Foul Matter

by Martha Grimes

  Back to supplying his own details: “—the fatal shot. The body was discovered in a dark alley by a child with her dog . . . with her Dalmatian—” And in the middle of this, the phone rang. It was Jimmy McKinney.

  A welcome interruption. “Jimmy! You’re back! How was the weekend? . . . No? . . . Sure, I can meet you. Tomorrow, how about that coffee shop? . . . Can I take it this Birches colony wasn’t a howling success . . . ? For some people, maybe . . . Okay. Tomorrow around three. Good. See you then.”

  Paul went back to haunting the TV.

  When last night there had still been nothing reported from Pittsburgh except for an incident in Shadyside that involved a red Porsche and people with guns, none of whom had yet been tracked down, Paul found that he could breathe a little easier. At eleven P.M. Molly asked him if anything was wrong. Would he like a drink? “Do you think there might be a mention of Don’t Go There on Larry King Live? It wouldn’t surprise me; you remember how much he liked the last book.”

  Paul smiled and took the drink she brought, knowing that Molly knew not even Larry King could stand himself for three or four hours two nights running. It was her way of making up a story to let him know she didn’t find his watching television all of this time peculiar. She just wanted to give Paul an excuse for gluing himself to the TV and not insisting she know why. What a wife! It would have been impossible, even given his fertile imagination, to make up Molly.

  She sat down on the chair arm and massaged his neck while they watched Andrea Thompson give the performance that hadn’t gone over very well with N.Y.P.D. Blue. Paul leaned back, feeling much more relaxed after Molly’s massage. CNN’s anchor mentioned again the extremely queer incident in Pittsburgh (Shadyside section), a name that in the last two days made Paul tense up like a harp string no matter what its context. “. . . including a wildly driven red Porsche and people with guns.”

  Molly, her cheek resting on the top of Paul’s head, said she liked that. “ ‘People with guns.’ Sounds like a John Sayles movie.”

  Arthur was eating a crepe, this time with strawberries. Paul sat down, telling Arthur he’d brought the additional “fifty large.” (Paul couldn’t stop writing dialogue sometimes.) “So what happened in Pittsburgh?”

  “It went fine,” said Arthur, spearing a strawberry.

  While Paul waited for Mr. Assassin to comment further, to enlarge upon the “It went fine,” he looked around the café: rickety tables and mismatched chairs (chosen just for those reasons) and a lot of people with beads and facial jewelry sitting in and at them. It was so Village. They were reading or writing or talking about reading and writing. Paul would have much preferred a real bar, but Arthur nixed that idea because he was an alcoholic.

  “Recovering,” Arthur had told Paul when he wedged into the booth in the steamed-milk environs of the café. He said it with a snicker, as if he didn’t value his recovered status, at the same time looking impossibly smug as if he did. “Two years now. My liver was on its last legs, let me tell you—”

  Let you not, thought Paul.

  “—and so I always carry my chip.” As if to prove it, Arthur brought this bauble out of his pocket into the café’s lemony light. It looked like a poker chip.

  “Good name,” said Paul, fearing he was about to hear Arthur’s drinking history. He was.

  “See, they give these out for a lot of your nondrinking anniversaries: a month, a year, five years, and so on.”

  “A month? Sounds like you don’t have to work very hard. Now, about Pitts—”

  “What? Don’t have to work hard?” Arthur threw up his hands, looking up, enjoining the malingering ceiling fans to witness. “Listen to the man! Just listen to him. Nonalkies just don’t realize. What one of us has to go through—”

  Impatiently, Paul shifted into another gear by bringing out the envelope and saying, “Here’s the rest of it.” He plunked it down on the table caring not a jot for whatever FBI agents might be in the café drinking cappuccino. “Now, tell me what happened.”

  Forgetting all about his spent liver, Arthur snatched up the envelope, took a look inside, apparently counting the bills with his eyes, then stuffed the money in an inside pocket. “Okay, you heard right. These two, Candy and Karl, they were there, sticking out like a sore thumb—”

  “Only because you knew who they were, Arthur.”

  “Well, yes, that’s possible.” He looked toward the espresso machine, which seemed continually to be spitting out steamed milk. “I’d like another latte. You want something? Cappuccino? Latte? Coffee? I’m treating,” Arthur said, prissily.

  Paul sighed. “Sure, why not?”

  Arthur picked up his cup and went over to the bar.

  At least, thought Paul, he had tried to protect Isaly. But that didn’t do much to lessen the guilt about putting Ned Isaly in jeopardy in the first place. And still was in danger, even if these two goons hadn’t made a try in Pittsburgh. What in hell were they waiting for? When Arthur came back with the cups, Paul asked him.

  “Sam didn’t tell you about them?”

  “No. I didn’t want to know, either, why should I? Now I do.” Paul paused, dredging up the phone call to Sammy. “Yeah, he did say something about them taking their time.”

  Arthur set down his fresh cup with an Ummm and lowered his voice. “They have to scout things first. They get to know the mark, you know, his or her routine, friends, stuff like that. They watch him. They eventually draw their conclusions and decide whether the mark deserves it or not.”

  “Deserves it? What in hell do you mean they decide? But what—who?” Paul realized he was near to shouting and dropped his voice. “Who the hell would hire guys like that? I may be old-fashioned, but I always thought it was the person laying out the money who got to decide.”

  Arthur shrugged. “They don’t do the job, they give back the money. That’s what I heard. I guess they got principles, same as you and me. Well, you, anyway.” He patted the pocket in which he’d deposited the money. “I feel almost guilty. I mean, I didn’t do all that much.”

  For a brief moment, Paul panicked. “Ned Isaly is still alive, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. Unless his plane crashed. I couldn’t get a seat on the same plane, but I stayed with him, meaning behind him, until I saw him go through the checkpoints.”

  “You don’t think he’s still in danger?” Paul said, his voice brimming with hope.

  “Probably not. If Candy and Karl were going to take a shot at him, they’d certainly have done it in Pittsburgh. As a matter of fact, maybe they did. I might have aborted one attempt by Candy—”

  “What, what?” Paul leaned across the table, arms crossed.

  “I thought he was going for his gun, you know, he likes to keep the holster strapped to his belt in back—?”

  “Actually, I don’t know where this guy keeps his gun.”

  “Heh, heh. I was sure he was going for it, but—” Arthur shrugged. “I guess not. That’s why—” Again he patted the pocket, this time making a frowny face worthy of Hannah.

  Paul made an equally frowny face. “Tell me I’m wrong, but isn’t the bottom line here simply that the vic lives on? I mean, it makes no difference whether you do or do not shoot the man who’s after him.” Paul wanted to get the protocol straight here in case he decided to write a book about it. The actual meaning of services truly rendered had never come up in the fictionalized version of Sammy Giancarlo’s career since Sammy always assumed he deserved the money.

  Arthur took a sip of his latte and nodded. “Theoretically, yes.”

  Paul held his palm flat out as if pushing that answer back into Arthur’s mouth. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Theory isn’t involved here. You were hired as a bodyguard, not as”—Paul lowered his voice—“a button man” (still that dialogue).

  “You’re saying, then, the one is not contingent upon the other?”

  Paul tried to ticker-tape this question through his addled brain. “Yes.”

  Art
hur nodded. “I see.”

  Paul really wanted to pop him. He wasn’t giving this hired hit man fucking lessons.

  Arthur said it again: “I see, yes. Yes, so theoretically—”

  Paul slammed his fist on the table, making Arthur jump as well as the people sitting at the nearest rickety table. He gave them a lop-sided smile and mumbled an apology. Then he turned again to Arthur. “Look. We’ll compromise on the money: if Ned Isaly gets killed by the end of the week, you can give back the fifty large (he couldn’t help himself). Is that fair?” Paul assumed Arthur would agree with alacrity since he was the one to question the morality of taking Paul’s money.

  He didn’t. After another thoughtful pause, he said, “Thing is, he could meet with an accident and that doesn’t come into the arrangement.” He took a bite of strawberry crepe and chewed thoughtfully.

  Paul stared at him, then leaned across the table, resisting the temptation to pull him forward by his collar. “If the ‘accident’—like getting in front of a car—were arranged—wink wink, nod nod—then it most certainly would come into the ‘arrangement.’ ”

  Arthur considered and nodded. “But there’s always the possibility it might really be a total accident, like, for instance falling on the subway tracks—”

  Paul laughed a trifle hysterically. “Arthur, when has that ever been an accident? People get pushed, that’s what happens.”

  Arthur looked around the room blindly. “Okay, so do you want to include the type of accident that would be covered? Like, if it’s the subway, then he was clearly pushed?”

  Paul blinked. “I’m not Metropolitan Life, for God’s sakes.” His head sank into his hands. He shook it. “What in hell are we talking about?” He’d forgotten.

  “What?”

  “What are we talking about?”

  Arthur whispered. “My fee. Why don’t we split the difference and say twenty-five thousand goes back to you if anything happens to him.”

  Paul just looked at him.

  Arthur shook his head. “I don’t know how you manage to write books. You can’t keep your mind on a thing for more than ten minutes. Right now you look blank as a plate.”

  Blank as a plate. Paul liked that. He made a mental note.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The coffee shop near the entrance to the Durban Agency’s building was virtually empty, something worth noting in Manhattan, where nothing was ever empty except in the event of a bomb scare or Memorial Day weekend.

  Jimmy was sitting at the same table they’d shared before, with the same waitress hovering with her coffeepot. She set down another thick white mug, filled it, and walked off.

  “I feel as if I never left,” said Paul, sliding into the booth.

  “Just be glad you never left for Upstate New York.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Ah! What happened—”

  “Incidentally, you look like shit.” Paul smiled as if to say shit didn’t bother him at all. “You’ve got a John Grisham beard going, purplish circles under your eyes, and your whole being seems, well, unruly. Twitchy.”

  “Have you actually been to any of these writers’ colonies?”

  “No. But I have friends who swear by them. They say Yaddo is better than Paris. Better than Rome, even.”

  Jimmy’s hand crawled across the table to grab Paul’s forearm. His eyes would have crawled, too, if they hadn’t been totally spent. “How in the fuck do Paris and Rome come into it?”

  Paul shrugged. “Beats me. That’s just what they said.”

  “Okay.” Jimmy pushed his spoon, napkin, and water glass closer to one another as if trying to gather himself in. “I’m given this cabin—one room, bathroom, a coffeemaker, and a little refrigerator. It’s very nice. No telephone, thank the Lord. No television, ditto. It’s in the woods, a really gorgeous woodland—”

  “That’s how I pictured it, kind of.”

  “For an hour I just lay on the bed listening to nothing. Nothing. When was the last time you ever listened to nothing?”

  Paul shrugged. “Last time I talked to my agent?”

  Jimmy glared. “That question was rhetorical, for God’s sakes. Stop interrupting. Then I get out my notebook, the one I write my poems in, you know—”

  Paul grunted as an answer, in case the notebook business was rhetorical, too.

  “This was Friday, after dinner—”

  “What was for dinner?”

  Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t damned well know what was for dinner; I got there after dinner was over, didn’t I?”

  Paul bit back any comment.

  “So I lay there thinking of a poem I was working on—”

  “Excuse me for interrupting, but is this accounting going to be your basic summary or is it a blow by blow? I only ask because if it’s the latter, maybe I should get a piece of pie—”

  “Just hold on. Now I was lying there watching the trees turn dark, thinking about this poem, when suddenly there was a pounding on the door that nearly knocked me off my bed.” Here Jimmy raised his fist, pounding on air. “I open the door and there’s these three guys totally drunk or stoned out of their minds, smoking cigars and one holding a fifth of Montecristo rum—”

  “Great stuff. It’s old Guatemalan rum, really rich. Good with cigars.”

  Jimmy blinked. “I get the feeling you’re missing the point here.”

  “Go on.”

  “They introduce themselves. Two of them are Irish and they’re all poets. They gibber on about how the IRA spelled death to poetry in Northern Ireland and all sorts of shit like that. Two of them think they’re fucking Dylan Thomas—”

  “Ha! It’d take at least two to make one of him.”

  “They’re still standing outside, the woods apparently being their Harry’s Bar while in residence, while one of them starts reading some long involved blank verse and the other two are blowing smoke in my face and offering me the Montecristo bottle. I say, ‘No thanks, see I’m really trying to write.’ ”

  “ ‘Write? Write? Hell, you can do that anywhere, boyo. Why waste a perfectly good weekend in the woods doing it?’ ”

  Paul laughed. “That’s good, that’s really good.” He raised a finger to the waitress. When she appeared he asked her what kind of pie they had here.

  “Oh.” She put on her pie-thinking cap. “Well, there’s berry, that’s blueberry and strawberry, apple, lemon meringue—”

  When Paul saw Jimmy drop his head in his hands, he ordered him a piece, too. “Make it two apples. Thanks. And more coffee. Thanks.”

  “There must’ve been a dozen of these little cabins; when I was being shown to mine, one of the managers or whoever she was pointed them out, each one buried in among the trees. It was an idyll, really. I mean, it should have been. Mine, for some fucking reason, became the hub. And where were these writers getting their booze? There wasn’t supposed to be any drinking, I mean except at the main house just before dinner when they served cocktails.” Jimmy drew in breath as if he’d just surfaced and went on.

  “Finally, these three left and I thought I might as well go to bed. Saturday morning I decide to skip breakfast in the main house and just write. So I make this sign on a piece of notebook paper: DO NOT DISTURB !PLEASE!! and scotch-tape it to the door—”

  The apple pie arrived with more coffee. Jimmy shoved his pie aside and, with burning eyes, continued his tale:

  “I’m finally getting close to four lines I’ve been grappling with—see, this poem is really hard because of its form; it’s analyzed rhyme—you know what that is.”

  Around a big bite of pie, Paul said, “Sure.” No, he didn’t, nor did he want to. “I should have ordered this à la mode. Do you want a scoop of ice cream?”

  Jimmy went on as if Paul were merely a recording device. “Around lunchtime, I hear this tapping on my windowpane, fingernails rat-tat-tatting, and I open the door, thinking it’s my lunch delivery. I’m really hungry because of no dinner, no breakfast. I open the do
or and here’s this girl—more of woman, she’s got to be in her thirties, trying to look like thirteen, you know, like gypsy clothes, head wrapped in a polka-dot scarf, big gold earrings—”

  “You’re really good on details. You should write some fiction—oh, sorry.” Paul ducked his head toward his pie when Jimmy made a movement with his fist.

  “She comes in as if my cabin is her cabin and plops down on my bed. She says, ‘Kee-rist, what a night! I keep reminding myself not to drink Eddie’s martinis. They’re lethal. Hi, my name’s Marie—’

  “ ‘—and I’m an alcoholic,’ I say.”

  Paul’s laugh sputtered around piecrust.

  “Well, that surprised her. She chirps, ‘Oh, are you in the program, too?’

  “ ‘Too? ’ I manage to get some acid into my tone. ‘You’re saying you are? Ha. No, I’m not in the fucking program, what do you want?’ ”

  “ ‘My, aren’t we tetchy this morning?’ As if I’d been drinking with her or fucking her the night before.

  “ ‘I came here to write, that’s why I came.’ ”

  “ ‘So did I, so did we all. But you gotta take a break sometime.’ ”

  “ ‘This place is break heaven. That’s all you guys do here.’ ”

  “ ‘Um,’ she says; a lot she cares. ‘Can I bum a ciggy?’ I tossed her the pack. She lights up and starts rattling on about her awful life, which is why she’s here because she’s writing a memoir about how she was abused as a child by her father, her brother, her uncle, her cousin—you know, your typical memoir—and what a great book it’s going to be—‘If you ever get around to writing it,’ I say. And she says, ‘Oh, I do. My self-discipline is legendary.’ Legendary!” Even Jimmy had to stop being mad and laugh at that.

  “She goes on. ‘So I guess you don’t want to fuck? Right?’ ”

  Paul snorted out another laugh.

  “ ‘You guess right. Actually, leave, will you?’ ”

  “ ‘Awright! Awright!’ She hands me back the Winstons and I tell her to keep the pack. By now, it’s got to be two, three in the afternoon and I’m starving. I look outside and my lunch isn’t there, so I figure the DO NOT DISTURB !sign made them hesitate about even leaving it. Didn’t Hemingway say you could only write on an empty stomach?”