Memory (Hard Case Crime) Read online

  Acclaim for the Work of

  DONALD E. WESTLAKE!

  “Dark and delicious.”

  —The New York Times

  “[A] book by this guy is cause for happiness.”

  —Stephen King

  “Donald Westlake must be one of the best craftsmen now crafting stories.”

  —George F. Will

  “Westlake is a national literary treasure.”

  —Booklist

  “Westlake knows precisely how to grab a reader, draw him or her into the story, and then slowly tighten his grip until escape is impossible.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Brilliant.”

  —GQ

  “A wonderful read.”

  —Playboy

  “Marvelous.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Tantalizing.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “A brilliant invention.”

  —New York Review of Books

  “A tremendously skillful, smart writer.”

  —Time Out New York

  “Suspenseful...As always, [Westlake] writes like the consummate pro he is.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Westlake remains in perfect command; there’s not a word...out of place.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Westlake is one of the best.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  In the fifth week, they came for him.

  It was Friday night. It was too cold now to be autumn anymore, but the snow hadn’t started yet. He was walking along the tilted slate squares of sidewalk, past the barren trees and the streetlights; it was just past midnight, and the street was deserted. He was a block from home when the highly polished new black car rolled slowly past him, going in his direction, and crept to a stop a few doors away. The passenger-side door opened, and a man climbed out. He was hard-looking. He stood on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips and squinted at Cole, the squint making the corners of his mouth turn up like the beginning of a snarl.

  “Paul Cole?” The man’s voice was harsh, but soft, as though there were no strength in it and he had to strain his throat to make any sound at all.

  Do I know him? Maybe he knows me from somewhere, and his is one of the faces I’ve forgotten. But if we already know each other, why did he ask me if I was me?

  He moved his head and said, “Yes. I’m Paul Cole.”

  The man’s right hand slipped with surprising speed into his hip pocket, and came out with a wallet, which he flipped open, saying, “Police. Get in the car...”

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS

  SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY

  by Donald E. Westlake

  NO HOUSE LIMIT by Steve Fisher

  BABY MOLL by John Farris

  THE MAX by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  GUN WORK by David J. Schow

  FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai

  KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

  THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny

  THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake

  HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt

  CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner

  FAKE I.D. by Jason Starr

  PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker

  STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe

  LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood

  HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent

  QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE by Max Allan Collins

  THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES by Jonny Porkpie

  THE VALLEY OF FEAR by A.C. Doyle

  MEMORY

  by Donald E. Westlake

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-064)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: April 2010

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London

  SE1 OUP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2010 by the Estate of Donald E. Westlake

  Cover painting copyright © 2010 by Glen Orbik

  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.

  Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-345-8

  E-book ISBN 978-1-78116-104-3

  Cover design by Cooley Design Lab

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  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.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  1

  After the show, they went back to the hotel room, and to bed, for the seventeenth time in three weeks. He had chosen her because, being on the road with him, she was handy; and additionally because she was married, had already clipped the wings of one male, and could therefore demand nothing more from him than he was willing to give. Why she had chosen him he neither knew nor cared.

  He was deep in clench-faced sweaty blindness of physical passion when the hotel room door burst open and what could only be the husband stormed in, topcoat flaring behind him like Batman’s cloak. He rose up from the mounded woman, smiling idiotically at the enraged face rushing toward him, thinking only What a cliché! and so unable to take it seriously. Till the husband reached out one flailing hand and brought it back lifting a chair, the legs pointing at four spots around his head as though to frame him there symmetrically for eternity, and then he scrambled back and away from the woman, his hand slipping on her rubbery breast, and he cried out, “What are you doing?”

  And the nurse dressed all in white said, “Ah, there you are!” She was smiling, looking down at him, pleased by his presence. Her teeth were wide and shiny, like enamel kitchen cabinets all in a row. The pale lips were an oval smile around them, but then the oval reversed to the comic exaggeration of a frown, and she said, “Oh, no. Don’t fade away again.”

  The teeth aren’t real, he thought.
<
br />   There was nothing between the two thoughts, what are you doing and the teeth aren’t real. No transition, no time lapse, no going to sleep and waking up, no explanation.

  The nurse had a face of leather, like a cowboy, but with a soft round nose. She said, “The doctor will want to talk to you. Now don’t fade away again.”

  “I won’t,” he whispered, because whispering was all he dared until he found out whether or not he was real.

  She went away, and his eyes looked at the ceiling, which had no character at all. It was featureless, lifeless, blameless white. He thought, Something must have happened in between. He must have beat me up, and I must be in a hospital. But there was no memory to go with the necessity. Not even a memory of time-lapse, such as comes when waking up from sleep. Waking up from sleep, there is the knowledge in the brain that a black form of time has been going on. But this was nothingness and less than nothingness. The four pointed chair legs, and then the nurse, and nothing in between.

  A soft decayed face came into his vision, trying to look stern. It wore glasses, in which he could see twin reflections of himself, very small, being nothing but a head on a pillow. This must be the doctor.

  It was. He introduced himself as such: “I am Doctor Croft. Are you awake enough to answer questions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have to whisper?”

  “I don’t know.” But he whispered it. He moved his tongue within his mouth, collecting saliva, and swallowed. “I don’t have to whisper.” His voice was rusty, like something long unused.

  “What is your name?”

  “Paul Cole. Paul Edwin Cole.”

  “How old are you?”

  His mind slithered, found it: “Twenty-six.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Troy, New York,”

  “What is your father’s name?”

  “He’s deceased.” What a stupid word, he thought, hearing himself say it. An Army word. That’s where I learned it, when they typed it on the yellow form. Father deceased. Mother deceased.

  But the doctor was not Army material. He persisted. He said, “What was his name, then?”

  “Robert nomiddleinitial Cole.” That was Army, too. NMI.

  “And your mother?”

  He knew the game now. Deceased was no good here. “Elizabeth Shoreby Cole.”

  “Is she alive?”

  “No, she’s— She’s dead.”

  “Your next of kin?”

  “I’m not dead.”

  “Who do we notify of your accident?”

  “Accident?”

  The soft decayed face turned sour. “You were caught, weren’t you? That’s an accident.”

  “Why didn’t you know my name?”

  “I did.”

  “From my wallet. Then why did you ask me?”

  “To see if you knew it.” He seemed inclined to explain, to be expansive, though still disapproving. “In head injury cases, particularly after prolonged shock or unconsciousness, we look for memory damage. But you seem all right, at least superficially. Now. Who do we notify?”

  “No one.”

  “You must have a relative.”

  “It’s a rule? I have a married sister. But why tell her? We haven’t been in contact in five years.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Ruth Cole.”

  “You said she was married.”

  “Oh.” He reached for the name, and bumped off it. It was like going down a flight of stairs, not looking, and there is one less step than you think, and your foot starts down for that last step and bumps painfully where there should only be air, and your arms have to pinwheel to keep you from falling, and you drop the newspaper, primary-colored comic pages scattering across the rug. “Her husband’s name is Ray, he’s got red hair, he—”

  “You can’t remember his last name?”

  “It’s been a long while since I’ve seen them.” Cold wetness was on his forehead. Why was the cold wetness there, as though he’d been washed but not dried. He drew a hand out from under the stiff covers and wiped his forehead, and then he felt dizzy and weak, as though he’d only pushed the cold wetness inside his head.

  The doctor said, “No matter. I’ll talk to you later on.”

  The face went away, and the face of the nurse with the unreal teeth came back. She was smiling again, idiotically, and he remembered his own idiotic smile when the husband had burst in, and he said, “What’s your name?”

  “May,” she said. “And you’re Paul.”

  “May. All right, why not. Tell me what happened?”

  “What happened?” How the oval opening around the teeth could twist and turn, so mobile and cunning. Now it expressed itself puzzled. “Don’t you know?”

  “He hit me with the chair.”

  “And we brought you here. And now you’re awake again, and just as fine as new.”

  “Where are the bandages?” He remembered the cold wet forehead, and his hand brushing it, and no bandages there.

  “Oh, you have lots of bandages,” she said. “Around your head, and—no, higher than that—and all around your chest, because you have broken ribs, too, you know.”

  He was feeling the tight hard coarse bandaging on the top of his head. It felt white, but not like the ceiling or her teeth. He said, “Tell me, uh...I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “May. In the merry month of May.”

  “June is a month, too.”

  “So it is.”

  “How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Fifty-eight hours.”

  He translated that, frowning, and when he frowned he could feel the bandages, a broad band around his head, and he felt like Civil War wounded, but there were no bandages on his brow. Fifty-eight hours. Two days, and then ten hours. Approximately midnight it had been, of Saturday. Sunday gone by, and Monday gone by, and now it must be ten o’clock Tuesday morning.

  With no feeling in his brain of time having passed. It was frightening.

  He said, “It’s ten o’clock Tuesday morning.”

  She looked down at a watch with a silver expansion band. “Ten-fifteen,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said, wondering about it.

  “You’ve been fed intravenously.”

  “Ah. This is all very expensive, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Good health is never expensive, I say. You’re an actor, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were with that acting company that was here Saturday night, weren’t you? At the Palace Theater.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I could have gone, but I was on duty. I do love the theater.”

  “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

  “Gone?” She gazed down at him in innocent astonishment. “Who’s gone?”

  “The company. The actors. The play.”

  “Oh, yes. I understand they had to appear somewhere else.”

  “Yes. Just for one night. Like here.”

  “That must be a wonderful life.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, did I ask you your name?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “What did you say?”

  “May. Remember? The merry month of May.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Don’t worry, now, this must all be confusing to you still.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I must go now.”

  “Yes.”

  Then for a while there was nothing but the blank face of the ceiling.

  Troy is a city of steep and stunted hills. Streets and streets of frame houses painted gray and tan. Streets of pockmarked blacktop. Narrow streets. The lights on the movie theater marquees never seem to be getting enough electricity. Down in Albany there are dartboards in all the bars.

  The girl who brought him his first hospital meal had the face of an English orphan; pinched, frightened, silent. Her uniform was white and too wide and too heavily starched. It had shor
t sleeves; her elbows were bony and gray.

  She cranked the bed so that he was sitting, and wheeled his food in place in front of him. It was on a thick white plate with a red stripe around for decoration, and a small chip out of the edge. On it were two pork chops, mashed potatoes still retaining the shape of the ice-cream scoop, and peas. Two pieces of white bread and a pat of butter were on a smaller plate. A thick squat glass held milk. The knife and fork were heavy, and plain, with the name of the hospital carved on the handles: Memorial Hospital.

  He didn’t feel himself to be hungry, but he ate everything, at a steady pace, and when he was finished he wanted a cigarette. A little later, the English orphan came back, to get the tray, and he asked her for a cigarette. Not looking at him, she said, “No smoking in hospital. Fire law.” She cranked the bed down again, and took the tray away. After, he wished he’d thought to tell her to leave him sitting, so he could look at the room.

  The next one he saw was male again, with a full and florid face, lined by dissatisfaction. He said, “I am Lieutenant Murray, City Police.”

  “They tell me I can’t smoke here.”

  “That’s right. Fire law. Doctor Croft says you’re well enough to answer questions.”

  He didn’t say anything, because he didn’t know if it was true or not.

  Lieutenant Murray looked down at something—he was holding a paper or something in his hand, below the line of Cole’s vision. He said, “You are Paul Cole, twenty-six years of age, height six feet, weight one hundred fifty-seven pounds, hair black, eyes blue, no scars or marks. Born Troy, New York, current permanent address New York City. Next of kin, sister, married name unknown. That correct?”