Dark City Lights

by Lawrence Block

I saw immediately what he meant, kicked myself for not seeing before. His face was covered with cuts and bruises, only I couldn’t tell because it was black, dirty, unshaven, hard to look at, and if you did you were immediately transfixed by those hostile, gleaming eyes of a demon from hell.

  “Who beat you up?”

  “Muthafucka.”

  I almost said, “What motherfucker?” but I was afraid he’d think I was mocking him. “Who was it? Who did this?”

  “Muthafucka got outta his car.”

  Which told the story. Some driver hadn’t taken kindly to our client cleaning his windshield and had cleaned his clock.

  I figured that was about as much as I was going to get. I figured right. Our client couldn’t describe the man who hit him or the car he drove. He thought it was a white man but he couldn’t tell if the car was a Mini Cooper or an SUV. Apparently our client’s earnings, if any, went immediately for drink, and his assailant had caught him on a particularly good day. I got virtually no information.

  Richard wouldn’t be pleased.

  “GOOD JOB, STANLEY.”

  “Good job? I got nothing.”

  “You got a signature.” Richard settled back in his desk chair and smiled. “That’s all I need. The guy’s a goldmine. Victim’s victim. Gotta love him.”

  “Who you gonna sue?”

  “The City of New York.”

  “How are they liable?”

  “I don’t know, but they are. It’s just a question of how many ways. Be fun adding them up.”

  “What about the guy who hit him?”

  “What about him?”

  “You don’t care about him?”

  “No, do you?”

  “He’s to blame.”

  “Stanley, I don’t indulge revenge fantasies. I make my clients money. That’s what they need.”

  “Don’t you want to sue him?”

  “For what? You think our client was beaten up by a neuro-surgeon or a bank executive? Ten to one the guy who decked him was a muscle-bound wage slave pissed off at getting stuck in yet another snarl of rush hour traffic after a dreary day of slogging through his dead-end nine-to-five job. The type of poor schmuck who’s mortgaged to the hilt, has no savings, and can’t afford liability insurance. I’m really gonna bother suing him? It wouldn’t be worth the cost of finding him, assuming you could even do it.”

  “I see your point.”

  “In other words, you totally disagree. Luckily, this is not a democracy. I am a majority of one, my vote is the only one that counts. I will have to learn to live with your disapproval. Just don’t go looking for this guy and expect me to pay you for doing it. Is that clear?”

  “Hell, yeah. I never wanted to take the case in the first place.”

  “I understand. I’ll try not to bore you with how much money it makes.”

  AS FAR AS I WAS concerned, that was the end of the case. That’s the way it works in the negligence business. You sign the clients, turn in the fact sheets, and never hear of them again. A large percentage Richard rejects. Of the ones he takes, most are routinely settled out of court, just a matter of the insurance companies crunching the numbers. The ones that are contested eventually come to trial, but that’s a year or two down the road. I’m occasionally employed to serve a summons on an elusive defendant, but generally that’s handled routinely, too. And even the ones that go to court I’m rarely asked to testify. So I never expected to hear of Nelson Jones again.

  It was three weeks and probably about fifty signups later and I was out in Newark, New Jersey, signing up a family who’d been injured in a tenement fire—probably one they started themselves, the mother and her boyfriend and her oldest son all smoked like chimneys—when my beeper went off. I called the office expecting yet another assignment, and got a message to call MacAullif.

  Sergeant MacAullif is my cop friend in homicide. Sometimes I help him out and sometimes he helps me out, and sometimes he tries to push me through the wall. It rankles him not to have my cellphone number, but I don’t want him calling me when I’m driving either. I’m sure if he wanted it bad enough he could get it; I’ve heard the police have connections.

  I hadn’t seen MacAullif in a while, because I hadn’t gotten in trouble and business had been slow. Not my work for Richard, that was steady as a Chinese water torture drip, but the occasional walk-in who showed up at my office wanting help. They were always trouble, but they paid better than Richard and rent in Manhattan isn’t cheap. I’d often gone to MacAullif for help with a client, and after a tirade of abusive vulgarities he was usually willing to oblige.

  It was a little different when he came to me. It was not often that he wanted my help. It usually meant I’d gotten involved in something so bad he wished I were never born. So if MacAullif wanted me, it couldn’t be good.

  It wasn’t.

  “Got a John Doe down at the morgue I’d like you to take a look at.”

  “Who is he?”

  “If I knew, would I call him John Doe? A scraggly black bum with a cast on his leg.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know him?”

  “We’re in the same Pilates class.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. Someone beat the shit out of this guy. I gotta know if it was on his own account or if I got a bunch of gangbangers getting off on killing homeless. That shit I don’t need.”

  “Why you asking me?”

  “Guy had a business card in his pocket, Rosenberg and Stone. I called the office, the girls asked Richard, he said to ask you.”

  “They give you a name?”

  “Are you serious? A lawyer divulge a client’s name when he’s not even sure it’s a client? These guys don’t lay themselves open to lawsuits. So, you wanna take a run down to the morgue, see if it’s the guy?”

  “I’m not a lawyer.”

  “So?”

  “Sounds like it is.”

  It was. He didn’t look pretty. Not that he did before, but someone had used his head for batting practice. One eye was bulging out of its socket, the jaw was askew, teeth in the lopsided, gaping mouth were broken off.

  “Well?” MacAullif said. He looked disappointed I hadn’t blown lunch.

  “That’s the guy. His name is Nelson Jones.”

  “He’s your client?”

  “Not anymore.”

  I WAS WRONG ON THAT count.

  “Don’t be silly,” Richard said. “The client may be dead, but the cause of action survives. I can file suit on behalf of the estate.”

  “You want me to track down the heirs?”

  “No need. The girls are on it.”

  “The girls?”

  “Wendy and Janet.”

  “They’re doing investigative work?”

  “On the computer. They’re checking vital statistics, birth, death, marriage, family trees. They’re doing a computer search.”

  “They can do that?”

  “Why not? They’re on the computer all day long. With their Twitters and tweets and Facebook and whatever the latest wrinkle is. They know enough to do it.”

  “Yeah, but tracing somebody.”

  “Hey, it’s not rocket science. A lot of it consists of doing a Google search and hitting ‘I’m Feeling Lucky.’”

  “They find anyone?”

  “No. Doesn’t mean they won’t. Doesn’t mean they will.”

  “If they don’t?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I win my suit, take my third. The rest will go into trust.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Someone killed him.”

  “Yes, they did. That’s why we’re in this situation.”

  “You think it was the same guy who beat him up?”

  “That would be incredibly unlucky, wouldn’t it? Pick the same car again.”

  “Unless he did it intentionally. To show the guy he couldn’t be intimidated.”

  “Oh, my God,” Richard said. “The pride of the squeegee guy. ‘My faddah was
a squeegee guy and his faddah before him, and I will stand in front of the gates of hell and let this guy beat on me until he realizes what he has done.’”

  “Richard—”

  “Stanley, it doesn’t matter if the same guy beat him up, or if a different guy beat him up, or if half a dozen guys took turns beating him up. The fact is he’s dead. In terms of liability that’s a big one. Kind of beats a fat lip all to hell. Though you wouldn’t believe the settlement I got that Birnbaum kid.”

  “Richard—”

  “Stanley, your involvement in the case is over. You fill out your timesheet, and you get paid, and that’s the end of it. And you don’t do anything more on the Nelson Jones case unless I specifically ask you to. And I’m not going to specifically ask you to, so you don’t. Is that clear?”

  “Absolutely.”

  MACAULLIF GRIMACED WHEN I CAME in. “It’s like a bad dream.”

  “Relax, MacAullif. I just want to know if there’s any progress in the Nelson Jones case.”

  “Of course you do. And you know the answer. There’s no progress in the Nelson Jones case, nor is there likely to be. A fed-up driver beat the shit out of a squeegee guy. It’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often.”

  “The squeegee guys are gone.”

  “Someone forgot to tell this one.”

  “What makes you think that’s why he got beat up?”

  MacAullif grimaced. “He had a rag stuffed in his mouth.”

  “You didn’t mention that.”

  “It was irrelevant.”

  “You showed me the body.”

  “I showed you the body. I didn’t show you the evidence.”

  “Evidence of what? You taking this case to trial?”

  “Not without a defendant.”

  “What progress have you made on that front?”

  “I told you. None.”

  “Why, because he wasn’t rich?”

  “No, because he wasn’t seen.”

  “Did anyone look?”

  “I’m sure they did.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It’s not my only case. I had no idea you’d come waltzing in here today, and I didn’t bone up on it.”

  “Well, could you check?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  MacAullif pulled the file. “Body was found seven o’clock in the morning. According to the coroner he was killed around midnight. Search for witnesses turned up zero.”

  “Where was he found?”

  “Empty lot on East 124th Street between Second and Third Avenue.”

  “Closer to Second?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Then you know exactly where he was killed. 124th Street feeds into the Triboro Bridge right on that corner. As you cross Second Avenue it’s a little jog to the left and up the ramp. The northwest corner of 124th is where the cars all get caught by the Second Avenue light. That’s where Nelson Jones was washing windows and that’s where someone jumped out and beat him up.”

  “Yeah, well no one saw it.”

  “It’s a street corner, MacAullif. At a high-volume bridge entrance where cars are apt to run the light. There’s surveillance cameras on those corners.”

  “Oh, for chrissakes.”

  “You check the surveillance tapes?”

  As MacAullif lunged to his feet and lurched around his desk I realized two things. No one had checked the tape, and I’d better get the hell out of his office.

  RICHARD LOOKED LIKE EVERY STUDENT’S worst dread, the strict disciplinarian headmaster who has just summoned you into his office. In this case I couldn’t imagine why. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Sergeant MacAullif called.”

  Oh.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Wanted me to give you a message. I don’t know why he couldn’t give you the message himself.”

  “I wasn’t here.”

  “You’re never here. The girls beep you and you call. This time he asked for me.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to avoid taking to you. Because he didn’t think you’d like what he said. He’s probably right, because I didn’t like what he said.”

  “I can explain.”

  “Spare me. Since I told you to leave the Nelson Jones case alone, you’ve hardly worked on anything else. You were working for free, by the way, but you knew that. I got the girls going over your time sheets, and any day in the last week your hours come to eight I’m gonna wanna know what cases you’re padding to hide the time you spent on Nelson Jones.”

  “You really think I’d do that?”

  “No, I think MacAullif just thinks you were working on the case because he’s a stressed-out old homicide cop and he’s having senior moments.”

  “Richard—”

  “Did you or did you not go to MacAullif and ask him about the Nelson Jones case?”

  “We may have had a conversation.”

  “Yes, you may. And, yes, you did. And did you ever stop to think what effect that might have on my case? Which is the only one I’m concerned with. I’m filing suit against the City of New York. You wanna prove someone other than the City of New York is guilty, fine, you do that. It doesn’t mean I can’t sue. It just makes it that much messier. Then I gotta spend money on trial prep, when there is no guarantee I’ll come out of this with anything. Trust me, I will, but I shouldn’t have to depend on me to bail myself out.”

  “Richard, what happened?”

  “You know what happened. You went to MacAullif made a big stink about some surveillance camera being aimed at the corner where Nelson Jones died.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to have that evidence?”

  “I could give a flying fuck about that evidence. It’s not important in the least. And I don’t have it because the police don’t have it, because no one has it, because it doesn’t exist. Which means if I get to court, the defense attorney will be able to make a big deal out of the fact that we don’t have it. It doesn’t matter in the least, but some asshole attorney will be able to strut around like he scored a telling point, and if the jury falls for it it will take a big bite out of the settlement.”

  “There’s no videotape evidence?”

  “No, there’s not. Thank you for pointing it out. If you hadn’t, no one could possibly give a shit. Now that you did it’s going to be a pain in the ass, thank you very much.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s to understand?”

  “Wasn’t there a camera at that intersection?”

  “It wasn’t working.”

  “It wasn’t working?”

  “No, it wasn’t. Which shouldn’t be a big shock. The cameras are old, they break down. Like the stop lights, and the street lights, and everything else.”

  “How long had it been out?”

  Richard took a breath. “I don’t know how long it had been out, I didn’t ask how long it had been out, I don’t care how long it had been out. Don’t concoct some conspiracy theory based on a broken surveillance camera. The damn thing wasn’t working. I’m sorry you don’t get to sit and watch twenty-four hours of pointless surveillance video, but you don’t. Because you live in the real world, not some storybook world where such things happen. Like it or not, the Nelson Jones case is a dead end. Leave it and go back to work.”

  I sighed. “Okay.”

  MACAULLIF’S FACE WAS LIVID. “MOTHERFUCKER!”

  “That’s what our client said. With more inflection.”

  “You come in here and ask me if I’m involved in a massive police cover-up?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Bullshit. I tell you the camera’s broken, and you wanna know if it’s really broken or if the commissioner’s nephew beat the shit out of the guy and the tape is just conveniently missing.”

  “Or just some cop on the block who got pushed too far. People aren’t going to rally around him?”

 
“They’re not gonna cover up a homicide. Jesus Christ, you got a lot of gall. Come in here with an accusation like that.”

  “I wasn’t accusing anyone.”

  “You’re asking if it happened! I’m telling you it didn’t, and you’re asking anyway!”

  “Was the camera out for weeks, or just for the day of the murder?”

  “Now you’re pissing me off.”

  “Because I’m touching a nerve?”

  “Because you’re here at all.”

  “I’d have thought that was beneath you, leaving a message with Richard.”

  “Beneath me? You talk about beneath me? I was trying to spare you the mistake of accusing the police department of corruption. I should have known you’d do it anyway.”

  “You’re willing to swear for each and every officer?”

  “I swear I’ll kick your ass if you won’t let go of this. It’s a no-win situation. You wanna go after the police department, be my guest. Just don’t count on me. My official position is the guy’s full of shit.”

  “You’ll turn your head if I get beat up?”

  “I won’t even blink if you get killed. You know why? You’ll deserve it. You’ll have brought it on yourself.”

  MacAullif picked up a file and began reading it as if I weren’t even there.

  THERE HAD TO BE A way. I knew it. In every detective story ever written, when the situation is hopeless, the hero finds a way. He picks, he pokes, he prods, and some insignificant detail, some tiny kernel of information inexplicably rings a bell. All you had to do was look. That was the key. To have the grit, the determination, the tenacity not to give up. To refuse to be defeated.

  And I knew I was going to fail. Utterly, completely, devastatingly. And it killed me that it was a homeless black beggar. An anti-social, unlikable son-of-a-bitch. A squeegee guy, the scourge of the City, in whose disappearance I had rejoiced. Did that make it easier to let it go?

  No, it made it harder. I had to deal with the nagging doubt would I have done it if it had been some sympathetic, white, family man who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time? I wouldn’t have. I just would have had less guilt.

  MacAullif hadn’t told me how many homicides went unsolved, but I knew it was a lot. That it would be another was not an earth-shattering event. I could live with that, couldn’t I?

  My beeper went off. I called the office and Wendy/Janet gave me a slip-and-fall in the produce section of a Stop & Shop.