Small Town

by Lawrence Block

Page 74

 

  Not in a newsreel, though. He wasn’t old enough to have been in a newsreel.

  And now he was on his feet, headed south on the bike path, walking by the water’s edge. And he paused at the very gate that led to the Nancy Dee, but no, he wasn’t entering, he was just taking a good look.

  The Carpenter smiled.

  The man turned, and the Carpenter watched him make his way to the path that would take him to the Boat Basin Café. The Carpenter smiled again, and made his own way carefully and unob-trusively to the slip where the Nancy Dee lay waiting for him.

  He’d have liked to paint out the name. Call it the Carole.

  Inside the cabin, he left the light unlit. When his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness he went over to the chest of drawers and took the gun from its clip, slipped it into his pocket.

  Then he sought out the cabin’s darkest corner and wedged himself into it, standing there like a statue in a niche. If no one came, he’d remain still and motionless for two, three, four hours, waiting in patient silence until it was time for his sacrifice.

  If anyone showed up before then, well, he was ready.

  T E N - T H I R T Y, A N D S T I L L N O sign of the son of a bitch.

  Which was fine, actually. This way he could be on board when the Carpenter showed up. It was late enough now for him to make his move. If Blackbeard gave him any grief, he’d drag him around the corner and cuff him to a lamppost.

  No point sneaking or skulking. That would draw attention quicker than anything else. No, the thing to do was walk right out on the pier and hop on board that boat as if you owned it, and that’s just what he did. He had the urge to go over to the helm, grab ahold of the wheel, and gaze off into the distance like an old sea dog.

  But he’d be wasting time. He walked over to the locked hatch-way, drew out his key ring, went to work.

  T H E C A R P E N T E R ’ S M I N D W A S adrift, bobbing in a sea of thought.

  But he came to suddenly, sensing a presence. Moments later he heard footsteps on the pier, and then felt the boat tilt as someone came aboard.

  He hadn’t moved since he took his position in the corner of the cabin, not even when his mind was all drifty. Nor did he move now.

  He heard someone trying a key in the lock. But who would have a key? He wondered if he should have left the hatch ajar. He’d thought of it, decided it might look suspicious. But if the fellow couldn’t get in—

  If he couldn’t get in, well, he’d just go away. Which would actually simplify things.

  Even so, the Carpenter hoped he’d be able to open the door. And he listened as whatever the man was using scraped the metal, scraped it again, then caught and forced it free. The hatch came open, letting a little light into the cabin, but none that reached the corner where the Carpenter was waiting.

  He didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Until the man came in, and found the stacked cases of empty beer bottles, the cans of gasoline, the heaped strips of cloth. The man stiffened, and the Carpenter sensed he could tell what he was looking at. The man lifted one of the bottles from the top case, then put it back where he’d found it.

  The Carpenter drew his pistol, took one step forward, pointed the gun at the back of the intruder’s neck. And squeezed the trigger.

  Instead of a bang! he heard a dry click! The gun was broken, or improperly loaded. But not entirely useless. Even as the man started to spin around, the Carpenter drew the gun back and used it like a hammer, like a tire iron, swung it with all his strength against the back of the man’s head.

  He fell to his knees, tried to brace himself, tried to rise, tried to turn.

  The Carpenter hit him again, and this time he fell all the way and lay still.

  thirty-nine

  SUSAN HAD LEFTaround noon, telling him she had a million things to do, letters to answer, bills to pay, clothes to wash.

  And no, he didn’t have to go downstairs with her, there would be no end of cabs, or she could just hop on a bus up Eighth Avenue, or even walk, it wasn’t that hot out, it might be pleasant to walk.

  And she kissed him, and he got up from the couch and let her out, and she kissed him again, and he stood at the door until he heard her leave the building, then went to the window and watched her walk off down the street and disappear around the corner.

  He liked her walk. A good no-nonsense athletic stride, but no less feminine for it. And her ass looked great in slacks.

  He’d been glad she was going yet reluctant to see her go. This was the first time she’d stayed the night, and in fact he hadn’t had many women stay over since he’d moved back into the Bank Street apartment after the divorce. There’d been ladies he’d spent the night with, and one a couple of years ago he’d spent a whole lot of nights with, and had given some thought to spending all his days and nights with, until she’d announced out of the blue one day that this just wasn’t working out, and anyway she was moving back to Santa Cruz.

  But with Jessica—that was her name, Jessica Duncan, and thank God she’d moved back to Santa Cruz—with her and the other less frequent overnight companions, he’d almost invariably gone to their apartments. They generally preferred it that way, given that he lived in one room and everything stank of cigarette smoke. (And what, incidentally, was he going to do about that? He seemed to have quit smoking, he was almost ready to start cutting the patches in half, and one symptom of his new status as a former smoker was that he was beginning to notice the way his place smelled. Not while he was in it, but when he came back from outdoors, the way you’d notice some cat lover’s litter box. Jesus, was he going to turn into one of those obnoxious ex-smokers who wrinkled their noses when someone two blocks away lit a Marlboro? Yeah, he thought, he probably was. )

  It wouldn’t hurt to have the place painted. And he could get rid of the upholstered furniture, the couch and the comfortable chair, both of which should probably be replaced anyway. That wouldn’t eliminate odors entirely, but it was a start, and time would do the rest.

  So many things to think about, just to keep from thinking about what he didn’t want to think about:

  His hands on her throat.

  H E A L M O S T C A L L E D H E R after he heard from Esther Blinkoff.

  She’d begun with an effusive apology for interrupting his holiday weekend, then told him it was only fair since he’d completely monopolized hers. She and her husband were at their house on the Jersey shore, spending their last long weekend there prior to closing it down for the season, and what had she done ever since they got there Friday? She’d ignored everybody and locked herself away with Darker Than Water, and it was all his fault that she’d been unable to stop reading.

  Usually, she confessed, she’d wait until she got some other in-house readings before announcing her own reaction to a manuscript. But why wait? She knew everyone was going to love the book, knew Sales would go out of their minds for it, and all she had to do now was figure out just which month to publish. The sooner the better, of course, but not so soon that the book didn’t have all the groundwork laid for it.

  And so on.

  It was what Roz had told him to expect. Esther had three million reasons to love the book, so how could she not? But her enthusiasm moved him all the same, and he reached for the phone to share it with Susan, then decided it could wait.

  Why the hell had she put his hands on her throat? Pressed them there, when he moved to take them away?

  Please, she’d urged.

  Please what?

  H E H A D D I N N E R A L O N E , came back and picked up a collection of O’Hara’s short stories. He skipped through it, reading a couple of old favorites, wishing he could write like that.

  On his way back from the bathroom, he checked the rabbit’s dish. Susan had said the cornmeal was disappearing, and he looked for himself and decided she was seeing things. Or, more accurately, not seeing them. He picked up the dish and sniffed it, and it seemed to him that
it smelled of tobacco smoke.

  Now you’re really being nuts, he told himself. And dumped the dish in the garbage, wiped it out, and added fresh meal from the sack in the refrigerator.

  Live a little, he told the rabbit. We’re going to be rich, you can have fresh cornmeal every day for years.

  But how’d you get here, anyway?

  He looked for his copy of Blake’s poems, found “The Tyger. ” There was one line he wanted to check, to make sure he remembered it correctly. Yes, there it was:

  Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

  He put the book back, picked up the rabbit, looked into his little eyes. They were some dark stone, maybe obsidian, and they gave the animal an expression of great alertness, which was all to the good; if you were going to talk to a little turquoise rabbit, you wanted to feel it was paying attention to you.

  Why did I pick you up, and why don’t I remember it? And what did I do just before I picked you up, or just after?

  And why did she put my hands on her throat?

  forty

  ONE PURCHASE THECarpenter had made was a small plastic funnel, and it was proving a handy tool indeed. He had used wide-mouthed fruit juice jars for his first Molotov cocktails, and they’d been easy to fill, though less easy to fit with stoppers. Nor were they readily available by the case in a riverside marina. Thus the beer bottles, and the funnel, which speeded up the task while keeping spillage to a minimum.

  The Carpenter filled twelve bottles at a time, stoppered them with the cloth wicks, and carried each full case out of the cabin and onto the open deck, where any fumes would dissipate quickly in the open air. He paused periodically to have a look at the intruder, who had not yet regained consciousness, and who might indeed be dead by now. He’d had a pulse when the Carpenter first checked, but he hadn’t stirred, and it seemed possible that he might have died of a burst blood vessel in the brain, or some other effect of the two blows he’d taken to the head.

  His pockets had yielded some treasures, most notably a pair of handcuffs, which encouraged the Carpenter to look further. He’d found a gun, a fully loaded revolver, and maybe this one actually worked. He seemed to recall that pistols had a tendency to jam, as his had evidently done, and he didn’t think that was the case with revolvers. He’d put the pistol back on top of the chest of drawers, held there by the clips, and transferred the intruder’s pistol to his pocket.

  Stripping the man, he’d found what he at once recognized as a bulletproof vest. Well, it wouldn’t have kept the Carpenter from putting a bullet into the back of the intruder’s neck, had the gun worked. The Carpenter tried it on and liked the feel of it, the comfort it somehow provided. He’d put his clothes on over it, liking the bulk and weight of it. Then he added the shoulder holster, and transferred the gun from his pocket to the holster. He practiced with it, drawing it, then returning it to the leather holster. He felt as though he were now secretly protected, as if by a guardian angel.

  The intruder, in marked contrast, was naked, and entirely vulnerable. He had no body hair, the Carpenter noted, although he had a full head of hair and the beard of a man who’d last shaved in the morning. The Carpenter ran a hand over the smooth skin and wondered at its cause. Some disease? Or had the intruder deliberately removed the hair, perhaps for some religious reason?