A Diet of Treacle

by Lawrence Block

  Dinner was veal chops. Veal chops and mashed potatoes and green peas. She served them all and they sat down to eat. Dinner for the boss. A strange tableau. She described the two apartments to Joe, told him about both places. “I think I liked the one in Gramercy a little better,” she said. “It’s smaller but there’s only the two of us. And it’s a nice place.”

  “Sounds good,” Joe said.

  “The Bank Street place is nice, too. But I’m a little sick of the Village. And I didn’t like the building there as much. The rent is higher and you don’t get as much for your money.”

  “Whatever you want,” he said. “It’s up to you. Just so we get a nice pad.”

  The veal chops were good, the potatoes smooth, the peas young and sweet. They finished and she carried the plates to the sink and ran water on them.

  The water was still running when the door was kicked open.

  The man who kicked it open was Detective First Grade Peter J. Samuelson, Narcotics Bureau.

  He had a gun in his hand.

  10

  The detective said: “You never learn. You have to push your luck. You have to lean until you fall. Now you fall.”

  The running water in the sink was very loud. Anita took tentative steps toward Joe, but an unmistakable motion from Samuelson halted her.

  “A long fall,” the detective said. “A long, long fall. Possession with intent. Rather obvious intent. You had a chance last time and you blew it, you damned fool.”

  What happened next occurred in slow motion. Shank unwound like a cobra. He stood up and grabbed Anita in one fluid movement. Then Anita was being propelled swiftly at Detective Samuelson. His gun was pointed between her breasts but he did not fire it.

  And Shank moved behind her. He moved with the grace of a dancer. His legs thrust him forward while his hand dipped in his pocket and brought out his knife.

  The knife danced in his hand and the blade leaped out, alert.

  Anita’s softness bounced into the detective. She fell away, limp, and Shank’s knife bit, cobralike, into the man with the gun. Slow motion. The knife sneaking between ribs, ripping upward. The gun, still unfired, dropping from limp fingers and clattering inanely on the bare floor.

  The detective’s hard body losing its hardness. A hand clutching at the hole the knife had made, the man trying to hold life in place. The knife withdrawn, and flowers of ruby blood blossoming from a hole in a chest.

  A body falling slowly, crumpling, folding to the floor.

  A suppressed scream from Anita, a gasp from Joe.

  Then quietude, except for the running water slap-ping at the dirty dishes in the sink.

  A tragicomedy in one act, a quick act. A gun on the floor, unfired. The knife dripping the detective’s blood.

  The detective on the floor.

  Dead.

  The water in the sink was still running.

  Anita spoke first. Her voice was a loud whisper. “You killed him. Oh, God, God in heaven, you killed him. He’s dead and you killed him.”

  “I had to.”

  “Had to? A year and a day for possession of pot. That’s what you would have gotten. Now you’ll get the electric chair. Murder. Murder in the first degree. The electric chair. Holy mother of God!”

  Shank’s brain was swimming. This was what it felt like, he thought. This is how killing felt. A strange feeling of power combined with the damnedest emptiness. A funny sort of a feeling.

  “A year and a day. That’s what they would have given you. Possession of pot.”

  Shank grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Possession of pot,” he snapped. “You think that’s what it is, huh? You think that’s the whole ball game. You know all the answers, don’t you? You think you know just what your man sells, baby. You’re all mixed up. All wrong.”

  Then he opened the dresser drawer, took out the little box. He opened it and showed her the capsules of heroin and smiled when she drew in her breath sharply.

  “God!”

  “A year and a day,” Shank said savagely. “Try ten years. Try fifteen or twenty. And not just for me. For me and for your man, Joe. For both of us with a little bit thrown in for you just for being here. How would you like to do a few years?”

  “Murder,” she said, numb. “Heroin. God in heaven.”

  Joe sat and stared. He, too, was numb, unable to think straight. It had happened so quickly while he simply sat and watched. The detective, the gun, the knife. Death, so quick. He felt left out now. But he stood up. He walked to Anita, put an arm around her. He looked at Shank.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We move,” Shank said. “We get out of town. What else can we do?”

  “We have to run?”

  Shank shook his head impatiently. “The cop let the world know where he was. If he doesn’t call in within an hour they’ll come looking for him. Even if we ditch the body it won’t do us any good. They’ll shake us down until they break us. They’ll nail us to fourteen different crosses. They’ll hang us, put us in the chair, whatever they do. We’ll die.”

  “You’ll die,” Anita told him, “You killed him. We didn’t do it.”

  “Read another law book. You’re guilty, too, sweetheart. Possession with intent to sell is a felony. We all possessed with intent. And if somebody kills in the commission of a felony, it’s murder one. The detective was killed and we were all here. We all get the chair.”

  “But—” Joe began.

  “So we run,” Shank said. “We got two hours to get out of town. Breeze to Grand Central and take the first train out. Get out far and fast. They won’t know where to look. We leave the state and keep going and they call it unsolved. We leave New York and we stay living. Otherwise we die. I don’t want to die.”

  “You can go,” she said. “Joe and I don’t have to go. They’re not after us. They’re after you. We didn’t do anything and we don’t have to run with you.”

  “They’ll catch you,” Shank said. “They’ll pick you up and they’ll squeeze you. They’ll ask you where I went.”

  “Don’t tell us. Then we won’t be able to tell them anything because we won’t know.”

  “They’ll call you accessories,” Shank said. “They’ll put you in jail.”

  “No—”

  “You got no choice. We hang together or we hang separately. You’ve got to come with me.”

  Joe was nodding. “He’s right,” he said. “But not all the way. I’ve got to go with him, Anita.”

  “No you don’t. No—”

  “I’ve got to,” Joe said again. “But you don’t. They don’t know anything about you. You can disappear. Go back to Harlem. Forget about us. We’ll run and we’ll get away but you can go on living. The fuzz doesn’t know who you are. You can forget us and live your own life.”

  Shank nodded. “I’ll buy it,” he said. “She could get away. But Joe and I have to run.”

  Anita hesitated only for a moment. She knew she was making the wrong decision but she knew also it was the only decision she could possibly make. She was committed. She shared their guilt in her own small way. And she and Joe were thrust together. She could not walk away from him. Not now, not ever.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I have to. I have to, now, forever. I’ll come with you, I will.”

  “No time to pack,” Shank was saying. “We take what we can carry. We head first for Buffalo. It’s a big junk town. I can sell there. We can get some money together.”

  They were short on money. Shank had fifty dollars in cash and the cop’s wallet yielded another twenty-five. Joe had a few dollars, Anita a few more. Enough to get them to Buffalo and pay for a hotel room, maybe a meal. Nothing more.

  “All that money in the bank,” Shank said. “All that goddamn money and the bank doesn’t open until Monday. Can’t risk it. Can’t stay around. They’ll tip to us by then. And they won’t let up. The police take care of their own. Kill a cop
and they turn the town inside-out looking for you. Someday I’ll come back, clean out that bank account. Not now.”

  Shank and Joe stuffed the cop’s hard body into the closet. They covered the bloodstains with newspapers.

  “They’ll find him,” Shank said. “Maybe this will keep them an extra hour. Maybe two hours. Every minute helps.”

  Curiously, Anita remembered to turn off the water running in the sink, thinking as she did so that the water would have washed nothing away, anyhow. The scum on the dirty dishes was very thick.

  They took a cab to Grand Central. Their timing was fortunate. A train left for Buffalo at 8:02 and they were on it. Shank had his knife in one pocket and the cop’s gun in the other. Joe was carrying the heroin. There was a lot of it—Shank had connected recently with Basil.

  “We’ll sell it in Buffalo,” he said. “Lay over a few days, sell what we can, then head west. Buy a car. It’s safer by car. Trains make me nervous.”

  The train stopped at Albany. A porter rolled through a sandwich cart. Shank bought three sandwiches and he, Joe and Anita wolfed them down without tasting them. The train started up again and sped west.

  “Chicago,” Shank said. “We can hole up in Chicago. I know a cat from the coast, he’s in Chicago. An old friend. We can connect with him, hide out there. Set ourselves up, get rolling again. Just so we get out of the state. New York’s going to be too hot.”

  Utica. Syracuse.

  Joe wondered what was going to happen. It was bad now, very bad. It could only get worse. A man was stuck in a closet with a hole in his chest and they had put him there.

  You could defend a lot of things, rationalize a lot of actions. You could defend smoking, defend selling. Somebody had to sell it, Joe’s mind ticked off the thoughts.

  Murder was different.

  Run, he thought. Run all you want. But where can you hide? How far can you run before they catch you?

  Joe looked at Anita and wondered why she had tagged along. He was somehow a little glad she was with them. He needed her. He took her hand now and held it. If only that cop had stayed away. He and Anita would have had their own place. And finally he would be money ahead and he could get a job and everything would be all right, good and clean and proper.

  Not running.

  Not looking for a place to hide.

  Why had she come along? Of the three, she alone was safe. She alone could go home, back to Harlem, back to something approaching sanity. She could stay away from police, she could be safe. Nobody knew her. Nobody was looking for her.

  And yet she had chosen to be with him. Now she was breaking the laws. Accessory to and after the fact. Guilty, now.

  Why?

  Rochester. Batavia.

  Anita sat in her seat and tried to sleep but could not. She wondered when she would be able to sleep again. Sometime, maybe.

  Joe was holding her hand, squeezing it. She wanted to squeeze back but she was still numb and she could not move. She felt as if she were not really alive. Everything was a dream. A big bad dream. A nightmare she was somehow living her way through. A bad nightmare that would have a dismal ending.

  They were running. First to Buffalo. Then to Chicago, then to somewhere else. She wondered when they would be able to stop running. Never, she decided. They would run until they dropped, run until they were caught and tried and electrocuted. She wondered if she would be killed with the others. She wondered if it made any difference, if anything made any difference any more.

  Probably not.

  She lit a cigarette from the butt of another and the smoke scratched her throat and clouded her lungs.

  She coughed out a cloud of smoke and her head swam. Nothing mattered any more. Nothing would ever matter. She and Joe were together, they would run together, they would be caught together, they would die together. Nothing mattered. Nothing would ever matter. Buffalo.

  The train jolted to a stop and they stood up together and walked out of it.

  Buffalo was gray in the morning. Anita, Joe and Shank left the railroad station and took a taxi to a dilapidated hotel on Clinton Street where the desk clerk asked no questions. They paid ten dollars in advance and the clerk gave them a room on the third floor whose window opened out on an air shaft. The room was dirty, the two beds unmade.

  “It’s quiet,” Shank said. “And we won’t be here long. A day, two days. Then we clear out and head west. We leave this town behind us. A bad town to begin with. And in the wrong state—for us. There are forty-nine other states. We’ll do better in any one of them. Not New York.”

  He took the heroin from Joe, put it in the dresser drawer. “You stay here,” he said. “The two of you, stay in the room, keep it quiet. I’ll be back in an hour, two hours. Wait for me.”

  He went out and left them alone.

  For several minutes they sat by themselves and said nothing. Then Joe broke the silence.

  “You didn’t have to come,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I had to be with you. I don’t know why.”

  “You were nuts to come. I don’t know how we’re going to get away.”

  She said nothing.

  “But I’m glad you came,” he went on. “I’m selfish, but I’m glad you came. I would go nuts without you. I need you, Anita.”

  She looked at him.

  “Anita,” he said. “I love you, Anita.”

  She went to him and sat on the bed with him. He put his arms around her, slowly, tentatively, and their mouths came together and they kissed. A long kiss. A good kiss, a kiss saying many things.

  “We have to stay together. We need each other, Anita. And some day we’ll get out of this. Out all the way. It’ll be the two of us forever.”

  “I hope so, Joe.”

  “It will. It will, honey. I love you, honey, I love you and I need you and—”

  It happened like a dream. There was no need to talk any more. They were lost in their overwhelming need, a need that could only be satisfied through the merging of flesh with flesh, body with body, soul with soul. They undressed automatically and they came together with no preceding love-play, no kisses, no caresses. His flesh claimed her and they joined in a dreamlike version of reality, bodies seeking, hearts pounding, minds clouded with love.

  When it was finished they lay in each other’s arms, holding themselves together, trying to right their lives with the sudden enormity of their love for each other. In the peak of passion they had managed to lose the horror of reality, the true nature of their situation. Now, as they basked in the glow of after-love, that horror filtered through to them once again. But they had each other, and somehow this lessened the horror. As long as they were together they could survive it.

  Finally, they slept…

  Shank let them sleep. He let himself into the hotel room, walked to the dresser and removed the capsules of heroin from the drawer. He seated himself at the table and took out the things he had purchased. Carefully he opened each capsule and diluted it with the milk sugar he had bought. He converted the thirty capsules into ninety capsules, each one-third as strong as the original ones had been. His investment was quickly tripled. He had three times the capital he had started with.

  Of course, each capsule was now worth one-third of what it had originally been worth. It was, in the junkie’s jargon, beat stuff. But the buyers did not have to know this. They would discover this only when they would use the capsules and derive a lesser kick from them than what they had been accustomed to. By that time Shank and Joe and Anita would be on their way, and goodbye Buffalo.

  It was a bad town, anyway. A dull gray town. Shank would connect now, and sell the ninety capsules as quickly as possible, and then the three would blow town. So long, Buffalo. Later for you, suckers. He slipped out of the room without waking Joe and Anita and took the heroin to the customers.

  They were awake when he returned. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s move. We’ve got to get
out of town.”

  “What’s the matter?” Joe said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “No more horse. All sold.”

  “How?”

  “Sold it for three bucks a cap,” he said. “A good price. Junk comes high in Buffalo. I was selling for half price. The buyers were very hungry. I holed up in a little bar in the middle of Spadesville and the trade was fast and thick. Half a dozen customers and we were all out and the store was closed. So we have to scram in a hurry.”

  “Why the rush?”

  Shank explained the customers would be ready to kill him in a very short time. He explained that he had sold one-third strength heroin for a heavy price, all things considered, and a lot of people would be mad at him when they would discover they had been taken.

  “So we run,” he explained. “I got better than two and a half bills. Ninety caps, bargain rate of three bucks a cap. We can buy a car. Not the best short in the world but one that will move for us. Let’s go.”

  On the way to the used car lot Joe bought an evening paper. The Buffalo paper had the story on a back page. Detective First Grade Peter J. Samuelson was dead as a lox. The police were searching for his killers.

  Shank bought a seven-year-old Chevy for two hundred dollars. It was worth less than half of that but the dealer knew something was wrong. Shank had to pay his price, and did.

  The car was a lemon. It rattled at fifty-five miles an hour. The brakes were in bad shape. The clutch could not work smoothly. The gears ground half the time. But it would do.

  Joe drove. He had no license but neither did Shank nor Anita. Joe knew how to drive so he drove. He took Route 20 out of town and headed for Cleveland. Cleveland would be safe for a day or two. They could scrape together a little more money. Head for Chicago. Anita sat next to him in the front seat. Shank slept in the back. Joe drove slowly and steadily. He could not have exceeded the speed limit if he had wanted to, and he did not want to. Not when he had no license. Not when the three were wanted for murder. Murder.