Eight Million Ways to Die

by Lawrence Block

Page 40

 

  "I noticed. "

  "One on each hand, she had. "

  "So?"

  "So he didnt take em. "

  "Why would he take her rings?"

  "You were saying he took Dakkinens. "

  I didnt say anything.

  Gently he said, "Matt, you dont still think Dakkinen got killed for a reason?"

  I felt rage swelling up within me, bulging like an aneurysm in a blood vessel. I sat there trying to will it away.

  "And dont tell me about the towels. Hes a ripper, hes a cute fucking psycho who makes plans and plays by his own private rules. Hes not the first case like that to come along. "

  "I got warned off the case, Joe. I got very professionally warned off the case. "

  "So? She got killed by a psycho and there could still be something about her life that some friends of hers dont want to come out in the open. Maybe she had a boyfriend and hes a married guy, just like you figured, and even if what she died of was scarlet fucking fever he wouldnt want you poking around in the ashes. "

  I gave myself the Miranda warning. You have the right to remain silent, I told myself, and exercised the right.

  "Unless you figure Dakkinen and Blaustein are tied together. Long-lost sisters, say. Excuse me, brother and sister. Or maybe they were brothers, maybe Dakkinen had her operation a few years ago. Tall for a girl, wasnt she?"

  "Maybe Cookie was a smokescreen," I said.

  "Hows that?"

  I went on talking in spite of myself. "Maybe he killed her to take the heat off," I said. "Make it look like a train of random murders. To hide his motive for killing Dakkinen. "

  "To take the heat off. What heat, for Christs sake?"

  "I dont know. "

  "Theres been no fucking heat. There will be now. Nothing turns the fucking press on like a series of random killings. The readers eat it up, they pour it on their corn flakes. Anything gives em a chance to run a sidebar on the original Jack the Ripper, those editors go crazy for it. You talk about heat, therell be enough heat now to scorch his ass for him. "

  "I suppose. "

  "You know what you are, Scudder? Youre stubborn. "

  "Maybe. "

  "Your problem is you work private and you only carry one case at a time. I got so much shit on my desk its a pleasure when I get to let go of something, but with you its just the opposite. You want to hang onto it as long as you can. "

  "Is that what it is?"

  "I dont know. It sounds like it. " He took one hand off the wheel, tapped me on the forearm. "I dont mean to bust balls," he said. "I see something like that, somebody chopped up like that, I try to clamp a lid on it and it comes out in other directions. You did a lot of good work. "

  "Did I?"

  "No question. There were things we missed. It might give us a little jump on the psycho, some of the stuff you came up with. Who knows?"

  Not I. All I knew was how tired I was.

  He fell silent as we drove across town. In front of my hotel he braked to a stop and said, "What Garfein said there. Maybe Ricone means something in Italian. "

  "It wont be hard to check. "

  "Oh, of course not. Everything should be that easy to run down. No, well check, and you know what well find? Itll turn out it means Jones. "

  I went upstairs and got out of my clothes and into bed. Ten minutes later I got up again. I felt unclean and my scalp itched. I stood under a too-hot shower and scrubbed myself raw. I got out of the shower, told myself it didnt make any sense to shave before going to bed, then lathered up and shaved anyway. When I was done I put a robe on and sat down on the edge of my bed, then moved to the chair.

  They tell you not to let yourself get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired. Any of the four can put you off balance and turn you in the direction of a drink. It seemed to me that Id touched all four bases, Id boxed that particular compass in the course of the day and night. Oddly enough, I didnt feel the urge for a drink.

  I got the gun from my coat pocket, I started to return it to the dresser drawer, then changed my mind and sat in the chair again, turning the gun in my hands.

  When was the last time Id fired a gun?

  I didnt really have to think very hard. It had been that night in Washington Heights when I chased two holdup men into the street, shot them down and killed that little girl in the process. In the time I remained on the force after that incident, I never had occasion to draw my service revolver, let alone discharge it. And I certainly hadnt fired a gun since I left the force.

  And tonight Id been unable to do it. Because something clued me that the car I was aiming at held drunken kids instead of assassins? Because some subtle intuitive perception made me wait until I was certain what I was shooting at?

  No. I couldnt make myself believe that.

  I had frozen. If instead of a kid with a whiskey bottle Id seen a thug with a tommy gun, I wouldnt have been any more capable of squeezing the trigger. My fingerd been paralyzed.

  I broke the gun, shook the bullets out of the cylinder, closed it up again. I pointed the empty weapon at the wastebasket across the room and squeezed the trigger a couple of times. The click the hammer made as it fell upon an empty chamber was surprisingly loud and sharp in my little room.

  I aimed at the mirror over the dresser. Click!

  Proved nothing. It was empty, I knew it was empty. I could take the thing to a pistol range, load it and fire at targets, and that wouldnt prove anything either.

  It bothered me that Id been unable to fire the gun. And yet I was grateful it had happened that way, because otherwise Id have emptied the gun into that car of kids, probably killed a few of them, and what would that have done to my peace of mind? Tired as I was, I went a few hard rounds with that particular conundrum. I was glad I hadnt shot anyone and frightened of the implications of not shooting, and my mind went around and around, chasing its tail.

  I took off the robe, got into bed, and couldnt even begin to loosen up. I got dressed again in street clothes, used the back end of a nail file as a screwdriver, and took the revolver apart for cleaning. I put its parts in one pocket, and in another I stowed the four live cartridges along with the two knives Id taken from the mugger.

  It was morning and the sky was bright. I walked over to Ninth Avenue and up to Fifty-eighth Street, where I dropped both knives into a sewer grating. I crossed the street and walked to another grating and stood near it with my hands in my pockets, one holding the four cartridges, the other touching the pieces of the disassembled revolver.

  Why carry a gun youre not going to shoot? Why own a gun you cant carry?

  I stopped in a deli on the way back to the hotel. The customer ahead of me bought two six-packs of Old English 800 Malt Liquor. I picked out four candy bars and paid for them, ate one as I walked and the other three in my room. Then I took the revolvers parts from my pocket and put them back together again. I loaded four of the six chambers and put the gun in the dresser drawer.

  I got into bed, told myself Id stay there whether I could sleep or not, and smiled at the thought as I felt myself drifting off.

  Chapter 29

  The telephone woke me. I fought my way out of sleep like an underwater swimmer coming up for air. I sat up, blinking and trying to catch my breath. The phone was still ringing and I couldnt figure out what was making that damned sound. Then I caught on and answered it.

  It was Chance. "Just saw the paper," he said. "What do you figure? That the same guy as got Kim?"

  "Give me a minute," I said.

  "You asleep?"

  "Im awake now. "

  "Then you dont know what Im talkin about. There was another killing, this time in Queens, some sex-change streetwalker cut to ribbons. "

  "I know. "

  "How do you know if you been sleeping?"

  "I was out there last night. "

  "Out there in Queens?"

  He sounded impressed. "Out there on Queens Boulevard," I
told him. "With a couple of cops. It was the same killer. "

  "You sure of that?"

  "They didnt have the scientific evidence sorted out when I was there. But yes, Im sure of it. "

  He thought about it. "Then Kim was just unlucky," he said. "Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. "

  "Maybe. "

  "Just maybe?"

  I got my watch from the nightstand. It was almost noon.

  "There are elements that dont fit," I said. "At least it seems that way to me. A cop last night told me my problem is Im too stubborn. Ive only got the one case and I dont want to let go of it. "

  "So?"

  "He could be right, but there are still some things that dont fit. What happened to Kims ring?"

  "What ring?"

  "She had a ring with a green stone. "

  "Ring," he said, and thought about it. "Was it Kim had that ring? I guess it was. "

  "What happened to it?"

  "Wasnt it in her jewelry box?"

  "That was her class ring. From high school back home. "

  "Yeah, right. I recall the ring you mean. Big green stone. Was a birthstone ring, something like that. "

  "Whered she get it?"

  "Out of a Crackerjack box, most likely. Think she said she bought it for herself. It was just a piece of junk, man. Chunk of green glass is all. "

  Shatter wine bottles at her feet.

  "It wasnt an emerald?"

  "You shuckin, man? You know what emeralds cost?"

  "No. "

  "Moren diamonds. Whys the ring important?"

  "Maybe its not. "

  "What do you do next?"

  "I dont know," I said. "If Kim got killed by a psycho striking at random, I dont know what I can do that the cops cant do better. But theres somebody who wants me off the case, and theres a hotel clerk who got scared into leaving town, and theres a missing ring. "

  "That maybe doesnt mean anything. "

  "Maybe. "

  "Wasnt there something in Sunnys note about a ring turning somebodys finger green? Maybe it was a cheap ring, turned Kims finger green, and she got rid of it. "

  "I dont think thats what Sunny meant. "

  "What did she mean, then?"

  "I dont know that either. " I took a breath. "Id like to connect Cookie Blue and Kim Dakkinen," I said. "Thats what Id like to do. If I can manage that I can probably find the man who killed them both. "

  "Maybe. You be at Sunnys service tomorrow?"

  "Ill be there. "

  "Then Ill see you. Maybe we can talk a little afterward. "

  "Fine. "

  "Yeah," he said. "Kim and Cookie. What could they have in common?"

  "Didnt Kim work the streets for a while? Didnt she take a bust on that Long Island City stroll?"

  "Years ago. "

  "She had a pimp named Duffy, didnt she? Did Cookie have a pimp?"

  "Could be. Some of the TVs do. Most of em dont, from what I know. Maybe I could ask around. "

  "Maybe you could. "

  "I havent seen Duffy in months. I think I heard he was dead. But Ill ask around. Hard to figure, though, that a girl like Kim had anything in common with a little Jewish queen from the Island. "