A Walk Among the Tombstones

by Lawrence Block

Page 33

 

  We went to Paris Green on Ninth Avenue. Bryce greeted me by name and gave us a window table, and Gary waved theatrically from the bar. Kenan ordered a glass of wine and I asked for a Perrier.

  "Nice place," he said.

  After wed ordered dinner he said, "I dont know, man. I got no reason to be in the city. I just got in the car and drove around and I couldnt think of a single place to go. I used to do that all the time, just drive around, do my part for the oil shortage and the air pollution. You ever do that? Oh, how could you, you dont have a car. Suppose you want to get away for a weekend? What do you do?"

  "Rent one. "

  "Yeah, sure," he said. "I didnt think of that. You do that much?"

  "Fairly often when the weathers decent. My girlfriend and I go upstate, or over to Pennsylvania. "

  "Oh, you got a girlfriend, huh? I was wondering. Two of you been keeping company for a long time?"

  "Not too long. "

  "Whats she do, if you dont mind my asking. "

  "Shes an art historian. "

  "Very good," he said. "Must be interesting. "

  "She seems to find it interesting. "

  "I mean she must be interesting. An interesting person. "

  "Very," I said.

  He was looking better this evening, his hair barbered and his face shaved, but there was still an air of weariness about him, with a current of restlessness moving beneath it.

  He said, "I dont know what to do with myself. I sit around the house and it just makes me nuts. My wifes dead, my brothers doing God knows what, my business is going to hell, and I dont know what to do. "

  "Whats the matter with your business?"

  "Maybe nothing, maybe everything. I set up something on this trip I just made. I got a shipment due sometime next week. "

  "Maybe you shouldnt tell me about it. "

  "You ever have opiated hash? If you were strictly a boozer you probably didnt. "

  "No. "

  "Thats what I got coming in. Grown in eastern Turkey and coming our way via Cyprus, or so they tell me. "

  "Whats the problem?"

  "The problem is I should have walked away from the deal. There are people in it I got no reason to trust, and I went in on it for the worst possible reason. I did it to have something to do. "

  I said, "I can work for you in the matter of your wifes death. I can do that irrespective of how you make your living, and I can even break a few laws on your behalf. But I cant work for you or with you as far as your profession is concerned. "

  "Petey told me that working for me would lead him back to using. Is that a factor for you?"

  "No. "

  "Its just something you wouldnt touch. "

  "I guess so, yes. "

  He thought for a moment, then nodded. "I can appreciate that," he said. "I can respect it. On the one hand, Id like to have you with me because Id be confident with you backing my play. And its very lucrative. You know that. "

  "Of course. "

  "But its dirty, isnt it? Im aware of it. How could I not be? Its a dirty business. "

  "So get out of it. "

  "Im thinking about it. I never figured to make it my lifes work. I always figured another couple of years, a few more deals, a little more money in the offshore account. Familiar story, right? I wish theyd just legalize it, make it simple for everybody. "

  "A cop said the same thing just the other day. "

  "Never happen. Or maybe it will. Ill tell you, Id welcome it. "

  "Then what would you do?"

  "Sell something else. " He laughed. "Guy I met this past trip, Lebanese like me, I hung out with him and his wife in Paris. Kenan, he says, you got to get out of this business, it deadens your soul. He wants me to throw in with him. You know what he does? Hes an arms dealer, for Christs sake, he sells weapons. Man, I said, my customers just kill themselves with the product. Your customers kill other people. Not the same, he insisted. I deal with nice people, respectable people. And he tells me all these important people he knows, CIA, secret services of other countries. So maybe Ill get out of the dope business and become a big-time merchant of death. You like that better?"

  "Is that your only choice?"

  "Serious? No, of course not. I could buy and sell anything. I dont know, my old man may have been slightly full of shit with the Phoenician business, but theres no question our people are traders all over the world. When I dropped out of college, first thing I did was travel. I went visiting relatives. The Lebanese are scattered all over the planet, man. I got an aunt and uncle in Yucat?n, I got cousins all through Central and South America. I went over to Africa, some relatives on my mothers side are in a country called Togo. I never heard of it until I went there. My relatives operate the black market for currency in Lom?, thats the capital of Togo. Theyve got this suite of offices in a building in downtown Lom?. No sign in the lobby and you got to walk up a flight of stairs, but its pretty much out in the open. All day long people are coming in with money to change, dollars, pounds, francs, travelers checks. Gold, they buy and sell gold, weigh it and figure the price.

  "All day long the money goes back and forth over the long table they got there. I couldnt believe how much money they handled. I was a kid, I never saw a lot of cash, and Im looking at tons of money. See, they only make like one or two percent on a transaction, but the volume is enormous.

  "They lived in this walled compound on the edge of town. It had to be huge to accommodate all the servants. Im a kid from Bergen Street, I grew up sharing a room with my brother, and here are these cousins of mine and theyve got something like five servants for each member of the family. Thats including children. No exaggeration. I was uncomfortable at first, I thought it was wasteful, but it was explained to me. If you were rich you had an obligation to employ a lot of people. You were creating jobs, you were doing something for the people.

  " Stay, they told me. They wanted to take me into the business. If I didnt like Togo, they had in-laws with the same kind of operation in Mali. But Togos nicer, they said. "

  "Could you still go?"

  "Thats the sort of thing you do when youre twenty years old, start a new life in a new country. "

  "What are you, thirty-two?"

  "Thirty-three. Thats a little old for an entry-level slot. "

  "You might not have to start in the mailroom. "

  He shrugged. "Funny thing is Francine and I discussed it. She had a problem with it because she was afraid of blacks. The idea of being one of a handful of white people in a black nation was frightening to her. She said, like, suppose they decide to take over? I said, honey, whats to take over? Its their country. They already own it. But she was not completely rational on the subject. " His voice hardened. "And look who she got in a truck with, look who killed her. White guys. All your life you fear one thing and something else sneaks up on you. " His eyes locked with mine. "Its like they didnt just kill her, they obliterated her. She ceased to exist. I didnt even see a body, I saw parts, chunks. I went to my cousins clinic in the middle of the night and turned the chunks into ashes. Shes gone and theres this hole in my life and I dont know what to put in it. "

  "They say time takes time," I said.

  "It can take some of mine. I got time I dont know what to do with. Im alone in the house all day and I find myself talking to myself. Out loud, I mean. "

  "People do that when theyre used to having somebody around. Youll get over it. "

  "Well, if I dont, so what? If Im talking to myself whos gonna hear me, right?" He sipped from his water glass. "Then theres sex," he said. "I dont know what the hell to do about sex. I have the desire, you know? Im a young guy, its natural. "

  "A minute ago you were too old to start a new life in Africa. "

  "You know what I mean. I have desires and I not only dont know what to do about them, I dont feel right about having them. It feels disloyal to want to go to bed with a woman whether I actually do it or not. And who would I go t
o bed with if I wanted to? What am I gonna do, sweet-talk some woman in a bar? Go to a massage parlor, pay some cross-eyed Korean girl to get me off? Go out on fucking dates, take some woman to a movie, make conversation with her? I try to picture myself doing that and I figure Id rather stay home and jerk off, only I wont do that either because even that seems like it would be disloyal. " He sat back abruptly, embarrassed. "Im sorry," he said. "I didnt mean to spout all this crap at you. I hadnt planned on saying any of that. I dont know where it came from. "

  I CALLED my art historian when I got back to the hotel. Shed had her class that night and wasnt back yet. I left a message on her machine and wondered if she would call.

  Wed had a bad time of it a few nights before. After dinner wed rented a movie that she wanted to see and I didnt, and maybe I was bitter about that, I dont know. Whatever it was, there was something wrong between us. After the movie ended she made an off-color remark and I suggested she might make an effort to sound a little less like a whore. That would have been an acceptable rejoinder under ordinary circumstances, but I said it like I meant it and she said something suitably stinging in return.

  I apologized and so did she and we agreed it was nothing, but it didnt feel that way, and when it got to be time to go to bed we did so on opposite sides of town. When we spoke the next day we didnt say anything about it, and we still hadnt, and it hung in the air between us whenever we talked, and even when we didnt.

  She called me back around eleven-thirty. "I just got in," she said. "A couple of us went out for a drink after class. How was your day?"

  "All right," I said, and we talked about it for a few minutes. Then I asked if it was too late for me to drop over.

  "Oh, gee," she said. "Id like to see you, too. "

  "But its too late. "

  "I think so, hon. Im wiped out and I just want to take a quick shower and pass out. Is that okay?"

  "Sure. "

  "Talk to you tomorrow?"

  "Uh-huh. Sleep well. "

  I hung up and said, "I love you," speaking to the empty room, hearing the words bounce off the walls. We had become quite adept at purging the phrase from our speech when we were together, and I listened to myself saying it now and wondered if it was true.

  I felt something but couldnt work out what it was. I took a shower and got out and dried off, and standing there looking at my face in the mirror over the bathroom sink I realized what it was I felt.

  There are two midnight meetings every night. The closest one was on West Forty-sixth Street and I got there just as they were beginning the meeting. I helped myself to a cup of coffee and sat down, and minutes later I was hearing a voice I recognized say, "My name is Peter and Im an alcoholic and a drug addict. " Good, I thought. "And I have one day back," he said.

  Not so good. Tuesday hed had two days, today he had one. I thought about how difficult it must be, trying to get back in the lifeboat and not being able to get a grip on it. And then I stopped thinking about Peter Khoury because I was there for my own benefit, not for his.