Grifter's Game

by Lawrence Block

  I saw the complete show at least twice. This was not difficult. My mind couldn’t stick with the picture but rambled all over the place. Even the second time through, the movie’s plot sailed far over my head into the stratosphere. The movie was a thoroughly anonymous and relatively painless time-killer. It was after midnight when the last show let out and I followed the crowd out onto the empty streets of Scarsdale.

  It started to get easier. The movie had turned me into the machine I had to be. Gears shifted. Buttons were pushed and switches were thrown. I found a bar—bars stay open later than movies, maybe because eyes are weaker than livers. I took a stool in the back all by myself and nursed beers until closing. Nobody talked to me. I was a loner and they were people who drank every night in the same bar. That might have been dangerous, except that they could not possibly remember me. They never noticed me in the first place.

  The bar closed at four, which was fine. I went into an all-night grill for a hamburger and a few cups of coffee. It was four-thirty almost to the minute when I left the grill, and that was just about right.

  It was good weather, just beginning to turn from night to day. The air was fresh and clean, a good change from New York, with just enough of a trace of bad smells mixed with the good to keep you from forgetting that you were in the suburbs, not the country. The sky was turning light, anticipating the sun which would rise in an hour or less. There were no clouds. It was going to be one hell of a nice day.

  I walked off the main street to a side street, off the side street to another side street. The neighborhood was not bad at all. It wasn’t rich Scarsdale but middle Scarsdale—fairly ordinary one-family homes that cost in the mid-twenties solely because they were in Scarsdale, trees in front, hedges, the white-collar works. I had a long walk because too many people kept their cars in their garages. Then I found what I was looking for.

  On the left-hand side of the street a green Mercury was parked snug against the curb. On the right-hand side there was a black Ford a year or so old. The Ford was the car I wanted. I wanted it for the same reason that the hired killer I was pretending to be would want it. It was ordinary, inconspicuous. If you are going to steal a car for a murder, you steal a black Ford. It’s one of the rules of the game.

  There was only one problem. The Ford’s owner might wake up early. If he drove into New York every morning, he’d probably get up around seven. If he saw the car gone, and if he called the cops, the alarm for that Ford would go out before I wanted it to.

  That’s where the Merc came in.

  I worked fast. I took the plates off the Merc, carried them to the Ford, took the plates off the Ford and put the Merc plates in their place, then crossed the street once more and put the Ford plates on the Merc. That sounds complicated—all I did, of course, was switch plates. But it would make a big difference. While the Ford owner would report his car missing, the Merc owner wouldn’t report his plates missing. The chances were that he wouldn’t even notice, not for a good long while. How often do you check your license plates before you get into your car?

  So, even if the Ford owner reported the car stolen and some hot-shot cop checked my car, it would have different plates. Which might make a difference. Then again, it might not. But I was taking enough chances as it was. Whenever there was a chance to minimize the risk, that was fine with me.

  I wiped off both sets of plates with my handkerchief, then slipped on a pair of ordinary rubber gloves, the kind they sell in drugstores. I’d bought them before I left New York, and now I was going to need them. They were good gloves—not surgical quality, but sheer enough so that my hands didn’t feel like catcher’s mitts. I took a good look around, prayed in silence, and opened the door of the Ford. I settled myself behind the wheel and set about jumping the ignition. It wasn’t hard. It never is. I was fourteen years old when I learned how easy it was to start a car without a key. It’s not the sort of thing you forget.

  The car purred kittenishly. I let it scurry along to the corner. Then we took a turn and another turn and still another turn, and then we were on the main road north in the general direction of Cheshire Point. I left Scarsdale with no regrets. It was a nice place for auto theft but I would hate to live there.

  The Ford was fine for murder but strictly garbage on the open road. The engine knocked gently from time to time and the pickup was several seconds behind the accelerator. The car moved like a retarded child. It was further encumbered with automatic transmission, which keeps you from shifting gears at the proper time, and power steering, which is an invention designed to drive anybody out of his mind.

  I pushed the Ford along and thought about the car Mona and I would have once the whole mess was cleaned up. A Jaguar, maybe. A big sleek beast with a dynamo under the hood and an intelligent over-all approach to Newtonian mechanics, automatic division. I wondered if anybody had ever made love to her in the back seat of a Jag. I didn’t think so.

  Cheshire Point made Scarsdale look like Levittown. I drove around and looked at one-acre plots with half-acre mansions and smelled money. The streets were very wide and very silent. The trees lining them were very tall and very somber. It was a suburb created by expatriate New Yorkers who had fled with only their money intact, and because it was such an artificial town at the surface it was hard finding my way around. The place had very little sense to it. Streets wandered here and there, evidently intent solely on having a good time, and directions became meaningless.

  I found Roscommon Drive after a struggle. It was wider than most of the streets and a parkway ran down the middle of it, a five-yard strip of shrubs and grass and greenery. I looked for house numbers, figured out where I was, and drove until I found Brassard’s house. It was what I think they call Georgian Colonial. Mostly stone with white wood trim. A rolling lawn kept short and green. A large elm in the middle of the lawn. Very impressive.

  I had pictured the home before. But I had never seen it, and seeing it did something to me. I gently brushed away the picture of L. Keith Brassard, Lord Of the Dope Trade, and replaced it with the illusion of complete respectability. I looked at rolling lawn and the big old elm and I saw that nice old man rolling along the Boardwalk in a rolling chair with his pretty young bride beside him. It would be fiendish to kill that man. It would be a foul, despicable crime to murder L. Keith Brassard, Pillar Of Cheshire Point.

  I had to shake myself to get rid of the illusion. I had to work hard to remind myself that he wasn’t a nice old man, that the fine old house was held together with needle marks and rubbery veins, that his pretty young bride was the woman I loved. I had to remind myself that he was a rotten old bastard and that I was going to murder him, and I told myself again what I had told myself a countless number of times—that the fact that he was a rotten old bastard made murdering him altogether fitting and proper.

  But it was hard to believe when I looked at that house. Not the splendor of it—successful crooks live more like kings than most kings do. But the utter respectability …

  I shook myself, more violently this time. The next step was to find the railroad station. According to Mona, he walked to the station every morning and left the car for her. That meant it was close by, and I had to figure out just how close by, and I had to know how to get there in a hurry. It would be important.

  The Ford found the station; I really can’t take any credit for it. The Ford nosed around until it turned up at the standard brown shed with rails running past it. Then the Ford, demonstrating a wonderful memory, found its way back to Roscommon Drive, put two and two together, and doped out the precise amount of time required to drive from the house to the station along the shortest possible route. It took about seven minutes.

  It was still too early. I thought about parking in front of Brassard’s house and waiting for him. I thought about Brassard looking out the window, seeing me, and coming out with a gun of his own. Then I looked around for a diner.

  I found one. It had a parking lot and I nestled the Ford in it, then stripp
ed off the gloves and pocketed them. The coffee was hot and black and strong.

  I needed it.

  I put the gloves back on later, then opened the door and slid in behind the wheel once again. If anybody had seen me I would have looked very strange to them. How often do you see a guy put on a pair of rubber gloves before he gets into his car? But nobody did, and I started the car and headed back to Roscommon Drive. It was around 8:30. He’d be working his crossword puzzle now, sitting at the breakfast table with pencil in hand and newspaper before him and cup of coffee at right elbow. I wondered if he was using the dictionary this time around, if the puzzle was hard or easy for him.

  Three doors from his house I braked to a stop, plopped the Ford into neutral and pulled up the hand brake. I left the motor running. From where I sat I could see his house—the heavy oak door, the flagstone path. And, hopefully, he couldn’t see me.

  I wanted a cigarette. And, while I knew there was no reason in the world for me to go without that cigarette, I remembered what crime labs did with cigarette ashes. I knew it didn’t matter, they could know everything there was to know about me including what brand of cigarettes I smoked and what toothpaste I used to keep my mouth kissing-sweet and whether I wore boxer shorts or briefs, and they still wouldn’t be anywhere close to knowing who I was. There was nothing to link me to Brassard, nothing to make the cops think of me in the first place or second place or third place. They could have a full description of me and still get nowhere.

  But I didn’t smoke that cigarette.

  Instead I straightened my tie, which was straight to begin with, and studied my reflection very thoughtfully in the rear-view mirror. The mirror image was cool and calm, a study in poise. It was a lie.

  I waited. And wished he would hurry up with his puzzle. And waited.

  I rolled down the window on the right-hand side of the car. I opened my jacket, took out the gun. I wrapped my hand around it, curled my finger around the trigger. It was a very strange feeling, holding the gun with a glove on my hand. I could feel it perfectly, but the presence of the glove, a thin layer between flesh and metal, seemed to remove me a little from the picture of violence. The glove rather than my hand was holding the gun. The glove rather than my finger would pull that trigger.

  I understood why generals didn’t feel guilty when their pilots bombed civilians. And I was glad I was wearing the gloves.

  8:45.

  The oak door swung open and I saw him, dressed for work, briefcase tucked neatly under arm. She was seeing him to the door, looking domestic as all hell with her hair in curlers. He turned and they kissed briefly. For some reason I couldn’t begrudge him that last kiss. I was almost glad he was getting the chance to kiss her good-bye. I wondered if they had made love the night before. A few days ago the thought would have sickened me. Now I didn’t mind it at all. It was his last chance. He was welcome to all he could get.

  She turned from him. The door closed. I released the emergency brake and threw the car into gear. I did not breathe while he walked down that flagstone path to the sidewalk. She would be in another room now, maybe with one of the maids. Or she would be expecting it, maybe at the window to watch in morbid fascination. I hoped she wasn’t at the window. I didn’t want her to watch.

  He reached the sidewalk and turned away from me, heading for the railroad station. I drove up behind him. Slowly.

  He walked well for a man his age. If he heard the Ford he didn’t show it. One arm held the briefcase, the other swung at his side. The gun felt cold now, even with the rubber glove.

  I drew up even with him, braked quickly, leaned across the seat toward him. Now he turned at the sound—not hurriedly, not scared, but wondering what was coming off. I pointed the gun at him and squeezed the trigger. Before there had been the total silence of a very quiet street. The noise of the gunshot erupted in the middle of all that silence, much louder than I had expected. I felt as though everybody in the world was listening.

  I think the first bullet was enough. It hit him in the chest a few inches below the heart and he sank to his knees with a very puzzled, almost hurt expression on his face. The briefcase skidded along the sidewalk. I did not want to shoot him again. Once was enough. Once would kill him.

  But the professionals don’t work that way. The professionals do not take chances.

  Neither did I.

  I emptied the gun into him. The second bullet went into his stomach and he folded up. The third bullet was wide; the fourth took half his head off. The fifth and sixth went into him but I do not remember where.

  I heaved the gun at him. Then I put the accelerator on the floor, for the benefit of any curious onlookers, and the Ford took off in spite of itself. I drove straight for two blocks with the gas pedal all the way down, then took a corner on two wheels and relaxed a little, slowing the Ford to a conservative twenty-five miles an hour.

  I was sweating freely and my hands itched inside the gloves. I had to struggle to keep from speeding. But I managed it, and the ride to the station took the estimated seven minutes.

  I parked the car near the station. I cut the motor, pulled up the handbrake. I stepped out of the car, closed the door, peeled off the rubber gloves and tossed them into the back seat. I wiped my hands on my pants and tried to keep calm.

  Then I walked to the station. There was a newsstand on the platform and I traded a nickel for a copy of the Times and waited for the train to come. I had to force myself to read the headlines. Castro had confiscated more property in Cuba. There was an earthquake in Chile. No murders. Not yet.

  The train came. I got on, found a seat. The car was a smoker and I got a cigarette going, needing it badly. I opened the paper to the financial pages and studied row upon row of thoroughly meaningless numbers.

  I glanced around. Nobody was looking at me. Dozens of men in suits sat reading the Times, and none of them looked at me. Why should they?

  I looked exactly the same as they did.

  9

  In all of life it is the little things that stay with you. I first made love to a woman several months after my seventeenth birthday. The woman has disappeared completely from my memory. I do not know what she looked like, what her name was, only that she must have been close to thirty. Nor do I remember anything about the act. It was probably pleasurable, but I can’t specifically recall pleasure and I don’t think pleasure had anything to do with it. It was a barrier to be crossed, and the pleasure or lack of pleasure in the crossing was, at the time, immaterial.

  But I remember something she said afterward. We were lying together—on her bed, I think—and I was telling myself silently that I was a man now. “God,” she said, “that was a good one.” Not That was good but That was a good one.

  I must have mumbled something in the affirmative, something stupid, because I remember her laugh, a curious mixture of amusement and bitterness.

  “You don’t know how good it was,” she said. “You’re too damn young to know the difference. Young enough to do a good job and too young to know what you’re doing.”

  I don’t know what that proves, if anything. Except that the mind is a strangely selective sort of thing. The act itself should have been significant, memorable. But the act, once finished, left no impression that I can still remember. The conversation remains.

  It was the same way with murder. I’m talking now about impact, not memory, but it comes out pretty much the same. I had killed a man. Killing, I understand, is a pretty traumatic thing. Soldiers and hired gunsels get used to it, sometimes, but it takes a while. I had never killed before. Now, after careful planning and deliberate execution, I had pointed a gun at a man and emptied it into him. True, he was socially worthless—a parasite, a leech—but the character of the man himself did not alter the fact that I had murdered him, that he was dead and I was his killer.

  But the mind is funny. I had planned his death, I had killed him, and now it was over. Period. The simple fact of murder seemed to be something I could live with. I
would not be plagued by guilt. As a result either of strength or weakness of character, I was a killer with a reasonably clear conscience.

  And now the rest of it. Three things stayed with me, stuck in the forefront of my mind. The very weird expression on his face the instant before I shot him, first of all. A total disbelief, as if he had suddenly wandered into a different time-continuum where he did not fit at all.

  Then there was the noise of the first gunshot. It rang so loud in my ears that the other four senses, smell and sight and taste and touch, disappeared entirely into the portion of time when the shot dominated the morning. All that sound in the middle of all that sensory silence—it was impressive.

  The third thing was the utter stupidity of putting all those bullets into that very dead body. I think shooting a dead man may well be more emotionally offensive than shooting a live one. There’s a concentrated brutality about it, which may explain why the newspapers and the public go wild when a murderer hacks up a corpse and stuffs it piece by piece into subway lockers, or whatever. Murder, at least, is rational. But the ridiculous mental picture of a killer emptying a gun into a man with a hole in his head is senseless, stupid, and much more terrible. The look in a man’s face. The sound of a gunshot. The waste of three or four or five bullets.

  These were significant, important.

  More so than murder.

  The commuter train unloaded us at Grand Central. I folded the Times and tucked it under my arm, then followed the fold out to the lower level of the station. I was confused for a few seconds; then I got my bearings and headed for the locker where I had left my suitcase. I found it, fished out the key, unlocked the thing and picked up my bag. I carried it to the ticket office where a stoop-shouldered old man with shaggy gray hair and thick, almost opaque eyeglasses sold me a one-way coach ticket to Cleveland. The human robot at the Information Desk informed me that the next train to Cleveland left in thirty-eight minutes from Track 41. I found Track 41 without too much trouble and sat down on a bench with my suitcase between my knees.