The Triumph of Evil by Lawrence Block Page A

don’t recognize the name?”
    “I don’t think so. Is that your name or something?”
    “Interesting you never heard of him,” Dorn said. “You helped to murder him.”
    “Huh?”
    “Your role was a small one. A spear carrier. You stole this automobile. Then you lost control of it and crashed it into one of those trees, I think. You weren’t wearing your seat belt.”
    “Mister, I don’t think—”
    “You died in the accident,” Dorn said, reaching, hands quick and accomplished. He cupped the back of the short-haired head with his right hand, caught up the shirt front with his left. He snapped the boy’s neck forward. There was no struggling. There was no time.
    The boy’s license was in his wallet. The boy had automatically tapped a pocket when Dorn asked him about the license. That was the pocket he looked in, and the wallet was there. He took the license, replaced the wallet. The boy’s name was—had been? no, was—Clyde Farrar, Jr.
    He propped Clyde Farrar, Jr., behind the wheel, left his seat belt unfastened. Dorn sat on the passenger side. He started the engine and steered with one hand. His own scat belt was fastened, and he was braced when the car hit the tree.
    Before he entered a second sporting goods store, this one considerably closer to the Maine border, he used a pencil to change Farrar’s date of birth from 1950 to 1920. His signature on the bill of sale for the deer rifle would have fooled anyone but a handwriting expert, The clerk didn’t look at it twice, or at the altered date of birth, for that matter.
    He changed it back after he left the store.
    A long distance telephone conversation:
    “Hello. You received the funds?”
    “Yes. Something else occurs to me.”
    “Oh?”
    “It would be best if there were no academic difficulty in my home district.”
    “We never considered it. That’s an undeveloped district, after all.”
    “Like so many, it has some surface tension. Admittedly of low density. I wouldn’t want the waters troubled. It would spoil my own swimming.”
    A chuckle. “As it happens, you have exclusive representation in your district. Now that you mention it, it might be worthwhile to assign someone in a conciliatory capacity.”
    “Try it again.”
    “You’re swimming alone, but if the water’s troubled we can send you some oil.”
    “Understood, but no. It’s my backwater.”
    “Delicious. Anything else?”
    “No.”
    Another long distance telephone conversation:
    “Hello? Hey, turn that down, huh? Hello?”
    “Is that you, Roger?”
    “Yeah. Who’s this?”
    “Burt.”
    “I can’t hear you, man.”
    “Burt Weldon.”
    “Man, this is a shit connection. You got to talk louder, you sound like you’re coining through a roomful of Dacron or something. Is it Burt?”
    “Right on, baby. Burt Weldon.”
    “Like I can just barely make you out. What’s happening?”
    “Everything’s happening, man. Everything.”
    “You cool, man? You sound kind of weird.”
    “I’m beautiful. I want you to recognize it when it happens.”
    “Huh?”
    “I want you to know where it came from.”
    “You sure you’re all right? It’s Burt Weldon, baby, I don’t know what he wants. He sounds really weird, totally fucked up. He never used to use anything. Hey, Burt? What kind of trip arc you on?”
    “The ultimate trip.”
    “Whatever’s cool.”
    “The ultimate cool. A trip down Drury Lane. That’s all I can say.”
    “Whatever it is I couldn’t hear it.”
    “I said a trip down Dreary Lane. We all know the Muffin Man.”
    “Huh?”
    Dorn set up the portable typewriter in his motel room. On a sheet of plain typing paper he typed:
    To the good people, who are dead or in jail:
    No one will understand this. Maybe that proves it was the right thing to do. The things the world understands always turn out wrong.
    Does the end justify the means? I no longer comprehend the question. Once I knew the question but did not know the answer. Now I know the answer