Lawrence Block - Scudder 1979 - Sins of the Fathers

by Sins of the Fathers(lit)

  I made the rounds. A basement club on Bank Street where a man with long white hair and a waxed moustache played the bowling machine all by himself while his beer went flat. A big room on West Tenth, its ambience pitched for the old college athlete crowd, sawdust on the floor and Greek-letter pennants on the exposed brick walls. In all, half a dozen gay bars within a four-block radius of 194 Bethune Street.

  I got stared at a lot. Was I a cop? Or a potential sexual partner? Or both?

  I had the newspaper photo of Richie, and I showed it around a lot to whoever was willing to look at it. Almost everyone recognized the photo because they had seen it in the paper. The murder was recent, and it had happened right in the neighborhood, and heterosexuals have no monopoly on morbid curiosity. So most of them recognized the picture, and quite a few had seen him in the neighborhood, or said they had, but nobody recalled seeing him around the bars.

  "Of course I don't come here all that often," I heard more than once. "Just drop in now and then for a beer when the throat gets scratchy."

  In a place called Sinthia's the bartender recognized me and did an elaborate double take. "Do my eyes deceive me? Or is it really the one and only Matthew Scudder?"

  "Hello, Ken."

  "Now don't tell me you've finally converted, Matt. It was enough of a shock when I heard you left the pigpen. If Matthew Scudder's come around to the belief that Gay is Good, why, I'd be properly devastated."

  He still looked twenty-eight, and he must have been almost twice that. The blond hair was his own, even if the color came out of a bottle. When you got up close you could see the face-lift lines, but from a couple of yards away he didn't look a day older than when I'd booked him fifteen years ago for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I hadn't taken much pride in the collar; the minor had been seventeen, and had already been more delinquent than Ken had ever hoped to be, but the minor had a father and the father filed a complaint and I had had to pick Kenny up. He got himself a decent lawyer, and the charges were dropped.

  "You're looking good," I told him.

  "Booze and tobacco and lots of sex. It keeps a lad young."

  "Ever see this young lad?" I dropped the news photo on top of the bar. He looked at it, then gave it back.

  "Interesting."

  "You recognize him?"

  "It's the young chap who was so nasty last week, isn't it? Ghastly story."

  "Yes."

  "Where do you come in?"

  "It's hard to say. Ever see him in here, Kenny?"

  He planted his elbows on the bar and made a V of his hands, then tucked his chin between them. "The reason I said it was interesting," he said, "is that I thought I recognized that picture when the Post ran it. I have an extraordinary memory for faces. Among other anatomical areas."

  "You've seen him before."

  "I thought so, and now I find myself certain of it. Why don't you buy us each a drink while I comb my memory?"

  I put a bill on the bar. He poured bourbon for me and mixed something orange for himself. He said, "I'm not stalling, Matthew. I am trying to recall what went with the face. I know I haven't seen it in a long time."

  "How long?"

  "At least a year." He sipped at his drink, straightened up, clasped his hands behind his neck, closed his eyes. "A year at the very least. I remember him now. Very attractive. And very young. I asked him for ID the first time he came in, and he didn't seem surprised, as if he always got asked for proof of age."

  "He was only nineteen then."

  "Well, he could have passed for a ripe sixteen. There was a period of a couple of weeks when he was in here almost every night. Then I never saw him again."

  "I gather he was gay."

  "Well, he wouldn't have come here to pick up girls, would he?"

  "He could have been window shopping."

  "Too true. We do get our fair share of those, don't we? Not Richie, though. He wasn't much of a drinker, you know. He'd order a vodka Collins and make it last until all the ice had melted."

  "Not a very profitable customer."

  "Oh, when they're young and gorgeous you don't care whether they spend much. They're window dressing, you know. They bring others in. From window shopping to window dressing, and no, our lad was not just looking, thank you. I don't think there was a night he came here that he didn't let someone take him home."

  He moved to the other end of the bar to replenish someone's drink. When he returned I asked him if he had ever taken Vanderpoel home himself.

  "Matthew, honey, if I had, I wouldn't have had that much trouble remembering him, would I now?"

  "You might."

  "Bitch! No, I was going through a very monogamous period at the time. Don't raise your brows so skeptically, luv. It doesn't become you. I suppose I might have been tempted, but cute as he was, he was not my type."

  "I would have thought he'd be just your type."

  "Oh, you don't know me as well as you think you do, do you, Matthew? I like a bit of chicken now and then, I'll admit it. God knows it's not the world's best-kept secret in the first place. But it's not just youth that does it for me, you know. It's corrupt youth."

  "Oh?"

  "That luscious air of immature decadence. Young fruit rotting on the vines."

  "You have a lovely way of putting things."

  "Don't I? But Richard was not like that at all. He had this untouchable innocence. You could be his eighth trick of the night, and you would still feel that you were seducing a virgin. And that, dear boy, is not my scene at all, as the children say."

  He made himself a fresh drink and collected for it out of my change. I still had enough bourbon left. I said, "You said something about the eighth trick of the night. Was he selling himself?"

  "No way. He didn't get the chance to pay for his own drinks, but if he had one drink a night, it was a lot. He wasn't hustling a buck."

  "Was he running the numbers?"

  "No, one partner a night was all he seemed to want. As far as I could tell."

  "And then he stopped coming in here. I wonder why."

  "Maybe he got allergic to the decor."

  "Was there anyone in particular he tended to go home with?"

  Ken shook his head. "Never the same friend twice. I would guess that he came around over a period of three weeks, and maybe he paid us fifteen or eighteen visits in all, and I never saw him repeat. That's not terribly unusual, you know. A lot of people are hung up on variety. Especially the young ones."

  "He started living with Wendy Hanniford around the time he stopped coming here."

  "I gathered he was living with her. I wouldn't know about the time element."

  "Why would he live with a woman, Ken?"

  "I didn't really know him, Matt. And I'm not a psychiatrist. I had a psychiatrist, but that wasn't one of the topics we got around to discussing."

  "Why would any homosexual live with a woman?"

  "God knows."

  "Seriously, Kenny."

  He drummed the bar with his fingers. "Seriously? All right. He could be bisexual, you know. It's not exactly unheard of, especially in this day and age. Everybody's doing it, I understand. Straight types are trying the gay scene on for size. Gay types are making tentative experiments with heterosexuality." He yawned elaborately. "I'm afraid I'm a hopelessly reactionary old thing myself. One sex is complicated enough for me. Two would be disastrous."

  "Any other ideas?"

  "Not really. If I'd known him, Matt. But he was just another pretty face to me."

  "Who knew him?"

  "Does anyone know anyone? I suppose whoever took him to bed came closest to knowing him."

  "Who took him to bed?"

  "I'm not a scorekeeper, darling. And we've had quite the turnover here these past few months. Most of the old crowd has gone off in search of greener pastures. We're getting a lot of smarmy little leather boys lately." He frowned at the thought, then remembered that frowning gives you lines and willed his face to return to its normal
expression. "I don't much adore the crew we've been attracting lately. Motorcycle boys, S-and-M types. I don't really want anyone killed in my bar, you know. Most especially my estimable self."

  "Why not do something about it?"

  "To be horribly candid, they scare me."

  I finished my drink. "There's an easy way for you to handle it."

  "Do tell."

  "Go over to the Sixth Precinct and talk to Lieutenant Edward Koehler. Tell him your problem and ask him to raid you a few times."

  "You've got to be kidding."

  "Think about it. Slip Koehler a couple of bucks. Fifty should do it. He'll arrange to raid you a few times and give your leather crowd a hard time. There won't be any charges against you, so it won't screw you up with the SLA. Your liquor license won't be in jeopardy. The motorcycle boys are like everybody else. They can't afford hassles. They'll find some other house to haunt. Of course your business will fall off for a couple of weeks."

  "It's off, anyway. The little cunts are all beer drinkers, and they don't leave tips."

  "So you won't be losing much. Then in a month or so you'll start getting the kind of clientele you want."

  "What a devious mind you have, Matthew. I think it might work, at that."

  "It should. And don't give me too much credit. It's done all the time."

  "You say fifty dollars should do it?"

  "It ought to. It would have when I was on the force, but everything's been going up lately, even bribery. If Koehler wants more, he'll let you know about it."

  "I don't doubt it. Well, it's not as if I never gave money to New York's Finest. They come around every Friday to collect, and you wouldn't believe what Christmas cost me."

  "Yes, I would."

  "But I never gave them money in the hope of anything beyond being allowed to remain in business. I didn't realize you could ask favors in return."

  "It's a free-enterprise system."

  "So it seems. I just might try it, and I'll buy you a drink on the strength of it."

  He poured a generous shot into my glass. I picked it up and eyed him over the top of it. "There's something else you could do for me," I said.

  "Oh?"

  "Ask around a little about Richie Vanderpoel. I know you don't want to give me any names. That's reasonable. But see if you can find out what he was like. I'd appreciate it."

  "Don't expect much."

  "I won't."

  He ran his fingers through his beautiful blond hair. "Do you really care what he was like, Matt?"

  "Yes," I said. "Evidently I do."

  MAYBE it was a reaction to too many visits to bars that were gay in name alone. I'm not sure, but on my way to the subway I stopped at an outdoor phone booth and looked up a number in my notebook. I dropped in a dime and dialed it, and when she answered I said, "Elaine? Matt Scudder."

  "Oh, hi Matt. How's it going?"

  "Not too bad. I was wondering if you felt like company."

  "I'd love to see you. Give me a half hour? I was just getting into the shower."

  "Sure."

  I had coffee and a roll and read the Post. The new mayor was having trouble appointing a deputy mayor. His investigative board kept discovering that his prospective appointees were corrupt in any of several uninteresting ways. There was an obvious answer, and he would probably hit on it sooner or later. He was going to have to get rid of the investigative board.

  Some more citizens had killed each other since yesterday's edition went to press. Two off-duty patrolmen had had a few drinks in a bar in Woodside and shot each other with their service revolvers. One was dead, the other in critical condition. A man and woman who had served ninety days each for child abuse had sued successfully to regain custody of the child from the foster parents who had had the kid for three and a half years. The nude torso of an adolescent boy had been discovered on a tenement roof on East Fifth Street. Someone had carved an X into the chest, presumably the same person who had removed the arms and legs and head.

  I left the newspaper on the table and got a cab.

  She lived in a good building on Fifty-first between First and Second. The doorman confirmed that I was expected and nodded me toward the elevator. She was waiting at the door for me, wearing royal-blue hip-huggers and a lime-green blouse. She had gold hoop earrings in her ears and she smelled of a rich, musky perfume.

  I draped my coat over an Eames chair while she closed the door and fastened the bolt. She came into my arms for an openmouthed kiss and rubbed her little body against me. "Mmmm," she said. "That's nice."

  "You're looking good, Elaine."

  "Let me look at you. You don't look so bad yourself, in a rugged, rough-hewn sort of a way. How've you been?"

  "Pretty good."

  "Keeping busy?"

  "Uh-huh."

  There was chamber music stacked on her stereo. The last record was just ending, and I sat on the couch and watched as she walked to the turntable and inverted the stack of records. I wondered whether the hip wiggle was for my benefit or if it came naturally to her. I had always wondered that.

  I liked the room. White wall-to-wall shag carpet, stark modern furniture more comfortable than it looked, a lot of primary colors and chrome. A couple of abstract oils on the walls. I couldn't have lived in a room like that, but I enjoyed spending occasional time in it.

  "Drink?"

  "Not just now."

  She sat on the couch next to me and talked about books she had read and movies she had seen. She was very good at small talk. I suppose she had to be.

  We kissed a few times, and I touched her breasts and put a hand on her round bottom. She made a purring sound.

  "Want to come to bed, Matt?"

  "Sure."

  The bedroom was small, with a more subdued color scheme. She turned on a small stained-glass lamp and killed the overhead light. We got undressed and lay down on the queen-size bed.

  She was warm and young and eager, with soft, perfumed skin and a tautly muscled body. Her hands and mouth were clever. But it was not working, and after a few minutes I moved away from her and patted her gently on the shoulder.

  "Relax, honey."

  "No, it's not going to work," I said.

  "Something I should be doing?"

  I shook my head.

  "Too much to drink?"

  It wasn't that. I was far too completely locked into my own head. "Maybe," I said.

  "It happens."

  "Or maybe it's the wrong time of the month for me."

  She laughed. "Right, you got your period."

  "Must be."

  We put our clothes on. I got three tens from my wallet and put them on the dresser. As usual, she pretended not to notice.

  "Want that drink now?"

  "Uh-huh, I guess. Bourbon, if you have it."

  She didn't. She had Scotch, and I settled for that. She poured herself a glass of milk, and we sat on the couch together and listened to the music without saying anything for a while. I felt as relaxed as if we had made love.

  "Working these days, Matt?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Well, everybody has to work."

  "Uh-huh."

  She shook a cigarette out of her pack, and I lit it for her. "You got things on your mind," she said. "That's what's the matter."

  "You're probably right."

  "I know I'm right. Want to talk about anything?"

  "Not really."

  "Okay."

  The telephone rang, and she answered it in the bedroom. When she came back I asked her if she had ever lived with a man.

  "You mean like a pimp? Never have and never will."

  "I meant like a boyfriend."

  "Never. It's a funny thing about boyfriends in this business. They always turn out to be pimps."

  "Really?"

  "Uh-huh. I've known so many girls. `Oh, he's not a pimp, he's my boyfriend.' But it always turns out that he's between jobs, and that he makes a life's work out of being between jobs, and she pays for ev
erything. But he's not a pimp, just a boyfriend. They're very good at kidding themselves, those girls. I'm lousy at kidding myself. So I don't even try."

  "Good for you."