A Time to Scatter Stones

by Lawrence Block

  “Ringing doorbells until somebody buzzed him in.”

  “That’s one way. That would get him to her door, and he might have the talent to get through it. She was in a hurry. Maybe she just closed the door, let the snaplock engage.”

  “And didn’t bother to use her key and turn the deadbolt.”

  “A lot of snaplocks, especially on doors in old buildings, aren’t all that much of a challenge. You could pick one with a butter knife.”

  “ ‘You didn’t take your alligator bag,’ That is so creepy.”

  “And if he’s clever enough to pull that off—”

  “Then he’s clever enough to track her down?” She made a face. “Maybe he is. Say he could catch up to her, and she could tell herself it was simpler and easier to fuck him one more time than to find some way to get rid of him. And of course he’d insist on anal, because she let him know she doesn’t like it. And they’d do it, and the next thing on his agenda is to find something else that she doesn’t like. And do it.”

  “Or she could refuse, and he could rape her.”

  “Trust you to look on the bright side,” she said. “Darling, what are you going to do?”

  “The only thing to do,” I said, “is find him and stop him. I just wish I knew how to do that.”

  “IN A MOVIE,” she said, “this is when one person suggests going to the police, and the other person explains why that’s a bad idea.”

  “It depends on the movie. Sometimes this is when they do in fact go to the police, and guess what?”

  “It turns out to be a bad idea.”

  “It has to,” I said, “or there’s no movie. But I’d hand this off to the cops in a hot second if I thought it would do any good.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I know how a cop would see it. She’s a working girl, and she had some kind of disagreement with one of her customers, and she’s set on making trouble for him by going to the cops. So he’d take her statement and make a lot of notes and send her home, and he’d forget her ten minutes after she was out the door.”

  She thought about it. “It might be different,” she said, “if the cop was a woman.”

  “It might,” I agreed, “but it might not. Say ‘working girl’ to a male cop and the first thought that comes to mind is ‘I can probably fuck her.’ What would a female police officer think?”

  “Well, if she’s dykey—”

  “No, let’s say she’s not. She’s married herself or she’s single and between relationships, and either way she puts in long hours on the job, long dangerous hours, and here’s this snooty bitch wearing nicer clothes than she owns and working a couple of hours a day and fucking men just like her husband or her ex or, I don’t know—”

  “Her father.”

  “Whatever. So a woman cop might be more sympathetic, but it’s not a given.”

  She thought about it. Did I want a cup of tea? I didn’t, and she decided that neither did she. We hadn’t had lunch. Was I hungry? I said I wasn’t but she should go ahead, and she said she wasn’t all that hungry herself and it wouldn’t hurt her to miss a meal.

  She said, “So what can we do if we can’t go to the cops? Say she’s a complete stranger and she comes up to your table at Armstrong’s and sits down and tells you her story. Then what?”

  “Armstrong’s,” I said. “Jimmy died, what is it, fifteen years ago?”

  “Is it that long?”

  I did the math in my head. “Longer. Sixteen years. But I get the point. If I was still in business and she was a stranger, what would I do?” I answered my own question. “Probably walk her over to Midtown North,” I said, “and sit her down with Joe Durkin or somebody like him, and make sure they took her seriously.”

  “You could have done that.”

  “Back then, sure. Now if I want to sit her down next to Joe Durkin, I’d have to fly her to Florida. And that’s assuming he’s still alive.”

  Mortality, never more than half a thought away.

  I said, “Let’s stop trying to figure out what I would have done twenty years ago. What would I do now?”

  “Well?”

  “The first order of business,” I said, “is getting a name and an address for the son of a bitch.”

  “Paul.”

  “Paul whose name probably isn’t Paul. I’d want to know his name and where he lives. I wish I had a photo of him, something more than dark brown hair and the beginnings of a bald spot.”

  “And if you did?”

  “I’d show it around her neighborhood.”

  “Which one? Curry Hill or West End Avenue?”

  Curry Hill’s what they call those blocks in the East Twenties replete with inexpensive Indian restaurants. The name’s a play on Murray Hill, which begins a few blocks to the north.

  “I was thinking 27th Street,” I said, “but I’d show it around her new neighborhood too, while I was at it. On the off-chance that he’d managed to track her that far.”

  “So you’d go knock on doors.”

  “Not these days,” I admitted. “These days I get tired thinking about it. I’d get somebody to do it.”

  “Somebody like TJ?”

  “If only,” I said.

  TJ WAS A BLACK street kid I’d met on Times Square, when a particularly nasty case had me checking out the peep shows and adult bookstores. He’d noticed me and figured I was looking for something, and figured too that he might turn a buck helping me find it. In not much time he became a part of my life—and eventually Elaine’s—and remained so for years.

  He was somewhere between sidekick and assistant. I’d been living in a hotel at the time, and when I moved in with Elaine across the street at the Parc Vendome, I kept that room as an office. But I spent less and less time in that hotel room, and the day came when I gave it to TJ.

  I don’t know where he lived before then. He kept a lot to himself.

  I did some more mental math, and I said, “Do you know how old he is now?”

  “No. But you’re gonna tell me, and it won’t make me happy.”

  “He was probably fourteen when I met him. Wiser than his years, certainly, but chronologically something like fourteen or fifteen. He’s got to be forty now.”

  “No. That’s impossible.”

  “Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one. Somewhere in there.”

  “Oh, I know you’re right. I just can’t get my mind around it. In my head he’ll be a boy forever. Remember his rhyming slang?”

  “ ‘When we gone eat? ’Cause I be starvin’, Marvin.’ ”

  “ ‘So let’s do it, Prewitt.’ ”

  “ But that was early on,” I said. “It didn’t take him all that long to let go of that.”

  “You’re saying he outgrew it, Prewitt?”

  I gave her a look. “He grew up,” I said. “Went through changes, but never quit being TJ. It was pretty wonderful to watch, really.”

  Across the street at his computer, day-trading stocks. Uptown at Columbia, slipping into classrooms and getting more out of the lectures than the kids whose parents were paying a few hundred dollars a credit. Most of the professors didn’t notice he was there. Most of the ones who did were happy to let him stick around.

  After he’d been doing this for a few years, a history professor called him over after class. “What you really ought to do,” he told him, “is audit Carter Hartwell’s class on the Reconstruction era. He gets into stuff we just glide over.”

  TJ didn’t recognize the name.

  “He’s at NYU. I’m sure he wouldn’t object to a bright young man sitting in the back of the room and hanging on to his every word. You know what? I’ll make a phone call.”

  So he took courses, not for credit, at both universities, and by his mid-twenties he’d been in and out of more classrooms than the maintenance staff. More than one professor had said it was a shame he hadn’t been a matriculated student all along, that he’d have a doctorate by now. And instead, what did he have? A high school diploma?


  Not even that. He’d skipped high school altogether. After eighth grade, he’d bided his time until, just out of curiosity, he turned up at Columbia.

  “IF YOU HAD A photograph of Paul,” she said, “you could give it to TJ.”

  “If he was still a teenager.”

  “ ‘If we had some eggs,’ ” she said, “ ‘we could have ham and eggs, if we had some ham.’ You’re sure you don’t want lunch?”

  “Positive.”

  “Coffee? Anything?”

  “No.”

  “Is there any way to get a photo of the son of a bitch?”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Find a place to lurk and when he turns up whip out your phone and take his picture.”

  “I’d have to take everybody’s picture,” I pointed out, “because I wouldn’t be able to recognize him.”

  “Because for that we’d need a photo.”

  “Right.”

  “And it’s too late to give it to TJ, anyway, because somehow or other that little boy got to be forty years old. What happens to the years, anyway? Where do they go?”

  “Wherever it is,” I said, “they don’t come back. How did I get so old?”

  “Same way I did.”

  “No, you’re still a sweet young thing. I’m an old man.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “A few hours ago you seemed pretty young. Vigorous, even.”

  “Vigorous.”

  “Uh-huh. I remember something you said about old age.”

  “That it’s a pain in the ass?”

  “No, it was something you heard at a meeting, and you liked it enough to bring it home to me. How it’s a privilege.”

  I remembered. “It was downtown,” I said. “I was at Perry Street. What was I doing there?”

  “Oh, gee, I don’t know. Staying sober?”

  “Raymond Gruliow, Esquire. Hard-way Ray, except at Perry Street he’s known as Ray G.”

  “Because anonymity is everything.”

  “He was speaking and he invited me to come down and hear his qualification. Was it his anniversary? It may have been.”

  “And he said the line?”

  “No, but he liked it well enough so that we talked about it afterward over coffee. It was during the discussion, and a woman spoke up. ‘Old age is not a burden. It is a privilege denied to many.’ What was her name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I can picture her,” I said, “and if I were an artist I could draw her face. She grew up in northern New England, Maine or Vermont. She was a librarian.”

  “Marian the Librarian?”

  “No, but that came to mind because her name was Mary. ‘Old age is a privilege denied to many.’ ”

  “It’s probably good for us to remember that,” she said. “Every once in a while.” She frowned. “Something you said.”

  “Something I said?”

  “God, I hate when that happens. Something you said triggered a thought, and then the conversation went on, and the thought got lost. What were we saying?”

  “Mary the Librarian,” I said. “Old age. A privilege, not a burden.”

  “Before that.”

  “How far back? You said I was vigorous for an old man on his last legs.”

  “Well, you are. But that’s not it. Perry Street, anonymity, Ray’s anniversary. How many years has he got now?”

  “Four.”

  “That’s all? And what’s so funny?”

  “The traditional response is ‘Isn’t that wonderful,’ not ‘That’s all.’ ”

  “I just thought he’d been going to meetings a lot longer than that. Oh, I guess he’s had relapses.”

  “It took him a little while to get his footing,” I said, “and then he picked up a drink again. The circumstances were in his qualification. He met this attractive European woman at a conference, and the conversation just sparkled, and she said, ‘Why don’t we have a glass of wine?’ And he didn’t want the wine, but he didn’t want to kill the mood, either. And by the end of the evening he was in a fake Irish pub on Columbus Avenue, knocking back the Bushmill’s while all the other drunks hung on his every word.”

  “And the attractive European woman?”

  “Left the meeting with her girlfriend.”

  “These things happen.”

  “But he’s sober now,” I said, “and as of that meeting he had four years, but it must be closer to five by now.”

  “Five years,” she said “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  HALF AN HOUR LATER she came over to where I was sitting. She had a dish towel in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, and she said, “Ray G.”

  “As in Gruliow. What about him?”

  “Not him,” she said. “The other Ray G.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I had the thought and I couldn’t find my way back to it. And then a minute ago it was just there, and I wanted to tell you before it went away again. But I’m pretty sure it won’t at this point, and now I’ve told you, so—”

  “Are they still living in Williamsburg?”

  “As far as I know. And I would think he’d still have the same number. I can look it up.”

  But it was in my phone’s list of contacts. I made the call.

  TUESDAY MORNING I AWOKE from a dream and when I got back from the bathroom I decided I wanted to get back into it. I couldn’t find my way into the dream, it had gone wherever dreams go, but I did manage to fall asleep again and got two more hours. Dreamless hours, as far as I could tell.

  For breakfast I had a piece of toast and a cup of coffee, because in less than two hours I’d be meeting Ray Galindez for lunch at the Morning Star. It was getting on for noon when Elaine left for the Croatian church, and not long after that when I headed out for my meeting with Ray.

  I picked a table at the front window where I could keep an eye on the door, and ordered coffee while I waited. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen Ray, and I decided it had to be about as long ago as Ray Gruliow’s last drink. Elaine had seen him more frequently than I, as they’d had an ongoing business relationship while her shop was still open. But as for me . . .

  Maybe it had been longer than five years. Jesus, would I recognize him?

  I kept looking toward the entrance, and it wasn’t long before he came in, wearing pressed jeans and a blazer and carrying a black leather portfolio, and of course I recognized him instantly. I raised a hand, and he saw me and came over, and after the handshake he took a seat across from me.

  “You look the same,” I said.

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing? But you, Matt. You look terrific. What’s so funny?”

  “The three stages of a man’s life,” I said. “Youth, middle age, and ‘You look wonderful!’ ”

  “I never heard that one. But you do, you know. Life good?”

  “No complaints.”

  “What about Elaine? Does she miss the shop?”

  Once she’d left the life, Elaine looked around for something to do. She took classes and was a regular at her gym, but none of that was work, and she felt the need for work. She’d always had a good eye for art and antiques, and one day she signed a lease for a small Ninth Avenue storefront a few blocks south of our apartment. I forget what they used to sell there, but she replaced the existing sign with her name, ELAINE MARDELL, and stocked it with items from her storage locker.

  One day we came home from a Matisse show at MOMA, and she said, “You know, he was a genius, and—”

  “Matisse?”

  “Uh-huh. A genius, and the Fauve style holds up marvelously, and I wouldn’t want to say this in front of the man himself, or in front of anybody but you, actually, but—”

  “But your average four-year-old kid could paint like that?”

  “No,” she said. “No no no. But there are some paintings of his that are not all that different from what you see in thrift shops. He knew what he was doing, and the thrift-shop artists didn’t, e
xcept maybe intuitively. And he knew how to get the effects he wanted, and they didn’t, and who’s to say that they got what they were aiming for? But if you look through enough bins of amateur crap, like one thrift shop after another—”

  “You might find something to hang on the walls.”

  “The shop’s walls.”

  “Right.”

  “Not our walls.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  The shop was fun for her. Fun for both of us, in fact, as I sometimes spelled her when she had a yoga class or a hair appointment, or the urge to prowl second-hand shops in a search for the next unheralded masterpiece. I enjoyed the interaction with the people who wandered into the shop, didn’t mind the bargaining that was a part of many transactions, and felt triumphant when somebody actually bought something.

  The place showed a profit, although we would have been hard put to live on it. But it kept us busy and it earned its keep, and she’d still have it but for the fact that the landlord quadrupled the rent.

  She came home and sat down with a pencil and paper, and an hour later she said she couldn’t make it work. “We’d be losing minimum of two grand a month staying open,” she said. “Probably more like three.”

  “We can do it if you want. We can afford it, can’t we?”

  She’d put money aside during her call girl years, then followed the advice of one of her regulars and began investing in real estate. Now she owned a batch of apartment houses in Queens, and enjoyed a nice stream of income from them. I had my pension and Social Security, plus the occasional windfall dollars I’d managed to set aside, so we were comfortable. If we had to subsidize the shop to the tune of twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars a year, we could do so without missing any meals.

  She shook her head. “It started out as a business. This would turn it into a hobby, and what the hell do I need with a hobby. You remember the joke?”

  “The guy with the bees?”

  “Thousand upon thousands of bees, and he lives in two rooms on Pitkin Avenue. ‘Charlie, where do you keep them?’ ‘In a cigar box.’ ‘Don’t they get all crushed, jammed together like that?’ ‘Hey, fuck it, it’s only a hobby.’ Well, I don’t want a hobby.”