HCC 115 - Borderline
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Authors: Lawrence Block
Contents
Raves For the Work of Lawrence Block!
Available now from Titan Books
“Wonderful.”
—
USA Today
“Addictive.”
—
Entertainment Weekly
“Reads like it’s been jolted by factory-fresh defibrillator pads.”
—
Time
“A first-rate writer.”
—
Chicago Sun-Times
“Block grabs you…and never lets go.”
—
Elmore Leonard
“[The] one writer of mystery and detective fiction who comes close to replacing the
irreplaceable John D. MacDonald.”
—
Stephen King
“The suspense mounts and mounts and mounts…very superior.”
—
James M. Cain
“The narrative is layered with detail, the action is handled with Block’s distinctive
clarity of style and the ending is a stunning tour de force.”
—
New York Times
“Lawrence Block is a master of entertainment.”
—
Washington Post
“One of the very best writers now working the beat.”
—
Wall Street Journal
“Stellar…a master storyteller in top form.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Brilliant…For clean, close-to-the-bone prose, the line goes from Dashiell Hammett
to James M. Cain to Lawrence Block. He’s
that
good.”
—
Martin Cruz Smith
“No one writes the hard-boiled thriller better than Lawrence Block.”
—
San Diego Union
“Lawrence Block is a master of crime fiction.”
—
Jonathan Kellerman
“Ratchets up the suspense with breathtaking results as only a skilled, inventive and
talented writer can do.”
—
Orlando Sentinel
“Lawrence Block is addictive. Make room on your bookshelf.”
—
David Morrell
“Remarkable…The suspense is relentless.”
—
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Lawrence Block is America’s absolute Number One writer of mystery fiction.”
—
Philip Friedman
“The reader is riveted to the words, the action.”
—
Robert Ludlum
“Block’s grasp of character is extraordinarily honest…his combining of the genre requirements
has an expert touch.”
—
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Everything mystery readers love best.”
—
Denver Post
“If Lawrence Block writes it, I read it.”
—
Mike Lupica
“Marvelous…will hold readers gaga with suspense.”
—
New York Newsday
“A superior storyteller.”
—
San Antonio Express-News
“A smooth, chilling suspense novel that stretches nerves wire-tight before they snap.”
—
Boston Herald
“Block knows how to pace a story and tighten the noose of suspense. He writes sharp
dialogue and knows his mean streets.”
—
San Francisco Examiner
“He is simply the best at what he does…If you haven’t read him before, you’ve wasted
a lot of time. Begin now.”
—
Mostly Murder
El Paso was a daylight town, quiet at night, and he walked the streets alone without
seeing a single person. He was used to the night, and to silent walks down silent
streets. In Tulsa, before the killing, before the little girl who had been so foolish
as to ask him the time, he had been essentially a creature of the night. A quiet man.
He had no friends in Tulsa. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him.
Weaver had been a nobody in Tulsa, a man who had never done a thing. Now, walking
through El Paso by night, he was at least a somebody for once. He had done something.
The something was a horrible thing, but he had done it, and they had put his picture
in the newspapers and had broadcast his name over the radio. They called him Dracula,
and they called him the Cannibal Killer, but now, for the first time, they knew who
he was.
Better to be loathed as a fiend than to be thoroughly ignored, better to be hated
than not to be known at all. One act of horror had given direction to his life, had
elevated him from
no
body to somebody.
He went on walking. He walked surely now, his stride powerful, his arms swinging easily
at his side. He was the Angel of Death, he thought. His life had a mission, a strange
and terrifying sense of purpose.
He thought of that little girl in Tulsa. Before, that girl had seemed to have been
a dreadful mistake, an end. But she was not an end at all. She was a beginning. She
was the first person he had killed.
She would not be the last…
BY LAWRENCE BLOCK:
A DIET OF TREACLE
GETTING OFF
THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART
GRIFTER’S GAME
KILLING CASTRO
LUCKY AT CARDS
YOU WILL ENJOY:
MEMORY
by Donald E. Westlake
NOBODY’S ANGEL
by Jack Clark
MURDER IS MY BUSINESS
by Brett Halliday
QUARRY’S EX
by Max Allan Collins
THE CONSUMMATA
by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
CHOKE HOLD
by Christa Faust
THE COMEDY IS FINISHED
by Donald E. Westlake
BLOOD ON THE MINK
by Robert Silverberg
FALSE NEGATIVE
by Joseph Koenig
THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH
by Ariel S. Winter
THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS
by James M. Cain
SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT
by Max Allan Collins
WEB OF THE CITY
by Harlan Ellison
JOYLAND
by Stephen King
THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN
by Elissa Wald
THE WRONG QUARRY
by Max Allan Collins
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-115)
First Hard Case Crime edition: May 2014
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street London se1 0up
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 1958, 1959, 1962, 1963 by Lawrence Block
Cover painting copyright © 2014 by Michael Koelsch
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of
the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Paperback Edition ISBN 978-1-78116-777-9
Hardcover Edition ISBN 978-1-78329-057-4
E-book ISBN 978-1-78116-778-6
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall
LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
BORDERLINE
Marty let up on the gas about fifty yards from the Customs shed. He put the clutch
on the floor, ground the gears slightly, dropping the big Olds into second. Then his
foot eased down on the brake and the car pulled up where it was supposed to. He rolled
down his window and let his face relax into an automatic smile.
The guy on duty was a Texas redneck with a hawk nose and a pronounced Adam’s apple.
He grinned in recognition. “Anything to declare?”
“There’s two cases of tequila in the trunk,” Marty said. “And a hundred pounds of
marijuana under the back seat. That’s about it.”
“Well, hell,” the Customs man said. “Just so you ain’t bringing back a dose or nothing.
Go on.”
The Customs shed was just an extra checkpoint, and the men on duty there didn’t knock
themselves out. There are, actually, two borders between the United States and Mexico.
The official border is easily passable, and no passports or cards of identification
are required. The working border is about sixty miles within Mexico, and that is where
tourist cards are required and the Customs check is fairly rigorous. The reason for
all this is a simple one. The border towns—Juarez and Tijuana and Nueva Laredo and
Matamoros—thrive on American commerce. They operate under Mexican law and Mexican
laissez-faire, yet they are easily accessible without a scrutinization or a host of
red tape.
Marty smiled a final smile at the redneck, dropped the Olds down into first, gunned
the motor and popped the clutch. The Olds shot forward, six years old and still the
fastest piece of iron on the road. Marty was in Texas now. El Paso. Ciudad Juarez
was behind him, behind the Customs shed, on the other side of the border.
He drove along Crescent, took a left at Brantwood, turned right again on Coronado
Avenue. He pulled up alongside a parking meter, got out of the car. Someone had left
five minutes on the meter for him. But it would take more than five minutes to eat,
even in a greasy spoon. Hell, it took five minutes before coffee got cool enough for
him to drink it. He dug a nickel out of a pocket of his gray gabardine slacks, stuck
it into the meter’s hungry mouth, and crossed the street to the diner.
It had Formica counters, bare hanging light bulbs, a floor of cracked linoleum. A
pair of truckers sat at the far end of the counter. One of them, the heavier one,
was joking with the waitress. She had big breasts and a pair of washed-out eyes, and
she laughed at everything the trucker said. The other trucker wasn’t saying anything.
He had his eyes on the girl’s breasts, and you could read his thoughts without half-trying.
Otherwise, the place was empty. Marty found a stool at the other end of the counter
from the truckers. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a pack of Luckies
with two bent cigarettes left in it. He selected one, straightened it out, lodged
it between his lips. He left the cigarette pack on the counter and dug a Zippo lighter
out of his back pocket. The chrome plating had worn off the lighter. It was a few
years older than the Olds parked outside, and, like the Olds, it still worked perfectly.
He thumbed the wheel and lit the cigarette. He inhaled, held the strong smoke in his
lungs for a few seconds, then blew it at the ceiling.
By this time the waitress realized he was alive. She left the truckers reluctantly,
scampered over to Marty. “Morning,” she said. “The usual?”
“Fine, Betty.”
She smiled when he called her by name. That was silly—everybody called her by name,
because her name was embroidered on her white uniform just above her left breast,
which was where everybody looked sooner or later. She went over to the window and
told the cook she wanted ham and eggs, with the eggs sunny side up. She came back
to Marty and leaned on the counter with her elbows. Her mouth was curved in a smile,
and her breasts hung over the counter like ripe fruit from a tree.