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

by Lawrence Block

  “He’s a police officer?”

  “A college student. He’ll be a lawyer when he’s through. Just what the world needs more of.”

  “You can’t have too many lawyers,” I said.

  “That seems to be the Good Lord’s view of the matter, the way he keeps making more of them. Won’t be long before they’ve got nobody left to sue but each other. He’s a bright young man, never mind who his uncle is, and photography’s his hobby.”

  “How is he at lurking?”

  “Lurking? Oh, to get the photo. I’d say he’s a devious cuss. Serve him in good stead in his chosen profession. Should I call him?” I said he should. “And when are we going to shoot some deer, will you tell me that?”

  “Probably never.”

  “Never make a hunter out of you, will we? You know what? Why don’t you come out here after the season’s over and we’ll just take a walk in the woods, which is the best part of hunting anyway. No guns to carry, and no risk of being mistaken for a twelve-point buck by somebody who had his breakfast out of a flask. Of course you don’t get to bring home any venison that way.”

  “Which spares you from having to pretend to enjoy it.”

  “Not your favorite meal, eh? Nor mine either, truth be known, but there’s something about going out and getting it that satisfies a man.”

  I called him from Elaine’s shop to tell him the photos had arrived and his nephew had done a good job.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, “but I’m not surprised. He always took good pictures, even as a little kid. I spoke to him just last night, and I’ll tell you what pleases me is how much fun he got out of doing the work. We could make a good police officer out of that boy.”

  “I bet your sister would love to hear that.”

  “Her and my brother-in-law both, and I guess I see their point. No question but that lawyers get richer than cops. Who ever said the world’s a fair place?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I swear it wasn’t me.”

  I spent a few hours minding the shop, and it’s a good thing I don’t have to do that too often. Someone—I think it was Pascal—wrote something to the effect that all of man’s problems stem from his inability to sit alone in a room. I’m generally pretty good at sitting alone in a room, with or without the TV on, but that day I found it a trial. For one thing, I wanted to be out on the streets doing something. For another, people kept interrupting me, and to no purpose. They would call up, ask for Elaine, want to know when she would be coming back, and ring off without leaving a name. Or they would come to the door, stick their heads in, register a certain amount of dismay at seeing me instead of the lady of the house, and go somewhere else.

  A couple of people did come in and browse, but I didn’t have to talk price with them, or make out charge card slips, because none of them tried to buy anything. One inquired about the price of several paintings—all the prices were clearly marked—and said that she would be back. That means about as much as saying “I’ll call you” to a woman after the two of you have seen a movie together. “People who keep shops,” Elaine had told me, “are more realistic than girls on dates. We know you won’t be back.”

  I had time to read the papers. Marty McGraw’s column did indeed include Will’s latest letter. Without naming names, the anonymous author made it clear that the three men on his list were just a starting point. Many more of us were candidates for his next list, unless we saw the light and mended our ways. The letter struck me as tired and unconvincing. I had the feeling Will #2 didn’t even believe it himself.

  TJ breezed in somewhere around the middle of the afternoon. He was wearing baggy jeans, with a down vest in hunter orange over his camo jacket. He was dressed for success, if your line of work happens to be street crime.

  “Got to change,” he said, slipping past me to the back room. He came back wearing khakis and a button-down shirt. “Don’t want to scare the customers off,” he said, “but if I went downtown like this, I’da scared the dude off.”

  “You found him?”

  He nodded. “Says it’s the man he saw.”

  “How sure is he?”

  “Sure enough to swear to it, ‘cept he ain’t about to swear to nothin’. Told him he wouldn’t have to. That straight?”

  “Probably. Can you take over now until Elaine gets back?”

  “No problem. Where you goin’, Owen?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “I don’t guess,” he said. “I detect. Where I detect you’s goin’ is Cleveland.”

  I told him he was a good detective.

  I’d already called from the shop to book the flight, and I walked over to Phyllis Bingham’s office to pick up the ticket, then back to the apartment to pack a bag with a clean shirt and a change of socks and underwear. I didn’t know how long this was going to take, but I figured to be away overnight no matter what.

  Phyllis had me flying Continental out of Newark. I beat the rush hour traffic to the airport, and by the time we were on the ground in Cleveland most of the commuters were sitting down to dinner. There was a small group of people with hand-lettered cardboard signs waiting at the security gate, and one of the signs had my name on it. The kid holding it was tall and rangy, with close-cropped reddish-blond hair and a narrow face.

  “I’m Matthew Scudder,” I said, “and you must be Jason Griffin. Your Uncle Tom said he’d try to reach you, and that you’d come if you had the time free.”

  He grinned. “He told me I’d better have the time free. ‘Meet his plane and drive him out to Lakewood, and anywhere else he wants to go.’ Is that where you want to go first? This man’s house in Lakewood?”

  I said it was, and we went to his car, a Japanese import a couple of years old. It sparkled, and I guessed that he’d taken it through a car wash on his way to the airport.

  On the way, I asked him what he knew about the case. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Tom didn’t tell you anything?”

  “My uncle’s a need-to-know kind of guy,” he said. “He gave me a name and an address and told me to go take the guy’s picture without being obvious about it. I told him I might have to buy a telephoto lens.”

  “I’ll reimburse you.”

  He grinned. “‘Borrow one,’ he said. So that’s what I did. I parked across the street from Mr. Havemeyer’s house and waited for him to come home. When he did get home he drove straight into the garage. It’s an attached garage, which is unusual in that neighborhood. They’re mostly older homes there, but his is newer than the others and it’s got a carport-type garage. So he went on in without giving me a look at him, let alone a chance to zoom in and take his picture.”

  “What did you do, wait for him to come out again?”

  “No, because he’d probably leave the same way, right? Uncle Tom hadn’t told me how to cope with this sort of situation. As a matter of fact the only advice he gave me—well, can you guess what it was?”

  “Bring a milk bottle.”

  “He said a wide-mouthed jar. Same difference. I asked him what I was supposed to do with it, and he said after I sat there for a couple of hours the answer would come to me. At which point I figured out what the jar was for. You’ll never guess what he told me next.”

  “What’s that?”

  “‘When the jar fills up, empty it in the gutter.’ I said, like, pour it out in the gutter? No one’ll see you, he said, and it’ll wash away. I told him thanks for the wise counsel, but I probably would have figured out how to empty the jar on my own. He said after all the rookies he’s trained over the years he’s learned to leave nothing to chance.”

  “He’s a wise man,” I said. “But I’m on your side. I have a feeling you’d have worked out the part about emptying the jar all by yourself.”

  “Maybe, but on the other hand I have to admit I never would have thought to bring the jar in the first place. You don’t ever see them peeing in bottles in the movies.”

  I agreed that you didn’
t. “How’d you get the pictures?”

  “There was this kid shooting baskets all by himself a few doors down the street. I told him I’d give him five bucks if he could ring the doorbell and get the man inside to come outside of his house. He went and rang it and ran off, and Mr. Havemeyer opened the door a crack and then shut it again. I snapped a picture but it wasn’t one of the ones I sent you because you couldn’t see anything. Anyway, I told the kid that wasn’t good enough, but if he did it again and got the guy to come out I’d pay him the five and another five on top of it.”

  “And it worked.”

  “He made it work. He went into his own house and got a paper bag about so big and filled it with crumpled newspaper. Then he put it on the stoop and set it on fire, and then he rang the bell again and pounded on the door and ran like a thief. Mr. Havemeyer opened the door a crack again, and then he rushed outside and started stomping and kicking at the burning bag.” He grinned. “It took me a minute to get focused because I was laughing too hard to hold the camera steady. It was pretty funny.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “It’s an old Halloween trick, actually.”

  “As I recall,” I said, “there’s a surprise in the bag.”

  “Well, yeah. Dog crap, so when you stomp out the fire you’re stepping in it. The kid skipped that part.”

  “Just as well.”

  “The pictures don’t show what he’s doing,” he said, “because with the lens I was right in tight on his face. But I have to laugh when I look at them, because his expression brings it all back.”

  “I thought he looked sort of beleaguered.”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s why.”

  Cleveland’s airport is south and west of the city. Lakewood is situated on the lake, appropriately enough, and a little ways to the west of Cleveland, so we could get there without running into city traffic. Jason drove and kept up his end of the conversation, and I found myself comparing him with TJ. Jason was probably a year or two older, and looked on the surface to have had an easier time of it, blessed as he was with a white face and a middie-class upbringing. He’d had a good deal more in the way of formal education, although you could argue that TJ’s street sense was as valuable, with a tuition every bit as pricey. By the time we got to Lakewood I’d decided that the two of them weren’t as different as they seemed. They were both decent kids.

  Lakewood turned out to be an older suburb, with big trees and prewar houses. Here and there you’d see a lot that the builders had originally passed up, with a little ranch house perched on it looking like the new kid on the block. We parked across the street from one of these and Jason killed the engine.

  “You can’t see where the fire was,” he said. “When I drove off he was going at it with a broom. I guess he did a pretty good job of cleaning up.”

  “He could have hired that same kid to scrub it for him.”

  “That would be something, wouldn’t it? I don’t know if he’s home. With the garage door shut you can’t tell if his car’s there or not.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have to set any fires to find out,” I said. “I’ll just ring his doorbell.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  I considered it. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then I’ll wait here.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. It may be a while.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ve still got that jar.”

  I only had to ring the bell once. The eight-note chimes were still echoing when I heard his footsteps approaching. Then he opened the door a crack and saw me, and then he opened it the rest of the way.

  The photos were a good likeness. He was a small and slender man, with some age showing in his pink face and some gray lightening his neatly combed hair. Close up, I could see his watery blue eyes behind his bifocal lenses.

  He was wearing dark gabardine slacks and a plaid sportshirt. There were several pens in the breast pocket of the shirt. His shoes were brown oxfords, recently polished.

  There was no fire raging on his stoop this time, just another middle-aged guy. But Havemeyer still sported his beleaguered expression, as if the world was just a little bit more than he could cope with. I knew the feeling.

  I said, “Mr. Havemeyer?”

  “Yes?”

  “May I come in? I’d like to talk with you.”

  “Are you a policeman?”

  It’s often a temptation to say yes to that question, or to leave it artfully unanswered. This time, though, I didn’t feel the need.

  “No,” I said. “My name is Scudder, Mr. Havemeyer. I’m a private investigator from New York.”

  “From New York.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “How did I…”

  “Did you fly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said, and his shoulders drooped. “I guess you’d better come in, hadn’t you?”

  22

  You’d have thought it was a social call. He led me to the front parlor, recommended a chair, and announced that he could do with a cup of tea. Would I have one? I said I would, and not just to be sociable. It sounded like a good idea.

  I stayed there while he fussed in the kitchen, and it struck me that he might return brandishing a butcher knife, or holding the same gun he’d used to kill Byron Leopold. If he did, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I wasn’t wearing body armor, and the closest thing I had to a weapon was the nail clipper on my key ring.

  Somehow, though, I knew I wasn’t in any danger. There was a greater risk that he’d seize the opportunity to turn the knife or gun on himself, and I figured he had the right. But he didn’t strike me as suicidal, either.

  He came out carrying a silver-handled walnut tray bearing a china teapot flanked by a sugar bowl and a little milk pitcher. There were spoons and cups and saucers as well, and he set everything out on the coffee table. I drank my tea black, while he added milk and sugar to his. The tea was Lapsang souchong. I can’t ordinarily tell one kind of tea from another, but I recognized its smoky bouquet before I’d even taken a sip.

  “There’s nothing like a cup of tea,” he said.

  I’d brought a pocket tape recorder along, and I took it out and set it on the table. “I’d like to record this,” I said. “If it’s all right with you.”

  “I suppose it’s all right,” he said. “Really, what difference does it make?”

  I switched on the recorder. “This is a conversation between Matthew Scudder and William Havemeyer,” I stated, and mentioned the date and time. Then I sat back and gave him a chance to say something.

  “I guess you know everything,” he said.

  “I know most of it.”

  “I knew you’d come. Well, not you, not specifically. But someone. I don’t know what made me think I could get away with it.” He raised his eyes to mine. “I must have been crazy,” he said.

  “How did it happen?”

  “That boat,” he said. “That awful, awful boat.”

  “The ferry.”

  “The Magnar Syversen. They had no business keeping the damnable boat in service, you know. It was manifestly unsafe. You wouldn’t believe how many violations they uncovered. And do you know how many people were needlessly killed?”

  “Eighty-four.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And John Wilbur Settle was one of them.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you held a policy on his life,” I said. “You’d bought it through a broker in Texas who specializes in viatical transactions. You’d already been a party to one such transaction, involving a man named Phillips.”

  “Harlan Phillips.”

  “You made money on Phillips,” I said, “and invested it in Settle.”

  “These were good investments,” he said.

  “So I understand.”

  “Good for all concerned. For the poor men
who were horribly ill and had no money, and for those of us seeking a safe investment with a generous return. I’m sorry, you told me your name but I don’t remember it.”

  “Matthew Scudder.”

  “Yes, of course. Mr. Scudder, I’m a widower. My wife had multiple sclerosis, she was ill for most of the years of our marriage and died almost seven years ago.”