The Snatch - [Nameless Detective 01]

by Bill Pronzini

  “Three hundred thousand dollars,” I said half audibly. “The price of a soul.”

  “I’m a murderer,” he said, “yes, I’m a murderer, I killed him don’t you know that? I murdered him murdered him murdered him . . .”

  He kept on that way, softer and softer, the words becoming unintelligible to me, and he was speaking only to himself now, to the very essence of his being. He no longer knew I was there. He was a callous man, a hard man, a man who had been very close to crime, even to criminals, over the years, skirting the periphery of illegality and immorality, never really affected by it—and yet, he had never himself had to deal with the cold, terrifying fact of death, of murder, of the awesomeness of snuffing out a human life. Faced with the thing he had done, the circumstances which had led to the act—examining it within himself—he was unable to cope with it; it was destroying him „ so quickly and so completely that the effects of that destruction were outwardly visible.

  As I listened to him babbling, I realized that he was totally incapable of pulling that trigger another time, of taking a second human life—and I realized, too, that I had known all along that this was true, that I had stood facing his gun not as a brave man facing death, but as a man who knows irrevocably the outcome of a situation, knows that he will not be harmed in any way. I looked deep into Martinetti’s eyes and saw the terrible guilt, the cancerous insanity burning in their depths, and then I forced my gaze again to the gun in his hand. It was no longer pointing at me; the muzzle was angled toward the floor at my feet.

  There were perhaps three steps between us, three long quick strides, and his shoulders were slumped now, muscles lax, mouth open to release his murmurings—three long quick strides. I took them without thinking any more about it and hit him the same way, a long hard right-hand flush on the point of his jaw, the shock of the impact exploding the length of my arm and into my armpit, pain through my knuckles, and he went down clean and silent, with his eyes rolling up in their sockets, sprawling out on top of the gun, covering it with his body, unmoving.

  I stood looking down at him, breathing heavily. I felt nothing at all. The anger and the hatred and the disgust were gone now, and they had left nothing in their place but a hollow vacuum, a weariness that transcended the physical.

  My hands were trembling and I thrust them into the pockets of my overcoat to still them, and the fingers of my right hand encountered the package of cigarettes I had bought earlier in the evening. I took it out and looked at it, and then I closed my eyes and tore open the pack and lit one and dragged smoke deep into my lungs. It was harsh and raw and hot and brought a vague weakness to my knees—it was fine.

  I went over to the telephone and picked up the receiver and stood holding it, looking over at Martinetti lying very still, very old, like some crumbling sarcophagus. And, strangely, I thought then of Erika.

  You were right, Erika, I thought. You were right that I’m honest and ethical and sensitive, that I don’t have a lot of flair or even a lot of guts. You were right that I’m not a hero, and that I never will be.

  But you were wrong, too. You said that I’m nothing more than a little boy playing at being a detective, that I’m living in the past, in a world that never existed. But the world I live in, you live in, is a world sicker and harsher and crueler than anything in man’s imagination, a lousy world that requires men like Donleavy and Reese and Eberhardt to keep it from becoming sicker and harsher and cruder than it already is, dedicated men, Erika, men who care. I’m one of those men—how or why I got to be that way is of no real consequence—and because I am, I’m not living the lie you think I am.

  You can’t change me, Erika, you can’t hope to make me into something that I’m not and never will be. And that’s why, if I must choose, I won’t choose you, even though I love you; I am what I am, and how can you cease being—how can you alter in any way—what you are?

  I’m no hero.

  I’m just a cop.

  I’m just a man.

  I sucked deeply, hungrily, on my cigarette and dialed the operator, and when she came on I asked her for the police above the tintinnabulation of the restless and .eternal sea. . . .