The Collected Mystery Stories, page 65
But even if there were a point, Elliott had nothing to report. A man had asked for money and he’d given it to him. They had a right to ask for money, some judge had ruled. They were exercising their First Amendment right of free speech. Never mind that there had been an unvoiced threat, that Elliott had paid the money out of intimidation. Never mind that it damn well felt like a mugging.
First Amendment rights. Maybe he ought to exercise his own rights under the Second Amendment—the right to bear arms.
That same evening, he took the gun from the drawer and tried it in various pockets—unloaded now. He tried tucking it into his belt, first in front, then behind, in the small of his back. He practiced reaching for it, drawing it. He felt foolish, and it was uncomfortable walking around with the gun in his belt like that.
It was comfortable in his right-hand jacket pocket, but the weight of it spoiled the line of the jacket. The pants pocket on the same side was better. He had reached into that pocket to produce the handful of change that had mollified the panhandler. Suppose he had come out with a gun instead?
“Thank you kindly. Have a nice day.”
Later, after he’d eaten, he went to the video store on the next block to rent a movie for the evening. He was out the door before he realized he still had the gun in his pocket. It was still unloaded, the six shells lying where he had spilled them on his bed. He had reached for the keys to lock up and there was the gun.
He got the keys, locked up, and went out with the gun in his pocket.
The sensation of being on the street with a gun in his pocket was an interesting one. He felt as though he were keeping a secret from everyone he met, and that the secret empowered him. He spent longer than usual in the video store. Two fantasies came and went. In one, he held up the clerk, brandishing his empty gun and walking out with all the money in the register. In the other, someone else attempted to rob the place and Elliott drew his weapon and foiled the holdup.
Back home, he watched the movie, but his mind insisted on replaying the second fantasy. In one version, the holdup man spun toward him, gun in hand, and Elliott had to face him with an unloaded revolver.
When the movie ended, he reloaded the gun and put it back in the drawer.
The following evening, he carried the gun, loaded this time. The night after that was a Friday, and when he got home from the office, he put the gun in his pocket almost without thinking about it. He went out for a bite of dinner, then played cards at a friend’s apartment a dozen blocks away. They played, as always, for low stakes, but Elliott was the big winner. Another player joked that he had better take a cab home.
“No need,” he said. “I’m armed and dangerous.”
He walked home, and on the way, he stopped at a bar and had a couple of beers. Some people at a table near where he stood were talking about a recent outrage, a young advertising executive in Greenwich Village shot dead while using a pay phone around the corner from his apartment. “I’ll tell you something,” one of the party said. “I’m about ready to start carrying a gun.”
“You can’t, legally,” someone said.
“Screw legally.”
“So a guy tries something and you shoot him and you’re the one winds up in trouble.”
“I’ll tell you something,” the man said. “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
He carried the gun the whole weekend. It never left his pocket. He was at home much of the time, watching a ball game on television, catching up with his bookkeeping, but he left the house several times each day and always had the gun on his person.
He never drew it, but sometimes he would put his hand in his pocket and let his fingers curl around the butt of it. He found its presence increasingly reassuring. If anything happened, he was ready.
And he didn’t have to worry about an accidental discharge. The chamber under the hammer was unloaded. He had worked all that out. If he dropped the gun, it wouldn’t go off. But if he cocked it and worked the trigger, it would fire.
When he took his hand from his pocket and held it to his face, he could smell the odor of the gun on his fingers. He liked that.
By Monday morning, he had grown used to the gun. It seemed perfectly natural to carry it to the office.
On the way home, not that night but the following night, the same aggressive panhandler accosted him. His routine had not changed. “Come on,” he said. “Gimme a dollar.”
Elliott’s hand was in his pocket, his fingers touching the cold metal.
“Not tonight,” he said.
Maybe something showed in his eyes.
“Hey, that’s cool,” the panhandler said. “You have a good day just the same.” And stepped out of his path.
*
A week or so after that, he was riding the subway, coming home late after dinner with married friends in Forest Hills. He had a paperback with him, but he couldn’t concentrate on it, and he realized that the two young men across the car from him were looking him over, sizing him up. They were wearing untied basketball sneakers and warm-up jackets, and looked street smart and dangerous. He was wearing the suit he’d worn to the office and had a briefcase beside him; he looked prosperous and vulnerable.
The car was almost empty. There was a derelict sleeping a few yards away, a woman with a small child all the way down at the other end. One of the pair nudged the other, then turned his eyes toward Elliott again.
Elliott took the gun out of his pocket. He held it on his lap and let them see it, then put it back in his pocket.
The two of them got off at the next station, leaving Elliott to ride home alone.
When he got home, he took the gun from his pocket and set it on the nightstand. (He no longer bothered tucking it in the drawer.) He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror.
“Fucking thing saved my life,” he said.
One night, he took a woman friend to dinner. Afterward, they went back to her place and wound up in bed. At one point, she got up to use the bathroom, and while she was up, she hung up her own clothing and went to put his pants on a hanger.
“These weigh a ton,” she said. “What have you got in here?”
“See for yourself,” he said. “But be careful.”
“My God. Is it loaded?”
“They’re not much good if they’re not.”
“My God.”
He told her how he’d bought it in Florida, how it had now become second nature for him to carry it. “I’d feel naked without it,” he said.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get into trouble?”
“I look at it this way,” he told her. “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
One night, two men cut across the avenue toward him while he was walking home from his Friday card game. Without hesitation, he drew the gun.
“Whoa!” the nearer of the two sang out. “Hey, it’s cool, man. Thought you was somebody else, is all.”
They veered off, gave him a wide berth.
Thought I was somebody else, he thought. Thought I was a victim, is what you thought.
There were stores around the city that sold police equipment. Books to study for the sergeant’s exam. Copies of the latest revised penal code. A T-shirt that read N.Y.P.D. HOMICIDE SQUAD, OUR DAY BEGINS WHEN YOUR DAY ENDS.
He stopped in and didn’t buy anything, then returned for a kit to clean his gun. He hadn’t fired it yet, except in Florida, but it seemed as though he ought to clean it from time to time anyway. He took the kit home and unloaded the gun and cleaned it, working an oiled patch of cloth through the short barrel. When he was finished, he put everything away and reloaded the gun.
He liked the way it smelled, freshly cleaned with gun oil.
A week later, he returned and bought a bulletproof vest. They had two types, one significantly more expensive than the other. Both were made of Kevlar, whatever that was.
“Your more expensive one provides you with a little more protection,” the proprietor explained. “Neither one’s gonna stop a shot from an assault rifle. The real high-powered rounds; concrete don’t stop ’em. This here, though, it provides the most protection available, plus it provides protection against a knife thrust. Neither one’s a sure thing to stop a knife, but this here’s reinforced.”
He bought the better vest.
One night, lonely and sad, he unloaded the gun and put the barrel to his temple. His finger was inside the trigger guard, curled around the trigger.
You weren’t supposed to dry-fire the gun. It was bad for the firing pin to squeeze off a shot when there was no cartridge in the chamber.
Quit fooling around, he told himself.
He cocked the gun, then took it away from his temple. He uncocked it, put the barrel in his mouth. That was how cops did it when they couldn’t take it anymore. Eating your gun, they called it.
He didn’t like the taste, the metal, the gun oil. Liked the smell but not the taste.
He loaded the gun and quit fooling around.
A little later, he went out. It was late, but he didn’t feel like sitting around the apartment, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He wore the Kevlar vest—he wore it all the time lately—and, of course, he had the gun in his pocket.
He walked around, with no destination in mind. He stopped for a beer but drank only a few sips of it, then headed out to the street again. The moon came into view, and he wasn’t surprised to note that it was full.
He had his hand in his pocket, touching the gun. When he breathed deeply, he could feel the vest drawn tight around his chest. He liked the sensation.
When he reached the park, he hesitated. Years ago, back when the city was safe, you knew not to walk in the park at night. It was dangerous even then. It could hardly be otherwise now, when every neighborhood was a jungle.
So? If anything happened, if anybody tried anything, he was ready.
CLEVELAND IN
MY DREAMS
“So,” Loebner said. “You continue to have the dream.”
“Every night.”
“And it is always without variation yet? Perhaps you will tell me the dream again.”
“Oh, God,” said Hackett. “It’s the same dream, all right? I get a phone call, I have to go to Cleveland, I drive there, I drive back. End of dream. What’s the point of going through it every time we have a session? Unless you just can’t remember the dream from one week to the next.”
“That is interesting,” Loebner said. “Why do you suppose I would forget your dream?”
Hackett groaned. You couldn’t beat the bastards. If you landed a telling shot, they simply asked you what you meant by it. It was probably the first thing they taught them in shrink school, and possibly the only thing.
“Of course I remember your dream,” Loebner went on smoothly. “But what is important is not my recollection of it but what it means to you, and if you recount it once more, in the fullest detail, perhaps you will find something new in it.”
What was to be found in it? It was the ultimate boring dream, and it had been boring months ago when he dreamed it the first time. Nightly repetition had done nothing to enliven it. Still, it might give him the illusion that he was getting something out of the session. If he just sprawled on the couch for what was left of his fifty minutes, he ran the risk of falling asleep.
Perchance to dream.
“It’s always the same dream,” he said, “and it always starts the same way. I’m in bed and the phone rings. I answer it. A voice tells me I have to go to Cleveland right away.”
“You recognize this voice?”
“I recognize it from other dreams. It’s always the same voice. But it’s not the voice of anyone I know, if that’s what you mean.”
“Interesting,” Loebner said.
To you perhaps, thought Hackett. “I get up,” he said. “I throw on some clothes. I don’t bother to shave, I’m in too much of a hurry. It’s very urgent that I go to Cleveland right away. I go down to the garage and unlock my car, and there’s a briefcase on the front passenger seat. I have to deliver it to somebody in Cleveland.
“I get in the car and start driving. I take I-71 all the way. That’s the best route, but even so it’s just about two hundred fifty miles door to door. I push it a little and there’s no traffic to speak of at that hour, but it’s still close to four hours to get there.”
“The voice on the phone has given you an address?”
“No, I just somehow know where I’m supposed to take the briefcase. Hell, I ought to know, I’ve been there every night for months. Maybe the first time I was given an address, it’s hard to remember, but by now I know the route and I know the destination. I park in the driveway, I ring the bell, the door opens, a woman accepts the briefcase and thanks me—”
“A woman takes the briefcase from you?” Loebner said.
“Yes.”
“What does this woman look like?”
“That’s sort of vague. She just reaches out and takes the briefcase and thanks me. I’m not positive it’s the same woman each time.”
“But it is always a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe her husband’s out, maybe he works nights.”
“She is married, this woman?”
“I don’t know,” said Hackett. “I don’t know anything about her. She opens the door, she takes the briefcase, she thanks me, and I get back in my car.”
“You never enter the house? She does not offer you a cup of coffee?”
“I’m in too much of a hurry,” Hackett said. “I have to get home. I get in the car, I backed out of the driveway, and I’m gone. It’s another two hundred fifty miles to get home, and I’m dog-tired. I’ve already been driving four hours, but I push it, and I get home and go to bed.”
“And then?”
“And then I barely get to sleep when the alarm rings and it’s time to get up. I never get a decent night’s sleep. I’m exhausted all the time, and my work’s falling off and I’m losing weight, and sometimes I’m just about hallucinating at my desk, and I can’t stand it, I just can’t stand it.”
“Yes,” Loebner said. “Well, I see our hour is up.”
“Now let us talk about this briefcase,” Loebner said at their next meeting. “Have you ever tried to open it?”
“It’s locked.”
“Ah. And you do not have the key?”
“It has one of those three-number combination locks.”
“And you do not know the combination?”
“Of course not. Anyway, I’m not supposed to open the briefcase. I’m just supposed to deliver it.”
“What do you suppose is in the briefcase?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what do you suppose might be in it?”
“Beats me.”
“State secrets, perhaps? Drugs? Cash?”
“For all I know it’s dirty laundry,” Hackett said. “I just have to deliver it to Cleveland.”
“You always follow the same route?” Loebner said at their next session.
“Naturally,” Hackett said. “There’s really only one way to get to Cleveland. You take I-71 all the way.”
“You are never tempted to vary the route?”
“I did once,” Hackett remembered.
“Oh?”
“I took I-75 to Dayton, I-70 east to Columbus, and then I picked up I-71 and rode it the rest of the way. I wanted to do something different, but it was the same boring ride on the same boring kind of road, and what did I accomplish? It’s thirty-five miles longer that way, so all I really did was add half an hour to the trip, and my head barely hit the pillow before it was time to get up for work.”
“I see.”
“So that was the end of that experiment,” Hackett said. “Believe me, it’s simpler if I just stick with I-71. I could drive that highway in my sleep.”
Loebner was dead.
The call, from the psychiatrist’s receptionist, shocked Hackett. For months he’d been seeing Loebner once a week, recounting his dream, waiting for some breakthrough that would relieve him of it. While he had just about given up anticipating that breakthrough, neither had he anticipated that Loebner would take himself abruptly out of the game.
He had to call back to ask how Loebner had died. “Oh, it was a heart attack,” the woman told him. “He just passed away in his sleep. He went to sleep and never woke up.”
Later, Hackett found himself entertaining a fantasy. Loebner, sleeping the big sleep, would take over the chore of dreaming Hackett’s dream. The little psychiatrist could rise every night to convey the dreaded briefcase to Cleveland while Hackett slept dreamlessly.
It was such a seductive notion that he went to bed expecting it to happen. No sooner had he dozed off, though, than he was in the dream again, with the phone ringing and the voice at the other end telling him what he had to do.
“I wasn’t going to continue with another psychiatrist,” Hackett explained, “because I don’t really think I was getting anywhere with Dr. Loebner. But I’m not getting anywhere on my own, either. Every night I dream this goddamned dream and it’s ruining my health. I’m here because I don’t know what else to do.”
“Figures,” said the new psychiatrist, whose name was Krull. “That’s the only reason anybody goes to a shrink.”
“I suppose you want to hear the dream.”
“Not particularly,” said Krull.
“You don’t?”
“In my experience,” Krull said, “there’s nothing duller than somebody else’s dream. But it’s probably a good place to get started, so let’s hear it.”
While Hackett recounted the dream, sitting upright in a chair instead of lying on a couch, Krull fidgeted. This new shrink was a man about Hackett’s age, and he was dressed casually in khakis and a polo shirt with a reptile on the pocket. He was clean-shaven and had a crew cut. Loebner had looked the way a psychiatrist was supposed to look.
