Sweet Little Hands (A Story From the Dark Side)

  Contents

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Sweet Little Hands

  About The Author

  A Word About Ehrengraf

  Sweet Little Hands

  Lawrence Block

  copyright 2001, © Lawrence Block

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales are entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by electronic, mechanical or other means, is forbidden without written permission of the author.

  A Note From The Author

  “Sweet Little Hands” was written in 2000 for one of the Flesh & Blood anthologies edited by Jeff Gelb and Max Allan Collins. I included it in the omnibus collection of my own short fiction, Enough Rope, so if you already own that book, or want to acquire it in eBook form, you may not need to snap up this present offering.

  It’s an edgy story, erotic and violent and perverse. I like the way it turned out, and hope you enjoy it.

  A Story From The Dark Side, by Lawrence Block

  Lying there, it seemed to him that he could hear his own cries echoing off the room’s blank walls. His heart was pounding, his skin glossy with sweat. Should he be afraid of this? Could a person actually die at climax?

  When he spoke, he did so as if resuming a conversation. “I wonder how often it happens,” he said.

  “How often what happens?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d been thinking, and I guess I assumed you could read my mind. And sometimes I think you can.”

  For answer, she laid a hand on his thigh. Sweet little hand, he thought.

  “My heart’s back to normal now,” he said, “or close enough to it. But I was wondering how often men die like that. If a fellow had a weak heart...”

  “My husband’s heart is strong.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of your husband.”

  “I was,” she said. “From the moment we got in bed. Longer than that, actually. Since we got here. Since I got up this morning, knowing I was going to be with you this afternoon.”

  “You’ve been thinking of him.”

  “And of what you’re going to do.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “His heart is strong,” she said. “In a physical sense, that is. In another sense, he has no heart.”

  “Do we have to talk about him?”

  She rolled onto her side, let her hand find the middle of his chest, more or less over his heart. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we have to talk about him. Do you know what it does to me? Knowing what you’re going to do to him?”

  “Tell me.”

  “It thrills me,” she said. “God, Jimmy, it gets me so hot I’m melting. I couldn’t wait to see you, and then I couldn’t wait to be in bed with you. We’ve always been hot for each other and it’s always been good between us, but all of a sudden it’s at a whole new level. You felt it, didn’t you? Just now?”

  “You get me so hot, Rita.”

  Her bunched fingers stroked his chest, moving in a little circle. “If I could get him hot,” she said, “so hot his heart would burst, I’d do it.”

  “You hate him that much.”

  “He’s ruining my life, Jimmy. He’s draining me, he’s sucking the life out of me. You know what he’s done.”

  “And you can’t just leave him.”

  “He told me what I’d get if I ever tried. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “You really think...”

  “‘Acid in your face, Rita. Not in the eyes, because I’ll want you to be able to see what you look like. Acid all over your tits, too, and between your legs, so nobody will ever want you, not even with a bag over your head.’”

  “What a bastard.”

  “George is worse than that. He’s a monster.”

  “I mean, to say a thing like that.”

  “And it’s not just talk, either. He’d do it. He’d enjoy doing it.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “He deserves to die.”

  “Tonight, Jimmy.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Baby, I can’t wait for it to be over. And we have to do it before he finds out about you and me. I think he’s starting to suspect something, and if he ever finds out for sure...”

  “That wouldn’t be good.”

  “It would be the end of everything. Acid for me, and God knows what for you. We can’t afford to wait.”

  “I know.”

  “He’ll be home tonight. I’ll make sure he drinks a lot of wine with dinner. There’s a baseball game on television and he’ll want to watch it. He always watches, and he never stays awake past the third inning. He settles into his La-Z-Boy and puts his feet up, and he’s out in no time at all.”

  Her hand moved idly as she went over the plan, working its way down his chest, down over his stomach, stroking, petting, eliciting a response.

  “He’ll be in the den,” she was saying. “You remember where that is. On the first floor, the second window on the right hand side. He’ll have the alarm set, but I’ll fix it so it’s limited to the doors. There’s a way to do that, in case you want to have a window open for ventilation. And I’ll have the window in the den open a couple of inches. Even if there’s a draft and he gets up and closes it, it won’t be locked. You’ll be able to open it without setting off the alarm. Jimmy? Is something the matter?”

  He took hold of her wrist. “Just that you’re setting off my alarm,” he said.

  “Don’t you like what I’m doing?”

  “I love it, but—”

  “You’ll come in through the window,” she went on. “He’ll be asleep in his chair. There’s all this crap on the walls, swords and daggers, a ceremonial war club from some South Sea Island tribe. Stab him with a dagger or beat his head in with the club.”

  “It’ll look spur-of-the-moment,” he said. “Burglar breaks in, panics when the guy wakes up, then grabs whatever’s closest and—Christ!”

  “I just grabbed whatever was closest,” she said innocently. “Jimmy, I can’t help it. It gets me all excited thinking about it.” Her lips brushed him. “We may have to stay away from each other for a while,” she said, “while I do the Grieving Widow number.” Her breath was warm on his flesh. “So I’ve got an idea, Jimmy. Suppose we have our victory celebration now?”

  “A splendid dinner,” George said, pushing back from the table. He was a large and physically imposing man, twenty years her senior. “But you didn’t eat much, my dear.”

  “No appetite,” she said.

  “For food.”

  “Well...”

  “I guess it’s almost time,” he said, “for me to adjourn to the library for brandy and cigars. Except it’s a den, not a library, and brandy gives me heartburn, and I don’t smoke cigars. But you know what I mean.”

  “Time for you to watch the ballgame. Who’s playing?”

  “The Cubs and the Astros.”

  “And is it an important game?”

  “There’s no such thing as an important game,” he said. “Grown men trying to hit a ball with a stick. How important could that possibly be?”

  “But you’ll watch it.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Another cup of coffee first?”

  “Another cup? Hmmm. Well, it is exceptionally good coffee. And I guess there’s time.

  This is crazy, he thought.

  There wa
s her house, and there, in the second window on the right-hand side, was the flickering glow of a television screen. The garage door was closed, and there were no cars parked in the driveway, or at the curb. Nobody walking around on the street.

  Crazy...

  He drove halfway around the block, found a parking place out of the reach of the streetlights. He left the car unlocked and circled the block on foot, his heartbeat quickening as he neared her house.

  Anyone who saw him would see a man of medium height and build dressed in dark clothes. And he’d burn the clothes when this was over. He’d assume there were bloodstains, or some other sort of physical evidence, and he’d leave nothing to chance.

  Impossible to believe he was actually going to do this. Going to kill a man, a man he’d never met. And would never meet, because with any luck at all he’d strike the fatal blow while the man slept.

  Not a man, not really. A monster. Acid on that beautiful face, those perfect breasts...

  A monster.

  Was it murder when Beowulf slew Grendel? When St. George struck down the dragon? That was heroism, not homicide. It was what you had to do if you wanted to win the heart of the fair maiden.

  Or he could go home right now and forget about her. There were plenty of women out there, and most of them never asked you to kill anybody. How hard would it be to find somebody else?

  Not like her, though. Never anybody like her. Never had been, and he somehow knew there never would be.

  Never an afternoon like the one he’d just spent. Never. drained him, emptied him out—and, even so, just remembering it was getting him stirred up again.

  He was at the window now. It was open a few inches, as she’d said it would be, and through it he could hear the voices of the baseball announcers, the crack of the bat, the subdued roar of the crowd. The mindless prattle of the commercial. “Bud.” “Wei.” “Ser.”

  He strained to hear more. Movement from the man. The husband.

  The monster.

  He got up on his toes, hooked his hands under the bottom edge of the window. He was standing in a bed of shrubbery, and it struck him that he was leaving footprints. have to get rid of the shoes, too, he thought, along with the rest of his clothes.

  Unless he gave it up and went home right now.

  But how much better he’d feel if he went home in triumph, with the monster slain and the maiden won!

  Besides, he realized, he wanted to do it. Wanted to thrust with the dagger, to flail away with the war club. God help him, he couldn’t wait.

  He took a full breath and eased the window all the way open.

  She hadn’t been able to eat. Now, upstairs in the bedroom she shared with her husband, she found herself unable to sit still. Her pulse was rapid, her mouth dry, her palms damp.

  Any minute now...

  She stripped to her skin, let her clothes lay where they fell. She sat up in bed and gazed down at her naked body, as if with a lover’s eyes. And touched herself, as if with a lover’s hands.

  Remembering:

  Crouching over him, she’d reached to probe with a finger, felt him stiffen and resist. Probed again, not to be denied, and felt him open up reluctantly to her. Unwilling to respond, unable to keep from responding...

  Her own excitement was mounting now. He was at the window now, he had to be, she was sure of it. But she was stuck up here, unable to know what was happening downstairs in the den. His den, George’s den, and her lover was at the window, must be at the window, had to be at the window...

  She looked down at her hands, then closed her eyes, remembering:

  “God, Rita, what you do to me.”

  “I had two fingers in you.”

  “God.”

  “First one and then two.”

  “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “You liked it.”

  “It was...interesting.”

  “You didn’t want to like it, but you liked it.”

  “Well, the novelty.”

  “Not just the novelty. You liked it.”

  “Well.”

  “Next time I’ll use my whole hand.”

  “Rita, for God’s sake—”

  She made a fist, opened it and closed it, opened it and closed it, watching the expression on his face.

  “You’ll like it,” she said.

  And he was down there now. She knew he was, she could tell, she could feel him there. She cupped her breasts, felt their weight, then let her hands slide lower. Let her fingers move, let her fantasies build, let her excitement mount...

  She was close, very close. Hovering there, not wanting to go any further, wanting to stay there, right on the brink—

  A shot rang out.

  God!

  She stayed there, stayed right there, right on the edge, right on the fucking edge, trembling, trembling, hot and wet and trembling, and waiting, God, waiting, Christ, waiting—

  Another shot. No louder than the first, how could it be louder than the first, but God, it seemed louder—

  She cried out with joy and fell back onto the bed.

  She was wearing a blue satin robe. Her feet were bare. She stepped carefully into the den and gasped at the sight of the man lying there. He was dressed all in black and lay sprawled on his back like a rag doll discarded by a spoiled child. One hand was at his side, the fingers splayed. The other still gripped the hilt of a foot-long dagger.

  She drew back involuntarily, then forced herself to take a closer look. “Yes,” she said, turning from the corpse. “Yes, that’s the man.”

  “James Beckwith,” the detective said.

  “Is that his name?”

  “According to the ID in his wallet.”

  “I never knew his name,” she said. “When I reported him to the police, I didn’t have a name to give them. Because I never knew it.”

  “You gave them a good description,” the detective said. “When I called in just now, they read it back to me, and it was all right on the money., Height, weight, age, hair color, everything down to the mole on his right cheek. That was what, four days ago that you reported him?”

  She nodded. ‘Can we go in the other room now? Seeing him there like that...”

  In the living room the detective said, “You did the right thing, filing the report. He was stalking you and you reported it. It’s a shame we couldn’t have done anything that might have prevented this, but—”

  “You didn’t have a name,” her husband said. “You couldn’t have him picked up, not if you didn’t know who he was.”

  “No, but we could have staked out your house, and we would have if we’d had reason to believe he was planning anything like this. But we get so many complaints of this nature it’s hard to know which ones to take seriously. So we wait and see if the guy takes it to a new level, and then we do something.”

  “It’s a shame it came to this,” her husband said. “Possibly, with professional help—”

  The detective was shaking his head. “My opinion,” he said, “a guy’s got this particular kind of a screw loose, there’s not a whole lot anybody can do for him. You can say it’s a shame he got hurt, but the thing to focus on is nobody else got hurt, not you and not your wife. That dagger he was holding, in fact he’s still holding it, well, I don’t think he was planning on using it for a toothpick. It’s a damn good thing you had the gun handy.”

  “It’s usually locked in a desk drawer. Ever since Rita told me about this fellow, about the remarks and the threats—”

  “And I believe he assaulted you physically, ma’am?”

  “My breasts,” she said, and lowered her eyes. “He ran up and took hold of my breasts. It was the most awful violation.”

  The detective shook his head. “You can call him a sick man,” he said, “and say he was emotionally disturbed, but another way of looking at it is he got pretty much what he deserved.”

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  “He’s gone, and the rest of them are gone, and the body’s
gone.”

  “The body.”

  “And they took my gun, but your friend swears I’ll get it back.”

  “My friend?”

  “He’d certainly like to be your friend. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you. When he wasn’t trying for a glimpse of your tits he was looking at your little pink toes.”

  “I guess I should have put slippers on.”

  “And fastened the top button of your robe. But I think you were just fine the way you were. Quite fetching, and the detective thought so, too.”

  “And now he’s gone, and we’re alone. So tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  ‘Tell me everything, George. I was going crazy, sitting up there and not knowing what was going on down here.”

  “As if you didn’t know.”

  “How could I know? Maybe he’d chicken out. Maybe you actually would fall asleep—”

  “Small chance of that.”

  “Tell me what happened, will you?”

  “He opened the window and climbed over the sill. Clumsily, I’d have to say. I was afraid he’d make so much noise he’d frighten himself off and pop out again before I could do anything.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Obviously not. I opened one eye just wide enough to get a glimpse of him, and as soon as he had both feet on the floor I opened both eyes and pointed the gun at him.”

  “And he’d already grabbed the dagger off the wall?”

  “Of course not. That came later.”

  “He grabbed it later?”

  “Do you want to hear this or do you want to keep on interrupting?”

  “I’m sorry, George.”

  “He saw the gun, and his eyes widened, and he looked on the point of saying something. So I shot him.”

  “That was the first shot.”

  “Obviously. I shot him in the pit of the stomach, and—”

  “Where? I couldn’t really see anything. Where did the bullet enter? Around the navel?”

  “Below the navel. I’d say about halfway between his navel and the place where you left your lipstick.”