Лоуренс Блок - Death Pulls a Doublecross [= Cowards Kiss]

I didn’t. I stayed behind him and I kept the Beretta centered on his back. He led the way to the bathroom, opened the door of the medicine cabinet. He took out a small phial of pills, held it up and studied the contents thoughtfully.

“I’ve carried them for so long a time,” he said. “When the Reich fell we all supplied ourselves with them. I’ve had them ever since. Some of us carried them in our mouths, ready to bite down on the capsule when it became necessary. Himmler managed that. He cheated his captors, died before their eyes.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’ve had them with me ever since,” he went on. “Even when I felt most secure they were always within reach. Habit, perhaps. I almost took them once. It was in Mexico City. I was in the air terminal waiting for a plane and two Jewish agents passed within arm’s reach of me. I had a pill in my mouth. I was ready to use it the minute I was recognized. But they did not recognize me.”

He uncapped the phial and tilted it. A large brown capsule rolled into the palm of his hand. He studied it.

“I threw that pill away,” he said. “Not then. Not until I was in Buenos Aires. I took it from my mouth when I stepped onto the plane, and I sat in my seat in the plane with the pill clutched in my hand. I expected agents to meet the plane. They did not. I took an apartment in Buenos Aires and threw the pill away. But I kept the others. And now I have occasion to use them.”

There was a glass on the shelf over the sink. It was still in its cellophane wrapper. He set the pill on the shelf and unwrapped the glass. He let the water run for a minute or two, then filled the glass to the brim.

“I’m not sure about this,” he said. “Do I swallow the pill or crush it in my teeth? Swallowing would be simpler. But the capsule might not dissolve. It didn’t dissolve when I had it in my mouth.”

He went on talking in the same gentle tone of voice. “I could have thrown the water in your face,” he said. “It would have been a chance, if a slim one. But I think you would have shot me. And the shot might not have killed me, and then we would have had the unpleasantness of police and a trial and the rest. It’s really not worth the chance. But how do you measure worth here? Is it worth any risk to save one’s life? All the logic in the world won’t answer that question.”

He poured the water into the sink, put the glass back on the shelf. He picked up the pill and held it between thumb and forefinger.

“They’re supposed to be painless,” he said. “Almost instantaneous. I wonder if that’s so or not. I really hope so. I’m a physical coward, Mr. London.”

“You’re a brave man.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “Bravery and resignation are not synonymous, not by any means. I’m simply a resigned coward.”

He put the pill in his mouth. Then he changed his mind and took it out again.

“There’s one point,” he said. “You might as well know this. I lied to you about one thing. I did it more to simplify procedures than anything else. Alicia wasn’t nude when I left her. After I killed her, that is.”

“I know.”

“Do you know what she was wearing?”

“Yes.”

A smile. “You know so many things, Mr. London. There are things I wish I knew. I wish I knew just what will happen after I put this little pill to use. Will it end there? The religious myths are really a little hard to take, yet I wish I could accept them. Even Hell would be preferable to simple nonexistence. The churches make a mistake, you know. Simple nothingness is more terrible than any Hell they have managed to devise. Sulfur and brimstone cannot compare.”

“Maybe it’s like going to sleep.”

He shook his head. “Sleep implies an eventual awakening. But I’m afraid it’s a moot point. A semantic game. And why puzzle over it when I can find out the answer in an instant?”

I wanted to tell him to put down the pill, to run, to catch a plane and disappear. But I thought of the dead blonde and the dead thieves and the corpse in Argentina. I thought of a little man found leaning against a Hell’s Kitchen warehouse, and I thought of six million of his relatives in German ovens.

I still wanted to let him go.

He smiled at me. Then he popped the pill into his mouth and closed his eyes. His jaws twitched once as he bit into the pill. His eyes opened, and for a tiny speck of time he looked at me. Then he fell to the floor and died.

I gave my car back to the garage. The same kid was still on duty and he had something suitably inane to say. But I didn’t hear it. I wasn’t listening.

The air smelled of a storm on the way. It had begun that way and it was ending the same way, with the city crouching under rain clouds. I walked home with the briefcase under my arm. I climbed the stairs and nobody shot at me from behind. I unlocked my door and went inside. There were no surprises — no dark little men with guns, no briefcases, no disorder. Just my apartment, just as I had left it.

I filled a glass with cognac and worked on it. I thought about love and death. I thought about Alicia Arden, about the kind of girl she must have been, about the girl she had been to the men who had known her. I thought about a girl of my own and found myself smiling. I picked up the phone and dialed Maddy’s number.

“Hi,” I said. “How was the audition?”

“Ed,” she chirped. “Oh, it was fine, it was great, I’ll tell you about it later. But what happened? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“How... how did everything go?”

“All right. Lots of things happened.”

“Tell me. You didn’t get hurt, did you? You’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said again. “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Can you come right down? Or should I come up?”

“Neither,” I said. “I’ll be down in an hour or so. We can grab a late dinner. I’ll take you out and feed you.”

“I’ll cook, Ed. I feel like cooking tonight. Why don’t you come down right away? I thought you were all finished.”

“Almost,” I said. “I’ll see you in two hours at the outside. And cook a big dinner. I’ll need it.”

I stood there a moment, thought about her, remembered how her voice sounded. I wondered what was coming up next for us, what she would be to me and what I would be to her. I thought about love, about its effect on some people I knew. It was either the most essential single thing in the world or the one thing a man had to learn to get by without, and I couldn’t make up my mind which way it worked. You could argue either side.

I lit a pipe, poured more cognac. And made another phone call.

Kaye answered. When she recognized my voice she started talking very fast and very shakily.

“Oh, Ed,” she said. “Ed, I’ve been worrying about you. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” I told her. “What do you mean?”

She hesitated. “Oh, I don’t know. But you’ve been calling Jack and seeing Jack and I was all worried.”

“What about?”

“About you.”

“Me?”

A pause. “Ed, if you’re... sick... you can tell me, Ed. I have a right to know. I—”

I laughed, as much out of relief as anything else. “It’s not for me,” I improvised. “It’s for Jack. He needed a detective and wanted to keep the business in the family. A few clients did a skip and he wanted me to run a tracer on them, get them to pay their bills. I don’t think you should worry yourself sick over it.”

She sounded very happy. “But I worry,” she said. “I mean, you’re all alone in the world, Ed.”

“I’ve got a pretty sweet sister—”

“You know what I mean. If you had a wife to take care of you I wouldn’t worry.”