A Drop of the Hard Stuff: A Matthew Scudder Novel

by Lawrence Block

  “A paragraph about each person.”

  “And some of them were long paragraphs. I would think that the person who killed him would almost have to be on that list.”

  “And you have a copy.”

  “Did I already mention that?”

  “No, but you wouldn’t have much of a dilemma without it. You’ve got his Eighth Step list and you have to decide what to do with it.”

  “If the police had leads, if they knew who did it whether or not they could make a case, then I wouldn’t have a problem. I’d destroy his list and that would be the end of it. But they don’t, and they very likely won’t, and won’t try very hard. So I’m in possession of information that might help them, and it’s my duty as a citizen to make it available to them.”

  “But?”

  “But there are around two dozen names on that list, Matt! That doesn’t mean there are that many suspects, because he’s got his dead father on the list, and a couple of other dead folks, and he’s got a high school girlfriend whose pants he lied his way into, and other people who’d be unlikely to respond with a couple of bullets if he turned up and said he was sorry. But that still leaves a third or more with mean lives and criminal histories, and only one of them could have killed him, and how can I chance getting all the others in trouble?”

  “And if his purpose all along was to make it up to these individuals—”

  “Exactly! One minute he turns up and says he’s sorry, it was the drink that made him do it, and here’s that ten bucks I never paid you, or a new lamp to replace the one I knocked off the table. And the next minute he’s dead, and the cops are knocking on the door.”

  “And the men on the list aren’t the sort who welcome the attention of men in blue uniforms.”

  “Or Robert Hall suits. Although Mr. Redmond was quite nicely dressed, as a matter of fact.”

  “He’s a detective.”

  “Oh, do they dress better than the others? I never knew that.”

  Two days after I got my gold shield, Eddie Koehler took me to a Fifth Avenue men’s shop called Finchley’s. The building’s facade looked like a Norman castle, and I walked out feeling like a lord, having just bought a suit for three times what I normally spent.

  I’d bought the suit to impress the public, because I’d been assured that I was a detective now, and had an image to protect. But there were other benefits; my wife had admired that suit, and so had my girlfriend.

  There had been other suits, of course, but that was the one I remembered—two-button, single-breasted, the medium-blue glen-plaid fabric almost silky to the touch. (“A nice hand,” the salesman had said.) Uncuffed pants. (“I don’t believe we want cuffs, do we?”)

  I wonder what happened to that suit. Far as that goes, I wonder what happened to Finchley’s. The last time I happened to look, it was gone. The crenellated building had a new tenant, with a window full of fake ivory and Orientalia for the tourist trade.

  Something’s there and then it’s not.

  Greg’s problem was clear enough. If he turned Jack’s Eighth Step list over to the surprisingly well-dressed Dennis Redmond, he’d be making trouble for people who’d had nothing to do with the murder. If he didn’t, he’d be helping a killer go free.

  I asked him if he’d talked it over with his sponsor.

  “I wish I could,” he said. “Do you know about the gay cancer? Kaposi’s sarcoma, it’s called, although I may be mispronouncing it. It’s extremely rare, or at least it used to be, but now every gay man starts the day checking himself for purple blotches. Adrian got very sick, and we were afraid he was going to die of it, because there’s no cure. But what actually killed him was pneumonia. A very rare form of pneumonia, except it’s not that rare anymore either, not if you’re a homosexual male.”

  I’d heard a little about it. There’d been a death in my home group at St. Paul’s, and another member had been hospitalized several times with persistent fevers that they didn’t know how to treat.

  “No one knows what causes it,” he said. “A friend of mine thinks it has something to do with the synergistic effect of leather and quiche. We may all die of it, Matt, but we’ll have some laughs along the way.”

  His sponsor, Adrian, had died just over a month ago, and he hadn’t picked a replacement. “I’ve been holding silent auditions,” he said, “trying people out without letting them know about it. It’ll have to be someone older than I, and with longer sobriety, but someone who still goes to meetings on a daily basis, or close to it. I don’t want a gay man because I don’t want to go through this again, and I don’t want a straight man because I just don’t. Lately I’ve been thinking I should get a female sponsor, but do I want a straight woman or a lesbian?”

  “Another dilemma,” I said.

  He nodded. “And one that will solve itself in the fullness of time. As opposed to my other dilemma, which requires action. Matt, you were a policeman. Are you likely to go back to that?”

  “Get reinstated?” I’d thought about it early on, talked it over with Jim Faber. “No,” I said. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “So now you’re a private detective.”

  “Not exactly. Private investigators are licensed. After I left the department, I started working privately for people, but in a very unofficial off-the-books kind of way. I would be doing favors, and they’d be giving me money as an expression of gratitude.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m looking for a job the way you’re looking for a sponsor,” I said. “Someone suggested a free program, EPRA, I forget what the initials stand for—”

  “Employment Program for Recovering Alcoholics. Jack started going, but he wasn’t able to stick with it. He got by delivering lunches for a deli. Not exactly a career, but a pretty good get-sober job.”

  “Well, my get-sober job seems to be the one I had when I came in. In the past eleven months I’ve had enough work come my way so that the rent keeps getting paid and I don’t miss any meals.”

  “You do favors for people, and they show their gratitude.”

  “Right.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’d like you to do me a favor.”

  IX

  IT WAS WELL past midnight by the time I got home. There were no messages waiting for me, just the usual run of junk mail. I tossed it when I got to my room, but I kept the 9x12 manila envelope addressed to Gregory Stillman, with the hand-stamped return address of a firm in Wichita, Kansas. It had once held a catalog of jewelers’ supplies, but now it contained Jack Ellery’s Eighth Step, the list of people he had allegedly harmed, among whose number one might well expect to find the name of his killer.

  I’d glanced at the first page of the list, just to make sure I’d be able to read Jack’s handwriting, and had then watched Greg slip it into the envelope and fasten the metal clasp. Now I put it on my dresser unopened and got out of my clothes and under the shower.

  The envelope was still there when I got out of the shower. I opened it and drew out a sheaf of unruled pages held together by a paper clip. The pages were numbered, and there were nine of them, all covered with Jack’s compact but legible handwriting, dark blue ink on white paper.

  The first name at the top of the first page was Raymond Ellery, who turned out to be Jack’s late father. I read a couple of sentences and felt a wave of tiredness wash over me. This could wait, all of it. I put the pages back in the envelope, refastened the clasp, and got into bed.

  I remembered that I hadn’t prayed. I didn’t see the point of it, it wasn’t really my style, but I’d spent almost a year now doing things that weren’t my style and that I only occasionally saw the point of. So I kept it simple, starting the day by asking for another day of sobriety, ending it with thanks for another sober day.

  But only when I remembered. I remembered now, but I was in bed with the light out, and I didn’t really feel like getting out of bed and down on my knees—which wasn’t really my style either.

  “Thank you,” I sai
d to whatever might be listening. And let it go at that.

  “He gave me a thousand dollars,” I told Jim. “Ten hundred-dollar bills. He didn’t have to count them, he had them set aside in his wallet, so I don’t guess he was making things up as he went along.”

  “I trust you remembered your police training.”

  “I put it in my pocket.”

  Another thing Vince Mahaffey had told me, years ago in Brooklyn. That’s what you did when somebody handed you money.

  “You don’t sound happy,” Jim said, “for somebody with a thousand dollars in his pocket.”

  “Most of it’s gone. I paid the next month’s rent, and I sent Anita a money order. I put a couple of bucks in the bank, and what’s left is in my wallet.”

  “All of it? Or did you give up a tenth of your crop as a burnt offering to the gods?”

  “Well,” I said.

  Some years ago I’d gotten in the habit of tithing, slipping ten percent of what money I received into the first church collection box I came to. Jim found this an amusing eccentricity, and one he assumed would fade away in sobriety. Meanwhile the Catholics got most of my money, if only because their sanctuaries were more likely to be open, and on my way home I’d detoured to pay my respects to the poor box at St. Paul the Apostle. And while I was there I lit a couple of candles, one of them for Jack Ellery.

  “You’re still a few dollars ahead of where you were yesterday,” Jim pointed out, “and you still don’t sound very happy.”

  “I took the money,” I said. “Now I have to earn it.”

  “By finding out who killed your friend.”

  “By finding out if there’s a name here I feel comfortable passing on to Redmond. I suppose that amounts to the same thing.”

  “Can’t you just eliminate the ones who couldn’t have done it and give him whoever’s left?”

  “Stillman could have done that himself,” I said. “The idea is to avoid creating a problem for someone who’s innocent of Jack’s murder, even though he may not be innocent of much else.”

  “Some nasty people on that list?”

  “I don’t know who’s on it,” I said, “except for Jack’s father, and he’s been dead for a few years now.”

  “Which would constitute exculpatory evidence, wouldn’t it? You haven’t read the list?”

  “I was too tired last night, and this morning I found other things to do. I guess I’ll go read it now.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” my sponsor said.

  But it still wasn’t something I wanted to do, and I went back to the room entertaining the fantasy that the manila envelope would have disappeared during my absence. The maid—whose weekly visit was a day away—would have come early, changing my sheets and emptying my wastebasket and consigning Jack’s Eighth Step to the incinerator. Or a burglar would have broken in and, annoyed at having found nothing worth stealing, would have walked off with it. Or spontaneous combustion, or a flash flood, or—

  It was there. I sat down and read it.

  By the time I was done I’d skipped lunch, and the sun was down. I went out and had something to eat before my regular Friday night step meeting at St. Paul’s. I had the urge to leave at the break but made myself stay for the whole meeting.

  “I’m going to pass on coffee tonight,” I told Jim. “I think I’ll go to a bar instead.”

  “You know, there’s been many a time I’ve had that thought myself.”

  “I read that fucking list,” I said, “and it took forever, because I kept stopping and staring out the window.”

  “At the liquor store across the street?”

  “At the Trade Center towers, I suppose, but I wasn’t really looking at anything. Just gazing off into the distance. It was hard going, Jim. I got more of a peek than I wanted into the guy’s heart and soul.”

  “So what else would you want to do but go to a bar?”

  I gave him a look. “I’ve got a slip of paper with five names on it, and there’s a guy I want to run them past.”

  “And the bar’s where you have to meet him.”

  “It’s where he’ll be. The Top Knot or Poogan’s Pub. He switches back and forth.”

  “A man wouldn’t want to get stuck in a rut,” he said. “You think it might be a good idea to take someone with you?”

  “I’m not going to drink.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re not, but you might be more comfortable with a sober friend along.”

  I thought about it, weighed that against the inhibiting effect of a stranger at the table. “Not this time,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Whichever bar you’ll find him in, I’m sure they’ll have a pay phone. And you’ve got plenty of quarters, don’t you?”

  “Quarters and subway tokens. Although I won’t need a token. I’ll be on West Seventy-second, I’ll walk there and back.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “The exercise’ll do you good.”

  I walked up to the corner of Seventy-second and Columbus. Poogan’s was half a block one way and the Top Knot was about as far in the other direction, and I felt like the donkey standing midway between two bales of hay. Either you made an arbitrary choice or you starved to death. I flipped a mental coin and went to the Top Knot, and of course he was at Poogan’s, sitting at a table with an iced bottle of Stoli in a wood-grained plastic bucket.

  The man at the table was holding a Rubik’s Cube, not manipulating it, just frowning at it. I walked over and said, “Hello, Danny Boy,” and without raising his eyes he said, “Matthew, have you ever seen one of these things?”

  “I’ve seen them. I’ve never actually played with one of them.”

  “Somebody gave this to me,” he said. “The idea is to wind up with solid colors on all six sides, though why anyone would want to go to the trouble is beyond me. Do you want this?”

  “No, but thanks.”

  He put the device on the table, looked up at me, smiled broadly. “Sit down,” he said. “It’s good to see you. Maybe I’ll leave this toy for the waitress. I get the feeling she’s easily amused. You’re looking well, Matthew. Something to drink?”

  “Maybe a Coke,” I said, “but there’s no hurry. We can wait until she shows up to collect her Rubik’s Cube.”

  “That’s what it’s called. I was thinking Kubek, but I knew that was wrong. Remember Tony Kubek?”

  The Yankee infielder, and I did indeed remember him, and we talked baseball for a few minutes. Then the waitress came by and I ordered a Coke, and Danny Boy took a drink of vodka and let her top up his glass.

  Danny Boy Bell is a diminutive albino Negro, always superbly dressed by the boys’ departments at Saks and Paul Stuart. His albinism has made him a creature of the night, but I think he’d keep vampire’s hours regardless of his skin’s sensitivity to sunlight. The world needs two things, I’ve heard him say, a dimmer switch and a volume control, both of them dialed way down. Dark rooms and soft music are his natural preference, all washed down with vodka, with the occasional company of some pretty young woman unburdened by much in the way of brainpower.

  When I was working out of the Sixth, Danny Boy was my best snitch, and one of only a few whose company didn’t make me feel like I needed a shower. He wasn’t looking to beat a criminal charge, or even a score, or feel important. He was in fact not so much a snitch as a broker in information, and every night he put in his hours at Poogan’s or the Knot, and people on every side of the law pulled up a chair at his table to ask him things or tell him things or both. He lived within a few blocks of both of his hangouts, and he rarely went anywhere else unless it was to watch a fight at the Garden or catch a set at a jazz club. Mostly he sat in his chair and drank his vodka, and it might have been water for all the visible effect it had on him.

  My Coke came, and I took a sip and wondered what visible effect it had on me.

  I said, “There’s a fellow who got himself killed a week ago. Lived in a furnished room in the East Nineties, made ends meet
by delivering lunches for a delicatessen in the neighborhood.”

  “The ends couldn’t have been too far apart,” he said, “if that brought in enough to make them meet. What was his name?”

  “John Joseph Ellery, but everyone called him Jack.”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t hear about the murder, and I can’t say the name rings a bell. What did he do before he decided to give UPS some competition?”

  “A little of this and a little of that.”

  “Ah, a useful trade. And was he still doing a little of both when he wasn’t helping them out at the deli?”

  “He went straight,” I said, and brandished my glass of Coke. “And found a new way of life.”

  “A drier path, so to speak. A path I see you’re still pursuing yourself, Matthew. It’s been a while now, hasn’t it?”

  “A year next month.”

  “That’s great,” he said, and it was clear he meant it, which pleased me. Not everyone I used to drink with was all that enthusiastic about the road I’d taken, and Jim said their reaction said more about them and their own drinking than it did about me and my sobriety. Some felt threatened, he said, while others assumed I’d disapprove of them and wanted to beat me to the punch.

  All the subject of drinking did for Danny Boy was remind him that he had a full glass in front of him, and in response he drank some of it. He said, “John Ellery, better known as Jack. Jack Ellery. Where’d he get killed?”

  “At home.”

  “In his furnished room. How?”

  “Two bullets. One in the forehead, one in the mouth.”

  “ ‘Keep your mouth shut’?”

  “Most likely.”

  “As opposed to ‘You shoulda kept your mouth shut, you fucking rat bastard,’ with the penis severed and stuffed into the mouth, or sometimes halfway down the throat. Are the Italians the only ones who employ that particular calling card, Matthew, or is it in wider use?”

  I had no idea.

  “A little of this, and a little of that. I hate to press for details, but—”