Even the Wicked: A Matthew Scudder Novel (Matthew Scudder Mysteries)

by Lawrence Block

  “How’s that?”

  “They want an exclusive. Remember what the fellow said after they tarred and feathered him and rode him out of town on a rail?”

  “Something about honor, wasn’t it?”

  “‘But for the honor of it, I’d have preferred to leave town in the usual manner.’ I may not have it word for word, but since it’s an apocryphal story, how could anybody have it word for word? It’s nice to be wanted, but I’m finding it easier and easier to say no. Except for McGraw.”

  “What did he want?”

  “What they all want. An interview.”

  He said something else, but I didn’t catch it. I was off chasing an errant thought, trying to run it down. I said, “No private meetings.”

  “Come again?”

  “I wouldn’t see anyone,” I said, “without your bodyguards present in the room.”

  “Not even a fat old newspaperman, eh?”

  “Not even the cardinal.”

  “Really? There’s something about the guy that inspires confidence. I guess it’s the red hat, makes him look like one of the Guardian Angels.” He laughed and I laughed with him, and he told me to relax. “The cardinal hasn’t called,” he said, “and Marty didn’t want a meeting, just a phoner. Five minutes of my time, and could I please hand him something his and his alone that he could make a column out of. I don’t think I gave him anything, but he can always spin a column out of thin air. He’s done it often enough in the past.”

  We told each other good-bye and I hung up the phone and turned off the TV without finding out what the silent figures were chattering about. I had an idea, and I sat there and let myself play with it. It seemed farfetched, and it struck me as something the police would have long since ruled out, but you never know. If nothing else, it gave me something to do.

  As it turned out, a few hours on the telephone put me right back at square one. You couldn’t say it was pointless, in that I was now able to let go of a stray thought that had come my way, but neither could I get much feeling of accomplishment out of it.

  Meanwhile Marty McGraw did manage to conjure up a column out of what Adrian had given him, a ruminative piece on the pluses and minuses of celebrity status. Another columnist in the same paper started out musing on the fate of Byron Leopold, but after a paragraph or two he went on to something else, and so did I. I could hardly claim close ties with Byron, I hadn’t even known his last name, and the apprehension of his murderer was the responsibility of the fellows at the Sixth Precinct. They could handle it just fine without any help from me.

  Except they didn’t, not right away, and I found myself being drawn in for no good reason. On Thursday, two days after the murder, I realized in my wanderings that I was a five-minute walk from the murder scene. I went over there and sat on a park bench for half an hour. I got into a couple of conversations, then went over and exchanged a few words with the doorman at Byron’s building.

  Saturday afternoon there was a memorial service for him at St. Luke’s on Hudson Street. People who had known him during the years he was sober shared reminiscences. I listened as if for clues.

  Afterward I had a cup of coffee with Ginnie. “It’s funny,” she said. “I keep having the feeling that I ought to hire you.”

  “To find the guy who shot Byron? The cops can do a better job of that than I can.”

  “I know. The feeling persists all the same. You know what I think it is? I’d be doing something for him, Matt. And there’s nothing else I can do for him.”

  Later that day I had a call from Adrian Whitfield. “You know what?” he said. “I’ve figured out how the son of a bitch is going to get me. He’s fixing it so I die of boredom.”

  “You hear about people dying of boredom,” I said, “but you don’t see it listed as ‘cause of death’ on a whole lot of autopsy reports.”

  “It’s a cover-up, like the Catholics do with suicide. People who die of boredom can’t be buried in hallowed ground. Did you ever know a fellow named Benedetto Nappi?”

  “I think I saw a couple of his paintings at the Frick.”

  “Not unless there’s a side to the man that I don’t know about. Benny the Suitcase is what they called him, although I couldn’t tell you why. The story goes that he had a job starting Tony Furillo’s car. He’d warm up the engine, and then if there was no explosion that meant it was safe for Tony to go for a ride.”

  “Like a food taster.”

  “Exactly like a food taster. You turned the key in the ignition and when nothing happened you went back home and watched cartoons. Benny did this for a couple of months and then quit. Not because he couldn’t take the pressure. I don’t think he noticed any pressure. ‘Nothing ever happens,’ he complained. Of course if anything ever did happen you’d have had to pick him up with a sponge, but all he knew was the boredom was too much for him.”

  “And you know how he feels.”

  “I do, and in point of fact I’ve got less right to complain than Benny ever had. I could gripe about having to wear body armor during a heat wave, but the truth of the matter is that I go from an air-conditioned apartment to an air-conditioned limo to an air-conditioned office. It’s hotter than hell on the street, but I don’t get to spend enough time out there to matter.”

  “You’re not missing a thing.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. I don’t know that Kevlar flatters my figure much, and it’s not the last word in comfort, but it’s not like a hair shirt. So here I am living my life and waiting for the bomb to go off, and when it doesn’t I start feeling cheated. What about you? Are you getting anywhere at all?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about sending you your money back.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I can’t think of a good way to earn it. I’ve put in some hours, but I don’t think I’ve learned anything I didn’t already know, and I’m certainly in no position to improve on the official investigation.”

  “And?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “Well, there is,” I said, and I told him about Byron Leopold.

  He said, “He’s what, a friend of a friend?”

  “Essentially, yes. I knew him, but just to say hello to.”

  “But not so closely that you can’t sleep as long as his killer walks the streets.”

  “I’m surprised there hasn’t been an arrest by now,” I said. “I thought I’d give it a couple of days, but I’ve already got a client.”

  “You’ve never worked more than one case at a time?”

  “Occasionally, but—”

  “But you think I’ll feel cheated. I’m walking around under sentence of death and you ought to be earning the money I paid you, not moonlighting while the sun shines. The friend wants to hire you?”

  “She mentioned it. I wouldn’t take her money.”

  “You’d be working pro bono.”

  “You lawyers and your Latin phrases.”

  “A man sits on a bench in a pocket park with a cup of coffee and the New York Times. Another man walks up, shoots him, runs off. And that’s it, right?”

  “So far.”

  “Victim had AIDS. What is it, homophobia?”

  “Byron was straight. He used to shoot dope, he got AIDS sharing needles.”

  “So maybe the killer was an ill-informed homophobe. Or it’s the other way round, some kind of mercy killing. Is that how you’re thinking?”

  “Those are some of the possibilities.”

  “Here’s another. You figure there’s any possible connection between this incident and our friend Will?”

  “Jesus,” I said. “That never crossed my mind.”

  “And now that it has?”

  “Crossed it and kept right on going,” I said. “If there’s a connection, I can’t say it leaps out at me. He didn’t announce it first or claim credit for it afterward. And the victim was the furthest thing
from a public figure. Where’s the connection?”

  “It’s so random,” he said. “So pointless.”

  “So?”

  “Whereas Will’s hits are all very specific. He addresses his target directly and tells him why he’s got it coming.”

  “Right.”

  “His official hits, that is.”

  “You think he’s doing some unannounced killing?”

  “Who knows?”

  “What would be the point?”

  “What’s the point of any of it?” he said. “What’s the point of killing me, for God’s sake? Maybe he likes killing and he can’t get enough of it. Maybe he’s planning to shoot me and he wants to practice on an easy target, somebody who’s not expecting it and isn’t surrounded by bodyguards. Maybe the little pas de deux in Jackson Square was a dress rehearsal.”

  It was an interesting idea. It seemed farfetched, but it was sufficiently provocative so that I found myself suggesting other possibilities. We kicked it around for a few minutes, and then Whitfield said, “I don’t think there’s any connection and neither do you. But I don’t see why you can’t spend a couple of days looking for one. Don’t send me my money back. You’ll find a way to earn it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so. What I’m paying you is small change compared to what Reliable’s getting from me for guarding my body. Forty-eight man-hours a day, plus the limo and the driver, plus whatever extras get tacked on to the bill. It doesn’t take long to add up.”

  “If it keeps you alive—”

  “Then it’s worth it. And if it doesn’t, then paying the tab becomes somebody else’s headache. What a deal, huh? How can I lose?”

  “I think you’re going to be all right.”

  “Tell you something,” he said. “I think so, too.”

  5

  The next day was Sunday, and I didn’t have a hard time talking myself into taking the day off. I watched an hour or so of preseason football on television, but my heart wasn’t in it, which gave me something in common with the players.

  I have a standing dinner date on Sundays with Jim Faber, my AA sponsor, but he was out of town for the month of August. Elaine and I caught a movie across the street from Carnegie Hall, then had dinner at a new Thai place. We decided we liked our regular Thai place better.

  I got to bed fairly early, and after breakfast the next morning I went down to the Village. My first stop was the Sixth Precinct station house on West Tenth, where I introduced myself to a detective named Harris Conley. We wound up having coffee and Danish around the corner on Bleecker Street, and he told me what he knew about the murder of Byron Leopold.

  From there I went to Byron’s building on Horatio, where I once again spoke with the doorman. He’d been on duty when the shooting occurred, and he was thus able to tell me more than the man I’d exchanged a few words with earlier. He couldn’t let me in, but he summoned the building superintendent, a stocky fellow with an Eastern European accent and the stained fingers and strong scent of a heavy smoker. The super listened to my story, looked at my ID, and took me up to the fifteenth floor, where he opened Byron’s door with his passkey.

  The apartment was a large studio with a small bathroom and a pullman kitchen. The furniture was sparse, and unexceptional, as if someone had chosen it out of a catalog. There was a television set, books in a bookcase, a framed Hopper poster from a show a year ago at the Whitney. There was a hardcover book, a post-Cold War spy thriller, on the round coffee table, with a scrap of paper tucked in to mark his place. He’d got about a third of the way through it.

  I picked up a little brass elephant from its own small wooden stand on top of the television set. I weighed it in my hand. The super was across the room, watching me. “You want it,” he said, “put it in your pocket.”

  I put the little fellow back on his stand. “I think he’s already got a home,” I said.

  “Not for long. All this stuff gotta go out of here. Who’s it belong to now, can you tell me that?”

  I couldn’t. I told him I was sure somebody would be in touch with him.

  “Co-op board’s gonna want to put this on the market. He was a tenant, Mr. Leopold. He didn’t buy when he had the chance, so the apartment ain’t his no more. Clothes and furniture’d go to his family, if he had one. Somebody’s gotta come around, say, ‘All this here is mine now.’ Nobody shows up, where it all goes is the Salvation Army.”

  “I’m sure they’ll make good use of it.”

  “Anything real good, the drivers got dealers they call, tip ’em off. Then the dealer snaps it up and slips ’em a few bucks on the side. I saw you lookin’ at that book. You want, pick it up, take it home with you.”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  I went to the window, looked out at the park across the way. I poked through the closet.

  “Cops been through here a couple of times,” he said. “One of ’em took things. Thought I didn’t notice. I notice plenty.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  “Pills from the medicine chest, a watch from the table next to the bed. Wasn’t a cop, he’d make a good thief. One of the other cops, he didn’t want to touch anything. Walks around like this.” He stood with his arms folded and pressed snug against his chest. “Thinks he’s gonna catch it if he touches anything. Catch it from breathing the air. Stupid bastard. That ain’t how you catch it.”

  On the last morning of his life, Byron Leopold breakfasted on half a cantaloupe and a slice of toast. (They’d found the melon rind in the garbage, the melon’s other half wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator, the dishes he’d used stacked in the sink.) He made a pot of drip coffee and filled a lidded plastic cup, then collected his home-delivered copy of the Times from the mat in front of his door. With the paper tucked under his arm, the coffee cup in one hand and his rubber-tipped cane in the other, he rode the elevator downstairs and walked through the lobby.

  This was his usual routine. On cold or rainy mornings he stayed in his apartment and sat at the window while he drank his coffee and read his newspaper, but when the weather was good he went out and sat in the sun.

  He was sitting down, reading the paper, with his cup of coffee on the bench beside him. Then a man had approached him. The man was white, and the eyewitness consensus seemed to be that he was neither old nor young, neither tall nor short, neither stout nor lean. He was evidently wearing light-colored slacks, although one witness recalled him in jeans. His shirt was either a T or a short-sleeved sport shirt, depending on whose word you took. My sense was that nobody paid any real attention to him until they heard the gunshot. At that point the few who weren’t diving for cover tried to see what was going on, but by then the shooter was showing them his heels, and not much else.

  He said something to Byron. A couple of people heard him, and one said he called Byron by name. If that was true it meant the killing was other than wholly random, but the cop I talked to at the Sixth hadn’t placed much faith in that particular witness. He was a neighborhood street person, I was given to understand, his consciousness generally under the sway of one chemical or another, and apt to see and hear things imperceptible to you or me.

  Two shots, almost simultaneous. No one actually saw the gun. One witness remembered him as carrying a paper bag, and maybe he was, and if so he could have had the gun concealed in it. Both slugs entered the victim’s chest, and were evidently fired from a distance of five to ten feet. The gun was a .38 revolver, more than powerful enough for the task at hand, though hardly a high-tech armorpiercing weapon. If Byron had been wearing the Kevlar vest that Adrian Whitfield was griping about, he’d have lived to tell the tale.

  But he wasn’t, and the bullets entered side by side, one finding his heart and the other an inch or so to the right of it. The pain and shock must have been something beyond description, but they couldn’t have lasted long. Death was pretty close to instantaneous.

  Two shots, and the shooter was off and running before the light die
d in Byron’s eyes. He was lucky. He could have tripped and gone sprawling, he could have run around a corner and right into a cop. Or, failing that, he could have rushed past somebody who managed to get a good look at his face.

  Didn’t happen. He got away clean.

  That afternoon I beeped TJ, and he met me at a coffee shop a couple of blocks from there. “We been here before,” he said. “Fixed the place up since then. Looks nice.”

  “How’s the cheeseburger?”

  He considered the question. “Fulfillin’,” he said.