Eight Million Ways to Die

by Lawrence Block

Page 18

  "I meant Wisconsin. Most of em come from Minnesota. "

  "I know. "

  "The murder rate used to be around a thousand a year. Three a day in the five boroughs. That always seemed high. "

  "High enough. "

  "Its just about double that now. " He leaned forward. "But thats nothing, Matt. Most homicides are husband-wife things, or two friends drinking together and one of em shoots the other and doesnt even remember it the next day. That rate never changes. Its the same as it always was. Whats changed are stranger murders, where the killer and the victim dont know each other. Thats the rate that shows you how dangerous it is to live somewhere. If you just take the stranger murders, if you throw out the other cases and put the stranger murders on a graph, the line goes up like a rocket. "

  "There was a guy in Queens yesterday with a bow and arrow," I said, "and the guy next door shot him with a. 38. "

  "I read about that. Something about a dog shitting on the wrong lawn?"

  "Something like that. "

  "Well, that wouldnt be on the chart. Thats two guys who knew each other. "

  "Right. "

  "But its all part of the same thing. People keep killing each other. They dont even stop and think, they just go ahead and do it. You been off the force what, a couple years now? Ill tell you this much. Its a lot worse than you remember. "

  "I believe you. "

  "I mean it. Its a jungle out there and all the animals are armed. Everybodys got a gun. You realize the number of people out there walking around with a piece? Your honest citizen, hes gotta have a gun now for his own protection, so he gets one and somewhere down the line he shoots himself or his wife or the guy next door. "

  "The guy with the bow and arrow. "

  "Whatever. But whos gonna tell him not to have a gun?" He slapped his abdomen, where his service revolver was tucked under his belt. "I gotta carry this," he said. "Its regulations. But Ill tell you, I wouldnt walk around out there without it. Id feel naked. "

  "I used to think that. You get used to it. "

  "You dont carry anything?"

  "Nothing. "

  "And it doesnt bother you?"

  I went to the bar and got fresh drinks, more vodka for him, more ginger ale for me. When I brought them back to the table Durkin drank the whole thing in one long swallow and sighed like a tire going flat. He cupped his hands and lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, blew out the smoke as if in a hurry to be rid of it.

  "This fucking city," he said.

  It was hopeless, he said, and he went on to tell me just how hopeless it was. He rang changes on the whole criminal justice system, from the cops to the courts to the jails, explaining how none of it worked and all of it was getting worse every day. You couldnt arrest a guy and then you couldnt convict him and finally you couldnt keep the son of a bitch in jail.

  "The prisons are overcrowded," he said, "so the judges dont want to hand out long sentences and the parole boards release people early. And the D. A. s let the guys cop to a reduced charge, they plea bargain good cases down to nothing, because the court calendars are so jammed up and the courts are so careful to protect the rights of the accused that you just about need a photo of the guy committing the crime in order to get a conviction, and then you might get a reversal because you were violating his civil rights by taking his photograph without prior permission. And in the meantime theres no cops. The departments got ten thousand men below what it had twelve years ago. Ten thousand fewer cops on the street!"

  "I know. "

  "Twice as many crooks and a third less cops and you wonder why its not safe to walk down the street. You know what it is? The citys broke. Theres no money for cops, no money to keep the subways running, no money for anything. The whole countrys leaking money, its all winding up in Saudi fucking Arabia. All those assholes are trading in their camels for Cadillacs while this country goes down the fucking tubes. " He stood up. "My turn to buy. "

  "No, Ill get them. Im on expenses. "

  "Right, you got a client. " He sat down. I came back with another round and he said, "What are you drinking there?"

  "Just ginger ale. "

  "Yeah, I thought thats what it looked like. Whyntcha have a real drink?"

  "Im sort of cutting back on it these days. "

  "Oh yeah?" The gray eyes focused on me as he registered this information. He picked up his glass and drank about half of it, set it down on the worn wooden table with a thunk. "You got the right idea," he said, and I thought he meant the ginger ale, but he had shifted gears by then. "Quitting the job. Getting out. You know what I want? All I want is six more years. "

  "Then you got your twenty?"

  "Then I got my twenty," he said, "and then I got my pension, and then Im fucking well gone. Out of this job and out of this shithole of a city. Florida, Texas, New Mexico, someplace warm and dry and clean. Forget Florida, I heard things about Florida, all the fucking Cubans, they got crime like you get here. Plus they got all the dope coming in there. Those crazy Colombians. You know about the Colombians?"

  I thought of Royal Waldron. "A fellow I know says theyre all right," I said. "He said you just dont want to cheat em. "

  "You bet your ass you dont want to cheat em. You read about those two girls over in Long Island City? Must have been six, eight months ago. Sisters, ones twelve and ones fourteen, and they found em in the back room of this out-of-business gas station, hands tied behind their backs, each of em shot twice in the head with a small-caliber weapon, I think a. 22, but who gives a shit?" He drank the rest of his drink. "Well, it didnt figure. No sex angle, nothing. Its an execution, but who executes a couple of teenage sisters?

  "Well, it clears itself up, because a week later somebody breaks into the house where they lived and shoots their mother. We found her in the kitchen with dinner still cooking on the stove. See, the familys Colombian, and the fathers in the cocaine business, which is the chief industry down there outside of smuggling emeralds-"

  "I thought they grew a lot of coffee. "

  "Thats probably a front. Where was I? The point is, the father turns up dead a month later in whatevers the capital of Colombia. He crossed somebody and he ran for it, and they wound up getting him in Colombia, but first they killed his kids and his wife. See, the Colombians, they play by a different set of rules. You fuck with them and they dont just kill you. They wipe out your whole family. Kids, any age, it dont matter. You got a dog and a cat and some tropical fish, theyre dead too. "

  "Jesus. "

  "The Mafia was always considerate about family. Theyd even make sure to arrange a hit so your family wouldnt be there to see it happen. Now we got criminals that kill the whole family. Nice?"

  "Jesus. "

  He put his palms on the table for leverage, hoisted himself to his feet. "Im getting this round," he announced. "I dont need some pimp payin for my drinks. "

  Back at the table he said, "Hes your client, right? Chance?" When I failed to respond he said, "Well, shit, you met with him last night. He wanted to see you, and now you got a client that you wont say his name. Two and twos gotta be four, doesnt it?"

  "I cant tell you how to add it. "

  "Lets just say Im right and hes your client. For the sake of argument. You wont be givin nothin away. "

  "All right. "

  He leaned forward. "He killed her," he said. "So why would he hire you to investigate it?"

  "Maybe he didnt kill her. "

  "Oh, sure he did. " He dismissed the possibility of Chances innocence with a wave of his hand. "She says shes quitting him and he says okay and the next day shes dead. Come on, Matt. Whats that if its not cut and dried?"

  "Then we get back to your question. Whyd he hire me?"

  "Maybe to take the heat off. "

  "How?"

  "Maybe hell figure well figure he must be innocent or he wouldnt have hired you. "

  "But thats not what you figured at all. "

  "No. "

  "You think he
d really think that?"

  "How do I know what some coked-up spade pimp is gonna think?"

  "You figure hes a cokehead?"

  "Hes got to spend it on something, doesnt he? Its not gonna go for country-club dues and a box at the charity ball. Lemme ask you something. "

  "Go ahead. "

  "You think theres a chance in the world he didnt kill her? Or set her up and hire it done?"

  "I think theres a chance. "

  "Why?"

  "For one thing, he hired me. And it wasnt to take the heat off because what heat are we talking about? You already said there wasnt going to be any heat. Youre planning to clear the case and work on something else. "

  "He wouldnt necessarily know that. "

  I let that pass. "Take it from another angle," I suggested. "Lets say I never called you. "

  "Called me when?"

  "The first call I made. Lets say you didnt know she was breaking with her pimp. "

  "If we didnt get it from you wed of gotten it somewhere else. "

  "Where? Kim was dead and Chance wouldnt volunteer the information. Im not sure anybody else in the world knew. " Except for Elaine, but I wasnt going to bring her into it. "I dont think youd have gotten it. Not right off the bat, anyway. "

  "So?"

  "So how would you have figured the killing then?"

  He didnt answer right away. He looked down at his near-empty glass, and a couple of vertical frown lines creased his forehead. He said, "I see what you mean. "

  "How would you have pegged it?"

  "The way we did before you called. A psycho. You know were not supposed to call em that anymore? There was a departmental directive went out about a year ago. From now on we dont call em psychos. From now on its EDPs. "

  "Whats an EDP?"

  "Emotionally Disturbed Person. Thats what some asshole on Centre Streets got nothing better to worry about. The whole citys up to its ass in more nuts than a fruitcake and our first priority is how we refer to them. We dont want to hurt their feelings. No, Id figure a psycho, some new version of Jack the Ripper. Calls up a hooker, invites her over, chops her up. "

  "And if it was a psycho?"

  "You know what happens then. You hope you get lucky with a piece of physical evidence. In this case fingerprints were hopeless, its a transient hotel room, theres a million latents and no place to start with them. Be nice if there was a big bloody fingerprint and you knew it belonged to the killer, but we didnt have that kind of luck. "

  "Even if you did-"

  "Even if we did, a single print wouldnt lead anywhere. Not until we had a suspect. You cant get a make from Washington on a single print. They keep saying youre gonna be able to eventually, but-"

  "Theyve been saying that for years. "

  "Itll never happen. Or it will, but Ill have my six years by then and Ill be in Arizona. Barring physical evidence that leads somewhere, I guess wed be waiting for the nut to do it again. You get another couple of cases with the same MO and sooner or later he fucks up and you got him, and then you match him to some latents in the room at the Galaxy and you wind up with a case. " He drained his glass. "Then he plea bargains his way to manslaughter and hes out in three years tops and he does it again, but I dont want to get started on that again. I honest to Christ dont want to get started on that again. "