Such Men Are Dangerous

by Lawrence Block

  I wondered how fast boats like that went. It seemed to be the sort of thing a person ought to know, and I didn’t have the vaguest idea.

  I spotted the car. It was in position, tucked behind a shed and not visible from ship. I drove another couple dozen yards and braked to a stop. I opened the door, and George dashed out from cover. I slid over to let him behind the wheel.

  He drove us out onto the pier. While they swung a ramp into position, I got out on my side and took the grenade and the launcher with me. I crouched on the pier with the truck shielding me. By the time George moved the van, I had the launcher sighted in and the grenade in place.

  That was the end of my job. I didn’t have anything else to do unless something was wrong. George was now telling them who I was and what I had aimed at them, and that it would blow them all to hell if he didn’t get paid and set loose. If they shot me the grenade would be launched automatically. If they got very cute and shot the launcher out from under me, the grenade would blow on the spot; I was still close enough to take them with me.

  Either they never planned a cross or he made it sound good, because he was walking off the ship past me in less than twenty minutes. He had two metal boxes, one in each hand. They looked like the kind that hold fishing tackle or plumber’s tools, only larger. He didn’t say anything; he just winked as he went by.

  I waited until I heard his horn, one long, two shorts, one long. I backed off with the grenade launcher still pointing at the ship. That looked good, but I was afraid I’d fall over my own feet, so I gave up and turned around and walked the rest of the way with the launcher under my arm. I figured somebody had a gun on me all the way, and that he just might be addled enough to give the trigger a squeeze. But I got to the shed and turned the corner, and the car was there with the motor running and the door open on the passenger side. I hopped in, and we were moving before I could yank the door shut.

  I separated the grenade and the launcher. I put the grenade in the glove compartment, chucked the launcher into the back seat.

  He shuddered. “You had to bring them?”

  “What did you want me to do with them?”

  “I know. They make me nervous.”

  “We drove two thousand miles with a truck full of them, and now you’re nervous.”

  “It’s different. I just spent half an hour with this one pointed at me.” He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and poked the dashboard lighter. He didn’t say anything until he had treated his lungs to a cloud of smoke. Then he started giggling.

  He said, “They never planned a cross. I’d give twenty-to-one on it. That bit with the grenade, they were terrified. Literally terrified. That you might slip. Anything.”

  “Just so they paid up. You couldn’t have counted it.”

  “I had trouble enough lifting it. I gave it a quick check. All U.S., incidentally. I thought they might make up part of it in pounds, but it’s nothing but dollars.” He fell silent. He wasn’t driving anywhere in particular, but he was making a lot of turns and keeping an eye on the mirror.

  All at once he giggled again. “You missed a show,” he said. “The boss man damn near had a stroke. ‘What if your friend slips? What if zere iss an ox-see-dent?’ To tell you the truth, the same thought occurred to me. That thing had me a little shaky.”

  “No need. I never engaged the pin.”

  He turned his head all the way around to look at me. “Truth?”

  “Truth. I didn’t want an ox-see-dent either.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “I figured you’d be more convincing this way. Sell the salesman, then let the salesman sell the product.”

  He thought about it. “I won’t argue, friend Paul. As long as my hair isn’t suddenly gray. Is it?”

  “No.”

  “Then all is forgiven.”

  He got very jovial a few minutes later. I put myself into the mood and threw an arm over his shoulder. He started singing something. A college song, I think.

  I moved my hand to the back of his neck. He stopped for a red light, and I used my thumb and forefinger on the big blood vessels on either side of his neck.

  When the light changed, I was driving. He was on the passenger side, sound asleep.

  SEVENTEEN

  I WAS STANDING a few feet behind him when he came to. I had removed the gag once I had the boat a good ways out on the water, but I heard him fighting the ropes before he actually said anything. This went on for a few minutes, and I stopped what I was doing and watched. I had him on his back, wedged between the deck chair and the rail so he wouldn’t roll around. His hands were tied behind his back with electrical wire. I had the same kind of wire wound around his legs in three places, and there was a heavy rope around his ankles.

  He did all the squirming he could and proved that he wasn’t going to accomplish anything that way. Then he stopped, and then he spoke in a whisper.

  “Paul? Paul? Where are you, Paul?”

  I said, “Here.”

  “I don’t know how the hell they did it. Was it the Greek? The last thing I remember was driving, then nothing. We’re on some kind of a boat. Not the Pindaris. Where are we?”

  “The Atlantic. About four miles from land. International waters.”

  “Jesus, how did we—” He stopped short. “Paul?” I walked around the deck chair on the port side. He didn’t say anything, and I watched his face as it all sank in. He got it a little at a time and his face kept on changing and he still didn’t say a word.

  “I rented the boat less than a mile down the waterfront from where we delivered the load. Did I say rented? I mean chartered. I chartered the ship. It’s a cabin cruiser, sleeps four. A good-sized engine, but it’s off now. We’re drifting. Adrift in the Atlantic. I like the sound of that, don’t you? Adrift in the Atlantic.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You will,” I said. “There’s loads of time. It’s two o’clock, the Pindaris sailed an hour ago. I saw her leave. She’s out of sight now. Pretty soon the sun will be over the yardarm. We don’t have a yardarm, George. It’s a nautical term. I don’t know what it means.”

  “Is this a gag?”

  “Guess.”

  “It might be your idea of a joke. We worked everything out, I made a mistake, a lot of mistakes, we worked everything out—”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s not a joke,” he said.

  “No.”

  “You are going to kill me.”

  “Yes.”

  “For Christ’s sake, why?” His voice was hoarse. “I’ll never try to job you again, you must know that. Do you want the money? I can’t believe it, but if you want it you can take it. Screw the money, I don’t care about the money.” A pause. “No, damn it, that’s not it. I just don’t believe it. That’s not it, is it, Paul?”

  “The money? No.”

  “Then—”

  “I killed nineteen men for a million dollars. That’s a little over fifty thousand dollars a man. If I killed you for another million I’d be cheapening their lives. It doesn’t seem right.”

  He stared at me. “Oh, no. The one thing I never figured—”

  “I got my million. Fair is fair. The other million is yours, George. I wouldn’t take it away from you.”

  “You snapped. You went over the edge. I never figured. Paul, Paul—”

  I dragged over one of the metal cases. I flipped the hinges, lifted the lid. It was packed with fifty-dollar bills in stacks of a hundred.

  “See? A million dollars.” I closed the box. “I don’t want it. Watch closely now, this is something you’ve never seen before. Watch.”

  I threw the box over the side.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  I felt like singing. I knew I was smiling like an idiot but I couldn’t help it. “What’s so hard to believe? There’s too much money in the world. Ordinarily I wouldn’t throw it in the ocean because the fish can’t eat it. I only throw organic refuse in the ocean. Sometimes
, though, a man has to bend so he won’t break. Sometimes he can do both. A question of compromise. The fish can’t eat a grenade launcher—” I threw the launcher over the side—“or a grenade—” I flipped the grenade after it— “or the wires on your wrists, or the rope around your ankles, or the anchor at the end of the rope. If you lift your head you’ll see the anchor. That’s why we’re adrift in the Atlantic, George, not just for the beauty of the phrase, the poetry of the words, but because the anchor is here in the boat and you’re attached to it. Are you getting attached to your anchor, George? The fish won’t eat it, or your clothes, but they’ll eat you, George!”

  I started laughing and couldn’t get hold of it. I grabbed onto the rail and clenched my teeth and shut my eyes and took deep breaths, in out in out. I knew what was happening. A corner of my mind knew exactly what was happening, and I kept my eyes shut and my jaws locked together and kept taking deep breaths until the rough parts smoothed out again.

  He was saying the same thing, over and over, as if the words had magical properties. “You’re crazy. You’re out of your mind, you’re crazy—”

  I stood and watched him. I was calm now, and so of course he started to tell me that I had to calm down. “I think I’ll go below,” I told him. “That’s another nautical term. It means downstairs. Try to get some rest, George.”

  I went downstairs and sat on a bed and wondered what they called beds on a ship. It wasn’t going well, I told myself. I couldn’t get organized, I kept going off on tangents and winding up hysterical. I had to straighten myself out. One thing at a time, one damned thing at a time.

  I thought it all out and had it fixed in my mind when I went upstairs again. He was lying still, and for a moment I thought he was dead, but then his eyes turned to focus on me. He didn’t say anything.

  I said, “I want you to understand all this. It’s almost 2:30 now. In an hour and a half, at four o’clock, the Pindaris will blow up. We may hear it, I’m not sure, I may, I mean. I don’t know what speed a big ship makes or—”

  “The Pindaris will—”

  “Please don’t interrupt. Let me talk, and then later you can ask all the questions you want, and I’ll try to answer them. I think I knew all along that I was going to blow up the ship. I think that’s one of the reasons I agreed to do the job in the first place. Those weapons are disgusting. They don’t just kill people, they kill everything. Everything. They kill the ground.”

  “How did—”

  “Please. You know the outfit I was in. We learned how to make bombs out of almost anything. I bought an alarm clock for the timer and opened up bullets for gunpowder. And other things. I set it all up while you were driving to the pier. In one of the crates I broke open. It won’t be much of a bomb. A little explosion and a little fire, but the explosion alone ought to be enough to start some of the napalm, and once that goes it’ll touch off most of the other stuff.”

  I took a deep breath. “Of course, blowing up the ship takes the pressure off us, too. Me. They’ll know about it, that the weapons were destroyed, and it won’t be quite as important to find out who took them. Maybe they’ll decide that the criminals went down with the ship. So it’s safer this way, but that’s not the point, that’s just a fringe benefit.”

  “A million dollars, a fortune in weapons, and a ship,” he said. He was talking to himself. “I don’t believe it. A ship, a freighter. I don’t—”

  I waited until he stopped. I was going to tell him that the only thing that really bothered me was the damage the blast would do. It would pollute a large portion of the sea and might disturb the ecology of the whole area. I didn’t tell him because I knew he didn’t care, and also because it was something I didn’t want to think about myself. I would have to think about it sooner or later, but it could wait.

  So I said, “I told you this because I had to, and it was something you had to know. But I know that you want to hear about yourself, don’t you?”

  “You already told me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to dump me overboard.”

  “That’s right.”

  He had a tremendous amount of control. I could almost see his mind trying to come apart, but he managed to keep it in check. He couldn’t talk for a few minutes and I waited for him, and then he said, his voice steady, interested, “Why, Paul? Why?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Because I tried to kill you.”

  “No. That would be stupid. I told you last night.”

  “Then why?”

  I had had the right answer ready before but now I couldn’t remember what it was. I hedged. “I’m safer this way. They might get to you, it’s possible. And you would throw me to them, you know you would. Or else you would kill me yourself. I’d always be the loose end, the one man on earth who knew about you, and you would go to Guatemala and come back from Guatemala and think about me. You’d have a million dollars free and clear with one man in the world who knew about you, just one man, and it might take a month or a year or five years but sooner or later it would get to you and you would try to kill me.”

  “Never, Paul. Never.”

  “You would.”

  “Never, I swear it!”

  It was a rotten trick and I was mad at myself. He had hope now. It was false hope, because he thought that was my real reason and that, since it was a rational reason, he could use reason to change my mind. He deserved to be treated as an equal. It was legitimate to hurt him, but this was not an honest way to do it.

  The words rushed out of him. They were wasted, I couldn’t even listen to them, but I let him go on. He never exactly finished. He ran out of breath, and when he did I held up a hand, and he let me talk.

  “What I just said was true, don’t interrupt, it was true, but that’s not why I’m doing this.” My head was splitting. I put my hand to my forehead and tried to hold it all together. “I want to tell you why. I want to, I want to tell you why, but there are too many reasons. I can’t sort them out. Everything runs together.”

  “Paul—”

  “You said I was crazy. No, no, wait, that didn’t bother me. Don’t you see? I know I’m crazy. But not just now, George. I’ve been crazy all along. My God, George, what do you expect? A guy cracks up and lives by himself on an island and runs around naked, of course he’s crazy! What else would he be? You think he gets cured out there? Do you cure a lion by putting it in a cage?”

  I stared into his eyes. He was beginning to understand. I think he was beginning to understand.

  “You let the lion out of the cage,” I told him. “I held the leash in my own hands and it worked, I stayed on the leash. Sometimes it was close but it worked. But when the job was over the leash went away. Do you see? Do you see?”

  He couldn’t answer me.

  “Why am I going to kill you? George, George, I have a hundred reasons. I have a million reasons. You came to my island. You went in my house. You read my list.” I couldn’t hold my voice down. It was getting louder and louder. “You threw a cigarette in the sand. Cellophane, the cellophane from the pack, you let it blow away. You watched me shoot the soldiers. You wouldn’t do it yourself but you watched me do it.

  “You talked to me! You made me break my rules! You made me talk to you, you made me want to break the rules! You take pills! You smoke! Damn you, you bastard, I already killed you. I drowned you and I could have left you in the water but I didn’t. I made you dead and then I made you alive again, but you’ve been dead all along. That’s why the boat, that’s why it has to be drowning.”

  “Paul, Paul—”

  “You came too close! I made myself stop talking to people and you made me talk to you! I was free, I was alone, and you came close! I was alone and I was myself and you wrecked that, you pushed your way in and now you’re me and I’m you! You’re the me I hate!”

  I stood there listening to that last sentence ringing in the air. It had come out all by itself. It was true, and it was a truth I hadn’
t known about before. I could feel tears behind my eyes. I knew they wouldn’t flow, I knew it, but they were there.

  I went downstairs again. Below. When I came back he said, “Paul, I give up. You don’t want to torture me. End it.”

  “Do it yourself.” He didn’t understand. “Take the black pill,” I said. “You once told me I’d never do it. Neither will you. You’ve got a hollow tooth, I found it when I gagged you. Bite it, take the black pill. It’s easier than drowning.”

  He breathed. In and out, in and out. “That’s what I thought. Part of you keeps thinking I’ll change my mind. That’s what I thought, but I had to find out for sure. Even when you’re under you’ll wonder if I’m going to pull you back up and let you go. You’ll keep on wondering, and then you’ll drown. Again.”

  “Paul—”

  I didn’t listen. I picked him up. I was surprised how easy he was to lift. He flapped like a fish, but he was still easy to lift. I wanted to make it fast now before something went wrong. I threw him overboard.

  The fucking line was too short. He hung head downward, his head just a foot from the water surface, and he was screaming. I grabbed the anchor and heaved it after him, and by the time I looked he was gone.

  At four o’clock I thought I heard a noise, a rumbling noise far out to sea. I went to the rail but I couldn’t see anything. It could very well have been thunder, a storm out over the Atlantic. Or my imagination.

  EIGHTEEN

  I DON’T KNOW how long I stayed on the boat. For a few days I left the engines off and stayed adrift in the Atlantic. The boat became a surrogate for my island, but without the discipline. There was food and water on board. I drank water, but as far as I know I didn’t touch the food. I think I slept a lot, but all the edges of memory are blurred, and I could not say what happened and what was dream.