Manhattan Noir

by Lawrence Block

  “Want me to guess why you don’t want to smoke this cigarette?” the detective said. “Okay. How about, because you poisoned it? Could that be it?”

  Arthur nodded uneasily.

  “Talk to me, Arthur.”

  “Yes,” he said in a small voice. “That’s it.”

  “And why are you going around offering homeless people poisoned cigarettes, Arthur? Do you dislike homeless people? Do you not want to see them around? Or do you just get off on killing people?”

  “No,” Arthur whispered, “that’s not it at all.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what it is, then?”

  “They’re so miserable,” Arthur said. There were tears in his eyes. “Out here on the street, in the cold, on drugs, selling their bodies … No one should have to live like that.”

  “So you kill them?”

  “I give them a cigarette. They feel no pain. They never know what happened. They’re out of their misery.”

  “In other words, you kill them.”

  “They go to sleep and don’t wake up.”

  “You kill them, goddamn it,” the detective said, pressing the gun harder into the man’s skull. “Say it.”

  “I kill them,” Arthur said. “But they’re better off for it.”

  Arthur and the detective sat silently, staring at each other. The detective saw no sign of understanding or of self-awareness. He saw terror, but no remorse.

  He thought of the digital recorder in his pocket, quietly capturing a record of their words, and pictured this grandfatherly man standing in front of a jury, earnestly insisting on his innocence. He looked at Arthur’s well-cut suit and polished loafers, at the watch on his wrist, and pictured the caliber of lawyer he would hire to defend himself. He pictured a trial with no witnesses to the crimes, a case where the victims were on the margins of society and the defendant looked like a pillar of the community. He pictured the defense lawyer asking the jury if they could trust a policeman who had held a gun to this nice old man’s head. Of course he admitted the crime, ladies and gentlemen—wouldn’t you? With a gun to your head?

  He pictured Harold Sladek, cold and wet, taking a cigarette from this well-dressed benefactor. He pictured Michael Casey passing time with his killer, thanking him for his kindness, whispering God bless.

  He pictured all this in the time it took for Arthur to swallow, nervously, twice.

  The detective passed the flame over the cigarette once more. This time he held it there. “Inhale.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Inhale!”

  Arthur sucked in, as briefly as he could. The tip of the cigarette glowed red. The detective closed the lighter and pocketed it.

  “Again.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Again.”

  “Please—”

  “This is the way it has to be,” the detective said. “You said the stuff you put in the cigarettes is painless. I hope it is, because I guarantee you, bullets are not.” The detective pulled the gun away from Arthur’s head and aimed it at his gut. “Not the way I’ll use them. Take your pick.”

  “You’re a monster,” Arthur said, the cigarette gripped tightly between his lips.

  “I can live with that,” the detective said. “Now decide.”

  Arthur looked at the gun, looked into the detective’s eyes, and inhaled.

  “Again,” the detective said.

  When Arthur was dead, the detective packed all the loose cigarettes into one of his bags and then stripped the corpse down to an undershirt and briefs. A press of a button erased the memory of the digital recorder, but just to be safe, he’d record over it when he got home.

  He bundled everything up under one arm, pulled his hat further down on his brow, and walked east on 38th Street. It was still dark. No one saw him.

  The body was found shortly after 9 in the morning.

  The papers reported that an unidentified homeless man had died during the night, presumably of exposure. In the Daily News it was mentioned that he’d had a thin blanket over him, apparently donated by a good samaritan.

  But, the News reported, it hadn’t been enough to keep him alive.

  THE LAST SUPPER

  BY CAROL LEA BENJAMIN

  Greenwich Village

  Harry was late. No problem. Esther knew just what to do while she waited, lifting her hand and finally catching the waiter’s eye. He was new, she thought, just a kid, his face eager, as if it really mattered to him what Esther wanted, as if he really cared. Was it a waiter thing, that faux interest? Or just a guy thing, appearing to be listening, to be interested, when they’re not. Harry used to be like that. Harry used to be a lot of things. But no more. She’d see him tonight, give him what he asked for, then never see him again.

  Esther pushed her empty glass toward the kid, a relative of Howdy Doody perchance, tapping the table the way you’d tap the bar, let the bartender know you were ready for another, let him know to keep them coming.

  “Another Manhattan?” the kid asked, picking up the empty glass. Definitely not Mensa material. Esther nodded. He said he’d be right back.

  Yeah, Esther thought. It had taken seventeen minutes to get the first one, the kid everywhere but at her table. She had to remind him, too, then listen politely while he pretended he hadn’t forgotten, while he told her there was a backup at the bar, the place half empty. Maybe she’d insist on paying just so she could stiff him on the tip. No way was Esther going to be here again, no matter what she tipped the kid.

  She looked over toward the door to see if Harry had come in. Maybe he was there already, looking around for her, not seeing her sitting in the far corner. But there was no Harry standing at the door, and anyway, the maître d’ would have brought him over. They wouldn’t leave him there on his own. Not Harry. Not at his favorite restaurant.

  Esther checked her watch and then adjusted her scarf, the silk one he’d gotten her ten years ago when they were in England, the same kind the queen wore. That was when she was still running the office, still doing Harry’s books. That was before Cheryl.

  Peering out into the dark, as dark as New York City ever gets, which is not very, Esther caught her own reflection in the pane, her droopy eyelids, the soft jaw line, her thinning hair, the crosshatching of wrinkles over her pale, thin lips, all the little tricks Mother Nature plays on you as you age, followed by the little tricks your husband plays on you when he notices.

  Esther took the little pot of lip gloss out of her purse, dipping one finger in, absentmindedly refreshing the color of her mouth, feeling hungry as soon as she did, checking the door again. Where the fuck was Harry?

  Dropping the lip gloss into the inside zippered pocket so that it wouldn’t get lost, Esther took out her pen, then snapped the purse closed. She put the pen on her napkin, where Harry would be sure to see it. She wanted him to know the arguing was over. She wanted him to feel at ease. Enough was enough, Esther thought, turning back once more to look at her reflection. He wanted her to sign the papers, she’d sign the papers. What difference did it make now anyway? Sign them or not, Harry didn’t want her anymore and nothing was going to change that. Anyway, she’d made her decision, and once Esther made up her mind, there was no going back.

  When another fifteen minutes had passed and there was still no Harry and still no second Manhattan, Esther began to daydream. Ever since Harry left her, she had been concocting ways to bump him off. In the beginning, it was the only way she could fall asleep, and later on, Esther found it elevated her mood any time of day. Looking out into the night through the oversize windows, Esther thought that might be a pleasant way to spend the time while she waited for the pimply waiter and her bald, overweight, philandering, estranged husband to show up.

  When Harry first told her about Cheryl, Cheryl who worked for Harry as she herself had done until recently, Cheryl his bimbo, his chippy, his fiancée and about to be his next wife as soon as Esther signed the papers Harry was bringing along, she would write a new
story every night. Lying in bed in the apartment she once shared with Harry, the apartment where she now lived alone, staring at the ceiling unable to sleep, Esther began killing Harry. She stood behind him, unseen, and pushed him in front of the Ninth Avenue bus, off the balcony of their penthouse apartment after he’d come crawling back to her, begging her to forgive him, even off the High Line, the old tram tracks the city kept promising to turn into a public space one day. She watched him die slowly at the hospital of some terrible, painful, incurable, slow-acting disease, and she gained access to the penthouse he shared with Cheryl, that tramp—who names a kid Cheryl, anyway?—and killed him there, tossing Cheryl’s hair dryer into the bathtub, holding a pillow over his face, even shooting him the moment he came home from work, alone, for once, Cheryl doing some retail therapy or getting the liposuction she, Esther, had refused when Harry suggested it. She’d killed him in Washington Square Park, right near the famous arch that all the Japanese tourists came by the busload to see. She’d killed him on the refurbished Christopher Street pier, once a gay sunbathing and pickup site, now a park where you can walk with your aged mother or bring your kids; Esther finding a time when the place was deserted, a time when she could be there alone with Harry and end his life. That’s the thing about stories, Esther thought, unlike real life, you can make them turn out just the way you want them to. Fiction, she’d come to see, was preferable to fact, at least the facts of life as Esther knew them.

  Struggling for the peace of mind that would let her sleep, Esther had killed Harry at The Strand, the world’s biggest bookstore, at The White Horse Tavern, one of many places where Dylan Thomas supposedly drank himself to death, at Pastis, the popular restaurant in the meat market where young people talked on their cell phones instead of to each other, and even at one of the few remaining wholesale markets where Harry ended up hanging on one of those nasty-looking meat hooks alongside some hapless cow. There probably wasn’t a place left in the Village that Esther hadn’t used as a venue for killing Harry—not a seedy bar, an after-hours club, a back cottage, a pocket park; not a street, an avenue, a lane, an alley, a square, a mews.

  In her desire for sleep, Esther had devised more ways to kill Harry than you could shake a scimitar at, a new one every night for the first three months. But then she saw that it was even more delicious to repeat a favorite story—there were so many of them, all so scrumptiously detailed and satisfying. That’s when she began to name them, then tweak the names, amusing herself with each title change. God knows, she needed a few laughs in her life. A while after that—she had been a bookkeeper, after all—Esther gave them each a number. That’s when “Am I Blue?”—formerly “Tampered”—in which Harry accidentally buys a bottle of Viagra that has been tampered with by a vindictive crazy person and falls down dead just as he’s about to join the voluptuous slut Cheryl under the sheets, that story became “One.” After that, on nights when Esther had done her yoga, taken a hot bath, and washed down an Ambien or two with some of that nice citron vodka she kept in the freezer, on those nights sometimes she could just slip under the comforter, close her eyes, and think “One,” and just like that she’d be off to dreamland. Esther, it seemed, had finally found something she was good at. In her stories she didn’t just murder Harry, she did it with grace, style, and wit, except perhaps for the one where she’d pulled up a loose cobblestone on Jane Street, one of the most charming of Greenwich Village’s many charming blocks, and bashed Harry’s stupid head in. That, of course, was the night he’d told her that he and Cheryl wanted to get married. That, Esther thought, had been the beginning of the end.

  What used to work, worked no more. Even Esther’s favorite plots now left her wide awake. For the last month or so, long nights of sleeplessness had turned into longer days of exhaustion, the tiredness pulling on Esther like a double dose of gravity, her heavy legs feeling like tree trunks, her dry skin sallow now, her eyes dull, making Esther plod through her own life without energy and without hope. Friends told her things would get better, that time heals all wounds, or that time wounds all heels, but either way things only got worse, and in the end Esther could see only one way out, only one way to stop her pain.

  That very afternoon, Esther had tossed the perishables and taken out the trash for the last time. And on the way to meet Harry, to do this one last thing, she’d packed Louie into his carrier and taken him over to that nice Mrs. Kwan at the deli a block from her apartment, a Korean deli a block or two from everyone’s apartment in Manhattan, and told her that if she kept Louie in the basement, she’d never have a problem with the Department of Health again. Mrs. Kwan had looked inside the bag, startled at first, then laughing, covering her mouth with one hand, nodding yes, thank you, a cat, good idea. Outside the deli, Esther had dropped her keys down a sewer grating, something else she wouldn’t need after her last supper with Harry.

  She straightened the pen on her napkin—Esther liked things neat. And when she looked up, as ready as she’d ever be, there was Harry heading toward her. And there was the waiter with her drink as well.

  “I ordered you a Manhattan,” she told Harry, pointing to his place setting, letting the waiter know the drink was for him, not her, flapping her hand when he tried to put down the little wooden dish of nuts, motioning him to take it away as Harry pulled out the chair and slipped off his scarf, not the one Esther had given him two years ago, this one from Cheryl. “I think I’ll have one, too,” she told the kid. “A man shouldn’t have to drink alone, should he?”

  “Still taking care of me, Esther?” Harry said.

  “Old habits die hard.”

  Harry nodded without looking at her, snapping his fingers for the waiter to come back, handing him his coat and scarf instead of hanging it on the rack himself the way everyone else did.

  “You’re looking good, Esther.” Still not looking at her. “New hairdo?”

  Esther smiled. “You noticed,” she said, smoothing the same hair style she’d worn for the last seven years.

  “So, my girl said I should bring the papers, Esther. I was quite surprised. Have you changed your mind? Have you decided … ?”

  The kid brought Esther’s Manhattan and gave them each a menu. Esther lifted her glass. “To your future, Harry,” she said, waiting for him to lift his glass, listening to the sound of the glasses as they touched, remembering the champagne she always shared with Harry on their anniversaries, the little robin’s-egg-blue box with the white satin bow he’d slip out of his pocket, at least until the last few anniversaries, the one when he was away, the one he just forgot, and the last one, the one he spent with Cheryl.

  Harry picked up his menu, and the moment he put it down, the damn kid appeared, that shit-eating grin on his face.

  “I’ll start with the risotto,” Harry told him, more interested in what he was going to eat for dinner than he was in Esther. “And then the steak, medium rare.”

  He didn’t even ask Esther what she was going to have. But the kid was looking at her, waiting. That was as good as it was going to get around here, Esther thought, waving her hand back and forth. “Nothing for me.”

  “Esther,” Harry said. “Come on. Have a bite.”

  “I’m on that diet you kept talking about, Harry.”

  “The liquid diet?”

  Esther picked up her drink. “Yes, Harry, that one.”

  Why was it always Esther who was supposed to go on a diet? Didn’t Harry ever look at himself in the mirror? But Cheryl didn’t mind. She loved Harry just the way he was, old enough to be her father, fat enough to play Santa without padding, and with an income in the neighborhood of two million a year, give or take. Esther figured Harry was doing the giving, Cheryl the taking, as much of it as she could.

  If Esther thought Harry would have trouble eating in front of her, she would have been sorely mistaken. But then again, she’d been mistaken about so many things, hadn’t she? And what did it matter now anyway?

  After a third Manhattan, the second that Harry
knew about, she decided to let Harry pay the bill. The kid didn’t seem so bad anymore. Let Harry leave him a big tip. Esther no longer cared. She excused herself to go to the ladies’ room while Harry looked at the dessert menu. When she got back, no sooner had she sat down when Harry took the agreement out of his pocket and handed it across the table.

  “Cheryl and I …” he began, then changed his mind. “I really appreciate this, Esther. And I’m sure you’ll agree I’ve been generous. There’s more than enough—”

  He stopped again when she held up a hand. “Water under the bridge, Harry.” She picked up the pen, signed and initialed wherever it was indicated to do so, then folded the document and handed it back to her husband.

  “Ready?” he asked, anxious to go now, anxious to get home to Cheryl and show her the signed papers, open a bottle of champagne, toast to their future. Esther nodded. She’d given him what he wanted. That was what this dinner had been about and she’d done it. Esther dabbed on some lip gloss and stood, picking up her coat from the back of her chair, slipping it on without Harry’s assistance, as the kid helped Harry into his coat, a new one, Esther noted, perhaps another gift from Cheryl, a gift paid for with Harry’s money.

  Still, she took his arm as they left the restaurant, the way she always used to. It felt good. It felt right, and besides, the streets were slippery and she didn’t want to fall. She’d left her boots back at the apartment. She’d wanted to look nice tonight, her last night with Harry. They walked a block north, to Jane Street, and Esther looked down at the cobblestones showing in patches where the traffic had melted the snow. Twenty-two, she thought as they crossed the street, the one where she’d killed Harry with a loose cobblestone. Why had she been so foolish, living on fantasies of revenge instead of moving on with her life?

  “I’d like to go on alone,” she said when they arrived at the next corner.

  Harry patted his coat where the signed papers would be in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Thank you, Esther. You always were a good sport.”