A Drop of the Hard Stuff: A Matthew Scudder Novel

by Lawrence Block

  “We won’t stay,” Jan said. She put her shopping bag on the table, and Mary Elizabeth placed hers alongside it. “I think this is everything,” Jan said.

  I nodded, lost in thought, and then when nobody moved or said anything I remembered my assigned role in the proceedings. I reached into my pocket and took out a ring of keys. I put them on the table, and they just sat there for a beat, and then Jan reached for them, picked them up, weighed them in her hand, put them in her purse.

  She turned to go, and Mary Elizabeth turned with her, and then Jan turned back to face me again. All in a rush she said, “I really hate this, and what I hate most of all is the timing. Right before your anniversary.”

  “In a couple of days.”

  “Tuesday, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I was going to wait until afterward,” she said, “but I thought maybe that would be worse, and—”

  “Let it go,” I said.

  “I just—”

  “Let it go.”

  She looked on the point of tears. Mary Elizabeth said, “Jan,” and she turned and walked after her, to the door and out.

  I stayed where I was. Two shopping bags shared the top of my table with the cup of coffee I’d ordered but so far hadn’t touched. One shopping bag was from a department store, the other from a company that sold art supplies. Each was a little more than half full, and Jan could have managed both of them herself. Mary Elizabeth, I decided, was there for moral support.

  I went to St. Paul’s for the evening meeting. Afterward I followed the crowd to the Flame and sat there until everybody went home. I walked down Ninth to Fifty-seventh, then walked on past my hotel and all the way across town to Lexington Avenue. I turned on Lexington and walked down to Thirtieth Street and got there just in time to help set up chairs for the midnight meeting.

  There were a few familiar faces in the room but nobody I really knew. They didn’t have a speaker, and the chairperson asked me if I had ninety days clean and sober. I said I’d spoken recently, and didn’t feel up to it. She found somebody else. They can always find somebody.

  I sat there for an hour and drank a couple of cups of bad coffee and ate a few cookies. I didn’t pay much attention to the speaker and didn’t raise my hand during the discussion. At the end I thought about finding someone to go out for coffee with, and decided the hell with it. I walked up to Forty-second Street and caught a cab the rest of the way home.

  My two shopping bags were as I’d left them, unpacked, standing side by side on the floor next to the bed. I went to bed, and they were still there the next morning. When I came back from breakfast, the maid had serviced my room, making my bed with clean sheets, emptying my wastebasket. And the shopping bags remained right where I’d left them.

  I picked up the phone, called Jim. “I’ve got two shopping bags on my floor,” I said, “and I can’t seem to figure out what to do with them.”

  “Empty shopping bags?”

  “About half full.” He waited, and I said, “Clothes of mine. That I’d left at Jan’s place.”

  “What I like about you,” he said, “is you always come right to the point.”

  So I talked and he listened, and I waited for him to ask me why I’d waited the better part of a day before telling him what was going on, but he never said a word about my silence. He waited until I’d run out of words, and then he said, “You knew it was coming.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That make it easier?”

  “Not especially.”

  “No, I didn’t think so. How do you feel?”

  “Devastated.”

  “And?”

  “Relieved.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  I thought for a moment. Then I said, “I keep thinking that I made this happen.”

  “By going to bed with Donna.”

  “Right.”

  “You realize, of course, that just because you keep thinking it doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Think about it, Matt.”

  “She didn’t know about Donna.”

  “No.”

  “She didn’t even pick it up subliminally, because we haven’t spent any time together since then. We’ve barely even talked on the phone.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m just looking for a way for it to be my fault.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I went to the midnight meeting last night.”

  “Probably didn’t hurt you.”

  “Probably not. I think I’ll spend most of the weekend in meetings.”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  “SoHo meets tonight. I think I’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Jim? I’m not going to drink.”

  “Neither am I,” he said. “Isn’t that great?”

  I went to meetings throughout the weekend, but I was in my room Saturday afternoon just long enough to get a phone call.

  It was Joe Durkin. “I don’t even know if this is worth passing on,” he said, “but you were brooding about that mugging in Gramercy, and I thought you’d like to know it was just what it looked like. A mugger who didn’t know his own strength.”

  “They got the guy?”

  “In the act,” he said. “Well, not in the act of hitting your guy. Saperstein?”

  “Sattenstein.”

  “Close enough. He wasn’t the first person mugged in that part of town, just the first who died from it, so they used a decoy from Street Crimes, put him in plain clothes, poured some booze on him, and had him walk around looking like he was half in the bag.”

  “I don’t know why I never got assignments like that.”

  “It must have been a treat,” he said, “to see the look on the skell’s face when the perfect victim showed him a badge and a gun. What I hear, they’re about to clear ten or a dozen cases. Guy’s confessing to everything they’ve got.”

  “Including Sattenstein?”

  “ ‘Oh, the poor man who was killed? No, that one I didn’t do.’ But he’ll cop to it too, by the time he gets to court. His lawyer’ll see to that. Get everything listed in the plea agreement so there’s nothing left to come back at you later on.”

  Sometimes things were just what they appeared to be. Gregory Stillman hanged himself, Mark Sattenstein got killed by a mugger.

  I got out of there and headed off to another meeting.

  Sunday afternoon I went to a meeting in a synagogue on Seventy-sixth Street a few doors west of Broadway. I’d never been there before, and when I walked in my first impulse was to turn around and walk out again, because Donna was there. I stayed, and we were cordial to each other, and she thanked me again for helping her out the previous Saturday, and I said I’d been happy to help, and it was as if we’d never been to bed together.

  I met Jim for our usual if-it’s-Sunday-this-must-be-Shanghai dinner, and we didn’t talk about Jan or Donna or the state of my sobriety. Instead he did almost all of the talking, telling stories from his own drinking days, and back before his first drink, back in his childhood. I got caught up in what he had to say, and it wasn’t until later that I realized he’d purposely avoided discussing what was going on in my life these days. I couldn’t decide whether he was giving me a break or just trying to spare himself, but whatever it was, I was grateful.

  We went to St. Clare’s, and then I walked him home and went home myself. Jacob was behind the desk, looking confused. I asked him what was the matter.

  “Your brother called,” he said.

  “My brother?”

  “Or maybe it was your cousin.”

  “My cousin,” I said. I was an only child. I had a couple of cousins, but we’d long since lost touch with one another. I couldn’t think of one who was likely to call.

  “It was a man,” he said. “Have to be, if it was your brother, wouldn’t it?”

  “What exactly did he
say?”

  “Says he calling Mr. Scudder. I ask would he like to leave his name. Scudder, he says. Yessir, I know it’s Mr. Scudder you calling, but what would your name be? So he say it again, Scudder, and I’m feeling like them two guys.”

  “Which two guys?”

  “You know. Them two guys.”

  “Abbott and Costello.”

  “Yeah, them two. So I say, lemme see now, you’re also Mr. Scudder. And he say, I am the Scudder.”

  “ ‘I am the Scudder.’ ”

  “Yeah, just like that. So I say, then you and Mr. Scudder be brothers. And he say how all men be brothers, and at this point it’s getting way too weird for me.”

  “Gee, I can’t imagine why.”

  “Say what?”

  “Nothing. He leave a number?”

  “Say you have it.”

  “I have his number.”

  “What he say.”

  “All men are brothers, and he’s the Scudder, and I have his number.”

  He nodded. “I tried to get it right,” he said, “but man like that don’t make it easy.”

  “You did fine,” I told him.

  XXXV

  I RODE UP in the elevator, feeling pleased with myself. I’d managed to figure out who my caller had to be, and that was the first detecting I’d done in longer than I cared to remember.

  I looked up his number, dialed it, and when he answered I said, “If you’re ever in the neighborhood, stop in and apologize to my desk clerk. You had the poor guy caught up in an Abbott and Costello routine.”

  The silence stretched until I started wondering if my detection had gone awry. Then he said, “Who’s this, man?”

  “Scudder.”

  “Oh, wow,” he said. “When I called, you know, I thought that’d be you answering your phone. But you’re at some kind of hotel.”

  “Well, it’s not the Waldorf.”

  “And this cat I was talking to, he’s the desk clerk?”

  “That’s right. His name is Jacob.”

  “Jacob,” he said. “Jay. Cub. Great name, man. You don’t meet many Jacobs.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Though you probably meet this particular one just about every day. I was goofing with him, you know? On account of the man’s got a little bit of an accent. He from the Indies?”

  “Somewhere down there.”

  “Yeah, well, I asked for you, and he repeated your name, like to take the message? Except the vowel sound came out more oo than uh. Like Scooder, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “So he asks my name, and I may have been, you know, the least bit high at the time.”

  “Hard to believe.”

  “Under the righteous influence of a benevolent herb, if you can dig it. And I thought, Right, I’m the Scooter calling for Mr. Scooder. And, well, you can see how we sort of went around in circles from there.”

  “I figured it was something like that.”

  “Abbott and Costello,” he said. “ ‘Who’s on first?’ Them the cats you mean?”

  “The very gentlemen.”

  “Can’t keep ’em straight, though. Abbott and Costello. Which one had the mustache?”

  “Neither one.”

  “Neither one? You sure about that?”

  “Pretty sure,” I said. “Uh, Scooter—”

  “You’re wondering why I called.”

  “I guess I am.”

  “High-Low Jack,” he said. “You still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Because you didn’t say anything for a minute there. That was what you asked me when you were over here, right? After we talked about Lucille?”

  “Right.”

  “You wanted to know about his name. What it meant, where it came from. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, there’s that thing from the card game. High, Low, Jack, and the Game. But why call him that? There’s Smiling Jack, there’s One-Eyed Jack, there’s Toledo Jack. Why High-Low Jack for Jack Ellery?”

  Sooner or later he’d get to it.

  “Mood swing,” he said.

  “Mood swing?”

  “Very changeable guy. He’s up, he’s down. He’s laid-back, he’s jumpy as a cat. He’ll hug you or he’ll slug you. Hey!”

  “Hey?”

  “Rhymes,” he said. “Hug you, slug you. Anyway, High-Low Jack. Now, wasn’t for the card game, wouldn’t have stuck. Like if his name was Ted, you wouldn’t call him High-Low Ted, because it wouldn’t mean anything. Or say his name was Johnny instead of Jack, which it could have been, they’re both short forms of John, right? High-Low Johnny? I don’t think so.”

  “High-Low Jack,” I said.

  “Right. Mood swing. Up one minute, down the next.”

  Well, that was at least slightly interesting. Maybe it even made sense. One thing it didn’t do was shed any light on the question of who killed him, or why.

  “He like that as a little kid?”

  “How’s that?”

  “You knew him when you were kids, right? Was he like that then, up one minute and down the next?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Maybe he was manic-depressive,” Scooter said. “I don’t know, everybody’s got good days and bad days, don’t they? Shrinks want to hang a label on everybody.”

  I was beginning to tire of the conversation. The bottom line seemed to be that Jack was a moody guy, and I didn’t see that leading me anywhere. Whatever moods the man had had, one could only assume they ended at the grave.

  “The world’s a heartless place,” I said, and Scooter said he couldn’t agree with me more. I had that right, he assured me.

  “High-Low Jack,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it the first time you asked. Seems so obvious now.”

  “Now that you think what a moody fellow he was.”

  “Yeah, that’s a fact. One minute he’s cool as a cucumber, next minute he’s hot as a pistol. Wow!”

  “Wow?”

  “Just thinking, man. It came to me just like that.”

  “What did?”

  “Expressions, man. How you can turn ’em around and have fun with ’em. Like you could say cool as a pistol, you know?”

  “I guess you could.”

  “Or hot as a cucumber. Oh, man, can you dig it? ‘That chick is hot as a cucumber.’ I mean, wow.”

  “Wow.”

  “Just switching things around, you know? Or think how everybody always says they searched every little nook and cranny. Turn it around—every little cranny and nook. Makes just as much sense that way, and yet you never hear it.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “You said it, man. Why does it always have to be lo and behold? From now on I’m gonna make a point of saying behold and lo! instead. Can you dig it?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Right as a whip. Smart as rain.”

  “Uh—”

  “Even Jack. High-Low Steven.”

  I was hanging up when the last phrase came through. I brought the receiver back to my ear. “Say that again,” I said.

  “What?”

  “What you just said. About Jack.”

  “Oh, just more switching, man. Like you say High-Low Jack and Even Steven, and I switched ’em around.”

  “Oh, just expressions.”

  “Right, having to do with Jack and his buddy.”

  “His buddy.”

  “Yeah, Steve.”

  “Steve.”

  “You’re like an echo, man. Scooder and Scooter, and there’s another echo right there.”

  “Tell me about Steve,” I said.

  He couldn’t tell me much.

  Jack had this running buddy, and if Jack was a creature of changeable temperament, Steve was just the opposite, always steady, always calm and cool. Hence Even Steven, as opposed to High-Low Jack.

  He didn’t even know how close the two had been, or what common interest might have bound them in friendship
. It was the coincidence of their names that linked them as much as anything else.

  “Like with Jack,” he said, “and calling him High-Low Jack, because there’s already the expression from the card game. But you wouldn’t call him High-Low Ted.”

  “So you said.”

  “And the same with Steve. If it doesn’t rhyme, you don’t pin the label on him. Even Steven, but not, like, Even Ted.”

  “Steady Teddy,” I suggested.

  “Oh, wow!”

  That sent him zooming off on a tangent, but it wasn’t too hard to get him back on course. He didn’t know Steve’s last name, and didn’t know that it was a matter of memory, as he had the sense that he’d never known Steve’s last name. Lucille, who’d very likely been to bed with Steve, probably hadn’t known his last name, either, and might or might not remember him, and anyway it was all academic, since Lucille had long since vanished somewhere out west.

  And if it hadn’t been for Jack, nobody’d call his buddy Even Steven. The two names seemed to go together. It was funny with names, he said.

  “Like I had a Vespa for about ten minutes,” he said. “Little motor scooter? And that was enough, and to some people I’ve been Scooter Williams ever since. I mean, people who never even knew me when I had the bike.”

  “Like Jacob.”

  “Jacob,” he said. “Oh, your Jacob! Scooter and Scooder!”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like Jacob. Funny, isn’t it?”

  I agreed that it was. And, he wondered, was this helpful, any of it? About Jack’s name and where it came from, and Even Steven?

  I said we’d have to see.

  I called Poogan’s, and Danny Boy came to the phone. “One quick question,” I said. “Even Steven.”

  “That’s not a question, Matthew.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s not. Does the name Even Steven—”

  “Mean anything to me?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “Not out of context. Is there a context?”

  I told him what I knew.

  “An old pal of Jack Ellery’s,” he said. “High-Low Jack and Even Steven. You know, the fact that a man’s unflappable, that he doesn’t have to take Librium to keep from bouncing off walls, that’s not the kind of trait that makes him instantly identifiable.”