now, aren’t you? Say it.”

“I’m terrified.”

“You’re scared to death. Say it.”

“I’m scared to death.”

“And now I think it’s time to find a parking place.”

“No!” she cried. Her foot found his and pressed the accelerator flat against the floorboards, while her hand wrenched the wheel hard to the right. The car took flight. Then there was impact, and then there was noise, and then there was nothing.

She came to suddenly, abruptly. She had a headache and she’d hurt her shoulder badly and she could taste blood in the back of her throat. But she was alive. God, she was alive!

The car was upside down, its top crushed. And he was behind the wheel, his head bent at an impossible angle. Blood trailed from the corner of one eye, and more blood leaked from between his lips. His eyes were wide open, staring, and rolled up in their sockets.

The passenger door wouldn’t open. She had to roll down the window and wriggle out through it. She felt faint when she stood up, and she had to hold on to the side of the car for support. She looked in the window she had just crawled through, and there, within reach, was the leather drawstring pouch.

She had not willed her foot to press down on the gas pedal, or her hand to yank the steering wheel. She did not now will her hand to reach through the window and extract the leather pouch. It did so of its own accord.

You don’t have to open it, she told herself.

She took a breath. Yes you do, she thought, and loosened the drawstring.

Inside, she found a small bottle of aspirin, a package of cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers, a small tin of nonprescription stay-awake pills, a bank-wrapped roll of quarters, and a nail clipper. She looked at all of this and shook her head.

But he’d made her take her sweater off. And it was still off, she was bare to the waist.

She couldn’t find her sweater, couldn’t guess where it had landed after the car flipped and bounced around. She tried one of the rear doors and managed to open it. When she did so the dome light went on, which made it easier for her to see what she was doing.

She found a sweatshirt in one of her bags and put it on. She found her purse — it had somehow ended up in the backseat — and she set that aside. And something made her open one of his bags and go through it, not certain what she was looking for.

She had to go through a second bag before she found it. A three-blade pocketknife with a simulated stag handle.

She cut off the little finger of his left hand. This was harder than it sounded, but she kept at it, and she seemed to have all the time in the world. Not a single car had passed on that desolate road.

When she was done she closed his knife and put it in her purse. She dumped everything else from the drawstring pouch, put the finger inside it, and tucked the pouch into her purse. Then, her purse on her shoulder, she made her way to the road and began walking along it, toward whatever came next.

Just a fewminutes before twelve on one of the best Sunday nights of the summer, a clear and fresh-aired and moonlit night, Thomas M. “Lucky Tom” Carroll collected his black snap-brim hat from the hat-check girl at Cleo’s Club on Broderick Avenue. He tipped the girl a crisp dollar bill, winked briskly at her, and headed out the front door. He was fifty-two, looked forty-five, felt thirty-nine. He flipped his expensive cigar into the gutter and strolled to the Cleo’s Club parking lot next door, where his very expensive, very large car waited in the parking space reserved for it.

When he had settled himself behind the wheel with the key fitted snugly in the ignition, he suddenly felt that he might not be alone.

Hearing a clicking sound directly behind him, Carroll stiffened, and then the little man in the backseat shot him six times in the back of the head. While the shots echoed deafeningly, the little man opened the car door, jammed his gun into the pocket of his suit jacket, and scurried off down the street as fast as he could, which was not terribly fast at all. He peeled his white gloves from his tiny hands, and managed to slow down a bit. Holding the white gloves in one hand, he looked rather like the White Rabbit rushing frenetically to keep his appointment with the Duchess.