One Night Stands; Lost weekends

by Lawrence Block

  “I’m telling you this for your own good,” he would say. “Hell—get what you can. I don’t blame you for that. But I have to keep you from marrying her. I’ve gotta look out for my older brother. You farmers don’t know all the angles.”

  That got Pa mad. He started off how there was nothing wrong with being a farmer and how it wasn’t as bad as the Navy where all you did was ride a tin boat or maybe kill some folk if there was a war on.

  Every day was just that much worse than the last.

  But when it happened I wasn’t ready for it. I walked to her place in a harder and colder wind than ever, and when I got there she was all alone. She was sitting hunched up on her bed with her head almost touching her knees and her hair falling down over her face. I couldn’t see her face. I pulled the door shut and walked over to her.

  When I went to give her a kiss she turned her face to the wall and wouldn’t look at me. I knew something was wrong, and I guess I knew just what it was, but I was hoping so hard that I wouldn’t let myself believe it.

  I sat down on the bed next to her and pulled her over to me. She didn’t pull away. I let her head rest in my lap and ran my fingers through that long silky hair. I thought I could get her to cry it out but she wouldn’t cry, not a single tear. Her whole body was shaking with something but she wouldn’t open up and let it out. I just sat there stroking her hair and not saying a thing.

  Then she looked at me and she started to cry. She cried for a long time, crying all the sickness and sadness out of her; when it was done she was better and I knew she would be all right.

  It wouldn’t leave a scar.

  It was done.

  The walk home was a long one even with the wind behind me. He was waiting for me, and when I came in he looked at me and he knew that I knew.

  He said, “She was nice, Brother John. But I’ve had better.”

  I just looked at him. I didn’t bother to tell him that he never had her, that I was the only man to have her, ever.

  He wouldn’t have known what I was talking about.

  “You ought to get around more,” he said. “Oughta see what the rest of the world’s like. You know?”

  The vein in my temple started throbbing just the way Margie’s did before.

  “There’s other women. Bet you’ll find some that’s even better in the sack than she is, Brother John.”

  When you’re up close a shotgun makes a big messy hole, big as a man’s fist, but when I squeezed that trigger the shell went through him like a sword through a piece of silk, like the wind blowing outside. He let out a moan and put both hands over the hole in his stomach and sat down slowly. His eyes were staring like he couldn’t believe it happened.

  His eyes got glassy, but they stayed open that way, staring at me.

  Outside the wind broke and it started to rain.

  Fifteen months and I’ll be out. The law’s the law, but the people around here know me and they knew Brad, and the law can bend a little when it has to.

  Margie will be waiting for me. I know she will.

  I DON’T FOOL AROUND

  FISCHER PULLED UP AT A CURB and we got out of the car in a hurry, heading for the black Chevy with the people standing around it. The precinct cop made room for us and we went on through. As far as I was concerned, this was just a formality. I knew who was dead and I knew who had killed him. Taking a good long look at the corpse wasn’t going to change that.

  The punk slumped over the wheel with holes in his head had lived longer than we had expected. He was a hood named Johnny Blue, a strongarm-weakbrain who crossed some of the wrong people. He’d been due for a hit for weeks, according to the rumbles that filtered through to Manhattan West. Now he’d been hit, and hard.

  One slug in the side of the face. Another in the neck. Three more in the back of the head.

  “Who is he?” Fischer asked. I told him.

  “A messy way to do it,” the kid went on. “Any of those shots would have killed him. Why shoot him up like that?”

  My college cop. My new partner, my cross to bear ever since some genius switched Danny Taggert to Vice. My Little Boy Lost, who wanted murder to be a nice clean affair, with one bullet lodged in the heart and, if you please, as little blood as possible.

  I said, “The killer didn’t want to take chances.”

  “Chances? But—”

  I was very tired. “This wasn’t a tavern brawl,” I told him. “This wasn’t one guy hitting another guy over the head with a bar stool. This was a pro killing.”

  “It doesn’t look so professional to me. A mess.”

  “That’s because you don’t know what to look for.” I turned away, sick of the corpse and the killer, sick of Fischer, sick of West 46th Street at three in the morning. Sick of murder.

  “It’s a pro killing,” I said again. “In a car, on a quiet street, in the middle of the night. Five bullets, any one of which would have caused death. That’s a trademark.”

  “Why?”

  “Because hired killers don’t fool around,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The coffee was bitter but it was black and it was hot. I sipped it as I read through the file again. I knew everything in the file by heart. I read it automatically, then shoved it over to Fischer.

  “Name,” I said, “Frank Calder. First arrest at age 14, 1948, grand theft auto. Suspended. Arrested three months later, GTA again, six months in Elmira. Three years later he was picked up for assault with a deadly weapon. A knife. The victim refused to press charges and we dropped them.”

  I sipped some more of the coffee. “That was eight years ago. Since then he’s been picked up fifteen times. Same charge each time. Suspicion of homicide.”

  “Innocent?”

  “Guilty, of course. Fifteen times that we know about. Probably a dozen more that we don’t know about. Fourteen times we let him go. Once we thought we had a case.”

  “What happened?”

  “Grand jury disagreed with us. Indictment quashed.”

  Fischer nodded. “And you think he may have killed Blue?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are we—”

  “I don’t think he might have killed Blue,” I said. “I know damn well he killed Blue. Calder does most of his work in the Kitchen. A Hell’s Kitchen boy from the start, grew up on 39th Street west of Ninth. Gun used was a .38. Calder always uses a .38. Likes to shoot people in cars.”

  “Still, you can’t be sure that—”

  “I can be sure,” I cut in. I wished that Vice would send Danny back to me. Fischer was impossible. “Calder works for Nino Popo a lot of the time. Popo had a thing against Blue. Quit sounding like a public defender, will you? This was one of Calder’s. Period.”

  “We pick him up now?”

  “No.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I know what I said. I know damn well what I said and I don’t need a parrot to toss it back at me.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up.” I finished the coffee. “I told you Calder was a pro. You know what that means? You understand what that record says? He’s a hired killer. You pay him and he shoots people. That’s how he makes his living. A good living. He dresses in three-hundred-dollar suits. He wears gold cuff links. He lives in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. The west side of the park—he’s not a millionaire. But he does well in his job.”

  I paused for breath. I just wanted to get home and go to bed. I was tired. “I told you about pros,” I said. “They don’t fool around. They don’t leave loopholes. It’s their business and they know it. They don’t crack under pressure. If we pick up Calder he’ll be out in no time at all. No witnesses. A cast-iron alibi. No holes at all.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We go home,” I said. “We go home and take hot showers and go to bed. Tomorrow we pick him up.”

  I left him there to wonder what I was talking about. I went home and took a hot shower and fell asleep the minute I hit the b
ed.

  Homicide is rugged. There are good things about it—we don’t take bribes, we stay clean. There are also bad things.

  Because there are only three types of murder, and of the three there is only one that we solve. There is the amateur killing with a motive, the husband who strangles his wife, the tavern brawl, the grudge murder. There you have your suspect at the start and you look around for the proof. And find it, no matter how clever a job they do of burying it. That is the kind that gets solved.

  There is also the silly killing. The bum beaten to death on the Bowery. The hustler with a knife in her belly. The fag killed in his own apartment by a casual conquest. The mugging victim with a crushed skull. These we don’t solve. Not without a break.

  And there is the professional murder. And those we never solve.

  I met Fischer at five in the afternoon. He was carrying a folded copy of an afternoon tabloid. The headline ran GANGLAND SLAYING IN HELL’S KITCHEN. I could have guessed it word for word. I took the paper from him and gave the story a quick run-through. It was about the same as the morning papers had it.

  It didn’t say we had nothing to work with. It didn’t say we had anything to work with. It said that Johnny Blue had been found in a parked car with holes in him, and that he was dead. Then there were a few paragraphs trying to turn the career of a fourth-rater into something notorious, and then there was some nonsense to the effect that the cops were keeping mum.

  Mum?

  “We’re on Calder,” I told him. “No other assignment until we nail him. Got that?”

  “Sure.”

  “I wanted it that way. I want to get Calder. I want to get him good.”

  “I thought you said it was impossible.”

  “It is.”

  “Then—”

  “You talk too much,” I said. I waited for him to get mad but he didn’t. He was hurt—it showed in his face, in the way he wouldn’t look at me. But he wouldn’t get mad. And this made me like him that much less. He never got mad at anything. He didn’t know how to hate.

  I don’t like college cops. I don’t like people who are up to their ears in understanding and sympathy and sweetness and sunshine. I don’t like people who don’t know how to hate.

  Maybe it’s just the way a person is. If I were Calder I would hate cops. I’m a cop. I hate Calder. I hate him because he breaks laws and shoots people. I hate him because he gets away with it. I hated Johnny Blue. He used to get away with things too. Now he was dead and Calder had killed him and I hated Calder.

  I was going to get him.

  “Look it over again,” I said, sliding Calder’s file over to Fischer again. “Skip the record. Look at the picture.”

  Dark black hair. A flat face, not too bad-looking. Hard eyes, a long nose, a little scar on the chin. I don’t know how he got the scar. Maybe he cut himself shaving.

  “You said we pick him up today. Were you kidding?”

  “I don’t kid. I was serious.”

  “They found evidence?”

  “No.”

  He looked at me. He was afraid to open his mouth. Gutless.

  “We worry him a little. Don’t bother your head about it. Go get the car and meet me out front. And wear a gun.”

  He didn’t say anything, just went off for the car. I checked my gun, then stuck it back in the holster. I picked up Calder’s file, and took a good long look at it. I let the face burn into my brain. I stood there for a minute or two and hated.

  Then I went out to the car where Fischer was waiting.

  The building was fancy. A uniformed doorman stood at attention out in front. I had to show him my shield before he let us inside. He was there to keep out undesirables. Unless they lived in the penthouse.

  The carpet was deep in the lobby. The elevator rose in silence. I stood there and hated Calder.

  He had the whole top floor. I got out of the elevator and took my gun out of its holster, wondering whether or not the doorman had called Calder yet. Probably.

  I rang the bell.

  “Yeah?”

  A penthouse overlooking the park didn’t get Hell’s Kitchen out of his speech. Nothing would.

  “Police.”

  “Whattaya want?”

  “Open the door and shut up.”

  A few seconds later the door opened. He was short, five-six or five-seven. He was wearing a silk bathrobe and slippers that looked expensive. The apartment was well-furnished but for what he had paid he could have used an interior decorator. There was a shoddiness about the place. Maybe the shoddiness was Calder.

  “Come on in,” he said. “You use a drink?”

  I ignored him. “You’re under arrest,” I told him.

  “What for?”

  “Murder.”

  “Yeah?” A wide smile. “Somebody got killed?”

  “Johnny Blue.”

  “I’m covered,” he said. No I’m innocent but I’m covered. “I was playing cards with some fellows.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He shrugged heroically. “You want, we can go down to the station. My lawyer’ll have me out right away. I’m clean.”

  “You’re never clean,” I said. “You were born filthy.”

  The smile widened. But there was uncertainty behind it. I was getting to him.

  “You’re cheap and rotten,” I said. “You’re a punk. You spend a fortune on cologne and it still doesn’t cover the smell.”

  Now the smile was gone.

  “Your sister sleeps with bums,” I said. “Your mother was the cheapest whore on the West Side. She died of syphilis.”

  That did it. He was a few feet away—then he lowered his head and charged. I could have clubbed him with the gun. I didn’t.

  I shot him.

  He gave a yell like a wounded steer and fell to his knees. The bullet had taken him in the right shoulder. I guess it hurt. I hoped so.

  “You shot him.” It was Fischer talking.

  “Good thinking,” I told him. “You’re on the ball.”

  “Now what?”

  I shrugged. “We can take him in,” I suggested. “We can book him for resisting arrest and a few other things.”

  “Not murder?”

  “You heard him,” I said. “He’s clean.”

  I looked at Fischer. That was the answer to my college cop, my buddy. Here was a murderer, a murderer with a shoulder wound. Now we would be nice to him. Get him to a hospital quick before he lost too much blood. Maybe drop the resisting arrest charge because, after all, he was a sick man.

  I had my gun in my hand. I stepped back a few feet and aimed. I watched the play of expressions on Calder’s face. He didn’t know whether or not to believe it.

  I shot him in the face.

  I talked to Fischer while I found a gun in a drawer, picked it up in a towel, and wrapped Calder’s fingers around it. It made it look good—he had drawn on me, I shot him in the shoulder, he went on and held onto the gun, and I shot him dead. It would look good enough—there wasn’t going to be any investigation.

  “Maybe thirty killings,” I said. “That’s what this animal had to his credit. He made beating the law a business. He didn’t fool around. And there was no way to get him.”

  No answer from my partner.

  “So this time he lost. He doesn’t fool around. Well, neither do I.”

  I knew Fischer wasn’t satisfied. He wouldn’t blab, but it would worry him. He would feel uncomfortable with me. I don’t fit into his moral scheme of things. Maybe he’ll put in for a transfer.

  I hope so.

  JUST WINDOW SHOPPING

  I CLIMBED OVER THE BACK FENCE and hurried down the driveway. They probably hadn’t seen me at the window, but I couldn’t afford to take chances. The police had caught me once. I certainly did not want to be picked up again.

  It was horrible when the police caught me. I admitted everything but that wasn’t enough for them. They put me in a chair with the light shining in my eyes so that I could barely see. Then
they started hitting me. They used rubber hoses so there wouldn’t be any marks. They hit me so much I nearly fainted.

  The beating wasn’t the worst of it, though. They called me names. They called me a sex fiend and a pervert. That hurt me more than the beatings.

  Because I’m not a pervert, you see. All I want to do is watch people. There’s no harm in that, is there? I don’t hurt anyone, and I never really bother anybody. Sometimes someone sees me watching them, and they get frightened or angry, but that’s only once in a great while. I’ve been very careful lately, ever since they caught me.

  And if they think I am a pervert, you should see some of the things I’ve seen. You wouldn’t believe the things some of these normal people do. It’s enough to make you sick to your stomach. Yet they are normal, and they call me a pervert, a Peeping Tom. I can’t quite understand it. All I do is watch.

  Ever since they caught me I have been very careful. That is why I left the window when the man looked at me. I’m almost sure he didn’t see me, but he glanced toward the window and I hopped the fence and got away from there. Besides, it wasn’t much fun watching at his window. The woman with him was old and fat and I was getting bored with the whole thing. There was no sense in taking chances for that.

  When I got out to the street I didn’t know where to go. I used to have a perfect spot. A pretty young prostitute over on Tremont Avenue who saw at least ten men a night. I could spend night after night watching her. The backyard was dark and I had a perfect view. But one night she saw me watching.

  She was nice about it and sensible, too. She didn’t call me a pervert. But she said the men might notice me, that they wouldn’t like it. She told me to stay away. It was a shame that I had to give up the spot, but at least she didn’t call the police or anything.

  But I couldn’t watch there anymore, and I had to find a new spot. I walked down the street looking for a lighted window. I stopped at several places, but there was nothing much to see. There were just people sitting or reading or watching television.