Lawrence Block - After the First Death

“You knew it all along.”

She nodded. “And after he was shot, when they didn’t know if he would come to or not I was praying he would die. All the time that you were hoping he would talk I was praying he’d the with his mouth shut. So you would never know. I fell apart when the cop came out and said he talked. And then let you go to see him. I knew what was coming and I fell apart inside. I tried to stop you-”

I remembered. “I never even thought she could have been killed for private reasons. It never occurred to me.”

“Well, you wanted to be innocent, Alex.”

“Uh-huh.”

She took one of my hands in hers. “Listen to me,” she said. “You killed somebody once. You got drunk and you didn’t know what you were doing and it happened. All right. You have a temper, Alex. You do. You told me about your sister-in-law, how you were ready to kill her-”

“Anybody would have-”

“And with that fence, Alex, I saw the look on your face. You were ready to take him apart. You got on top of it and nothing happened, but imagine if you were drunk at the time.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Or with Phillie, the way you beat up on him. You weren’t just trying to frighten him. You just let go.” She squeezed my hand. “Look, you have a temper and one time it got away from you. You were drunk and it got loose. But you lived with that for a few years, Alex, and you’re free now, and it’s over.”

“And I’m a killer again.”

“You want to write out a label and paste it on your forehead. Killer. Listen, you want to know something? I had three abortions. Three. I can’t ever have kids. So I’m three killers.”

“It’s not the same.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You know the difference.”

“Maybe.”

“I was going to go back to work,” I said. “I was going to become a professor again. I don’t feel very professorial right now.”

“Maybe you still can.”

“Not a chance.”

“Well, you can do something.”

“What?”

A stretch of silence. Then, “I just wish I knew how to say things better. I know what I want to say but I don’t get the words right.”

“Go ahead.”

She turned away from me. In a small, clear voice she said, “Well, I don’t know what good it does either of us, Alex, but I love you. That’s all.”

In the little bedroom where she had never lain with any man but me I said, “I can’t be in very good shape after all that drinking. I may not be much good to you.”

“Oh, Alex. Oh, baby.”

“How soft you are.”

“Baby-”

“How warm.”

And afterward, in the warm sweet darkness, I said, “You’re not going out tonight You’re staying here.”

“Yes.”

And neither of us said anything about tomorrow.

She stayed home the next night, and the night after that. But the following night she told me she had to go out for awhile.

“Stay here.”

“You know I got to go out.”

“I have money.”

She started to cry. I didn’t know why, and I waited, and she said, “Alex, it’s bad enough I have to be a whore. But I won’t be your whore, I won’t do it. I won’t take your money and put it in my arm.”

“Do you need it that much?”

“You know how I get. You’ve seen me. You know what I am.”

“Could you kick?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did before.”

“Yeah. A few times.”

“Could you do it again?”

“Kicking is easy. How many times did you quit smoking? And start up again?”

We tossed it back and forth for a while, and then of course she went out as she had planned, and I wanted a drink for the first time since the binge. But instead I stayed in the apartment and drank coffee. She was gone a few hours. When she came back she went straight into the bathroom and stood under the shower for half an hour. Then she went into the bedroom and took a shot and then she came out and looked at me and started to cry.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

“Well try.”

“I just don’t know.”

“I love you, you know.”

“I know it. Otherwise you couldn’t stand me.”

“We’ll try.”

“The things we do to ourselves, Alex. The things we do to each other.” She slumped on the couch. “I couldn’t turn myself off tonight That’s what I always have to do, to turn myself off and just be a machine. I couldn’t make it tonight. I thought I was going to be sick. I wanted to die.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“They have this thing called methadone for when you want to kick. It makes it easier. You would have to help me.”

“I will.”

“Alex, I can’t guarantee a thing-”

“We’ll try, that’s all.”

“What happens if I fall down?”

“I pick you up again.”

“You won’t let go, will you?”

“No. Never.”

She only fell down once and she got up right away and stayed on her feet. And after she was past the methadone and the codeine and the thiamine, after she was as clean as doctors could make her, we got out of the city and came here. It’s a little town in Montana where you can drink the air and breathe the water, and it is three thousand miles and several hundred years away from Times Square.

We have new names, and if anybody knows who we are they haven’t let us know about it. We bought a little diner and live in the three rooms upstairs of it. I do most of the cooking, and seem to have an aptitude for it. Jackie is putting on weight and looks better than ever. We don’t make much money, but we don’t need much money, either. And when you own a restaurant you never go hungry.

Understand this, it is not all roses. We are not sure that we will make it. Nothing is ever certain. We do not know quite where we are going. But where you are going is less important, I think, than where you are. And still less important is where you have been.

In the summer of 1964, I moved from the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Tonawanda to Racine, Wisconsin, to take an editorial position in the coin supply division of Whitman Publishing Company, a division of Western Printing. I enjoyed my time in the corporate world, but a year and a half of it turned out to be enough, and in early 1966 my then-wife and I and our two daughters moved into a large, well-appointed house in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was down the street from my agent, Henry Morrison, and a block away from Don Westlake, my best friend.

I’d done some non-numismatic (currency-related) writing during my sojourn in Racine, completing the second Jill Emerson novel ( Enough of Sorrow ), a Gold Medal Books crime novel ( The Girl with the Long Green Heart ), and the first Evan Tanner adventure ( The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep ). In New Brunswick I installed my massive oak desk in a third-floor study and went right to work on a second Tanner book. I was freelancing full time again and glad to be back to it.

Once a week I’d go to New York, generally getting a ride in from Henry. I’d participate in a poker game that four or five of us had kicked off in 1960-and that continues to this day, albeit monthly rather than weekly. And sometimes, after the game broke up, I’d pursue other interests in and around Times Square, catching a train home the following afternoon.

Around this time a lot of criminals drew “Get Out of Jail Free” cards, courtesy of some Supreme Court decisions. Because their confessions had been improperly obtained, because they’d been denied counsel, because in one way or another their rights had been violated, they got to walk out and go home-at least until they got picked up for doing the same thing over again.