Oddments

by Bill Pronzini

  Jones and I each rolled one die to determine who would go first; mine was the highest. Then we shook all five dice in our cups, banged them down on the bar. What I had showing was four treys and a deuce.

  "Your call, Mr. Quint."

  "One five," I said.

  "One six."

  "Two deuces."

  "Two fives."

  "Three treys."

  "Three sixes."

  I considered calling him up, since I had no sixes and he would need three showing to win. But I didn't know his methods and I couldn't read him at all. I decided to keep playing.

  "Four treys."

  "Five treys."

  "Six treys."

  Jones smiled and said, "Come up." And he had just one trey (and no sixes). I'd called six treys and there were only five in our combined hands; he was the winner.

  "So much for feeling lucky," I said, and signaled Tony to bring another white wine for Mr. Jones. On impulse I decided a second Manhattan wouldn't hurt me and ordered that too.

  Jones said, "Shall we play again?"

  "Two drinks is definitely my limit."

  "For dimes, then? Nickels or pennies, if you prefer."

  "Oh, I don't know. . ."

  "You're a good player, Mr. Quint, and I don't often find someone who can challenge me. Besides, I have a passion as well as an affinity for liar's dice. Won't you indulge me?"

  I didn't see any harm in it. If he'd wanted to play for larger stakes, even a dollar a hand, I might have taken him for a hustler despite his Armani suit and silk tie. But how much could you win or lose playing for a nickel or a dime a hand? So I said, "Your call first this time," and picked up my dice cup.

  We played for better than half an hour. And Jones wasn't just good; he was uncanny. Out of nearly twenty-five hands, I won two—two. You could chalk up some of the disparity to luck, but not enough to change the fact that his skill was remarkable. Certainly he was the best I'd ever locked horns with. I would have backed him in a tournament anywhere, anytime.

  He was a good winner, too: no gloating or chiding. And a good listener, the sort who seems genuinely (if superficially) interested in other people. I'm not often gregarious, especially with strangers, but I found myself opening up to Jones—and this in spite of him beating the pants off me the whole time.

  I told him about Connie, how we met and the second honeymoon trip we'd taken to Lake Louise three years ago and what we were planning for our twentieth wedding anniversary in August. I told him about Lisa, who was eighteen and a freshman studying film at UCLA. I told him about Kevin, sixteen now and captain of his high school baseball team, and the five-hit, two home run game he'd had last week. I told him what it was like working as a design engineer for one of the largest engineering firms in the country, the nagging dissatisfaction and the desire to be my own boss someday, when I had enough money saved so I could afford to take the risk. I told him about remodeling our home, the boat I was thinking of buying, the fact that I'd always wanted to try hang-gliding but never had the courage.

  Lord knows what else I might have told him if I hadn't noticed the polite but faintly bored expression on his face, as if I were imparting facts he already knew. It made me realize just how much I'd been nattering on, and embarrassed me a bit. I've never liked people who talk incessantly about themselves, as though they're the focal point of the entire universe. I can be a good listener myself; and for all I knew, Jones was a lot more interesting than bland Jeff Quint.

  I said, "Well, that's more than enough about me. It's your turn, Jones. Tell me about yourself."

  "If you like, Mr. Quint." Still very formal. I'd told him a couple of times to call me Jeff but he wouldn't do it. Now that I thought about it, he hadn't mentioned his own first name.

  "What is it you do?"

  He laid his dice cup to one side. I was relieved to see that; I'd had enough of losing but I hadn't wanted to be the one to quit. And it was getting late—dark outside already—and Connie would be wondering where I was. A few minutes of listening to the story of his life, I thought, just to be polite, and then—

  "To begin with," Jones was saying, "I travel."

  "Sales job?"

  "No. I travel because I enjoy traveling. And because I can afford it. I have independent means."

  "Lucky you. In more ways than one."

  "Yes."

  "Europe, the South Pacific—all the exotic places?"

  "Actually, no. I prefer the U.S."

  "Any particular part?"

  "Wherever my fancy leads me."

  "Hard to imagine anyone's fancy leading him to Bayport," I said. "You have friends or relatives here?"

  "No. I have business in Bayport."

  "Business? I thought you said you didn't need to work. . ."

  "Independent means, Mr. Quint. That doesn't preclude a purpose, a direction in one's life."

  "You do have a profession, then?"

  "You might say that. A profession and a hobby combined."

  "Lucky you," I said again. "What is it?"

  "I kill people," he said.

  I thought I'd misheard him. "You. . . what?"

  "I kill people."

  "Good God. Is that supposed to be a joke?"

  "Not at all. I'm quite serious."

  "What do you mean, you kill people?"

  "Just what I said."

  "Are you trying to tell me you're. . . some kind of paid assassin?"

  "Not at all. I've never killed anyone for money."

  "Then why. . . ?"

  "Can't you guess?"

  "No, I can't guess. I don't want to guess."

  "Call it personal satisfaction," he said.

  "What people? Who?"

  "No one in particular," Jones said. "My selection process is completely random. I'm very good at it too. I've been killing people for . . . let's see, nine and a half years now. Eighteen victims in thirteen states. And, oh yes, Puerto Rico—one in Puerto Rico. I don't mind saying that I've never even come close to being caught."

  I stared at him. My mouth was open; I knew it but I couldn't seem to unlock my jaw. I felt as if reality had suddenly slipped away from me, as if Tony had dropped some sort of mind-altering drug into my second Manhattan and it was just now taking effect. Jones and I were still sitting companionably, on adjacent stools now, he smiling and speaking in the same low, friendly voice. At the other end of the bar Tony was slicing lemons and limes into wedges. Three of the booths were occupied now, with people laughing and enjoying themselves. Everything was just as it had been two minutes ago, except that instead of me telling Jones about being a dissatisfied design engineer, he was calmly telling me he was a serial murderer.

  I got my mouth shut finally, just long enough to swallow into a dry throat. Then I said, "You're crazy, Jones. You must be insane."

  "Hardly, Mr. Quint. I'm as sane as you are."

  "I don't believe you killed eighteen people."

  "Nineteen," he said. "Soon to be twenty."

  "Twenty? You mean. . . someone in Bayport?"

  "Right here in Bayport."

  "You expect me to believe you intend to pick somebody at random and just. . . murder him in cold blood?"

  "Oh no, there's more to it than that. Much more."

  "More?" I said blankly.

  "I choose a person at random, yes, but carefully. Very carefully. I study my target, follow him as he goes about his daily business, learn everything I can about him down to the minutest detail. Then the cat and mouse begins. I don't murder him right away; that wouldn't give sufficient, ah, satisfaction. I wait . . . observe . . . plan. Perhaps, for added spice, I reveal myself to him. I might even be so bold as to tell him to his face that he's my next victim."

  My scalp began to crawl.

  "Days, weeks . . . then, when the victim least expects it, a gunshot, a push out of nowhere in front of an oncoming car, a hypodermic filled with digitalin and jabbed into the body on a crowded street, simulating heart failure. There are many ways
to kill a man. Did you ever stop to consider just how many different ways there are?"

  "You. . . you're not saying—"

  "What, Mr. Quint? That I've chosen you?"

  "Jones, for God's sake!"

  "But I have," he said. "You are to be number twenty."

  One of my hands jerked upward, struck his arm. Involuntary spasm; I'm not a violent man. He didn't even flinch. I pulled my hand back, saw that it was shaking, and clutched the fingers tight around the beveled edge of the bar.

  Jones took a sip of wine. Then he smiled—and winked at me.

  "Or then again," he said, "I might be lying."

  ". . . What?"

  "Everything I've just told you might be a lie. I might not have killed nineteen people over the past nine and a half years; I might not have killed anyone, ever."

  "I don't. . . I don't know what you—"

  "Or I might have told you part of the truth . . . that's another possibility, isn't it? Part fact, part fiction. But in that case, which is which? And to what degree? Am I a deadly threat to you, or am I nothing more than a man in a bar playing a game?"

  "Game? What kind of sick—"

  "The same one we've been playing all along. Liar's dice."

  "Liar's dice?"

  "My own special version," he said, "developed and refined through years of practice. The perfect form of the game, if I do say so myself—exciting, unpredictable, filled with intrigue and mortal danger for myself as well as my opponent."

  I shook my head. My mind was a seething muddle; I couldn't seem to fully grasp what he was saying.

  "I don't know any more than you do at this moment how you'll play your part of the hand, Mr. Quint. That's where the excitement and the danger lie. Will you treat what I've said as you would a bluff? Can you afford to take that risk? Or will you act on the assumption that I've told the monstrous truth, or at least part of it?"

  "Damn you. . ." Weak and ineffectual words, even in my own ears.

  "And if you do believe me," he said, "what course of action will you take? Attack me before I can harm you, attempt to kill me . . . here and now in this public place, perhaps, in front of witnesses who will swear the attack was unprovoked? Try to follow me when I leave, attack me elsewhere? I might well be armed, and an excellent shot with a handgun. Go to the police... with a wild-sounding and unsubstantiated story that they surely wouldn't believe? Hire a detective to track me down? Attempt to track me down yourself? Jones isn't my real name, of course, and I've taken precautions against anyone finding out my true identity. Arm yourself and remain on guard until, if and when, I make a move against you? How long could you live under such intense pressure without making a fatal mistake?"

  He paused dramatically. "Or—and this is the most exciting prospect of all, the one I hope you choose—will you mount a clever counterattack, composed of lies and deceptions of your own devising? Can you actually hope to beat me at my own game? Do you dare to try?"

  He adjusted the knot in his tie with quick, deft movements, smiling at me in the back-bar mirror—not the same pleasant smile as before. This one had shark's teeth in it. "Whatever you do, I'll know about it soon afterward. I'll be waiting. . . watching. . . and I'll know. And then it will be my turn again."

  He slid off his stool, stood poised behind me. I just sat there; it was as if I were paralyzed.

  "Your call, Mr. Quint," he said. And he was gone into the night.

  The Dispatching of George Ferris

  Mrs. Beresford and Mrs. Lenhart were sitting together in the parlor, knitting and discussing recipes for fruit cobbler, when Mr. Pascotti came hurrying in. "There's big news," he said. "Mr. Ferris is dead."

  A gleam came into Mrs. Beresford's eyes. She looked at Mrs. Lenhart, noted a similar gleam, and said to Mr. Pascotti, "You did say dead, didn't you?"

  "Dead. Murdered."

  "Murdered? Are you sure?"

  "Well," Mr. Pascotti said, "he's lying on the floor of his room all over blood, with a big knife sticking in his chest. What else would you call it?"

  "Oh, yes," Mrs. Lenhart agreed. "Definitely murder."

  Mrs. Beresford laid down her knitting and folded her hands across her shelf-like bosom. "How did you happen to find him, Mr. Pascotti?"

  "By accident. I was on my way down to the john—"

  "Lavatory," Mrs. Lenhart said.

  "—and I noticed his door was open. He never leaves his door open, not when he's here and not when he's not here. So I'm a good neighbor. I peeked inside to see if something was wrong, and there he was, all over blood."

  Mrs. Beresford did some reflecting. George Ferris had been a resident of their rooming house for six months, during which time he had managed to create havoc in what had formerly been a peaceful and pleasant environment. She and the other residents had complained to the landlord, but the landlord lived elsewhere and chose not to give credence to what he termed "petty differences among neighbors." He also seemed to like Mr. Ferris, with whom he had had minor business dealings before Ferris' retirement and who he considered to possess a sparkling sense of humor. This flaw in his judgment of human nature made him a minority of one, but in this case the minority's opinion was law.

  The problem with Mr. Ferris was that he had been a practical joker. Not just an occasional practical joker; oh, no. A constant, unending, remorseless practical joker. A Practical Joker with capitals and in italics. Sugar in the salt shaker; ground black pepper in the tea. Softboiled eggs substituted for hardboiled eggs. Kitchen cleanser substituted for denture powder. Four white rats let loose in the dining room during supper. Photographs of naked ladies pasted inside old Mr. Tipton's Natural History magazine. Whoopee cushions, water glasses that dribbled, fuzzy spiders and rubber-legged centipedes all over the walls and furniture. These and a hundred other indignities—a deluge, an avalanche of witless and childish pranks.

  Was it any wonder, Mrs. Beresford thought, that somebody had finally done him in? No, it was not. The dispatching of George Ferris, the joker, was in fact an act of great mercy.

  "Who could have done it?" Mrs. Lenhart asked after a time.

  "Anybody who lives here," Mr. Pascotti said. "Anybody who ever spent ten minutes with that lunatic."

  "You don't suppose it was an intruder?"

  "Who would want to intrude in this place? No, my guess is it was one of us."

  "You don't mean one of us?"

  "What, you or Mrs. Beresford? Nice widow ladies like you? The thought never crossed my mind, believe me."

  "Why, thank you, Mr. Pascotti."

  "For what?"

  "The compliment. You said we were nice widow ladies."

  Mr. Pascotti, who had been a bachelor for nearly seven decades, looked somewhat uncomfortable. "You don't have to worry—the police won't suspect you, either. They'd have to be crazy. Policemen today are funny, but they're not crazy."

  "They might suspect you, though," Mrs. Beresford said.

  "Me? That's ridiculous. All I did was find him on my way to the john—"

  "Lavatory," Mrs. Lenhart said.

  "All I did was find him. I didn't make him all over blood."

  "But they might think you did," Mrs. Beresford said.

  "Not a chance. Ferris was ten years younger than me and I've got arthritis so bad I can't even knock loud on a door. So how could I stick a big knife in his chest?"

  Mrs. Lenhart adjusted the drape of her shawl. "You know, I really can't imagine anybody here doing such a thing. Can you, Irma?"

  "As a matter of fact," Mrs. Beresford said, "I can. We all have hidden strengths and capacities, but we don't realize it until we're driven to the point of having to use them."

  "That's very profound."

  "Sure it is," Mr. Pascotti said. "It's also true."

  "Oh, I'm sure it is. But I still prefer to think it was an intruder who sent Mr. Ferris on to his reward, whatever that may be."

  Mr. Pascotti gestured toward the parlor windows and the sunshine streaming in through them. "I
t's broad daylight," he said. "Do intruders intrude in broad daylight?"

  "Sometimes they do," Mrs. Lenhart said. "Remember last year, when the police questioned everybody about strangers in the neighborhood? There was a series of daylight burglaries right over on Hawthorn Boulevard."

  "So it could have been an intruder, I'll admit it. We'll tell the police that's what we think. Why should any of us have to suffer for making that lunatic dead?"

  "Isn't it time we did?" Mrs. Beresford asked.

  "Did? Did what?"

  "Tell the police what we think. After we tell them Mr. Ferris is lying up in his room with a knife in his chest."

  "You're right," Mr. Pascotti said, "it is time. Past time. A warm day like this, things happen to dead bodies after a while."

  He turned and started over to the telephone. But before he got to it there was a sudden eruption of noise from out in the front hallway. At first it sounded to Mrs. Beresford like a series of odd snorts, wheezes, coughs, and gasps. When all these sounds coalesced into a recognizable bellow, however, she realized that what she was hearing was wild laughter.

  Then George Ferris walked into the room.

  He was wearing an old sweatshirt and a pair of old dungarees, both of which were, as Mr. Pascotti had said, all over blood. In his left hand he carried a wicked-looking and also very bloody knife. His chubby face was contorted into an expression of mirth bordering on ecstasy and he was laughing so hard that tears flowed down both cheeks.

  Mrs. Beresford stared at him with her mouth open. So did Mrs. Lenhart and Mr. Pascotti. Ferris looked back at each of them and what he saw sent him into even greater convulsions.

  The noise lasted for fifteen seconds or so, subsided into more snorts, wheezes, and gasps, and finally ceased altogether. Ferris wiped his damp face and got his breathing under control. Then he pointed to the crimson stains on his clothing. "Chicken blood," he said. He pointed to the weapon clutched in his left hand. "Trick knife," he said.

  "A joke," Mr. Pascotti said. "It was all a joke."

  "Another joke," Mrs. Lenhart said.

  "Another indignity," Mrs. Beresford said.

  "And you fell for it," Ferris reminded them. "Oh, boy, did you fall for it! You should have seen your faces when I walked in." He began to cackle again. "My best one yet," he said, "no question about it. My best one ever. Why, by golly, I don't think I'll live to pull off a better one."