Everybody Dies (Matthew Scudder)

by Lawrence Block

  He hung up. “’The big fellow,’” he said. “It’s presumption, hanging that tag on myself. That’s what they called Collins.”

  “And De Valera didn’t like it.”

  “A sanctimonious bastard, wasn’t he? Tell me something. Where the hell’s Cancún?”

  “The Yucatán Peninsula.”

  “That’s Mexico, isn’t it? Mrs. McGinley like is there, likes it better than phone calls in the middle of the night. ‘I can’t wake him, he’s sleeping.’ Well, if he wasn’t sleeping, you wouldn’t need to wake him, you silly cow.” He sighed, leaned back in the oak desk chair. “How the hell do you know Dev didn’t like it? You never went to the movie.”

  “Elaine rented it,” I said, “and we watched it on the VCR. Jesus Christ.”

  “What?”

  “That was last night we saw it. It doesn’t seem possible. It feels more like a week.”

  “It’s a fully day you had, isn’t it?”

  “So much death,” I said.

  “The two we buried at the farm, and that was what, four nights ago? Then Peter Rooney, but you only know of him from my telling you. And then your friend, the Buddhist. I drank to his memory, and the next minute they were making a charnel house of Grogan’s, killing people left and right. Burke was killed, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I looked for him and found him on the floorboards behind the bar, covered with glass from the mirror and with a terrible hole in his chest. Dead at his post, like a captain going down with the ship. I’d say that’s the end of that bar. Next time you see it some Korean’ll have it, selling fruits and vegetables around the clock.”

  He fell silent, and after a long moment I said, “I knew her, Mick.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “You know who I meant?”

  “Of course I do. Herself as was sitting nearby, that you didn’t want to be hearing their conversation. I had a feeling right then.”

  “Did you?”

  “I did. Do you know, moving to the next table probably saved our lives. It put us off to the side and gave us that extra fraction of time to hit the floor before the bullets reached us.” He cocked his head, looked at something on the wall. “Unless it’s all worked out in advance,” he said, “and you die when your time comes and not before.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Ah, that’s man’s lot, isn’t it? To wonder.” He opened desk drawers until he found the one with the bottle of Jameson in it. He cracked the seal and drank from the bottle. He said, “Was she the one, then?”

  “The one?”

  “Your bit on the side.”

  “I guess that’s as good a phrase as any. We stopped seeing each other awhile ago.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.”

  “I cared for her, though.”

  “That’s rare enough,” he said, and took another drink. “I never loved anyone. Aside from my mother and my brothers, but that’s a different matter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of women, I loved none and cared for few.”

  “I love Elaine,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone else.”

  “You were married before.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “There was a time when I thought I did.”

  “Ah. What was this one’s name?”

  “Lisa.”

  “She was a fine-looking woman.”

  My mind filled with a picture of her as I saw her last, her skull shattered. I blinked it away and saw her in her apartment, wearing jeans and a sweater, standing in front of a window with a view of the setting sun. That was better.

  “Yes,” I said. “She was.”

  “It was sudden, you know. I doubt she ever knew what hit her.”

  “But she’s gone.”

  “That she is,” he said.

  He had the old leather satchel on top of the desk and was poking around in it. “Cash from the safe,” he said. “Some papers. All the guns I could grab up. The police can get a court order and torch the safe, or they’ll do it without a court order. What they can’t use as evidence against me they’ll shove in their pockets. So I didn’t want to leave them too much.”

  “No.”

  “And anything they left would be useless to me, as I couldn’t go back for it. They’ll have it sealed off, once they’ve finished with their photographs and measurements, all the scientific things they do. You’d know more about that than I.”

  “The crime scene routine’s changed since my day,” I said. “It seems to me they shoot a lot of videotape these days. And they keep getting more scientific.”

  “Though what’s the need for science in this? One man sprays a room with. bullets and another hurls a bomb. I wonder have they finished carrying out the dead yet. I wonder how many dead there were, and others dying.”

  “We’ll hear it on the news.”

  “Too many, whatever the number. A whole row drinking their pints at the bar, and a stream of bullets to knock them off their stools. Not Eamonn Dougherty, though. Never a scratch on him. Did I not once tell you he’d outlive us all?”

  “I believe you did.”

  “The murderous wee bastard. I wonder how old he is. Jesus, he was in Tom Barry’s flying column. He has to be ninety, and he could be ninety-five. A long life to live when you’ve all that blood on your hands. Or do you suppose the blood washes off after so many years?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I wonder,” he said, and looked down at his own hands. “You saw the gunman. Vietnamese, Andy thought. Or Thai, or God knows what else. Did you get a look at the one that threw the bomb?”

  “No.”

  “He got away, and I scarcely saw him myself. There was his big face, looming over the other’s shoulder, and then he threw the bomb and after that I never saw him again. It seems to me he was a very pale washed-out sort of white.”

  “And partnered with an Asian.”

  “It’s the entire United fucking Nations arrayed against me,” he said. “It’s no more than luck they weren’t trying to kill me.”

  “You mean all that was just to get your attention?”

  “Oh, they came to do murder, and it was murder they did. But I’d say the man who sent them never expected to find me there, or yourself either. He sent those two to destroy the place and kill as many people as they could.” He hefted the weapon he’d taken from the dead Asian. “If I hadn’t shot the fucker,” he said, “he’d have gone on firing until he killed everyone in the room.”

  And if he hadn’t been quick as a cat, knocking me down even as he drew the gun . . .

  “A big moon face pale as death. Does that sound like anyone you know?”

  “A cop said the moon’s full tonight.”

  “Then maybe that was himself. The man in the moon, come down to pay his respects. What about the two who waylaid you the other night?”

  I described them as well as I could and he just shook his head. They could be anybody, he said. Anybody at all.

  “And it was a black man did the shooting at the Chinese restaurant. It makes a man long for the old days, when the only people I had to worry about were the Eyetalians. And they may have been bad bastards but you could reason with them. Now it’s the Rainbow Coalition, with all the races of man uniting against me. What’s next, do you suppose? Cats and dogs?”

  “Are you safe here, Mick?”

  “Safe enough, for as long as I’ll be here. I didn’t want to go to any of my apartments. There’s people who know about them. Only a few people, and they’re people I trust, but how do I know who’s to be trusted? Andy Buckley’s almost a son to me, but who’s to say what he’ll do if some bastard puts a gun to his head?”

  “That’s why you wouldn’t let him drop us off.”

  “No, I wanted a car handy, and a less noticeable car than the Cadillac. But he’s no need to
know where I am. He can’t reveal what’s been kept from him.”

  “Couldn’t you go to the farm?”

  He shook his head. “There’s altogether too many know of the farm. And it’s too far away from everything.” He took a drink. “If I wanted to be away from it all,” he said, “I could stay with the brothers.”

  That puzzled me for a moment. Then I said, “Oh. The monastery?”

  “The Thessalonians, of course. What were you thinking?”

  “You said the brothers, and we were talking about the shooter being black and the Rainbow Coalition, and . . .”

  “Ah, that’s rich,” he said. “No, it’s the brothers on Staten Island, not the brothers on Lenox Avenue.” He looked at his hands again. “I’m a terrible Catholic,” he said. “Ages since my last confession, and a soul well blackened with sins. But I could go there, to the brothers, and they’d take me in and ask me no questions. Whoever he is, he’d never think to hunt me there. He’d not be sending his black and brown shooters, or his pale white bomb throwers, either.”

  “Maybe that’s not a bad idea, Mick.”

  “It’s no idea at all,” he said, “because I can’t do it.”

  “Why not? Suppose you just walk away from it all.”

  He shook his head. “There’s nothing to walk away from. I don’t know who he is or what he wants, the man who’s set all this in motion, but it can’t be anything I have. Am I a crime boss with a great territory? I’m nothing of the sort. I own a few pieces of property, I have some business interests, but that’s not what he wants. Don’t you see? It’s personal with him. He wants to destroy me.” He uncapped the bottle, took a drink. “And all I can do,” he said, “is try to get him first.”

  “Before he gets you.”

  “Is there another way? You’re the policeman.”

  “Years ago.”

  “But you can still think like one. Give me a policeman’s advice. Shall I go swear out a complaint? Against person or persons unknown?”

  “No.”

  “Or ask for police protection? They couldn’t protect me if they wanted to, and whyever should they want to? Haven’t I lived my whole life on the other side of the law? And now it’s kill or be killed, and how can I be hoisting a white flag and asking them to change the rules?”

  A door at the left rear corner of the basement opened onto a flight of steps leading up to the air shaft. Mick unbolted the door and asked me again if I didn’t want to catch a few hours’ sleep before I went home. I could have the couch, he said. He was drinking, he’d just sit in the chair and sip whiskey until he dozed off.

  I told him I didn’t want Elaine to wake up before I got home. She’d turn on the news and hear what had happened at Grogan’s.

  “’Twill be everyone’s lead story,” he said. “I’d put on the radio to learn the number of dead, but I’ll know soon enough.” He gripped my shoulder. “Go on home. And keep your eyes open, will you?”

  “I will.”

  “And pack your bags and take herself off to Ireland or Italy or wherever she wants to go. Just so you get the hell away from here. Will you do that?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “That’s what I want to hear from you, that you’re at the airport waiting for your flight to board.”

  “How will I call you? What’s the phone number here?”

  “Wait a minute,” he said, and scribbled on a piece of paper, straightened up and handed it to me. “The cellular phone. I never give out the number because I don’t want a fucking telephone ringing in my pocket. I just bought the creature because you can never find a pay phone that works, or if you do you’ve no quarters for it. I don’t know how much time I’ll spend here, and I don’t want to answer the store phone anyway, with people calling to inquire about doorknobs and strap hinges. Call me from the airport, eh? Will you do that?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, just gave me a pat on the back and a shove out the door. I headed up the dark stairs and heard the door close, heard the lock turn.

  “He saved my life,” I said. “No question. The one guy was spraying the room with bullets, trying to kill everything with a pulse. There was a couple two tables away having a low-voltage lovers’ quarrel. Killed, both of them. Same thing would have happened to me if I’d stayed in my chair.”

  “But not if you’d stayed in bed.”

  “I’d have been fine,” I said. “Until the next time I walked out the door.”

  She’d been sleeping when I got home, but not deeply. The sound of my key in the lock was enough to wake her. She got up, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, put on a robe and followed me into the kitchen. I made the coffee for a change, and while it dripped through I told her everything that had happened.

  She said, “Bombs and bullets. I’d say it sounds like The Godfather, Part Four, except it doesn’t, not really. It sounds like a war.”

  “That’s what it feels like.”

  “Welcome to Sarajevo. Or isn’t there a bar in the East Village called Downtown Beirut?”

  “On Second Avenue, if it’s still in business.”

  “Two people go out for a beer so they can talk about their relationship, and the next thing you know they’re wearing toe tags. Caught in the crossfire. Was there any crossfire?”

  “Not from me. Mick emptied his gun at him. He was the one who shot the shooter. My gun never made it out of the holster, and Tom and Andy were all the way in the back, so I don’t think anybody else on our side got any shots off.”

  “’Our side.’” She sipped her coffee and made a face. It was too strong. When I make the coffee it always comes out too strong.

  She said, “He was saving his own life, you know.”

  “He covered me with his body. Flopped on top of me, deliberately shielded me.”

  “But it must have been reflexive, don’t you think? Something happened and he simply reacted.”

  “So?”

  “So he didn’t consciously think, Matt’s in danger and I have to knock him down and shield him from bullets. He just did it.”

  “Would the act have scored higher on the nobility charts if he’d thought it over first? If he’d stopped to think we’d both be dead.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “You see what I’m doing, don’t you? I’m trying to minimize what he did so you won’t feel obligated to him. You almost got killed twice in one night. I want you to quit the game before your luck runs out.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Why not? How does what happened change anything? If Mick saved your life it was because he wants you to live, not so you can stand shoulder to shoulder with him on the battlefield. Didn’t he tell you to take me to Ireland?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “I’ve never been there. And I get the feeling we’re not going.”

  “Not right now.”

  “Want to tell me why?”

  “Because it really is a war,” I said, “and nobody’s going to let me be Switzerland. What were we saying before? My name’s in the shawl. The only way I could stay neutral at this point is to pack up and leave the country.”

  “So? Your passport’s in order.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t sit on a stone fence in County Kerry, hoping my problem will solve itself.”

  “So you’re going to be involved.”

  “That’s got to be better than sitting around with my thumb up my ass waiting for something to happen.”

  “Besides, the man saved your life.”

  “That’s a factor.”

  “And a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Does that get factored in, too?”

  “It’s probably part of the equation,” I admitted. “I may think most of that guy stuff is bullshit, but that doesn’t render me immune to it. And it’s not all crap. If I’m going to live in this town I can’t let people scare me out of it. And I have to live in this town.”

  “Why? We could live anywhere.”

  “
We could, but we don’t. We live here.”

  “I know,” she said. “This is home.” She tried her coffee again, then gave up and carried her cup to the sink. “It’s a shame,” she said. “I don’t know about sitting on stone fences, but it would have been fun to go to Ireland.”

  “You can still go.”

  “When? Oh, you mean now? No thanks.”

  “Or Paris, or anywhere you want.”

  “Where I’ll be out of harm’s way.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you won’t have to worry about me.”

  “So?”

  “So forget about it. If I’m gonna sit around waiting for the phone to ring, I’d just as soon stay where it’s a local call. Don’t try to talk me around, okay? Because it won’t work. I may not be a Taurus but I’m just as stubborn as you are. If you won’t go, neither will I.”

  “It’s your call. Will you close the shop?”

  “That I’ll do. I’ll even hang a sign that says I’m off on a buying trip until the first of October. Will this be over and done with by the end of the month?”

  “One way or another.”

  “I wish you hadn’t put it that way.”

  I said, “That couple I mentioned? At Grogan’s?”

  “The low-level lovers’ quarrel? What about them?”

  “She’s someone we used to know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Lisa Holtzmann.”

  The two women had met in an art history class at Hunter. That’s how I came to know her husband, and how she came to call me after he was killed.

  “My God,” she said. “And she was killed?”

  “Instantly, from the look of things.”

  “That poor girl. What a life and what a death. Where was it we saw her?”

  “Armstrong’s, and it was awhile ago.”

  “And we didn’t bother saying hello. Who knew we’d never see her again?” She frowned. “What was she doing at Grogan’s? I know what she was doing, but you wouldn’t think that would be her kind of place, would you?”

  “As far as I know, that’s the first time she ever went there. No, that’s not true, because they were there the other night.”

  “The night before last?”

  “No, the night the whole thing started. Wednesday, it would have been. Before we went over to the storage place in Jersey. She was there with the same guy, and it may have been the same table. And it wasn’t his kind of place, either.”