Death by the Book - Lenny Bartulin [1]
He should have minded his own business. Curiosity got the cat’s head blown off.
‘Honeymoon in Tahiti,’ he shouted, desperation rising in his voice. ‘Massages and cocktails by the pool. Nothing but the best, baby!’ Jack was not into things tropical, but then marriage was all about compromise. ‘If you could just throw me a rope …’
The gun remained pointed at him.
Jack tried to squirm up the rain-drenched slope. Like a worm on the end of a hook. A surge of adrenaline helped move him about a foot. Not enough. And where the hell was he going anyway?
Another bullet hollowed out the dark and scorched the air not too far from his left ear, thumping into the soggy ground. Was she a terrible shot or just a sadistic bitch?
Jack closed his eyes, pressed himself against Mother Earth. Almost let slip a prayer, but it was too late to pay insurance now. ‘How about a last cigarette?’
There was no reply. Waves broke below. Jack breathed in the cold salty air: but all he could taste was gunshot smoke and fear.
The strap slipped out. Then held. His body stiffened, turned to lead. Light rain began to fall again. Terror beat his heart. Jesus. I’m gonna die.
Who the hell was going to look after his cat?
1
THE SKY WAS TWO O’CLOCK BLUE, cloudless on a Wednesday afternoon. The weather had forgotten it was winter: the air was almost sweet and the breeze had manners. Jack Susko lit a cigarette and began walking down the hill. He could not remember the last time he was in Double Bay. Nobody he knew earned the sort of money needed to live here. It was the kind of place where old women noticed your shoes, where lawns were green year-round, and the streets were clean and wide and lined with big old trees. A place where money had always done the talking and everything else the listening — even the pollution had been slipped a roll and asked to go west. Parks and playgrounds and plenty in the bank: the kind of place to consider having kids.
Jack put his sunglasses on. Having a child was not a priority, though if you asked him what was he might take a while to answer. For the moment, it was a package he was delivering to 32 Cumberland Gardens. The streets were so nice around here, they were gardens.
Over the rooftops on his right, Jack caught glimpses of water in the bay. On his left, houses and apartment blocks stepped up the slope of Bellevue Hill, straining against each other for a better view, their windows whitewashed by the sun. Jack had a vision of himself in one of those double-glazed sunrooms: cognac in hand, looking out at the city’s skyline, the phone warm on his ear as he gave calm instruction to a banker on the Bahnhof Strasse in Zurich. It was the kind of job he could settle for, part-time even. Pity they never came up in the employment pages.
No, Jack Susko would not be retiring at the age of thirty-four. His view would remain the dusty shelves and battered paperbacks of the last year or so. Instead of up, he would climb down the steps into his basement shop in York Street in the city, where he spent the day making sure delinquent kids did not lift the stock. At least he was his own boss. Though sometimes it would have been nice to boss somebody around.
The guy’s name was Hammond Kasprowicz. He had called Jack two days ago, asking for copies of four books: The Machine, Entropy House, The Cull and Simply Even. Every copy you have, he said. And it’s poetry, he added, as if Jack might not know what that was. Did Susko Books have a poetry section? His voice was cantankerous. At one point he coughed violently down the line for about a minute and Jack had to hold the phone away from his ear. When he stopped, Kasprowicz wheezed and his voice was tight. He would pay fifty dollars for every copy and an extra fifty if they were personally delivered. He gave his address, stated a time and day, and hung up.
Afterwards, Jack wondered why Kasprowicz was willing to pay so much for very little. But he did not think about it for too long. He remembered a piece of advice he had been given many years ago: when someone wants to