After the First Death - Lawrence Block [19]
There was no back exit as far as I could see. That would have been the easiest way, and I had been trying to find a building with a back exit, but I couldn’t remember one. This would have to do. I went on inside and climbed one flight of stairs, took off my shoe, put the money in it, and put the shoe back on. I waited an appropriate stretch of time and went back downstairs and opened the front door. I motioned to them, and they came across the street on the run.
“Apartment 6-B,” I said. I was holding the door open so that we wouldn’t have to play games with the buzzer. “Don’t use the elevator. Take the stairs. Right up to the sixth floor and ring two short and one long. Got it?”
“Two short and one long.”
“Right. It’s all set, and the girls are waiting for you. Enjoy yourselves.”
If no one was home at 6-B they might spend as much as an hour inside, convinced that I was on the up-and-up and the girls were cheating them. If somebody answered the door there would be an unfortunate scene, and eventually the boys would know just how they had been taken. Either way they had five flights of stairs to climb, and I did not intend to wait for their return.
They hurried inside, thanking me profusely, pounding up the stairs. I went outside and walked very speedily for three blocks. The stack of bills in my shoe had me limping oddly. Then a cab came along, and I stuck out a hand and caught it.
It was hard to believe how easy it had been. The words and gestures were all there when I needed them and the sailors never missed their cues. Now, in the cab, I was shaking. But while it was building I had been genuinely calm.
After all, the Murphy game is an exceptionally easy con to pull off. The sailors’ drunken naivete hadn’t hurt, but they could have been older and soberer and it wouldn’t have helped them. Almost anyone will fall for it the first time around.
I lost thirty dollars like that once, years ago. And now had ninety back, which put me sixty dollars ahead of the game. Bread upon the waters—
7
THE HOTEL WAS ON THIRTY-SEVENTH STREET BETWEEN PARK AND Lexington. In the bathroom of Room 401 there was a mirror, and in the mirror there was a face which looked altogether too much like mine.
Still, there were differences. I still looked like me, but I no longer looked like my description. My hair, normally a dark brown, was now a rather washed-out-gray. I had had all of it; now, with the aid of a razor, I had provided myself with something of a receding hairline. An all-night drugstore had furnished me with the necessary paraphernalia.
The face in the mirror was the face I would probably be wearing in ten or fifteen years. If I lived that long.
I had not expected to be able to sleep. By the time I was through with my work as an amateur makeup man, the city was yawning outside my window, impatient for the day to begin. I dropped into bed and closed my eyes and started to think things out, and before I could begin to get my thoughts organized I was under, and slept for ten hours without stirring.
When I awoke finally I looked at myself in the mirror again. I needed a shave and thought briefly of growing a beard or moustache. This struck me as a bad idea—men with beards or moustaches are more noticeable, and one automatically wonders what they would look like without facial hair. I wanted as little attention paid to me as possible. I’d picked up a copy of the News before registering at the hotel, and I had studied the picture they ran under the headline GIRL KILLER DOES IT AGAIN! The photo was one they had taken upon my release from prison (at which time the headline read PLAY-GIRL SLAYER FREE AGAIN) and it was not an especially good likeness to begin with. With the gray hair, with