Dark City Lights

by Lawrence Block

  She made a rather elaborate striptease of it, which was a waste of time as far as he was concerned, but it didn’t take her too long. When she was naked he picked up her husband’s gun, muffled it with the same throw pillow he’d used earlier, and shot her twice in the chest. Then he put the gun back in her husband’s hand and got out of there.

  IT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE that they charged two dollars for a Good Humor. Keller wasn’t positive. But it seemed to him he could remember paying fifteen or twenty cents for one. Of course that had been many years ago, and everything had been cheaper way back when, and cost more nowadays.

  But you really noticed it when it involved something you hadn’t bought in years, and a Good Humor, ice cream on a stick, was not something he’d often felt a longing for. Now, though, walking in the park, he’d seen a vendor, and the urge for a chocolate-coated ice cream bar, with a firm chocolate center and assorted gook embedded in the chocolate coating, was well nigh irresistible. He’d paid the two dollars—he probably would have paid ten dollars just then, if he’d had to—and went over to sit on a bench and enjoy his Good Humor.

  If only.

  Because he couldn’t really characterize his own humor as particularly good, or even neutral. He was, in fact, in a fairly dismal mood, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. There were things he liked about his work, but its immediate aftermath had never been one of them; whatever feeling of satisfaction came from a job well done was mitigated by the bad feeling brought about by the job’s nature. He’d just killed three people, and two of them had been his clients. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to go.

  But what choice had he had? Both of the women had met him and seen his face, and one of them had tracked him to his apartment. He could leave them alive, but then he’d have to relocate to Chicago; it just wouldn’t be safe to stay in New York, where there’d be all too great a chance of running into one or the other of them.

  Even if he didn’t, sooner or later one or the other would talk. They were amateurs, and if he did just what he was supposed to do originally—send Fluffy to that great dog run in the sky—either Evelyn or Myra would have an extra drink one night and delight in telling her friends how she’d managed to solve a problem in a sensible Sopranos-style way.

  And, of course, if he executed the extra commission from one of them by killing the other, well, sooner or later the cops would talk to the survivor, who would hold out for about five minutes before spilling everything she knew. He’d have to kill Myra, because she’d followed him home and thus knew more than Evelyn, and that’s what he’d done, thinking he might be able to leave it at that, but with George dead the cops would go straight to Evelyn, and . . .

  He had to do it. Period, end of story.

  And the way he left things, the cops wouldn’t really have any reason to look much further. A domestic triangle, all three participants dead, all shot with the same gun, with nitrate particles in the shooter’s hand and the last bullet fired through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. (And, as Evelyn had observed with delight, out the back of his skull.) It’d make tabloid headlines, but there was no reason for anyone to go looking for a mystery man from Chicago or anywhere else.

  Usually, after he’d finished a piece of work, the next order of business was for him to go home. Whether he drove or flew or took a train, he’d thus be putting some substantial physical distance between himself and what he’d just done. That, plus the mental tricks he used to distance himself from the job, made it easier to turn the page and get on with his life.

  Walking across the park wasn’t quite the same thing.

  He centered his attention on his Good Humor. The sweetness helped, no question about it. Took the sourness right out of his system. The sweetness, the creaminess, the tang of the chocolate center that remained after the last of the ice cream was gone—it was all just right, and he couldn’t believe he’d resented paying two dollars for it. It would have been a bargain at five dollars, he decided, and an acceptable luxury at ten. It was gone now, but . . .

  Well, couldn’t he have another?

  The only reason not to, he decided, was that it wasn’t the sort of thing a person did. You didn’t buy one ice cream bar and follow it with another. But why not? He wouldn’t miss the two dollars, and weight had never been a problem for him, nor was there any particular reason for him to watch his intake of fat or sugar or chocolate. So?

  He found the vendor, handed him a pair of singles. “Think I’ll have another,” he said, and the vendor, who may or may not have spoken English, took his money and gave him his ice cream bar.

  He was just finishing the second Good Humor when the woman showed up. Aida Cuppering walked briskly along the path, wearing her usual outfit and flanked by her usual companion. She stopped a few yards from Keller’s bench, but Fluffy strained at his leash, making a sound that was sort of an angry whimper. Keller looked in the direction the dog was pointing, and fifty yards or so up the path he saw what Fluffy saw, a Jack Russell terrier who was lifting a leg at the base of a tree.

  “Oh, you good boy,” Aida Cuppering said, even as she stooped to unclip the lead from Fluffy’s collar.

  “Go!” she said, and Fluffy went, tearing down the path at the little terrier.

  Keller couldn’t watch the dogs. Instead he looked at the woman, and that was bad enough, as she glowed with the thrill of the kill. After the little dog’s yelping had ceased, after Cuppering’s body had shuddered with whatever sort of climax the spectacle had afforded her, she looked over and realized that Keller was watching her.

  “He needs his exercise,” she said, smiling benignly, and turned to clap her hands to urge the dog to return.

  Keller never planned what happened next. He didn’t have time, didn’t even think about it. He got to his feet, reached her in three quick strides, cupped her jaw with one hand and fastened the other on her shoulder, and broke her neck every bit as efficiently as her dog had broken the neck of the little terrier.

  “SO YOU SAW FLUFFY MAKE a kill.”

  He was in White Plains, drinking a glass of iced tea and watching Dot’s television. It was tuned to the Game Show Channel, and the sound was off. Game shows, he thought, were dopey enough when you could hear what the people were saying.

  “No,” he said. “I couldn’t watch. The animal’s a killing machine, Dot.”

  “Now that’s funny,” she said, “because I was just about to say the same thing about you. I don’t get it, Keller. We take a job for short money because all you have to do is kill a dog. The next thing I know, four people are dead, and two of them used to be clients of ours. I don’t know how we can expect them to recommend us to their friends, let alone give us some repeat business.”

  “I didn’t have any choice, Dot.”

  “I realize that. They already knew too much when it was just going to be a dog that got killed, but as soon as human beings entered the equation, it became very dangerous to leave them alive.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And when you come right down to it, all you did was what each of them hired you to do. A says to kill B and C, you kill B and C. And then you kill A, because that’s what B hired you to do. I have to say I think D came out of left field.”

  “D? Oh, Aida Cuppering.”

  “Nobody wanted her killed,” she said, “and at last report nobody paid to have her killed. Was that what you call pro bono?”

  “It was an impulse.”

  “No kidding.”

  “That dog of hers, killing other dogs is his nature, but there’s no question she did everything she could to encourage it. Just because she liked to watch. I was supposed to kill the dog, but he was just a dog, you know?”

  “So you broke her neck. If anyone had been watching . . .”

  “Nobody was.”

  “A good thing, or you’d have had more necks to break. The police certainly seem puzzled. They seem to think the killing might have been the work of one of her clients.
It seems she really was a dominatrix after all.”

  “She would sort of have to have been.”

  “And one of her clients lived in the apartment where the love triangle murder-suicide took place earlier that afternoon.”

  “George was her client?”

  “Not George,” she said. “George lived across the street with Evelyn, remember? No, her client was a man named Edmund Tannen.”

  “Myra’s husband. I thought he was supposed to be having an affair with Evelyn.”

  “I don’t suppose it matters who was doing what to whom,” she said, “since they’re all conveniently dead now. Or inconveniently, but one way or another, they’ve all been wiped off the board. I don’t know about you, but I can’t say I’m going to miss any of them.”

  “No.”

  “And from a financial standpoint, well, it’s not the best payday we ever had, but it’s not the worst, either. Ten for the dog and twenty-five for Evelyn and forty-two for Myra and George. You know what that means, Keller.”

  “I can buy some stamps.”

  “You sure can. You know the real irony here? Everybody else in the picture is dead, except for the Good Humor Man. You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”

  “No, for God’s sake. Why would I?”

  “Who knows why anybody would do anything. But except for him, they’re all dead. Except for the one creature you were supposed to kill in the first place.”

  “Fluffy.”

  “Uh-huh. What is it, professional courtesy? One killing machine can’t bear to kill another?”

  “He’ll get sent to the YMCA,” he said, “and when nobody adopts him, which they won’t because of his history, he’ll be put to sleep.”

  “Is that what they do at the YMCA?”

  “Is that what I said? I meant the SPCA.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “The animal shelter, whatever you want to call it. She lived alone, so there’s nobody else to take the dog.”

  “In the paper,” Dot said, “it says they found him standing over her body, crying plaintively. But I don’t suppose you stuck around to watch that part.”

  “No, I went straight home,” he said. “And this time nobody followed me.”

  THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY AFTERNOON, THE phone was ringing when he got back to his apartment. “Stay,” he said. “Good boy.” And he went and picked up the phone.

  “There you are,” Dot said. “I tried you earlier but I guess you were out.”

  “I was.”

  “But now you’re back,” she said. “Keller, is everything alright? You seemed a little out of it when you left here the other day.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “That’s really all I called to ask, because I just . . . Keller, what’s that sound?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s a dog.”

  “Well,” he said.

  “This whole dog business, it made you miss Nelson, so you went out and got yourself a dog. Right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “‘Not exactly.’ What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, no. Keller, tell me it’s not what I think it is.”

  “Well.”

  “You went out and adopted that goddamn killing machine. Didn’t you? You decided putting him to sleep would be a crime against nature, and you just couldn’t bear for that to happen, softhearted creature that you are, and now you’ve saddled yourself with a crazed bloodthirsty beast that’s going to make your life a living hell. Does that pretty much sum it up, Keller?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” he said. “Dot, they sent the dog to a shelter, just the way I said they would.”

  “Well, there’s a big surprise. I thought for sure they’d run him for the senate on the Republican ticket.”

  “But it wasn’t the SPCA.”

  “Or the YMCA either, I’ll bet.”

  “They sent him to IBARF.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Inter-Boro Animal Rescue Foundation, IBARF for short.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And the thing about IBARF,” he said, “is they never euthanize an animal. If it’s not adoptable, they just keep it there and keep feeding it until it dies of old age.”

  “How old is Fluffy?”

  “Not that old. And, you know, it’s not like a maximum-security institution there. Sooner or later somebody would leave a cage open, and Fluffy would get a chance to kill a dog or two.”

  “I think I see where this is going.”

  “Well, what choice did I have, Dot?”

  “That’s the thing with you these days, Keller. You never seem to have any choice, and you wind up doing the damnedest things. I’m surprised they let you adopt him.”

  “They didn’t want to. I explained how I needed a vicious dog to guard a used-car lot after hours.”

  “One that would keep other dogs from breaking in and driving off in a late-model Honda. I hope you gave them a decent donation.”

  “I gave them a hundred dollars.”

  “Well, that’ll pay for fifty Good Humors, won’t it? How does it feel, having a born killer in your apartment?”

  “He’s very sweet and gentle,” he said. “Jumps up on me, licks my face.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Don’t worry, Dot. I know what I have to do.”

  “What you have to do,” she said, “is go straight to the SPCA, or even the YMCA, as long as it’s not some chickenhearted outfit like IBARF. Some organization that you can count on to put Fluffy down in a humane manner, and to do it as soon as possible. Right?”

  “Well,” he said, “not exactly.”

  “WHAT A NICE DOG,” THE young woman said.

  The animal, Keller had come to realize, was an absolute babe magnet. In the mile or so he’d walked from his apartment to the park, this was the third woman to make a fuss over Fluffy. This one said the same thing the others had said: that the dog certainly looked tough and capable, but that he really was just a big baby, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?

  Keller wanted to urge her to get down on all fours and bark. Then she’d find out just what kind of a big old softie Fluffy was.

  He’d waited until twilight, hoping to avoid as many dogs and dogwalkers as possible, but there were still some to be found, and Fluffy was remarkably good at spotting them. Whenever he caught sight of one, or caught the scent, his ears perked up and he strained at the leash. But Keller kept a good tight hold on it, and kept leading the dog to the park’s less-traveled paths.

  It would have been easy to follow Dot’s advice, to pay another hundred dollars and palm the dog off on the SPCA or some similar institution. But suppose they got their signals crossed and let someone adopt Fluffy? Suppose, one way or another, something went wrong and he got a chance to kill more dogs?

  This wasn’t something to delegate. This was something he had to do for himself. That was the only way to be sure it got done, and got done properly. Besides, it was something he’d been hired on to do long ago. He’d been paid, and it was time to do the work.

  He thought about Nelson. It was impossible, walking in the park with a dog on a leash, not to think about Nelson. But Nelson was gone. In all the time since Nelson’s departure, it had never seriously occurred to him to get another dog. And, if it ever did, this wasn’t the dog he’d get.

  He patted his pocket. There was a small-caliber gun in it, an automatic, unregistered, and never fired since it came into his possession several years ago. He’d kept it, because you never knew when you might need a gun, and now he had a use for it.

  “This way, Fluffy,” he said. “That’s a good boy.”

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  BILL BERNICO has written a novel and more than three hundred short stories. His Cooper, PI series began in 1989 and now numbers 156 short stories featuring five generations of private eyes named Cooper. He and his wife, Kathie, live on the shores of Lake Michigan in Cleveland,
Wisconsin.

  JILL D. BLOCK’s first published story appeared recently in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. She lives in Manhattan where she is an attorney by day.

  LAWRENCE BLOCK’s several Life Achievement awards have made it abundantly clear to him and others that his future is largely in the past. Nevertheless, he’ll follow the recent film version of his Matthew Scudder novel, A Walk Among the Tombstones, with a new noir thriller, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, coming in September 2015 from Hard Case Crime. (His film agent describes it as “James M. Cain on Viagra.”)

  TOM CALLAHAN spent three decades as an award-winning reporter and freelance writer (The New York Times, Parade Magazine) and writing teacher before moving into fiction and film. Born in Harlem to a family with firm roots in the Bronx, he currently lives north of the Bronx border—but visits frequently.

  PETER CARLAFTES is an author, playwright, and performer. His books include A Year on Facebook (humor), Drunkyard Dog and I Fold With the Hand I Was Dealt (poetry), and Triumph for Rent (Three Plays) and Teatrophy (Three More Plays). He is co-director of Three Rooms Press.

  JANE DENTINGER came to Manhattan to be an actress, and enjoyed a long run Off-Broadway in Jack Heifner’s Vanities. When it closed, she wrote Murder on Cue, the first of six Jocelyn O’Roarke mysteries, all newly available from Open Road Media. She managed Murder Ink, the mystery bookstore, and has held executive positions at the Mystery Guild Book Club.

  JIM FUSILLI is the author of eight novels. He also serves as the rock and pop music critic of the Wall Street Journal and is the founder of www.ReNewMusic.net, a music website for grownups. He lives in New York City.

  KAT GEORGES is a writer, playwright, performer, and designer. Her books include Our Lady of the Hunger, Slow Dance at 120 Beats a Minute, Maiden Claiming, and Punk Rock Journal. In New York since 2003, she is co-director of Three Rooms Press.

  PARNELL HALL is the author of the Stanley Hastings private eye novels, the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries, and the Steve Winslow courtroom dramas. His books have been nominated for Edgar, Shamus, and Lefty awards. Parnell is an actor, screenwriter, singer/songwriter, and former private eye. He lives in New York City.