Enough Rope

by Lawrence Block

  “Yes, and his address is no more than half a mile from my house. Maybe that’s why all these impressions have been so intense.”

  “Do you know where he is now, Ms. Belgrave?”

  “I don’t,” she said, “but I do feel connected to him, and I have the strong sense that I might be able to help.”

  He nodded. “And your hunches usually pay off.”

  “Not always,” she said. “That was confusing the year before last, sending you to look in wells.”

  “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

  “Surely not.”

  He leaned forward, clasped his hands. “The Ackerman boy, Ms. Belgrave. You think he’s all right?”

  “Oh, I wish I could say yes.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “The nightmares,” she said, “and the headaches. If he were all right, the way the Turlock girl was all right—”

  “There’d be no dreams.”

  “That’s my fear, yes.”

  “So you think the boy is . . .”

  “Dead,” she said.

  He looked at her for a long moment before he nodded. “I suppose you’d like some article connected with the boy,” he said. “A piece of clothing, say.”

  “If you had something.”

  “How’s this?” he said, and opened a drawer and brought out a teddy bear, its plush fur badly worn, the stitches showing where it had been ripped and mended. Her heart broke at the sight of it and she put her hand to her chest.

  “We ought to have a record of this,” he said, propping a tape recorder on the desk top, pressing a button to start it recording. “So that I don’t miss any of the impressions you pick up. Because you can probably imagine how frantic the boy’s parents are.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So do you want to state your name for the record?”

  “My name?”

  “Yes, for the record.”

  “My name is Sylvia Belgrave.”

  “And you’re a psychic counselor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re here voluntarily.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Why don’t you take the teddy bear, then. And see what you can pick up from it.”

  She thought she’d braced herself, but she was unprepared for the flood of images that came when she took the little stuffed bear in her hands. They were more vivid than anything she’d experienced before. Perhaps she should have expected as much; the dreams, and the headaches, too, were worse than they’d been after Melissa Sporran’s death, worse than years ago, when Gordon Sawyer drowned.

  “Smothered,” she managed to say. “A pillow or something like it over his face. He was struggling to breathe and . . . and he couldn’t.”

  “And he’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “And would you happen to know where, Ms. Belgrave?”

  Her hands tightened on the teddy bear. The muscles in her arms and shoulders went rigid, bracing to keep the images at bay.

  “A hole in the ground,” she said.

  “A hole in the ground?”

  “A basement!” Her eyes were closed, her heart pounding. “A house, but they haven’t finished building it yet. The outer walls are up but that’s all.”

  “A building site.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the body’s in the basement.”

  “Under a pile of rags,” she said.

  “Under a pile of rags. Any sense of where, Ms. Belgrave? There are a lot of houses under construction. It would help if we knew what part of town to search.”

  She tried to get her bearings, then realized she didn’t need them. Her hand, of its own accord, found the direction and pointed.

  “North and west,” he said. “Let’s see, where’s there a house under construction, ideally one they stopped work on? Seems to me there’s one just off Radbourne Road about a quarter of a mile past Six Mile Road. You think that might be the house, Ms. Belgrave?”

  She opened her eyes. He was reaching across to take the teddy bear from her. She had to will her fingers to open to release it.

  “We’ve got some witnesses,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “A teenager mowing a lawn who saw Eric Ackerman getting into a blue Taurus just like the one you’ve got parked across the street. He even noticed the license plate, but then it’s the kind you notice, isn’t it?

  2nd site. Second sight, eh? Perfect for your line of work.” God, her head was throbbing.

  “A woman in a passing car saw you carrying the boy to the house. She didn’t spot the vanity plate, but she furnished a good description of the car, and of you, Ms. Belgrave. She thought it was odd, you see. The way you were carrying him, as if he was unconscious, or even dead. Was he dead by then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You killed him first thing? Smothered him?”

  “With a pillow,” she said. “I wanted to do it right away, before he became afraid. And I didn’t want him to suffer.”

  “Real considerate.”

  “He struggled,” she said, “and then he was still. But I didn’t realize just how much he suffered. It was over so quickly, you see, that I told myself he didn’t really suffer a great deal at all.”

  “And?”

  “And I was wrong,” she said. “I found that out in the dreams. And just now, holding the bear . . .”

  He was saying something but she couldn’t hear it. She was trembling, and the headache was too much to be borne, and she couldn’t follow his words. He brought her a glass of water and she drank it, and that helped a little.

  “There were other witnesses, too,” he said, “once we found the body, and knew about the car and the license plate. People who saw your car going to and from the construction site. The chief wanted to have you picked up right away, but I talked him into waiting. I figured you’d come in and tell us all about it yourself.”

  “And here I am,” she heard herself say.

  “And here you are. You want to tell me about it from the beginning?”

  She told it all simply and directly, how she’d selected the boy, how she got him to come into the car with her, how she’d killed him and dumped the body in the spot she’d selected in advance. How she’d gone home, and washed her hands, and waited through three days and nights of headaches and bad dreams.

  “Ever kill anybody before, Ms. Belgrave?”

  “No,” she said. “No, of course not.”

  “Ever have anything to do with Eric Ackerman or his parents?”

  “No.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Second sight,” she said.

  “Second . . .”

  “Second sight. Vanity plates. Vanity.”

  “Vanity?”

  “All is vanity,” she said, and closed her eyes for a moment. “I never made more than a hundred fifty dollars a week,” she said, “and nobody knew me or paid me a moment’s attention, but that was all right. And then Melissa Sporran was killed, and I was afraid to come in but I came in anyway. And everything changed.”

  “You got famous.”

  “For a little while,” she said. “And my phone started ringing, and I raised my rates, and my phone rang even more. And I was able to help people, more people than I’d ever helped before, and they were making use of what I gave them, they were taking it seriously.”

  “And you bought a new car.”

  “I bought a new car,” she said, “and I bought some other things, and I stopped being famous, and the ones who only came because they were curious stopped coming when they stopped being curious, and old customers came less often because they couldn’t afford it, and . . .”

  “And business dropped off.”

  “And I thought, I could help so many more people if, if it happened again.”

  “If a child died.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you helped.”

  “Yes. And I w
aited, you know, for something to happen. And there were crimes, there are always crimes. There were even murders, but there was nothing that gave me the dreams and the headaches.”

  “So you decided to do it yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you’d be able to help so many more people.”

  “That’s what I told myself,” she said. “But I was just fooling myself. I did it because I’m having trouble making the payments on my new car, a car I didn’t need in the first place. But I need the car now, and I need the phone ringing, and I need—” She frowned, put her head in her hands. “I need aspirin,” she said. “That first time, when I told you about Melissa Sporran, the headache went away. But I’ve told you everything about Eric Ackerman, more than I ever planned to tell you, and the headache hasn’t gone away. It’s worse than ever.”

  He told her it would pass, but she shook her head. She knew it wouldn’t, or the bad dreams, either. Some things you just knew.

  Hit the Ball, Drag Fred

  One rarely thought of golf as a waiting game. Oh, to be sure, it was a game of considerable preparation, a game even of contemplation. One spent untold hours on the driving range, additional hours on the putting green. And, before actually hitting the ball, one took time to judge the distance, to assess the wind direction and velocity, and thus to select the right club and to envision the ideal shot. Then one took the indispensable practice swing, and in the follow-through one watched the imaginary ball sail to its intended landing place. Then and only then did one address the ball and take a cut at it.

  But one did not in the ordinary course of things spend a great deal of time standing around and waiting. If, as sometimes happened, one was stuck in a foursome of dullards who spent half their time knocking the ball into the rough and the other half looking for it, then a certain amount of waiting was inevitable. But Nicholson rarely found himself in such company. He generally avoided playing with men he didn’t know. Better to go out by oneself and play through the duffers and dawdlers.

  Today, though, waiting seemed inescapable. At the first tee, a man named Jason Hedrick was waiting for someone to play a round with him, and, a hundred yards away in his car, Roland Nicholson waited for Hedrick to get tired of waiting. There was a bad moment when a car pulled up and golfers piled out of it, but Nicholson relaxed when he saw there were four of them. Their group was complete, and they wouldn’t be asking Hedrick to join them.

  The four men teed off in turn while Hedrick went on practicing on the putting green. By the time they had disappeared down the fairway, another car pulled up and two golfers emerged, a man and a woman. Nicholson didn’t think such a couple would invite a single man to join them, nor could Hedrick politely invite himself. Still, anything could happen on a golf course, so Nicholson held his breath until the two had teed off and left Jason Hedrick with his putter in his hand.

  The man, Nicholson noted, teed off twice. He topped his first drive and sent a little dribbler fifty yards down the middle of the fairway, and promptly teed up a second ball, driving it just as straight but three or four times as far. He’d taken a mulligan, obviously rejecting (and not troubling to count) his first effort. You couldn’t do that in a tournament, or in any halfway serious game of golf, but a disheartening number of players allowed themselves a mulligan in noncompetitive social play, especially off the first tee.

  Not Roland Nicholson. He was a far cry from a scratch golfer, and it was no rare thing for him to top a grounder off the tee, or slice the ball into deep woods. As far as he was concerned, that was part of the game. You could take all the practice swings you wanted, but once you actually hit the ball, you went where it went—and hit it again. That, after all, was the game those funny-talking men in skirts had invented at St. Andrew’s. If you weren’t going to play it by the rules, why play it at all?

  When a third car arrived, Nicholson thought the day was lost. Two men got out of it and strode toward the clubhouse. Hedrick, who had to be heartily sick of the putting green by now, would feel free to ask if he could join them, and they’d have no reason to turn him down.

  Nicholson could invite himself along and make up a foursome, but why on earth would he do that? Better to play a round by himself, and he didn’t much feel like that, either. Easier to turn the car around and go home.

  But then the two men came around the clubhouse, each at the wheel of a motorized golf cart. Hedrick might rent a cart himself, desperation might drive him to it, but Nicholson had a hunch the man would hold out. Golfers like Jason Hedrick, and indeed like Nicholson himself, golfers who walked the course, were apt to regard the cart contingent with a raised eyebrow, if not with a curled lip, much as a hunter who tracked and stalked game might regard a man who shot wolves in the Arctic from a helicopter.

  The two wheeled golfers dismounted, teed off—no mulligans, Nicholson was pleased to note—and hopped on their motorized steeds. Even as they vanished in the distance, Jason Hedrick walked off the putting green, had a word with the club pro, and headed for the first tee. His drive was straight and true, as good as any Nicholson had seen that morning. He bent to retrieve his tee, straightened up, returned his driver to his bag, and started walking.

  Now was the critical moment. If anyone came along, a twosome or foursome, anyone at all . . .

  Nicholson had to wait, had to give Hedrick time to finish the first hole and begin the second. Had to wait, while some unwitting clown in plaid pants came along and spoiled everything.

  But no one did. Time crawled, certainly, but still it passed, and when he judged that enough of it had done so, Roland Nicholson fetched his bag of clubs from the trunk, had a word with the club pro, and teed off.

  The first hole was a 340-yard par four, with a dogleg to the left around a stand of trees. If Tiger Woods were to play the Oak Hollow course, or John Daly, or any of the really long hitters, he might try to hit a controlled hook that would curve to the left after it cleared the trees. Such refinements were not part of Nicholson’s game, and all he tried to do was keep the ball in the middle of the fairway and drive it as far as he could.

  The result was satisfactory. He’d have liked more distance, but the ball flew straight as an arrow, and what more could you ask? He walked to the ball, took out his two iron, put it back, touched the big silvery head of one club, then drew his four wood. His shot, after a deliberate practice swing, was hole high but off to the left. He chipped onto the green, some forty feet from the pin. His first putt ran well past the hole—never up, never in, he told himself—but he steadied himself and sank a twelve-footer coming back, for a bogey five.

  A good start.

  It took Nicholson several more holes to catch up with Hedrick. He played quickly, but he didn’t want to hurry his shots, knowing that would amount to a false economy—he’d hit the ball poorly, and consequently would have to hit it more often.

  He bogeyed the second hole. The third hole was a par five, and he put together a good drive and a strong second shot and was at the edge of the green in three. Par seemed a good possibility but his putter let him down, and he wound up with a seven.

  He wrote it on the scorecard.

  On the fourth hole he put it all together. His drive carried the fairway bunkers, and he followed it with a five iron, a wedge, and a putt that found the center of the cup. Four for a par.

  The fifth hole was the first par three, and as he reached the tee he could see Hedrick 190 yards away, kneeling down, trying to read the green. Nicholson teed up a ball, grabbed his three iron, addressed the ball without benefit of a practice swing, and took his best shot.

  “Fore!” he cried.

  The ball sailed straight at the green, straight at Hedrick, but carried beyond both and dropped into a sand trap on the far side of the green.

  He called out an apology, grabbed his clubs, and hurried down the fairway.

  “So damned sorry,” he was saying. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I never even saw you there until I’d hit
the ball, and for a change it went right where it was supposed to. I thought it was going to take your head off.”

  “I could see it was long,” Hedrick said, “the moment I looked up. What did you use, a three iron?”

  “A four,” Nicholson said.

  “Oh? Then you must have had your heart in it. I always use a four here myself, but I never carry the green.”

  “I should have got more loft,” Nicholson said. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet while you putt out, and I’ll be careful not to hit into you again.”

  “Prefer to play alone, do you?”

  “The only thing I prefer it to,” said Nicholson, “is not playing at all. Fellow I was supposed to play with couldn’t make it. Ben Weymouth. Don’t suppose you know him?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “He canceled at the last minute. I’d been hoping I’d run into somebody at the first tee, but no such luck, and I couldn’t afford to wait on the off chance someone would turn up. And Jimmy said I’d just missed a fellow who’d been looking for somebody to play with.”

  “That would have been me,” Hedrick said. “I got tired of waiting, but it looks as though we found each other after all. It’s your shot.”

  “Oh,” Nicholson said, seemingly taken aback. “But I couldn’t possibly horn in, not after the way I almost crowned you there.”

  “No harm done. So why not finish the round together? Unless you really don’t want company.”

  “Company’s exactly what I do want. If you’re sure . . .”

  “I’m sure,” Hedrick said. “And you’re away, and the lie you’ve got in the trap is the reason God invented the sand wedge.”

  He got a good shot from the trap and two-putted for a bogey four. Hedrick’s putt lipped the cup, hesitated for a long moment, then dropped for a birdie. Nicholson complimented him on the putt and Hedrick turned it aside, saying it was the result of having so much time to think about it.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you’ve brought me luck. If I’d hit that putt straight off, it never would have dropped.”

  “Good luck for both of us,” Nicholson replied.

  On the next hole they both hit good drives, but to opposite sides of the broad fairway. They met on the green, each reaching it in three, each two-putting for a bogey.