Eight Million Ways to Die ms-5

by Lawrence Block

  I made myself stay there. I'd gotten through the eighth day and there was no reason why I couldn't get through the ninth. I sat there and every now and then I looked at my watch and sometimes a whole minute went by between looks. Finally it got to be eleven o'clock and I went downstairs and hailed a taxi.

  There's a midnight meeting seven nights a week at the Moravian Church on the corner of Thirtieth and Lexington. The doors open about an hour before meeting time. I got there and took a seat, and when the coffee was ready I got myself a cup.

  I didn't pay attention to the qualification or the discussion. I just sat there and let myself feel safe. There were a lot of newly sober people in the room, a lot of people who were having a hard time. Why else would they be there at that hour?

  There were some people who hadn't stopped drinking yet, too. They had to put one of them out, but the others didn't make any trouble. Just a roomful of people getting through one more hour.

  When the hour was up I helped fold the chairs and empty the ashtrays. Another chair folder introduced himself as Kevin and asked me how long I'd been sober. I told him it was my ninth day.

  "That's great," he said. "Keep coming back."

  They always say that.

  I went outside and signaled a passing cab, but when he cut over and started to brake I changed my mind and waved him off. He gunned his engine as he drove away.

  I didn't want to go back to the room.

  So instead I walked seven blocks north to Kim's building, bluffed my way past her doorman, let myself into her apartment. I knew there was a closetful of booze there but it didn't bother me. I didn't even feel the need to pour it down the sink, as I'd done with the bottle of Wild Turkey earlier.

  In her bedroom, I went through her jewelry. I wasn't really looking for the green ring. I picked up the ivory bracelet, unfastened the clasp, tried it for size on my own wrist. It was too small. I got some paper towels from the kitchen and wrapped the bracelet carefully, put it in my pocket.

  Maybe Jan would like it. I'd pictured it on her wrist a few times- at her loft, during the funeral service.

  If she didn't like it she didn't have to wear it.

  I went over, picked up the phone. The service hadn't been disconnected yet. I supposed it would be sooner or later, just as sooner or later the apartment would be cleaned and Kim's things removed from it. But for now it was still as if she'd just stepped out for a moment.

  I hung up the phone without calling anyone. Somewhere around three o'clock I got undressed and went to sleep in her bed. I didn't change the linen, and it seemed to me that her scent, still faintly discernible, constituted a presence in the room.

  If so, it didn't keep me awake. I went right off to sleep.

  I woke up bathed in perspiration, convinced that I'd solved the case in a dream and then forgot the solution. I showered and dressed and got out of there.

  There were several messages at my hotel, all of them from Mary Lou Barcker. She'd called just after I left the night before and a couple of times that morning.

  When I called her she said, "I've been trying to reach you. I would have called you at your girlfriend's but I couldn't remember her last name."

  "Her number's unlisted." And I wasn't there, I thought, but left it unsaid.

  "I'm trying to reach Chance," she went on. "I thought you might have talked to him."

  "Not since around seven last night. Why?"

  "I can't get hold of him. The only way I know is to call his service-"

  "That's the only way I know."

  "Oh. I thought you might have a special number."

  "Only the service."

  "I've called there. He always returns his calls. I've left, God, I don't know how many messages and he hasn't called me back."

  "Has that ever happened before?"

  "Not for this length of time. I started trying him late yesterday afternoon. What time is it, eleven o'clock? That's over seventeen hours. He wouldn't go that long without checking with his service."

  I thought back to our conversation at his house. Had he checked with his service in all the time we were together? I didn't think he had.

  Other times we'd been together he called in every half hour or so.

  "And it's not just me," she was saying. "He hasn't called Fran, either. I checked with her and she called him and he never returned her calls."

  "What about Donna?"

  "She's here with me. Neither of us wanted to be alone. And Ruby, I don't know where Ruby is. Her number doesn't answer."

  "She's in San Francisco."

  "She's where?"

  I gave her a brief explanation, then listened as she relayed the information to Donna. "Donna's quoting Yeats," she told me. " 'Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.' Even I can recognize that. Apt, though. Things are falling apart all over the place."

  "I'm going to try to get hold of Chance."

  "Call me when you do?"

  "I will."

  "Meanwhile Donna's staying here and we're not booking any tricks or answering the door. I already told the doorman not to let anybody come up."

  "Good."

  "I invited Fran to come over here but she said she didn't want to. She sounded very stoned. I'm going to call her again and instead of inviting her to come over I'm going to tell her to come over."

  "Good idea."

  "Donna says the three little pigs will all be hiding in the brick house. Waiting for the wolf to come down the chimney. I wish she'd stick to Yeats."

  I couldn't get anywhere with his answering service. They were happy to take my message but wouldn't disclose whether Chance had called in recently. "I expect to hear from him shortly," a woman told me, "and I will see that he receives your message."

  I called Brooklyn information and got the number for the house in Greenpoint. I dialed it and let it ring for a dozen times. I'd remembered what he'd told me about removing the clappers from the bells of his telephones, but I thought it was worth a check.

  I called Parke Bernet. The sale of African and Oceanic art and artifacts was scheduled for two o'clock.

  I had a shower and a shave, had a roll and a cup of coffee and read the paper. The Post managed to keep the Motel Ripper on the front page, but it took some stretching to do it. A man in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx had stabbed his wife three times with a kitchen knife, then called the police to tell them what he'd done. This normally would have rated two paragraphs on the back page at the most, but the Post put it on the front page and topped it with a teaser headline that wondered, did the motel ripper inspire him?

  I went to a meeting at twelve-thirty and got to Parke Bernet a few minutes after two. The auction was being held in a different room from the one where the sale lots had been displayed. You had to have a sale catalog to get a seat, and the catalogs cost five dollars. I explained I was just looking for someone and scanned the room. Chance wasn't there.

  The attendant didn't want me to hang around unless I bought a catalog, and it was easier to do that than argue with him. I gave him the five dollars and wound up registering and getting a bidder's number while I was at it. I didn't want to register, I didn't want a bidder's number, I didn't want the goddamned catalog.

  I sat there for almost two hours while one lot after another went under the hammer. By two-thirty I was fairly certain he wasn't going to show but I stayed in my seat because I couldn't think of anything better to do. I paid minimal attention to the auction and looked around every couple of minutes for Chance. At twenty to four the Benin bronze was offered for bids and sold for $65,000, which was just a little higher than the estimate. It was the star of the sale and quite a few bidders left once it had been sold. I hung on a few minutes longer, knowing he wasn't coming, just trying to grapple with the same thing I'd been grappling with for days.

  It seemed to me that I already had all the pieces. It was just a question of fitting them together.

  Kim. Kim's ring and Kim's mink jacket. Cojones. Maricуn. The towe
ls. The warning. Calderуn. Cookie Blue.

  I got up and left. I was crossing the lobby when a table full of catalogs of past sales caught my eye. I picked up a catalog of a jewelry auction held that spring and leafed through it. It didn't tell me anything. I put it back and asked the lobby attendant if the gallery had a resident expert on gems and jewelry. "You want Mr. Hillquist," he said, and told me what room to go to and pointed me in the right direction.

  Mr. Hillquist sat at an uncluttered desk as if he'd been waiting all day for me to consult him. I gave him my name and told him I wanted some vague approximation of the value of an emerald. He asked if he could see the stone, and I explained that I didn't have it with me.

  "You would have to bring it in," he explained. "The value of a gem depends upon so many variables. Size, cut, color, brilliance-"

  I put my hand in my pocket, touched the.32, felt around for the bit of green glass. "It's about this size," I said, and he fitted a jeweler's loupe into one eye and took the piece of glass from me. He looked at it, went absolutely rigid for an instant, then fixed his other eye warily upon me.

  "This is not an emerald," he said carefully. He might have been talking to a small child, or to a lunatic.

  "I know that. It's a piece of glass."

  "Yes."

  "It's the approximate size of the stone I'm talking about. I'm a detective, I'm trying to get some idea of the value of a ring that has disappeared since I saw it, I-"

  "Oh," he said, and sighed. "For a moment I thought-"

  "I know what you thought."

  He took the loupe from his eye, set it on the desk in front of him. "When you sit here," he said, "you are at the absolute mercy of the public. You wouldn't believe the people who come here, the things they show me, the questions they ask."

  "I can imagine."

  "No, you can't." He picked up the bit of green glass and shook his head at it. "I still can't tell you the value. Size is only one of several considerations. There's also color, there's clarity, there's brilliance. Do you even know that the stone is an emerald? Did you test it for hardness?"

  "No."

  "So it could even be colored glass. Like the, uh, treasure you've given me here."

  "For all I know it is glass. But I want to know what it could be worth if it did happen to be an emerald."

  "I think I see what you mean." He frowned at the piece of glass. "You have to understand that my every inclination is to avoid naming any sort of a figure. You see, even assuming the stone is a genuine emerald, its range in value could be considerable. It could be extremely valuable or very nearly worthless. It could be seriously flawed, for example. Or it could simply be a very low-grade stone. There are mail order firms that actually offer emeralds by the carat for some ridiculous sum, forty or fifty dollars the carat, and what they're selling is no bargain, either. Yet they are genuine emeralds, however worthless they may be as gemstones."

  "I see."

  "Even a gem-quality emerald could vary enormously in value. You could buy a stone this size-" he weighed the chunk of glass in his hand "- for a couple thousand dollars. And that would be a good stone, not industrial-grade corundum from western North Carolina. On the other hand, a stone of the highest quality, the best color, perfect brilliance, unflawed, not even Peruvian but the very best Colombian emerald, might bring forty or fifty or sixty thousand dollars. And even that's approximate and imprecise."

  He had more to say but I wasn't paying attention. He hadn't really told me anything, hadn't added a fresh piece to the puzzle, but he'd given the box a good shake. Now I could see where everything went.

  I took the cube of green glass with me when I left.

  Chapter 32

  Around ten-thirty that night I walked in and out of Poogan's Pub on West Seventy-second Street. A light rain had begun falling an hour or so earlier. Most of the people on the street were carrying umbrellas. I wasn't, but I had a hat, and I paused on the sidewalk to straighten it and adjust its brim.

  Across the street I saw a Mercury sedan with its motor riding.

  I turned to my left and walked to the Top Knot. I spotted Danny Boy at a table in back but went to the bar anyway and asked for him. I must have spoken loudly because people looked at me. The bartender motioned toward the rear and I went back there and joined him.

  He already had company. He was sharing his table with a slender fox-faced girl whose hair was as white as his own, but in her case nature couldn't take the credit. Her eyebrows were severely plucked and her forehead had a shine to it. Danny Boy introduced her as Bryna. "Rhymes with angina," he said, "among other things." She smiled, showing sharp little canine teeth.

  I pulled a chair out and sat down heavily. I said, "Danny Boy, you can pass the word. I know all about Kim Dakkinen's boyfriend. I know who killed her and I know why she was killed."

  "Matt, are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," I said. "You know why I had so much trouble getting a line on Kim's boyfriend? Because he wasn't an action guy, that's why. Didn't go to clubs, didn't gamble, didn't hang out. Wasn't connected."

  "You been drinking, Matt?"

  "What are you, the Spanish Inquisition? What do you care if I've been drinking or not?"

  "I just wondered. You're talking loud, that's all."

  "Well, I'm trying to tell you about Kim," I said. "About her boyfriend. See, he was in the jewelry business. He didn't get rich, he didn't starve. He made a living."

  "Bryna," he said, "suppose you powder your nose for a few minutes."

  "Oh, let her stay," I told him. "Her nose doesn't look shiny to me."

  "Matt-"

  "What I'm telling you's no secret, Danny Boy."

  "Suit yourself."

  "This jeweler," I went on. "The way it looks, he started seeing Kim as a john. But something happened. One way or another, he fell for her."

  "These things happen."

  "They do indeed. Anyway, he fell in love. Meanwhile, some people got in touch with him. They had some precious stones that never went through Customs and that they had no bill of sale for. Emeralds. Colombian emeralds. Real quality stuff."

  "Matt, would you please tell me why in the hell you're telling me all this?"

  "It makes an interesting story."

  "You're not just telling me, you're telling the whole room. Do you know what you're doing?"

  I looked at him.

  "Okay," he said, after a moment. "Bryna, pay attention, darling. The crazy man wants to talk about emeralds."

  "Kim's boyfriend was going to be the middleman, handling the sale of the emeralds for the men who'd brought them into the country. He did this sort of thing before, made a few dollars for himself. But now he was in love with an expensive lady and he had a reason to want some real money. So he tried a cross."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. Maybe he switched some stones. Maybe he held out. Maybe he decided to grab the whole bundle and run with it. He must have told Kim something because on the strength of it she told Chance she wanted out. She wasn't going to be turning tricks anymore. If I were going to guess, I'd say he did a switch and went out of the country to unload the good stuff. Kim got herself free of Chance while he was gone, and when he got back it was going to be Happily Ever After time. But he never came back."

  "If he never came back, who killed her?"

  "The people he crossed. They decoyed her to that room at the Galaxy Downtowner. She probably thought she was going to be meeting him there. She wasn't hooking anymore, she wouldn't have gone to a hotel room to meet a john. In fact she'd never been much on hotel tricks. But suppose she gets a call from somebody who says he's a friend and the boyfriend's afraid to come to her place because he thinks he's being followed, so would she please meet him at the hotel?"

  "And she went."

  "Sure she went. She got all dressed up, she wore the presents he gave her, the mink jacket and the emerald ring. The jacket wasn't worth a fortune because the guy wasn't rich, he didn't have money to burn, but
he could give her a terrific emerald because the emeralds didn't cost him anything. He was in the business, he could take one of those smuggled stones and have it set in a ring for her."

  "So she went over and got killed."

  "Right."

  Danny Boy drank some vodka. "Why? You figure they killed her to get the ring back?"

  "No. They killed her to kill her."

  "Why?"

  "Because they were Colombians," I said, "and that's how they do it. When they have a reason to hit somebody they go for the whole family."

  "Jesus."

  "Maybe they figure it's a deterrent," I said. "I could see where it might be. The cases make the papers pretty regularly, especially in Miami. A whole family gets waxed because somebody burned somebody else in a coke deal. Colombia's a rich little country. They've got the best coffee, the best marijuana, the best cocaine."

  "And the best emeralds?"

  "That's right. Kim's jeweler wasn't a married guy. I figured he was, that's why he was so hard to get a line on, but he never married. Maybe he never fell in love until he fell in love with Kim, and maybe that's why he was ready to kick his life over. Anyway, he was a bachelor. No wife, no kids, no living parents. You want to rub out his family, what do you do? You kill his girlfriend."

  Bryna's face was as white as her hair now. She didn't like stories where they killed the girlfriend.

  "The killing was pretty professional," I went on, "in that the killer was careful about evidence. He covered his tracks pretty well. But something made him do a butcher job instead of a couple of quick bullets from a silenced handgun. Maybe he had a thing about prostitutes, or maybe it was women in general. One way or another, he went and did a number on Kim.

  "Then he cleaned up, packed the dirty towels along with the machete, and got out of there. He left the fur jacket and he left the money in the purse but he took her ring."

  "Because it was worth so much money?"