Free Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block

Hillman’s residence?”
    “No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
    He hung up on me and I sat there in the hot booth hearing his voice again in my mind. It was a cultured voice. He spaced his words and talked pleasantly. I left the booth and walked around the block. They were home. I took out a cigarette and smoked it in a hurry. I had to get in touch with her and I wasn’t sure how to do it. I wondered if his phone was tapped. Most likely it was. I figured he probably tapped it himself. It wouldn’t be the first time.
    I called again from the same booth and this time she answered it. When she said hello I saw her in my mind and felt her in my arms. I started to shake.
    “Is Jerry Hillman there?”
    “No,” she said. “You must have the wrong number.”
    She recognized my voice. I could tell.
    “Isn’t this AL 5-2504?”
    “No,” she said.
    I sat in the phone booth for over fifteen minutes. I held the phone to my ear with one hand to make it look good while I held the hook down with the other. Then the phone rang and I lifted the hook and said hello.
    “Joe,” she said. “Hello, Joe.”
    “How has it been?”
    “All right,” she said. “I suppose. I missed you, Joe.”
    “I’ve been going crazy waiting for you. I was afraid you wouldn’t catch the number. Where are you calling from?”
    “A drugstore,” she said. “I … I was ready for your call. Keith answered the first time and said it was a wrong number. But I knew it was you.”
    I took a breath. “I have to see you,” I said. “Can you get into Manhattan tomorrow?”
    “I think so. He’s going to the office. I’ll ride in with him and tell him I have to do some shopping. I can get in sometime between nine and ten. Is that all right?”
    “Perfect.”
    “Where are you staying?”
    “A hotel,” I said. “The Collingwood. Just east of Herald Square.”
    “Should I meet you there?”
    I thought about it for a minute. “Better not,” I said. “There’s an Automat on Thirty-fourth between Sixth and Seventh. Meet me there.”
    “Thirty-fourth between Sixth and Seventh. I’ll be there. I love you, Joe.”
    I told her I loved her. I told her how much I wanted her.
    “I have to get off now,” she said. “I came down to the drugstore to buy Tampax. He’ll wonder what’s taking me so long.”
    “Tampax?”
    I must have sounded disappointed because she giggled at me with a very sexy giggle. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It was two birds with one stone, Joe. It was an excuse to go to the drugstore and an excuse to keep Keith away from me tonight. I don’t want him touching me tonight, Joe. Not when you’re this close to me. I couldn’t stand it.”
    She hung up and I stood there with a receiver in my hand. I walked out of there and tried not to shake visibly. I stopped at a little bar on the way home and tossed down a double shot of bourbon, then sipped the beer chaser very slowly.
    The bartender was a big man with a wide forehead. He was listening to hillbilly music on a portable radio that blared away on top of the back bar. The song was something about a real grade-A bitch who was causing the singer untold heartache. The bartender polished glasses in time to the not-very-subtle rhythms of the song. Two or three guys were doing solo drinking. A man and a woman were drinking and playing footsie in a back booth.
    How long since I’d seen her? Less than a week. Five or six days. But you can forget a lot in that amount of time. I remembered what she looked like and what she sounded like and how it felt to hold onto her. But I had forgotten, in part, just how much I needed her.
    The sound of her voice had brought all of it back to me. Brought it back forcibly.
    I wondered how I would kill him. I would have to be the killer, of course. And I would have to do it alone. She’d be the prime suspect, the first one the cops would get to, and I’d have to make sure she had a perfect alibi.
    I could kill him at home or at his office. At