The Devil Knows You're Dead: A MATTHEW SCUDDER CRIME NOVEL

by Lawrence Block

“I was planning on it,” I said. “I figured you might want company.”

  “I’d be nervous making the trip by myself.”

  I told her I’d be at her place at two, that that would leave us plenty of time. I had another call to make, to TJ’s beeper, but I didn’t want to loiter in the Waddell & Yount office waiting for a callback, nor did I think “Who wants TJ?” would go over well with the girl on the switchboard. I went out and called from the street, punched in my number at the tone, and waited for his call.

  After five minutes without a callback and a couple of dirty looks from passersby looking for a phone, I spent a quarter and called my hotel. The only slips in my box were a pair of calls from TJ. No message, just his beeper number. I fed the phone another quarter and called Elaine and got her machine. “It’s Matt,” I said. “Are you there?” When there was no response I said, “I’d like to see you tonight but things are starting to heat up. We could have dinner if I get done in time, or else I can come over late. I’ll call as soon as I have a better picture of my schedule.” It seemed as though there ought to be something to add to that, but I couldn’t think what, and then the tape ran out and saved me the trouble.

  I depressed the hook and held on to the receiver, hoping for TJ’s call. Of course he could have called while I was talking to my hotel or Elaine’s machine, in which case he’d have gotten a busy signal. I was thinking this through when a man in a dark suit and a porkpie hat asked me if I was going to make my call or what. “Because if what you want’s a private office,” he said, “there’s buildings up and down Broadway got plenty of vacancies, more’n they know what to do with. Talk to ’em, they’ll fix you up with a desk, a chair, phone company’ll put in your own private phone.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey, no problem,” he said, and dropped his own quarter in the slot.

  A block away I spent another quarter and called AA’s Intergroup office. I asked the volunteer who answered if there was a lunchtime meeting nearby. She sent me to a community center just off Union Square and I got there as they were reading the preamble. I sat down and stayed put for an hour, but I was barely aware of what they were saying. My mind was too busy with Glenn Holtzmann to have room for much else. Still, it was as good a place to think as any, and the coffee wasn’t bad, and the buck I put in the basket was as much as anyone expected from me. And if I’d declined to throw that in no one would have cared. Nobody suggested I go rent myself an office, nor did anyone advise the old fellow sleeping two rows in front of me to look for a hotel room.

  I got to Fifty-seventh and Tenth a few minutes early. There was a different doorman on duty, but when I gave him her name he was every bit as suspicious as the one the night before. I gave him my name as well and told him I was expected, and once he’d confirmed this we were old friends.

  Up on Twenty-eight, she opened the door just as I knocked and closed it as soon as I’d cleared the threshold. She took hold of my arm just above the elbow and told me she was glad I was there. “You’re five minutes early,” she said, “and in the past ten minutes I must have looked at my watch twenty times.”

  “You’re anxious.”

  “I’ve been anxious ever since you left last night. The money made me nervous from the moment I discovered it, but it wasn’t entirely real until I showed it to you and we talked about it. I should have made you take it with you.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Because it kept me up most of the night. It just scared me, that’s all. At one point I decided it wasn’t safe in the closet, that was the first place they would look.”

  “The first place who would look?”

  “I have no idea. I hopped out of bed and got the box down from the shelf and stowed it under the bed. Then I decided that was the first place they’d look. I decided the money was dangerous and all I wanted was to be rid of it. I had the idea of opening the box and throwing all the money out the window.”

  “That’s some idea.”

  “You know what stopped me? I was afraid to open the window. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep from jumping. In fact I got so I was scared to stand close to the window even with it shut and locked. Heights don’t usually scare me, but it wasn’t the height, it was my own mind I was afraid of. Look at me.”

  “You look all right.”

  “Do I?”

  She looked fine to me. She was wearing tan flannel slacks, a moss-green turtleneck, a brass-buttoned navy blazer. She had lipstick on, and a little makeup. And she was wearing perfume, a woodsy scent.

  There was coffee made and I agreed we had time for a cup. After she’d poured it she went into the bedroom and came back with the strongbox. I took it from her and felt its weight, then set the dial to 511 and lifted the lid.

  She said, “You remembered the combination.”

  “I remember stuff.” I took out a stack of bills and flipped through them, giving them a close look. She asked, her voice rising, if there was anything wrong with the money. I told her the bills looked good to me. They weren’t counterfeit. They hadn’t been stuffed in fruit jars and buried out behind a stone barn somewhere in Pennsylvania, either. Some of them were older—hundreds circulate at a more sedate pace than smaller denominations, and take longer to wear out—but most bore dates within the past decade. They were not part of Holtzmann’s legendary patrimony. I told her I was glad she hadn’t thrown them out the window.

  “I was going to undo the wrappers,” she said, “so as not to hurt anybody. Imagine being killed by falling money.”

  “You wouldn’t want that on your conscience.”

  “No. But I thought how pretty it would look, all those bills floating through the air, tossed here and there by the breeze. And think of how many people I would have made happy.”

  “Even so,” I said.

  We went downstairs and hailed three cabs to find one willing to make the trip. Cabbies these days apply for a hack license as soon as they clear Immigration, and the first five words of English they learn are, “I don’t go to Brooklyn.” The first two showed off their command of the language and drove away smiling. The third, a Nigerian who’d grown up speaking English, had nothing to prove and was willing to go wherever we wanted. He didn’t know how to get there, but he took direction well.

  Of course the subway would have been faster and easier, and about fifteen dollars cheaper, but who in his right mind would take three hundred thousand in cash for a ride on the subway? You might as well toss it out the window.

  DREW Kaplan sat at his desk and listened attentively while I filled him in on who Lisa was and why we were there. I told him just about everything, but didn’t say anything about the contents of the metal strongbox I’d placed on his desk. When I’d run through it he went back over a couple of points, but he didn’t say a word about the box, either. Then he tipped his chair back and gazed up at the ceiling.

  “Needs a paint job,” I offered.

  “So? You could use a haircut, but am I insensitive enough to bring that up?”

  “Evidently.”

  “Evidently. Mrs. Holtzmann, first let me offer my sympathies. Of course I read the press coverage of the case. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “On the basis of what I’ve just been told, I think you definitely need someone to look after your interests. I gather you’d like to put that”—he indicated the strongbox—“in a safe place. You haven’t told me what’s in it and I don’t see any reason why you should, but perhaps Matt here would like to take, say, three wild guesses as to what it might conceivably contain.”

  “Three guesses?” I said.

  “Sure. Shot-in-the-dark time.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, there might be several tusks of poached ivory in the box, smuggled in from Tanzania.”

  “There’s a possibility.”

  “Or Judge Crater might be in there.”

  “Could be,” Drew said, enjoying himself. “He’s been missing a lo
ng time.”

  “What’s that, two guesses?”

  “Uh-huh. One to go.”

  “Well, I suppose there could be a substantial amount of cash in the box.”

  “And if by some wild coincidence there really was cash in there, would you like to take another wild guess where it came from?”

  “Uh-uh. Not a clue.”

  “As much of a mystery as the apartment equity, and everything else about this mysterious man. All right.” He laid a hand on top of the strongbox. “I’m going to take this for safekeeping,” he announced, “with the understanding that I have no idea what it contains, and that not only my custodianship of the box but its very existence are confidential matters. I’ll give you a receipt for the box, Mrs. Holtzmann, or should that be Ms.?”

  “On the receipt? I don’t care.”

  “On the receipt it will just say Lisa Holtzmann. I wanted to know how you preferred to be called.”

  “Lisa,” she said. “Call me Lisa.”

  “Fine, and I’m Drew. As I said, I’ll give you a receipt, but if this box disappears in a burglary you’ll have to understand that there’s no question of reimbursement or insurance coverage. I’d reimburse you for the strongbox, but not for what’s in it.”

  She looked at me. I nodded, and she told Drew she understood.

  “Set your mind at rest,” he said. “I don’t steal from clients, I just overcharge them. It’s a lot more lucrative in the long run and you spend less time in prison. Lisa, if this box here were all we had to worry about I’d take it and charge you a few dollars for storage. Or I might suggest you go around the corner and lease a safe-deposit box in your maiden name, or in some name you always thought you might like to use.” He sat up straight, clasped his hands. “But there’s more at stake here. You’ve got your apartment, which those nice folks at Internal Revenue might take an interest in if your husband happened to buy it with unlaundered funds. You’ve also got insurance proceeds, which they shouldn’t be able to attach, but might depending on the nature and ownership of the policies, and on just how Laughing Boy filed or didn’t file his tax return.” He frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make slighting references to your late husband. There’s no disrespect intended, it’s just he’s left you in a tricky spot and that tends to inspire me to heights of sarcasm.”

  “But underneath it all,” I said, “Drew’s a prince.”

  He ignored me. “There’s also a good possibility of hidden assets,” he went on, “which might only come to you if you’re aware of them. What I’d like from you, Lisa, is a check for five thousand dollars as a retainer. That should cover the actions I undertake on your behalf.”

  Again she looked at me. This time I said, “That’s no good, Drew. She hasn’t got it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not in the bank. She’ll get the insurance money eventually, but for the time being all she’s got is a household account with enough dough in it to cover her day-to-day expenses.”

  “I see.”

  I shot a look at the strongbox. His eyes went to it and back to me.

  “I’d like to get paid by check,” he said. “If I went down the hall for a minute and didn’t put that in the safe until I got back, and if she wrote out the check, maybe when she got back home she’d happen to discover five thousand dollars in the refrigerator, just enough to deposit in the bank so the check wouldn’t bounce. What do you think?”

  “I think that would leave a paper trail that wouldn’t do her a whole lot of good. One look from anybody and the first thing they pick up is the cash deposit.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Shit. Give me a minute.” He sat back and closed his eyes. After a full minute he opened them and said, “Okay, here’s how we’ll do it. You brought your checkbook with you, I hope? I’d like you to write out a check payable to Drew Kaplan, Attorney-at-Law, in the amount of two hundred dollars.”

  I said, “See? They’re all alike. They start out high, but you can generally Jew them down.”

  “I didn’t hear that,” he said. “Did you put the whole phrase, my name and Attorney-at-Law? Good.” He picked up the phone and pushed the intercom button and said, “Karen, draw a check on the office account payable to Matthew Scudder, with the notation that it’s for investigative services on behalf of Lisa Holtzmann.” He spelled her name for Karen, then covered the mouthpiece and said, “Investigative? Investigatory? Which is right?”

  “Who cares?”

  He shrugged. Into the phone he said, “One hundred dollars, and hold on to it. He’ll pick it up when he’s ready to leave.”

  “I like that,” I said. “Are we partners? Do we split everything fifty-fifty?”

  He ignored me again. He said, “Now here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going down the hall for a minute, and when I get back I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Lisa has ten thousand dollars in her purse that she completely forgot about. And no, there hasn’t been a sudden price increase. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  When he had left the room I opened the box and removed two stacks, each of fifty bills. She put them in her purse and I closed the box and spun the dial. We waited in silence until Drew returned with my check. “A hundred dollars,” he said. “Now you can buy that Cadillac.”

  “You’ll never guess what Lisa found in her purse.”

  “Tanzanian ivory would be my guess, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.”

  A glance from Lisa, another nod from me. She drew out both stacks of bills and placed them on his desk.

  He sighed and said, “You try to do it by the book, you try not to take cash, but how can you operate that way and serve the best interests of the client? This is how lawyers get in trouble.” He thought about that and said, “Well, it’s one way. There are other.” He picked up one packet of bills, weighed it in his hand, tossed it to me. He took the other, riffled the edges, sighed again, and put it in his inside breast pocket. To Lisa he said, “Do you understand what just took place?”

  “I think so.”

  “If there’s anything you don’t understand Matt will be able to explain it. You have a lawyer now and you have a detective, and because I wrote out the check retaining our friend here, anything you tell him or he finds out on his own is privileged information. He can’t be compelled to divulge it. Not that he would anyway, but this way his ass is covered, if you’ll pardon the plain speech.” He hefted the strongbox. “You forget how heavy ivory is,” he said. “Especially the poached kind. Lisa, I’ll be in touch. Call me if anything happens and refer all matters to me. Don’t answer any questions from anybody about anything. Don’t allow anyone access to your apartment without a warrant, and call me if anybody shows up with one. Matthew, always a pleasure.”

  THERE was a cab at the hack stand down the block and the driver was untroubled by our destination of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. “That’s Manhattan,” I said, and he assured me it was not a problem. Lisa wondered why I had specified the borough; did Brooklyn have a Tenth Avenue and a Fifty-seventh Street? Indeed it did, I said, and they intersected near where Sunset Park and Bay Ridge abutted one another. She said she didn’t know Brooklyn at all, that she’d been to Williamsburg where some artists she knew had lofts, but we weren’t anywhere near there now, were we? No, I said, we weren’t.

  What conversation there was stayed at that level until we had reached our destination and gone on up to her apartment. “I’m going to have a drink,” she announced. “I got out of the habit while I was pregnant, but there’s no reason not to, is there? I think I’ll have a scotch. What about you?”

  “A little of that coffee, if there’s any left.”

  “You don’t drink?”

  “I used to.”

  She took this in, started to say something, and changed her mind. She went into the kitchen and came back with coffee for me and what looked like a very weak scotch and soda for herself. We each picked a couch to sit on and went over what had taken place at the law office on Cou
rt Street. Drew hadn’t wanted to take cash, I explained, because that was a good way for a lawyer to get in trouble. Several defense attorneys had run into problems when they accepted cash fees from drug dealers. The government had tried to impound the fees on the grounds that they were the proceeds of illegal traffic in narcotics, and had sometimes been able to pull this off even when the original case against the defendant wound up being dismissed.

  “Was Glenn trafficking in drugs?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “At this point no one can say what the hell he was doing, but the money is pretty likely to be dirty one way or another. At the very least it’s untaxed income. And it’s about to become untaxed income all over again, because Drew can’t very easily enter it in his books and deposit it in his bank account without leaving it an open question as to where it came from. He has to keep it off the books.”

  “I thought people preferred income off the books.”

  “Not always. In this case the money he’ll save in taxes is offset by the fact that he’s going to be breaking the law. More to the point, two people will know he’s broken the law.”

  “And the two people are—”

  “You and I. He doesn’t think we’re likely to turn him in or he wouldn’t have taken the cash, but he bought himself a little insurance by making sure I took five thousand dollars myself in his presence. Now my hands aren’t any cleaner than his. Incidentally, I’ll give that money back to you if you want.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a lot of money.”

  “I was going to throw the whole kit and caboodle out the window a few hours ago, remember?”

  “You wouldn’t have done that.”

  “No, but I wanted to. I didn’t know that money existed until a few days ago. Ever since I found it I’ve been afraid someone would take it away or kill me for it. Now there’s a chance I may be able to keep some of it, and even if I don’t I can at least stop worrying about it. If one of those packets of bills goes to you and the other to a lawyer in Brooklyn, what do I care?”

  She punctuated the question with a long sip from her drink. It triggered a flash of sense memory—the faintly medicinal taste of scotch, cooled by the ice cubes, diluted by the soda, the tongue tingling from the soda’s bubbles, from the whiskey’s alcohol. Jesus, I could damn near hear the background music, Brubeck or Chico Hamilton, say. Or Chet Baker, playing a trumpet solo, then putting the horn down and singing in that voice as thin as her drink, as cool, as enduring in memory.