Walk Among the Tombstones: A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel

by Lawrence Block

  “I was, but I got off the phone with him at least ten minutes ago. Maybe closer to fifteen.”

  “Yeah, be about right.”

  “I thought you’d call right away.”

  “I couldn’t, man. I had to follow the dude.”

  “You followed him?”

  “What you think I do, run away when I see him comin’? I don’t walk out arm in arm with the man, but he walk out an’ I give him a minute an’ I slip out after him.”

  “That’s dangerous TJ. The man’s a killer.”

  “Man, am I supposed to be impressed? I’m on the Deuce ’bout every day of my life. Can’t walk down that street without you’re followin’ some killer or other.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Turned left, walked to the corner.”

  “Forty-ninth Street.”

  “Then walked across to the deli on the other side of the avenue. Went inside, stayed a minute or two, came out again. Don’t guess he had them make him a sandwich on account of he wasn’t in there that long. Could of picked up a six-pack. Package he carried was about that size.”

  “Then where did he go?”

  “Back the way he came. Sucker walked right past me, crossed Fifth again, and he’s headin’ straight back for the laundry. I thought, shit, can’t follow him back in there, have to hang around outside until he makes his call.”

  “He didn’t call here again.”

  “Didn’t call nowhere, ’cause he didn’t go inside the laundry. Got in his car an’ drove off. Didn’t even know he had a car until he got into it. It was parked just the other side of the laundry, where you couldn’t see it if you were sittin’ where I was.”

  “A car or a truck?”

  “Said a car. I tried to stay with it but there wasn’t no way. I was layin’ half a block back, not wantin’ to tag him too close on his way back to the laundry, and he was in the car an’ outta there before I could do nothin’. Time I could get to the corner he was around it an’ out of sight.”

  “But you got a good look at him.”

  “Him? Yeah, I saw him.”

  “You could recognize him again?”

  “Man, could you recognize yo’ mama? Kind of a question is that? Man is five-eleven, one hundred seventy pounds, real light brown hair, has eyeglasses with brown plastic frames. Wearin’ black leather lace-up shoes an’ navy pants and a blue zip-up jacket. An’ about the lamest sport shirt you ever saw. Blue an’ white checks. Could I recognize him? Man, if I could draw I’da drawed him. You put me with that artist you was tellin’ me about, we’d wind up with somethin’ looked more like him than a photograph.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah? Car was a Honda Civic, sort of a blue-gray, a little beat up. Up until he got into it I figured I’d follow him right back to where he’s stayin’. He snatched somebody, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “A fourteen-year-old girl.”

  “Motherfucker,” he said. “I knowed that, maybe I tag him a little closer, run a little faster.”

  “You did fine.”

  “What I think I do now, I check out the neighborhood some. Maybe I see where he park his car.”

  “If you’re sure you’d recognize it.”

  “Well, I got the plate number. Be a lot of Hondas, but not too many got the same license plate.”

  He read it out to me and I jotted it down and started to tell him how pleased I was with his performance.

  He didn’t let me finish. “Man,” he said, exasperated, “how long we gonna go on this way, with you bein’ stone amazed every time I do somethin’ right?”

  “IT’S going to take us a few hours to get the money together,” I told him when he called again. “It’s more than he has and it’s going to be difficult to raise it at this hour.”

  “You’re not trying to lower the price, are you?”

  “No, but if you want the whole amount you’ll have to be patient.”

  “How much do you have now?”

  “I don’t have a count.”

  “I’ll call in an hour,” he said.

  * * *

  “YOU can use this phone,” I told Yuri. “He won’t be calling for the next hour. How much have we got?”

  “A little over four,” Kenan said. “Less than half.”

  “Not enough.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “One way to look at it, who else are they gonna sell her to? If you tell him this is all we got, take it or leave it, what’s he gonna do?”

  “The trouble is you don’t know what he’s likely to do.”

  “Yeah, I keep forgetting he’s a lunatic.”

  “He wants a reason to kill the girl.” I didn’t want to stress this in front of Yuri, but it had to be said. “That’s what got them started in the first place. They like killing. She’s alive, and he’ll keep her alive as long a she’s their ticket to the money, but he’ll kill her the minute he thinks he can get away with it, or that he’s lost his shot at the money. I don’t want to tell him we’ve only got half a mil. I’d rather show up with half a mil and tell him it’s the whole thing, and hope he doesn’t count it until we’ve got the girl back.”

  Kenan thought about this. “The trouble is,” he said, “the cocksucker already knows what four hundred thousand looks like.”

  “See if you can raise some more,” I said, and went off to use the Snoopy phone.

  THERE used to be a number you called at the Department of Motor Vehicles. You gave your shield number and told them the plate you wanted to trace and somebody looked it up and read it off to you. I no longer knew that special number, and had a feeling it had long since been phased out. Nobody answered the listed number for DMV.

  I called Durkin but he wasn’t at the station house. Kelly wasn’t at his desk, either, and there was no point in paging him, because he couldn’t do what I wanted him to do from a distance. I remembered when I’d been in to pick up the Gotteskind file from Durkin and pictured Bellamy at the adjacent desk, having a one-sided conversation with his computer terminal.

  I called Midtown North and got him. “Matt Scudder,” I said.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “How you doing? Joe’s not around, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe you can do me a favor. I was riding around with a friend of mine and some son of a bitch in a Honda Civic clipped her fender and just plain took off. Most flagrant thing you ever saw.”

  “Damn. And you were in the car when it happened? Man’s a fool, leaving the scene of an accident. Most likely drunk or on drugs.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. The thing is—”

  “You got the plate? I’ll run it for you.”

  “I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Hey, nothing to it. I just ask the computer. Hang on.”

  I waited.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Something the matter?”

  “Well, they changed the damn password for getting into the DMV data bank. I enter like you’re supposed to and it won’t let me in. Keeps saying back ‘Invalid Password.’ If you call tomorrow I’m sure—”

  “I’d love to move on this tonight. Before he gets a chance to sober up, if you follow me.”

  “Oh, definitely. If I could help you—”

  “Isn’t there someone you can call?”

  ‘Yeah,” he said with feeling. “That bitch down in Records, but she’ll tell me she can’t give it out. I get that crap from her all the time.”

  “Tell her it’s a Code Five emergency.”

  “Say that again?”

  “Just tell her it’s a Code Five emergency,” I said, “and she’d better give you the password before you wind up with circuits backed up all the way to Cleveland.”

  “Never heard that before,” he said. “Hang on, I’ll give it a shot.”

  He put me on Hold. Across the room, Michael Jackson peeked at me through the fingers of his white glove. Bellamy came back on the
line and said, “Damn if it didn’t work. ‘Code Five emergency.’ Cut right through the bullshit. She came up with the password. Lemme enter it. There you go. Now what was that license number?”

  I gave it to him.

  “Let’s just see what we get. Okay, didn’t take long. Vehicle is a Eighty-eight Honda Civic two-door, color is pewter . . . Pewter? Man, why can’t they say gray? But you don’t care about that. Owner is—you got a pencil? Callander, Raymond Joseph.” He spelled the last name. “Address is Thirty-four Penelope Avenue. That’s in Queens, but where in Queens? You ever hear of Penelope Avenue?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Man, I live in Queens, and it’s a new one on me. Wait, here’s the zip. One-one-three-seven-nine. That’s Middle Village, innit? Never heard of no Penelope Avenue.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess you’re motivated, aren’t you? Hope nobody in the car was hurt.”

  “No, just a little body damage.”

  “Nail him good, leaving the scene like that. Other hand, you report it and your friend’s insurance rates go up. Best thing might be if you and him can work something out private, but that’s probably what you got in mind, huh?” He chuckled. “Code Five,” he said. “Man, that really lit a fire under that girl. I owe you for that.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “No, I really mean it. I run into problems with this thing all the time. That’s gonna save me a lot of major headaches.”

  “Well, if you really figure you owe me—”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I just wondered if he had a sheet, our Mr. Callander.”

  “Now that’s easy to check. Don’t have to call a Code Five ’cause I happen to know that entry code. Hang on now. Nope.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Far as the state of New York is concerned, he’s a Boy Scout. Code Five. What’s it mean, anyway?”

  “Let’s just say it’s high level.”

  “I guess.”

  “If you get a hard time,” I heard myself say, “just tell them they’re supposed to know that a Code Five supersedes and countermands their standing instructions.”

  “Supersedes and countermands?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Supersedes and countermands their standing instructions.”

  “You got it. But don’t use it on routine matters.”

  “God no,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to wear it out.”

  FOR a moment there I’d thought we had a bead on him. I had a name now, and an address, but it wasn’t the address I wanted. They were somewhere in Sunset Park, in Brooklyn. The address was somewhere in Middle Village, in Queens.

  I called Queens Information and dialed the number given to me. The phone made that sound they’ve developed, somewhere between a tone and a squawk, and a recording told me the number I had reached was no longer in service. I called information again and reported this, and the operator checked and told me that the termination of service was recent and the listing had not been deleted yet. I asked if there was a new number. She said there was not. I asked if she could tell me when service had been terminated and she said she couldn’t.

  I called Brooklyn Information and tried to find a listing for a Raymond Callander, or an R or RJ Callander. The operator pointed out that there were other ways to spell that last name, and checked more possibilities than would have occurred to me. Spelled one way or another, there were a couple of listings for R and one RJ, but the addresses were way off, one on Meserole in Greenpoint, another way over in Brownsville, none of them anywhere near Sunset Park.

  Maddening, but then the whole case had been like that from the beginning. I kept getting teased, making major breakthroughs that didn’t really lead anywhere. Turning up Pam Cassidy had been the best example. From out of nowhere we’d managed to produce a living witness, and the bottom-line result of that was that the cops had taken three dead cases and shoved them all into a single open file.

  Pam had provided a first name. Now I had a last name to go with it, and even a middle name, all thanks to TJ with an assist from Bellamy. I had an address, too, but it had probably stopped being valid at about the time the phone was disconnected.

  He wouldn’t be all that hard to find. It’s easier when you know who you’re looking for. I had enough now to find him, if I was able to wait until daytime, and if I could allow a few days for the search.

  But that wasn’t good enough. I wanted to find him now.

  IN the living room, Kenan was on the phone, Peter at the window. I didn’t see Yuri. I joined Peter, and he told me that Yuri had gone out to look for more money.

  “I couldn’t look at the money,” he said. “I was getting an anxiety attack. Rapid heartbeat, cold damp hands, the whole bit.”

  “What was the fear?”

  “Fear? I don’t know. It just made me want to do some dope, that’s all. You gave me a word-association test right now, every response’d be heroin. A Rorschach, every ink-blot’d look like some dope fiend bangin’ himself in a vein.”

  “But you’re not doing it, Pete.”

  “What’s the difference, man? I know I’m gonna. All it is is a question of when. Beautiful out there, isn’t it?”

  “The ocean?”

  He nodded. “Only you can’t really see it anymore. Must be nice living where you can look out at water. I had a girlfriend once, she was into astrology, told me that’s my element, water. You believe in that stuff?”

  “I don’t know much about it.”

  “She was right that it’s my element. I don’t like the others too much. Air, I never liked to fly. Wouldn’t want to burn up in a fire or be buried in the earth. But the sea, that’s the mother of us all, isn’t that what they say?”

  “I guess.”

  “That’s the ocean out there, too. Not a river or a bay. That’s just nothing but water, straight on out, farther than you can see. Makes me feel clean just to look at it.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder and left him looking at the ocean. Kenan was off the phone, and I went to ask him how the count stood.

  “We got a shade under half of it,” he said. “I been calling in every favor I got coming and Yuri’s been doing the same. I got to tell you, I don’t think we’re going to find a whole lot more.”

  “The only person I can think of is in Ireland. I hope this looks like a million, that’s all. All it has to do is get past whatever rough count they give it on the spot.”

  “Suppose we shoot some air into it. If every pack of hundreds is short five bills, you got a tenth again more packs.”

  “Which is fine unless they pick one pack at random and spot-count it.”

  “Good point,” he said. “First glance, this is going to look like a good deal more than what I handed over to them. That was all hundreds. This has about twenty-five percent of the total in fifties. You know there’s a way to make it look like a lot more than it is.”

  “Bulk it up with cut paper.”

  “I was thinking with singles. The paper’s right, the color, everything but the denomination. Say you got a stack, supposed to be fifty hundred-dollar bills, total of five grand. You dummy it up with ten hundreds on top and ten on the bottom and fill in with thirty singles. ‘Stead of five grand you have a little over two grand looking like five. Fan it, all you see is green.”

  “Same problem. It works unless you take a good look at one of the dummied-up packets. Then you see it’s not what it’s supposed to be, and you know right away, no argument, that it was phonied up that way to fool you. And if you’re a nut case to begin with, and you’ve been looking for an excuse to murder all night long—”

  “You kill the girl, bang, and it’s over.”

  “That’s the trouble with anything flagrant. If it looks as though we’re trying to screw them—”

  “They’ll take it personally.” He nodded. “Maybe they won’t count the stacks. You got fifties and hundreds mixed, five thousand to a stack, half that in
a stack of fifties, how many stacks are we talking if we come in at half a mil? A hundred if it’s all hundreds, so call it a hundred and twenty, thirty, something like that?”

  “Sounds right.”

  “I don’t know, would you count it? You count in a dope deal, but you’ve got time, you sit back, you count the money and inspect the product. Different story. Even so, you know how the big traffickers count? The guys who turn upwards of a mil in each transaction?”

  “I know the banks have machines that can count a stack of bills as quickly as you can riffle through it.”

  “Sometimes they use those,” he said, “but mostly it’s weight. You know how much money weighs, so you just load it on the scale.”

  “Is that what they did at the family enterprise in Togo?”

  He smiled at the thought. “No, that was different,” he said. “They counted every bill. But nobody was in a hurry.”

  The phone rang. We looked at each other. I picked it up, and it was Yuri on the car phone, saying he was on his way. When I hung up Kenan said, “Every time the phone rings—”

  “I know. I think it’s him. When you were out before we had a wrong number, some guy who called twice because he kept forgetting to dial two-one-two for Manhattan.”

  “Pain in the ass,” he said. “When I was a kid we had a number that was one digit off from a pizzeria on Prospect and Flatbush. You can imagine the wrong numbers we got.”

  “Must have been a nuisance.”

  “For my parents. Me and Petey, we loved it. We’d take the fucking order. ‘Half cheese and half pepperoni? No anchovies? Yessir, we’ll have it ready for you.’ And fuck ’em, let ’em go hungry. We were terrible.”

  “Poor bastard in the pizza place.”

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t get many wrong numbers these days. You know when I got a couple? The day Francey was kidnapped. That morning, like God was sending me a message, trying to give me some kind of a warning. God, when I think what she must have gone through. And what that kid’s going through now.”

  I said, “I know his name, Kenan.”

  “Whose name?”

  “The one on the phone. Not the rough half of their rough-and-smooth act. The other one, the one who does most of the talking.”