After the First Death

by Lawrence Block

  “I’ve got to know who hired him.”

  “We’ll probably find out. Pick up some of the suspects, sweat ’em a little bit. Amateurs talk.”

  “But where’s the proof? The first murder was years ago.”

  “There may be a link. If there is, well find it.”

  “He has to talk,” I said.

  I sat in a waiting room at the hospital and chain-smoked like an expectant father. Jackie kept telling me not to worry, that everything was going to be all right I worried anyway.

  People kept coming in with bulletins. Several times he just about died, and each time the doctors performed some medical miracle and kept him alive. Then around two-thirty one of the detectives came in and sat down across from us. “He’s conscious,” he said.

  “And?”

  “He talked. They generally do once they know they’re dying. He admits killing the girl.” The detective looked suddenly exhausted. “He, uh, wants to talk to you,” he told me. “Don’t go if you don’t want to, it’s not necessary, but—”

  I got to my feet Jackie’s hand was tugging at my arm. “Don’t” she said.

  “He wants to talk to me.”

  “So? He’s crazy, Alex. He might—”

  “What? He’s ninety per cent dead. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  She let go of my arm. I walked down a corridor and into a room, and there was a bed in it and Turk was on the bed. A bottle was dripping something into his arm. His eyes were closed when I walked in, and I looked at him for a few moments unobserved. His skin was gray, already lifeless.

  He opened his eyes, saw me. And smiled. “Fountain,” he said. “My man, my man. The Turkey is dying.”

  “Easy—”

  “No harm, man, I don’t feel a thing. They got me so shot up with morph and demerol and what-all. I’m just so free and easy. I never knew why all those junkies did it, man, and now I think I do.”

  “Turk I—”

  “No, let me talk. There’s not much time. Oh, baby, why did you have to be there? That’s all I want to know. Like you’re my man, like you got me out of slam and I owed you, you know? Why did you have to be there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, with that hooker, man. That Robin. You know, I got a call, where she was, the hotel and the room, and I went down there and who’s with her but my man Fountain.” He managed a smile. “You should a come in with me, man. No chasing ’em around Times Square. Would a had your pick of nice uptown tail. Anything you wanted, price no object.”

  “You killed the girl to frame me—”

  “Frame you?” He sighed heavily. “Baby, I cut that junkie bitch to cut her, dig? I used to sell to that sweet man of hers, that Danny. And then I found out he was dragging down on me, he was stealing and then he was hustling the smack on his own, cutting into my own customers. That little bitch put him up to it. Junkie dreams, you dig?” He started to laugh, but I guess the motion was painful and he stopped. “Junkie dreams. They all think they can sell, and feed themselves on the profits, and they can never stand the hassle, you know. But I couldn’t allow that, see. Word gets around and everybody tries, and before you know it a man’s sales drop and he gets his whole territory cut out from under him. Can’t allow that. So I had to waste Danny—”

  “He died of an overdose.”

  “Funny kind of an OD. That was strychnine, man. I laid two bags of it on him, figured he and Robin would get off together. And don’t you know he had to hog both bags himself?” He shook his head. “You just can’t trust a junkie, man. He figured to share with his woman, right? But he took it all himself, and I had to go and loll her on my own.”

  My hands and feet were numb, as though my blood had simply stopped running. I wanted to go away.

  “So I had the word out, you know, and I got this call and went to the hotel, and all I had to do was say who I was and she opened the door for me. She thought Danny OD’d, same as you. Never suspected I had any reason to burn her. And I knew she would have a trick with her, but I figured if I had to kill somebody extra it wouldn’t be no never mind. But it was you, man! I mean, I owed you, and last thing I wanted to do was to put a knife in you.”

  He stopped abruptly and his eyes went glassy. I thought it was the end. Don’t the yet, I thought. More, more. Tell me all of it make some sense out of it.

  “Man, this dying is too much. Feels so funny—”

  “Turk—”

  “I cut her, see, and I never thought you would open your eyes. So then I got out of there. I had her damn blood all over me and I had to go wash myself clean. Then I was going to get out and go home, but I remembered how you got in trouble the first time, see, and I thought I better do something or you be up against it. I was almost out of the hotel and then I went back upstairs to the room. I was going to haul you out of there and put you someplace else so you wouldn’t ever know anything about it. But the door was locked, see, so I knew you was awake—”

  “There was a thief in the room. He locked it.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Now it fits. I figured you was awake and you’d get out of there on your own, see? So I cut out fast. And here I owed you to begin with, and then the next day I discover it’s worse than ever, you didn’t get up and you didn’t get out and the police are after you. Man, I went out looking for you. And when you called I wanted to give you money, give you my car, anything, just get you out of the country and let everything get cool again. I hate owing anything to anybody. I was born owing nothing to nobody and I wanted to go out the same way, and here I’m going out and still owing you. Ain’t that too much?”

  “Turk—”

  “I knew if they caught you it’d all be up for you, and instead it turns around and it’s all up for me. Just too much.”

  “Turk, the first girl—”

  “And me owing you, and all.”

  “Evangeline Grant—”

  “Now if I’d of drug you out of the room right away, or if I waited another couple minutes wiping my hands and that thief was gone by then, why, you never would a been in it Both of us, we’d never be in it.”

  I said, “Evangeline Grant Turk. The first girl. Five years ago. Who … who killed her?”

  “And I’m owing you. And never no more chance to make it straight with you, either.” He shuddered. “That hurts as bad as dying. Cause all I wanted was a chance to make it straight with us.”

  “It’s straight Turk.”

  I hadn’t thought he’d be able to hear me, but I guess he did. He did his best to smile, and he said something I couldn’t make out and then he settled back in his bed and died.

  They were silent in the waiting room. Jackie, the cops. I walked over to them, and some of them looked at me and others carefully looked away.

  “He’s dead,” I announced, but no one seemed to care.

  “He told me everything.”

  “Well, it clears you completely, Mr. Penn, and—”

  “What about the other girl?”

  “That was years ago, and—”

  “Evangeline Grant—what about her?”

  “We don’t—”

  “Who killed her?”

  I stood listening to the echo of my own words in the sterile silent room. Why do we ask such questions? A cop got to his feet. He came over to me, and he laid an infinitely gentle hand upon my shoulder and he spoke very softly, very softly indeed.

  He said, “I’m afraid you did, Mr. Penn.”

  24

  A LOT HAPPENED AFTER THAT BUT I DO NOT REMEMBER IT VERY well I moved through it as a ship through fog. There was some police business, and some forms to fill out, and a horde of newspapermen, and flashbulbs popping in my face. That sort of thing. And eventually it stopped and I escaped, and found a bar and had a drink, and then everything slipped away and the days and nights went by. I don’t know how many of them there were. Somewhere along the line I got to my bank and took out a lot of cash, so I didn’t have to worry about money. I just staye
d drunk and the days went by. If I went too long between drinks I thought about things that I did not want to think about, and that was bad, so I stayed drunk.

  Until one day or night I looked up from a drink and saw her face. I knew that I recognized her but I could not remember at first just who she was. I couldn’t remember.

  She said, “Oh, baby, you’ve been hard to find. You’ve been so hard to find.”

  Then I knew who she was. “Jackie,” I said. “You’re Jackie.”

  “You better come home with me, Alex.”

  “Can’t go home,” I said. “Can’t.”

  “Come on, Alex.”

  “I’m a dangerous man. Killed a girl. Might hurt you, Jackie.”

  “You come with me, baby.”

  I picked up my glass and spilled most of my drink on myself. She was holding my arm, trying to draw me out of that place. The other drinkers were regarding us with appropriate interest.

  “Let’s go, baby.”

  “Gotta keep drinking.”

  “We’ll pick up a bottle. There’s a liquor store down the street, we’ll take a bottle home with us.”

  “Cause I gotta keep drinking.”

  “Sure, baby. Come with me, now.”

  She got me out of there. She picked up a bottle of Scotch at a nearby liquor store and stopped a cab and helped me into it. On the way to her place the motion got to me, and the driver stopped the car so that I could get out long enough to be sick. Then we went to her place, and I was sick again, and she opened the bottle for me and I drank enough of it and passed out.

  I went on drinking for about a week. She made sure I took in food along with the liquor, and she had a doctor come by from time to time to give me vitamin shots. During all this time I was something less than a person. Each night she went out to hustle, first waiting until I passed out then locking me in with a bottle handy in case I woke up before she returned.

  Until finally I woke up one morning and didn’t want a drink, and knew that I would not want a drink again for a long time. I was sick for that day and most of the next day, but I was done with the drinking, and by the following night I was feeling better again.

  “What we do to ourselves,” she said. “Jesus, the things we do to ourselves.”

  “You saved me, Jackie.”

  “You would of come out of it by yourself sooner or later. I was just afraid you might get in trouble.”

  “I’ve never been on that kind of a binge before. It lasted a long time.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “I hope to God it’s over.”

  “It is, Alex. You had to get it out of your system, and it’s out now, and it’s over.”

  “Jackie, I killed that girl.”

  “I know.”

  “For a while I tried to tell myself the first one could still be a frame, but I know better. I couldn’t sell it to myself, not after Williams confessed. I killed Evangeline Grant.”

  “I know. I knew it before you did.”

  “You—”

  “As soon as I knew it was the Turkey,” she said. “I knew Robin had dealings with him, and I thought about Danny, and I knew it had to be something like that. Either that she worked some kind of a cross on him, or that she sold him out to the cops, set him up for an arrest, something like that. It had to be.”

  “You knew it all along.”

  She nodded. “And after he was shot, when they didn’t know if he would come to or not I was praying he would die. All the time that you were hoping he would talk I was praying he’d the with his mouth shut. So you would never know. I fell apart when the cop came out and said he talked. And then let you go to see him. I knew what was coming and I fell apart inside. I tried to stop you—”

  I remembered. “I never even thought she could have been killed for private reasons. It never occurred to me.”

  “Well, you wanted to be innocent, Alex.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She took one of my hands in hers. “Listen to me,” she said. “You killed somebody once. You got drunk and you didn’t know what you were doing and it happened. All right. You have a temper, Alex. You do. You told me about your sister-in-law, how you were ready to kill her—”

  “Anybody would have—”

  “And with that fence, Alex, I saw the look on your face. You were ready to take him apart. You got on top of it and nothing happened, but imagine if you were drunk at the time.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Or with Phillie, the way you beat up on him. You weren’t just trying to frighten him. You just let go.” She squeezed my hand. “Look, you have a temper and one time it got away from you. You were drunk and it got loose. But you lived with that for a few years, Alex, and you’re free now, and it’s over.”

  “And I’m a killer again.”

  “You want to write out a label and paste it on your forehead. Killer. Listen, you want to know something? I had three abortions. Three. I can’t ever have kids. So I’m three killers.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “You know the difference.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I was going to go back to work,” I said. “I was going to become a professor again. I don’t feel very professorial right now.”

  “Maybe you still can.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Well, you can do something.”

  “What?”

  A stretch of silence. Then, “I just wish I knew how to say things better. I know what I want to say but I don’t get the words right.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She turned away from me. In a small, clear voice she said, “Well, I don’t know what good it does either of us, Alex, but I love you. That’s all.”

  In the little bedroom where she had never lain with any man but me I said, “I can’t be in very good shape after all that drinking. I may not be much good to you.”

  “Oh, Alex. Oh, baby.”

  “How soft you are.”

  “Baby—”

  “How warm.”

  And afterward, in the warm sweet darkness, I said, “You’re not going out tonight You’re staying here.”

  “Yes.”

  And neither of us said anything about tomorrow.

  She stayed home the next night, and the night after that. But the following night she told me she had to go out for awhile.

  “Stay here.”

  “You know I got to go out.”

  “I have money.”

  She started to cry. I didn’t know why, and I waited, and she said, “Alex, it’s bad enough I have to be a whore. But I won’t be your whore, I won’t do it. I won’t take your money and put it in my arm.”

  “Do you need it that much?”

  “You know how I get. You’ve seen me. You know what I am.”

  “Could you kick?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You did before.”

  “Yeah. A few times.”

  “Could you do it again?”

  “Kicking is easy. How many times did you quit smoking? And start up again?”

  We tossed it back and forth for a while, and then of course she went out as she had planned, and I wanted a drink for the first time since the binge. But instead I stayed in the apartment and drank coffee. She was gone a few hours. When she came back she went straight into the bathroom and stood under the shower for half an hour. Then she went into the bedroom and took a shot and then she came out and looked at me and started to cry.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

  “Well try.”

  “I just don’t know.”

  “I love you, you know.”

  “I know it. Otherwise you couldn’t stand me.”

  “We’ll try.”

  “The things we do to ourselves, Alex. The things we do to each other.” She slumped on the couch. “I couldn’t turn myself off tonight That’s what I always have to do, to turn myself o
ff and just be a machine. I couldn’t make it tonight. I thought I was going to be sick. I wanted to die.”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “They have this thing called methadone for when you want to kick. It makes it easier. You would have to help me.”

  “I will.”

  “Alex, I can’t guarantee a thing—”

  “We’ll try, that’s all.”

  “What happens if I fall down?”

  “I pick you up again.”

  “You won’t let go, will you?”

  “No. Never.”

  She only fell down once and she got up right away and stayed on her feet. And after she was past the methadone and the codeine and the thiamine, after she was as clean as doctors could make her, we got out of the city and came here. It’s a little town in Montana where you can drink the air and breathe the water, and it is three thousand miles and several hundred years away from Times Square.

  We have new names, and if anybody knows who we are they haven’t let us know about it. We bought a little diner and live in the three rooms upstairs of it. I do most of the cooking, and seem to have an aptitude for it. Jackie is putting on weight and looks better than ever. We don’t make much money, but we don’t need much money, either. And when you own a restaurant you never go hungry.

  Understand this, it is not all roses. We are not sure that we will make it. Nothing is ever certain. We do not know quite where we are going. But where you are going is less important, I think, than where you are. And still less important is where you have been.

  A New Afterword by the Author

  In the summer of 1964, I moved from the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Tonawanda to Racine, Wisconsin, to take an editorial position in the coin supply division of Whitman Publishing Company, a division of Western Printing. I enjoyed my time in the corporate world, but a year and a half of it turned out to be enough, and in early 1966 my then-wife and I and our two daughters moved into a large, well-appointed house in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was down the street from my agent, Henry Morrison, and a block away from Don Westlake, my best friend.

  I’d done some non-numismatic (currency-related) writing during my sojourn in Racine, completing the second Jill Emerson novel (Enough of Sorrow), a Gold Medal Books crime novel (The Girl with the Long Green Heart), and the first Evan Tanner adventure (The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep). In New Brunswick I installed my massive oak desk in a third-floor study and went right to work on a second Tanner book. I was freelancing full time again and glad to be back to it.