Small Town

by Lawrence Block

Page 19

 

  He turned, retraced his steps, crossed Christopher. Then came West Tenth Street, and then Charles.

  Once all three streets were named for one man. Tenth Street, or at least a stretch of it, was then called Amos Street, and the man was Charles Christopher Amos, who’d owned a large tract of land there.

  And West Fourth Street had been called Asylum Street. So, when you stood at the corner of West Fourth and West Tenth, you were at the erstwhile intersection of Amos and Asylum, and how many people knew that?

  Of course it was no less interesting an intersection now, West Fourth and West Tenth Streets. What business did they have intersecting one another? Numbered streets ran east and west, numbered avenues ran north and south, that was how it was supposed to be, but here everything was askew, everything came at you on a slant, and West Fourth Street angled north even as Tenth and Eleventh and Twelfth Streets angled south.

  He liked that almost as much as Waverly crossing Waverly . . .

  He turned the corner on Charles Street and stood in a doorway across the street from where the woman had been killed. He remembered how the man and woman had left the bar together and walked side by side (but not arm in arm) along a more direct version of the route he’d just taken.

  How he’d walked along in their wake.

  He put his hand in his pocket and felt the cool surface of the object within, tracing its contours with his fingertips. He drew it from his pocket and held it in his closed right hand, and he stood in the shadows as they lengthened.

  A couple passed—college age, the boy Asian, the girl a blonde with almost translucent skin. They were too wrapped up in each other to notice him, but then hardly anyone ever did. Then they were gone, and time passed, although he was barely conscious of its passing.

  After a time he moved out of the shadows and walked back to Waverly, staying with it as it crossed Seventh Avenue and walking two more blocks to Bank Street.

  This would have been the man’s route home. There was his building, and was that his window, with the light on? Was he at home?

  And would he be coming out soon? Maybe yes, maybe no. Time would tell.

  He was still clutching the small object in his closed right fist.

  Like what? A talisman? A charm?

  He opened his hand and looked at it lying in his palm, a little turquoise rabbit. There was something sweetly whimsical about it, something endearing.

  He returned it to his pocket and drew back into the shadows, waiting.

  eight

  JOHN, IF YOU’REhome, it’s Roz. Come to think of it, it’s Roz whether you’re home or not, but are you?”

  She was in the middle of another sentence by the time he got the phone to his ear. “I’ve always liked that construction,” he said.

  “‘If I don’t see you before you leave, have a nice time. ’ And if you do see me before then, should I have a lousy time? Odd use of the conditional, if you think about it. ”

  “Or even if you don’t. ”

  “Damn,” he said. “I did it myself, didn’t I? And in the same paragraph. ”

  “You’re sounding chipper, John. ”

  “I am? Maybe it’s the music. It’s pledge week on the jazz station, so I switched to classical. ”

  “What are you listening to?”

  “Ravel,” he said. “Pavane for a Dead Infant. What’s so funny?”

  “You’re making this up, right?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what the hell I’m listening to, Mozart or Haydn, one of those guys. And if I’m sounding better, it’s probably not the music. Maybe I’m just getting used to being under house arrest. ”

  “You’re not getting out?”

  “Not really. I did have a visitor the other day. Well, two of them.

  Maury Winters came over, and he brought along a private detective who’s going to track down the real killer. ”

  “Oh?”

  “It sounds like OJ, doesn’t it? Searching the golf courses of America for the real killer of Nicole and Ron. This guy, though, all he’s likely to find is the next drink in the next gin mill, judging from the red nose and the matching breath. The idea is she went out right after I left and dragged somebody else home, which strikes me as not impossible, and maybe somebody saw her. It’d be nice if a witness turned up, but so far nobody has, so this joker’s on the payroll to go look for one. And, since she picked me up in a bar, my guess is that’s where he’ll go looking, and there are enough bars in the neighborhood to keep him busy. ”

  “Maybe he’ll come up with something. ”

  “Maybe he will. I’m inclined to belittle him, but maybe that’s just me. The guy’s a retired cop, twenty years on the job, and the fact that he likes his booze doesn’t necessarily mean he’s inept. ”

  “But you don’t have a lot of faith in the process. ”

  “I can’t say I do, no. I think he’s just going through the motions. ”

  “The detective?”

  “Well, sure, but that’s what they do. No, what I think is Winters is just going through the motions in hiring him, hoping to stir up something that’ll muddy the waters. But as far as finding the guy, I think he thinks the guy’s already been found. ”

  “What makes you say that, John?”

  “Impression I get. The cops quit looking once they got to me, and I think Winters figures they got it right. I suppose it’s natural.

  What percentage of his clients are innocent of the crimes they’re charged with? I don’t mean how many get acquitted, I mean how many genuinely didn’t do it?”

  “That’s true for any criminal lawyer, isn’t it?”

  “That’s my point. And it shouldn’t interfere with his ability to present the best possible defense. Still, you’d think he’d ask me. ”

  “Ask you?”

  “If I did it. That’s the damnedest thing, Roz. Nobody asks. ”

  “Nobody?”

  “Well, aside from the cops, hoping I’d fall on the floor and confess. Nobody else. Not even Karin. She wanted to know if I was planning to skip to Brazil, but other than that she didn’t seem to care if the man she bailed out was guilty or innocent. ”

  “She knows you couldn’t have done it, John. ”

  “You figure?”

  “Of course. Anybody who knows you knows that much. ” Her words, delivered in such a matter-of-fact manner, moved him profoundly, and for a moment he was unable to speak. Then he said, “That’s very good to hear, Roz. ”

  “Well. ”

  “Just for the record, I didn’t do it. ”

  “I know that. ”

  “But you’re wrong about one thing. I could have. ”

  “How’s that?”

  “Anyone could have,” he said. “Anyone’s capable of it. ”

  “Of murder. ”

  “I think so, yes. ”

  “Well, there’s a sobering thought,” she said. “Even thee and me, eh? God knows there’ve been times I felt like it. When that Carmichael cunt managed to work things out so that she stayed and I got the ax, I’ll admit I had fantasies about killing her. I mean I thought about it, I ran it through my mind, but there was never a chance it was going to be real. And, of course, getting out of that rathole was the best thing that ever happened to me. ”

  “And me. ”

  “That and bringing Hannah back from China, and how could I have done that if I was serving twenty-five to life? So I’m certainly glad I didn’t screw it up by letting Lesley Carmichael have it with her monogrammed Tiffany letter opener. ”

  “Was that how you fantasized it?”

  “That was one of several ways. But it was never real, and I honestly don’t think I could ever do anything like that. I’m tough as an old boot, sweetie, and God knows I’ve got a temper, but it never gets physical. I never even throw things. Some women throw things, did you know that?”

  “Fortunately,” he said, “most of them can’t hit what they’re aiming at. �
��

  “I wonder if dykes throw things. All those games of softball, they could probably knock your eye out at thirty paces. ”

  “The women who fling glass ashtrays at me,” he said, “tend to be at least nominally heterosexual. I know what you mean, though, having fantasies and knowing that’s all they were. But there was a time when it was more than a fantasy. ”

  “For you, you mean?”

  “For me. ”

  “I don’t suppose Lesley Carmichael was the designated victim?”

  “No, I didn’t even get pissed at her, actually. I’d figured they were going to drop me sooner or later. No, this was earlier. I was thinking about killing my wife. ”

  “Jesus, the way you said that. ”

  “How did I say it?”

  “Like you were thinking of going to a movie, or taking a tai chi class. So, I don’t know, dispassionately?”

  “Well, it was a long time ago. ”

  “And you were really thinking about it? Like, thinking of doing it? Does Karin even know? I guess not, or she might not have been in such a rush to post your bail. ”

  “It wasn’t Karin. ”

  “Hello? How many wives have you had, sweetie?”

  “Two. I got married right out of college. ”

  “I never knew that. ”

  “Well, it’s not a secret, but it doesn’t come up all that often. It was over in less than a year, and not a moment too soon, let me tell you. We fought all the time, and neither of us wanted to be married, and least of all to each other. Nor did we have a clue how to get out of it. I swear I don’t ever want to be that age again. ”

  “I think you’re safe. ”

  “We were driving somewhere flat. I want to say Kansas, but it could have been anywhere in the Great Plains. Were we on our way to visit her parents? No, we’d already been to see them, they lived in Idaho, he ran a family-owned lumber mill. Her father, that is. Her mother baked her own bread and smiled bravely. You can imagine what a good time we had there. ”

  “And then you were in Kansas. ”

  “Or someplace like it, and in a motel for the night, and we’d been at each other’s throats all fucking day. And the thought came to me that I was going to have this bitch around my neck for the rest of my life. And there was this voice in my head: Unless you kill her. ” He frowned. “Or was it Unless I kill her? ”

  “Honey, it only matters if you’re writing it. An inner voice, who cares if it’s speaking in the first or second person?”

  “You’re right. ”

  “Only a writer . . . ”

  “I guess. Point is I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Here was this impossible situation, and only one way out of it. ”

  “Aside from walking out the door, which didn’t occur to you. ”

  “It absolutely didn’t, and don’t ask me why. All I knew was I was stuck for life unless she died. ”

  “You’re not even Catholic. ”

  “No, and neither was she. Don’t look for this to make sense. In my mind it was ’til death us do part, and that was beginning to seem like a splendid idea. Here we were, in the godforsaken middle of the country, on our way to a teaching job I was going to take in western Pennsylvania. They were expecting a married guy, but if I wasn’t married I didn’t really have to go there at all, did I? I could tell them my plans changed and thanks but no thanks, and I could come to New York, which was what I’d wanted to do in the first place.