Eight Million Ways to Die

by Lawrence Block

Page 43

 

  "Oh, was it? What was he doing there?"

  "Hoping to get lucky, I suppose. You never know wholl show up at a funeral. "

  "Not many people showed up at this one. "

  "Just a handful. "

  "Im glad we were there. "

  "Uh-huh. "

  I bought her a cup of coffee, then put her in a cab. She insisted she could take the subway but I got her into a cab and made her take ten bucks for the fare.

  A lobby attendant at Parke Bernet directed me to the second-floor gallery where Fridays African and Oceanic art was on display. I found Chance in front of a set of glassed-in shelves housing a collection of eighteen or twenty small gold figurines. Some represented animals while others depicted human beings and various household articles. One I recall showed a man sitting on his haunches and milking a goat. The largest would fit easily in a childs hand, and many of them had a droll quality about them.

  "Ashanti gold weights," Chance explained. "From the land the British called the Gold Coast. Its Ghana now. You see plated reproductions in the shops. Fakes. These are the real thing. "

  "Are you planning to buy them?"

  He shook his head. "They dont speak to me. I try to buy things that do. Ill show you something. "

  We crossed the room. A bronze head of a woman stood mounted on a four-foot pedestal. Her nose was broad and flattened, her cheekbones pronounced. Her throat was so thickly ringed by bronze necklaces that the overall appearance of the head was conical.

  "A bronze sculpture of the lost Kingdom of Benin," he announced. "The head of a queen. You can tell her rank by the number of necklaces shes wearing. Does she speak to you, Matt? She does to me. "

  I read strength in the bronze features, cold strength and a merciless will.

  "Know what she says? She says, Nigger, why you be lookin at me dat way? You know you aint got de money to take me home. " He laughed. "The presale estimate is forty to sixty thousand dollars. "

  "You wont be bidding?"

  "I dont know what Ill be doing. There are a few pieces I wouldnt mind owning. But sometimes I come to auctions the way some people go to the track even when they dont feel like betting. Just to sit in the sun and watch the horses run. I like the way an auction room feels. I like to hear the hammer drop. You seen enough? Lets go. "

  His car was parked at a garage on Seventy-eighth Street. We rode over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and through Long Island City. Here and there street prostitutes stood along the curb singly or in pairs.

  "Not many out last night," he said. "I guess they feel safer in daylight. "

  "You were here last night?"

  "Just driving around. He picked up Cookie around here, then drove out Queens Boulevard. Or did he take the expressway? I dont guess it matters. "

  "No. "

  We took Queens Boulevard. "Want to thank you for coming to the funeral," he said.

  "I wanted to come. "

  "Fine-looking woman with you. "

  "Thank you. "

  "Jan, you say her name was?"

  "Thats right. "

  "You go with her or-"

  "Were friends. "

  "Uh-huh. " He braked for a light. "Ruby didnt come. "

  "I know. "

  "What I told you was a bunch of shit. I didnt want to contradict what I told the others. Ruby split, she packed up and went. "

  "When did this happen?"

  "Sometime yesterday, I guess. Last night I had a message on my service. I was running around all yesterday, trying to get this funeral organized. I thought it went okay, didnt you?"

  "It was a nice service. "

  "Thats what I thought. Anyway, theres a message to call Ruby and a 415 area code. Thats San Francisco. I thought, huh? And I called, and she said she had decided to move on. I thought it was some kind of a joke, you know? Then I went over there and checked her apartment, and all her things were gone. Her clothes. She left the furniture. That makes three empty apartments I got, man. Big housing shortage, nobody can find a place to live, and Im sitting on three empty apartments. Something, huh?"

  "You sure it was her you spoke to?"

  "Positive. "

  "And she was in San Francisco?"

  "Had to be. Or Berkeley or Oakland or some such place. I dialed the number, area code and all. She had to be out there to have that kind of number, didnt she?"

  "Did she say why she left?"

  "Said it was time to move on. Doing her inscrutable oriental number. "

  "You think she was afraid of getting killed?"

  "Powhattan Motel," he said, pointing. "Thats the place, isnt it?"

  "Thats the place. "

  "And you were out here to find the body. "

  "It had already been found. But I was out here before they moved it. "

  "Must have been some sight. "

  "It wasnt pretty. "

  "That Cookie worked alone. No pimp. "

  "Thats what the police said. "

  "Well, she coulda had a pimp that they didnt know about. But I talked to some people. She worked alone, and if she ever knew Duffy Green, nobody ever heard tell of it. " He turned right at the corner. "Well head back to my house, okay?"

  "All right. "

  "Ill make us some coffee. You liked that coffee I fixed last time, didnt you?"

  "It was good. "

  "Well, Ill fix us some more. "

  His block in Greenpoint was almost as quiet by day as it had been by night. The garage door ascended at the touch of a button. He lowered it with a second touch of the button and we got out of the car and walked on into the house. "I want to work out some," he said. "Do a little lifting. You like to work out with weights?"

  "I havent in years. "

  "Want to go through the motions?"

  "I think Ill pass. "

  My name is Matt and I pass.

  "Be a minute," he said.

  He went into a room, came out wearing a pair of scarlet gym shorts and carrying a hooded terry-cloth robe. We went to the room hed fitted out as a gym, and for fifteen or twenty minutes he worked out with loose weights and on the Universal machine. His skin became glossy with perspiration as he worked and his heavy muscles rippled beneath it.

  "Now I want ten minutes in the sauna," he said. "You didnt earn the sauna by pumping the iron, but we could grant a special dispensation in your case. "

  "No thanks. "

  "Want to wait downstairs then? Be more comfortable. "

  I waited while he took a sauna and shower. I studied some of his African sculpture, thumbed through a couple of magazines. He emerged in due course wearing light blue jeans and a navy pullover and rope sandals. He asked if I was ready for coffee. I told him Id been ready for half an hour.

  "Wont be long," he said. He started it brewing, then came back and perched on a leather hassock. He said, "You want to know something? I make a lousy pimp. "

  "I thought you were a class act. Restraint, dignity, all of that. "

  "I had six girls and I got three. And Mary Loull be leaving soon. "

  "You think so?"

  "I know it. Shes a tourist, man. You ever hear how I turned her out?"

  "She told me. "

  "First tricks she did, she got to tell herself she was a reporter, a journalist, this was all research. Then she decided she was really into it. Now shes finding out a couple of things. "

  "Like what?"

  "Like you can get killed, or kill yourself. Like when you die theres twelve people at your funeral. Not much of a turnout for Sunny, was there?"

  "It was on the small side. "

  "You could say that. You know something? I could have filled that fucking room three times over. "

  "Probably. "

  "Not just probably. Definitely. " He stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, paced the floor. "I thought about that. I could have taken their biggest suite and filled it. Uptown people, pimps and whores, and the ringside crowd. Could have mentioned it t
o people in her building. Might be she had some neighbors who would have wanted to come. But see, I didnt want too many people. "

  "I see. "

  "It was really for the girls. The four of them. I didnt know theyd be down to three when I organized the thing. Then I thought, shit, it might be pretty grim, just me and the four girls. So I told a couple of other people. It was nice of Kid Bascomb to come, wasnt it?"

  "Yes. "

  "Ill get that coffee. "

  He came back with two cups. I took a sip, nodded my approval.

  "Youll take a couple pounds home with you. "

  "I told you last time. Its no good to me in a hotel room. "

  "So you give it to your lady friend. Let her make you a cup of the best. "

  "Thanks. "

  "You just drink coffee, right? You dont drink booze?"

  "Not these days. "

  "But you used to. "

  And probably will again, I thought. But not today.

  "Same as me," he said. "I dont drink, dont smoke dope, dont do any of that shit. Used to. "

  "Whyd you stop?"

  "Didnt go with the image. "

  "Which image? The pimp image?"

  "The connoisseur," he said. "The art collector. "

  "Howd you learn so much about African art?"

  "Self-taught," he said. "I read everything I could find, went around to the dealers and talked to them. And I had a feel for it. " He smiled at something. "Long time ago I went to college. "

  "Where was that?"

  "Hofstra. I grew up in Hempstead. Born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but my folks bought a house when I was two, three years old. I dont even remember Bed-Stuy. " He had returned to the hassock and he was leaning back, his hands clasped around his knees for balance. "Middle-class house, lawn to mow and leaves to rake and a driveway to shovel. I can slip in and out of the ghetto talk, but its mostly a shuck. We werent rich but we lived decent. And there was enough money to send me to Hofstra. "

  "What did you study?"

  "Majored in art history. And didnt learn shit about African art there, incidentally. Just that dudes like Braque and Picasso got a lot of inspiration from African masks, same as the Impressionists got turned on by Japanese prints. But I never took a look at an African carving until I got back from Nam. "

  "When were you over there?"

  "After my third year of college. My father died, see. I could have finished all the same but, I dont know, I was crazy enough to drop out of school and enlist. " His head was back and his eyes were closed. "Did a ton of drugs over there. We had everything. Reefer, hash, acid. What I liked, I liked heroin. They did it different there. You used to get it in cigarettes, used to smoke it. "

  "I never heard of that. "

  "Well, its wasteful," he said. "But it was so cheap over there. They grew the opium in those countries and it was cheap. You get a real muzzy high that way, smoking skag in a cigarette. I was stoned that way when I got the news that my mother died. Her pressure was always high, you know, and she had a stroke and died. I wasnt nodding or anything but I was high from a skag joint and I got the news and I didnt feel anything, you know? And when it wore off and I was straight again I still didnt feel anything. First time I felt it was this afternoon, sitting there listening to some hired preacher reading Ralph Waldo Emerson over a dead whore. " He straightened up and looked at me. "I sat there and wanted to cry for my mama," he said, "but I didnt. I dont guess Ill ever cry for her. "