Thieves Fall Out
Authors: Gore Vidal
Acclaim for the Works of Gore Vidal!
Some Other Hard Case Crime Books You Will Enjoy
The Works of
GORE VIDAL!
“Few American writers can display the virtuosity of Gore Vidal.”
—New Republic
“Highly literate, stylish, entertaining, and provocative.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Superb…a grand entertainment.”
—Harold Bloom
“Magnificent.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Always absorbing.”
—The New Yorker
“Extraordinarily intelligent and entertaining.”
—Newsweek
“Dazzling…wicked entertainment of a very high order.”
—New York Times
“What a fascinating book.”
—Atlantic Monthly
“A bravura tour de force.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A highly entertaining read, and a real page-turner.”
—Washington Times
“Simply great.”
—Associated Press
“A subtle, provoking, enthralling book…Vidal’s ability to invoke a world is amazing.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“A rich, colorful, and fulfilling tapestry.”
—San Diego Union
“Compelling and tumultuous…An adventure of mind and body during a dramatic, significant era, Vidal’s creation is confronting, stimulating, amusing, and unique.”
—Vogue
“Suspenseful and extravagantly decorated…Impossible to resist.”
—Cosmopolitan
“Vidal writes so well that you find yourself holding your breath over something that is a foregone conclusion.”
—Boston Globe
“Frank, shocking…extremely sympathetic, penetrating and exhortive.”
—New York Herald Tribune
“A superb story…Fascinating.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith
“A prodigiously skilled and clever performance.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“Richly entertaining.”
—Washington Post
“An excellent book.”
—Chicago Daily News
“One of the best novels of its kind.”
—Christopher Isherwood
“America’s most formidable man of letters.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Delectable…Savory…Vidal is the true heir of Oscar Wilde.”
—Bloomberg News
“[A] grand, teeming affair.”
—Time
“Mr. Vidal writes with an engaging freshness, which is rarely naïve, occasionally salacious and almost always entertaining.”
—Spectator
“One of America’s most distinguished writers.”
—Booklist
“Savage, bitter, bawdy, biting, and brilliant.”
—USA Today
“Wonderfully entertaining.”
—Daily Telegraph
“A preposterously good novel.”
—Sphere
“Vidal’s combination of learning, wit and disdain gets into your blood. He can change the way you think—the only definition of a great writer which makes sense.”
—Observer
“An outrageous, thumb-in-your-eye novel.”
—Vanity Fair
“A noble work…An important human document, of excellent and enlightening truthfulness.”
—Thomas Mann
“A seer and a scourge as well as an entertainer of the highest order.”
—Jay McInerney
“Provocateur, scholar, historian, novelist, scoundrel, whatever you want to call Gore Vidal, make sure you include ‘national treasure’…[He] is an original mind, who thinks and sees without regard to convention. That alone makes him required reading.”
—The Oregonian
“There is no one quite like him, and if you don’t know his work then you should.”
—The Times (UK)
The little man shook his great head. “I have been to many countries. I’ve done many things. Now I play piano at Le Couteau Rouge.”
“What do you know about a woman named Hélène de Rastignac, a French countess?”
Le Mouche sighed. “Many things. I know, for instance, that she is not French, but Alexandrian, and I know that she is not a countess.”
“But she is rich?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Was she a spy in the war?”
“Everyone in Cairo was a spy. It was the thing to be.”
“Was she one?”
“I have no idea. She was the mistress, though, of Erich Raedermann, who was, as you may or may not know, the most important Nazi agent in Egypt.”
This was news. “What happened to him?”
“He was shot, I believe, while with her at their house. She buried him decently. Germany fell. She did not fall with it.”
“I met her through an Englishman named Hastings.”
Le Mouche whistled softly. “You move in very fast circles, Mr. Wells.”
“Too fast, maybe?”
“Maybe, yes. I should be very—circumspect, if I were you. This is not like any other country in the world. People can disappear in this country more completely than anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of Russia, and leave no trace.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Only to take care, Mr. Wells. I should hate to see you come to harm…”
MEMORY
by Donald E. Westlake
NOBODY’S ANGEL
by Jack Clark
MURDER IS MY BUSINESS
by Brett Halliday
GETTING OFF
by Lawrence Block
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
EASY GO
by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange
THE WRONG QUARRY
by Max Allan Collins
BORDERLINE
by Lawrence Block
BRAINQUAKE
by Samuel Fuller
EASY DEATH
by Daniel Boyd
QUARRY’S CHOICE
by Max Allan Collins
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-119)
First Hard Case Crime edition: April 2015
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Reprinted by an arrangement with
The Gore Vidal Revocable Trust
Cover painting copyright © 2015 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 978-1-78116-792-2
E-book ISBN 978-1-78329-248-6
Design direction by Max Phillips
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
His dreams grew confused and ominous. Suddenly his muscles contracted in fear and he awoke, sweat cold on his body.
It took him several moments to bring the room into focus. His head throbbed and an ache behind his eyes made the bright sunlight unbearable.
The room was small. Strips of moldering yellow plaster hung from the lathes. The single window was tall, with broken shutters dangling crazily shut, slicing the light in zebra patterns on the warped floor.
The bed was the only piece of furniture in the room: a verminous mattress over springs. When he looked at it, he got to his feet in disgust, staggering a little. From far away he could hear a high toneless chanting. It was the sound that had awakened him, that he had heard in his dreams: the muezzin calling the Mohammedans to prayer, a strange, unearthly noise.
As he picked up his trousers, which lay crumpled on the floor beside the bed, someone began to pound on the door. Through wide cracks in the door’s panels he saw the outline of a woman.
“Come in,” he said, pulling on his trousers. Then, seeing that the door was bolted, he opened it for her.
She entered the room scowling, a dark-skinned woman wearing a loose robe. She was good-looking, in a heavy way, with large black eyes as bright and unblinking as a rat’s.
“American?” Her voice was deep and guttural.
He nodded, fastening his belt and reaching for his shirt. He could remember nothing, yet he was sure he had never seen her before. Vaguely he recalled having paid for a room.
“Money!” The word exploded in the room and she put out one hand in the universal gesture.
“Now, look here.…” He shoved his feet into his shoes awkwardly and stood up, working the heels into place.
A flood of abuse made him dizzy. Her hands opened and shut convulsively as she shouted at him, her black eyes large and brilliant. He edged toward the door. She put herself between him and the door, her hands clutching now at his clothes. He shoved her away. This was a mistake, for she immediately yelled for help. Help came in the form of five women of different age, weight, and beauty, but all sharing the same profession and dressed in similar loose robes, all shouting as they crowded about him on the rickety stairs outside the room.
Alarmed, he tried to make his way through this tiger-smelling group, but firm arms prevented him; hands grabbed at him fiercely. With a sudden lunge he broke free of them, and half running, half falling, got down the stairs to the street.
In an arcade two blocks away he paused, suddenly exhausted, sweating in the heat and slightly nauseated.
The bright Cairo noon dazzled his eyes. Shimmering waves of heat made the modern buildings across the wide street quiver as though they were fashioned of gray rubber. He turned his back on the street and looked down the arcade, where, in the shade, men wearing fezzes and sheetlike robes of plain white or striped cotton sat in doorways selling food and shoes and beads and sandals and Coca-Cola. Veiled women passed them without a look to right or left; idle men lounged against the blunt pillars of the arcade, watching the street, where modern cars from all the countries of the world drove gleaming past. He took a deep breath, inhaling all the strange odors of Cairo: musk and food, urine, drugs, filth, and sandalwood. This sudden wealth of new sensation pleased him and he felt better, though still shaky. He reached in the breast pocket of his sport shirt for cigarettes. They were gone. He had bought a pack only the evening before. It must have been a rough night, he thought, moving toward a booth where a grizzled, bearded villain was selling cigarettes.