Enough Rope

by Lawrence Block

  “ ‘You need half-soles.’ “

  “No, like you eat too much starchy food, and you need to express the feminine side of your personality, and the relationship you’re in is stifling your creativity. Things like that.”

  “All by looking at your shoes. And that makes sense to you?”

  “Does sense make sense? Look, do you know what holism is?”

  “Like eating brown rice?”

  “No, that’s whole foods. Holism is like with holograms, the principle’s that any cell in the body represents the entire life in microcosm. That’s why I can rub your feet and make your headache go away.”

  “You can?”

  “Well, not me personally, but a foot reflexologist could. That’s why a palmist can look at your hand and see evidence of physical conditions that have nothing to do with your hands. They show up there, and in the irises of your eyes, and the bumps on your head.”

  “And the heels of your shoes,” Keller said. “I had my palm read once.”

  “Oh?”

  “A year or two ago. I was at this party, and they had a palmist for entertainment.”

  “Probably not a very good one, if she was hiring out for parties. How good a reading did she give you?”

  “She didn’t.”

  “I thought you said you had your palm read.”

  “I was willing. She wasn’t. I sat down at the table with her and gave her my hand, and she took a good look and gave it back to me.”

  “That’s awful. You must have been terrified.”

  “Of what?”

  “That she saw imminent death in your hand.”

  “It crossed my mind,” he admitted. “But I figured she was just a performer, and this was part of the performance. I was a little edgy the next time I got on a plane—”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “—but it was a routine flight, and time passed and nothing happened, and I forgot about it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I even thought about it.”

  She reached out a hand. “Gimme.”

  “Huh?”

  “Give me your hand. Let’s see what got the bitch in a tizzy.”

  “You can read palms?”

  “Not quite, but I can claim a smattering of ignorance on the subject. Let’s see now, I don’t want to know too much, because it might jeopardize the superficiality of our relationship. There’s your head line, there’s your heart line, there’s your life line. And no marriage lines. Well, you said you’ve never been married, and your hand says you were telling the truth. I can’t say I can see anything here that would make me tell you not to buy any long-playing records.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “So I bet I know what spooked her. You’ve got a murderer’s thumb.”

  Keller, working on his stamp collection, kept interrupting himself to look at his thumb. There it was, teaming up with his forefinger to grip a pair of tongs, to pick up a glassine envelope, to hold a magnifying glass. There it was, his own personal mark of Cain. His murderer’s thumb.

  “It’s the particular way your thumb is configured,” Maggie had told him. “See how it goes here? And look at my thumb, or your left thumb, as far as that goes. See the difference?”

  She was able to recognize the murderer’s thumb, he learned, because a childhood friend of hers, a perfectly gentle and nonviolent person, had one just like it. A palmist had told her friend it was a murderer’s thumb, and the two of them had looked it up in a book on the subject. And there it was, pictured lifesize and in color, the Murderer’s Thumb, and it was just like her friend Jacqui’s thumb, and, now, just like Keller’s.

  “But she never should have given you your hand back the way she did,” Maggie had assured him. “I don’t know if anybody’s keeping statistics, but I’m sure most of the murderers walking around have two perfectly normal thumbs, while most people who do happen to have a murderer’s thumb have never killed anybody in their life, and never will.”

  “That’s a comfort.”

  “How many people have you killed, Keller?”

  “None, for God’s sake.”

  “And do you sense a burst of homicidal rage in your future?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I’d say you can relax. You may have a murderer’s thumb, but I don’t think you have to worry about it.”

  He wasn’t worried, not exactly. But he would have to say he was puzzled. How could a man have a murderer’s thumb all his life and be unaware of it? And, when all was said and done, what did it mean?

  He had certainly never paid any particular attention to his thumb. He had been aware that his two thumbs were not identical, that there was something slightly atypical about his right thumb, but it was not eye-catchingly idiosyncratic, not the sort of thing other kids would notice, much less taunt you about. He’d given it about as much thought over the years as he gave to the nail on the big toe of his left foot, which was marked with ridges.

  Hit man’s toe, he thought.

  He was poring over a price list, France & Colonies, wrestling with some of the little decisions a stamp collector was called upon to make, when the phone rang. He picked it up, and it was Dot.

  He made the usual round trip by train, Grand Central to White Plains and back again, He packed a bag before he went to bed that night, and in the morning he caught a cab to JFK and a plane to Tampa. He rented a Ford Escort and drove to Indian Rocks Beach, which sounded more like a headline in Variety than a place to live. But that’s what it was, and, though he didn’t see any Indians or rocks, it would have been hard to miss the beach. It was a beauty, and he could see why they had all these condos on it, and vacation time-shares.

  The man Keller was looking for, an Ohioan named Stillman, had just moved in for a week’s stay in a beachfront apartment on the fourth floor of Gulf Water Towers. There was an attendant in the lobby, Keller noticed, but he didn’t figure to be as hard to get past as the Maginot Line.

  But would he even need to find out? Stillman had just arrived from sunless Cincinnati, and how much time was he going to spend inside? No more than he had to, Keller figured. He’d want to get out there and soak up some rays, maybe splash in the Gulf a little, then zone out some more in the sun.

  Keller’s packing had included swim trunks, and he found a men’s room and put them on. He didn’t have a towel to lie on—he hadn’t taken a room yet—but he could always lie on the sand.

  It turned out he didn’t have to. As he was walking along the public beach, he saw a woman approach a man, her hands cupped. She was holding water, and she threw it on the man, who sprang to his feet. They laughed joyously as he chased her into the surf. There they frolicked, perfect examples of young hormone-driven energy, and Keller figured they’d be frolicking for a while. They’d left two towels on the sand, anonymous unidentifiable white beach towels, and Keller decided one was all they needed. It would easily accommodate the two of them when they tired of splashing and ducking one another.

  He picked up the other towel and walked off with it. He spread it out on the sand at the private beach for Gulf Water Towers residents. A glance left and right revealed no one who in any way resembled George Stillman, so Keller stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. The sun, a real stranger to New York of late, was evidently wholly at home in Florida, and felt wonderful on his skin. If it took a while to find Stillman, that was okay with him.

  But it didn’t.

  Keller opened his eyes after half an hour or so. He sat up and looked around, feeling a little like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. When he failed to see either Stillman or his own shadow, he lay down and closed his eyes again.

  The next time he opened them was when he heard a man cursing. He sat up, and not twenty yards away was a barrel-chested man, balding and jowly, calling his right hand every name in the book.

  How could the fellow be that mad at his own hand? Of course he might have a murderer’s thumb, but what if he did? Keller had one himself, and had never felt th
e need to talk to it in those terms.

  Oh, hell, of course. The man was on a cell phone. And, by God, he was Stillman. The face had barely registered on Keller at first, his attention held by the angry voice and the keg-shaped torso thickly pelted with black hair. None of that had been visible in the head-and-shoulders shot Dot had shown him, and it was what you noticed, but it was the same face, and here he was, and wasn’t that handy?

  While Stillman took the sun, Keller did the same. When Stillman got up and walked to the water’s edge, so did Keller. When Stillman waded in, to test his mettle in the surf, Keller followed in his wake.

  When Keller came ashore, Stillman stayed behind. And by the time Keller left the beach, carrying two towels and a cellular phone, Stillman had still not emerged from the water.

  Why a thumb?

  Keller, back in New York, pondered the question. He couldn’t see what a thumb had to do with murder. When you used a gun, it was your index finger that gave the trigger a squeeze. When you used a knife, you held it in your palm with your fingers curled around the handle. Your thumb might press the hilt, as a sort of guide, but a man could have no thumbs at all and still get the business end of a knife to go where he wanted it.

  Did you use your thumbs when you garroted somebody? He mimed the motion, letting his hands remember, and he didn’t see where the thumbs had much of a part to play. Manual strangulation, now that was different, and you did use your thumbs, you used all of both hands, and would have a hard time otherwise.

  Still, why a murderer’s thumb?

  “Here’s what I don’t get,” Dot said. “You go off to some half-a-horse town at the ass end of nowhere special and you poke around for a week or two. Then you go to a vacation paradise in the middle of a New York winter and you’re back the same day. The same day!”

  “I had an opening and I took it,” he said. “I wait and maybe I never get that good a shot at him again.”

  “I realize that, Keller, and God knows I’m not complaining. It just seems like a shame, that’s all. Here you are, the two of you, fresh off a couple of planes from the frozen North, and before either one of you gets the chill out of your bones, you’re on a flight to New York and he’s rapidly approaching room temperature.”

  “Water temperature.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “And it was like a bathtub.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “He could have opened his veins in it, but after you held his head underwater for a few minutes he no longer felt the need to. But couldn’t you have waited a few days? You’d have come home with a tan and he’d have gone into the ground with one. You meet your Maker, you want to look your best.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Dot, have you ever noticed anything odd about my thumb?”

  “Your thumb?”

  “This one. Does it look strange to you?”

  “You know,” she said, “I’ve got to hand it to you, Keller. That’s the most complete change of subject I’ve ever encountered in my life. I’d be hard put to remember what we were talking about before we started talking about your thumb.”

  “Well?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re serious? Let me see. I’d have to say it looks like a plain old thumb to me, but you know what they say. You’ve seen one thumb . . .”

  “But look, Dot. That’s the whole point, that they’re not identical. See how this one goes?”

  “Oh, right. It’s got that little . . .”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are mine both the same? Like two peas in a pod, as far as I can make out. This one’s got a little scar at the base, but don’t ask me how I got it because I can’t remember. Keller, you made your point. You’ve got an unusual thumb.”

  “Do you believe in destiny, Dot?”

  “Whoa! Keller, you just switched channels again. I thought we were discussing thumbs.”

  “I was thinking about Louisville.”

  “I’m going to take the remote control away from you, Keller. It’s not safe in your hands. Louisville?”

  “You remember when I went there.”

  “Vividly. Kids playing basketball, guy in a garage, and, if I remember correctly, the subtle magic of carbon monoxide.”

  “Right.”

  “So?”

  “Remember how I had a bad feeling about it, and then a couple got killed in my old room, and—”

  “I remember the whole business, Keller. What about it?”

  “I guess I’ve just been wondering how much of life is destined and preordained. How much choice do people really have?”

  “If we had a choice,” she said, “we could be having some other conversation.”

  “I never set out to be what I’ve become. It’s not like I took an aptitude test in high school and my guidance counselor took me aside and recommended a career as a killer for hire.”

  “You drifted into it, didn’t you?”

  “That’s what I always thought. That’s certainly what it felt like. But suppose I was just fulfilling my destiny?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, cocking her head. “Shouldn’t there be music playing in the background? There always is when they have conversations like this in one of my soap operas.”

  “Dot, I’ve got a murderer’s thumb.”

  “Oh, for the love of God, we’re back to your thumb. How did you manage that, and what in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Palmistry,” he said. “In palmistry, a thumb like mine is called a murderer’s thumb.”

  “In palmistry.”

  “Right.”

  “I grant you it’s an unusual-looking thumb,” she said, “although I never noticed it in all the years I’ve known you, and never would have noticed it if you hadn’t pointed it out. But where does the murderer part come in? What do you do, kill people by running your thumb across their lifeline?”

  “I don’t think you actually do anything with your thumb.”

  “I don’t see what you could do, aside from hitching a ride. Or making a rude gesture.”

  “All I know,” he said, “is I had a murderer’s thumb and I grew up to be a murderer.”

  “ ‘His Thumb Made Him Do It.’ “

  “Or was it the other way around? Maybe my thumb was normal at birth, and it changed as my character changed.”

  “That sounds crazy,” she said, “but you ought to be able to clear it up, because you’ve been carrying that thumb around all your life. Was it always like that?”

  “How do I know? I never paid much attention to it.”

  “Keller, it’s your thumb.”

  “But did I notice it was different from other thumbs? I don’t know, Dot. Maybe I should see somebody.”

  “That’s not necessarily a bad idea,” she said, “but I’d think twice before I let them put me on any medication.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said.

  The astrologer was not what he’d expected.

  Hard to say just what he’d been expecting. Someone with a lot of eye makeup, say, and long hair bound up in a scarf, and big hoop earrings—some sort of cross between a Gypsy fortune-teller and a hippie chick. What he got in Louise Carpenter was a pleasant woman in her forties who had thrown in the towel in the long battle to retain a girlish figure. She had big blue-green eyes and a low-maintenance haircut, and she lived in an apartment on West End Avenue full of comfortable furniture, and she wore loose clothing and read romance novels and ate chocolate, all of which seemed to agree with her.

  “It would help,” she told Keller, “if we knew the precise time of your birth.”

  “I don’t think there’s any way to find out.”

  “Your mother has passed?”

  Passed. It might be more accurate, he thought, to say that she’d failed. He said, “She died a long time ago.”

  “And your father . . .”

  “Died before I was born,” Keller said, wondering if it was true. “You asked me over the phone if there was anyone who might remem
ber. I’m the only one who’s still around, and I don’t remember a thing.”

  “There are ways to recover a lot of early memory,” she said, and popped a chocolate into her mouth. “All the way back to birth, in some instances, and I’ve known people who claim they can remember their own conception. But I don’t know how much to credit all of that. Is it memory or is it Memorex? Besides, you probably weren’t wearing a watch at the time.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I don’t know the doctor’s name, and he might be dead himself by this time, but I’ve got a copy of my birth certificate. It doesn’t have the time of birth, just the date, but do you suppose the Bureau of Vital Statistics would have the information on file somewhere?”

  “Possibly,” she said, “but don’t worry about it. I can check it.”

  “On the Internet? Something like that?”

  She laughed. “No, not that. You said your mother mentioned getting up early in the morning to go to the hospital.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “And you were a fairly easy birth.”

  “Once her labor started, I came right out.”

  “You wanted to be here. Now you happen to be a Gemini, John, and . . . shall I call you John?”

  “If you want.”

  “Well, what do people generally call you?”

  “Keller.”

  “Very well, Mr. Keller. I’m comfortable keeping it formal if you prefer it that way, and—”

  “Not Mr. Keller,” he said. “Just plain Keller.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s what people generally call me.”

  “I see. Well, Keller . . . no, I don’t think that’s going to work. I’m going to have to call you John.”

  “Okay.”

  “In high school kids used to call each other by their last names. It was a way to feel grown up. ‘Hey, Carpenter, you finish the algebra homework?’ I can’t call you Keller.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m being neurotic, I realize that, but—”

  “John is fine.”

  “Well then,” she said, and rearranged herself in the chair. “You’re a Gemini, John, as I’m sure you know. A late Gemini, June nineteenth, which puts you right on the cusp of Cancer.”