Tricks полностью

"Later," he said, and freed his hand and began walking off.

"You come on back later, man, hear?" she shouted after him. "Ask for Crystal."

He walked into the darkness. On the dock, he could hear rats rustling along the pilings. Another lamp post, another huddle of hookers.

"Hey, Blondie, lookin' for some fun?"

White girl in her twenties. Wearing a long khaki coat and high heels. Opened the coat to him as he went past.

"Interested?" she said.

Nothing under the coat but garter belt and long black stockings. Quick glimpse of rounded belly and pink-tipped breasts.

"Faggot!" she yelled after him, and twirled the coat closed as gracefully as a dancer. The girls with her laughed. Fun on the docks.

Made a right turn onto Fairview, began walking up toward Fourth. Pools of light on the sidewalk ahead. Larry's Bar. Two plate-glass windows, beer displays in them, entrance door set between them. He went to the closest window, cupped his hands on either side of his face, peered through the glass. Not too crowded just now. Annie. Sitting at a table with a black man and a frizzied brunette. Good, at least one backup was close by. There at the bar. Eileen. With a big blond guy wearing glasses.

Okay, Kling thought.

I'm here.

Don't worry.

From where Shanahan sat slumped behind the wheel of the two-door Chevy across the street, he saw only a big blond guy looking through the plate-glass window of the bar. Six feet tall, he guessed, give or take an inch, broad shoulders and narrow waist, wearing a seaman's pea jacket and blue jeans.

Shanahan was suddenly alert.

Guy was still looking through the window, hands cupped to his face, motionless except for the dancing of his blond hair on the wind.

Shanahan kept watching.

The guy turned from the window.

No eyeglasses.

Might not be him.

On the other hand…

Shanahan got out of the car. It was clumsy moving with the right arm in a cast, but he'd rather be made for a cripple than a cop. Guy walking up the street now. How come he wasn't going in the bar? Change of M.O.? Shanahan fussed with the lock of the car door, watching him sidelong.

Minute the guy was four car lengths away, Shanahan took off after him.

The bar was baited with Eileen, but there were plenty of other girls out here on the street. And if this guy was suddenly changing his pattern, Shanahan didn't want any of them dying.

Eileen didn't like the tricks her mind was beginning to play.

She was beginning to like him.

She was beginning to think he couldn't possibly be a murderer.

Like the stories you read in the newspapers after the kid next door shot and killed his mother, his father, and his two sisters. Nice kid like that? all the neighbors said. Can't believe it. Always had a kind word for everyone. Saw him mowing the lawn and helping old ladies across the street. This kid a killer? Impossible.

Or maybe she didn't want him to be a murderer because that would mean eventual confrontation. She knew that if this was the guy, she'd have to end up face to face with him on the street outside. And the knife would come out of his pocket. And…

It was easier to believe he couldn't possibly be the killer.

You're tricking yourself, she thought.

And yet…

There really were a lot of likable things about him.

Not just his sense of humor. Some of his jokes were terrible, in fact. He told them almost compulsively, whenever anything in the conversation triggered what appeared to be a vast computer-bank memory of stories. You mentioned the tattoo near his thumb, for example—the killer had a tattoo near his thumb, she reminded herself—and he immediately told the one about the two girls discussing the guy with the tattooed penis, and one of them insisted only the word Swan was tattooed on it, whereas the other girl insisted the word was Saskatchewan, and it turned out they were both right, which took Eileen a moment to get. Or you mentioned the sudden change in the weather, and he immediately reeled off Henry Morgan's famous weather forecast, "Muggy today, Toogy tomorrow," and then segued neatly into the joke about the panhandler shivering outside in the cold and another panhandler comes over to him and says, "Can you lend me a dime for a cup of coffee?" and the first guy says, "Are you kidding? I'm standing here bare-assed, I'm shivering and starving to death, how come you're asking me for a dime?" and the second guy says, "Okay, make it a nickel," which wasn't very funny, but which he told with such dramatic flair that Eileen could actually visualize the two panhandlers standing on a windy corner of the city.

Outside, the city beckoned.

The night beckoned.

The knife beckoned.