Eight Million Ways to Die ms-5

by Lawrence Block

  "Should it?"

  "I don't know."

  "It's not real money anyway," she said. "Fast money doesn't last. If it did, all the drug dealers would own the stock exchange. But that kind of money goes out the way it comes in." She swung her legs around, sat facing forward on the church pew. "Anyway," she said, "I have everything I want. All I ever wanted was to be left alone. I wanted a decent place to live and time to do my work. I'm talking about my poetry."

  "I realize that."

  "You know what most poets go through? They teach, or they work a straight job, or they play the poetry game, giving readings and lectures and writing out proposals for foundation grants and getting to know the right people and kissing the right behinds. I never wanted to do all that shit. I just wanted to make poems."

  "What did Kim want to do?"

  "God knows."

  "I think she was involved with somebody. I think that's what got her killed."

  "Then I'm safe," she said. "I'm involved with no one. Of course you could argue that I'm involved with mankind. Would that put me in grave danger, do you suppose?"

  I didn't know what she meant. With her eyes closed she said, " 'Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind,' John Donne. Do you know how she was involved, or with whom?"

  "No."

  "Does her death diminish me, do you suppose? I wonder if I was involved with her. I didn't know her, not really, and yet I wrote a poem about her."

  "Could I see it?"

  "I suppose so, but I don't see how it could tell you anything. I wrote a poem about the Big Dipper but if you want to know anything real about it you'd have to go to an astronomer, not to me. Poems are never about what they're about, you know. They're all about the poet."

  "I'd still like to see it."

  This seemed to please her. She went to her desk, a modern version of the old rolltop, and found what she was looking for almost immediately. The poem was hand-lettered on white bond paper with an italic-nibbed pen.

  "I type them up for submission," she said, "but I like to see how they look on the page this way. I taught myself to do calligraphy. I learned from a book. It's easier than it looks."

  I read:

  Bathe her in milk, let the white stream run

  Pure in its bovine baptism,

  Heal the least schism

  Under the soonest sun. Take her

  Hand, tell her it doesn't matter,

  Milk's not to cry over. Scatter

  Seed from a silver gun. Break her

  Bones in a mortar, shatter

  Wine bottles at her feet, let green glass

  Sparkle upon her hand. Let it be done.

  Let the milk run.

  Let it flow down, down to the ancient grass.

  I asked if I could copy it into my notebook. Her laugh was light, merry. "Why? Does it tell who killed her?"

  "I don't know what it tells me. Maybe if I keep it I'll figure out what it tells me."

  "If you figure out what it means," she said, "I hope you'll tell me. That's an exaggeration. I sort of know what I'm getting at. But don't bother copying it. You can have that copy."

  "Don't be silly. That's your copy."

  She shook her head. "It's not finished. It needs more work. I want to get her eyes into it. If you met Kim you must have noticed her eyes."

  "Yes."

  "I originally wanted to contrast the blue eyes with the green glass, that's how that image got there in the first place, but the eyes disappeared when I wrote it. I think they were in an earlier draft but somewhere along the line they dropped out." She smiled. "They were gone in a wink. I've got the silver and the green and the white and I left the eyes out." She stood with her hand on my shoulder, looking down at the poem. "It's what, twelve lines? I think it should be fourteen anyway. Sonnet length, even if the lines are irregular. I don't know about schism, either. Maybe an off-rhyme would be better. Spasm, chasm, something."

  She went on, talking more to herself than to me, discussing possible revisions in the poem. "By all means keep that," she concluded. "It's a long way from final form. It's funny. I haven't even looked at it since she was killed."

  "You wrote it before she was killed?"

  "Completely. And I don't think I ever thought of it as finished, even though I copied it in pen and ink. I'll do that with drafts. I can get a better idea of what does and doesn't work that way. I'd have kept on working on this one if she hadn't been killed."

  "What stopped you? The shock?"

  "Was I shocked? I suppose I must have been. 'This could happen to me,' Except of course I don't believe that. It's like lung cancer, it happens to other people. 'Any man's death diminishes me.' Did Kim's death diminish me? I don't think so. I don't think I'm as involved in mankind as John Donne was. Or as he said he was."

  "Then why did you put the poem aside?"

  "I didn't put it aside. I left it aside. That's nitpicking, isn't it?" She considered this. "Her death changed how I saw her. I wanted to work on the poem, but I didn't want to get her death into it. I had enough colors. I didn't need blood in there, too."

  Chapter 17

  I had taken a cab from Morton Street to Donna's place on East Seventeenth. Now I took another to Kim's building on Thirty-seventh. As I paid the driver I realized I hadn't made it to the bank. Tomorrow was Saturday, so I'd have Chance's money on my hands all weekend. Unless some mugger got lucky.

  I lightened the load some by slipping five bucks to the doorman for a key to Kim's apartment, along with some story about acting as the tenant's representative. For five dollars he was eager to believe me. I went up to the elevator and let myself in.

  The police had been through the place earlier. I didn't know what they were looking for and couldn't say what they found. The sheet in the file Durkin showed me hadn't said much, but nobody writes down everything that comes to his attention.

  I couldn't know what the officers on the scene might have noticed. For that matter, I couldn't be sure what might have stuck to their fingers. There are cops who'll rob the dead, doing so as a matter of course, and they are not necessarily men who are especially dishonest in other matters.

  Cops see too much of death and squalor, and in order to go on dealing with it they often have the need to dehumanize the dead. I remember the first time I helped remove a corpse from a room in an SRO hotel. The deceased had died vomiting blood and had lain there for several days before his death was discovered. A veteran patrolman and I wrestled the corpse into a body bag and on the way downstairs my companion made sure the bag hit every single step. He'd have been more careful with a sack of potatoes.

  I can still recall the way the hotel's other residents looked at us. And I can remember how my partner went through the dead man's belongings, scooping up the little cash he had to his name, counting it deliberately and dividing it with me.

  I hadn't wanted to take it. "Put it in your pocket," he told me. "What do you think happens to it otherwise? Somebody else takes it. Or it goes to the state. What's the state of New York gonna do with forty-four dollars? Put it in your pocket, then buy yourself some perfumed soap and try to get this poor fucker's stink off your hands."

  I put it in my pocket. Later on, I was the one who bounced bagged corpses down the stairs, the one who counted and divided their leavings.

  Someday, I suppose, it'll come full circle, and I'll be the one in the bag.

  I spent over an hour there. I went through drawers and closets without really knowing what I was looking for. I didn't find very much. If she'd had a little black book full of telephone numbers, the call girl's legendary stock in trade, someone else had found it before I did. Not that I had any reason to assume she'd had such a book. Elaine kept one, but Fran and Donna had both told me they didn't.

  I didn't find any drugs or drug paraphernalia, which proved little in and of itself. A cop might appropriate drugs just as he'd take money from the dead. Or Chance might have picked up any contraband that he found lying arou
nd. He'd said that he visited the apartment once after her death. I noticed, though, that he'd left the African masks. They glared at me from their spot on the wall, guarding the premises on behalf of whatever eager young whore Chance would install in Kim's place.

  The Hopper poster was still in place over the stereo. Would that stay behind for the next tenant, too?

  Her spoor was all over the place. I breathed it when I went through the clothes in her dresser drawers and in her closet. Her bed was unmade. I lifted the mattress, looked under it. No doubt others had done so before me. I didn't find anything and I let the mattress fall back into place, and her spicy scent rose from the rumpled bedclothing and filled my nostrils.

  In the living room, I opened a closet and found her fur jacket, other coats and jackets, and a shelf full of wine and liquor bottles. A fifth of Wild Turkey caught my eye, and I swear I could taste that rich overproof bourbon, could feel the bite of it in my throat, the hot rush flowing down to my stomach, the warmth spreading clear to my toes and fingers. I closed the door, crossed the room and sat down on the couch. I hadn't wanted a drink, hadn't so much as thought of a drink in hours, and the unexpected glimpse of a bottle of booze had caught me unawares.

  I went back to the bedroom. She had a jewelry box on the top of her dressing table and I went through it. A lot of earrings, a couple of necklaces, a string of unconvincing pearls. Several bangle bracelets, including an attractive one made of ivory and trimmed in what looked to be gold. A gaudy class ring from LaFollette High in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The ring was gold, stamped 14K on the inside, heavy enough by the feel of it to be worth something.

  Who would get all of this? There had been some cash in her bag at the Galaxy Downtowner, four hundred bucks and change according to the note in her file, and that would probably wind up going to her parents in Wisconsin. But would they fly in and claim her coats and sweaters? Would they take possession of the fur jacket, the high school ring, the ivory bracelet?

  I stayed long enough to make a few notes and managed to get out of there without again opening the front closet. I rode the elevator to the lobby, waved at the doorman and nodded at an entering tenant, an elderly woman with a small short-haired dog on a rhinestone-studded leash. The dog yipped at me, and I wondered for the first time what had become of Kim's little black kitten. I'd seen no traces of the animal, no litter pan in the bathroom. Someone must have taken it.

  I caught a cab at the corner. I was paying it off in front of my hotel when I found Kim's key with my pocket change. I hadn't remembered to return it to the doorman, and he hadn't thought to ask me for it.

  There was a message for me. Joe Durkin had called and left his number at the precinct. I called and was told he was out but was expected back. I left my name and number.

  I went up to my room, feeling winded and tired. I lay down but I couldn't get any rest that way, couldn't turn off the tapes in my head. I went downstairs again, had a cheese sandwich and french fries and coffee. Over a second cup of coffee I took Donna Campion's poem out of my pocket. Something about it was trying to get through to me but I couldn't figure out what. I read it again. I didn't know what the poem meant; assuming that it was intended to have any literal meaning. But it seemed to me that some element of it was winking at me, trying to get my attention, and I was just too brain damaged to catch on.

  I went over to St. Paul's. The speaker told a horrible story in a chatty matter-of-fact fashion. Both his parents had died of alcoholism, his father of acute pancreatitis, his mother of suicide committed while drunk. Two brothers and a sister had died of the disease. A third brother was in a state hospital with a wet brain.

  "After I was sober a few months," he said, "I started hearing how alcohol kills brain cells, and I got worried about how much brain damage I might have. So I went to my sponsor and told him what was on my mind. 'Well,' he said, 'maybe you've had some brain damage. It's possible. But let me ask you this. Are you able to remember where the meetings are from one day to the next? Can you find your way to them without any trouble?' 'Yeah,' I told him, 'I can manage that all right.' 'Well then,' he said, 'you got all the brain cells you need for the time being.' "

  I left on the break.

  There was another message from Durkin at the hotel desk. I called right back and he was out again. I left my name and number and went upstairs. I was having another look at Donna's poem when the phone rang.

  It was Durkin. He said, "Hey, Matt. I just wanted to say I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression last night."

  "About what?"

  "Oh, things in general," he said. "Once in a while the whole business gets to me, you know what I mean? I have the need to break out, drink too much, run off at the mouth. I don't make a habit of it but once in awhile I have to do it."

  "Sure."

  "Most of the time I love the job, but there's things that get to you, things you try not to look at, and every now and then I have to get all that shit out of my system. I hope I didn't get out of line there toward the end."

  I assured him that he'd done nothing wrong. I wondered how clearly he recalled the previous evening. He'd been drunk enough to be in a blackout, but not everybody has blackouts. Maybe he was just a little vague, and uncertain how I'd taken his outbursts.

  I thought of what Billie's landlady had told him. "Forget it," I said. "It could happen to a bishop."

  "Hey, I got to remember that one. It could happen to a bishop. And probably does."

  "Probably."

  "You getting anywhere with your investigation? Coming up with anything?"

  "It's hard to tell."

  "I know what you mean. If there's anything I can do for you-"

  "Matter of fact, there is."

  "Oh?"

  "I went over to the Galaxy Downtowner," I said. "Talked to an assistant manager. He showed me the registration card Mr. Jones signed."

  "The famous Mr. Jones."

  "There was no signature on it. The name was handprinted."

  "Figures."

  "I asked if I could go through the cards for the past few months and see if there were any other hand-printed signatures, and how they compared to Jones's printing. He couldn't authorize it."

  "You should have slipped him a few bucks."

  "I tried. He didn't even know what I was getting at. But you could have him pull the printed cards. He wouldn't do it for me because I've got no official standing, but he'd hop to it if a cop made the request."

  He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he asked if I thought it was going to lead anywhere.

  "It might," I said.

  "You think whoever did it stayed at the hotel before? Under some other name?"

  "It's possible."

  "But not his own name, or he would have signed it in script instead of being cute. So what we'd wind up with, assuming we got very lucky and there was a card to be found and we actually came up with it, what we'd have is another alias for the same son of a bitch, and we wouldn't be any closer'n we are now to knowing who he is."

  "There's another thing you could do, while you were at it."

  "What's that?"

  "Have other hotels in the area check their registrations for, oh, the past six months or a year."

  "Check 'em for what? Printed registrations? Come on, Matt. You know the man-hours you're talking about?"

  "Not printed registrations. Have them check for guests named Jones. I'm talking about hotels like the Galaxy Downtowner, modern hotels in that price range. Most of them'll be like the Galaxy and have their registrations on computer. They can pull their Jones registrations in five or ten minutes, but not unless someone with a tin shield asks 'em to."

  "And then what have you got?"

  "You pull the appropriate cards, look for a guest named Jones, probably with the first initial C or the initials CO, and you compare printing and see if you find him anywhere. If you come up with anything you see where it leads. I don't have to tell you what to do with a lead."

  He wa
s silent again. "I don't know," he said at length. "It sounds pretty thin."

  "Maybe it is."

  "I'll tell you what I think it is. I think it's a waste of time."

  "It's not a waste of all that much time. And it's not that thin. Joe, you'd do it if the case wasn't already closed in your mind."

  "I don't know about that."

  "Of course you would. You think it's a hired killer or a lunatic. If it's a hired killer you want to close it out and if it's a lunatic you want to wait until he does it again."

  "I wouldn't go that far."

  "You went that far last night."

  "Last night was last night, for Christ's sake. I already explained about last night."

  "It wasn't a hired killer," I said. "And it wasn't a lunatic just picking her out of the blue."

  "You sound like you're sure of it."

  "Reasonably sure."

  "Why?"

  "No hired hitman goes crazy that way. What did he hit her, sixty times with a machete?"

  "I think it was sixty-six."

  "Sixty-six, then."

  "And it wasn't necessarily a machete. Something like a machete."

  "He had her strip. Then he butchered her like that, he got so much blood on the walls that they had to paint the room. When did you ever hear of a professional hit like that?"

  "Who knows what kind of animal a pimp hires? Maybe he tells the guy to make it ugly, do a real job on her, make an example out of her. Who knows what goes through his mind?"

  "And then he hires me to look into it."

  "I admit it sounds weird, Matt, but-"

  "It can't be a crazy, either. It was somebody who went crazy, but it's not a psycho getting his kicks."

  "How do you know that?"

  "He's too careful. Printing his name when he signed in. Carrying the dirty towels away with him. This is a guy who took the trouble to avoid leaving a shred of physical evidence."

  "I thought he used the towels to wrap the machete."

  "Why would he do that? After he washed the machete he'd put it back in the case the way he brought it. Or, if he wanted to wrap it in towels, he'd use clean towels. He wouldn't carry away the towels he washed up with unless he wanted to keep them from being found. But towels can hold things- a hair, a bloodstain- and he knew he might be a suspect because he knew something linked him to Kim."