The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

shoes.
    At first I was going to slip out the door and run. But how far would I get? I'd have a two-minute jump on him at the most, and I'd be running all over Ireland in my socks. No, it wouldn't do. I had to nail him and I had to get my shoes back.
    I slipped out of the stall, lowered my head and charged.
    He barely moved at all. At the last moment he turned lazily around just in time to see me hurtling through the air at him. His mouth fell open, and he started to take a small step backward, and I sailed into him, my head ramming him in the pit of his soft stomach, and down we went.
    I was ready for a war. I had visions of us bouncing one another off plumbing fixtures, hurling karate chops at one another, fighting furiously until one of us managed to turn the tide. But this was not to be. I had never realized just how great an advantage surprise can provide. Mustafa collapsed like a blown tire. We fell in a heap, and I landed on top, and he did nothing but gape at me.
    I was drunk with power. I clapped a hand over his foul mouth and leaned all my weight upon his chest and stomach. "My mother, who died some years ago, never had anything to do with dogs or camels," I said in much better Turkish than his own. "You are a foul pig to suggest such a thing." And I gave his head a tentative bang on the tile floor.
    "You are also doomed," I said. "I'm a secret agent working for the establishment of a free and independent Kurdistan. I've poisoned the entire water supply of Istanbul. Within a month everyone in Turkey will perish of cholera."
    His eyes rolled in his head.
    "Sleep well," I said, and I slammed his head against the floor again, but infinitely harder this time. His eyes went glassy, and their lids flopped shut, and for a moment I was afraid that I had actually gone and killed him. I checked his pulse. He was still alive.
    I dragged him back into the stall where I'd left my shoes and jacket and I stripped off all his clothes and used strips of his shirt to tie him up and gag him. I tied his hands together behind his back and lashed his feet together and propped him up on the toilet seat. He wasn't stirring at all, and I guessed that he would stay out for quite some time. I locked the door so that no one would disturb him in the meanwhile, put on my own shoes and jacket, made a little bundle of his remaining clothing, and crawled into the adjoining compartment with it. Then I walked out of the men's room.
    I took my passport and Mustafa's passport from his pants and put them both in my pocket. I stuffed his clothes in a trash can and poked them down to the bottom. I kept expecting him to emerge from the men's room and chase after me, but he stayed where he was, and I hurried through a pair of big glass doors to the outside.
    No air was ever fresher. It had begun to rain, a fine misty rain, and the air had a sharp chill. My summer suit, ideal for Istanbul, was not the right thing at all for Ireland. I didn't care. I was out of Turkey and out of Mustafa's hands and free, and I could barely believe it.
    There were taxis, but I didn't dare take one. Someone might remember me. I couldn't leave a trail. I asked an Aer Lingus stewardess where I could get a bus to Limerick. She pointed at an oldish double-decker bus, and I headed toward it.
    "You've forgotten your luggage," she called after me.
    "I'm leaving it at the airport."
    I got onto the bus and went up to the top. We waited five very long minutes. Then the bus pulled out onto a narrow road and headed for Limerick. After a few moments a conductor came upstairs and collected the fare from everyone. It was five shillings. He came to me and looked at my suit and asked for seventy cents. I gave him a dollar bill, and he took a long limp ticket, punched it in several places, gave it to me, and handed me a two-shilling piece and two large copper pennies in change.
    We drove a mile. Then we slowed to a stop, and I saw a uniformed man wearing a pistol emerge from a glassed-in shack and