Lawrence Block - The Girl with the Long Green Heart

“Go on.”

“Let him see that you wouldn’t mind making a buck. Make him draw it out of you a little at a time, but make sure he knows you’re glad to look out for number one as long as it’s safe.”

I thought it over. “You’re right,” I said.

“It was just an idea—”

“No. You’re right. I may have played it a little too angelic. It’s an easy role to fall into.” I finished my drink. “Still worried?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I’ll be worried until this is over. God, if this falls in—” She closed her eyes. “Doug Rance is sitting safe across the border. You can hop on a plane and disappear far enough so that no one will ever find you. And he wouldn’t even try too hard. But me — if he ever finds out, John, I’ve had it. The viper in his bosom.” She managed a somewhat brave smile. “He would only kill me,” she said.

A whole batch of lines didn’t do the job. Don’t worry, everything’ll be all right, it’s in the bag — you don’t throw phrases like those at a woman who’s telling you how she stands a fair chance of getting killed. You don’t say anything at all.

I kissed her. She held back at first, too much involved in dreams of doom to ride it all the way. Then the fear broke and she came to me, and the wheels went around again and the slot machine paid off again. There was nothing casual about it.

I took her on her living room couch with her blouse half off and her skirt bunched up around her waist. The couch was too short, engineered for more sedate pleasures. The lights were all too bright. None of this mattered much.

Afterward, she got up to throw our steaks on the fire. I lit us a couple of cigarettes and made a fresh pair of drinks. We didn’t talk much. It wasn’t necessary.

“What do I do when this is over, John?”

“Take the money and run.”

“And then?”

I had my arm around her. I drummed my fingers against the curve of her shoulder. “According to Doug,” I said, “you’ve got a program figured. Meet a rich man and marry him.”

She was silent.

“Something wrong?”

“I’ve already got a rich man. And it wouldn’t be very different being married to him. I’d just feel like a whore with a license. I don’t know what I’ll wind up doing. Right now I can’t think very much past a day or two after tomorrow.”

We were listening to an Anita O’Day record. Some song about a nightingale. The mood was as mellow as that girl’s voice. We could have used a fireplace with thick logs burning. And some very old cognac.

I said, “You could always stay with the grift.” I made it light.

“Me?” She laughed softly. “I’d shake apart into little pieces.”

“Not you.”

“The way I’ve been?”

“You’ve been beautiful,” I told her. “The nervousness doesn’t mean a thing. Anyone who knows what he’s doing and cares how it turns out gets nervous.”

“Even you?”

“Me more than most.”

“You don’t let it show.”

“It’s there, though.”

She found a cigarette. I lit it for her. “Would you work with me again on something like this? I mean if I weren’t a part of it to begin with. If I was just another hand in the game. Would you want me in on it?”

“Any time.”

“Then maybe I’ve got a career after all. We’ll be partners.”

“You’re forgetting something.”

“Oh?”

“I’m about to retire,” I said. “Remember?”

“I didn’t forget.” She drew on her cigarette, took it from her lips, stared at its tip. “I wasn’t sure whether or not that was the truth. About quitting, buying that roadhouse.”

“Does it sound pipe-dreamish?”

“That’s not it. I thought it might be part of a line. It sounded sincere enough at the time, but later, well, you’re very good at sounding sincere. Will you really do it, John?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure you can make a go of it?” She didn’t have to coax me. I was not exactly playing hard to get. I swung into a reading of The Dream, the unabridged version. She kept her head on my shoulder and said the right words at all of the right places. I was long sold on the dream myself, but now it was coming out rosier than ever.

“Colorado,” she said. “What’s it like out there?”

“You’ve never been West?”

“Well, Las Vegas and Reno. But that’s not the same, is it? All bright lights and no clocks in the casinos and lots of small men with eyes that never show expression. What’s Colorado like?”

“Nothing like Vegas.”

“Tell me about it.”

So I talked about air that lifted you up onto your toes when you filled up your lungs with it, and mountains that climbed straight up and dropped off sharp and clean, and the way the trees turned overnight in early October. I probably sounded very chamber of commerce. I’m apt to get that way. I’ve always loved that kind of country. The grift always kept me in the cities, mostly on the Coast, because that was where the action was. But I never really felt I was breathing in the cities, especially in the smog belt. And in Q there were times, a couple of them, when I found myself gasping like a trout in a net. The prison doctors said it was psychosomatic. They were probably right. It still had felt very damned fine to be back in the mountains.

Anita stopped singing somewhere in the middle of the lecture, and some clown came on the radio with a fast five minutes of news. Evvie switched off the radio and came back and put her head on my shoulder where it belonged and listened some more. When I finally ran out of gas she didn’t say anything. I was a little embarrassed. It’s hard to talk like a poet without feeling like a jackass.

Then she said, “You make it sound pretty.”

“It is.”

“You even make it sound... possible. Quitting the racket, doing what you said.”

“It’s more than possible, Evvie.”

She said, “I wish—” And let it hang there.

First in Q, and then on the outside, there had been many versions of The Dream. Step by step it focused itself and narrowed itself down. Finding Bannion’s had been a final touch. Each version of The Dream had become just a shade more specific than the last.

Each version had had The Girl. Sometimes she was formless, and other times she was remarkably well drawn. Sometimes she was a glorious innocent, and she either accepted my past and forgave it or else she knew not a thing about it. In other versions she was a trifle soiled herself — a grifting girl, or a halfway hooker, or any of a dozen shadow-world types. Part of the past, but with me in the future.

But every version had The Girl.

And I heard myself saying, “It wouldn’t be exciting. But excitement wears thin after a while. It’s good country, Evvie. You’d love it out there—”

She stood up, walked across the room. I sat where I was and listened to my words bouncing off the walls.

She said, “You’re not conning me, are you?”

“I don’t think I could.”

“Because that was starting to sound alarmingly like a proposal.”

“Something like that.”

She turned. She looked at me, straight at me, and I drank the depths of her eyes. Then she began to nod, and she said, “Yes. Oh, yes, yes.”

I saw Gunderman in the morning. I did not much want to see him. I was not in the mood to play a part. The night with Evvie had flattened out the hunger pains, and a hungry man makes a better fisherman.

But the hook was already set, the line already strung halfway across the lake. Even a well-fed angler can reel in a big one, especially when the fish practically jumps into the boat. My heart was not exactly in it, but it did not exactly have to be. Gunderman made it easy.