Look at the Birdie (short story)

"Look at the Birdie" is a short story first published posthumous in the collection of the same name in 2009 and reprinted in Complete Stories in 2017.

Plot Summary

One night a man is loudly complaining in a bar about someone he hates. He is approached by Felix Koradubian who introduces himself as a "murder counselor" and suggests he have the person killed. Koradubian states that he's a convicted felon for practicing medicine without a license who's also been in and out of mental institutions his whole life, meaning his testimony would be easily dismissed in court. While in prison, he claims to have killed at least twenty three people over several years on the outside using what he calls the "cat-over-the-wall technique": if someone throws a cat over a wall that scratches someone's eyes out, that person is liable, but not if the cat does so ten minutes later.

Before he explains further, Koradubian calls over his haggard and crazy looking wife who snaps the man's photograph and then runs out. The man furiously demands the photograph, but Koradubian instead proceeds to explain his system. He had previously run an unlicensed group therapy center in an old, round, mirror-lined ballroom for severely deranged and dangerous paranoiacs scared of other doctors. His practice was shut down and his life ruined, his once lucrative lifestyle reduced to poverty. As revenge, Koradubian began taking pictures of those who'd brought about his downfall and sent the photographs to former patients, telling them he'd discovered there was indeed a conspiracy and the person in the photo was part of it. Imagining the city now filled with "innocent-looking lunatics who would suddenly kill and run", the horrified man agrees when Koradubian demands whatever money he has on him, but he learns that his picture will remain filed somewhere and that these payments must go on "indefinitely".