Lawrence Block - A Stab in the Dark

He had a cigarette in one hand. As I approached he moved purposefully into my path and asked me for a match.

That's how the bastards do it. One stops you and sizes you up. The other moves in behind you, and you get a forearm across the windpipe, a knife at your throat.

I don't smoke but I generally have a pack of matches in my pocket. I cupped my hands, scratched a match. He tucked the unlit cigarette between his lips and leaned forward, and I flipped the burning match in his face and went in under it, grabbing and shoving hard, sending him reeling into the brick wall behind him.

I whirled myself, ready for his partner.

There was nobody behind me. Nothing but an empty street.

That made it simpler. I kept turning, and I was facing him when he came off the wall with his eyes wide and his mouth open. He was my height but lighter in build, late teens or early twenties, uncombed dark hair and a face white as paper in the light of the streetlamps.

I moved in quick and hit him in the middle. He swung at me and I sidestepped the punch and hit him again an inch or two above his belt buckle. That brought his hands down and I swung my right forearm in an arc and hit him in the mouth with my elbow. He drew back and clapped both hands to his mouth.

I said, "Turn around and grab that wall! Come on, you fucker. Get your hands on the wall!"

He said I was crazy, that he hadn't done anything. The words came out muffled through the hands he was holding to his mouth.

But he turned around and grabbed the wall.

I moved in, hooked a foot in front of his, drew his foot back so that he couldn't come off the wall in a hurry.

"I didn't do nothing," he said. "What's the matter with you?"

I told him to put his head against the wall.

"All I did was ask you for a match."

I told him to shut up. I frisked him and he stood still for it. A little blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Nothing serious. He was wearing one of those leather jackets with a pile collar and two big pockets in front. Bomber jackets, I think they call them. The pocket on the left held a wad of Kleenex and a pack of Winston Lights. The other pocket held a knife. A flick of my wrist and the blade dropped into place.

A gravity knife. One of the seven deadly weapons.

"I just carry it," he said.

"For what?"

"Protection."

"From who? Little old ladies?"

I took a wallet off his hip. He had ID that indicated he was Anthony Sforczak and he lived in Woodside, Queens. I said, "You're a long ways from home, Tony."

"So?"

He had two tens and some singles in his wallet. In another pants pocket I found a thick roll of bills secured by a rubber band, and in the breast pocket of his shirt, under the leather jacket, I found one of those disposable butane lighters.

"It's out of fluid," he said.

I flicked it. Flame leaped from it and I showed it to him. The heat rose and he jerked his head to the side. I released the thumbcatch and the flame died.

"It was out before. Wouldn't light."

"So why keep it? Why not throw it away?"

"It's against the law to litter."

"Turn around."

He came off the wall slowly, eyes wary. A little line of blood trailed from the corner of his mouth down over his chin. His mouth was starting to puff up some where my elbow had caught him.

He wouldn't die of it.

I gave him the wallet and the cigarette lighter. I tucked the roll of bills in my own pocket.

"That's my money," he said.

"You stole it."

"Like hell I did! What are you gonna do, keep it?"

"What do you think?" I flicked the knife open and held it so that the light glinted off the face of the blade. "You better not turn up in this part of the city again. Another thing you better not do is carry a blade when half the department's looking for the First Avenue Slasher."

He stared at me. Something in his eyes said he wished I didn't have that knife in my hand. I met his gaze and closed the knife, dropped it on the ground behind me.

"Go ahead," I said. "Be my guest."

I balanced on the balls of my feet, waiting for him. For a moment he might have been considering it, and I was hoping he'd make a move. I could feel the blood singing in my veins, pulsing in my temples.

He said, "You're crazy, you know? What you are is crazy," and he edged off ten or twenty yards, then half-ran to the corner.

I stood watching until he was out of sight.

The street was still empty. I found the gravity knife on the pavement and put it in my pocket. Across the street, Armstrong's door opened and a young man and woman emerged. They walked down the street holding hands.

I felt fine. I wasn't drunk. I'd had a day of maintenance drinking, nothing more. Look how I'd handled the punk. Nothing wrong with my instincts, nothing slow about my reflexes. The booze wasn't getting in the way. Just a matter of taking on fuel, of keeping a full tank. Nothing wrong with that.

I came suddenly awake. There was no warm-up period. It was as abrupt as turning on a transistor radio.

I was on my bed in my hotel room, lying on top of the covers with my head on the pillow. I had piled my clothes on the chair but slept in my underwear. There was a foul taste in my dry mouth and I had a killer headache.

I got up. I felt shaky and awful, and a sense of impending doom hung in the air, as though if I turned around quickly I could look Death in the eye.

I didn't want a drink but knew I needed one to take the edge off the way I felt. I couldn't find the bourbon bottle and then I finally found it in the wastebasket. Evidently I'd finished it before I went to bed. I wondered how much it had contained.

No matter. It was empty now.

I held out a hand, studied it. No visible tremors. I flexed the fingers. Not as steady as Gibraltar, maybe, but not a case of the shakes, either.

Shaky inside, though.

I couldn't remember returning to the hotel. I probed gingerly at my memory and couldn't get any further than the boy scuttling down the street and around the corner. Anthony Sforczak, that was his name.

See? Nothing wrong with the memory.

Except that it ran out at that point. Or perhaps a moment later, when the young couple came out of Armstrong's and walked up the street holding hands. Then it all went blank, coming into focus again with me coming to in my hotel room. What time was it, anyway?

My watch was still on my wrist. Quarter after nine. And it was light outside my window, so that meant a.m. Not that I really had to look to be sure. I hadn't lost a day, just the length of time it took me to walk half a block home and get to bed.

Assuming I'd come straight home.

I stripped off my underwear and got into the shower. While I was under the spray I could hear my phone ringing. I let it ring. I spent a long time under the hot spray, then took a blast of cold for as long as I could stand it, which wasn't very long. I toweled dry and shaved. My hand wasn't as steady as it might have been but I took my time and didn't cut myself.

I didn't like what I saw in the mirror. A lot of red in the eyes. I thought of Havermeyer's description of Susan Potowski, her eyes swimming in blood. I didn't like my red eyes, or the mesh of broken blood vessels on my cheekbones and across the bridge of my nose.

I knew what put them there. Drink put them there. Nothing else. I could forget about what it might be doing to my liver because my liver was tucked away where I didn't have to look at it every morning.

And where nobody else could see it.

I got dressed, put on all clean clothes, stuffed everything else in my laundry bag. The shower helped and the shave helped and the clean clothes helped, but in spite of all three I could feel remorse settling over my shoulders like a cape. I didn't want to look at the previous night because I knew I wasn't going to like what I'd see there.