Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2010-06-14T14:00:00+00:00

8

After dinner I packed my suitcase and checked out of the Collingwood. I found a locker at Grand Central and shoved the suitcase into it. The gun, loaded, stayed in my inside jacket pocket. It bulged ridiculously and jiggled up and down when I walked. In the washroom of the train to Scarsdale I switched it from the jacket pocket to the waistband of my trousers. That felt a hell of a lot more professional, but it worried me. I was afraid the thing would go off spontaneously, in which case I wouldn’t be much good to Mona. I tried to think about other more pleasant things.

By the time we hit Scarsdale I was beginning to shake inside. There was too much time to kill and no convenient way to kill it. I wondered whether I had taken the wrong turn. Maybe it would have been better to stay overnight at the Collingwood, then grab an early train up.

That would have given me a night’s sleep. But it left too much to chance. I had to pick up a car, which meant I had to hit Westchester while it was still dark out. And it was safer if I came in on a crowded train, which ruled out 4 A.M. trains. So I had picked the best way, but I still wasn’t feeling too good about it.

I found a movie house a block from the train station, paid my half a buck and went in to be hypnotized. I took a seat in the back and tried to get used to the feeling of the gun in my pants. The metal wasn’t cold any more. It was body temperature, or close enough, and I’d been wearing it so long it felt as though it was a part of me. I stared at the screen and let time pass.

I saw the complete show at least twice. This was not difficult. My mind couldn’t stick with the picture but rambled all over the place. Even the second time through, the movie’s plot sailed far over my head into the stratosphere. The movie was a thoroughly anonymous and relatively painless time-killer. It was after midnight when the last show let out and I followed the crowd out onto the empty streets of Scarsdale.

It started to get easier. The movie had turned me into the machine I had to be. Gears shifted. Buttons were pushed and switches were thrown. I found a bar—bars stay open later than movies, maybe because eyes are weaker than livers. I took a stool in the back all by myself and nursed beers until closing. Nobody talked to me. I was a loner and they were people who drank every night in the same bar. That might have been dangerous, except that they could not possibly remember me. They never noticed me in the first place.

The bar closed at four, which was fine. I went into an all-night grill for a hamburger and a few cups of coffee. It was four-thirty almost to the minute when I left the grill, and that was just about right.

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