Lawrence Block - The Girl with the Long Green Heart

She still wore the jade heart. I touched it, let my fingers trail down to her breasts. She purred again.

“I’ll get dressed and drive you back.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Well, you can’t walk, for God’s sake.”

“Why not? It’s a nice night.”

“It’s a long walk.”

“How far?”

“Nine or ten blocks, I think. All the way down to North Union and then over to the hotel. Let me drive you, John.”

“I feel like walking.”

I dressed. I finished my drink and she worked on hers. It was late and the night outside was cold and quiet.

I said, “He’s going to keep you busy tomorrow morning with a million crazy questions. You know what to tell him. Then he may want to see me, or he may try to stall for more time. I don’t think I should let him stall too much. I’m going to grab a plane tomorrow afternoon.”

“For Toronto?”

“Yes.” I drew on a cigarette. “The more I think about it, the more I think I shouldn’t see him tomorrow. It would be good if he got tied up with something during the morning that kept him busy until two or three in the afternoon, and then by the time he was ready for me it would be too late and I would have already left for the airport. I think that’s the way to do it, to give him the rope so that he can rope himself in a little.”

“What do you have to do in Toronto?”

“A lot of things. I’ll dodge around for about a week to give him time to get answers to his letters. Keep a close watch on him in the meantime. If he starts to go off the track, don’t keep it a secret. Get on the goddamn phone and call us.”

“Where?”

“You have the Barnstable number. It’s on our letterhead. Just call and talk to Doug.”

“Suppose I want to talk to you?”

I told her what hotel I was staying at, and how to reach me. I didn’t spend too much time at the hotel. I told her to leave messages if I wasn’t there, to give her name as Miss Carmody. If there was a message to the effect that Miss Carmody had called, I would try her first at her apartment and then at the office.

“And when will I see you again, John?”

“In about a week, maybe ten days. I think he’ll probably try to get in touch with us, and we’ll give him a short stall and then make contact again, probably with me coming down here to Olean again.”

She didn’t say anything. I knotted my tie and made the knot properly small and neat. I put a foot on a chair and tied my shoe. I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. It was a copper-enameled ashtray with a red and green geometric design on it, the sort of thing women make in Golden-Ager classes at the YWCA.

She said, “I’ll miss you.”

“Evvie—”

She stood up. I turned to her and kissed her. She was all breathless and shaky. There were deep circles under her eyes.

“I hope I’m not just part of the game, John. Cheat the mooch and sleep with the girl, all of it part of a package deal. I hope—”

“You know better.”

“I hope so,” she said.

The air was cool, the sky clear. There was a nearly full moon and a scattering of stars. Irving Street was wide, with tall shade trees lining the curbs on both sides of the street. The houses were set back a good ways from the curb. They were single homes built forty or fifty years ago. Most of them had upstairs porches. Some had bay windows and other gingerbread. I walked eight blocks down Irving to North Union without meeting anyone. A single car passed me, a cab, empty. He slowed, I shook my head, and he went on.

All but a few of the houses were completely dark inside. Here and there a light would be on upstairs, and in two houses I could see television screens flickering in darkened living rooms.

I turned left at North Union, crossed the street, found my way back to the Olean House. The lobby was deserted except for a sleepy old man at the desk and a very old woman who sat in one of the chairs opposite the fireplace reading a newspaper. I picked up my key at the desk and took the elevator upstairs.

It happens more often than it doesn’t. You’re caught up in something fast-moving and exciting and secretive, and this sudden common bond masks all of the things that you do not have in common, and moments are infused with a deceptive sort of vitality, and you wind up in the rack. Bells ring, all of that.

I went over to my window. There was nothing in particular to look at. Most of the stores on the main drag didn’t even bother keeping their windows lit. I smoked a cigarette.

It happens all the time. You try not to let it get mixed that way, the business and the pleasure. Like not going where you eat, a similar attempt to separate disparate functions. It is rarely as easy as it sounds, and circumstances can make it harder.

I was an old buck gone long in the tooth with an age-old weakness for pretty girls. And she had had four years of Wallace J. Gunderman, and simple biology could make her ready enough for a change of pace, especially when she could so easily talk herself into thinking that it all meant something. So it was all something to take and enjoy and forget soon after. It was just what she had said she hoped it wasn’t — part of the fruits of the game, her body along with her boss’s money. Take it and enjoy it and kiss it good-bye.

I got undressed and hung everything up neatly. I stood under a too-hot shower. I got out of the shower and sat on the edge of the bed and smoked another cigarette.

I told myself not to think about it. I put out my cigarette and reached for the phone. It took the old man a long time to answer. I gave him my name and my room number and told him to ring me at eleven, and not to put any calls through before then. He asked me to wait a minute. He dug up a pencil and I repeated the instructions to him very slowly while he wrote everything down. Then he read it back to me and I said yes indeed, fine, perfect.

I cradled the phone. I thought about the color of the jade heart against her white skin, and her eyes and hair and the way she smelled and the small sounds she made.

I went to bed and to sleep.

I’d been up for an hour and a half when the phone rang at eleven. The woman said, “It’s eleven o’clock, Mr. Hayden. You had several phone calls, but I didn’t put them through because there was a message that you weren’t to be disturbed.”

“Fine. Any messages?”

“The calls were all from Mr. Gunderman,” she said. She made the name sound almost holy. “You’re to call him as soon as possible.”

I sat around the hotel room for another half hour. I packed my suitcase, smoked a few cigarettes. I left the suitcase by the side of the bed and went downstairs for breakfast. At noon I called Gunderman’s office from a pay phone across the street.

Evvie answered. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hayden,” she said. “Mr. Gunderman is out to lunch.”

“I’m at a pay phone,” I said. “You can talk.”

“He’ll be sorry he missed your call, Mr. Hayden. He’s been trying to reach you all morning, but he had a luncheon appointment and he was called out.”

“Oh, I get it. There’s someone in the office.”

“That’s quite correct, Mr. Hayden.”

“Who is it? Gunderman?”

“No, I don’t believe so.”

“All right, it doesn’t matter. I’ll give you questions you can answer without any trouble. When do you expect him back?”

“Perhaps an hour, Mr. Hayden.”

“How did he take the line you handed him? Was he with it all the way?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And he’s very anxious to see me?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Then I think it’s just as well that he doesn’t. There’s a plane leaving Ischua Airport at four-thirty this afternoon. When he comes in, tell him I was over to the office. Can you do that?”