Catch and Release: 17 Stories by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Anthology
ISBN: 9781492811787
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2013-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

SPEAKING OF LUST

“I dealt, didn’t I?” the soldier said. He looked at his cards, shook his head. “What do you figure I had in mind? I pass.”

The policeman, sitting to the dealer’s left—East to his South—nodded, closed his eyes, opened them, and announced: “One club.”

“Pass,” said the doctor.

The priest said, “You bid a club, partner?” And, without waiting for a response, “One heart.”

The soldier passed. You could tell he was a soldier, as he wore the dress uniform of a brigadier general in the United States Army.

“A spade,” the policeman said. He too was in uniform, down to the revolver on his hip and the handcuffs hanging from his belt.

The doctor, wearing green scrubs, looked as though he might have just emerged from the operating room. He was silent, looking off into the middle distance, until the priest stared at him. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I pass.”

“Two spades,” said the priest, with a tug at his Roman collar.

“Pass,” said the soldier.

“Four spades,” the policeman said, and glanced around the table as if to confirm that the bidding was over. The doctor and priest and soldier dutifully passed in turn. The doctor studied his cards, frowned, and led the nine of hearts. The priest laid down his cards—four to the king in the trump suit, five hearts to the ace-jack—and sat back in his chair. The policeman won the trick with the ace of hearts from dummy and set about drawing trump.

Play was rapid and virtually silent. A fire crackled on the hearth, and the clock on the mantel chimed the quarter hour. Smoke drifted to the high ceiling—from the doctor’s cigar, the priest’s cigarette, the soldier’s stubby briar pipe. Books, many of them bound in full leather, filled the shelves on either side of the fireplace, and one lay open in the lap of the room’s only other occupant, the old man who sat by the fire. He had been sitting there when the four began their card game, the book open, his eyes closed, and he was there still.

“Four spades bid, five spades made,” the policeman said, gathering the final trick. The priest took up his pencil and wrote down the score. The policeman shuffled the cards. The soldier cut them, and the policeman scooped them up and began to deal. He opened the bidding with a diamond, and the doctor doubled. The priest looked at his cards for a long moment.

“Lust,” he said.

The others stared at him. “Is that your bid?” his partner said. “Lust?”

The priest stroked his chin. “Did I actually say that?” he said, bemused. “I meant to pass.”

“Which made you think of making a pass,” the doctor suggested, “and so you spoke as you did.”

“Hardly that,” the priest said. “I was thinking of lust, but I assure you I entertained no lustful thoughts. I was thinking of lust in the abstract, the sin of lust.”

“Lust is a sin, is it?” said the soldier.

“One of the seven cardinal sins,” the priest said.

“Lust is desire, isn’t it?”

“A form of desire,” the priest said.

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