Lawrence Block - The Specialists

Because if you read it the other way, then the kid downstairs was his long-lost, goddamned son and the aggravation in New Cornwall was an accident, some punks who didn’t know whose bank they were robbing, and all it meant was a few weeks of headaches for his lawyers.

But how in hell was he supposed to know what was true and what wasn’t?

To himself as much as to her he said, “If I decide he’s my kid, every time I look at him, I’m gonna wonder. All the time I’ll be wondering. It’s no good. Either he’s lying or else his mother was crazy and gave him a crazy story. That dose I had, maybe it was just a dose, maybe all along I was sterile. Yeah, that’s it. I could never have kids, so he couldn’t be a kid of mine. Right?”

“If you say so, Albert.”

“I say so.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Well, I’ll let him sweat until morning. And I’ll let a couple of the boys open him up a little first. If there’s anything in this Chicago thing.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“Even if I did, which I don’t, he could have been lying to you, kid.”

“Oh.”

He stretched out on the bed, pleased that things were working out, that the indecisiveness was gone. He reached out a hand and caught hold of one of her breasts. He squeezed sharply and she let out a bark of surprise.

“You got to expect sag with tits this size,” he said. “Get over here. Open your legs, I want some.”

“If you’ll let me watch.”

“Huh?”

“When you kill him.”

“He gets to you, don’t he?”

“Not what you think. Will you let me? I’ll do it the way you always want.”

He grinned and took her head in his hands. “You’ll get a front-row seat,” he told her.

He settled himself, closed his eyes, stroked her dark hair with his hands. “Oh, you bitch,” he said softly, reverently. “Oh, you crazy, classy, screwed-up, delicious bitch. Oh, Jesus Christ.”

Then the door flew open and Manso came in with a gun.

In the morning they spent long, lazy hours in bed. An hour or two past noon they would put on bathing suits and walk from their cabin to the beach twenty feet from their door. She never stayed in the water for any length of time. The Caribbean was a bright electric blue, always warm and always clear, with a clean sand bottom. He could swim in it for hours, and sometimes did. She would go in with him and paddle around for a few minutes. Then she would go ashore and lie down on their blanket under the sun. Like him, she tanned readily and did not burn, and within a week she was brown.

At night after dinner they would usually stick around the lodge for a couple of hours. The native bartender did clever things with rum, and the owner, an Alsatian Jew with one blue eye and one brown eye, would join them at their table and trade lies with them.

Then a midnight swim, and lovemaking, and sleep.

She said, “I wish we could stay here forever.”

“Nothing’s forever.”

“I know.”

“And the secret is not to stay any one place too long. That’s one of the secrets.”

“And the other is never come back, because no place is ever as good the second time around.”

“How did you know? Oh, that’s right, I made this speech before, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“You look good as a blonde.”

“I’ll have to get to a beauty parlor. The roots are starting to show.”

“I didn’t notice. The blonde hair and the tan — I don’t think your own mother would recognize you.”

“Well, we can’t test that out, can we?”

“No, I’m afraid we can’t.” He started to say something else, then changed direction. “I called the airport. I booked us on a Trans-Carib flight Thursday to Miami. Then from there we fly Delta. We could have had a through flight Wednesday on Pan Am, but the Trans-Carib’s a better line. And this way we have an extra day.”

“I’m glad of that. Will I like Phoenix?”

“I like it. And you can keep the tan year-round out there.”

“Will you... still want me in Phoenix?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, I figured there were other girls there.”

“Nothing serious.”

“Because you and I have no strings. I’m alive, that’s enough. If you see something you want—”

“We’ll just keep on keeping on, huh?”

“Because what you said — nothing’s forever.”

Later: “I wonder where they all are, what they’re doing.”

“The colonel’s reading something. His Bible or some military history. Helen’s probably baking. The others? Howard was going to spend a couple of days in New York. There were some stamp auctions he wanted to go to. Frank is on the road somewhere, I don’t know where. Ben’s probably in the drunk tank of some jail or other. He generally goes on a bender afterwards and drinks up all his money.”

“How can anybody drink up fifty thousand dollars?”

“Ben would try, but he doesn’t have to. If he took all his cash he’d get himself in all kinds of trouble. He generally takes a thousand or two. He keeps five hundred bucks for getaway money and blows the rest. What he doesn’t take, the colonel invests for him. Ben must be worth, oh, a quarter of a million.”

“You would never guess it.”

“He doesn’t act it. He doesn’t even think about it, which is why he manages to stay out of trouble. You see, that’s the whole thing, you have to create a life for yourself that you feel comfortable in. Like we could spend absolutely all our time traveling and living it up, but then life would just be something in between the jobs, and it’s harder to live that way. Same with Ben. When he runs out of dough, he’ll get a job somewhere. And live like a bum until the colonel gives him a call.”

“And Eddie? He’s in Europe?”

He nodded. “Monte Carlo, I think. He wants to stay away from the stateside gambling areas, at least for the time being. He’s clean as far as the police are concerned, but he figures it might be good to let the gambling types have some time to forget about Platt and his wife. You want to go in for a minute before we go back to the cabin?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll just take a dip, then. It seems to be doing my leg some good.”

She sat on the beach and watched him bobbing in the waves. She lit a cigarette, then poked the burnt match into the sand.

She would not see her children again, or her parents. Perhaps not ever, and certainly not for many years.

She thought that there must be something wrong with her. Because she had loved the children, and she had cared for her mother and father, and now she was never going to see them again and she didn’t seem to care at all. It seemed unnatural, and she thought that there must be something wrong with her.

She was tan, she was blonde, she glowed with health and vitality. She was eating like a horse and still losing weight, slimming down nicely. And her face, when she caught sight of it in a mirror, looked back at her radiant with the joy of being alive and in love.

He didn’t want to get married. Well, neither did she, because he was right and nothing was forever. Sooner or later he would probably want to be rid of her. He denied this now, but she expected it would happen sooner or later. But by then she would be trained in a new life role, and she wouldn’t go back to New Jersey and the police would never find her.

According to the papers, she was presumed dead. A hostage, kidnapped and presumed dead. Well, she thought, so be it. Patricia Novak, rest in peace. Patricia Crosby, welcome to the club.

Giordano was emerging from the surf. He walked easily, hardly favoring the leg at all. She looked at him in the moonlight and her blood quickened, and she ran across the sand to meet him.