Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

I had no desire to limit my dicelife by spending it all in prison so advanced planning was called for. Interrupting my work at the Catskill CETRE for a week I went on a `business trip' to New York. I discovered that Osterflood was living at his old apartment on the East Side about four blocks from where I used to live. Ah, the memories. He seemed to be working for a brokerage firm on Wall Street and was gone for nine hours each day. The first night I trailed him he went out to dinner, a movie, a discotheque and returned home alone and presumably read or watched television and then slept.

It's a rather interesting experience to spend an evening trailing a man you're planning to murder the next day; watching him yawn, become irritable when he can't find the right change for a newspaper, smile at some thought he's having. In general, Osterflood seemed rather nervous, I thought, tensed up - as if someone were trying to murder him.

I began to realize that murder is not as easy as it's cracked up to be. I couldn't loiter outside Osterflood's apartment a second consecutive night: my giant form was entirely too conspicuous. When and where to kill him? He was a big, muscular man, probably the only man on my original list of thirty-six that I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley after I'd just fired a shot at him and missed I had brought my .38 revolver I still possessed from my pre-dice, suicide-considering days, and I was pretty accurate at ten feet or less; I figured Big Frank would need a hole in the head to take him down. I also brought slang some strychnine to help along in that way should the opportunity arise.

My main problem was that if I killed him in his apartment I would have trouble escaping unnoticed. Gun shots in East Side apartments renting for four hundred dollars a month are not especially common. His apartment had a doorman, an elevator man, perhaps a hired security man, probably no stairwell. To shoot Osterflood in the street or in an alley was also dangerous since although gunshots were there much more frequent, nevertheless, people usually had enough curiosity to look over at what was happening. I was simply too big to be anonymous.

I suddenly realized that living in New York City, Frank Osterflood - and every other New Yorker - lived year after year without once, ever, being more than twenty feet from some other human being. Usually he was within ten feet of a dozen people. He had no private, isolated life in which he might be totally by himself and meditate and commune with himself and take stock and be murdered. I resented it deeply.

I couldn't afford to wait around; I wanted to hurry back to Catskill to continue developing the Catskill Dice Center, there to make people happy and joy-filled and free again.

Somehow I had to lure him away from the warren of Manhattan. But how? Was he interested in boys these days? Or girls? Or men? Or women? Or money? Or what? What was the hook that would drag him out of the cesspool of the city into the lovely, lonely autumn of the woods? How would I prevent his telling someone that he had seen me again, that he was going someplace with me? The only method that I could dimly see was to accost him as he returned from work, invite him to dinner and then lure him out of the city on some spontaneously combusted pretext and, on some isolated country road, miles from the nearest other human being communing with himself, shoot him. It seemed very messy and haphazard, and I was determined to commit a nice clean crime - without any sick emotions, without fuss, with dignity, grace and aesthetic bliss. I wanted to murder in such a way that Agatha Christie would be pleased and not offended. I wanted to commit a crime so perfect that no one would suspect anything, not the murdered, not the police, not even me.

Of course, such a crime would be impossible, so I retreated to my earlier ideal-that I should murder without fuss,

emotion or violence arid with dignity, grace and aesthetic bliss. It was the very least I owed the victim.

But how! The Die only knows. I certainly couldn't see how. I would have to have faith. I would have to get myself

with Osterflood and see what turned up. I'd never read of an Agatha Christie murderer proceeding in quite this way,

but it was all I could do on twenty-four hours' notice.

`Frank, baby,' I said the next evening as he emerged from his taxi. `Long time, no see. It's your old buddy Lou Smith;

you must remember me. Good to see you again.'

I pumped his hand as the taxi pulled away and, still hoping to prevent him from uttering my. name within earshot of

the doorman, I threw my arm around his shoulder and whispered that we were being trailed and began marching him

away.

`But Dr-'

`Had to see you. They're trying to get you,' I whispered as we moved up the block.

`But who's trying `Tell you all about it at dinner.'

He stopped about thirty feet from his apartment.

`Look, Dr. Rhinehart, I . . . I've got an important . . . appointment this evening. I'm sorry, but-'

I had hailed another taxi and it careered over to our curb lusting after our East Side money.

`Dinner first. Got to talk first. Someone's trying to murder you.'

`What?'

`Get in, quick.'

Inside the taxi I got my first good look at Frank Osterflood; he was a bit heavier about the jowls than he had been

before and seemed more nervous and tense, but it might have been his concern about dying. His hair was nicely trimmed and brushed, his expensive suit fit flawlessly, and he gave off the pleasant odor of some heroic after-shave lotion. He looked like a highly successful, well-paid, socially placed thug.

'- To murder me?' he said, staring into my face is search of a jocular smile. I had glanced at my watch; it was six

thirty-seven.

`I'm afraid so,' I said. `I learned from some of my dicepeople that they're planning to murder you.'

I stared sincerely into his face. `Maybe tonight even.'

`I don't understand,' he said, looking away. `And where are we going now?'

`Restaurant in Queens. Very good hors d'oeuvres.'

`But why? Who? What have I done?'

I shook my head slowly from side to side, while Osterflood stared nervously out at the passing traffic and seemed to

flinch every time a car drew up alongside us.

`Ah, Frank, you don't have to hide things from me. You know you've done some things that . . . well, might upset some

people. Someone, someone has found it's you. They plan to kill you. I'm here to help.'

He glanced back at me nervously.

`I don't need any help. I've got to go someplace at - at eight-thirty. Don't need help.'

Tight-jawed, he stared straight ahead at the somewhat un-artistic photograph of Antonio Rosco Fellini, driver of the

cab.

`Ah, but you do, Frank. Your little appointment at eight-thirty may be your rendezvous with death. You'd better let me come along.' `I don't understand,' he said. `Since dice therapy with you and Dr. Boyd I haven't, I haven't . . . done anything I haven't

paid for.'

`Ahhhh,' I said vaguely, searching for my next line.

`Except my wife.'

`Where's this place again?' shouted back Antonio Rosco Fellini. I told him.

`And my wife has left me and is suing me and if I die she won't get a cent.'

`But those early days in Harlem, Frank. They may know.'

He hesitated and stared over at me wide-eyed in fear.

`But I'm leaving my money partly to the NAACP,' he said.

`Maybe they don't know that,' I said.

`Probably no one knows,' he said sadly. `I just recently decided.'

'Ah, and when did you decide?'

'Just now, a minute ago.'

We drove on in silence for a while, Osterflood twice looking mind us to see if we were being followed. He reported

that we were.

`What's this appointment about tonight, Frank?'