Even the Wicked

by Lawrence Block

Page 24

 

  I checked again an hour later, and an hour after that. Then I dozed off, and when I opened my eyes it was twenty minutes to twelve. The lights were out in the law office. I walked on past it and used the lavatory again, and the lights were still out when I returned.

  The lock was better than the one on Barishs door, and I thought I might have to break the glass to get in. I was prepared to do that-I didnt think anyone was around to hear it, or inclined to pay attention-but first I used my pocketknife to gouge the door jamb enough so that I could get a purchase on the bolt and snick it back. I put on the lights, figuring that a lighted office would look less suspicious to someone across the street than a darkened office with someone moving around inside it.

  I found Whitfields office and got busy.

  * * *

  It was around one-thirty in the morning when I got out of there. I left the place looking as Id found it, and wiped whatever surfaces I might have left prints on, more out of habit than because I thought anyone might dust the place for prints. I rubbed a little dirt into the gouges Id made around the lock, so that the scar didnt look too new, and I drew the door shut and heard the bolt snick behind me.

  I was too tired to think straight, and actually considered holing up in Barishs office and napping in his easy chair until dawn, all that in order to avoid having to sneak out past the guard. Instead I decided to bluff my way past him, and when I went downstairs the lobby was empty. A sign Id missed on my way in announced that the building was locked from ten at night to six in the morning.

  This didnt mean I couldnt get out, just that once out I couldnt get back in again. That was fine with me. I got out of there and had to walk three blocks before I could hail a cruising cab. Stickers on the windows in the passenger compartment warned me against smoking. In front, the Pakistani driver puffed away at one of those foul little Italian cigars. Di Nobili, I think theyre called. Years and years ago I was partnered with a wise old cop named Vince Mahaffey, and he smoked the damn things day in and day out. I suppose they were no less appropriate for a Pakistani cabby than for an Irish cop, but I didnt let myself be transported on wings of nostalgia. I just rolled down the windows and tried to find something to breathe.

  Elaine was asleep when I got in. She stirred when I slipped into bed beside her. I gave her a kiss and told her to go back to sleep.

  "TJ called again," she said. "You didnt beep him. "

  "I know. What did he want?"

  "He didnt say. "

  "Ill call him in the morning. Go to sleep, sweetie. "

  "You all right?"

  "Im fine. "

  "Find out anything?"

  "I dont know. Go to sleep. "

  " Go to sleep, go to sleep. Is that all you can say?"

  I tried to think of a response, but before I could come up with anything she had drifted off again. I closed my eyes and did the same.

  12

  Elaine was gone by the time I woke up. There was a note on the kitchen table explaining that shed left early for an auction at Tepper Galleries on East Twenty-fifth Street, and reminding me to beep TJ. I had a shower first, and toasted an English muffin. There was coffee in the thermos, and I drank one cup and poured another before I picked up the phone and dialed his beeper number. When the tone sounded I punched in my own number and hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later the phone rang and I picked it up. "Who wants TJ?" he said, and went on without waiting for a response, " Cept I know who it is, Diz, on account of I reckanize the number. You believe it took me this long to find a phone? Either they out of order or somebody be on them, talkin like they gettin paid by the word. You think I should get a cell phone?"

  "I wouldnt want one. "

  "You dont want a beeper," he said, "or a computer, neither. What you wants the nineteenth century back again. "

  "Maybe the eighteenth," I said, "before the Industrial Revolution took the joy out of life. "

  "Someday you can tell me how nice it was with horses and buggies. Why I dont want a cell phone, they cost too much. Cost when you call somebody, cost when somebody call you. Top of that, you got no privacy. Dudes chillin with a Walkman, hes liable to pick up everything you sayin. What makes it work like that?"

  "How would I know?"

  "Dont even need a Walkman. People be pickin up your conversation on the fillings in their teeth. Next thing you know they think its the CIA, tellin em they supposed to go to the post office and shoot everybody. "

  "You wouldnt want that on your conscience. "

  "Damn, you right about that. " He laughed. "I stick to my beeper. Hey, listen. I found that dude. "

  "What dude is that?"

  "Dude you had me lookin for. Dude who was on the scene when the one dude shot the other dude. "

  "Theres too many dudes in that sentence," I said. "I dont know who youre talking about. "

  "Talkin bout Myron. "

  "Myron. "

  "Dude got shot in that little park? Dude had AIDS? Ring a little bell, Mel?"

  "Byron," I said.

  "Byron Leopold. Whad I do, call him Myron? I been doin that in my head all along. Thing is, see, I never heard of nobody named Byron… You still there?"

  "Im here. "

  "You didnt say nothin, so I beginnin to wonder. "

  "I guess I was speechless," I said. "I didnt know you were still looking for the witness. "

  "Aint been nobody told me to stop. "

  "No, but-"

  "An the man got me started in this detectin business, everybody say he like a dog with a bone. Once he get his teeth in somethin, he aint about to turn it loose. "

  "Is that what they say?"

  "So I gettin to be the same my own self, like a dog with a bone. Sides, it be somethin to do. "

  "And you found the dude. "

  "Took some doin," he admitted. "He wasnt exactly lookin to be found. But he saw the whole thing, cept it was more hearin than seein. He wasnt lookin at first, and when he did look he was seein it from behind. So he saw the back of the dude who did the shooting, and he didnt see the gun, just heard, you know, pop pop. "

  "Thats what he heard? Pop pop?"

  "What he heard was gunshots. What else you gone hear when somebody shoots a gun?"

  "Everybody who was there heard the gunshots," I said, "and even if they hadnt the bullets in Leopolds body are fairly strong evidence that a couple of shots were fired. So if all this fellow did was hear the shots-"

  "Aint all he heard. "

  "Oh. "

  "That was all the man heard, you think Id be botherin you with it?"

  "Sorry. What else did he hear?"

  "Heard the dude say, Mr. Leopold? Then he didnt hear nothin, so either Byron just nodded or his voice didnt carry. Then he heard the dude say, Byron Leopold? An maybe he looked up an maybe he didnt, but the next he heard the dude was bustin caps. "

  "Pop pop. "

  "Like that. "

  "When can I see this witness?"

  "He might be pretty slow to talk to you. He already missed a few chances to talk to the police. "

  "I dont suppose the gentlemans a vice president at IBM. "

  "He in the park sellin product," he said, "an soon as the dude commences to shoot, he ready to call it a day hisself. I can maybe put you cross a table from him, but that dont mean hes gone talk to you. Sides, what you gonna axe him that I didnt axe him already?"

  " Mr. Leopold? Byron Leopold? "

  "Dont sound to me like hes makin it up. "

  "No," I said, "it doesnt. "

  * * *

  An hour later I was watching him eat french fries at a Fourteenth Street coffee shop. His cheeseburger was but a memory. He was wearing baggy jeans and a denim jacket with a quilted lining. His railroaders cap was on the seat beside him.

  I told him I had pretty much forgotten Byron Leopold.

  "Whys that?" he wondered. "You come to the conclusion he died of natural causes?"

  "When I thought
about it at all," I said, "which wasnt often, I suppose I figured hed been taken for someone else and killed in error. Or that hed unwittingly made an enemy in the neighborhood by sitting on the wrong bench or mouthing off at the wrong person. And he had AIDS, and he was far enough along so that the disease was visible. Maybe somebody had an AIDS phobia and decided the best cure lay in killing off the victims. "

  "Like the dudes who set bums on fire. "

  "As a quick cure for the problem of homelessness. Thats the idea. I didnt think that was it, though, because that kind of killer doesnt act once and then go off and enter a monastery. "

  "He repeats. "

  "Usually. " The waitress came by and filled my coffee cup without asking. The coffee wasnt very good, but there was plenty of it. I said, " Mr. Leopold? Byron Leopold? "

  "Like that. "

  "Making sure hes got the right person. "

  "Person hes supposed to shoot. Like he knows the name but he never met him before. We brainstormin, right? Battin ideas back and forth?"

  "Something like that," I agreed. "He sounds hired, doesnt he?"

  "The killer? You mean like a pro?"

  "Not like a pro," I said. "The whole things too raggedy-ass for a pro. Heres a man whos alone a lot, leads a very regular life, hasnt set up any security system to make himself hard to kill. Its easy to get close to him in private, so why would a professional hitman kill him in front of witnesses?"

  "Only reason I said a pro, Joe, is you said hired. "

  "An amateur," I said, "hired by another amateur. It pretty much takes a pro to hire a pro. You need to be connected, you cant look up contract killers in the yellow pages. Ordinary citizens hire killers all the time, but theres nothing terribly professional about the people who work for them. "

  "An it dont always work out the way it sposed to," he said. "Like the other day in Washington Heights. "

  I knew the one he was talking about. It had been all over the papers the past few days. A Dominican teenager, bridling at her fathers strict discipline, had engaged a pair of local hard cases to kill the man, enticing them with the prospect of the $20,000 he kept in a strongbox in the closet, considering it ever so much safer than the bank.

  So they showed up at the house one night and she let them in. She gave them the money, and then they were supposed to wait for Daddy to come home. But they got tired of waiting, and it occurred to them that he might be armed, and there was an easier way to close the account. So they took the girl who started the whole thing and shot her twice in the head, and they did the same for her sleeping mother and brother while they were at it, and then they went home. The father came home from work to find his family dead and his money gone. I bet his car wouldnt start, either.

  "In Washington Heights," I said, "everybody had a reason. The girl was mad at her father, and the killers wanted the money. "

  "So who had a reason to kill Byron?"

  "Thats what I was wondering. "