Lawrence Block - A Ticket To The Boneyard

I called her name again but evidently she had the water running and didn't hear me. I put the gun under my belt again, then drew it out and walked down the short hallway to the living room carrying it in my hand. I wanted coffee, if it was ready, and I wanted to work out how we were going to play the scene.

I walked into the living room and turned toward the kitchen and stopped in my tracks, because he was standing there with his back to the window and Elaine at his side and a little in front of him. He had one hand on her arm, just above the elbow, and with the other he was gripping her wrist.

He said, "Put the gun down. Now, right this minute, or I'll break her arm."

The gun wasn't pointed at him, and I wasn't holding it right, I didn't have my finger anywhere near the trigger. I was holding it in my hand the way you'd hold a plate of hors d'oeuvres.

I put the gun down.

She had described him well, the long angular body, spare of flesh but tight as a coiled spring, the narrow face, the eccentric haircut. Someone had used a clippers on everything outside the perimeter of the soup bowl, and his hair perched on his head like a skullcap. His nose was long, and fleshy at the tip, and his lips were quite full. His forehead sloped back, and beneath it his eyes were set deep under a prominent ridge of brow. The eyes were a sort of muddy brown, and I couldn't read anything in them.

His features and his hairstyle combined to give him a faintly medieval look, like an evil friar, but his clothes didn't fit the part. He wore an olive corduroy sport jacket with leather piping at the cuffs and lapels and tooled leather patches on the elbows. His pants were khaki, with a knife-edge crease, and he was wearing lizard boots with one-inch heels and silver caps on their pointed toes. His shirt was western style, with snaps instead of buttons, and he had one of those string ties with a turquoise slide.

"You must be Scudder," he said. "The pimping cop. Elaine wanted to let you know I was here, but I thought it would be nicer to surprise you. I told her I was sure you were a man who enjoyed surprises. I told Elaine not to make a sound, and so she didn't make a sound, not even when I hurt her. She does what I tell her. Do you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because she's beginning to realize I know what's best for her. I know what she needs."

His pallor was such that he didn't look to have any blood in his body. Beside him, Elaine was a matching shade; the blood had drained out of her face, and her strength and resolve looked to have gone with it. She looked like a zombie in a horror movie.

"I know what she needs," he said again, "and what she doesn't need is a dull-witted cop to pimp for her."

"I'm not her pimp."

"Oh? What are you then? Her lawfully wedded husband? Her demon lover? Her twin brother, separated from her at birth? Her long-lost bastard son? Tell me what you are."

It's funny what you notice. I kept looking at his hands. They still gripped her arm at the wrist and above the elbow. She'd told me how much strength he had in his hands, and I didn't doubt her word, but they didn't look that strong. They were large hands and his fingers were long, and knobby at the knuckle joints. The fingernails were short, clipped clear to the quick, and they had well-defined moons at their bases.

"I'm her friend," I said.

" I'm her friend," he said. "I'm her friends and her family." He paused for a moment, as if to relish the sound of that statement. He looked as though he liked it well enough. "She doesn't need anyone else. She certainly doesn't need you." He smiled just enough to show his prominent front teeth. They were large and slightly bucked. Horse teeth. Briskly he said, "Your services are no longer required. Your period of employment is terminated. You're out on your ass, you piece of shit. She doesn't want you around. Don't just stand there, with your face hanging out like bloomers on a tenement washline. Go. Scat!"

"Well, I don't know," I said. "I'm here at Elaine's invitation, not yours. Now if she wants me to leave—"

"Tell him, Elaine."

"Matt—"

"Tell him."

"Matt, maybe you'd better go."

I looked at her, trying to cue her with my eyes. "Do you really want me to leave?"

"I think you'd better."

I hesitated for a beat, then shrugged. "Whatever you say," I said, and moved toward the table where I'd set the gun down.

"Hold it! What do you think you're doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm getting my gun."

"I can't allow that."

"Then I don't see how the hell I can leave," I said, reasonably. "That's my service revolver, and I'd be in shit up to my ears if I left it here."

"I'll break her arm."

"I don't care if you break her neck. I'm not going anywhere unless the gun goes with me." I thought for a moment. I said, "Look, I'll pick it up by the barrel. I'm not looking to shoot anybody with it. I just want to walk out of here with it."

While he worked it out I took another two steps and reached out to take the gun by the barrel. I kept the gun within his field of vision, so that he could see it was no danger to him. I couldn't have shot him anyway; he had Elaine positioned between us, and his fingers looked to be digging into her flesh. If she was in pain, I don't think she was aware of it. All that showed in her face was a mix of fear and despair.

Gun in hand, I angled forward and to my right. I was getting closer to him, but moving to put the coffee table between us. It was a flattened cube, of plywood I suppose, clad in white Formica. As I walked, I said, "I got to hand it to you, you made me look stupid. How did you get past the doorman?"

He just smiled.

"And through the door," I said. "That's a good lock there, and she swore you didn't have a key. Or did you? Or did she open it for you?"

"Put the gun away," he said. "And go."

"Oh, this? It bother you?"

"Just put it away."

"If it bothers you," I said, "here." And I tossed it at him.

He was holding her arm too hard, that was his mistake. It slowed his reaction time. He had to let go before he could do anything else, and instead his hands tightened reflexively and she cried out. He let go then, snatching at the gun, but by then I had a foot out to kick the coffee table at him, and I did, hard. It caromed into his shins even as I was launching myself over it and into him. The two of us sailed into a wall — we didn't miss the window by much — and the impact took the breath out of him. He wound up on his back and I wound up on top of him, and when I'd scrambled free he was still on the floor. I hit him on the chin, hard, and his eyes glazed. I grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him back against the wall and hit him three times in the middle. He was all muscle and all hard, but I put a lot into my punches and they got through. He sagged, and I swung a forearm and put my whole shoulder into it, and my elbow got him in the chin and put his lights out.

He lay on the floor like a rag doll, his head and shoulders propped against the white wall, one leg drawn up, one fully extended. I stood there, breathing hard, staring down at him. One of his hands lay on the floor, the fingers splayed. I remembered the look of the fingers gripping Elaine's arm, and I had the urge to move my foot a few inches so that it covered that hand, then lean my weight onto that foot and see if that didn't take some of the strength out of those steel fingers.

Instead I retrieved my piece and wedged it under my belt, then turned to Elaine. Some of the color had returned to her face. She didn't look wonderful, but she looked a lot better than she had when he was holding her arm.

She said, "When you said you didn't care if he broke my neck—"

"Oh, come on. You had to know I was setting him up."