Blood on Their Hands

by Lawrence Block

Up the driveway she walked, the leather bag hanging off her arm, gently bumping into her side as she went up to the large house. She thought she could make out the heavy shape of the pistol as it bumped against her. God, the damn thing was heavy, and she sure hoped it wouldn’t break the other object she had in her purse. She looked up at the house, recalled when it was first built last year. The previous house on this lot had been an old Victorian, owned by a lawyer from town who had served two terms in the U.S. Senate during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The house hadn’t been particularly historical or noteworthy, which was why there was no protection in place when Hank Zamett bought it and had it razed to the ground. The stained glass windows in the door, the walnut wainscoting, and the delicate spires on the roof, all torn up and smashed and crushed, and then, a bigger and more modern house had been built. A McMansion, the locals had called it, for it was three times as large as its neighboring house. But Hank had money, Hank had the will, and what he wanted, he usually got.

  She went up to the front door, rang the bell. She had been in the house exactly once before. This was going to be her second visit, and, she knew, was going to be her last.

  It happened one cold October day, when the heat had gone out in her studio, and she had spent a long hour or two trying to figure out why the heat wasn’t making its way to the register. She was cold and her fingers and knees ached, and her back was throbbing from having crawled around the basement, trying to trace the heating lines going out of the ancient oil furnace. The problem had been a malfunctioning thermostat. Ten minutes after replacing it, Jess had come home and had shown her a magazine, one of many high-tech journals that littered his own office and workspace.

  “See this guy here?” he had said, pointing out a photo in the magazine.

  “Yeah?” she had replied, washing her hands yet again, hearing the tick-tick-tick as heat finally started crawling into her studio. The photo showed a beefy-looking guy, hair slicked back, wearing glasses and a satisfied smile on his face. He was in an office, sitting with self-assurance on the edge of his desk, and though there was snow visible outside, he was wearing a short-sleeve shirt, revealing a thick and muscular bicep.

  “That’s Hank Zamett. The guy that bought Senator Hudson’s place. The guy that founded Zamett Systems. A real mover and shaker in the industry. He’s quite impressive, Laura.”

  She looked at the photo again. “He doesn’t look very impressive to me. He’s wearing a summer shirt in winter, it looks like.”

  Jess just smiled. “He always dresses like that. He’s a competitive weight lifter, triathlete, mountain climber. Likes to show off his biceps.”

  “Sounds like a nut,” she had said.

  “A very wealthy nut, and he wants me to come work for him.”

  Right then and there, she should have said no. Should have taken that magazine away and burned it, if she had been smart, if she had listened to what was going on in her mind. For she didn’t like the hungry look of the guy, sitting on his desk like that, showing off his body like some great ape in some remote rain forest tribe, showing that he was king of the hill.

  “That sounds nice,” she had said, and a week later, it was too late. Jess was now working for the man with the hungry look.

  She rang the doorbell at the front door, waited a few seconds, and then rang it again. The door opened up and Hank Zamett was there, wiping his face with a small hand towel. He was wearing gray sweatpants, a white tanktop shirt, and a suspicious look on his face.

  “Laura,” he said. “Um, hi. Look, I really don’t think we should be talking. Your lawyer and my lawyers might get upset.”

  Laura had expected this response, and said, “Oh, come on, Hank. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of lawyers, now, are you?”

  That got him, made his eyes flash a bit. Hank always liked to say, in private and in public, that he wasn’t afraid of a damn thing. She said, “All I want to do is talk. For five minutes. Give me five minutes and then I’ll leave. All right?”

  He shook his head. “Five minutes...that’s okay, Laura, but it’s not going to change my mind. You know how it is. Business is business.”

  She walked into the big house. “Sure,” she said. “I know exactly how it is.”

  So Jess had gone to work for Zamett Systems, and only after trying to ease Laura’s mind. There would be a solid salary, great benefits, no more juggling expenses and tax issues with being a consultant. There would be no travel, so no more weeks alone in the house. The main facility was only ten minutes away, and he’d be home early enough for dinner, every day. Zamett Systems would give him all the support he needed, to really work on some great projects, and the money potential with the stock options was great.

  She had just said one thing, one thing only: “But I thought you liked working for yourself, Jess. I didn’t think money mattered that much to you.”

  And he had said, “With money like this, hon, we can do a lot. Travel. Get a better house. A house with a studio that doesn’t have a lousy heating system. Doesn’t that sound great?”

  Of course it did, and of course, Jess—sweet, genius, innocent Jess—had no idea what he had just agreed to do.

  She followed Hank down a hallway, and she was pleased that he had brought her to his office. Two of the walls had floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking a finely mowed lawn and some apple trees off in the distance. The office had bookshelves with books that looked unread, some cabinets with antiques, and a large lamp in the corner. He sat down in a big leather chair, in front of a desk that seemed to be the size of her studio. He wiped his face again and tossed the towel on the floor. “Okay, Laura,” he said. “The clock is ticking. Five minutes.”

  She put the purse in her lap, said to him, “Hank, I brought you something. Something I’ve thought about for a while.”

  And with that, she reached into her purse.

  The first couple of weeks on the job, Jess would come home at 9 p.m. Or 10 p.m. Or 11 p.m. She soon adjusted to eating alone at home, and Jess would be full of apologies and excuses. He was adjusting to being an employee, and not a consultant. He had a steep learning curve if he expected to do well at Zamett Systems. Hank Zamett was expecting a lot from him. It all sounded reasonable and fair and perfectly understandable, but all Laura knew was that she missed those long afternoons, when he was back from some consulting gig and she didn’t enter the studio, and they explored the hills and woods and lakes near their home.

  A couple of times she had been a bit more aggressive, and had packed up a dinner and had gone to where Jess was working. The place, right from the start, had given her the creeps. Her own work area was dirty and crowded, with pictures and posters on the wall, dirt on the floor, a radio blasting classical tunes from the local NPR station, and overflowing wastebaskets. A mess to be sure, but her own mess. The cool and quiet and well-lit place that Jess was spending more and more of his time in looked to be like an asylum for both the equally gifted and disturbed.

  Jess’s office was one in a series, down a long white corridor. She went through the open door and sat down in front of his desk, a metal thing that had a neat pile of papers, a clock, and a computer terminal with a huge screen, and three of her own little pottery creations, lined up on the edge of the desk. Light came in from overhead panels in the ceiling and there was a whiteboard on one side that covered nearly the entire wall. On the whiteboard, in different colored inks, were strings of numbers and symbols and acronyms that made her head ache to look at. Jess sat behind a computer terminal, face pudgy and red, and just as she unpacked a salad for herself and a steak sandwich for Jess, a burly man blew into the place like he owned it, which was true. She recognized Hank Zamett from the magazine photo, and he was dressed just like the photo: dress slacks, bright tie, short-sleeve shirt cut to show off his biceps.

  “Jess, look, we’ve got to get a better handle on—”

  “Excuse me, Hank, I’d like you to meet my wife, Laura.”

  He turned, like he was first not
icing another human was in the office. “Oh,” he said. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she said in return, and she noted the quick up-and- down look from his eyes, knew the look well. She had just been evaluated as a possible bed partner, and Hank Zamett had just dismissed that possibility in about a second or two. So what, she didn’t think being overlooked by a creature like Hank Zamett meant anything, but she was surprised at how sour she felt. It was like she had failed at a contest she was sure she didn’t want to be in.

  Hank went over to Jess’s side at the desk, and they started talking in a form of English she couldn’t follow. She waited and waited, until the grumbling in her stomach grew too loud, and she slowly and silently ate her salad. Hank and Jess kept on talking. They kept on talking for quite some time, and then the two of them got up and went over to the whiteboard and both started scribbling in acronyms and symbols. She waited for a while longer, and then picked up her purse and empty salad bowl and walked away.

  Hank looked surprised at what she had pulled out of her purse. It was a small bowl, made by her own hands and with the help of a memory of dear old Jess, and she carefully placed it in the middle of the clean desk. It was brown with streaks of black, with what looked to be a piece of glass centered on one side.

  He stared at it, like he expected it to start rotating or emitting sparks or some damn thing, and she said quietly, “See what that is? It’s a decorative pot. I make a lot of these. I also made a fair number for Jess. I made it with my own hands. Something I worked with, something I pulled from the ground. Do you see the point? When I made that pot, I did something that my ancestors and your ancestors did thousands of years ago. Stretching centuries behind me and centuries ahead of me, there have been and there will always be potters. Always.”

  His eyes seemed to darken. “Is there a point to this?”

  “Yes, Hank,” she said. “You think you’re on top of your game. You think you’re the very best. You think you’ve got the world by the tail, that everything is breaking your way, will continue to break your way. And what I’m telling you is that what you and your people do did not exist thirty years ago, and will not exist thirty years in the future. You’re just a flicker of motion on the world’s stage. Nothing else. Hank, you don’t count.’’

  Now his eyes really were dark. “Sorry Laura. I do count. I do count a lot. Wall Street and Silicon Valley and the trade press all agree, as do my employees. I don’t care what you think about my time on the stage. And speaking of time, I think it’s time for you to leave.’’

  She shook her head. “No. Before I leave, I want you to make things right. For what Jess did for you.”

  He shook his head in reply. “Nope. Sorry. My lawyers said I was totally within my rights. And bringing some sort of crappy gift—” He made a dismissive gesture to the pot with his hand. “—isn’t going to change my mind. Okay?”

  She sighed. All right, then. “Okay. One more thing.” She went back to her purse, this time pulled out something that wasn’t crafted by her hands, but by some unknown craftspeople in a Connecticut River Valley facility of Messrs. Smith and Wesson. She pointed it right at his meaty face.

  “Do you think this might change your mind? Hank?” And seeing the look on his face brought a strange emotion to her, an emotion familiar yet distant. And then she recognized what she was feeling, something that had not happened to her since Jess died: happiness.

  Besides the increased hours at work, Laura noticed that Jess was starting to slip. Always a bit chunky, he was really starting to pack on the pounds, and it was easy to know why: their afternoon walks or bicycle rides had gone away, the meals eaten at home had mutated into vending machine snacks eaten at his desk at work, and a few times—instead of taking the several minutes necessary to come home—he would sprawl under his desk and sleep there. He was forgetful, he was snappish, and instead of spending long minutes admiring her pottery—especially the little gifts she brought to him at work—he would smile, say “nice,” and then change the subject.

  “Jess,” she said once, as they were getting ready for bed. “You’ve got to start taking better care of yourself. It’s not healthy.”

  Jess tried to reassure her. “Sweets, it’s okay. Honest it is. We’re trying to get through the beta test of a new product, something that will make the investors sit up and take notice. Just a few more weeks and it’ll get better. Honest.”

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “Positive. Look what we’re doing...” he started, and then went into a long discussion of miniature cameras and transmitters that could allow anyone with the aptitude of changing toilet paper, the ability to wire up one’s bedroom, one’s house, hell, one’s car, to allow 24/7 surveillance or videography. Home security, web presence, the whole ball of wax available in one inexpensive package. He even gave her a demo with some gear in his computer bag that he had brought home, and she nodded in the right places and gave out the usual exclamations of interest and amazement, while she watched the minutes slip away.

  Just when Jess went on about the possible military aspects of what he had been working on, she kissed him. “My smelly genius, it’s way past your bedtime. Come along.” He grinned, like a puppy being praised for a particularly elaborate trick, and he put the gear away. So they went to bed and Jess fell asleep in a matter of moments, and all night long, it seemed, his legs and arms trembled, and he whispered to himself, like his mind was still back at work, not letting him loose, not giving him any respite at all.

  Hank’s look of surprise quickly turned into anger. “Laura. Put that down. Right now.”

  “Nope.”

  “Laura, put the gun away. All right? Put it down and walk out the door, and I won’t press any charges. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

  Laura made a point of sighing quite loud. “You see, Hank, you’re making a mistake. You think that what you’re thinking is going to make a difference. You think I really care about any possible charges that might come my way.”

  “Threatening me with a weapon, that’s very serious,” Hank said, eyes flickering down to the pistol and up to her face.

  “Maybe. Then again, maybe I’ll just plead the distraught widow excuse, and I’ll get off with a stern lecture. Are you willing to risk that?”

  Hank looked again at the pistol, made a presentation of slumping his muscular shoulders. “Okay. You win, Laura. What do you want? Money? Part of the profits? A plaque with Jess’s name out in front of the plant?”

  She didn’t let the weapon waver. “How stupid do you think I am, Hank?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, “I’ve been selling my own handiwork for years, and I know all the ins and outs of negotiations and dealmaking. Trust me, you haven’t gone into serious negotiations until you’ve gone into some of these small country stores with old Yankee retailers. Do you think I believe for one moment that any kind of deal or agreement we come to in this office, with a pistol pointing in your direction, that this deal would last out the evening? Of course it wouldn’t. I’m not that stupid. It’s too late for you to start offering me money. Hank, or a deal.”

  “What do you want, then?” he asked.

  “Justice,” she said.

  “You came to the wrong place,” he said.

  She moved the pistol a few inches, brought her free hand up, and held the pistol in the approved firing stance. She pulled the trigger, drilling a hole in the plate glass window right behind his desk. Hank jerked and his face turned white, and when he looked back at her, she said, “Wrong answer, Hank. Care to try again?”

  The first time Laura went to Hank Zamett’s house was the evening of a warm summer party, a party to celebrate the completion of a certain milestone in the development of a pretty tricky piece of software. Jess hadn’t been feeling well all day, feverish and headachy, and she wanted to keep him home, but he insisted. “This is going to be important, sweets. Real important. Besides the employees and senior staff, there are going to be a number of
important VCs in the crowd.”

  She tried to make a joke. “VCs? Viet Cong?”

  But he didn’t appreciate the humor. “No. Venture capitalists, hard-eyed guys with lots of money to invest and who are careful who gets it. A few years back, you could squeeze out whatever you wanted from VCs with a half-assed business plan and some high-end computer servers. Since the NASDAQ meltdown, that’s changed. You need to show them real stuff that’ll get real customers interested in spending money. Not a singing sock puppet.”

  At Hank’s large home, it looked like something out of The Great Gatsby, with tents up in the backyard, caterers, and live music. She moved through the crowd, a fruit drink in her hand, not really wanting to talk to any of the other guests, all of whom were associated with Zamett Systems. She had enough talk about the company with Jess around; she didn’t need any additional discussion tonight.

  In the large backyard she found a spot near an old dead apple tree, its wide trunk offering some solitude. She stood there and sipped her drink and was startled for a moment: she could hear voices. She peered around the trunk, saw two men, dressed alike in tan chinos and bright polo shirts. Their faces weren’t familiar, and as they talked, she realized that there were two of the fabled VCs, money guys who could make or break a company through the effort of writing a single check.

  Laura could only catch snatches of the conversation, but what she did hear pleased her: the system that Jess had come up with, had designed and worked on, looked to be a potential hit. The VCs were impressed with the demonstration and were ready to give Hank Zamett whatever he wanted. Good, she thought. Very good. Maybe that would lessen some of the pressure, lighten some of the load, and get Jess back to a normal life.

  Then, the VCs voices got louder, and they laughed at what they were seeing. Laura looked around again, saw Hank leading a group of his folks—including Jess—out to the held. Hank had his shirt off and was juggling a football, up and down.