A Drop of the Hard Stuff: A Matthew Scudder Novel

by Lawrence Block

  “Then what is? Oh.”

  “You see, don’t you? If I didn’t destroy my own Fourth Step…”

  “Then who’s to say that Jack didn’t hang on to his?”

  “My thought exactly. I’ll check his room tomorrow. Or do you suppose they’ve sealed it with that yellow Crime Scene tape?”

  “I’m sure they have,” I said, “but they’ll have long since unsealed it by now. Once the crime lab crew is finished, there’s no real reason to maintain a seal. He had a furnished room, didn’t he? Did he pay his rent weekly or by the month?”

  “By the week.”

  “Then the odds are it’s been rented by now.”

  “And if he left his Fourth Step behind, some other tenant’s reading it even as we speak. But won’t they pack up his possessions? Isn’t that what they do when somebody dies?”

  I said that sounded about right. “And they give it to the heirs, or the next of kin,” I said. “I don’t suppose Jack had a will.”

  “Just the sort every alcoholic has, along with a whim of iron. A Last Will and Testament? No, hardly. I don’t think he had anything to pass on, or anybody to leave it to.”

  “My guess is the super’ll wait a decent interval, then keep what he wants and throw the rest out.”

  “That’s what I thought. So what I’m going to do is go over there tomorrow and tell them I’m his cousin and I’ve come to collect his effects. There shouldn’t be a problem, should there?”

  “I can’t see why. A box of old clothes and personal papers? He’ll be glad to see the last of it.”

  “I can give the clothes to the Goodwill or the Sally. And if there’s, you know, some sort of personal item like a pocketknife, I’ll take it for a keepsake.” He was silent for a moment, perhaps recalling other dead friends and other souvenirs. “And if there’s a Fourth Step,” he said, “I’ll call you.”

  “Good.”

  “Matt? You wouldn’t want to keep me company, would you?”

  “What time?”

  “It would have to be in the afternoon.”

  That saved me from having to invent a reason I couldn’t go. Donna had already supplied me with a perfectly good one. “I can’t,” I said. “I have to go to Brooklyn.”

  “Really? Were you a bad boy? Are you being punished?”

  “It’s work,” I said. “I have to help a member of my group move her stuff out of her boyfriend’s apartment.”

  “Oh, God,” he said. “That takes you off the hook, but at what price? You’ve got a worse day ahead of you than I do. Matt, if I find anything interesting I’ll call you.”

  Won’t they pack up his possessions? Isn’t that what they do when somebody dies?

  Well, it depends who it is, and how and where he dies. If he’s a respectable member of society, and is considerate enough to leave a detailed will, his property is apportioned as specified therein. (Of course that’s after the in-home nurse pockets a few things that she just knows the deceased wanted her to have.) Then the relatives get to fight over the small stuff, and siblings get to drag out and act on every grudge and resentment left over from childhood.

  If there’s no will, they get to fight over the big stuff too.

  But if the deceased takes his last breath in a Bowery flophouse or an SRO welfare hotel, if the cops zip him into a body bag and cart him down a couple of flights of stairs, then anything worth the taking is pretty sure to get taken. The little stash of emergency cash, the couple of bucks left over from the most recent government check, the folded ten-dollar bill in the shoe—if a relative does turn up, it will have long since disappeared. The cops take it.

  I always did. I learned from a partner, who explained the ethics of the situation. The ethical thing, he told me, was to divvy up with your partner.

  And so I robbed the dead. It didn’t keep me up nights, or lead me to drink a drop more bourbon than I’d have had anyway. I can’t imagine it amounted to much over the years. Usually it was five dollars, ten dollars, certainly well under a hundred dollars. But one time I got to share $972 with my partner du jour. I remember the amount, remember how precisely we split it down the middle, remember what a nice windfall the $486 made, and how it left me with a feeling of gratitude and respect toward the derelict who’d unintentionally bestowed it upon me. (He’d gotten drunk, fell in his bathroom, gashed his head open, and bled out before recovering consciousness. We were ready to hate him for the mess he’d created, but the money he left us changed our attitude. Of course you don’t have to be on the Bowery to die like that; the actor William Holden managed it just about a year before I had my last drink.)

  More names for my list, if I ever actually took the Eighth Step. How did you make amends to men whose names you had managed to forget as soon as you’d written up the report? I wasn’t even sure I’d been wrong to take the money. If my partner and I left it, that just meant somebody else would pocket it. And who was legally supposed to get it? The State of New York? What the hell did some bureau in Albany need with five dollars here and ten dollars there, or even a princely $972?

  On the other hand, it wasn’t my money.

  A lot of John Does and Richard Roes for my list, plus a couple of Mary Moes. Because women died too, of causes natural and unnatural, and you had to look in their purses for ID, didn’t you? And you’d always find a couple of dollars.

  I was partnered with one prince of the city who took a pair of hoop earrings from the ears of a dead hooker. “These look like eighteen karat,” he said. “What does the poor darling need with gold earrings in potter’s field?”

  I told him to keep them. Was I sure? Yes, I said, I was sure. Be a shame to split the pair, I said.

  Noble of me. Maybe that’d be enough to get me into Heaven. What did I ever do that was good? Well, St. Peter, one time I could have stolen the gold from a dead whore’s ears. But I restrained myself.

  XXVI

  I ALMOST DIDN’T recognize you,” I said.

  Donna grinned, fluffed her hair. “Is it that different?”

  The long auburn hair that had flowed down over her shoulders, and occasionally drifted into her eyes, had been cropped boyishly short and permed into a tight cap of curls. Richard, behind the wheel, said, “Isn’t it fabulous? And positively transformative—or do I want to say transformational?”

  Nobody offered an opinion on that one.

  “Well,” he said, “whichever the word is, that’s it. What a metamorphosis! From Brenda Starr to Little Orphan Annie.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she said. “I always liked Brenda Starr.”

  “What have you got against Annie?”

  “Nothing, but I never much wanted to look like her.” She was in the front of the car, next to Richard, and she had an arm hooked over her seat back so that she could look at me. “Well, Matthew S.? What’s your verdict?”

  “It looked nice long,” I said, “and it looks nice short. One thing it does, it shows off your face better.”

  “It used to get lost in all that hair,” Richard said. “Now it pops.”

  “I look like Little Orphan Annie and my face pops,” she said.

  “These are good things, sweetie. Trust me.”

  “All I know,” she said, “is it’s done. The boy who does my hair couldn’t believe it when I went in there this morning and told him what I wanted.”

  “Like, ‘Oooh, how can you possibly want me to do that to you?’ ”

  “Not at all,” she told him. “He’s been wanting to cut my hair forever. ‘I finally talked you into it!’ But it wasn’t his doing.”

  “The occasion,” I guessed. “Washing that man right out of your hair.”

  Richard said he always loved Mary Martin. Donna said, “Sort of, but not exactly. I called him last night.”

  “Vinnie,” I said.

  “Which was probably a mistake, because I didn’t want to hear his voice, or for him to hear mine. But I thought I should remind him that I was coming for my things this af
ternoon, and that it would help if he could contrive to be elsewhere.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know if he was able to take in the information. He started going on and on about my hair, my beautiful long hair, and how he wanted to see it spread out on his pillow and, well, other things I’d just as soon not repeat.”

  “We’ll use our overheated imaginations,” Richard said.

  “I’m sure you will. And I thought, You know, buster, if you like my hair that much, there must be something wrong with it. And whether there is or not, you’ve seen it for the last time. And I got up this morning and rushed straight to the beauty parlor, and Hervé was able to fit me in, and the rest is history.”

  “It’s not history, sweetie, it’s art appreciation. Just fabulous.”

  “Thank you, Richard.”

  “But Hervé? Honestly?”

  “I think it used to be Harvey.”

  “Ooh la la,” said Richard. “How continental.”

  Vincent Cutrone’s apartment was in a six-story brick building on a street corner in Cobble Hill. A dry cleaner and a deli shared the ground floor, with half a dozen small apartments on each of the upper floors. Richard, who’d found the place with no trouble, was able to park right in front, and the three of us entered the building together. Donna had her key out, but pushed the button for 4-C anyway, and sighed deeply when the intercom made that throat-clearing noise it makes when someone’s about to respond.

  “Yo,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m coming up,” she said. “I’ve got people with me.”

  He didn’t say anything, nor did he buzz us in. She used her key, and we were getting on the elevator when we finally heard the buzzer sound.

  “Yo,” Donna said, and rolled her eyes again. “Why did I ever think—never mind.”

  He must have been waiting at the door, because it opened inward as Donna was extending the key. Vinnie loomed in the doorway, his eyes taking in all three of us, then doing a pronounced double take. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?”

  “I had it cut,” she said.

  “By a fuckin’ butcher?” He looked past her at me and Richard. “You believe this, guys? Best thing the woman had goin’ for her and she chops it off. Hell of a thing. I’m the one who drinks and she’s the one who goes nuts.”

  She said, “I came for my things, Vincent. I thought—”

  “Oh, now it’s Vincent. All the time it was ‘Oh, Vinnie, nobody ever made me feel like you made me feel. Oh, Vinnie, I love it when you—’ ”

  I’d seen him before. At meetings, here and there around town. I never heard his story, never knew his name, couldn’t recall ever seeing him with Donna. But I recognized the face.

  He was an inch or two shorter than I, and a few pounds heavier. His hair was dark brown and shaggy, and a little longer than the new Donna’s. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and he smelled the way you do when the alcohol is working its way out of your pores. He was wearing a soiled white undershirt, the kind that leaves the shoulders uncovered, and a pair of cutoff jeans. His feet were bare.

  “You said you’d stay away from the apartment while I collected my things.”

  “No, Donna, you’re the one who said that. But you moved out, right? It’s my apartment now, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So it’s my apartment, who’s got a better right to be here? You want to kick me out of it? Hey, I wanted to, I could kick you out of it.”

  “Vinnie—”

  “Ah, we’re back to Vinnie. I feel all warm and fuzzy now.” He reached out a hand, rubbed her hair. “You know what you look like? You look like Raggedy fuckin’ Ann.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “ ‘Don’t touch me.’ A different tune these days, Donna. Hey, don’t worry. I’m not gonna kick you out of my apartment.” He stood aside, motioned her in. “Esta es su casa,” he said. “You know what that means?”

  “I know what it means.”

  “It’s Spanish, it means this is your house. Except it’s mine.”

  I said, “Vinnie, maybe it’d be a good idea if you gave us an hour.”

  He looked at me. Before, he’d regarded me as an audience, but now I had a speaking part, and he responded accordingly. “I know you,” he said. “Matt, am I right? Used to be a cop before they kicked you off the force for bein’ an asshole. You the new boyfriend?”

  “Matt and Richard are helping me move,” Donna said.

  “They’re just what you need,” he said. “Matt can beat me up and Richard here can blow me. Between the two of ’em I got no fuckin’ chance.”

  It was a long afternoon in Cobble Hill. Vinnie had been drinking around the clock for days now, and he got to show all his emotions in turn, from self-pity to belligerence. He said he wished that Donna hadn’t cut her hair, and that he’d like to wrap it around her neck and strangle her with it. He walked out of the room, turned up the volume on the TV, came back with a beer, wandered off again.

  The apartment must have been nice before he picked up a drink. Now it was all empty bottles and beer cans and pizza boxes, half-eaten containers of Chinese food, and copies of Hustler and Penthouse. There was a page torn from Screw, hooker ads with their photos and phone numbers, taped alongside the wall phone in the kitchen. Some of the ads were circled in Magic Marker.

  “This one,” he announced, pointing to one of the photos, “could give you cards and spades, Donna. Could suck a tennis ball through a garden hose. I dunno, though. Bet you could do the same, huh, Richard?”

  Nobody answered him, but this didn’t seem to bother him. I’m not sure he noticed.

  A long afternoon in Cobble Hill.

  XXVII

  WE WERE ACROSS the bridge and back in Manhattan when she said, “Raggedy Ann, for God’s sake. Little Orphan Annie and Raggedy Ann.”

  “You are fabulously glamorous,” Richard said. “So will you please stop that shit?”

  “Okay.”

  “I meant Little Orphan Annie in the nicest possible way. And you have big eyes, the same as she does, except yours are this gorgeous light brown. And they really pop now that your hair’s not falling in front of them.”

  “So now I’m pop-eyed? I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”

  “And you don’t look at all like Raggedy Ann,” he said. “The man is a drunken imbecile.”

  There was a long silence. Then she said, “He’s not a bad fellow, you know. When he’s sober.”

  “He’s not sober, though, is he?”

  “No.”

  “And drunk or sober, he was never right for you. And deep down you always knew that.”

  “Oh, God, Richard. You’re absolutely right.”

  “Well, of course,” he said.

  Her belongings filled the trunk and shared the backseat with me. When we got back where we started, Eighty-fourth and Amsterdam, Richard circled the block and couldn’t find a parking spot. I told him to park next to the fire hydrant, and handed him a card to put on the dashboard.

  “Detectives’ Endowment Association,” he read aloud. “And this means I won’t get a ticket?”

  “It improves the odds.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d take my chances on a ticket, but what if they tow it?”

  Donna said, “Honey, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable staying with the car. Matt and I can manage the stuff. We’ll just make an extra trip.”

  She lived on the fifth floor of a brownstone. It was a fine building in excellent condition, and the only smell in the stairwell was a faint hint of furniture polish. But it was a walk-up, and it took us three trips, and by the time I’d climbed those four flights of stairs for the third time I was winded.

  “Sit down,” she said, “before you fall down. Those stairs keep me in shape, but they’re killers if you’re not used to them. Plus you were carrying three times as much as I was. Can I get you a glass of water? Or maybe a Coke?”

  �
��A Coke would be great.”

  “Except it’s Pepsi.”

  “Pepsi’s fine.”

  “Here you go. I’ll just tell Richard we’re all set now.”

  She parked me in a Queen Anne wing chair in the living room, in front of a fireplace with a marble surround. Over it she’d hung a nineteenth-century landscape in a fancy frame, and a thick Chinese rug was centered on the dark hardwood floor. It was a very pleasing room, richer and more formal than I’d have expected, and a better match to the business attire she’d worn last night than to this afternoon’s jeans and sweater.

  I wondered what the apartment’s other rooms looked like. The kitchen, the bedroom. I stayed where I was and imagined them, and then I heard her footsteps on the stairs.

  “Now just let me catch my breath,” she said upon entering, and dropped onto the medallion-back love seat. “Richard said to give you his love, and tell you to have a happy anniversary, if he doesn’t see you before then. You’re coming up on a year, aren’t you?”

  “Pretty soon.”

  “Another Coke? Pepsi, I mean. Can I get you another?”

  “One’s my limit.”

  “Ha! I like that. Oh, before I forget—”

  She came over and passed me a pair of hundred-dollar bills. We argued about it. I told her it was too much, and she said that’s what she’d given Richard and that was what she was giving me. I said I’d have been happy to do what I’d done for free, out of friendship, so at the very least why didn’t we split the difference? And I handed her one of the bills, and she pushed it back at me.

  “I’d have happily paid four hundred,” she said, “or even more, so we’re already splitting the difference. And if you’ll put the money away we won’t have to discuss it anymore, and won’t that be a pleasure?”

  I agreed that she had a point there, and put the bills in my wallet. Without planning to, I said, “Well, let me spend some of this on dinner. Will you keep me company?”

  Her eyes widened. “What a lovely idea. But it’s Saturday, and don’t you have a standing date with—is it Jane?”

  “Jan.”