Such Men Are Dangerous

by Lawrence Block

  He wouldn’t get back in his boat and go away forever. I should have known that. He had too much leverage, he was too well placed.

  “Just one job,” I said, slowly. “Right?”

  “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “And then nobody bothers me again.”

  “If you say so, that’s how it’ll be. You may change your mind once you’re back in action, but the choice is yours all the way, Paul.”

  The hell it was. If they had a lever now they’d have a lever until hell froze.

  I frowned thoughtfully. “How long would it take?”

  “As little as one week or as much as three. Split the difference and call it two weeks flat. A fortnight. Two weeks from today you’ll be back on your tight little island.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “Not bad at all.”

  “And I’d have my choice afterward? I could do more work or be left alone forever?”

  “Right. No strings either way.”

  I let my face relax. “You make it sound good.”

  “It is good, Paul.”

  “I’d like to know what it’s all about. “I hesitated. “Look, uh, George, I didn’t mean to pop off like that. When you go days on end without seeing another human being—”

  “I understand completely.”

  “I mean, no one but me has ever been out here before.”

  “You don’t have to explain, Paul. My apologies.”

  “Well,” I said. I headed for the shack. He was standing just to the right of the doorway. “Suppose I fix us a drink. And you’ll want to get out of that jacket. You must be roasting to death in it.”

  He was shrugging the jacket down over his shoulders just as I drew even with him. His gun hand dropped and the gun pointed at the ground in front of him. I kicked the muscle on the underside of his forearm. He howled and the gun went flying, and he was still howling when the heel of my hand caught the point of his jaw.

  He sagged. I grabbed him, one hand bunching his shirtfront, the other between his legs. I hoisted him high into the air and marched across the sand to the water’s edge. He was yammering like a little monkey.

  I walked straight out into the water until it came almost to my knees. “My island,” I was shouting. “My island, my house, my list! My life, you son of a bitch. My life!”

  I slammed him down on his back. His legs worked furiously. I stuffed his head underwater and held it there.

  “No jobs for you, damn you! My island, my house, my list!”

  He couldn’t hear me. He was underwater, and he was struggling, and bubbles were coming up through the water from his mouth and nose. After a few moments he went limp, and then, a little later, the bubbles stopped.

  FIVE

  HE WAS A lot heavier when I carried him back to shore. His clothes were soaked and his lungs were full of water. It was tempting to leave him there, but I put him over a shoulder and hauled him onto the sand and dropped him face down on it.

  I slipped one arm under his stomach, lifted him up a few inches, rolled him back and forth. Half the ocean streamed out of his mouth and nose. I moved in front of him and squatted with a knee on either side of his head and began artificial respiration, pressing down on his lungs, sliding my hands along his arms to his elbows, lifting the elbows, dropping, then going through the whole process again. 1, 2, press the lungs. 3, 4, reach for the elbows. 5, 6, lift the elbows. 7, release.

  Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is supposed to be something like sixty percent more efficient. The thought of applying it to Dattner made me gag. If my method worked, all well and good. If not, tough.

  It was bad enough that I had to revive him at all. I couldn’t remember wanting anything as much as I had wanted to leave him underwater. He certainly deserved it. He had invaded my privacy and disturbed my life, and murder seemed a minor crime in comparison.

  But once rage passed, I saw how inconvenient it would be if he died. He was no Gaines, no friendless wino with no one looking out for him. He was an Agency man on Agency business. There would be men who had known he had come here, and when he didn’t return I would have visitors. I could get rid of the boat and the body so that no one would ever be able to prove what had happened to Dattner. But I couldn’t keep them off my back. That was the real problem, and Dattner’s death would only enlarge it.

  Press the lungs, reach for the elbows, lift, drop. I kept working on him, ignoring the increasing suspicion that I was respirating a corpse, and after a while he rumbled and coughed. I stopped. He breathed on his own several times, then quit on me. I started in again and got him going, and this time he stayed with it. He gasped and said something unintelligible, and rolled his head and opened his eyes.

  I put my thumbs on either side of his neck and pressed firmly. He blacked out. I checked to make sure that the sudden loss of consciousness didn’t interrupt his breathing. There was a momentary lapse but then he came on strong again, nice and regular. I rolled him over onto his back and put my ear to his chest. I had stripped him to his underwear before I started respirating him, and now I realized how white his skin was. Ten minutes of midday sun and he’d be in terrible shape. The sun was on the way down now, so that was no problem.

  I listened to his lungs as he breathed. It sounded as though I had gotten almost all of the water out. His pulse was weak but steady.

  I went into my shack. At least he hadn’t moved anything out of place. I found my roll of twine, cut two lengths, returned to him and tied his ankles together, then put him on his stomach again and tied his wrists together behind his back.

  I got undressed. My clothes were wet and I spread them on the beach to dry. It felt good to be out of them, but before I left the shack I put on a pair of swim trunks. That’s the trouble with having people near you. You can’t feel comfortable naked. I think it’s less a matter of inhibition than the equation of exposure with being unprotected. When you’re naked, your enemy can get at you.

  I found his gun, a .45 automatic. I had no use for it, and I didn’t want him to get hold of it, so I threw it halfway to Mushroom Key.

  I went back for my rowboat, towed it through the water around the perimeter of my island to where I usually beached it. I carried all of my provisions into the shack and put them away where they belonged. When that was done I waded out to check my fishing line. There were three fishes on it, all the same species, ranging from six to ten inches in length. I didn’t know what kind they were but they were the type I usually caught, with flaky meat and a lot of soft tiny bones. I took all three to shore and killed them, although I didn’t expect to eat them all. But I had learned not to leave a fish in the water overnight. Something would come and tear it to shreds. This way I would eat what I wanted and use what remained for tomorrow’s bait.

  Somewhere in the middle of all this Dattner came to again. He made of lot of noise at first, mostly shouting my name. I ignored him. I had discovered before I found my island that people run out of steam if you simply fail to respond to them for long enough. Just because someone says something to you does not mean you are compelled to answer him. It works with strangers, and now it worked with Dattner. Before very long he quieted down and waited for me to notice him.

  I let him wait. I chopped the heads and tails off the fishes, slit them down the middle, gutted them and fileted them. I crumpled half a dozen pages of One, Two, Three … Infinity, nested them where I built my fires and packed slivers of driftwood over them. When the fire was going nicely I fried two of the fish in cooking oil and ate them both. They were delicious, but then they always are.

  “You almost drowned me.”

  “Not almost. I drowned you, but then I changed my mind and brought you around again. For a while I didn’t think you would make it. I almost gave up. I suppose you could say you were dead for a few minutes and then came back to life.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “You mean the Lazarus bit? I’m honored, but it’s not quite the same thing.”
r />   “Jesus Christ.”

  He was on his back, his hands underneath him. I was squatting on my haunches alongside him, finishing a cup of coffee. I had never understood how people could sit on their haunches for long periods of time. I’d always found it painful. When you have all the time in the world to practice, it gets easy.

  “One minute you’re talking about getting me something to drink, and the next minute my head’s underneath the ocean. I never saw anything like it.”

  “You’ve been telling me how good I am. Now you know.”

  “Yeah. Paul?”

  “What?”

  “Why kill me?”

  I finished the coffee, trotted back to the shack to get an orange for dessert. I gnawed at it for a few minutes before answering him. “You came here,” I said, finally. “You came here, to my island. I didn’t invite you. I didn’t want company, you or anybody else. And you wouldn’t go away. I told you to go away and you wouldn’t go.” I shrugged. “On top of that, I got mad. When you’re all alone all the time you don’t have to keep your temper because nothing makes you lose it. So I was out of practice, and I got mad. Anyway, I couldn’t think of a better way to get rid of you.”

  “So you tried to drown me.”

  “I didn’t try. I drowned you, and then I changed my mind.”

  He thought this over while I finished my orange. I set the peel floating in the water. I throw all my organic garbage in the sea where sooner or later something eats it. Cans I bum out and bury. I don’t want to make anything dirty.

  On the way back I put more wood on the fire. I had a fair stockpile of firewood, and I could always bum planks from his boat.

  “Paul?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have any idea how completely you’ve changed?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you do. Why did you change your mind?”

  “I figured they would miss you and send someone looking for you, so killing you would just complicate things. It would make me feel good for a couple of hours but then it would make my life more difficult.”

  “No other reason?”

  “Like what?”

  “Forget it. What happens now?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Will you let me go away?”

  “As soon as I’m sure you’ll leave me alone. I think you probably will, because you must realize I wouldn’t be of any use to you. To the Agency. If you don’t want me any more, and if you’re not set on being vindictive, then there’s no reason to keep you here. Or to kill you. So I’ll put you in your boat and send you on your way.”

  “Uh-huh. The funny thing is, I want you more than ever.”

  “Then you must be crazy.”

  “Don’t bet on it. Look, Paul—”

  “Later,” I said. I took the frying pan to the water’s edge and washed it clean. Usually, on days when I go over to Mushroom Key, I eat a late lunch as soon as I get back and a late dinner a little after sunset. Dattner had fouled up my schedule. The sun was already on its way down, and the two fish filets were lunch. In a few hours I would want to get to sleep, and I hadn’t had dinner, and didn’t like to eat just before I went to bed. I had planned on having the pork chops.

  I would have skipped dinner, but this was no time to abandon my ten rules. They had never been more important. I took two unnecessary drinks from the old pint of corn whiskey. That killed the bottle, and I put it aside to return to Clint next trip. I got the pork chops from the fridge and sauteed them in the frying pan in a half inch of sea water. It’s good to cook in and saves adding salt. When the chops were ready I carried the pan over to Dattner. He was on his side, watching me.

  “You eat a lot.”

  “One of these is for you, if you want it.”

  “If I want it. The only thing I want more is a cigarette. I suppose the ones in my jacket are soaked.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “There’s another pack on the boat.”

  “It’s a dirty habit,” I said. “Now’s your chance to kick.”

  His laugh started out ingratiating and wound up honest. He sort of got carried away with it. He asked if I would cut him loose.

  “Don’t get cute.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Because it wouldn’t do you any good. Your gun’s in thirty feet of water, and a knife or ax wouldn’t give you enough of an edge.”

  “I’ve had a lot of training, you know. Unarmed combat.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “You don’t sound terrified. I guess I don’t blame you. I’ll be a good boy, Paul. Just cut me loose and let me eat and I’ll be good.”

  “I undid his ankles first, opening the knot easily. Then I rolled him over and worked on the length of twine around his wrists. It had gotten wet, and I had a tough time picking it apart.

  “Why not cut it?”

  “I don’t want to ruin the twine.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “And this is the joker who has all the money he needs. What is that, a tenth of a cent’s worth of twine? You don’t need money, but you’ll spend all day working on a knot and—”

  I opened the knot. He turned over, sat up, rubbed his wrists.

  He said, “A couple of feet of twine—”

  I handed him a pork chop and told him to shut up and eat it. I ate mine. When he was done I threw the bones into the water. I opened the quart bottle of shine and brought him two ounces in an empty tin can.

  “Aren’t you drinking?”

  “No.”

  “I forgot. Two a day before dinner and no more, right?”

  “One of the things we won’t talk about is the list.”

  “Don’t get angry—”

  “I’m just telling you.”

  “Sure.” He drained the can in two swallows. “Smooth,” he said.

  “Homemade corn.”

  “Nothing like it. They make it around here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He asked if he could go to the boat for cigarettes. I told him no—he might have a gun there, or might try to get away. He said he would give me his word. I just looked at him. He asked, then, if I would go for his cigarettes. I told him not to be silly. He stopped talking.

  I said, “About the twine. You don’t understand anything at all. The cost of it doesn’t matter. It’s the inconvenience. The greatest nuisance in the world is garbage. I don’t throw things into the water unless they get eaten sooner or later. So—”

  “What about the bones?”

  “They’ll break down. Fish will eat parts of them and pick at the meat and marrow, and the rest will nourish some form of life. And—”

  “And my gun?”

  “Lesser of two evils. I don’t usually throw guns in the sea. I don’t usually have to. Shut up, will you?” He did. “So with twine, little unusable bits of twine, I have to burn them. That’s easy enough, but it’s something else that has to be done. And twine doesn’t burn that well. They treat the fibers with some sort of crud and it stinks when it bums.

  “And if I waste twine, sooner or later I’ll have to buy more twine. Which means remembering to pick it up at the store, and carrying it to the boat, and having it take up so much space in the boat, and carrying it ashore and putting it away again. The less often I have to do this, not just with twine but with everything else—”

  “I get the point.”

  “Do you? I don’t mean the twine, I mean the real point. That there’s a reason for everything I do. That I have worlds of time out here with nobody in my way. That I’ve gradually worked things out so that my life runs exactly the way I want it to. Whenever I find that I’ve got something in the shack that’s useless, I get rid of it. I use books I’m finished with to start fires. I used to have a fork and a spoon, small ones for eating, and one day I realized that I was eating all my meals with my fingers anyway, or else eating
with the cooking fork. So I dug a hole and buried the tableware. I don’t want anything extra around. I don’t want anything to get in my way.”

  “It’s an unusual attitude.”

  “It works for me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I left to take a leak, and that reminded him that he had a similar function to perform. I told him where to go, and to kick sand over it when he was done. On the way back he said, “Paul? There’s something you might want to hear, but it refers to something you said not to mention.”

  “Huh?”

  “It refers to, uh, the list.”

  “Oh, go ahead.”

  He chose his words carefully. “One item there, one of the maxims, was about not talking to anyone. Unnecessarily, that is.”

  “So?”

  “Well, if you think back over the past few minutes. When you started explaining about the twine, and your views on garbage, uh, and getting rid of useless articles. You didn’t have to bother explaining all of that to me. That was what I suppose would come under the heading of unnecessary talk. Until then you hardly talked at all, but now it’s as if you want to talk, to have a conversation.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not making any point. I just thought it was something you might like to hear about.”

  I didn’t answer him, and he let it lie there. After a while I said that it was getting dark and suggested we move closer to the fire. We did. I asked him if he wanted coffee.

  “If you’re having some,” he said.

  I poured fresh water into my cast-iron kettle and put it on the fire. When it boiled I added powdered coffee, stirred it, scooped out two cans and gave him one.

  “Thanks.” he said.

  “I don’t have sugar or cream.”

  “This is fine.”

  “If you want to get those cigarettes out of your jacket, you can probably dry them out.”

  “And they’ll be smokable?”