Time to Murder and Create

by Lawrence Block

Page 18

 

  I had been telling Birnbaum the truth. I had a hunch, and the more I thought about it the more I believed in it, and at the same time I kept wanting to be wrong. So I sat around the station house and read newspapers and drank endless cups of weak coffee and tried not to think about all of the things I couldnt possibly avoid thinking about. Somewhere along the line Birnbaum went home, after hed briefed another detective named Guzik, and around nine thirty Guzik came over to me and said they had a make from Washington.

  He read it off the teletype sheet. "Lundgren, John Michael. Date of birth fourteen March forty-three. Place of birth San Bernardino, California. Whole trail of arrests here, Matt. Living off immoral earnings, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, grand larceny. He did local bits all up and down the West Coast, pulled some hard time in Quentin. "

  "He pulled a one-to-five in Folsom," I said. "I dont know whether they called it extortion or larceny. That would have been fairly recent. "

  He looked up at me. "I thought you didnt know him. "

  "I dont. He was working a badger game. Arrested in San Diego, and his partner turned states evidence and got off. Sentence suspended. "

  "Thats more detail than Ive got here. "

  I asked him if he had a cigarette. He said he didnt smoke. He turned to ask if anybody had a cigarette, but I told him to forget it. "Get somebody with a steno pad," I said. "Theres a lot to tell. "

  I gave them everything I could think of. How Beverly Ethridge had worked her way in and out of the world of crime. How she had married well and turned herself back into the society type she had been in the first place. How Spinner Jablon had pieced it all together on the strength of a newspaper photo and turned it into a neat little blackmail operation.

  "I guess she stalled him for a while," I said. "But it kept being expensive, and he kept pushing for bigger money. Then her old boyfriend Lundgren came east and showed her a way out. Why pay blackmail when its so much easier to kill the blackmailer? Lundgren was a pro as a criminal but an amateur as a killer. He tried a couple of different methods on Spinner. Tried to get him with a car, then wound up hitting him over the head and putting him in the East River. Then he tried for me with the car. "

  "And then with the knife. "

  "Thats right. "

  "How did you get into it?"

  I explained, leaving out the names of Spinners other blackmail victims. They didnt like that much, but there wasnt anything much they could do about it. I told them how I had staked myself out as a target and how Lundgren had taken the bait.

  Guzik kept interrupting to tell me I should have given everything to the cops right off, and I kept telling him it was something I had not been willing to do.

  "Wedve handled it right, Matt. Jesus, you talk about Lundgrens an amateur, shit, you ran around like an amateur yourself and almost got your ass in the wringer. You wound up going up against a knife with nothing but your hands, and its dumb luck youre alive this minute. The hell, you ought to know better, you were a cop fifteen years, and you act like you dont know what the departments all about. "

  "How about the people who didnt kill Spinner? What happens to them if I hand you the whole thing right off the bat?"

  "Thats their lookout, isnt it? They come into it with dirty hands. They got something to hide, that shouldnt be getting in the way of a murder investigation. "

  "But there was no investigation. Nobody gave a shit about Spinner. "

  "Because you were withholding evidence. "

  I shook my head. "Thats horseshit," I said. "I didnt have evidence that anybody killed Spinner. I had evidence that he was blackmailing several people. That was evidence against Spinner, but he was dead, and I didnt think you were particularly anxious to take him out of the morgue and throw him in a cell. The minute I had murder evidence I put it in your hand. Look, we could argue all day. Why dont you put out a pickup order on Beverly Ethridge?"

  "And charge her with what?"

  "Two counts of conspiracy to murder. "

  "Youve got the blackmail evidence?"

  "In a safe place. A safe-deposit box. I can bring it here in an hour. "

  "I think Ill come along with you and get it. "

  I looked at him.

  "Maybe I want to see just whats in the envelope, Scudder. "

  It had been Matt up until then. I wondered what kind of a number he wanted to run. Maybe he was just fishing, but he had visions of something or other. Maybe he wanted to take my place in the blackmail dodge, only hed want real money, not the name of a murderer. Maybe he figured the other pigeons had committed real crimes and he could buy himself a commendation by knocking them off. I didnt know him well enough to guess which motivation would be consistent with the man, but it didnt really make very much difference.

  "I dont get it," I said. "I give you a homicide collar on a silver platter and you want to melt down the platter. "

  "Im sending a couple boys over to pick up Ethridge. In the meantime, you and me are going to open up a safe-deposit box. "

  "I could forget where I left the key. "

  "And I could make your life difficult. "

  "Its not that much of a cinch as it is. Its just a few blocks from here. "

  "Still raining," he said. "Well take a car. "

  WE drove over to the Manufacturers Hanover branch at Fifty-seventh and Eighth. He left the black-and-white in a bus stop. All that to save a three-block walk, and it wasnt raining all that hard any more. We went inside and went down the stairs to the vault, and I gave my key to the guard and signed the signature card.

  "Had the damnedest thing you ever heard of a few months back," Guzik said. He was friendly now that I was going along with him. "This girl rented a box over at Chemical Bank, and she paid her eight bucks for a year, and she was visiting the box three or four times a day. Always with a guy, always a different guy. So the bank got suspicious and asked us to check it out, and wouldnt you know, the chick is a pross. Instead of taking a hotel room for ten bucks, shes picking up her tricks on the street and taking them to the fucking bank, for Christs sake. Then she gets her box out and they show her to the little room, and she locks the door and gives the guy a quick blow job in complete privacy, and then she sticks the money in the box and locks it up again. And all it runs her is eight bucks for the year instead of ten bucks a trick, and its safer than a hotel because if she gets a crazy hes not going to try beating her up in the middle of a fucking bank, is he? She cant get beaten up and she cant get robbed, and its perfect. "

  By this time the guard had used his key and mine to get the box from the vault. He handed it to me and led us to a cubicle. We entered together, and Guzik closed and locked the door. The room struck me as rather cramped for sex, but I understand people do it in airplane lavatories, and this was spacious in comparison.

  I asked Guzik what had happened to the girl.

  "Oh, we told the bank not to press charges, or all it would do was give every streetwalker in the business the same idea. We told them to refund her box-rental fee and tell her they didnt want her business, so I guess thats what they did. She probably walked across the street and started doing business with another bank. "

  "But you never got any more complaints. "

  "No. Maybe shes got a friend at Chase Manhattan. " He laughed hard at his own line, then chopped it off abruptly. "Lets see whats in the box, Scudder. "

  I handed it to him. "Open it yourself," I said.

  He did, and I watched his face while he looked through everything. He had some interesting comments on the pictures he saw, and he gave the written material a fairly careful reading. Then he looked up suddenly.

  "This is all the stuff on the Ethridge dame. "

  "Seems that way," I said.

  "What about the others? "

  "I guess these safe-deposit vaults arent as foolproof as theyre supposed to be. Somebody must have come in and taken everything else. "

  "You son of a
bitch. "

  "Youve got everything you need, Guzik. No more and no less. "

  "You took a different box for each one. How many others are there?"

  "What difference does it make?"

  "You son of a bitch. So well walk back and ask the guard how many other boxes you have here, and well take a look at all of them. "

  "If you want. I can save you a little time. "

  "Oh?"

  "Not just three different boxes, Guzik. Three different banks. And dont even think about shaking me for the other keys, or running a check on the banks, or anything else you might have in mind. In fact, it might be a good idea if you stopped calling me a son of a bitch, because I might get unhappy, and I might decide not to cooperate in your investigation. I dont have to cooperate, you know. And if I dont, your case goes down the drain. You can possibly tie Ethridge to Lundgren without me, but youll have a hell of a time finding anything a D. A. is going to want to take to court. "

  We looked at each other for a while. A couple of times he started to say something, and a couple of times he figured out that it wasnt a particularly good idea. Finally something changed in his face, and I knew hed decided to let it go. He had enough, and he had all he was going to get, and his face said he knew it.

  "The hell," he said, "its the cop in me, I want to get to the bottom of things. No offense, I hope. "

  "None at all," I said. I dont suppose I sounded very convincing.

  "They probably hauled Ethridge out of bed by now. Ill get back and see what shes got to say. It should make good listening. Or maybe they didnt haul her out of bed. These pictures, youd have more fun hauling her into bed than out. Ever get any of that, Scudder?"

  "No. "

  "I wouldnt mind a taste myself. Want to come back to the station house with me?"

  I didnt want to go anywhere with him. I didnt want to see Beverly Ethridge.

  "Ill pass," I said. "Ive got an appointment. "

  Chapter 17

  I spent half an hour under the shower with the spray as hot as I could stand it. It had been a long night, and the only sleep Id had had been when I dozed off briefly in Birnbaums chair. I had come close to being killed, and I had killed the man whod been trying for me. The Marlboro man, John Michael Lundgren. Hed have been thirty-one next month. I would have guessed him at younger than that, twenty-six or so. Of course, Id never seen him in particularly good light.

  It didnt bother me that he was dead. He had been trying to kill me and had seemed pleased at the prospect. He had killed Spinner, and it wasnt unlikely that hed killed other people before. He might not have been a pro at killing, but it seemed to be something he enjoyed. He certainly liked working with the knife, and the boys who like to use knives usually get a sexual thrill out of their weaponry. Edged weapons are even more phallic that guns.

  I wondered if hed used a knife on Spinner. It wasnt inconceivable. The Medical Examiners office doesnt catch everything. There was a case a while ago, a then-unidentified floater they fished out of the Hudson, and she was processed and buried without anyones noticing that there was a bullet in her skull. They found out only because some yoyo severed her head before burial. He wanted the skull for a desk ornament, and ultimately they found the bullet and identified the skull from dental records and found out the woman had been missing from her home in Jersey for a couple of months.