Walk Among the Tombstones: A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel

by Lawrence Block

  “I think we got away with it this time.”

  “Looks like it. Kenan uses smack now and then. I don’t know if you knew that.”

  “How would I know it?”

  “I didn’t figure you did. Maybe once a month he’ll snort up a bag. Maybe less than that. It’s recreational with him, he’ll go to a jazz club and do up a bag in the john so that he can get into the music better. The thing is, he didn’t let Francey know. He was sure she wouldn’t approve, and he didn’t want to do anything that would lower him in her eyes.”

  “Did she know he trafficked in it?”

  “That was different. That was business, that was what he did. And he wasn’t going to stay in it forever. A few years and out, that’s his plan.”

  “That’s everybody’s plan.”

  “I see what you’re saying. Anyway, she was cool about it. It was something he did, it was his business, it was off to one side in a separate world. But he didn’t want her to know he used sometimes.” He was silent for a beat. Then he said, “He was stoned the other day. I called him on it and he denied it. I mean, fuck, man, he’s gonna deceive a junkie on the subject of dope? Man’s obviously high and swears he’s not. I guess it’s because I’m clean and sober, he don’t want to put temptation in front of me, but give me credit for some basic intelligence, huh?”

  “Does it bother you that he can get high and you can’t?”

  “Does it bother me? Of course it fucking bothers me. He’s going to Europe tomorrow.”

  “He told me.”

  “Like he’s got to do a deal right away, build up the cash. That’s a good way to get arrested, rushing into deals. Or worse than arrested.”

  “Are you worried about him?”

  “Jesus,” he said. “I’m worried about all of us.”

  ON the bridge back to Manhattan he said, “When I was a kid I loved bridges. I collected pictures of them. My old man got it into his head that I should be an architect.”

  “You still could, you know.”

  He laughed. “What, go back to school? No, see, I never wanted that for myself. I didn’t have an inclination to build bridges. I just liked to look at ’em. I ever get the urge to pack it in, maybe I’ll do a Brodie off the Brooklyn Bridge. Be something to change your mind halfway down, wouldn’t it?”

  “I heard a guy qualify once. He came out of a blackout on one of the bridges, I think it was this one, on the other side of the railing and with one foot in space.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He sounded pretty serious to me. No memory of having gone there, just whammo, there he is with one hand on the rail and one foot in the air. He climbed back and went home.”

  “And had a drink, probably.”

  “I would think so. But imagine if he came to five seconds later.”

  “You mean after he took another step? Be a horrible feeling, wouldn’t it? Only good thing about it is it wouldn’t last long. Oh, shit, I should have got in the other lane. That’s all right, we’ll go a few blocks out of our way. I like it down here, anyway. You get down here much, Matt?”

  We were driving around the South Street Seaport, a restored area around the Fulton Street fish market. “Last summer,” I said, “my girlfriend and I spent the afternoon, walked around the shops, ate at one of the restaurants.”

  “It’s a little yuppied up, but I like it. Not in the summer, though. You know when it’s nicest? On a night like this when it’s cold and empty and you’ve got a light rain falling. That’s when it’s really beautiful down here.” He laughed. “Now that,” he said, “is a stone junkie talking, man. Show him the Garden of Eden and he’ll say he wants it dark and cold and miserable. An’ he wants to be the only one there.”

  IN front of my hotel he said, “Thanks, Matt.”

  “For what? I was planning on going to a meeting. I should be thanking you for the ride.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks for the company. Before you go, one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you all night. This job you’re doing for Kenan. You think you got much of a chance of getting anyplace with it?”

  “I’m not just going through the motions.”

  “No, I realize you’re giving it your best shot. I just wondered if you figured there was much chance it would pay off.”

  “There’s a chance,” I said. “I don’t know how good it is. I didn’t start out with a lot to work with.”

  “I realize that. You started with next to nothing, the way it looked to me. Of course you’re looking at it from a professional standpoint, you’re going to see it differently.”

  “A lot depends on whether some of the actions I’m taking lead anywhere, Pete. And their actions in the future are a factor, too, and they’re impossible to foresee. Am I optimistic? It depends when you ask me.”

  “Same as your Higher Power, huh? The thing is, if you come to the conclusion that it’s hopeless, don’t be in a rush to tell my brother, huh? Stay on it an extra week or two. So he’ll think he did everything he can.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “The thing is, it’s not something I have to be told. I’ve always been a stubborn son of a bitch. When I start something I have a hell of a time letting go of it. I think that’s the main way I solve things, to tell you the truth. I don’t do it by being brilliant. I just hang on like a bulldog until something shakes loose.”

  “And sooner or later something does? I know they used to say nobody gets away with murder.”

  “Is that what they used to say? They don’t say it much anymore. People get away with murder all the time.” I got out of the car, then leaned in to finish the thought. “That’s in one sense,” I said, “but in another sense they don’t. I don’t honestly think anybody ever gets away with anything.”

  Chapter 9

  I was up late that night. I tried sleeping and couldn’t, tried reading and couldn’t, and wound up sitting in the dark at my window, looking out at the rain falling through the light of the streetlamps. I sat and thought long thoughts. “The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” I read that line in a poem once, but you can think long thoughts at any age, if you can’t sleep and there’s a light rain falling.

  I was still in bed when the phone rang around ten. TJ said, “You got a pen, Glenn? You want to get one, write this down.” He reeled off a pair of seven-digit numbers. “Better write down seven-one-eight, too, ’cause you got to dial that first.”

  “Who will I get if I do?”

  “Woulda got me, was you home first time I called you. Man you harder to get than lucky! Called you Friday afternoon, called you Friday night, called you yesterday all day and all night up until midnight. You a hard man to reach.”

  “I was out.”

  “Well, I more or less ‘stablished that. Man, that was some trip you sent me on. Ol’ Brooklyn, it go on for days.”

  “There’s a lot of it,” I agreed.

  “More than you’d have a need for. First place I went, rode to the end of the line. Train came up above ground and I got to see some pretty houses. Looked like an old-time town in a movie, not like New York at all. Got to the first phone, called you. Nobody home. Went chasin’ out to the next phone, and man, that was a trip. I went down some streets that the people looked at me like, nigger, what you doin’ here? Didn’t nobody say anything, but you didn’t have to listen real hard to hear what they thinkin’.”

  “But you didn’t have any trouble.”

  “Man, I never have trouble. What I do, I make it a point to see trouble ‘fore trouble sees me. I found the second telephone, called you a second time. Didn’t get you ’cause you wasn’t there to be got. So I thinkin’, hey, maybe I’m closer to some other subway, on account of I am miles from where I get off the last one. So I go into this candy store, say, like, ‘Can you tell me where the nearest subway station is?’ I say it like that, you know, you woulda thought you was hearin’ an announcer on TV. Man looks at
me, says, ‘Subway?’ Like it not just a word he don’t know, it a whole concept he can’t get his mind around. So I just went back the way I came, man, back to the end of the Flatbush line, ’cause at least I knew how to do that.”

  “I think that was probably the closest station anyway.”

  “I think you right, ’cause I looked at subway map later an’ I couldn’t see one closer. One more reason to stay in Manhattan, man. You never far from a train.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “I sure was hopin’ you be there when I called. Had it all set, I run the number by you, say, ‘Call it right now.’ You dial, I pick up an’ say, ‘Here I am.’ Tellin’ you about it now it don’t seem all that cool, but I couldn’t wait to do it.”

  “I gather the phones had the numbers posted.”

  “Oh, right! That’s what I left out. Second one, the one way to hell an’ gone out Veterans Avenue? Where everybody look at you real strange? That phone did have the number posted. The other one, Flatbush an’ Farragut, it didn’t.”

  “Then how’d you get it?”

  “Well, I resourceful. Told you that, didn’t I?”

  “More than once.”

  “What I did, I call the operator. Say, ‘Hey, girl, somebody screwed up, ain’t no number here on the phone, so how do I know where I callin’ from?’ An’ she say how she got no way to tell what the number is of the phone I’m at, so she can’t help me.”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “Thought so myself. Thought they got all that equipment, you ask them a number at Information an’ they can say it about as fast as you can ask it, so how come they can’t give you the number of your own phone? An’ I thought, TJ, you fool, they took out the numbers to fuck up dope dealers, an’ here you go soundin’ just like one. So I dial 0 again, on account of you can call the operator all day long an’ never spend no quarter, it a free call. An’ you know you get somebody different every time you call. So I got some other chick, an’ this time I took all the street out of my voice, I said, ‘Perhaps you can help me, miss. I’m at a pay phone and I have to leave the number with my office for a call back, and someone defaced the phone with spray-painted graffiti in such a way that the number is impossible to make out. I wonder if you could possibly check the line and supply it for me.’ An’ I ain’t even through sayin’ it when she’s readin’ off the number for me. Matt? Oh, shit.”

  The recording had cut in to ask for more money.

  “Quarter ran out,” he said. “I got to feed in another one.”

  “Give me the number, I’ll call you.”

  “Can’t. I ain’t in Brooklyn now, I didn’t happen to con nobody out of the number for this particular phone.” The phone chimed as his coin dropped. “There, we be all right now. Pretty slick, though, way I got the other number. You there? How come you ain’t sayin’ nothing’?”

  “I’m stunned,” I said. “I didn’t know you could talk like that.”

  “What, you mean talk straight? ‘Course I can. Just because I street don’t mean I be ignorant. They two different languages, man, and you talkin’ to a cat’s bilingual.”

  “Well, I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah? I figured you’d be impressed I got to Brooklyn an’ back. What you got for me to do next?”

  “Nothing right now.”

  “Nothin’? Sheee, ought to be something I can do. I did good on this, didn’t I?”

  “You did great.”

  “I mean, man didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to find his way to Brooklyn an’ back. But it was cool how I got the number out of that operator, wasn’t it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I was bein’ resourceful.”

  “Very resourceful.”

  “But you still ain’t got nothin’ for me today.”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “Check with me in a day or two.”

  “Check with you,” he said. “Man, I’d check with you anytime you say if only you was there to be checked with. You know who oughta have a beeper? Man, you oughta have a beeper. I could beep you, you’d say to yourself, ‘Must be TJ tryin’ to get hold of me, must be important.’ What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then how come you laughin’? I be checkin’ with you every day, my man, because I think you need me workin’ for you. An’ that is final, Lionel.”

  “Hey, I like that.”

  “Thought you would,” he said. “Been savin’ it up for you.”

  IT rained all day Sunday and I spent most of the day in my room. I had the TV on and switched back and forth between tennis on ESPN and golf on one of the networks. There are days when I can get caught up in a tennis match but this wasn’t one of them. I can never get caught up in golf, but the scenery is pretty and the announcers aren’t as relentlessly chatty as they are in most other sports, so it’s not a bad thing to have going on while I sit thinking about something else.

  Jim Faber called in the middle of the afternoon to cancel our standing dinner date. A cousin of his wife’s had died and they had to go put in an appearance. “We could meet someplace now for a cup of coffee,” he said, “except it’s such a lousy day outside.”

  We spent ten minutes on the phone instead. I mentioned that I was a little worried about Peter Khoury, that he might pick up a drink or a drug. “The way he talked about heroin,” I said, “he had me wanting some myself.”

  “I noticed that about junkies,” he said. “They get this wistful quality, like an old man talking about his lost youth. You know you can’t keep him sober.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not sponsoring him, are you?”

  “No, but neither is anybody else. And last night he was using me like a sponsor.”

  “Be just as well if he didn’t formally ask you to be his sponsor. You’ve already got a professional relationship with his brother, and to an extent with him.”

  “I thought of that.”

  “But even if he did, that still doesn’t make him your responsibility. You know what constitutes being a successful sponsor? Staying sober yourself.”

  “It seems to me I’ve heard that.”

  “From me, probably. But nobody can keep anybody else sober. I’m your sponsor. Do I keep you sober?”

  “No,” I said. “I stay sober in spite of you.”

  “In spite of me or to spite me?”

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  “What’s Peter’s problem, anyway? Feeling sorry for himself because he can’t drink or shoot up?”

  “Snort.”

  “Huh?”

  “He stayed away from needles. But yeah, that’s most of it. And he’s pissed off at God.”

  “Shit, who isn’t?”

  “Because what kind of a God would let something like that happen to a wonderful person like his sister-in-law?”

  “God pulls that kind of shit all the time.”

  “I know.”

  “And maybe he had a reason. Maybe Jesus wants her for a sunbeam. Remember that song?”

  “I don’t think I ever heard it.”

  “Well, I hope to God you never hear it from me, because I’d have to be drunk to sing it. Do you figure he was fucking her?”

  “Do I figure who was fucking who?”

  “Whom. Do you figure Peter was fucking the sister-in-law?”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Why would I think that? You’ve got a hell of a mind, you know that?”

  “It’s the people I hang around with.”

  “It must be. No, I don’t think he was. I think he’s just feeling sad, and I think he wants to drink and take dope, and I hope he doesn’t. That’s all.”

  I called Elaine and told her I was free for dinner, but she’d already made arrangements for her friend Monica to come over. She said they were going to order Chinese food in, and I was welcome to come over, that way they could order more dishes. I said I would pass.

  “You’re afraid it’ll be an evening of girl talk,” sh
e said. “And you’re probably right.”

  Mick Ballou called while I was watching 60 Minutes and we talked for ten or twelve of them. I told him in the same breath that I had booked a trip to Ireland and that I’d had to cancel it. He was sorry I wasn’t coming over but glad I’d found something to keep me busy.

  I told him a little about what I was doing, but not the sort of person I was working for. He had no sympathy for drug dealers, and occasionally supplemented his income by invading their homes and taking their cash.

  He asked about the weather and I said it had been raining all day. He said it was always raining there, that he was finding it hard to recall what the sun looked like. Oh, and had I heard? They’d come up with evidence that Our Lord was Irish.

  “Is that so?”

  “It is,” he said. “Consider the facts. He lived with his parents until He was twenty-nine years old. He went out drinking with the lads the last night of His life. He thought His mother was a virgin, and herself, a good woman, she thought He was God.”

  THE week started slowly. I hammered away at the Khoury case, if you want to call it that. I managed to get the name of one of the officers who’d caught the Leila Alvarez homicide. She was the Brooklyn College student who’d been dumped in Green-Wood Cemetery, and the case belonged not to the Seventy-second Precinct but to Brooklyn Homicide. A Detective John Kelly had headed the investigation, but I had trouble reaching him and was reluctant to leave a name and number.

  I saw Elaine Monday and she was disappointed that her phone hadn’t been ringing off the hook with calls from rape victims. I told her she might not get any response, that it was like that sometimes, that you had to throw a lot of baited hooks in the water and sometimes you went a long time without a bite. And it was early, I said. It was unlikely the people she spoke to would have made any calls until the weekend was over.

  “It was over today,” she reminded me. I said if they did make calls it might take them a while to reach people, and it might take the victims a couple of days to make up their minds to call.