One Night Stands; Lost weekends

by Lawrence Block

  He slept well that night. There were dreams, unpleasant ones, but he was tired enough to sleep anyway and he didn’t hear the alarm clock in the morning. And once again he was almost an hour late for school.

  SCHOOL ENDED, FINALLY. The classes were dull and the teachers were something of a nuisance, but Sigmund clenched his hands into fists and lived through it, just as he lived through the flight from Poland long ago. He would clench his hands into tight little fists, and sometimes lower his eyelids, and everything passed in time.

  Lucci was waiting for him after school. Lucci was the same age but not as tall as Sigmund. But Lucci’s mother was dead and Lucci’s father drank red wine all day, so Lucci did not go to school.

  “Tonight,” Lucci said. “We’ll go out tonight, okay?”

  Sigmund hesitated. “It’s cold out. It’ll be cold as ice tonight.”

  “So what? You can use the gold, can’t you?”

  Sigmund nodded.

  “So we’ll go out then. Want to shoot some pool?”

  “I can’t,” said Sigmund. “No money.”

  Lucci shrugged. “What the hell, we’re buddies, aren’t we? I’ll treat.”

  They were buddies, and they went to the small poolroom on Christie Street where the cigar smoke was thick and warm in the air. They played two games of eight-ball and one game of straight and one game of Chicago, and they each smoked two of Lucci’s cigarettes, and Lucci paid for all the games. Then it was time to go. They shook hands warmly because they were buddies and Sigmund walked home for his dinner. It was so cold on the street that he could see his breath in front of his eyes, hovering in the air like the cigar smoke in the poolroom. He shuddered.

  When he opened the door he could smell food cooking on the stove, but otherwise he would not have known that his mother had moved at all since the previous night. She was sitting again in the red armchair, her fingers flying as they skillfully manipulated the slender needles. She looked up as he came in.

  “It is cold out,” she said. “You are almost blue from the cold, Sigmund.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “It’s not that bad.” He took off his jacket and hung it on a peg on the wall. When he turned around she was holding her knitting up proudly.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s almost finished. Weeks I have worked on it, and it’s almost finished.”

  He forced himself to smile. “That’s good. That’s real good, Ma.”

  “Tonight it will be done.” She stood up slowly and beckoned to him. “Come, let us eat.”

  The food was good. There was tender boiled cabbage and lamb stew and milk, and Sigmund enjoyed the meal. He ate quickly despite her frequent injunctions to chew his food more thoroughly, and he stood up from the table as soon as he was finished.

  “That was a good meal, Ma.”

  She frowned at him. “Where are you going? You’re not going out, Sigmund?”

  “Yeah. There’s a guy I have to meet.”

  “No,” she said. “Not one of your hoodlum friends, not in this weather. It’s too cold for your hoodlum friends.”

  “I’ve got to go out,” he said, uncomfortably. “It’s not that cold.”

  “All night you’ll be out. All night you’ll be freezing in the cold with your hoodlums. Don’t go, please.”

  He leaned over and pecked at her forehead. “Good-bye, Ma. I’ll try to be home early.” He grabbed his jacket from the peg and hurried out the door, managing to escape her final words.

  THE NIGHT WAS COLD and the wind blew through the thin jacket. But Lucci was waiting at the corner, a smile playing on his thin lips, a light dancing in his eyes. “It’s too early,” Lucci said. “Let’s have a game of pool.”

  They played two games of eight-ball and a game of Chicago at the place on Christie Street. Sigmund lost all three games, as he always lost when they played, and Lucci paid for all three, as he always paid. Then Lucci said it was time enough, and they set the cue sticks on the tabletop and hurried into the night.

  They walked west, through the cold clutter of the streets toward the Bowery. “This is the ticket,” Lucci explained. “You just give a drunk a tap on the head and he’s out for the night. Just a little tap and we take his gold. But don’t tap too hard, ’cause they get soft in the head from drinking, and you’ll squash their heads like a melon.”

  Sigmund saw a drunk, weaving back and forth along the sidewalk. “Him?”

  “No, too seedy. You got to pick a guy with money.”

  They walked on, passing up some as too run-down and others as too sober, until Lucci saw a victim. They surrounded the man and Lucci chopped him across the temple and the man went to the ground without protest. It was very easy.

  But the drunk’s pockets yielded only seven dollars and change, so they kept on looking. The wind grew colder and colder, and few men were on the streets, but they didn’t give up.

  They saw the man then, out of place on the Bowery. They walked up behind him and Sigmund hit him hard on the head, but the man did not lose consciousness as the other had. Instead he stared up from the sidewalk and opened his mouth to scream.

  Lucci kicked him, a short, hard kick in the side of the head. The man’s head rolled slightly on the pavement, his eyes closed, and he died.

  “Christ!” said Lucci. He grabbed for the man’s wallet and they ran in panic down the street. At the corner they divided the money and split up.

  Sigmund’s share for the night was sixty dollars. It was more money than he had ever had before, more money than he had seen in a long time. But the man was dead and cold on the cold sidewalk, and the icy wind could not stop the sweat from forming steadily on Sigmund’s brow.

  The man was dead. The thought was colder than the wind, and the wind was very cold.

  HE OPENED THE DOOR and tiptoed inside, softly. The door squeaked shut behind him and she looked up across the room from the faded red armchair. Although her eyes were flat and lifeless, they seemed to look right through him.

  “Sigmund,” she said.

  He rubbed his hands together to warm them. He was cold, very cold. He took off his jacket and hung it on the peg.

  “You’re cold,” she said. “On a night like this you had to go out. Stealing, on a night like this.”

  She looked into his eyes then, and he returned the look. For a moment her eyes were alive again, burning into him. But the life vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

  “I want to go to sleep,” he said. “Ma, I…I want to go right to sleep.”

  She took a deep breath and released it slowly, almost as though she were reluctant to let go of it. Then she stood up, slowly, lifting the black garment and holding it in front of her. “Sigmund, tonight you’ll be cold. It’s a cold night, this one.”

  He was shivering. “I know. That’s why I want to go to bed now.”

  “Do me a favor. Wear this.” She reached out her hands, offering the shroud to him. “Do it for your mother.”

  “What for?”

  “It’s warm. Believe me, it’s a warm thing.”

  “But it’s a shroud, Ma.”

  “So? In this country, it’s just something else to wrap in. They don’t have shrouds, not in this country.”

  He started to back away. “I don’t need it. Honest.”

  “Take it,” she said. “Tight stitching it’s got, so it should be warm. Please.”

  He shrugged and took the shroud from her, then hurried to his room. He undressed rapidly, wrapped himself in the shroud, and got into bed. It was warm, anyhow, and it was a very cold night.

  She stayed for a long time in the red armchair. She sat very still, and now even her hands were motionless. Time passed slowly.

  She stood up at last and walked to his room. The door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open and entered.

  “Sigmund,” she whispered. “Are you asleep?”

  There was no answer. He lay very still, not tossing as much as he had done on recent nights. The shroud was wrapped neatly around him, a
lmost covering his face.

  “Sigmund,” she repeated, and again there was no response.

  She looked then, at the knitting needle that she held in her right hand. She looked at it for several minutes, and she knew what had to be done. She would do it swiftly, just as her husband had done to the German many years ago.

  Carefully she lifted the blanket back, exposing the shrouded form. Then, in one motion, she jabbed the long slender needle through the shroud and into the body at the base of the spine. The boy twitched once, as the German had done, and then lay still.

  She pulled out the knitting needle and washed it in the sink. Then she returned to the faded red armchair and sat in it, thinking. He would be warm now. The shroud would keep him warm. And he would be good, for the shroud would keep the evil spirits from him.

  After some time she picked up the needles and her ball of yarn. She began to knit again, and at first her fingers moved very slowly. Gradually they picked up speed, and her hands moved faster and faster.

  SWEET LITTLE RACKET

  THE NEWSPAPER SEEMED TO OPEN by itself to the classified ads. You get that way after a while. You get so used to fumbling through the paper every morning, hunting for a job, then folding the paper up and throwing it against the wall. It’s a regular routine—not the greatest bit in the world—but one that sort of grows on you when you go long enough without working.

  I was sick of it. I ran my eyes down the column but there was nothing, nothing worth wasting my time on. I folded the paper methodically and flung it against the wall. It didn’t help; I still felt lousy.

  If I were just a punk I wouldn’t mind it, but I wasn’t used to wasting my time sitting around a crummy room. I was never rich, but I used to have a red-hot little liquor store that made nice money.

  I cut prices and did a volume business until they brought in Fair Trade and knocked the business to hell. Then the heavy taxes on small businesses made things just that much worse. Bit by bit the business fell apart.

  Five months. Five months without working, five months doing nothing, and all because the big boys had things rigged against the little man. I could have gone out and grabbed a two-bit job, but there’s no sense working for somebody else. You never get any place that way.

  I stood up, ready to go down the street for a beer before the landlady came around and yelled for the rent, when the idea hit me. I just couldn’t go on like this anymore. And I hit on a way to set up a handy little business all my own, a business the big boys couldn’t pull out from under me.

  The big boys had the world nicely wrapped around their pinkies. But when everything stacks up so perfectly for you, that’s the time you have to be careful. You scare easy. You hedge your bets and quit taking the chances that brought you to the top.

  All I needed was a couple of big boys who were afraid. If I could scare five of them to the tune of fifty bucks a week, I would be set up with a little business pulling down two and a half yards per. And that was handy money to a loner like me. No wife and kids to feed—no folks to support—it could be big dough. And the big boys can afford fifty a week with no headaches.

  The first big boy I wanted to get was Gargan. James Gargan of Gargan Motors, the fat slob who repossessed my buggy when I fell a few months back in the payments. He could afford the fifty, that was certain enough. And I’d like to be sitting on his payroll.

  I drafted a letter to Gargan and read it over. It looked good—simple and to the point. He was to mail fifty dollars a week to me, or one of his kids might get hit by a car. Nice and simple. I could picture his face while he read the letter. First he’d think it was a bluff. Then he’d start wondering. And finally he’d decide it didn’t matter whether it was a bluff or not. Hell, he couldn’t chance anything happening to one of his kids, could he?

  And the next thing he knew, he’d be slipping a brand-new fifty in an envelope and addressing it to me.

  You know I almost mailed that letter. I was halfway down the street to the mailbox before I realized what a stupid play that would be. I remembered reading somewhere that there were two kinds of blackmail, the only difference being whether the threat came by letter or in person. By letter was a felony; in person was only a misdemeanor. Sending that letter would have been one of the dumbest things ever.

  Instead, I walked into Mr. Gargan’s office that afternoon. I gave him the pitch, laying it right on the line. Then I leaned back in my chair and stared at him.

  For several minutes he didn’t say anything, but I could hear his mind working it out. Then he blew a cloud of cigar smoke at the ceiling and said, “I suppose you know this is blackmail.”

  I just smiled in his face.

  “I could have you arrested,” he went on. “I could call a policeman and have you arrested immediately.”

  “How would you prove it?”

  “They’d take my word for it.”

  I shrugged. “You’re a smart man, Mr. Gargan. You don’t figure I’m working this all by myself, do you? If you lock me up, your kid’ll get it just the same.”

  He chewed on the cigar and I wondered whether he’d have the guts to call my bluff. But he didn’t.

  “Fifty dollars?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m to send it to you?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’ll pick it up every Monday afternoon, and you can start the ball rolling this afternoon. Just put me on your payroll for fifty bucks.”

  “You bastard,” he said. He considered for another moment and stood up, reaching in his pocket for his wallet. He slipped me two twenties and a ten and swore at me again.

  “It’s just a business,” I told him. “Don’t take it so hard, Mr. Gargan.” Before he could answer I turned around and walked out.

  One time at the liquor store I jabbed a hypodermic needle through the corks in half a dozen bottles of imported Scotch, drained them dry, and filled them again with a cheap blend. That had been easy money, but the fifty bucks I had in my pocket right now was the easiest money ever. And it was steady: Gargan would kick in with fifty every Monday, without even whimpering from here on in.

  I paid off the landlady and bought a couple shirts. I took a girl to my room for the evening. That damn near shot the fifty, but I wasn’t figuring on living the rest of my life on fifty dollars per; $250 would be a lot more like it.

  I picked another customer Tuesday, a guy named Theodore Sims. He ran a big insurance agency on Wilkin Street, and I came on telling him I wanted to sell him some insurance. He tried to hustle me out the door, but by the time I finished my spiel he was sitting down again and doing some heavy thinking. I walked out of there ten minutes later with another fifty in my pocket and another client on my list.

  Choosing my customers was the most important part. If I picked a guy who couldn’t drop fifty a week without noticing it, I’d get in trouble eventually. If I tabbed a muscle boy with more guts than brains, my bluff wouldn’t stand a chance.

  But I was careful.

  I added my name to another payroll on Wednesday and another on Thursday. Both times I spruced up my pitch a little, starting off with the insurance salesman bit and moving right into the regular routine. I got smoother and smoother, until by Friday I had myself believing that they were in for trouble if they didn’t come across.

  Of course, no matter what they did they were safer than a virgin in a roomful of eunuchs. I wasn’t going to take a swipe at anybody’s kid, and I didn’t even have a car to run a kid down with if I felt like it. But the big boys don’t have to take chances, and that’s why I cleared two hundred bucks the first week.

  Friday was a day of rest. I had plenty of time to find a fifth sucker, and besides it was a good day to go to the beach. I took a quick dip in the water and spread out a blanket on the sand, letting the sun burn down on me and thinking what a nice little business I had. The nicest thing was the absence of competition. There was no heavy operator to push me out of the catbird’s seat.

  On Monday, Gargan start
ed to make noises until I reminded him that I could always raise the ante if he didn’t behave himself. The others were respectfully quiet. Another week, another two hundred for me—and with no taxes to pay. Who could ask for a better setup?

  Two hundred was enough, when you came right down to it. I’m not a guy with expensive tastes. Sure, I like a drink when I’m dry and a woman now and then, and I like expensive Scotch and high-priced women, but two hundred a week will buy plenty of liquor and sex. I’m not a pig.

  It went on that way for about two months. It was a regular routine: Gargan on Monday, Sims on Tuesday, Lon Butler on Wednesday, and David Clark on Thursday. I had regular working hours, and my wages came to something like fifty bucks an hour.

  It even became a routine for my customers. After a while we didn’t even bother to talk to each other. I walked into the office, picked up my money, and walked out. That was all there was to it.

  My landlady was thrilled. She got her rent right on the button without asking twice, and she never had it so good. She must have wondered where the hell I was getting the dough, but that was none of her business and she had enough sense to keep her nose out. She was strictly business. As long as I paid on time, she kept her eyes closed and her mouth shut.

  That was the main reason I kept on living in my little dump. But I found other things to spend the money on. I picked up an Italian silk suit and some decent shoes, bought a radio for the room, and even got some pictures for the walls. I gave one of my broads a silk nightgown and she was extra-good to me from that point on.

  I even bought a car. With a steady income, it was no headache keeping up payments. I latched onto a little foreign job with wire wheels and plenty of speed. It was nice, sitting behind the wheel of the car and opening her up. It was particularly nice when I stopped to think how the car was being paid for.

  Nice, huh?

  But after a while the idea of another half a yard a week began looking better and better. I could get along without it all right, but fifty bucks more wouldn’t hurt. I took my time, trying to pick the perfect mark. I was set up so perfectly that there was no point in risking everything unless I had a sure thing. I took my time and waited.