A Drop of the Hard Stuff: A Matthew Scudder Novel

by Lawrence Block

  She killed herself in that apartment, shot herself with a gun Tommy had given her. She called me first, and I got there too late, but in plenty of time to commit a felony of my own, and so arranged things that Tommy Tillary, who’d gotten away with killing his wife, wound up going to prison for killing his girlfriend.

  I thought about all of this, and while I was thinking I was getting dressed—undershorts, shirt, pants, socks, shoes. I grabbed a jacket and went out of my room and down to the street. I turned right and walked to the corner and turned right again.

  I got as far as the Pioneer—or Piomeer, as you prefer. The dingy little market was still open, and so of course was the ginmill next door to it. I could go in and belly up to the bar, and the fellow standing behind it would probably be able to answer the question I’d come to ask him.

  And who could say what else I might ask? Whatever it was, he’d have the answer.

  XLI

  BUT I TURNED around and went home instead. It was late enough for the newsstand at the corner of Eighth and Fifty-seventh to have the early edition of the Times, but when I got to my hotel I let my feet do the smart thing for a change and take me inside. I went upstairs and got undressed again and pulled the chair over to the window and sat for a little while looking at nothing in particular.

  I’d headed for Armstrong’s because I had a question to ask. And I’d turned back because I’d just spent a day that had put me physically closer to a drink than I’d been in the past year, and I was one day away from the one-year anniversary of my last drink. I didn’t want a drink now, I didn’t feel like drinking, but enough had sunk in during the previous 364 days to make me realize just how vulnerable I was and just how dangerous that room was for me now.

  Oh, I could have called someone, some sober friend to keep me company while I asked my question. But I didn’t have to do that either. I could just go home and get to bed. My question would still be there in the morning.

  I didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep. I got in bed, turned off the light, stretched out on the unfamiliar mattress, settled my head on the unfamiliar pillow.

  The next thing I knew it was morning.

  The first thing I did after breakfast was call Dennis Redmond. I got him at the station house, and he was on his way out when I reached him. I told him I was pretty sure I had something. He said, “On Ellery? Because it’s gonna take a lot to make Stillman look like anything but suicide.”

  “Try G. Decker Raines,” I said. “And Marcy Cantwell.”

  “Now why are those names familiar?”

  “A few years back,” I said. “A double homicide on Jane Street in the West Village. A Bohemian love nest, according to the Post, and—”

  “I remember the case. Still unsolved to this day, if I’m not mistaken. Why? You’re saying you know who did it? Well, who was it?”

  “Jack Ellery.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “He confessed to it. In writing.”

  “And you’ve seen this confession.”

  “I have it in hand.”

  He thought about it. He said, “I don’t suppose he did it all by his lonesome.”

  “He had a partner.”

  “And Ellery got religion, or whatever you want to call it, and the partner was afraid he’d talk. Hell, I’ve got to get out of here. You remember that place I met you before? The Minstrel Boy? Say two this afternoon? And Matt? Bring that confession, will you?”

  I hung up and the phone rang almost immediately. It was Jan, calling to wish me a happy anniversary. It was a curious conversation, because the things we weren’t saying drowned out the things we said. She said how happy she was for me, and how hard I’d worked for that year, and I told her how grateful I was for the unwavering support she’d given me from the very beginning, and when she was off the line I wanted to call her right back. But what would I say to her?

  I had a couple of other calls to make, but the phone rang right away and this time it was Jim. He asked me gruffly if I was still sober, and I said that I was, miraculously enough, and he said damn right it was a miracle, and I should never forget that. And he congratulated me, and told me the first year was the hardest. “Except for all the ones that come after it,” he said.

  “After you left last night,” I said, “I had trouble falling asleep.”

  “So you took three Seconal and washed them down with a pint of vodka.”

  “I put my clothes on and walked over to Armstrong’s.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I had a question I wanted to ask the bartender.”

  “And?”

  “I decided it would keep, and that probably wasn’t a good place for me to be. The point is, I’m going over there now, on the chance that the day-shift barman will be able to answer my question. And if he can’t I’ll be dropping by again this evening.”

  “You could call around, find someone to keep you company.”

  I said I’d think about it.

  * * *

  Armstrong’s generally opened around eleven, and it was twenty or thirty minutes past that by the time I got there. I’d put in some time on the phone and managed a quick visit to the squad room at Midtown North. What I didn’t do was call someone to back me up when I went around the corner, so I was by myself when I walked into a room that smelled not unpleasantly of beer and tobacco smoke.

  Two tables were occupied, and there was a fellow at the end of the bar, nursing a beer while he worked his way through the Daily News. Lucian was behind the stick, assembling a Bloody Mary, and he paused in midpour at my approach. He was surprised to see me, and trying to hide it.

  “It looks beautiful,” I said of his handiwork, “but it’s not what I’m here for. I just stopped by to ask you a question.”

  “Go right ahead, Matt. If I don’t know the answer I’ll make something up.”

  “I was just wondering if anybody came around recently asking questions about me.”

  “Questions. I don’t think so. What kind of questions?”

  “What I used to drink.”

  “Why would anybody ask that? But you know, there was an old friend of yours in here the other day.”

  “Oh?”

  “He sat here, had a couple. Paid for his drink when he got it, waved away the change. ‘That’s good, have one yourself.’ So, you know, guy’s like that, you fill the glass a little fuller on his next round.”

  “Sure.”

  “Same story the second time around. ‘That’s good, have something for yourself.’ And he says how this is a nice place, and an old buddy of his used to come here.”

  “And he mentioned me by name.”

  He nodded. By now he’d finished putting the Bloody Mary together and strained it into a stemmed glass. I’d assumed it was for a customer, but he took a sip of it himself. “Long night,” he explained. “Got to get the heart started.”

  “Sound policy.”

  He took another sip. “The impression I got,” he said, “was you were cops together.”

  “He was a cop?”

  “Used to be, would be my guess.”

  “I don’t suppose you got his name.”

  “No, and I don’t think he got mine either. We never got that far.”

  “What did he look like?”

  He frowned. “You know,” he said, “I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Middle-aged, not fat, not skinny. Sort of average. He was drinking Scotch, I remember that much, and I think it was Johnnie Red, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

  “And he talked about me.”

  “Just did I ever see you, and did you ever get here now that you weren’t drinking anymore, and how you used to be a bourbon drinker.”

  “He remembered that.”

  “But what he couldn’t remember,” he said, “was what your favorite bourbon used to be.”

  “Ah. What did you tell him?”

  “I don’t think you had a favorite. But he wanted an answer. Say it was a special occasion. What
was that bourbon you would order then? Like he used to know, and he wanted his memory refreshed.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I don’t know if I ever poured it for you,” he said, “and what difference did it make what you used to drink, since you’re not drinking it now? But he had to have an answer, Mr. Have Something for Yourself, and I remember somebody else was going on about how one particular brand of poison was the best in the world, and I think it was Turkey, but it might have been Evan Williams, and you named another bourbon and said it was as good as either of them. You remember the conversation?”

  I shook my head.

  “No reason why you should. This was years ago. But it stuck in my mind, and a day or two later I had a taste of it myself, and I decided you were right. Can you guess the label?”

  “You tell me.”

  For answer he reached and drew down the bottle from the top shelf. Maker’s Mark.

  And he hesitated for a second or two, it couldn’t have been any longer than that, and then he replaced the bottle on the shelf.

  “So that’s what I told him,” he said. “You know the guy, Matt?”

  “I had an idea who it was,” I said, “and your description nailed it down.”

  “Yeah, I’m hopeless at describing people. He was wearing glasses, if that helps. Was it okay what I told him?”

  “Sure.”

  He hesitated, then said, “You know, it’s funny. Just now, when I had the bottle in my hand, I had the feeling you were going to ask me to pour you one.”

  “Really.”

  “Just for a second. How long has it been?”

  “Just about a year.”

  “No kidding? That long?”

  “A year today, as a matter of fact.”

  “No shit. Jesus, you know what I almost said? ‘That calls for a drink.’ But I guess it doesn’t, does it?”

  I caught the noon meeting at Fireside. I got the usual round of applause at the beginning when I announced my anniversary.

  I sat there drinking coffee and listening to somebody’s drinking story, and I remembered that moment when Lucian had brandished the long-necked bottle of bourbon. Oh, what the hell, said a voice in my head. Let’s see if it tastes as good as I remember.

  XLII

  THE FIRST TIME I’d met him at the Minstrel Boy I got there first, and I played John McCormack’s version of the bar’s theme song while I waited for him. This time I was a few minutes early, and I played the flip side of the record:

  She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer

  Yet ’twas not her beauty alone that won me.

  Oh no, ’twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning

  That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee…

  Redmond came in during the final chorus, stopped at the bar for a drink, came over and sat down. He was respectfully silent until the record ended. “Hell of a voice,” he said. “How long you figure he’s been dead?”

  “No idea.”

  “I know he was long gone before I ever heard of him. My mother had all his records. Well, a bunch of them, anyway. Seventy-eights, in an album. I can picture it on a shelf in our living room. Don’t ask me what became of them, but he’s still here on the jukebox, and the voice is still as clear as a bell, all these years later.”

  He took a drink, put the glass on the table. I had a Coke in front of me, and no great urge to drink any of it. He said, “Well, what have you got?”

  “Hell of a document,” he said. He rolled Jack’s confession into a scroll, tapped it against the top of his now-empty glass. He’d read it through twice, and we’d talked for a while, and now he’d read it through again. “I suppose we could establish that he’s the one who wrote it. There must be samples of his handwriting around for comparison purposes. Of course there’s always going to be an expert witness for the defense swearing up and down it couldn’t possibly be his handwriting, because look at the little loops on the Ds. And that’s assuming you could get the document admitted as evidence, which is no sure thing. You found it in his room?”

  “Taped to the bottom of a drawer.”

  “Where we’d have spotted it if we’d had any reason to look for it, but we didn’t. How’d you know to look?”

  “Stillman went to collect Jack’s effects from the super. But somebody’d already been there.”

  “You thought it was me.”

  “I thought it might be.”

  “And it could have been me,” he said, “if we’d given the case a higher priority. But I’d already looked at everything in the room, and there wasn’t much.”

  “No.”

  “So it wasn’t me,” he said, “or my partner, or anybody else with a badge. It was whoever killed him, looking to see if there’d been anything in the room that he’d missed.”

  “Right.”

  “And was there?”

  “I think there was a copy of Jack’s Fourth Step.”

  “Which you said he’d talked over with Stillman.”

  “And that was when he told Stillman he’d killed someone,” I said, “but without saying who or when. It seemed likely to me that he’d written out a more detailed version for his own benefit, and that’s what I went to his room hoping to find.”

  “It would have been better,” he said, “if I had found it.”

  “Well, you didn’t know to look for it, and—”

  “If you’d come to me,” he said, “and we’d gone over there together, and made the discovery, that would have been better. But instead we’ve got you bribing the super to look the other way, and being on premises where you’ve got no legal right to be, and bringing back something you say you found in a particular place at a particular time. Which I don’t for a moment doubt you did, but I don’t get to decide what’s admissible and what isn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “So from an evidentiary standpoint—”

  “I know.”

  “Not that it would prove anything anyway, beyond the fact that the dead man who wrote it claims he and a partner killed a couple of people. He doesn’t even name the partner.”

  “No.”

  “Even Steven. So it’s some guy named Steve.”

  “I had a friend check a couple of files full of aliases and nicknames. He couldn’t come up with anything.”

  “It might be on a list somewhere,” he said, “but that’s right up there with saying the cash or the dope or the stolen jewelry is in an evidence locker somewhere. That doesn’t mean anybody’s ever going to see it again. Even Steven.” He shook his head. “But you know who he is.”

  He studied the business card. “Says he’s your friend in Jersey City.”

  “Half of that’s true.”

  “The Jersey City part?”

  “I spoke to a journalist who knows him. He hangs around the courthouse, does favors, arranges things.”

  “Lot of guys like that,” Redmond said. “Hardly an endangered species on that side of the river. Vann, it says. How’d that turn into Steve?”

  “His mother named him Evander,” I said, “and he knocked that down to one syllable, and put a second N on it to make it clear that it was his first name.”

  “Could be Dutch otherwise. Van Steffens.”

  “I can’t be sure of this,” I said, “but I think it dropped down to two syllables before one of them disappeared. From Evander to Evan.”

  “Evan Steffens.” He nodded slowly. “Which doesn’t have far to go to become Even Steven.”

  “When Jack wrote about it,” I said, “he started out by saying he’d call his partner S. And he did, just using the single initial all the way through. Toward the end, though, he referred to him as E.S.”

  “Which could stand for Even Steven.”

  “But who uses initials for a nickname? Once I thought of that—”

  “Yeah, I can see how you got there. Okay, let me get another drink, because the one is barely a memory at this point. And then you can lay the whole thing out
for me.”

  By the time I was done his second drink was mostly gone. I’d switched from Coke to coffee, and my cup was empty, too.

  “Ellery gets sober,” Redmond said, “and he wants to get right with God. What’s he gonna do, turn himself in for the Love Nest Murders?”

  “Not necessarily. He hasn’t even gotten specific with his sponsor. But he wants to find some way to make amends for what he did that night.”

  “How does Steffens find out?”

  “They’re both in a world where word gets around,” I said. “ ‘Hey, you hear about High-Low Jack? He’s going up to all the assholes he gave a screwing to years ago, looking to make things up to them.’ Or he could have gone to Steffens himself. ‘I just wanted to tell you that something may come out about what we did on Jane Street, but you’ve got nothing to worry about, because I’ll be sure to keep your name out of it.’ ”

  “If I’m Steffens, I don’t know that I find that tremendously reassuring.”

  “No, of course not. If Jack ever tells anybody with a badge what he did, how long before they get the rest out of him?”

  “Or even if he doesn’t, Matt. If it lands on my desk, first thing I do is look at his known associates. Maybe Steffens’s name comes up, maybe it doesn’t, but if you’re Steffens, how can you know it won’t?”

  “One way to make sure.”

  “And it would have worked if it hadn’t been for Stillman. Down-and-out ex-con living in a furnished room—you know how those get solved. Someone gets drunk and talks too much. Steffens never talked about Jane Street, so why should he talk about High-Low Jack?”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “No, he’d have gotten away with it, and I’m not happy about it, but the fact is a lot of people get away with a lot of murders. Including the ones that don’t make it into the book as murders, which I guess is the case with Gregory Stillman. But the other one came first, didn’t it? Sattenstein?”