Hard Case Crime - 01 - Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Unbekannt
Published: 2011-10-07T03:37:54+00:00

I was sitting on the edge of the bed again. The gun and the bullets nested snugly in one of my drawers in between several shirts. I was thinking again. It was getting to be a habit

If we faked an accident, we were dead. If we faked a suicide, we were dead.

We had to fake a murder.

Respectable Westchester burghers don't get killed often. When they do, if they are old men with young wives, it is not hard to figure out why they were killed or by whom.

But crooks are different. Crooks get killed all the time, for any number of reasons. And crooks get killed professionally. They get killed by gunmen from out of town, flown in for the job and flown out when the job is over. Gangland hits don't get solved. Gangland hits are perfect crimes. The cops don't kill themselves trying to find the killer. It would be a waste of their time.

In a sense, L. Keith Brassard was a respectable burgher. In another sense, he was a crook.

I had to kill the crook. I had to make it look like a mob hit, professionally planned and professionally carried out. I had an untraceable gun, and that was the first step.

There were other steps. But when they were done, it would be simple. It wouldn't make page three in the Daily News. It would be on the front page, and it would say that a Westchester gangster with a solid-gold front had been bumped by the boys. The world would leave the widow alone. They'd feel sorry for her.

They'd leave her for me.

I opened my drawer, took another look at the gun, and smiled. I closed the drawer, left the hotel, grabbed lunch. Around three that afternoon I decided to call Brassard's office and see if he was in. I looked through my wallet for his number, trying to remember whether or not I had jotted it down. I hadn't, but I had four other numbers which I stared at for several minutes. Then I remembered copying them from a slip of paper in Brassard's office.

I called them in turn from a pay phone.

The first two didn't answer. The third was a bar on the East Side in the sixties, the fourth a Greek night club in the Chelsea district. I rang off on both of them.

I guessed that the numbers were drops, contacts for Brassard's heroin business. This didn't do much for me one way or the other. It made it a little more certain Brassard was in the business, but I already knew that. I started to tear up the slip of paper, then changed my mind and returned it to my wallet.

A phone book gave me his number. I dialed WOrth 4-6363 and let it ring itself hoarse, Then I hung up and went back to my room. I used a knife blade on the lock of the attaché case and it popped open in less than a minute.

The package was still there.

I looked at it, shook a little, put it back in the case and locked it up again.

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