A Stab in the Dark

by Lawrence Block

Page 6

 

  Gilman looked at the card for a moment, then handed it back. I watched his face and could see him make up his mind. "Oh, well," he said. "I cant see the harm in talking with you, Mr. Scudder. Its not as though I knew anything substantial. It was all a fair amount of years ago, wasnt it? A lot of water under the bridge since then, or over the dam, or wherever it goes. " His blue eyes brightened. "Speaking of liquid, we generally have a drink about now. Will you join us?"

  "Thank you. "

  "We generally mix up some martinis. Unless theres something else youd prefer?"

  "Martinis hit me a little hard," I said. "I think Id better stick with whiskey. Bourbon, if youve got it. "

  Of course they had it. They had Wild Turkey, which is a cut or two better than what Im used to, and Rolfe gave me five or six ounces of it in a cut-crystal Old Fashioned glass. He poured Bombay gin into a pitcher, added ice cubes and a spoonful of vermouth, stirred gently and strained the blend into a pair of glasses that were mates to mine. Donald Gilman raised his glass and proposed a toast to Friday, and we drank to that.

  I wound up sitting where Rolfe had had me sit earlier. Rolfe sat as before on the rug, his knees drawn up and his arms locked around them. He was still wearing the jeans and shirt hed put on to introduce me to Judy Fairborn. His weights and jump rope were out of sight. Gilman sat on the edge of the uncomfortable chair and leaned forward, looking down into his glass, then looking up at me.

  "I was trying to remember the day she died," he said. "Its difficult. I didnt come home from the office that day. I had drinks with someone after work, and then dinner out, and I think I went to a party in the Village. Its not important. The point is that I didnt get home until the following morning. I knew what to expect when I got here because I read the morning paper with my breakfast. No, thats wrong. I remember that I bought the News because its easier to manage on the train, the business of turning the pages and all. The headline was Icepick Killer Strikes in Brooklyn, or words to that effect. I believe there had been a previous killing in Brooklyn. "

  "The fourth victim. In Sheepshead Bay. "

  "Then I turned to page three, I suppose it must have been, and there was the story. No photograph, but the name and address, of course, and that was unmistakable. " He put a hand to his chest. "I remember how I felt. It was incredibly shocking. You dont expect that sort of thing to happen to someone you know. And it made me feel so vulnerable myself, you know. It happened in this building. I felt that before I felt the sense of loss one feels over the death of a friend. "

  "How well did you know the Ettingers?"

  "Reasonably well. They were a couple, of course, and most of their social interaction was with other couples. But they were right across the hall and Id have them in for drinks or coffee from time to time, or theyd ask me over. I had one or two parties that they came to, but they didnt stay very long. I think they were comfortable enough with gay people, but not in great quantity. I can understand that. One doesnt like to be overwhelmingly outnumbered, does one? Its only natural to feel self-conscious. "

  "Were they happy?"

  The question pulled him back to the Ettingers and he frowned, weighing his answer. "I suppose hes a suspect," he said. "The spouse always is. Have you met him?"

  "No. "

  " Were they happy? The questions inevitable, but who can ever answer it? They seemed happy. Most couples do, and most couples ultimately break up, and when they do their friends are invariably surprised because they seemed so bloody happy. " He finished his drink. "I think they were happy enough. She was expecting a child when she was killed. "

  "I know. "

  "I hadnt known it. I only learned after her death. " He made a little circle with the empty glass, and Rolfe got gracefully to his feet and replenished Gilmans drink. While he was up he poured me another Wild Turkey. I was feeling the first one a little bit so I took it easy on the second.

  Gilman said, "I thought it might have steadied her. "

  "The baby?"

  "Yes. "

  "She needed steadying?"

  He sipped his martini. "De mortuis and all that. One hesitates to speak candidly of the dead. There was a restlessness in Barbara. She was a bright girl, you know. Very attractive, energetic, quick-witted. I dont recall where she went to school, but it was a good school. Doug went to Hofstra. I dont suppose theres anything the matter with Hofstra, but its less prestigious than Barbaras alma mater. I dont know why I cant remember it. "

  "Wellesley. " London had told me.

  "Of course. Id have remembered. I dated a Wellesley girl during my own college career. Sometimes self-acceptance takes a certain amount of time. "

  "Did Barbara marry beneath herself?"

  "I wouldnt say that. On the surface, she grew up in Westchester and went to Wellesley and married a social worker who grew up in Queens and went to Hofstra. But a lot of that is just a matter of labels. " He took a sip of gin. "She may have thought she was too good for him, though. "

  "Was she seeing anybody else?"

  "You do ask direct questions, dont you? Its not hard to believe you were a policeman. What made you leave the force?"

  "Personal reasons. Was she having an affair?"

  "Theres nothing tackier than dishing the dead, is there? I used to hear them sometimes. She would accuse him of having sex with women he met on the job. He was a welfare caseworker and that involved visiting unattached women in their apartments, and if ones in the market for casual sex the opportunitys certainly there. I dont know that he was taking advantage of it, but he struck me as the sort of man who would. And I gather she thought he was. "

  "And she was having an affair to get even?"

  "Quick of you. Yes, I think so, but dont ask me with whom because Ive no idea. I would sometimes be home during the day. Not often, but now and then. There were times when I heard her coming up the stairs with a man, or I might pass her door and hear a mans voice. You have to understand that Im not a busybody, so I didnt try to catch a peek of the mystery man, whoever he was. In fact I didnt pay the whole business a great deal of attention. "

  "She would entertain this man during the day?"

  "I cant swear she was entertaining anybody. Maybe it was the plumber come to repair a leaky faucet. Please understand that. I just had the feeling that she might have been seeing someone, and I knew she had accused her husband of infidelity, so I thought she might be getting a bit of sauce for the goose. "

  "But it was during the day. Didnt she work days?"

  "Oh, at the day-care center. I gather her schedule was quite flexible. She took the job to have something to do. Restlessness, again. She was a psychology major and shed been in graduate school but gave it up, and now she wasnt doing anything, so she started helping out at the day-care center. I dont think they paid her very much and I dont suppose they objected if she took the odd afternoon off. "

  "Who were her friends?"

  "God. I met people at their apartment but I cant remember any of them. I think most of their friends were his friends. There was the woman from the day-care center, but Im afraid I dont remember her name. "

  "Janice Corwin. "

  "Is that it? It doesnt even ring a muted bell. She lived nearby. Just across the street, if Im right. "

  "You are. Do you know if shes still there?"

  "No idea. I cant remember when I saw her last. I dont know that Id recognize her anyway. I think I met her once, but I may just recall her because Barbara talked about her. You say the name was Corwin?"

  "Janice Corwin. "

  "The day-care centers gone. It closed years ago. "

  "I know. "

  THE conversation didnt go much further. They had a dinner date and Id run out of questions to ask. And I was feeling the drinks. Id finished the second one without being aware of it and was surprised when I found the glass empty. I didnt feel drunk but I didnt feel sober either, and my mind could have been clearer.

  The cold air helped. There
was a wind blowing. I hunched my shoulders against it and walked across the street and down the block to the address I had for Janice Corwin. It turned out to be a four-story brick building, and a few years back someone had bought it, turned out the tenants as soon as their leases expired, and converted it for single-family occupancy.

  According to the owner, whose name I didnt bother catching, the conversion process was still going on. "Its endless," he said. "Everythings three times as difficult as you figure, takes four times as long, and costs five times as much. And those are conservative figures. Do you know how long it takes to strip old paint off doorjambs? Do you know how many doorways there are in a house like this?"

  He didnt remember the names of the tenants hed dispossessed. The name Janice Corwin was not familiar to him. He said he probably had a list of the tenants somewhere but he didnt even know where to start looking for it. Besides, it wouldnt have their forwarding addresses. I told him not to bother looking.

  I walked to Atlantic Avenue. Among the antique shops with their Victorian oak furniture and the plant stores and the Middle Eastern restaurants I managed to find an ordinary coffee shop with a Formica counter and red leatherette stools. I wanted a drink more than I wanted a meal, but I knew Id be in trouble if I didnt have something to eat. I had Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes and green beans and made myself eat everything. It wasnt bad. I drank two cups of so-so coffee and paused on my way out to look up Corwin in the phone book. There were two dozen Corwins in Brooklyn, including a J. Corwin with an address that looked to be in Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst. I tried the number but nobody answered.

  No reason to think shed be in Brooklyn. No reason to think shed be listed under her own name, and I didnt know her husbands name.

  No point checking the post office. They dont hold address changes longer than a year, and the building on Wyckoff Street had changed hands longer ago than that. But there would be ways to trace the Corwins. There generally are.

  I paid the check and left a tip. According to the counterman, the nearest subway was a couple blocks away on Fulton Street. I was on the train heading for Manhattan before I realized that I hadnt even bothered to walk over to Bergen and Flatbush and take a look at the station house of the Seventy-eighth Precinct. Somehow I hadnt thought of it.

  Chapter 5

  I stopped at the desk when I got back to my hotel. No mail, no messages. Upstairs in my room I cracked the seal on a bottle of bourbon and poured a few fingers into a glass. I sat there for a while skipping around in a paperback edition of The Lives of the Saints. The martyrs held a curious fascination for me. Theyd found such a rich variety of ways of dying.

  Couple of days earlier thered been an item in the paper, a back-pages squib about a suspect arrested for the year-old murder of two women in their East Harlem apartment. The victims, a mother and daughter, had been found in their bedroom, each with a bullet behind the ear. The report said the cops had stayed on the case because of the unusual brutality of the murders. Now theyd made an arrest, taking a fourteen-year-old boy into custody. Hed have been thirteen when the women were killed.