Blood on Their Hands

by Lawrence Block

  “And you are...?”

  “I’m this poor little lad’s Nan, that’s who I am. This is my grandson’s been beaten up like this. Have you seen his fingers? He’ll never play the piano again.”

  Blick knew a feed line when he heard one. He ignored it. “Now then, Dean—are you feeling up to answering a question or three?”

  “S’pose so.” The kid in the bed was very small. His blue hair looked like a symptom.

  Dean’s Nan opened her mouth to speak, but Blick had been in the job long enough to know how to silence grandparents without leaving visible marks. He looked at her. She scowled, and became silent.

  “The man who did this to you—did you get a good look at him?”

  “S’pose so. It was a bit quick. I’m, like, walking along? And then suddenly he’s like wham! Bam! All over me.

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “Never seen him before.”

  “But you saw him well enough that you would have recognized him, if you had known him?”

  “I’d have known him,” said Dean. He added, in a smaller voice, “I’d know him again, an’ all.”

  Kids are good liars, because that’s all kids do. That’s how they get through childhood. So Blick was only pretending to study Dean; really, he was studying Dean’s Nan. As far as he could tell, she thought Dean was telling the truth. That didn’t mean he was, of course. But it made it more likely.

  Blick didn’t think Dean was a mugger, and the nurse he’d spoken to before he came in didn’t think Dean was a heavy drug user. Dean definitely didn’t look like Mr. Holt’s mugger, according to Mr. Holt’s own description.

  Blick had entered the hospital expecting to discover some connection between Dean Stubbs and Mr. Holt, which would explain why Holt had singled him out for violence. He’d already checked the obvious ones—address, kinship, workplace, clubs, and so on—and none of those had produced anything. Holt had never reported any other crime— vandalism, say—which young Dean might have been involved in. Now Blick was starting to believe that maybe there wasn’t a connection to be found.

  He still thought Holt was lying, though. He just couldn’t think what he was lying about.

  Back at the station, PC Blick went straight to the CID office, to speak to a DC called Jan. Before he could speak to her, she spoke to him.

  “Blicky! The hero of the day!”

  “Oh. You heard.”

  “I heard. I heard about your victims going around the place walloping teenagers. Excellent development! Before your next bus trip, can I give you a list?”

  “Thanks, Jan. I knew I could count on your sympathetic support.”

  “Always, Blicky. Always.”

  She was his best friend in the job. They’d slept together once, a couple of summers ago, but somehow they’d survived even that.

  “Jan, you were the officer dealing in the Holt mugging?”

  “Yup—if you call taking a statement and filing it ‘dealing.’”

  “The assailant description—it wasn’t anyone you recognized?

  She shook her head. She had nice hair, but at this stage of the shift it could do with a wash. “Nope. Definitely not one of our regulars. And it didn’t produce a hit on the suspect index, either. Why—what are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know,” said Blick, which was close to the truth. “And there haven’t been any incident reports since, that matched that description?”

  She reached out a finger and flicked his tie. He was glad there was no one else around, because flicking someone’s tie like that—with just one finger—counts as foreplay in police circles. “You don’t think the mugger exists, do you? Or at least, you don’t think a mugger matching that description exists.”

  “I don’t know,” said Blick, which was slightly less true than it had been a few seconds earlier. “Was the victim drunk when officers arrived?”

  “He’d been drinking, he wasn’t drunk. He’d had a couple of pints at the snooker hall. But he hadn’t been in a fight, if that’s where you’re going. No grazing to the knuckles, clothes weren’t in disarray, no cuts or bruises. Well, except the bruises in his trousers.”

  “He did take a blow to the balls?”

  “Duty surgeon said so.”

  Blick reset his tie. The superintendent was fussy about standards of appearance. Also, in case Jan wanted to flick it again. “Does that sound like a mugging to you?”

  She thought about it. Her posture became a little defensive. She wasn’t in a tie-flicking mood anymore. “There was nothing to suggest that this was a domestic.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “What sort of man is going to report a domestic kick in the balls? And if he did—if he was a battered husband—why would he report it as a mugging? Doesn’t make sense, Blicky. Think about it.”

  “Okay, but supposing he was cruising. Supposing he came on to a woman, or a boy, thinking she or he was a prostitute. Picked the wrong person, got his nuts crushed as a lesson in manners.”

  “Well...”

  “Makes more sense than a one-time-only mugger. A successful mugger, who retires immediately after his first performance?”

  Jan swiveled her chair away from him. She had plenty of volume crime to keep her busy. She had no time for mysteries. “Well, Blicky, if you come up with anything, be sure to keep us informed.”

  “Oh, sure, I will,” said PC Blick, which was entirely untrue.

  “You’re making a complete testicle of yourself, young man.”

  For a second, Mr. Holt’s lawyer looked as if she might like to comment on this statement by her client, but a second later she looked as if she might prefer not to.

  “Mr. Holt,” said PC Blick, “this case will go to court. You can count on that. You beat up a child, put him in hospital, quite possibly destroyed any potential future he might or might not have had as a concert pianist.”

  For the first time in two interviews, the CID woman sitting next to Blick looked at him. She frowned. Could have been a smile, maybe, but Blick thought it was probably a frown.

  He continued, “As I’m sure your solicitor will have explained to you, your best hope is to convince the judge that there were mitigating circumstances.”

  “Him being a mugging little bastard, for instance?” said Holt. “Would that do?”

  “No one is ever going to believe that you mistook Dean for the man who attacked you. The court is going to believe that you attacked Dean Stubbs because you had some reason to attack him. Because he had done you some harm.”

  “He’s a mugger,” said Holt. “Is that harm enough?”

  And that’s when Blick got it. “Mr. Holt. Could you please describe the man who mugged you?”

  “Constable, my client has already—”

  “I’ve told you what he looked like. I told you at the time.”

  “Yes, you did. And, of course, I told you, didn’t I? In our first interview, earlier today. I refreshed your memory.”

  “My memory didn’t need refreshing, young man. I know well enough what a mugger looks like, thank you very much.”

  “I’m sure you do, Mr. Holt. I’m sure you think you do.”

  Holt’s face was pinker than ever. Pinker than Blick had ever seen it, anyway. “You, young man, are making a total testicle of yourself.”

  The lawyer threw her pen down on the table and said: “Spectacle! The word is spectacle.”

  Holt gave her a haughty look. “Perhaps it is where you come from.”

  “There was no mugging, sir.”

  “Holt was never mugged?” said the inspector. “Then who kicked him in the balls?”

  “He did it himself, I believe.”

  “Impossible. You can’t kick yourself in the balls.” The inspector spoke with the certainty of one who had tried. Which caused Blick to lose his train of thought momentarily.

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir,” he said at last, when he had cleared his mind of irrelevant speculations and unwanted images. “You c
an’t do it to yourself deliberately. But you can do it accidentally—or at least, something that provokes similar bruising patterns. I’ll bet teachers do it all the time, walking into child-size desks in classrooms.”

  “Your Mr. Holt isn’t a teacher, is he?”

  “No, sir, but he does play snooker. We’ll never prove it, of course—”

  “God, I hope not!” the inspector interrupted. “What sort of spectacle would that make in court?”

  “—but I reckon if you were to compare Holt’s inside leg measurement to that of a snooker table, you would—”

  “Yes, all right, Blick.” The inspector waved his fingers in front of his face. “So, he accidentally knackers himself. Why did he report a mugging that never took place?”

  “So that he could get on the Victim Bus, sir.”

  “Not another of your bloody day-trippers, Blick? Looking for an afternoon on the town courtesy of the taxpayer?”

  “No sir. Looking for an excuse to attack a teenage boy.”

  “What? Why, for God’s sake?”

  “Because,” said PC Blick, speaking slowly to let it sink in, “all teenage boys are muggers. Everyone knows that. That’s what it says on the TV, isn’t it? In the newspapers. It’s common knowledge.”

  The inspector was so astonished by this that for a moment he forgot not to be intelligent. “And, of course,” he said, “all muggers are big louts with pockmarked skin and goatee beards.”

  “Unless they’re big scary blacks, sir, yes. Holt probably thought black would be too obvious.”

  “But Dean Stubbs isn’t a big lout with pockmarked skin, is he?”

  “No, sir. But he is just the right size for walloping about the face and body with a furled umbrella. Besides, one kid will do as well as another. They’re all at it, after all—everyone knows that.”

  A couple of days later, the inspector called Blick into his office and told him that the Victim Bus scheme was being permanently and irrevocably canceled.

  “If you think that’s best, sir,” said Blick.

  “I do,” said the inspector.

  “That is the best bloody news I have had in the last three hundred years. I am going to get so bloody drunk tonight they’ll have to take me home in a bucket,” said PC Blick. Silently.

  Safety First

  Marcia Talley

  George stood on the steps of Lakeland Public Library—his library—and studied his reflection in the tall glass doors. Intelligent gray eyes set in a pleasantly round face, a full head of auburn hair, all his own, thank you very much. All in all, a cheerful sort of guy. Squinting at his reflection, he smoothed back an unruly lock with the palm of his hand, straightened his tie, and wondered, for the fourth morning in a row, why such a friendly-looking fellow deserved such punishment.

  Years ago, sitting at a solitary cataloger’s desk deep in the bowels of Lakeland Public, aspiring to be head of it one day, he wished he had known then what he knew now. Management would be simple, he told himself, if it weren’t for all the people.

  These doors, for example. He winced as the plain glass panels whooshed open automatically before him, followed by a blast of heat that ruffled his carefully styled hair. At their weekly staff meetings the circulation librarian, Jean McBride, had gone on and on about the old revolving doors. “That’s the second time this week a mother with a stroller’s been caught in that door, not to mention the indignity of forcing our handicapped patrons to use the basement entrance!” Counterarguments about the architectural significance of the doors—made of brass, glass, and ornately carved wood, part of the original building when Andrew Carnegie had dedicated it at the turn of the century—not to mention the added cost of heating the lobby, had fallen on deaf ears. When the readers’ services librarian and the head of cataloging had stood in solidarity with their colleagues, George had capitulated. Now, fully ten percent of his fuel oil budget was going to heat four parallel parking spaces on Cuyahoga Street and keep the blasted forsythia bushes warm throughout the winter. He had the bills to prove it.

  “Morning, Dr. Hopkins.”

  “Morning, Jean.” It annoyed him that no matter how early he arrived at work, that damned woman was there ahead of him. Already his stomach was in knots thinking about the staff meeting he’d scheduled for later that morning. He prayed they wouldn’t gang up on him again.

  Jean had been a particular challenge. When he’d first taken the directorship, she had been manning the circulation desk wearing tennis shoes, slacks, dumpy sweaters, and once, to his horror, a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. At his first staff meeting, he’d impressed on her, indeed on all “front office” staff, the importance of their appearance. “If we don’t look professional,” he had admonished, “how can we expect our customers (never patrons!) to treat us as such?”

  Today he smiled at Jean, who wore, he was pleased to note, a frilly white blouse under a chic, navy blue suit. He pictured navy hose ending in black, patent-leather t-strap shoes, but could only imagine this without leaning very obviously over the counter.

  George punched the up button and waited, pacing, while the elevator made a slow, creaking ascent from the basement. When the doors shuddered open, he climbed aboard and rode to the fifth floor, where his office was tucked into a corner with windows overlooking Lake Erie on two sides.

  Lolly, his secretary, was already at her desk, head bent over her keyboard. When he pushed through the double doors, she popped up as if shot from a toaster. “Dr. Hopkins! Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  As he crossed the carpet to his office, Lolly orbited around her cubicle, keeping her body between her boss and whatever was displayed on her monitor screen. George’s eyes narrowed. “Coffee will be fine, Miss Taylor.” He took three steps toward his office, then suddenly turned, catching his secretary, already on her way to the coffee machine, off guard. “What’s that on your monitor?”

  Lolly smiled uncertainly. “Just a screen saver.”

  George squinted toward the monitor where manic dogs frolicked, gradually gobbling bits of the Word document Lolly had been working on. He scowled. “What’s wrong with the one that came with the computer?” he demanded, thinking of the soothing, cloud-studded landscape that materialized on his screen whenever it had been idle for ten minutes.

  Lolly’s dark eyes bored into his, her lips forming a thin, hard line. She opened her mouth, then seemed to reconsider. “I’ll change it back,” she whispered.

  George grunted. “What if a board member should come in and see that? Very unprofessional!” He unlocked the door to his office and slipped in, thinking this was not an auspicious start to the day.

  For the next two hours, sipping the hot coffee Lolly periodically provided, hoping, vainly, to feel the revitalizing effects of caffeine surging through his system, George proofed the final draft of his annual report. On page twenty-seven, he added a paragraph that had just occurred to him about estate planning and the Friends of the Library Foundation. Then, exuding self-confidence after a short but productively persuasive telephone conversation with an elderly, chronically ill donor, George gathered up the annual report, slid it into his secretary’s in-box, and headed toward the conference room, smiling.

  His confidence evaporated the minute he entered the room. Arranged in a horseshoe around the table was his staff, presided over like a malevolent Buddha by Claudia Fairfield, head of readers’ services, narrow-eyed and unsmiling. Instantly, he regretted appointing Claudia head of the facilities management committee. Before he had time to pull up his chair, she thrust her triangular chin over the table and announced, “We have our report.”

  George swallowed, the coffee he’d recently consumed making an unwelcome comeback. On his left sat Jean McBride, hands folded on the table in front of her, quietly studying her painted thumbnails. On Jean’s left was Belinda D’Arcy, the archivist, leafing through some papers and refusing to meet his eyes; still fuming, no doubt, over George’s refusal to grant her request for leave without pay to take care of her
mother. Next to Belinda sat Miles Nichols, the head cataloger who, with his floppy hair, flattish nose, and lipless mouth, reminded George of a lizard. Myles had an elderly mother, too. If George were to grant Belinda’s request, soon Myles would be asking for leave, and the next thing he knew, the whole staff would be expecting George to bend over backward for them. There’d be no end to it. Time off to attend classes. Write a thesis. Get married. Go on vacations even.

  George had done his homework on Belinda, at least. She’d threatened to quit, but George had been through her personnel folder and knew that the threat was an empty one. Just two years short of retirement, Belinda could hardly risk losing her pension.

  As Claudia droned on about the annual picnic, vending machines in the staff area (including one that dispensed cappuccino), and electrical outlets in the ladies’ rest rooms to accommodate their damn hair dryers, George zoned out. He found himself wondering about the package he was expecting from L.L. Bean and whether he’d have time to eat before his evening karate class.

  “Overtime.” The word sliced through his reverie like a knife. George had replaced his predecessor’s rather lackadaisical approach to payroll with a computerized system, well aware that the institution of time cards would make him about as popular as mosquitoes at a nudist colony. But it had to be done. Now, it appeared, he was being punished for his pains. “Because of the Friends’ meeting, I worked forty-nine hours last week,” Jean was whining. “How does the library plan to pay me for it?”

  Controlling his exasperation, George explained, for what seemed like the hundredth time, that overtime hours had to be approved in advance, and referred her to the new staff manual.

  “Nobody told me I had to ask in advance,” Jean complained.

  “It’s in the cover memo I sent out to all staff,” George reminded her. He hastily finessed by referring Jean to the personnel office all the while knowing, with fear’s cold fingers squeezing his gut, that before long he’d be summoned by the Brunehilde in charge of that office and forced to attend another session of “sensitivity training.”