Free Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block Page B

You don’t—”
    “Get to the point.”
    She took a sip of her drink and followed it with a deep breath. “The heroin,” she said. “Do you still have it?”
    I nodded.
    “We can use it,” she said.
    “Sell it and run?” I got ready to tell her all over again why that wouldn’t work. But she didn’t give me a chance.
    “Plant it,” she said. “Put it in his car or around the house or something. Then you or I would call the police anonymously and tip them off. They would search and find the heroin and arrest him.”
    A bell rang somewhere but I ignored it. “Just like that?” I said. “Plant it, tip the fuzz, and send hubby off to jail?”
    “Why not?”
    “Because it wouldn’t work.”
    She looked at me.
    “Let’s see just what would happen, Mona. The police would run the tip down and find the heroin. Then they’d ask him how it got there, and he’d say he didn’t have the vaguest idea. Right?”
    She nodded.
    “So they’d take him in and book him,” I went on. “The charge would be possession with intent to sell. In ten minutes a very expensive lawyer would have him out on bail. Ten months later his case would come up. He’d plead not guilty. His lawyer would tell the court that here was a man with no criminal record, no illicit connections, a respectable businessman who had been framed by person or persons unknown. They would find him not guilty.”
    “But the dope would be right there!”
    “So what?” I took a sip of the bourbon. “The jury would acquit him forty-nine chances out of fifty. The fiftieth—and that’s a hell of a long shot—they’d find him guilty and his lawyer would file an appeal. And he’d win on the appeal unless an even longer long shot came in. Even if both long shots broke right—and I’m damned if I ever want to buck odds like that—it would still be two to three years before he saw the inside of a jail for more than five consecutive hours. That’s a long time to wait, honey. And there’s a damn good chance that sometime during those two or three years he would figure out who tipped the cops. At which time he would find a very capable gunman who would shoot a large hole in your pretty head.”
    She shuddered.
    “So we have to kill him.”
    “I didn’t want to.” Her voice was very small.
    “You know another way?”
    “I thought—But you’re right. There isn’t any other way. We have to … kill him.”
    I drank to that. I ordered another round and the bartender brought the drinks, bourbon and water for me, another screwdriver for her. I paid for them.
    “How?”
    I didn’t answer her.
    “How will we—”
    “Hang on,” I said. “I’m trying to think.” I put my elbow on the table and rested my forehead in the palm of my hand. I closed my eyes and tried like hell to think straight. It wasn’t particularly easy. Brassard and money and Mona and heroin were chasing one another around a beanpole with my face. There had to be a way to fit all the pieces together and come out with a plan. But I couldn’t find it.
    “Well?”
    I lit a cigarette, then studied her face through a cloud of smoke. I rested the cigarette in a small glass ashtray and took her hands in mine. All of a sudden whatever plan I might have thought of became quite unimportant. It was like the first time. And the second time, and every time. I guess electric is the right word for it. It was exactly that effect.
    Electric. One time I saw a man pick up a lamp cord that had frayed right through to the bare wire. The current glued him and the cord together. He couldn’t let go. The voltage was a little too low to kill him, but he remained stuck to that wire until some young genius cut the power.
    That’s how it was.
    “Joe—”
    “Let’s get out of here.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “My hotel.”
    “Is that safe?”
    I stared at her.
    “Someone might see us,” she said. “It would mean taking a chance. And we can’t afford to take chances.”
    She knew how much I