After the First Death

by Lawrence Block

  She said, “Everybody needs a crutch, that’s all Everybody has his own hang-up.” She opened her eyes. “Here I’m telling you things I don’t ever tell anybody. Alex? How come you picked me up?”

  “I wanted to find out if—”

  “No no no. I saw you on the street, you know, back and forth, back and forth. There were a lot of girls out tonight What made you pick me?”

  “You were the prettiest.”

  She opened her eyes very wide and turned a little toward me. Truth is perhaps contagious; I had not meant to tell her that had tried to avoid telling it to myself, but it had come out. She studied my eyes very closely.

  “You’re a very nice person, Alex.”

  I looked at her and didn’t know what to do.

  “Yes,” she said, very softly, to the question I had not asked. “I would like it very much, Alex.”

  So I kissed her.

  She kissed greedily, eagerly, like a yearning schoolgirl in a parked car. She kissed warm and wet and tightened her arms around my neck. She kissed sweet and soft, and I rubbed the back of her neck and stroked her like a frightened kitten.

  We walked drunkenly to her little bedroom and stopped to kiss in the doorway. She sighed, and murmured my name. We entered the bedroom and left the lights out. We undressed. She drew down the bedclothing and we lay down on the bed together.

  “Well, it took awhile, but here we are. Who would of guessed?”

  “Shhhh.”

  “Alex—”

  We kissed, and she clung to me, and I felt the awesome softness of her. Every bit of her was soft and smooth. I could not stop touching her. I touched her breasts, her belly, her back, her bottom, her legs. I loved the way she felt.

  She lay quite still, eyes closed, body at peace, in the sweet inertia of heroin, while I wrote song lyrics on all the delights of her flesh. I stroked her and kissed her, and at length her body began to make sweet abbreviated movements, and her breathing matched these movements in rhythm. She made small noises, sweet dim sounds. I ceased to think, I lost myself utterly in the smell taste touch of her. And at length she said, suddenly urgent, “Now, darling, now.”

  I threw myself down upon that small soft body, and her hand clutched me and tucked me home. She worked and strained in sweet agony beneath me. I brought her there. I heard her cry out and felt her quiver, and then I melted at last inside her in unutterable delight.

  She came back from the bathroom. I had not moved or opened my eyes. She slipped into bed beside me and said, “I’m not sick, you don’t have to worry.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  “You must of been.”

  “No.”

  “I had the clap three times. The other, never.” Her voice was flat. “I been everything, I had everything. I wish to hell I was somebody else.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”

  “No.”

  “In your little soldier suit.”

  “No.”

  “Hold onto me, Alex, I feel all shaky.”

  She was small and soft in my arms. I kissed her. She opened her eyes for a moment, then closed them again and relaxed. I let my own eyes slip shut and discovered how exhausted I was. There was a curtain ready to come down and I wasn’t going to fight it.

  She said, “The watch and the wallet. And Robin’s purse.”

  “Huh?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  She spoke with an effort, dragging the words up one by one. “The man who killed them. I just had an idea. Tomorrow. First sleep.”

  We fell asleep holding each other.

  19

  WHEN I AWOKE A LITTLE BEFORE NOON JACKIE BROUGHT ME A cup of coffee and a sweet roll. “I usually eat breakfast around the corner,” she said. “But I figured the less you go out and let people see you, the better. The roll okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “I bought you some socks and underwear. I hope everything’s the right size. It’s just schlock from Columbus Avenue but at least it’s clean.”

  I got dressed. The socks and underwear were the right size. I felt a little foolish putting on my uniform again, but it still seemed a worthwhile disguise. I went into the kitchen and got another cup of coffee and took it into the living room.

  We smoked and drank coffee. She had evidently fixed an hour or so before, as well as I could judge. Her movements were slow and studied, but she wasn’t as obviously junked up as she had been the night before. Her face, clean and fresh, looked very vulnerable. She would dart quick looks at me, then turn her attention back to cigarette and coffee.

  After a while I said, “Well, I guess I better get going.”

  “Who said?”

  “Well I—”

  She turned away. “Go, if you want to. You don’t have to stay on my account.”

  I put out my cigarette and set the empty cup on the coffee table, but I stayed on the couch. I hadn’t seen the script yet and I didn’t know my lines. She was a hooker and I was a John, she was an angel of mercy and I was a man in trouble, she was Jane and I was Tarzan, all those things. I didn’t know my lines.

  Without looking at me she said, “You don’t remember what I said last night? About the watch and the wallet and the purse?”

  I had forgotten.

  “Because that part of it doesn’t add up right,” she said. “I thought if we sort of picked at it we might get somewheres. See what I mean?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, Alex, what I mean is, what happened to your watch and wallet?”

  “They must have been stolen.”

  “And Robin’s purse?”

  “I didn’t know she had one.”

  “She always carried a purse. Same as I always do. I make sure I get the money as soon as I’m in the room with the fellow, and I put my coat or something over the purse. You know, on a chair or on the dresser. I know Robin always did the same.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember. It was getting increasingly harder to bring that particular night back into focus. It seemed to me now that I remembered a purse, that she had taken my money and tucked it into a purse, but I couldn’t be entirely sure.

  “Maybe she had a purse. I don’t know.”

  “She must of had one, Alex. A lot of the colored girls don’t, they like to leave their bras on and they’ll tuck the bills in there, but most men don’t like that. Leaving the bra on, I mean.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anyway, she had to have a purse. And you had your watch and wallet, didn’t you?”

  “I hardly thought about it. I just supposed that they had been stolen somewhere along the line.”

  “But you had them when you went with Robin.”

  “Did I?”

  She spread her small hands. “Well, what else? You paid Robin, didn’t you? You gave her some money?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  “You must of given her money if you made love to her. So that means you had the watch and wallet when you went with her.”

  “I guess so.” I looked at her, the small intense eyes, the head tilted forward in concentration. “But what difference does it make? If I had them then, I certainly didn’t have them when I woke up the next morning. So—”

  “Well, what happened to them?”

  “Oh.”

  “You see what I mean, Alex?”

  “I never even thought of it.”

  “Well, see, you were too busy concentrating on who could of done it and then you didn’t stop to think about just what it was that happened. But that was one of the first things I thought of, that the watch and the wallet were gone. And Robin’s purse, too. It wasn’t there when you woke up?”

  “If it was, I never saw it”

  “Would you of noticed it?”

  “I’m not sure. But the watch and the wallet were gone. Unless they were in the purse.”

  “You mean if Robin took them?” I nodde
d. “No,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. “Robin didn’t take diem. Robin never stole.”

  “Never?”

  “No. Neither do I, I never steal I did once, a long time ago. A man who passed out. We didn’t even make love, he just got on the bed and passed out. And I went through his wallet and took his money. Not his wallet but just the money from it. Almost a hundred dollars. I felt bad about it. I don’t mean I sat around crying, but I felt bad about it.”

  She fell silent, her gaze turned inward, fastening upon the memory and the way she had felt. “I never did it again,” she said. “A lot of the girls do, maybe most of them, but I never do, and neither did Robin. I’m pretty sure of that.”

  “Then the watch and wallet—”

  “Maybe the killer.”

  “But why?”

  A shrug. “Everybody likes money.”

  “Not the man who framed me. I didn’t have much in the wallet, and the watch wasn’t worth a fortune. And whoever set me up for this wouldn’t take chances for a few dollars. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Suppose he hired someone.”

  I had briefly considered this possibility, but I had not wanted to dwell on it Because once I allowed it, my elimination process went utterly out the window. The proof that Russell Stone, for example, was not in New York Saturday night—it counted for nothing once I admitted that he could have hired someone to do his killing for him. Still, like it or not, it was quite possible. And it was similarly possible that a hired killer would take the trouble to add a watch and wallet and a whore’s purse to his haul.

  “We can forget the purse and the wallet,” she was saying. “Whoever he was, he’d just take the money and ditch the rest. Stick them in a trashcan, probably. That’s no help.”

  “What about the watch?”

  “That’s our chance.” Her teeth worried her lower lip. “I hope it wasn’t a really cheap watch. Like they sell in drugstores for $10.95.”

  “It was worth about a hundred new. Maybe a little more.”

  “Well, that’s one for our side. You know the make?”

  “Elgin. It said Lord Elgin on the dial.”

  “You would know it if you saw it?”

  “I suppose so.” I concentrated. “There was a link missing in the band, and—”

  “Forget the band. It probably has a new band by now.”

  “Oh. Just a minute. I think I could recognize it by the face. There’s a nick in the paint around the dial. If I saw it, I’m sure I would know it. But why? How could we find it?”

  “If he stole it to keep ft, then we can’t Unless you walk around the city until you happen to see it on somebody’s wrist But if he stole it to sell it, it’s less than a week, and whoever took it probably still has it A watch that’s worth around a hundred dollars, you could fence it almost anywhere. I mean you wouldn’t have to go to an important fence. Just any pawnshop, and you would get ten or fifteen dollars for it. Maybe twenty, but probably ten or fifteen. So if we go looking to buy a watch, and we happen to see it—”

  “It sounds impossible, Jackie.”

  “You think so?”

  “You said it yourself. How many pawnshops are there in the city? And how many watches? It could be anywhere.”

  “It’s most likely around midtown. There’s some places a person would be most likely to go.”

  “Still—”

  “Can you think of a better place to start?”

  “No, but—”

  “I know a few people in hockshops.” Her hand moved, unconsciously, I think, to her upper arm. A sweater covered the hit marks, but I had seen them last night “The scene I have, things of mine go in and out of hockshops. So there’s some people I know.”

  She was right. It was a place to start “Well try it,” I said.

  “Let me get a coat on.”

  “All right.”

  At the doorway I said, “Jackie, why are you doing this? Why take the trouble?”

  “What’s it matter?”

  “I just wondered.”

  She shrugged but didn’t say anything. The sun was bright outside, and she took sunglasses from her purse and put them on. We walked toward the park to catch a taxi While we were waiting she said, “You want to know something? I like you, Alex. I don’t like many people. That I can talk to and relax with.”

  I found her hand. It was small and soft, and cold.

  “Do you like me, Alex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t say it unless it’s true”

  “I like you, Jackie.”

  “You ought to pull your cap down a little. You don’t want too much of your face showing.”

  “All they notice is the uniform.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’re a sweet person, Jackie.”

  We stood waiting. There was a dearth of empty cabs. I lit us each a cigarette. She said, “Look, don’t make me a saint. Maybe I’m just interested, you know? Nothing ever happens. Something to do, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  She was superb in the pawnshops. Before we went to the first place, on Eighth Avenue just below Forty-seventh Street, she went over the routine with me. “Now the way it ought to play is that I’m in love with you and I want to buy you a present. See, the places we’ll be going, they’ll know that I’m a prostitute. So what they’ll figure is that you’re my man, and they’ll think, you know, a prostitute and her man, and they won’t be afraid to show a watch that is hot, like they might be otherwise.”

  Prostitute. The word had an odd sound on her lips. Unlike the slang and the euphemisms, it was clinically accurate, devoid of the usual overtones. A prostitute and her man.

  We played it by ear at the first shop and refined the script as we went along. First we would stand around outside, studying the watches on display in the window. Then, inside, she would explain that we wanted to buy a watch. A decent watch, and it had to have a sweep second hand—mine had had one, and that was one quick way to narrow down the entries.

  “What was the brand you said you liked, honey?”

  “Lord Elgin.”

  “That’s it Do you have any Lord Elgins?”

  They usually did; it’s not an uncommon watch. And they showed us tray after tray of watches. We made a great business of looking at watches, with Jackie now and then pointing one out and asking me if I didn’t like it, and with me always finding some reason to reject what was shown to me. We were careful to seem like live customers. If the pawnbroker had a Lord Elgin in stock, we wanted to make damned certain we got a look at it.

  And we went from shop to shop, and looked at watch after watch after watch, and kept not finding mine.

  We broke for a late lunch, bacon and eggs at an Automat on Sixth Avenue. I said, “Well, it was a good idea.”

  “We’ll find it, Alex.”

  “I don’t even know if I would recognize the damned thing. I’ve seen so many watches already today. Maybe somebody showed it to me and I didn’t spot it.”

  “You would know it. How long have you had it?”

  “I don’t know. Eight, ten years. Gwen gave it to me.”

  “Your wife?”

  “That’s right”

  “Oh.” She took a sip of coffee. “If you wore it all that time, you’ll know it when you see it. And there are more places to try. We’ll find the watch.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t like what we’re pretending, do you?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know. That you’re my man.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “No?” She searched my eyes, then looked away. “I don’t blame you,” she said.

  “I really don’t mind it.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I wanted to change the subject “Did Robin have a man?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. If she did, he might know something.”

  “She had somebody. Danny, his name was. But he die
d about, oh, two or three weeks before she did. Two weeks, I think. An OD. That’s an overdose. Heroin.”

  “He used it, too?”

  “Oh, sure. And Robin had to hustle twice as hard. Two habits, you know. Anybody who says two can live as cheap as one isn’t on stuff.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m getting a little ginchy, like I should go back to the apartment and fix. It’s not time. I think it’s talking about it that’s doing it. Sometimes it’s in the mind, you know? How did we get on this subject?”

  “Robin’s man.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. He got a cap that wasn’t cut the way they usually are, or he used two caps to get up higher, or something. He died with a needle in his arm and Robin was there when it happened. Oh, Jesus. I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

  “All right.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You want to go back to the apartment, Jackie?”

  “No, I’m all right”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m all right. It’s my hangup and I know what it’s all about.” She took my arm. “We’ll find your watch,” she said. “I got a feeling.”

  And we did, three or four places later, three or four blocks downtown and a block west. In a secondhand shop with a window full of radios and cameras and typewriters, we looked at a few watches, and then Jackie asked me what brand it was that I was especially interested in, and I said Lord Elgin right on cue, and the little old man in shirtsleeves remembered a Lord Elgin in truly perfect shape, a bargain, he could give us an awfully good price on it, and it was my watch he showed me.

  He’d changed the band, just as Jackie had said he would. But it was the same watch and I would have known it a block off. “This is it,” I said. And added, “This is just what we’ve been looking for.”

  Jackie reached to take it from me, nudging me with her foot. I guessed that this meant I should shut up and follow her lead. She studied the watch, then asked the price.

  “Forty-five dollars.”

  She thought it over, then set it down on the counter. “Well think it over,” she said. “We’ll be back.”

  “Forty dollars,” the man suggested.

  “We just want to go outside and talk it over in private.”

  “At forty it’s a bargain. I bought it reasonable myself, that’s why I can offer it to you so cheap. You know what these cost new?”