A Ticket to the Boneyard by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online

ready for a date.”
    “Maybe you are.”
    “Yeah, a fucking date with destiny. Are you all right?”
    “I’m a little slow off the mark,” I admitted. “Maybe you could get some coffee going.”
    “Sure.”
    I got dressed, putting on the clothes I’d taken off two hours ago, the clothes I’d been wearing for the better part of a week. I generally wore a suit on the job in those days—I still do, more often than not—and I put it on. I had trouble getting my tie tied right and made two attempts before the inanity of it struck me and I pulled the tie out from under my collar and tossed it on a chair.
    I had the .38 the city issued me in a shoulder holster. I drew it once or twice, then took off the jacket and the holster and wedged the gun under my belt, the butt nestled in the small of my back.
    The bourbon bottle was on the table next to the bed. It was a fifth, and there was maybe half a pint left in it. I uncapped it and took a short pull straight from the bottle. Just a quick one, to get the old heart started.
    I called to Elaine but she didn’t answer. I put my suit jacket back on and practiced drawing the gun. The movement felt awkward, which can happen with any movement when you rehearse it to death. I moved the gun to the left side of my abdomen and practiced a crosshanded draw, but I liked that even less, and I thought about trying the shoulder holster again.
    Maybe I wouldn’t have to draw it. Maybe I could just keep the thing in my hand. We hadn’t choreographed this show yet, hadn’t decided where I was going to be when she let him in. I thought the simplest thing might be if I waited behind the door when she opened it, then stepped out with a drawn gun once he was inside. But maybe it made more sense to give him a little time alone with her first, while I waited in the kitchen or the bedroom for the right moment. There looked to be a psychological advantage in that, but there was more room in the script for something to go wrong. Her anxiety might tip him off, say, or he might just decide to do something weird. Crazy people, after all, are apt to do crazy things. It’s their trademark.
    I called her name again but evidently she had the water running and didn’t hear me. I put the gun under my belt again, then drew it out and walked down the short hallway to the living room carrying it in my hand. I wanted coffee, if it was ready, and I wanted to work out how we were going to play the scene.
    I walked into the living room and turned toward the kitchen and stopped in my tracks, because he was standing there with his back to the window and Elaine at his side and a little in front of him. He had one hand on her arm, just above the elbow, and with the other he was gripping her wrist.
    He said, “Put the gun down. Now, right this minute, or I’ll break her arm.”
    The gun wasn’t pointed at him, and I wasn’t holding it right, I didn’t have my finger anywhere near the trigger. I was holding it in my hand the way you’d hold a plate of hors d’oeuvres.
    I put the gun down.
     
     
    She had described him well, the long angular body, spare of flesh but tight as a coiled spring, the narrow face, the eccentric haircut. Someone had used a clippers on everything outside the perimeter of the soup bowl, and his hair perched on his head like a skullcap. His nose was long, and fleshy at the tip, and his lips were quite full. His forehead sloped back, and beneath it his eyes were set deep under a prominent ridge of brow. The eyes were a sort of muddy brown, and I couldn’t read anything in them.
    His features and his hairstyle combined to give him a faintly medieval look, like an evil friar, but his clothes didn’t fit the part. He wore an olive corduroy sport jacket with leather piping at the cuffs and lapels and tooled leather patches on the elbows. His pants were khaki, with a knife-edge crease, and he was wearing lizard boots with one-inch heels and silver caps on their pointed toes. His shirt was