Lawrence Block - A Long Line of Dead Men

"Someone he knew?"

"Someone who knew him," I said. "Someone who called him by name. 'You're Ian Heller, aren't you? You don't remember me, but we met at So-and-so's party.' He'd know enough about Heller to find a pretext for conversation. Heller wouldn't worry about getting shoved in front of a train. If anything, he'd feel more secure than he'd felt a few minutes ago. He wasn't all alone with a group of potentially dangerous strangers. He had a friend with him."

Gordon Walser said it was diabolical. Lowell Hunter said, "You know, it reminds me of The Godfather. 'The attack when it comes will be from someone you trust, someone you would never doubt for a moment. That's who they'll use.' "

"That's how he must do it," I said. "In a way, Ian Heller was a bad example. His death occurred during rush hour. The platform was crowded, and anybody could have positioned himself properly and given him a well-timed shove. But it could have happened at an off-hour in an empty station, just the way I described it."

"So we'll stay away from subways," someone said.

"What you ought to do," I suggested, "is think of the killer more as a confidence man than a wild-eyed assassin. Think of him stalking Alan Watson on his way home, then conveniently running into him after Watson stopped for pizza on Austin Street. 'Alan, how are you? You walking home? I'm going the same way, I'll keep you company.' Even if Watson had never seen the guy before, he'd have to assume he was a neighbor, someone he'd met and forgotten. And they probably had a very pleasant conversation, right up to the time when the guy stuck a knife in Watson's chest."

"I don't know if I got through to them," I told Elaine. "A couple of them wanted to know if they ought to arm themselves. I didn't know what to tell them. They probably couldn't get carry permits, certainly not in a hurry, so that would mean risking an illegal-weapons charge."

"That's better than getting killed, isn't it?"

"Of course, and these men are respectable establishment types; if they wound up defending themselves with an illegal handgun, nobody'd be in a rush to bring charges against them. But suppose some perfectly innocent person asked one of them for a match, or lost his balance and lurched into one of our armed heroes?"

"Bang bang."

"I told them to call me if anything out of the ordinary happens. They'll keep in touch with each other, too. It's funny."

"What is?"

"The way it's got them relating to one another. In one way they're closer. Remember, these are fellows who've shared a very intimate association for over thirty years- but only one night a year. They're united by deep and longstanding bonds of brotherhood, but they don't really know each other."

"And?"

"And now things have changed, and nothing brings you together like the need to defend yourselves against a common enemy. But at the same time, the enemy might be one of them."

"Didn't Pogo have something to say about that?"

" 'We have met the enemy and he is us.' The thing is we haven't met the enemy, not head-on. He may be one of us and he may not. So-"

"So they're closely bonded but a little uneasy about it."

"Something like that. For the first time ever they have to maintain contact with one another. And, also for the first time, they don't dare trust each other. It's like Cannibals and Christians." She looked bewildered. "You know, Cannibals and Christians. It's a logic problem, you've got six people trying to cross a river, three cannibals and three Christians, and the boat only holds three people and you can't have one Christian left alone with two cannibals or he'll get eaten."

"I don't think it's very realistic."

"For God's sake," I said, "it's not supposed to be realistic. It's a logic problem."

"Well, I'm a Jewish girl," she said. "Cannibals, Christians, what's the difference? Who can tell them apart?"

"Not you, evidently."

"Not me," she agreed. "You know what I say? Goyim is goyim. That's what I say."

We had dinner at an Italian place on the next block. It still hadn't rained, and looked and felt more like it than ever. "So you met Gerry Billings," Elaine said. "I hope you asked him if he could do anything about this weather."

"God, he must get sick of hearing that."

"If he doesn't get sick of pointing at the wall and talking about warm fronts and cold fronts, he probably doesn't ever get sick of anything. When you see him pointing at a map or a chart, he's not really, you know."

"Somebody else is pointing for him?"

"He's pointing at nothing," she said, "and the image of him pointing is superimposed on another image of a map or chart. So it comes out looking right, but he's got to stand there and point at a blank wall. That's probably the hardest part of his whole job, remembering what part of the wall is Wyoming."

We fought over the check. She wanted to pay it because she'd sold one of the paint-by-number paintings for approximately a hundred times what she'd paid for it. I pointed out that that was still only a couple of hundred dollars, while I'd just scooped up a nine-thousand-dollar retainer.

"You still have to buckle down and earn it," she said. "The painting, on the other hand, is out of my hands and out of the store. The transaction is completed. Done, finis, finito."

"Too bad," I said. "This one's on me."

Back home, I checked the answering machine. Jim Shorter hadn't called, and I'd expected that he would. I tried him and he didn't answer. Then I tried my own number across the street, to see if I'd forgotten to engage Call Forwarding, but I got a busy signal, which indicated that I'd remembered.

I tried Alan Watson's widow in Forest Hills. No answer.

"You're restless," Elaine said. "Do you feel like a movie? Or do you think you ought to go to a meeting?"

I said, "I was thinking of taking a cab up to Yorkville."

"What's there?"

"A meeting."

"St. Paul's is handier. Why go all the way up there? You want to check up on your new sponsee, is that it?"

"He's not my sponsee."

"Your unofficial sponsee. He didn't call and you're worried about him."

"I suppose so. What would your friends in Al-Anon say about that?"

"They'd tell me it's none of my business how you work your program."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know. You meant what would they tell you to do, and if you want to know that you'll have to ask them yourself."

"I should leave him alone," I said.

"Think so, huh?"

"I should go to meetings for myself, not for anybody else, and if he gets sober that's fine, and if he goes out and drinks again that's fine, too."

"So?"

"So I'm afraid he'll drink," I said, "and I'm afraid it'll be my fault. But it won't be my fault if he drinks, and it won't be my doing if he stays sober, and anyway he's got his own Higher Power. Right?"

"Everything you say is right, master."

"Oh, boy."

"So what are you going to do? Grab a cab uptown?"

"Nah, fuck him," I said. "Let's go to a movie."

The movie we saw starred Don Johnson as a homicidal gigolo and Rebecca De Mornay as his attorney. As we left the theater, Elaine said, "I cannot believe how much she looked like Hillary." Who was Hillary, I wanted to know, and who looked like her?

"Hillary Clinton," she said. "Who else? And De Mornay looked enough like her to fool the president himself. You didn't notice? I can't believe it. Where were you, anyway?"

"Lost in space, I guess. Regretting the past, dreading the future."

"Business as usual. Just to keep you abreast of things, Don Johnson was the bad guy."

"I got that much," I said.

"Well, how much more do you really need to know? I think it's finally going to rain. I just felt a drop, unless it dripped from somebody's air conditioner."

"No, I felt it, too."