Small Town

by Lawrence Block

Page 66

 

  “I’m just being dramatic. He’s miles away from the Sixth Precinct, where Slaughter and Reade are stationed, and no closer to the pair who wanted to tie me to the whorehouse murders. ”

  “I know a cop,” she said. “Well, a former cop. ”

  “Is he a private eye? Because then you’ve got the same problem you’ve got with Galvin. ”

  She shook her head. “He’s sort of retired for the time being. He used to be the police commissioner. ”

  “And he’s a friend of yours? Perfect. He’s probably not in a position to do anything, but he can tell you where to go, or just pass the information on for you. You have his number handy? You want to call him?”

  “I’ll be seeing him the day after tomorrow. ”

  “Today’s Wednesday, so that means . . . Friday? He’s the guy you see Friday nights?”

  “Shit,” she said.

  “A former police commissioner. The only one I can think of is Ben Ward, and he just died the end of June. ” His eyes widened.

  “Buckram? Francis X. Buckram—”

  “Francis J. ”

  “I stand corrected. Francis J. Buckram is Franny? He’s the guy who likes for you to wax his private parts and fuck him in the ass?”

  “You’re not supposed to know that. ”

  “You mean he doesn’t feature it in his press releases? Damn, that’s hard to believe. Look, don’t worry. I won’t say a thing. I’ll giggle a little, but that’s all I’ll do, swear to God. Yeah, tell him. Seriously, I mean it. He’ll know what to do. ”

  thirty-two

  HE COULD FEELhim out there.

  William Boyce Harbinger, alias the Carpenter. Born December 18, 1939. Height five feet ten inches, weight 155 pounds. Color of hair, gray. Color of eyes, blue. Complexion, fair.

  Out there, somewhere in the city.

  Waiting.

  It was getting to Buckram. He couldn’t think about anything else. The way he was these days, he damn well needed those Friday nights, and he no longer cared what she did to him. She could draw blood, she could tap a vein and drink from it. Anything, just so she got him out of his self for a couple of hours.

  Phone calls piled up. He hadn’t returned any in weeks, and now he’d changed the outgoing message on his machine: Hi, I’m away, and not able to retrieve messages or return calls. Try me again sometime in the fall. That struck him as abrupt, and he’d thought of adding something along the lines of Have a nice day or Enjoy the summer, but decided it would be hypocritical. He didn’t care what kind of a day any of them had, didn’t see why anyone should enjoy the summer.

  Or any other season.

  The Carpenter was enjoying the summer. Cooling his heels, biding his time. Getting ready for something that would make his Chelsea firebombing spree look like a Boy Scout campfire.

  What was he waiting for?

  I T W O U L D B E O N a Wednesday. Last year the date had fallen on a Tuesday, he remembered that much, everybody in the city remembered that much. There was a line in a Gershwin song about Tuesday maybe being a good news day. Well, that Tuesday had been a bad news day, the ultimate bad news day.

  This year, September 11 would fall on a Wednesday.

  There was no way to know that was what the Carpenter was waiting for, and yet he knew it with an unyielding certainty, knew it without knowing how he knew it. That was the day that changed his life, wasn’t it? Well, his and everybody else’s, but the Carpenter took it personally, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Lost his whole family, lost every piece of furniture in the room of life. And turned overnight from a harmless old coot with a penchant for New York City history into a maniac who seemed set on finishing what the fucking terrorists had started.

  God damn them anyway, the sons of bitches.

  If he could just do something about them . . .

  But he couldn’t, of course, and neither could anyone else. They were safely dead, gone to spend eternity with seventy virgins, and maybe that was punishment enough. He tried to imagine a Catholic equivalent, where St. Peter handed good little boys the keys to a Carmelite nunnery. Here you are, sonny boy. Enjoy yourself. Just be careful they don’t smack you with a ruler.

  O N T H E M O R N I N G O F Wednesday, September 11, there would perhaps inevitably be a ceremony at Ground Zero. The new mayor would be there, along with the old one, and the governor, and every local politician who could shoehorn his way in. And, the White House had just announced, the president of the United States would be there as well. He’d speak at Ground Zero in the morning, and during the afternoon he would address a session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

  Somewhere in the city, Buckram was certain, the Carpenter was thinking about September 11, last year’s and this year’s. So, he suspected, were half the terrorists and bona fide nut jobs on the planet. If there was a more obvious target, a stronger magnet for terror, he couldn’t think what it might be. The Prez himself, standing right where it all happened, on the anniversary of the day it happened.

  And what could he do about it?

  Nothing, he thought. He couldn’t do zip, but then again, neither in all likelihood could the Carpenter. There’d be security up the wazoo, cops and Secret Service agents a mile deep. No question the Air Force would resume overflights, and God help any pilot who wandered off course that morning. Nobody was going to get anywhere near either site, Ground Zero or the UN.

  But the Carpenter might try, and he might get lucky. The damnedest rank amateurs managed to turn up at the right place at the right time, and before you could say Squeaky Fromm or Sirhan Sirhan or John Hinckley or Leon Czolgosz or Charles Gui-teau, well, there was the shit and there was the fan, and who’d have thought they’d have wound up so close together?

  Or just possibly (because, after all, you didn’t want to lose sight of the fact that he was nuttier than a whole pecan orchard) the Carpenter wasn’t all that interested in Ground Zero or the United Nations. Maybe he’d figured out a way to squirt nerve gas into the ventilation system at the Chrysler Building, or bring down a bridge, or float a barge full of plastique onto Liberty Island. Or maybe he’d find some other place to go crazy with Molotov cocktails. Yankee Stadium, say, or a rock concert, or, hell, anyplace full of people.

  He wanted to do something. But he couldn’t even go tell anybody. He had access, he could call anybody in the NYPD or the city government and he’d be put right through. To say what? That he thought the Carpenter might try something on September 11?

  Gee, thanks for sharing that, Fran. That’s very helpful. Sharon, if this clown calls again, I’m not here.

  Maybe he should go search Central Park for a willow tree. Cut himself a forked stick like the dowsers used to witch for water.

  Peel the bark off, stand in Times Square with the thing, spin around a few times and walk in the direction the stick pointed. Let it lead him straight to the Carpenter.

  If he thought there was a chance in a million it would work, he’d fucking try it.

  F R I D A Y M O R N I N G H E W O K E up with a headache and a sour taste in his mouth. He showered and shaved and brushed his teeth and took a couple of aspirin, and while he waited for them to kick in he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t skip his weekly trip to London Towers.

  At eight o’clock he was there, getting a big smile from her smartass doorman. He got on the elevator, and by the time he got off it he had an erection. He felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

  And she saw it the minute she opened the door, motioned him inside, felt it through his clothing, told him she wanted to see it.

  “The hair’s starting to grow back, Franny. We’re going to have to wax you. ”

  The cuffs, the rawhide thongs, the leather hood. Her hands, her mouth. The cock ring. The toys. The smell of hot wax.

  God help him, he loved it.

  “F R A N N Y, S O M E B O D Y T O L D M E something a few days ago and it seems to me I ought to pass it along. I’m
not sure if it’s a police matter, but I figured you would know who should be told about it. ” He was dressed, all but his shoes. She was dressed, too, and had shifted gears smoothly, no longer the sexual taskmaster, suddenly a woman friend seeking advice. It was harder for him to make the adjustment, but he sat down to hear what she had to say.

  And learned about a man who’d disappeared, an older man, a widower, who’d failed to turn up at his office and was not lying dead in his apartment. Nothing remarkable there, he thought, but she went on to tell how the man, one Peter Shevlin, kept a boat at Seventy-ninth Street, and the boat came and went, apparently of its own accord.

  The Flying Dutchman, he thought.

  “I’m sorry,” she was saying. “Now that I hear myself telling you this I’m struck by how ridiculous it sounds. He’s probably turned up by now, he was probably never gone in the first place, just trying to avoid the old battle-ax who’s trying to lead him to the altar. ”

  “Probably,” he said, but drew out his notebook just the same.

  “Better give me the names again,” he said. “It’ll give me something to do. ”

  thirty-three

  IN THE EARLYmorning hours, when the sky was just beginning to lighten, the Carpenter’s wife paid him a visit.

  He noticed her perfume first. It was a scent he hadn’t smelled in years, in decades. She’d worn the same perfume as long as he’d known her. Woodhue, that was the name of it, by Fabergé. He bought her some every year on their anniversary, and at Christmas, and on her birthday. And then one day he’d noticed that she was wearing something else, and wondered why, and she explained that there’d been a change in her body chemistry, evidently, because her old perfume no longer smelled very nice on her or to her.

  And so she’d changed scents, to something a little spicier, a little heavier, and that became the perfume he bought for her three times a year, and you would think he could remember its name now, but he couldn’t. He remembered Fabergé Woodhue, however, and recognized it the instant he smelled it.

  And then he just felt her presence, there in the little cabin of the Nancy Dee. Next he heard her voice, speaking his name. Billy? She alone had called him Billy. His parents, contemptuous of nicknames, never called him anything but William. Friends in school had called him Bill. At work he was William, or Mr. Harbinger, and Carole called him William, too, in front of other people.

  When they were alone she called him Billy.

  Billy? Can’t you see me?

  And then of course he could. She was young, she looked as she had looked in the early years of their marriage. Not the girl that he met and fell in love with, but the young woman with whom he had set about making a life. She was wearing the blue dress he’d always liked. He’d wondered whatever happened to that dress.

  “Carole,” he said, “I thought you were dead. ” I am, Billy.

  “But you’re here. ”

  I can’t stay long.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said. Had he ever told her that when she was alive? He must have, he’d thought it often enough. Yes, surely he’d told her.

  You used to tell me that all the time, Billy. I never believed you.