Grifter's Game

by Lawrence Block

  She was right as rain with the Bob Mitchum line. I was overplaying things. We had nothing at all to worry about. I was on my way to New York without leaving a trace of a trail. Brassard was out looking for wrong trees to bark up. We had it aced.

  All we had to do now was get away with murder.

  5

  I checked into the Collingwood Hotel as Howard Shaw. The Collingwood was a good second-class hotel on Thirty-fifth Street just west of Fifth. My room was thirty-two dollars a week; it was clean and comfortable. I had a central location without being in the middle of things, the way I would have been in a Times Square hotel. I stood that much less chance of running into old familiar faces.

  The door clicked shut behind me and I dropped my three suitcases on the floor. I shoved the attaché case under the bed and decided to hope for the best. The Collingwood was a residential hotel and there were no bellboys to scoop up your bags. Nobody saw the L. K. B. monogram on the luggage on the way up, which was fine with me. Getting rid of the luggage was the next step, of course. It might have been simpler to check them in a subway locker and throw the key away, but they were too good and I was too broke. I ripped the labels out of all of Brassard’s clothing except for what fit me, stuffed the clothes into the suitcases, and went downtown to where Third Avenue turns into the Bowery.

  I sold better than three hundred dollars’ worth of clothing to a round-shouldered, beetle-eyed man for thirty dollars. I pawned two suitcases worth over a hundred bucks for twenty-five. I left Brassard’s stuff to be bought by bottle babies, and I went back to my hotel and slept.

  It was Thursday. Sunday or Monday they would be coming back to New York. Now they were together at the Shelburne. Probably in bed.

  I dreamed about them and woke up sweating.

  Friday I looked him up in the phone book. There was a single entry, not even in bold-faced type. It said Brassard, L. K. 117 Chmbrs . . . . . . WOrth 4-6363. I left the hotel and found a pay phone in a drugstore around the corner. I dialed WOrth 4-6363 and let it ring eight times without getting an answer. I walked over to Sixth and caught the D train to Chambers, then wandered around until I found 117.

  It was the right building for him. The bricks had been red once; now they were colorless. All the windows needed washing. The names of the tenants were painted on the windows—Comet Enterprises, Inc. . . . Cut-Rate Auto Insurance . . . Passport Fotos While-U-Wait . . . Zenith Employment . . . Kallett Confidential Investigations . . . Rafael Messero, Mexican Attorney, Divorce Information. Nine stories of cubbyholes, nine stories of very free enterprise. I wondered why he didn’t have a better office. I wondered if he ever came to the one he had.

  His name was on the directory. The elevator was self-service and I rode it to the fifth floor. I got out and walked past the employment agency to the door marked L. K. Brassard. The window glass was frosted and I couldn’t see a thing.

  I tried the door and wasn’t particularly surprised to find out that it was locked. The lock was the standard spring lock that catches automatically when you close the door, and there was a good eighth of an inch between the door and the jamb. I looked around at Zenith Employment. Their door was closed. I wondered what the penalty was for breaking and entering.

  The blade of my penknife took the lock in less than twenty seconds. It’s a simple operation—you fit the knife blade in between the door and the jamb and pry the locking mechanism back. Good doors have the jamb recessed so that this cannot be done. This one was a bad door. I opened it about an inch and looked around again. Then I shoved it open, walked in and locked it behind me.

  The office looked like what it was supposed to be. One of the oldest remaining roll-top desks in America stood in one corner. There was an inkstand on it. I looked around hysterically for a quill pen and was almost surprised not to find one.

  There were half a dozen large ledgers on the desk and I went over them fairly carefully. I don’t know what I expected to find. Whether the entries were coded or merely blinds I couldn’t tell. It was a waste of time studying them.

  The drawers and pigeonholes of the desk yielded a lot more of nothing in particular. There were bills and canceled checks and bank statements. Evidently he had a certain amount of legitimate business in addition to the main event. From what I could make out, he imported a lot of Japanese garbage—cigarette lighters, toys, junk jewelry, that sort of stuff. That fit into the picture. It was easy to see heroin coming through Japan by way of China or Hong Kong or Macao.

  I sat in his leather chair in front of his desk and tried to put myself in his place. What hit me the hardest was the very double life he was leading. He was not a crook in the same sense as, say, Reggie Cole or Max Treger.

  Everybody who knew Treger knew just what sort of a man he was. He managed to stay out of jail because nobody managed to collect the evidence that would put him where he belonged. But if Treger had a wife, Mrs. T. knew just how her husband kept mink on her back. Some of Treger’s neighbors snubbed him while others pretended he was just one of the boys—but they all knew he was a gangster. The people in Cheshire Point didn’t know that about good old L. Keith Brassard.

  I tapped out a drum solo on the top of that very respectable desk and wondered why the hell I had come to his office in the first place. I didn’t know what I’d expected to find, or hoped to find. I wasn’t a federal narcotics agent trying to crack a dope ring. I was a wise guy who wanted to kill Brassard and wind up with his wife. So what was I doing there?

  I wiped off everything I remembered touching. It probably would never matter, but I didn’t want to leave my prints in his office in case they ever tied me to him. There was one scrap of paper I’d found with four phone numbers on it and nothing to tell what the numbers were. I copied them down.

  He could tell the office had been entered. I did what I could, but I knew there would be some items out of place. I hoped there was a maid with a key—then he might not suspect a search.

  On the way back to the hotel I picked up a few pairs of slacks and some underwear. I found a suit and an extra sport jacket and arranged to have them delivered to me at the Collingwood by Monday. All together the clothes came to over a hundred, and left me with not much money. It hurt to spend that much on clothes, but I couldn’t see any way to avoid it. I needed the clothes. And they couldn’t be too cheap or it wouldn’t look right. Then I picked up a fairly respectable looking suitcase for twenty-five bucks. That hurt too.

  By the time I got back to the hotel I felt pretty rotten. I was tired and bored and perspiring. The shower took care of the perspiration but the boredom remained. I had nothing to do and no place to go and I did not like myself very much. And I missed her so much I could taste it. I had a good dinner with a drink before and a brandy after. Then I went out and bought a bottle and took it to bed.

  Saturday came and went without my accomplishing very much. I went to a barber and got a crew cut, something I hadn’t done in one hell of a long time. When I got back to my room I gave myself a long look in the bathroom mirror. The haircut had changed me more than anything else could have. It made my face rounder, my forehead higher, my whole appearance a good two years younger.

  I went down to the drugstore, picked up a handful of paperback novels, went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day reading, and sipping what remained in the bottle. I had time to kill and I wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. If I could have spent two days in a coma I would have been glad of it. I didn’t want to think and I didn’t want to plan and I didn’t want to do much of anything. I just waited for the time to go by.

  Sunday afternoon I walked over to Penn Station and looked her up in the Westchester phonebook. She lived on something called Roscommon Drive. I memorized the number and left.

  I called her that evening.

  It was a warm night and the fan in the phone booth did not work. I put in a dime and dialed her number and got an operator who sent back my dime and told me to deposit twenty cents. I dropped in th
e original dime and another one and the phone rang. A man’s voice said hello to me.

  “Is Jerry there?”

  “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

  “Isn’t this Jerry Hillman’s residence?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  He hung up on me and I sat there in the hot booth hearing his voice again in my mind. It was a cultured voice. He spaced his words and talked pleasantly. I left the booth and walked around the block. They were home. I took out a cigarette and smoked it in a hurry. I had to get in touch with her and I wasn’t sure how to do it. I wondered if his phone was tapped. Most likely it was. I figured he probably tapped it himself. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  I called again from the same booth and this time she answered it. When she said hello I saw her in my mind and felt her in my arms. I started to shake.

  “Is Jerry Hillman there?”

  “No,” she said. “You must have the wrong number.”

  She recognized my voice. I could tell.

  “Isn’t this AL 5-2504?”

  “No,” she said.

  I sat in the phone booth for over fifteen minutes. I held the phone to my ear with one hand to make it look good while I held the hook down with the other. Then the phone rang and I lifted the hook and said hello.

  “Joe,” she said. “Hello, Joe.”

  “How has it been?”

  “All right,” she said. “I suppose. I missed you, Joe.”

  “I’ve been going crazy waiting for you. I was afraid you wouldn’t catch the number. Where are you calling from?”

  “A drugstore,” she said. “I … I was ready for your call. Keith answered the first time and said it was a wrong number. But I knew it was you.”

  I took a breath. “I have to see you,” I said. “Can you get into Manhattan tomorrow?”

  “I think so. He’s going to the office. I’ll ride in with him and tell him I have to do some shopping. I can get in sometime between nine and ten. Is that all right?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “A hotel,” I said. “The Collingwood. Just east of Herald Square.”

  “Should I meet you there?”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Better not,” I said. “There’s an Automat on Thirty-fourth between Sixth and Seventh. Meet me there.”

  “Thirty-fourth between Sixth and Seventh. I’ll be there. I love you, Joe.”

  I told her I loved her. I told her how much I wanted her.

  “I have to get off now,” she said. “I came down to the drugstore to buy Tampax. He’ll wonder what’s taking me so long.”

  “Tampax?”

  I must have sounded disappointed because she giggled at me with a very sexy giggle. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It was two birds with one stone, Joe. It was an excuse to go to the drugstore and an excuse to keep Keith away from me tonight. I don’t want him touching me tonight, Joe. Not when you’re this close to me. I couldn’t stand it.”

  She hung up and I stood there with a receiver in my hand. I walked out of there and tried not to shake visibly. I stopped at a little bar on the way home and tossed down a double shot of bourbon, then sipped the beer chaser very slowly.

  The bartender was a big man with a wide forehead. He was listening to hillbilly music on a portable radio that blared away on top of the back bar. The song was something about a real grade-A bitch who was causing the singer untold heartache. The bartender polished glasses in time to the not-very-subtle rhythms of the song. Two or three guys were doing solo drinking. A man and a woman were drinking and playing footsie in a back booth.

  How long since I’d seen her? Less than a week. Five or six days. But you can forget a lot in that amount of time. I remembered what she looked like and what she sounded like and how it felt to hold onto her. But I had forgotten, in part, just how much I needed her.

  The sound of her voice had brought all of it back to me. Brought it back forcibly.

  I wondered how I would kill him. I would have to be the killer, of course. And I would have to do it alone. She’d be the prime suspect, the first one the cops would get to, and I’d have to make sure she had a perfect alibi.

  I could kill him at home or at his office. At home might be better—Manhattan homicide cops are too damned thorough. Westchester homicide would be a little less likely to know what was doing.

  How? A gun or a knife? The proverbial blunt instrument? Or would I wring his neck with my hands? I tried to remember whether or not you could get fingerprints on a human being’s neck. I didn’t think you could.

  I started to shake some more. Then I had another double bourbon and another beer and went back to the hotel.

  6

  I got to the Automat at nine. The girl in the cashier’s cage dealt me a stack of nickels and I wandered around playing New York’s favorite slot machines. I filled a tray with a glass of orange juice, a dangerous-looking bowl of oatmeal, a pair of crullers and a cup of black coffee. Then I found a table that gave me a good view of the entrance and started in on my breakfast.

  I was working on a second cup of coffee when she showed. I looked at her and my head started spinning. She was wearing a very simple blue-gray summer dress that buttoned up the front. She looked sweet and virginal and lovely, and I waited for her to rush over to my table and wrap herself around my neck.

  But she was so cool it almost scared me. She looked right at me and the shadow of a smile crossed her face. Then she swept on past me, broke a quarter into nickels and invested the nickels in coffee and a glazed doughnut. Then she stood with the tray in her hands, looking around for a place to sit. Finally she walked over to my table, unloaded the tray and sat down.

  “This is fun,” she said. “The cloak and dagger stuff, I mean. I’m getting a little carried away with it.”

  I had too much to say and there was no convenient place to begin. I started a cigarette to go with the coffee and plunged in somewhere in the middle. “Have any trouble getting here?”

  “None at all. I rode in with Keith on the train. I told him I had to do some shopping. Remind me to do some shopping later. I’ll buy a pair of shoes or something. Anything.”

  “It must be nice to have money.”

  I just threw the line out; maybe it was a mistake. She turned her eyes on me and her eyes said a great many things that cannot be translated too easily into English. Sure, it was nice to have money. It was nice to be in love, too. Many things were nice.

  “Joe—”

  “What?”

  “I was thinking that maybe we don’t have to kill him.”

  “Not so loud!”

  “No one’s paying any attention to me. Look, there’s another way that I’ve been thinking about. We won’t have to kill him if it works out.”

  “Getting soft?”

  “Not soft,” she said.

  “What then?”

  “Maybe scared. I understand they electrocute murderers in New York. I … don’t want to be electrocuted.”

  “You have to be convicted first.”

  Her eyes flared. “You sound as though you hate him,” she said. “You sound as though killing is more important than getting away with it.”

  “And you sound as though you’re trying to back out. Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe we should forget the whole thing. You go your way and I’ll go mine. Buy yourself all the shoes you want. And a few more furs. And—”

  And a man sat down at our table. An old man, broken by time, with a frayed collar on his clean white shirt, with spots on a wide polka-dot tie. He very solemnly poured milk over a bowlful of corn flakes and sprinkled two tablespoons of sugar on top of the mess while we watched him with our mouths open.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Come on.”

  No matter where you are in Manhattan there is a bar around the corner. There was a bar around the corner now and we went to it. We found the most remote of the three empty booths and filled it. I hadn’t want
ed a drink; now I needed one. I had bourbon and water and she had a screwdriver.

  “Well?”

  “You’ve got everything wrong,” she said. “I’m not trying to get out of anything. You can be pretty saintly about this, can’t you? You don’t have to live with him. You don’t—”

  “Get to the point.”

  She took a sip of her drink and followed it with a deep breath. “The heroin,” she said. “Do you still have it?”

  I nodded.

  “We can use it,” she said.

  “Sell it and run?” I got ready to tell her all over again why that wouldn’t work. But she didn’t give me a chance.

  “Plant it,” she said. “Put it in his car or around the house or something. Then you or I would call the police anonymously and tip them off. They would search and find the heroin and arrest him.”

  A bell rang somewhere but I ignored it. “Just like that?” I said. “Plant it, tip the fuzz, and send hubby off to jail?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it wouldn’t work.”

  She looked at me.

  “Let’s see just what would happen, Mona. The police would run the tip down and find the heroin. Then they’d ask him how it got there, and he’d say he didn’t have the vaguest idea. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “So they’d take him in and book him,” I went on. “The charge would be possession with intent to sell. In ten minutes a very expensive lawyer would have him out on bail. Ten months later his case would come up. He’d plead not guilty. His lawyer would tell the court that here was a man with no criminal record, no illicit connections, a respectable businessman who had been framed by person or persons unknown. They would find him not guilty.”

  “But the dope would be right there!”

  “So what?” I took a sip of the bourbon. “The jury would acquit him forty-nine chances out of fifty. The fiftieth—and that’s a hell of a long shot—they’d find him guilty and his lawyer would file an appeal. And he’d win on the appeal unless an even longer long shot came in. Even if both long shots broke right—and I’m damned if I ever want to buck odds like that—it would still be two to three years before he saw the inside of a jail for more than five consecutive hours. That’s a long time to wait, honey. And there’s a damn good chance that sometime during those two or three years he would figure out who tipped the cops. At which time he would find a very capable gunman who would shoot a large hole in your pretty head.”