'And it almost worked.'
'It should have worked. He could have waited behind the door and killed me before I knew what was happening. Or he could have stayed in the bathroom a few more minutes and given me time to get into bed. But he got too much of a kick out of killing and that's what screwed him up. He wanted us both naked when he took me out, so he waited in the bathroom, and he couldn't wait for me to get into bed because he was too keyed up, too excited. Of course if I hadn't had the gun handy he'd have killed me anyway.'
'He couldn't have been all alone.'
'He was alone as far as the killings were concerned. He probably had partners in the emerald operation. The cops may get somewhere looking for them and they may not. Even if they do, there's no real way to make a case against anybody.'
He nodded. 'What happened to the brother? Kim's boyfriend, the one who started everything.'
'He hasn't turned up. He's probably dead. Or he's still running, and he'll live until his Colombian friends catch up with him.'
'Will they do that?'
'Probably. They're supposed to be relentless.'
'And that room clerk? What's his name, Calder¢n?'
'That's right. Well, if he's holed up somewhere in Queens, he can read about it in the paper and ask for his old job back.'
He started to say something, then changed his mind and took both our cups back to the kitchen to refill them. He came back with them and gave me mine.
'You were up late,' he said.
'All night.'
'You been to sleep at all?'
'Not yet.'
'Myself, I doze off in a chair now and then. But when I get in bed I can't sleep, I can't even lie there. I go work out and take a sauna and a shower and drink some more coffee and sit around some more. Over and over.'
'You stopped calling your service.'
'I stopped calling my service. I stopped leaving the house. I guess I been eating. I take something from the refrigerator and eat it without paying attention. Kim's dead and Sunny's dead and this Cookie's dead, and maybe the brother's dead, the boyfriend, and what's-his-name is dead. The one you shot, I disremember his name.'
'Marquez.'
'Marquez is dead, and Calder¢n disappeared, and Ruby's in San Francisco. And the question is where's Chance, and the answer is I don't know. Where I think I am is out of business.'
'The girls are all right.'
'So you said.'
'Mary Lou isn't going to be turning tricks anymore. She's glad she did it, she learned a lot from it, but she's ready for a new stage in her life.'
'Yeah, well, I called that one. Didn't I tell you after the funeral?'
I nodded. 'And Donna thinks she can get a foundation grant, and she can earn money through readings and workshops. She says she's reached a point where selling herself is starting to undermine her poetry.'
'She's pretty talented, Donna. Be good if she could make it on her poetry. You say she's getting a grant?'
'She thinks she's got a shot at it.'
He grinned. 'Aren't you gonna tell me the rest of it? Little Fran just got a Hollywood contract and she's gonna be the next Goldie Hawn.'
'Maybe tomorrow,' I said. 'For now she just wants to live in the Village and stay stoned and entertain nice men from Wall Street.'
'So I still got Fran.'
'That's right.'
He'd been pacing the floor. Now he dropped onto the hassock again. 'Be a cinch to get five, six more of them,' he said. 'You don't know how easy it is. Easiest thing in the world.'
'You told me that once before.'
'It's the truth, man. So many women just waiting to be told what to do with their damn lives. I could walk out of here and have me a full string in no more than a week's time.' He shook his head ruefully. 'Except for one thing.'
'What's that?'
'I don't think I can do that anymore.' He stood up again. 'Damn, I been a good pimp! And I liked it. I tailored a life for myself and it fit me like my own skin. And you know what I went and did?'
'What?'
'I outgrew it.'
'It happens.'
'Some spic goes crazy with a blade and I'm out of business. You know something? It would have happened anyway, wouldn't it?'
'Sooner or later.' Just as I'd have left the police force even if a bullet of mine hadn't killed Estrellita Rivera. 'Lives change,' I said. 'It doesn't seem to do much good to fight it.'
'What am I gonna do?'
'Whatever you want.'
'Like what?'
'You could go back to school.'
He laughed. 'And study art history? Shit, I don't want to do that. Sit in classrooms again? It was bullshit then, I went into the fuckin' army to get away from it. You know what I thought about the other night?'
'What?'
'I was gonna build a fire. Pile all the masks in the middle of the floor, spill a little gas on 'em, put a match to 'em. Go out like one of those Vikings and take all my treasures with me. I can't say I thought about it for long. What I could do, I could sell all this shit. The house, the art, the car. I guess the money'd last me a time.'
'Probably.'
'But then what'd I do?'
'Suppose you set up as a dealer?'
'Are you crazy, man? Me deal drugs? I can't even pimp no more, and pimping's cleaner'n dealing.'
'Not drugs.'
'What, then?'
'The African stuff. You seem to own a lot of it and I gather the quality's high.'
'I don't own any garbage.'
'So you told me. Could you use that as your stock to get you started? And do you know enough about the field to go into the business?'
He frowned, thinking. 'I was thinking about this earlier,' he said.
'And?'
'There's a lot I don't know. But there's a lot I do know, plus I got a feel for it and that's something you can't get in a classroom or out of a book. But shit, you need more'n that to be a dealer. You need a whole manner, a personality to go with it.'
'You invented Chance, didn't you?'
'So? Oh, I dig. I could invent some nigger art dealer same way I invented myself as a pimp.'
'Couldn't you?'
' 'Course I could.' He thought once more. 'It might work,' he said. 'I'll have to study it.'
'You got time.'
'Plenty of time.' He looked intently at me, the gold flecks glinting in his brown eyes. 'I don't know what made me hire you,' he said. 'I swear to God I don't. If I wanted to look good or what, the superpimp avenging his dead whore. If I knew where it was going to lead - '
'It probably saved a few lives,' I said. 'If that's any consolation.'
'Didn't save Kim or Sunny or Cookie.'
'Kim was already dead. And Sunny killed herself and that was her choice, and Cookie was going to be killed as soon as Marquez tracked her down. But he'd have gone on killing if I hadn't stopped him. The cops would have landed on him sooner or later but there'd have been more dead women by then. He never would have stopped. It was too much of a turn-on for him. When he came out of the bathroom with the machete, he had an erection.'
'You serious?'
'Absolutely.'
'He came at you with a hard-on?'
'Well, I was more afraid of the machete.'
'Well, yeah,' he said. 'I could see where you would be.'
He wanted to give me a bonus. I told him it wasn't necessary, that I'd been adequately paid for my time, but he insisted, and when people insist on giving me money I don't generally argue. I told him I'd taken the ivory bracelet from Kim's apartment. He laughed and said he'd forgotten all about it, that I was welcome to it and he hoped my lady would like it. It would be part of my bonus, he said, along with the cash and two pounds of his specially blended coffee.
'And if you like the coffee,' he said, 'I can tell you where to get more of it.'
He drove me back into the city. I'd have taken the subway but he insisted he had to go to Manhattan anyway to talk to Mary Lou and Donna and Fra
n and get things smoothed out. 'Might as well enjoy the Seville while I can,' he said. 'Might wind up selling it to raise cash for operating expenses. Might sell the house, too.' He shook his head. 'I swear it suits me, though. Living here.'
'Get the business started with a government loan.'
'You jiving?'
'You're a minority group member. There's agencies just waiting to lend you money.'
'What a notion,' he said.
In front of my hotel he said, 'That Colombian asshole, I still can't remember his name.'
'Pedro Marquez.'
'That's him. When he registered at your hotel, is that the name he used?'
'No, it was on his ID.'
'That's what I thought. Like he was C. O. Jones and M. A. Ricone, and I wondered what dirty word he used for you.'
'He was Mr. Starudo,' I said. 'Thomas Edward Starudo.'
'T. E. Starudo? Testarudo? That a curse in Spanish?'
'Not a curse. But it's a word.'
'What's it mean?'
'Stubborn,' I said. 'Stubborn or pig-headed.'
'Well,' he said, laughing. 'Well, hell, you can't blame him for that one, can you?'
THIRTY-FOUR
In my room I put the two pounds of coffee on the dresser, then went and made sure nobody was in the bathroom. I felt silly, like an old maid looking under the bed, but I figured it would be a while before I got over it. And I wasn't carrying a gun anymore. The.32 had been impounded, of course, and the official story was that Durkin had issued it to me for my protection. He hadn't even asked how I'd really come by it. I don't suppose he cared.
I sat in my chair and looked at the place on the floor where Marquez had fallen. Some of his bloodstains remained in the rug, along with traces of the chalk marks they place around dead bodies.
I wondered if I'd be able to sleep in the room. I could always get them to change it, but I'd been here a few years now and I'd grown accustomed to it. Chance had said it suited me, and I suppose it did.
How did I feel about having killed him?
I thought it over and decided I felt fine. I didn't really know anything about the son of a bitch. To understand all is to forgive all, they say, and maybe if I knew his whole story I'd understand where the blood lust came from. But I didn't have to forgive him. That was God's job not mine.
And I'd been able to squeeze the trigger. And there'd been no ricochets, no bad bounces, no bullets that went wide. Four shots, all in the chest. Good detective work, good decoy work, and good shooting at the end.
Not bad.
I went downstairs and around the corner. I walked to Armstrong's, glanced in the window, but went on walking to Fifty-eighth and around the corner and halfway down the block. I went into Joey Farrell's and stood at the bar.
Not much of a crowd. Music on the jukebox, some baritone crooner backed up with a lot of strings.
'Double Early Times,' I said. 'With water back.'
I stood there, not really thinking of anything, while the bearded barman poured the drink and drew the chaser and set them both before me. I had placed a ten dollar bill on the counter. He cracked it, brought my change.
I looked at the drink. Light danced in the rich amber fluid. I reached for it, and a soft inner voice murmured Welcome home.
I withdrew my hand. I left the drink on the bar and took a dime from my pile of change. I went to the phone and dropped the dime and dialed Jan's number.
No answer.
Fine, I thought. I'd kept my promise. Of course I might have misdialed, or the phone company might have fucked up. Such things have been known to happen.
I put the dime back in the slot and dialed again. I let it ring a dozen times.
No answer.
Fair enough. I got my dime back and returned to the bar. My change was as I'd left it, and so were the two glasses in front of me, the bourbon and the water.
I thought, Why?
The case was finished, solved, wrapped up. The killer would never kill anyone again. I had done a whole lot of things right and felt very good about my role in the proceedings. I wasn't nervous, I wasn't anxious, I wasn't depressed. I was fine, for Christ's sake.
And there was a double shot of bourbon on the bar in front of me. I hadn't wanted a drink, I hadn't even thought of a drink, and here I was with a drink in front of me and I was going to swallow it.
Why? What the hell was the matter with me?
If I drank the fucking drink I would end up dead or in the hospital. It might take a day or a week or a month but that was how it would play. I knew that. And I didn't want to be dead and I didn't want to go to the hospital, but here I was in a gin joint with a drink in front of me.
Because -
Because what?
Because -
I left the drink on the bar. I left my change on the bar. I got out of there.
At half past eight I walked down the flight of basement stairs and into the meeting room at St. Paul's. I got a cup of coffee and some cookies and took a seat.
I thought, You almost drank. You're eleven days sober and you went into a bar you had no reason to be in and ordered a drink for no reason at all. You almost picked up the drink, you were that close to it, you almost blew eleven days after the way you sweated to get them. What the hell is the matter with you?
The chairman read the preamble and introduced the speaker. I sat there and tried to listen to his story and I couldn't. My mind kept returning to the flat reality of that glass of bourbon. I hadn't wanted it, I hadn't even thought about it, and yet I'd been drawn to it like iron filings to a magnet.
I thought, My name is Matt and I think I'm going crazy.
The speaker finished what he was saying. I joined in the applause. I went to the bathroom during the break, less out of need than to avoid having to talk to anybody. I came back to the room and got yet another cup of coffee that I neither needed nor wanted. I thought about leaving the coffee and going back to my hotel. The hell, I'd been up two days and a night without a break. Some sleep would do me more good than a meeting I couldn't pay attention to in the first place.
I kept my coffee cup and took it to my seat and sat down.
I sat there during the discussion. The words people spoke rolled over me like waves. I just sat there, unable to hear a thing.
Then it was my turn.
'My name is Matt,' I said, and paused, and started over. 'My name is Matt,' I said, 'and I'm an alcoholic.'
And the goddamnedest thing happened. I started to cry.
The End
Lawrence Block - Scudder 1982 - Eight Million Ways To Die Page 33