I just stared at him. His friend? What was he saying?
“I didn’t know—”
“Be quiet,” he said, real soft. “I’ve known him for years. Gerry was one of my best friends.”
“I didn’t want nobody to die. I —”
“But somebody did die. And it was your fault.”
“Toth…”
He whispered, “It was your fault.”
“All right, you tricked me. Call the cops. Get it over with, you goddamn liar.”
“You really don’t understand, do you?” He shook his head. Why was he so calm? His hands weren’t shaking. He wasn’t looking around, nervous and all. Nothing like that. He said, “If I’d wanted to turn you in, I would just’ve flagged down that squad car a few minutes ago. But I said I wouldn’t do that. And I won’t. I gave you my word I wouldn’t tell the cops a thing about you. And I won’t.”
“Then what do you want?” I shouted. “Tell me.” Trying to bust through that tape. And as he unfolded my Buck knife with a click, I was thinking of something I told him.
Oh man, no …Oh, no.
“Yeah, being blind, I guess. That’d be the worst thing I could think of.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“What’m I going to do, Jack?” Weller said. He cut the last bit of tape off his wrists with the Buck, then looked up at me. “Well, I’ll tell you. I spent a good bit of time tonight proving to you that you shouldn’t kill me. And now…”
“What, man? What?”
“Now I’m going to spend a good bit of time proving to you that you should’ve.”
Then, real slow, Weller finished his scotch and stood up. And he walked toward me, that weird little smile on his face.
1998
LAWRENCE BLOCK
LIKE A BONE IN THE THROAT
Lawrence Block (1938-) was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. After attending Antioch College in Ohio, he moved to New York City, working as an editor at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, then at Whitman Publishing Company. His career as a professional writer began early, with his first story, “You Can’t Lose,” being published in 1957, when he was nineteen, and his first novel, Death Pulls a Double Cross, in 1961, when he was twenty-three. As prolific as he is talented and versatile, he can be ranked with such contemporaries as Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) and Donald E. Westlake in all three categories. They all reached the hundred-book mark, under their own names and numerous pseudonyms; Block’s pen names include Chip Harrison, Jill Emerson, and Paul Kavanagh. His bibliography illustrates his versatility: his finest work, the hard-boiled mysteries featuring Matthew Scudder; the much softer and funnier series about a bookstore-owner-cum-burglar, Bernie Rhodenbarr; espionage stories (as Kavanagh); outlandish humor in the Evan Tanner thrillers; soft-core erotica (as Emerson); fantasy (Ariel, 1980); and nonfiction books about the writing craft. His excellence as a writer has resulted in numerous honors, including eleven Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations. He has won the Edgar four times: once for Best Novel,-A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1992), and three times for Best Short Story, the only writer to win three times in that category. In 1994 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, for lifetime achievement.
“Like a Bone in the Throat” was first published in the anthology Murder for Revenge (New York: Delacorte, 1998). While it is surely the most noir of his stories (can you imagine a darker one?), readers should also seek “By Dawn’s Early Light,” which won the Edgar in 1985 and is one of the modern classics of the mystery genre. It was written specifically for the first Private Eye Writers of America anthology, The Eyes Have It (New York: Mysterious Press, 1984), but first appeared two months earlier in the August 1984 issue of Playboy.
Throughout the trial Paul Dandridge did the same thing every day. He wore a suit and tie, and he occupied a seat toward the front of the courtroom, and his eyes, time and time again, returned to the man who had killed his sister.
He was never called upon to testify. The facts were virtually undisputed, the evidence overwhelming. The defendant, William Charles Croydon, had abducted Dandridge’s sister at knifepoint as she walked from the college library to her off-campus apartment. He had taken her to an isolated and rather primitive cabin in the woods, where he had subjected her to repeated sexual assaults over a period of three days, at the conclusion of which he had caused her death-by manual strangulation.
Croydon took the stand in his own defence. He was a handsome young man who’d spent his thirtieth birthday in a jail cell awaiting trial, and his preppy good looks had already brought him letters and photographs and even a few marriage proposals from women of all ages. (Paul Dandridge was twenty-seven at the time. His sister, Karen, had been twenty when she died. The trial ended just weeks before her twenty-first birthday.)
On the stand, William Croydon claimed that he had no recollection of choking the life out of Karen Dandridge, but allowed as how he had no choice but to believe he’d done it. According to his testimony, the young woman had willingly accompanied him to the remote cabin, and had been an enthusiastic sexual partner with a penchant for rough sex. She had also supplied some particularly strong marijuana with hallucinogenic properties and had insisted that he smoke it with her. At one point, after indulging heavily in the unfamiliar drug, he had lost consciousness and awakened later to find his partner beside him, dead.
His first thought, he’d told the court, was that someone had broken into the cabin while he was sleeping, had killed Karen, and might return to kill him. Accordingly he’d panicked and rushed out of there, abandoning Karen’s corpse. Now, faced with all the evidence arrayed against him, he was compelled to believe he had somehow committed this awful crime, although he had no recollection of it whatsoever, and although it was utterly foreign to his nature.
The district attorney, prosecuting this case himself, tore Croydon apart on cross-examination. He cited the bite marks on the victim’s breasts, the rope burns indicating prolonged restraint, the steps Croydon had taken in an attempt to conceal his presence in the cabin. “You must be right,” Croydon would admit, with a shrug and a sad smile. “All I can say is that I don’t remember any of it.”
The jury was eleven to one for conviction right from the jump, but it took six hours to make it unanimous. Mr. Foreman, have you reached a verdict? We have, Your Honor. On the sole count of the indictment, murder in the first degree, how do you find? We find the defendant, William Charles Croydon, guilty.
One woman cried out. A couple of others sobbed. The DA accepted congratulations. The defence attorney put an arm around his client. Paul Dandridge, his jaw set, looked at Croydon.
Their eyes met, and Paul Dandridge tried to read the expression in the killer’s eyes. But he couldn’t make it out.
Two weeks later, at the sentencing hearing, Paul Dandridge got to testify.
He talked about his sister, and what a wonderful person she had been. He spoke of the brilliance of her intellect, the gentleness of her spirit, the promise of her young life. He spoke of the effect of her death upon him. They had lost both parents, he told the court, and Karen was all the family he’d had in the world. And now she was gone. In order for his sister to rest in peace, and in order for him to get on with his own life, he urged that her murderer be sentenced to death.
Croydon’s attorney argued that the case did not meet the criteria for the death penalty, that while his client possessed a criminal record he had never been charged with a crime remotely of this nature, and that the rough-sex-and-drugs defence carried a strong implication of mitigating circumstances. Even if the jury had rejected the defence, surely the defendant ought to be spared the ultimate penalty, and justice would be best served if he were sentenced to life in prison.