Eight Million Ways to Die

by Lawrence Block

Page 22

 

  "Should it?"

  "I dont know. "

  "Its not real money anyway," she said. "Fast money doesnt last. If it did, all the drug dealers would own the stock exchange. But that kind of money goes out the way it comes in. " She swung her legs around, sat facing forward on the church pew. "Anyway," she said, "I have everything I want. All I ever wanted was to be left alone. I wanted a decent place to live and time to do my work. Im talking about my poetry. "

  "I realize that. "

  "You know what most poets go through? They teach, or they work a straight job, or they play the poetry game, giving readings and lectures and writing out proposals for foundation grants and getting to know the right people and kissing the right behinds. I never wanted to do all that shit. I just wanted to make poems. "

  "What did Kim want to do?"

  "God knows. "

  "I think she was involved with somebody. I think thats what got her killed. "

  "Then Im safe," she said. "Im involved with no one. Of course you could argue that Im involved with mankind. Would that put me in grave danger, do you suppose?"

  I didnt know what she meant. With her eyes closed she said, " Any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind, John Donne. Do you know how she was involved, or with whom?"

  "No. "

  "Does her death diminish me, do you suppose? I wonder if I was involved with her. I didnt know her, not really, and yet I wrote a poem about her. "

  "Could I see it?"

  "I suppose so, but I dont see how it could tell you anything. I wrote a poem about the Big Dipper but if you want to know anything real about it youd have to go to an astronomer, not to me. Poems are never about what theyre about, you know. Theyre all about the poet. "

  "Id still like to see it. "

  This seemed to please her. She went to her desk, a modern version of the old rolltop, and found what she was looking for almost immediately. The poem was hand-lettered on white bond paper with an italic-nibbed pen.

  "I type them up for submission," she said, "but I like to see how they look on the page this way. I taught myself to do calligraphy. I learned from a book. Its easier than it looks. "

  I read:

  Bathe her in milk, let the white stream run

  Pure in its bovine baptism,

  Heal the least schism

  Under the soonest sun. Take her

  Hand, tell her it doesnt matter,

  Milks not to cry over. Scatter

  Seed from a silver gun. Break her

  Bones in a mortar, shatter

  Wine bottles at her feet, let green glass

  Sparkle upon her hand. Let it be done.

  Let the milk run.

  Let it flow down, down to the ancient grass.

  I asked if I could copy it into my notebook. Her laugh was light, merry. "Why? Does it tell who killed her?"

  "I dont know what it tells me. Maybe if I keep it Ill figure out what it tells me. "

  "If you figure out what it means," she said, "I hope youll tell me. Thats an exaggeration. I sort of know what Im getting at. But dont bother copying it. You can have that copy. "

  "Dont be silly. Thats your copy. "

  She shook her head. "Its not finished. It needs more work. I want to get her eyes into it. If you met Kim you must have noticed her eyes. "

  "Yes. "

  "I originally wanted to contrast the blue eyes with the green glass, thats how that image got there in the first place, but the eyes disappeared when I wrote it. I think they were in an earlier draft but somewhere along the line they dropped out. " She smiled. "They were gone in a wink. Ive got the silver and the green and the white and I left the eyes out. " She stood with her hand on my shoulder, looking down at the poem. "Its what, twelve lines? I think it should be fourteen anyway. Sonnet length, even if the lines are irregular. I dont know about schism, either. Maybe an off-rhyme would be better. Spasm, chasm, something. "

  She went on, talking more to herself than to me, discussing possible revisions in the poem. "By all means keep that," she concluded. "Its a long way from final form. Its funny. I havent even looked at it since she was killed. "

  "You wrote it before she was killed?"

  "Completely. And I dont think I ever thought of it as finished, even though I copied it in pen and ink. Ill do that with drafts. I can get a better idea of what does and doesnt work that way. Id have kept on working on this one if she hadnt been killed. "

  "What stopped you? The shock?"

  "Was I shocked? I suppose I must have been. This could happen to me, Except of course I dont believe that. Its like lung cancer, it happens to other people. Any mans death diminishes me. Did Kims death diminish me? I dont think so. I dont think Im as involved in mankind as John Donne was. Or as he said he was. "

  "Then why did you put the poem aside?"

  "I didnt put it aside. I left it aside. Thats nitpicking, isnt it?" She considered this. "Her death changed how I saw her. I wanted to work on the poem, but I didnt want to get her death into it. I had enough colors. I didnt need blood in there, too. "

  Chapter 17

  I had taken a cab from Morton Street to Donnas place on East Seventeenth. Now I took another to Kims building on Thirty-seventh. As I paid the driver I realized I hadnt made it to the bank. Tomorrow was Saturday, so Id have Chances money on my hands all weekend. Unless some mugger got lucky.

  I lightened the load some by slipping five bucks to the doorman for a key to Kims apartment, along with some story about acting as the tenants representative. For five dollars he was eager to believe me. I went up to the elevator and let myself in.

  The police had been through the place earlier. I didnt know what they were looking for and couldnt say what they found. The sheet in the file Durkin showed me hadnt said much, but nobody writes down everything that comes to his attention.

  I couldnt know what the officers on the scene might have noticed. For that matter, I couldnt be sure what might have stuck to their fingers. There are cops wholl rob the dead, doing so as a matter of course, and they are not necessarily men who are especially dishonest in other matters.

  Cops see too much of death and squalor, and in order to go on dealing with it they often have the need to dehumanize the dead. I remember the first time I helped remove a corpse from a room in an SRO hotel. The deceased had died vomiting blood and had lain there for several days before his death was discovered. A veteran patrolman and I wrestled the corpse into a body bag and on the way downstairs my companion made sure the bag hit every single step. Hed have been more careful with a sack of potatoes.

  I can still recall the way the hotels other residents looked at us. And I can remember how my partner went through the dead mans belongings, scooping up the little cash he had to his name, counting it deliberately and dividing it with me.

  I hadnt wanted to take it. "Put it in your pocket," he told me. "What do you think happens to it otherwise? Somebody else takes it. Or it goes to the state. Whats the state of New York gonna do with forty-four dollars? Put it in your pocket, then buy yourself some perfumed soap and try to get this poor fuckers stink off your hands. "

  I put it in my pocket. Later on, I was the one who bounced bagged corpses down the stairs, the one who counted and divided their leavings.

  Someday, I suppose, itll come full circle, and Ill be the one in the bag.

  I spent over an hour there. I went through drawers and closets without really knowing what I was looking for. I didnt find very much. If shed had a little black book full of telephone numbers, the call girls legendary stock in trade, someone else had found it before I did. Not that I had any reason to assume shed had such a book. Elaine kept one, but Fran and Donna had both told me they didnt.

  I didnt find any drugs or drug paraphernalia, which proved little in and of itself. A cop might appropriate drugs just as hed take money from the dead. Or Chance might have picked up any contraband that he found lying around. Hed
said that he visited the apartment once after her death. I noticed, though, that hed left the African masks. They glared at me from their spot on the wall, guarding the premises on behalf of whatever eager young whore Chance would install in Kims place.

  The Hopper poster was still in place over the stereo. Would that stay behind for the next tenant, too?

  Her spoor was all over the place. I breathed it when I went through the clothes in her dresser drawers and in her closet. Her bed was unmade. I lifted the mattress, looked under it. No doubt others had done so before me. I didnt find anything and I let the mattress fall back into place, and her spicy scent rose from the rumpled bedclothing and filled my nostrils.

  In the living room, I opened a closet and found her fur jacket, other coats and jackets, and a shelf full of wine and liquor bottles. A fifth of Wild Turkey caught my eye, and I swear I could taste that rich overproof bourbon, could feel the bite of it in my throat, the hot rush flowing down to my stomach, the warmth spreading clear to my toes and fingers. I closed the door, crossed the room and sat down on the couch. I hadnt wanted a drink, hadnt so much as thought of a drink in hours, and the unexpected glimpse of a bottle of booze had caught me unawares.

  I went back to the bedroom. She had a jewelry box on the top of her dressing table and I went through it. A lot of earrings, a couple of necklaces, a string of unconvincing pearls. Several bangle bracelets, including an attractive one made of ivory and trimmed in what looked to be gold. A gaudy class ring from LaFollette High in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The ring was gold, stamped 14K on the inside, heavy enough by the feel of it to be worth something.

  Who would get all of this? There had been some cash in her bag at the Galaxy Downtowner, four hundred bucks and change according to the note in her file, and that would probably wind up going to her parents in Wisconsin. But would they fly in and claim her coats and sweaters? Would they take possession of the fur jacket, the high school ring, the ivory bracelet?

  I stayed long enough to make a few notes and managed to get out of there without again opening the front closet. I rode the elevator to the lobby, waved at the doorman and nodded at an entering tenant, an elderly woman with a small short-haired dog on a rhinestone-studded leash. The dog yipped at me, and I wondered for the first time what had become of Kims little black kitten. Id seen no traces of the animal, no litter pan in the bathroom. Someone must have taken it.

  I caught a cab at the corner. I was paying it off in front of my hotel when I found Kims key with my pocket change. I hadnt remembered to return it to the doorman, and he hadnt thought to ask me for it.

  There was a message for me. Joe Durkin had called and left his number at the precinct. I called and was told he was out but was expected back. I left my name and number.

  I went up to my room, feeling winded and tired. I lay down but I couldnt get any rest that way, couldnt turn off the tapes in my head. I went downstairs again, had a cheese sandwich and french fries and coffee. Over a second cup of coffee I took Donna Campions poem out of my pocket. Something about it was trying to get through to me but I couldnt figure out what. I read it again. I didnt know what the poem meant; assuming that it was intended to have any literal meaning. But it seemed to me that some element of it was winking at me, trying to get my attention, and I was just too brain damaged to catch on.