Eight Million Ways to Die

by Lawrence Block

Page 38

 

  I didnt say anything. He picked up his cigarettes, offered me one. I shook my head. He took one for himself and lit it. He took a drag, blew out a column of smoke, then ran a hand over his head, smoothing down the dark hair that already lay flat upon his scalp.

  He said, "Could be there was some engraving. People do that with rings, engraving on the inside. To Kim from Freddie, some shit like that. You think thats it?"

  "I dont know. "

  "You got a theory?"

  I remembered what Danny Boy Bell had said. If the boyfriend commanded such muscle, was so well connected, how come he hadnt shown her off? And if it was someone else with the muscle and the connections and the insufficient words to the wise, how did that someone else fit in with the boyfriend? Who was this accountant type who paid for her mink, and why wasnt I getting a smell of him from anywhere else?

  And why did the killer take the ring?

  I reached into my pocket. My fingers touched the gun, felt its cool metal, slipped beneath it to find the little cube of broken green glass that had started all of this. I took it from my pocket and looked at it, and Durkin asked me what it was.

  "Green glass," I said.

  "Like the ring. "

  I nodded. He took the piece of glass from me, held it to the light, dropped it back in my palm. "We dont know she wore the ring to the hotel," he reminded me. "We just said so for the sake of argument. "

  "I know. "

  "Maybe she left it at the apartment. Maybe someone took it from there. "

  "Who?"

  "The boyfriend. Lets say he didnt kill her, lets say it was an EDP like I said from the beginning-"

  "You really use that expression?"

  "You get so you use the expressions they want you to use, you know how it works. Lets say the psycho killed her and the boyfriends worried hell be tied into it. So he goes to the apartment, hes got a key, and he takes the ring. Maybe he bought her other presents and he took them, too. He wouldve taken the fur, too, but it was in the hotel. Why isnt that theory just as good as the killer yanking the ring off her finger?"

  Because it wasnt a psycho, I thought. Because a psycho killer wouldnt be sending men in lumber jackets to warn me off, wouldnt be passing messages to me through Danny Boy Bell. Because a psycho wouldnt have worried about handwriting or fingerprints or towels.

  Unless he was some sort of Jack the Ripper type, a psycho who planned and took precautions. But that wasnt it, that couldnt be it, and the ring had to be significant. I dropped the piece of glass back into my pocket. It meant something, it had to mean something.

  Durkins phone rang. He picked it up, said "Joe Durkin" and "Yeah, right, right. " He listened, grunting acknowledgment from time to time, darting a pointed look in my direction, making notes on a memo pad.

  I went over to the coffee machine and got us both coffee. I couldnt remember what he took in his coffee, then remembered how bad the coffee was out of that machine and added cream and sugar to both cups.

  He was still on the phone when I got back to the desk. He took the coffee, nodded his thanks, sipped it, lit a fresh cigarette to go with it. I drank some of my own coffee and made my way through Kims file, hoping something I saw might bridge a gap for me. I thought of my conversation with Donna. What was wrong with the word sparkle? Hadnt the ring sparkled on Kims finger? I remembered how it had looked with the light striking it. Or was I just fabricating the memory to reinforce my own theory? And did I even have a theory? I had a missing ring and no hard evidence that the ring had even existed. A poem, a suicide note, and my own remark about eight million stories in the Emerald City. Had the ring triggered that subconsciously? Or was I just identifying with the crew on the Yellow Brick Road, wishing I had a brain and a heart and a dose of courage?

  Durkin said, "Yeah, its a pisser, all right. Dont go way, okay? Ill be right out. "

  He hung up, looked at me. His expression was a curious one, self-satisfaction mixed with something that might have been pity.

  He said, "The Powhattan Motel, you know where Queens Boulevard cuts the Long Island Expressway? Its just past the intersection. I dont know just where, Elmhurst or Rego Park. Right about where they run into each other. "

  "So?"

  "One of those adult motels, waterbeds in some of the rooms, X-rated movies on the teevee. They get cheaters, the hot-sheet trade, take a room for two hours. Theyll turn a room five, six times a night if they get the volume, and a lot of its cash, they can skim it. Very profitable, motels like that. "

  "Whats the point?"

  "Guy drove up, rented a room a couple of hours ago. Well, that business, you make up the room soon as the customer leaves it. Manager noticed the car was gone, went to the room. Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door. He knocks, no answer, he knocks again, still no answer. He opens the door and guess what he finds?"

  I waited.

  "Cop named Lennie Garfein responded to the call, first thing that struck him was the similarity to what we had at the Galaxy Downtowner. That was him on the phone. We wont know until we get the medical evidence, direction of thrust, nature of wounds, all that, but it sure as hell sounds identical. Killer even took a shower, took the towels with him when he left. "

  "Was it-"

  "Was it what?"

  It wasnt Donna. Id just spoken to her. Fran, Ruby, Mary Lou-

  "Was it one of Chances women?"

  "Hell," he said, "how do I know who Chances women are? You think all I do is keep tabs on pimps?"

  "Who was it?"

  "Not one of anybodys women," he said. He crushed out his cigarette, started to help himself to a fresh one, changed his mind and pushed it back into the pack. "Not a woman," he said.

  "Not-"

  "Not who?"

  "Not Calder?n. Octavio Calder?n, the room clerk. "

  He let out a bark of laughter. "Jesus, what a mind you got," he said. "You really want things to make sense. No, not a woman, and not your boy Calder?n either. This was a transsexual hooker off the Long Island City stroll. Preoperative, from what Garfein said. Means the tits are there, the silicone implants, but shes still got her male genitals. You hear me? Her male genitals. Jesus, what a world. Of course maybe she got the operation tonight. Maybe that was surgery there, with a machete. "

  I couldnt react. I sat there, numb. Durkin got to his feet, put a hand on my shoulder. "I got a car downstairs. Im gonna run out there, take a look at what they got. You want to tag along?"

  Chapter 28

  The body was still there, sprawled full-length on the king-size bed. It had bled white, leaving the skin with the trans-lucence of old china. Only the genitalia, hacked almost beyond recognition, identified the victim as male. The face was that of a woman. So was the smooth and hairless skin, the slender but full-breasted body.

  "Shed fool you," Garfein said. "See, she had the preliminary surgery. The breast implants, the Adams apple, the cheekbones. And of course the hormone shots all along. That keeps down the beard and the body hair, makes the skin nice and feminine. Look at the wound in the left breast there. You can see the silicone sac. See?"

  Blood all over, and the smell of fresh death in the air. Not the stale reek of a late-found corpse, not the stench of decomposition, but the horrible odor of a slaughterhouse, the raw throat-catching smell of fresh blood. I felt not so much nauseated as overpowered, oppressed by the warmth and density of the air.

  "What was lucky is I recognized her," Garfein was saying. "That way I knew right off she was a pross and that made the connection in my mind with that case of yours, Joe. Was the one you caught as bloody as this?"

  "Same thing," Durkin said.

  I said, "You recognized her?"

  "Oh, right away. I did a hitch not that long ago with the Pussy Posse over in Long Island City. They still got a stroll there, theyve had street prostitution in that same location for forty or fifty years, but now youre getting a lot of middle-class people moving in there, converting lofts for r
esidential use, buying up the old brownstones and converting them back from rooming houses to nice homes. They sign the lease in the daytime and then they move in and they look at whats around them and they arent happy, and the pressure comes down to clean up the street. " He pointed at the figure on the bed. "I must have arrested her, oh, say three times. "

  "You know her name?"

  "Which name do you want? Theyve all got more than one. Her street name was Cookie. That was the name that came to me when I saw her. Then I called in to the station house at Fiftieth and Vernon and had somebody pull her file. She was calling herself Sara but back when she made her bar mitzvah the name they wrote down was Mark Blaustein. "

  "She had a bar mitzvah?"

  "Who knows? I wasnt invited. But shes a nice Jewish girl from Floral Park is the point Im making. A nice Jewish girl who used to be a nice Jewish boy. "

  "Sara Blaustein?"

  "Sara Bluestone a/k/a Sara Blue. A/k/a Cookie. Notice the hands and feet? Theyre on the large side for a girl. Thats one way you can tell a transsexual. Of course its not foolproof, you get girls with big hands and boys with small ones. Shed fool you, wouldnt she?"

  I nodded.

  "She would have had the rest of the surgery soon. Probably already had herself scheduled for the operation. Law says they have to live as a woman for a year before Medicaidll pick up the tab. Of course they all got Medicaid, they all got welfare. Theyll turn ten or twenty tricks a night, all quickie blow jobs in the johns cars for ten or twenty bucks a pop, theyll bring in a couple of hundred dollars a night seven nights a week, all of it tax free, and they got Medicaid and welfare and the ones with kids get ADC and half the pimps are on SSI. "

  He and Durkin batted that ball around a little. Meanwhile the technical people were busy around us, measuring things, taking photographs, dusting for prints. We got out of their way and stood together in the motel parking lot.

  Durkin said, "You know what we got, dont you? We got us Jack the fucking Ripper. "

  "I know it," Garfein said.

  "You get anything with the other guests? She musta made some noise. "

  "You kidding? Cheaters? I didnt see nothin, I didnt hear nothin, I gotta go now. Even if she did some screaming, in a job like this everybodyd figure it was a new way to have fun. Assuming they werent too busy having their own fun to notice. "

  "First he checks into a decent midtown hotel and phones up a fancy call girl. Then he picks up a TV streetwalker and drags her to a cheaters motel. You figure the cock and balls came as a shock to him?"

  Garfein shrugged. "Maybe. You know, half your street prostitutes are guys in drag. Some sections its more than half. "

  "The West Side docks its a lot more than half. "

  "Ive heard that," Garfein said. "You talk to the johns, some of emll admit they prefer if its a guy. They say a guy gives better head. Of course theres nothing queer about them, see, because theyre just receiving it. "

  "Well, go figure a john," Durkin said.

  "Whether he knew or not, I dont think it put him off much. He went and did his number all the same. "