Lawrence Block - A Walk Among the Tombstones

“Ah, sweet Lucy,” he said. “I hate to see you go, child.”

He let go of her. I’d barely had a chance to look at her, half-shadowed by his body. Even in the darkness she looked pale and drawn. Her hands were clutched together at her waist, her arms tight against her sides, her shoulders hunched. She looked as though she was trying to present the smallest possible target to the world.

I said, “Come here, Lucia.” She didn’t move. I said, “Your father’s over there, darling. Go to your father. Go ahead.”

She took a step, then stopped. She looked very unsteady on her feet, and she was gripping one hand tightly with the other.

“Go on,” Callander told her. “Run!”

She looked at him, then at me. It was hard to tell what she was seeing because her gaze was unfocused, vacant. I wanted to pick her up, toss her over my shoulder, run back to where her father was waiting.

Or tug my jacket aside with one hand, draw the gun with the other, and drop both of the bastards where they stood. But the dark man’s gun was pointing at me, and Callander also had a gun in his hand now, a companion piece for the long knife he was still holding.

I called out to Yuri, told him to call her. “Luschka!” he cried. “Luschka, it’s Papa. Come to Papa!”

She recognized the voice. Her brow contracted in concentration, as if she was struggling to make sense out of the syllables.

I said, “In Russian, Yuri!”

He replied with something that I certainly couldn’t understand, but it evidently got through to Lucia. Her hands unclasped and she took a step, then another.

I said, “What’s the matter with her hand?”

“Nothing.”

As she drew alongside me I reached for her hand. She snatched it away from me.

There were two fingers missing.

I stared at Callander. He looked almost apologetic. “Before we set the terms,” he said, by way of explanation.

There was another burst of Russian from Yuri, and now she was moving faster, but hardly running. She couldn’t seem to manage more than an awkward shuffle, and I wasn’t sure how long she could sustain even that much.

But she stayed on her feet and kept going, and I stayed on mine and looked into the barrels of two handguns. The dark man stared silently at me, still a study in rage, while Callander watched the girl. He kept the gun pointed at me but he couldn’t keep his eyes from turning to her, and I could feel how much he wanted to swing the gun, too, in her direction.

“I liked her,” he said. “She was nice.”

THE rest of it was easy. I opened the second suitcase and stepped back a few paces. Ray came forward to inspect the contents of both cases while his partner kept me covered. The bills got only a cursory examination. He flipped through half a dozen packs, but he didn’t count any of them, or make a rough count of the number of packets. Nor did he spot the counterfeits, but I don’t think anybody on earth would have.

He closed the cases and fastened their clasps, then drew his gun again and stood aside while the dark-haired man came to pick up both of them, grunting with the effort. It was the first sound he had made in my presence.

“Take one at a time,” Callander said.

“They ain’t heavy.”

“Take one at a time.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Ray,” he said, but he put down one of the suitcases and went off with the other.

He wasn’t gone long, and neither Ray nor I spoke in his absence. When he got back he hefted the second case and pronounced it lighter than its fellow, as if this meant we’d cheated him on the count.

“Then it should be easier to carry,” Callander said patiently. “Go ahead now.”

“We oughta plug this cocksucker, Ray.”

“Another time.”

“Fucking dope-dealing cop. Oughta blow his head off.”

When he had gone Callander said, “You promised us a week. Will you keep your word on that?”

“Longer if I can.”

“I’m sorry about the finger.”

“Fingers.”

“As you prefer. He’s difficult to control.”

I thought, But you were the one who used the wire on Pam.

“I appreciate the week’s lead time,” he went on. “I think it’s time to try a change of climate. I don’t think Albert will want to come with me.”

“You’ll leave him here in New York?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“How did you find him?”

He smiled faintly at the question. “Oh,” he said, “we found each other. People with specialized tastes often find each other like that.”

It was an odd moment. I had the sense that I was talking to the person behind the mask, that our circumstances had provided a rare window of opportunity. I said, “May I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why the women?”

“Oh, my. Take a psychiatrist to answer that, wouldn’t it? Something buried in my childhood, I suppose. Isn’t that what it always turns out to be? Weaned too early or too late?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t care how you got that way. I just want to know why you do it.”

“You think I have a choice?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Hmmm. That’s not so easy to answer. Excitement, power, just sheer intensity — words fail me. Do you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been on a roller coaster? Now I hate roller coasters, I haven’t been on one in years, I get sick to my stomach. But if I didn’t hate roller coasters, if I loved them, then that’s what it would be like.” He shrugged. “I told you. Words fail me.”

“You don’t sound like a monster.”

“Why should I?”

“What you do is monstrous. But you sound like a human being. How can you—”

“Yes?”

“How can you do it?”

“Oh,” he said. “They’re not real.”

“What?”

“They’re not real,” he said. “The women. They aren’t real. They’re toys, that’s all. When you have a hamburger are you eating a cow? Of course not. You’re eating a hamburger.” A slight smile. “Walking down the street she’s a woman. But once she gets in the truck that’s over. She’s just body parts.”

A chill ran the length of my spine. When that happened my late aunt Peg used to say a goose must have just walked over my grave. A funny expression, that. I wonder where it came from.

“But do I have a choice? I think I do. It’s not as though I’m driven to act out every time the moon is full. I always have a choice, and I can choose not to do anything, and I do choose not to, and then one day I choose the other way.

“So what kind of choice is it, really? I can postpone it, but then the time comes when I don’t want to postpone it any longer. And postponing just makes it sweeter, anyway. Maybe that’s why I do it. I read that maturity consists of the ability to defer gratification, but I don’t know if this is what they had in mind.”

He looked to be on the point of further revelation, and then something shifted within him and the window of opportunity slammed shut. Whatever real self I’d been talking to ducked back behind its protective body armor. “Why aren’t you afraid?” he asked, petulant. “I’ve got a gun on you and you act like it’s a water pistol.”

“There’s a high-powered rifle trained on you. You wouldn’t get a step.”

“No, but what good would it do you? You’d think you would be scared. Are you a brave man?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m not going to shoot. And let Albert keep everything? No, I don’t think so. But I think it’s time for me to melt into the shadows. Turn around, start walking back toward your friends.”

“All right.”

“There’s no third man with a rifle. Did you think there was?”