Enough Rope

by Lawrence Block

  Besides, the pity he’d felt for her had dried up during her argument with her lover. He’d responded to a sense of her vulnerability, a fragile quality that he’d since decided was conveyed by that see-through skin of hers. She was actually a whining, sniping, carping nag of a woman, and about as fragile as an army boot.

  So, when she stepped out of the bathroom, he took her from behind and broke her neck. He left her where she fell, just as he’d left Thurnauer on the bedroom floor. You could try to set a scene, make it look as though she had stabbed him and then broken her neck in a fall, but it would never fool anybody, so why bother? The client had merely stipulated that the man be dead, and that’s what Keller had delivered.

  It was sort of a shame about the girl, but it wasn’t all that much of a shame. She was no Mother Teresa. And you couldn’t let sentiment get in the way. That was always a bad idea, and especially on a high-risk day.

  There were good restaurants in Boston, and Keller thought about going to Locke-Ober’s, say, and treating himself to a really good meal. But the timing was wrong. It was just after three, too late for lunch and too early for dinner. If he went someplace decent they would just stare at him.

  He could kill a couple of hours. He hadn’t brought his catalog, so there was no point making the rounds of the stamp shops, but he could see a movie, or go to a museum. It couldn’t be that hard to find a way to get through an afternoon, not in a city like Boston, for God’s sake.

  On a nicer day he’d have been happy enough just walking around Back Bay or Beacon Hill. Boston was a good city for walking, not as good as New York, but better than most cities. With the rain still coming down, though, walking was no pleasure, and cabs were hard to come by.

  Keller, back on Newbury Street, walked until he found an upscale coffee shop that looked okay. It wasn’t going to remind anybody of Locke-Ober, but it was here and they would serve him now, and he was too hungry to wait.

  The waitress wanted to know what the problem was. “It’s my coat,” Keller told her.

  “What happened to your coat?”

  “Well, that’s the problem,” he said. “I hung it on the hook over there, and it’s gone.”

  “You sure it’s not there?”

  “Positive.”

  “Because coats tend to look alike, and there’s coats hanging there, and—”

  “Mine is green.”

  “Green green? Or more like an olive green?”

  What difference did it make? There were three coats over there, all of them shades of beige, none at all like his. “The salesman called it olive,” he said, “but it was pretty green. And it’s not here.”

  “Are you sure you had it when you came in?”

  Keller pointed at the window. “It’s been like that all day,” he said. “What kind of an idiot would go out without a coat?”

  “Maybe you left it somewhere else.”

  Was it possible? He’d shucked the coat in the Emerson Street living room. Could he have left it there?

  No, not a chance. He remembered putting it on, remembered opening his umbrella when he hit the street, remembered hanging both coat and umbrella on the peg before he slid into the booth and reached for the menu. And where was the umbrella? Gone, just like the coat.

  “I didn’t leave it anywhere else,” he said firmly. “I was wearing the coat when I came in, and I hung it up right there, and it’s not there now. And neither is my umbrella.”

  “Somebody must of taken it by mistake.”

  “How? It’s green.”

  “Maybe they’re color-blind,” she suggested. “Or they have a green coat at home, and they forgot they were wearing the tan one today, so they took yours by mistake. When they bring it back—”

  “Nobody’s going to bring it back. Somebody stole my coat.”

  “Why would anybody steal a coat?”

  “Probably because he didn’t have a coat of his own,” Keller said patiently, “and it’s pouring out there, and he didn’t want to get wet any more than I do. The three coats on the wall belong to your three other customers, and I’m not going to steal a coat from one of them, and the guy who stole my coat’s not going to bring it back, so what am I supposed to do?”

  “We’re not responsible,” she said, and pointed to a sign that agreed with her. Keller wasn’t convinced the sign was enough to get the restaurant off the hook, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to sue them.

  “If you want me to call the police so you can report it . . .”

  “I just want to get out of here,” he said. “I need a cab, but I could drown out there waiting for an empty one to come along.”

  She brightened, able at last to suggest something. “Right over there,” she said. “The hotel? There’s a canopy’ll keep you dry, and there’s cabs pulling up and dropping people off all day long. And you know what? I’ll bet Angela at the register’s got an umbrella you can take. People leave them here all the time, and unless it’s raining they never think to come back for them.”

  The girl at the cash register supplied a black folding umbrella, flimsy but serviceable. “I remember that coat,” she said. “Green. I saw it come in and I saw it go out, but I never realized it was two different people coming and going. It was what you would call a very distinctive garment. Do you think you’ll be able to replace it?”

  “It won’t be easy,” he said.

  “You didn’t want to do this one,” Dot said, “and I couldn’t figure out why. It looked like a walk in the park, and it turns out that’s exactly what it was.”

  “A walk in the rain,” he said. “I had my coat stolen.”

  “And your umbrella. Well, there are some unscrupulous people out there, Keller, even in a decent town like Boston. You can buy a new coat.”

  “I never should have bought that one in the first place.”

  “It was green, you said.”

  “Too green.”

  “What were you doing, waiting for it to ripen?”

  “It’s somebody else’s problem now,” he said. “The next one’s going to be beige.”

  “You can’t go wrong with beige,” she said. “Not too light, though, or it shows everything. My advice would be to lean toward the tan end of the spectrum.”

  “Whatever.” He looked at her television set. “I wonder what they’re talking about.”

  “Nothing as interesting as raincoats, would be my guess. I could unmute the thing, but I think we’re better off wondering.”

  “You’re probably right. I wonder if that was it. Losing the raincoat, I mean.”

  “You wonder if it was what?”

  “The feeling I had.”

  “You did have a feeling about Boston, didn’t you? It wasn’t a stamp auction. You didn’t want to take the job.”

  “I took it, didn’t I?”

  “But you didn’t want to. Tell me more about this feeling, Keller.”

  “It was just a feeling,” he said. He wasn’t ready to tell her about his horoscope. He could imagine how she’d react, and he didn’t want to hear it.

  “You had a feeling another time,” she said. “In Louisville.”

  “That was a little different.”

  “And both times the jobs went fine.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So where do you suppose these feelings are coming from? Any idea?”

  “Not really. It wasn’t that strong a feeling this time, anyway. And I took the job, and I did it.”

  “And it went smooth as silk.”

  “More or less,” he said.

  “More or less?”

  “I used a letter opener.”

  “What for? Sorry, dumb question. What did you do, pick it up off his desk?”

  “Bought it on the way there.”

  “In Boston?”

  “Well, I didn’t want to take it through the metal detector. I bought it in Boston, and I took it with me when I left.”

  “Naturally. And chucked it in a Dumpster or down a se
wer. Except you didn’t or you wouldn’t have brought up the subject. Oh, for Christ’s sake, Keller. The coat pocket?”

  “Along with the keys.”

  “What keys? Oh, hell, the keys to the apartment. A set of keys and a murder weapon and you’re carrying them around in your coat pocket.”

  “They were going down a storm drain before I went to the airport,” he said, “but first I wanted to get something to eat, and the next thing I knew my coat was gone.”

  “And the thief got more than just a coat.”

  “And an umbrella.”

  “Forget the umbrella, will you? Besides the coat he got keys and a letter opener. There’s no little tag on the keys, tells the address, or is there?”

  “Just two keys on a plain wire ring.”

  “And I hope you didn’t let them engrave your initials on the letter opener.”

  “No, and I wiped it clean,” he said. “But still.”

  “Nothing to lead to you.”

  “No.”

  “But still,” she said.

  “That’s what I said. ‘But still.’ “

  Back in the city, Keller picked up the Boston papers. Both covered the murder in detail. Alvin Thurnauer, it turned out, was a prominent local businessman with connections to local political interests and, the papers hinted, to less savory elements as well. That he’d died violently in a Back Bay love nest, along with a blonde to whom he was not married, did nothing to diminish the news value of his death.

  Both papers assured him that the police were pursuing various leads. Keller, reading between the lines, concluded that they didn’t have a clue. They might guess that someone had contracted to have Thurnauer hit, and they might be able to guess who that someone was, but they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere with it. There were no witnesses, no useful physical evidence.

  He almost missed the second murder.

  The Globe didn’t have it. But there it was in the Herald, a small story on a back page, a man found dead on Boston Common, shot twice in the head with a small-caliber weapon.

  Keller could picture the poor bastard, lying facedown on the grass, the rain washing relentlessly down on him. He could picture the dead man’s coat, too. The Herald didn’t say anything about a coat, but that didn’t matter. Keller could picture it all the same.

  Green as the grass.

  He stared hard at his thumb, then looked in a drawer for the copy of his chart Louise had given him. It looked even more impressive now, if no less incomprehensible. He put it back in the drawer.

  Later, when the sky was dark, he went outside and looked up at the stars.

  Keller’s Designated Hitter

  Keller, a beer in one hand and a hot dog in the other, walked up a flight and a half of concrete steps and found his way to his seat. In front of him, two men were discussing the ramifications of a recent trade the Tarpons had made, sending two minor-league prospects to the Florida Marlins in return for a left-handed reliever and a player to be named later. Keller figured he hadn’t missed anything, as they’d been talking about the same subject when he left. He figured the player in question would have been long since named by the time these two were done speculating about him.

  Keller took a bite of his hot dog, drew a sip of his beer. The fellow on his left said, “You didn’t bring me one.”

  Huh? He’d told the guy he’d be back in a minute, might have mentioned he was going to the refreshment stand, but had he missed something the man had said in return?

  “What didn’t I bring you? A hot dog or a beer?”

  “Either one,” the man said.

  “Was I supposed to?”

  “Nope,” the man said. “Hey, don’t mind me. I’m just jerking your chain a little.”

  “Oh,” Keller said.

  The fellow started to say something else, but broke it off after a word or two as he and everybody else in the stadium turned their attention to home plate, where the Tarpons’ cleanup hitter had just dropped to the dirt to avoid getting hit by a high inside fastball. The Yankee pitcher, a burly Japanese with a herky-jerky windup, seemed unfazed by the boos, and Keller wondered if he even knew they were for him. He caught the return throw from the catcher, set himself, and went into his pitching motion.

  “Taguchi likes to pitch inside,” said the man who’d been jerking Keller’s chain, “and Vollmer likes to crowd the plate. So every once in a while Vollmer has to hit the dirt or take one for the team.”

  Keller took another bite of his hot dog, wondering if he ought to offer a bite to his new friend. That he even considered it seemed to indicate that his chain had been jerked successfully. He was glad he didn’t have to share the hot dog, because he wanted every bite of it for himself. And, when it was gone, he had a feeling he might go back for another.

  Which was strange, because he never ate hot dogs. A few years back he’d read a political essay on the back page of a news magazine that likened legislation to sausage. You were better off not knowing how it was made, the writer observed, and Keller, who had heretofore never cared how laws were passed or sausages produced, found himself more conscious of the whole business. The legislative aspect didn’t change his life, but, without making any conscious decision on the matter, he found he’d lost his taste for sausage.

  Being at a ballpark somehow made it different. He had a hunch the hot dogs they sold here at Tarpon Stadium were if anything more dubious in their composition than your average supermarket frankfurter, but that seemed to be beside the point. A ballpark hot dog was just part of the baseball experience, along with listening to some flannel-mouthed fan shouting instructions to a ballplayer dozens of yards away who couldn’t possibly hear him, or booing a pitcher who couldn’t care less, or having one’s chain jerked by a total stranger. All part of the Great American Pastime.

  He took a bite, chewed, sipped his beer. Taguchi went to three and two on Vollmer, who fouled off four pitches before he got one he liked. He drove it to the 396-foot mark in left center field, where Bernie Williams hauled it in. There had been runners on first and second, and they trotted back to their respective bases when the ball was caught.

  “One out,” said Keller’s new friend, the chain jerker.

  Keller ate his hot dog, sipped his beer. The next batter swung furiously and topped a roller that dribbled out toward the mound. Taguchi pounced on it, but his only play was to first, and the runners advanced. Men on second and third, two out.

  The Tarpon third baseman was next, and the crowd booed lustily when the Yankees elected to walk him intentionally. “They always do that,” Keller said.

  “Always,” the man said. “It’s strategy, and nobody minds when their own team does it. But when your guy’s up and the other side won’t pitch to him, you tend to see it as a sign of cowardice.”

  “Seems like a smart move, though.”

  “Unless Turnbull shows ’em up with a grand slam, and God knows he’s hit a few of ’em in the past.”

  “I saw one of them,” Keller recalled. “In Wrigley Field, before they had the lights. He was with the Cubs. I forget who they were playing.”

  “That would have had to be before the lights came in, if he was with the Cubs. Been all around, hasn’t he? But he’s been slumping lately, and you got to go with the percentages. Walk him and you put on a .320 hitter to get at a .280 hitter, plus you got a force play at any base.”

  “It’s a game of percentages,” Keller said.

  “A game of inches, a game of percentages, a game of woulda-coulda-shoulda,” the man said, and Keller was suddenly more than ordinarily grateful that he was an American. He’d never been to a soccer match, but somehow he doubted they ever supplied you with a conversation like this one.

  “Batting seventh for the Tarpons,” the stadium announcer intoned. “Number 17, the designated hitter, Floyd Turnbull.”

  “He’s a designated hitter,” Dot had said, on the porch of the big old house on Taunton Place. “Whatever that means.”

  “I
t means he’s in the lineup on offense only,” Keller told her. “He bats for the pitcher.”

  “Why can’t the pitcher bat for himself? Is it some kind of union regulation?”

  “That’s close enough,” said Keller, who didn’t want to get into it. He had once tried to explain the infield fly rule to a stewardess, and he was never going to make that sort of mistake again. He wasn’t a sexist about it, he knew plenty of women who understood this stuff, but the ones who didn’t were going to have to learn it from somebody else.

  “I saw him play a few times,” he told her, stirring his glass of iced tea. “Floyd Turnbull.”

  “On television?”

  “Dozens of times on TV,” he said. “I was thinking of seeing him in person. Once at Wrigley Field, when he was with the Cubs and I happened to be in Chicago.”

  “You just happened to be there?”

  “Well,” Keller said. “I don’t ever just happen to be anyplace. It was business. Anyway, I had a free afternoon and I went to a game.”

  “Nowadays you’d go to a stamp dealer.”

  “Games are mostly at night nowadays,” he said, “but I still go every once in a while. I saw Turnbull a couple of times in New York, too. Out at Shea, when he was with the Cubs and they were in town for a series with the Mets. Or maybe he was already with the Astros when I saw him. It’s hard to remember.”

  “And not exactly crucial that you get it right.”

  “I think I saw him at Yankee Stadium, too. But you’re right, it’s not important.”

  “In fact,” Dot said, “it would be fine with me if you’d never seen him at all, up close or on TV. Does this complicate things, Keller? Because I can always call the guy back and tell him we pass.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Well, I hate to, since they already paid half. I can turn down jobs every day and twice on Sundays, but there’s something about giving back money once I’ve got it in my hands that makes me sick to my stomach. I wonder why that is?”

  “A bird in the hand,” Keller suggested.

  “When I’ve got a bird in my hand,” she said, “I hate like hell to let go of it. But you saw this guy play. That’s not gonna make it tough for you to take him out?”