A Walk Among the Tombstones

by Lawrence Block

Page 34

 

  I listened intently to the qualification, although I couldnt tell you what I heard, and when the speaker finished up and opened the meeting I got my hand up right away. I got called on and said, "My names Matt and Im an alcoholic. Ive been sober a couple of years and Ive come a long way since I walked in the door and sometimes I forget that Im still pretty fucked up. Im going through a difficult phase in my relationship and I didnt even realize it until a little while ago. Before I came over here I felt uncomfortable and I had to stand under a shower for five minutes to dope out what it was I felt. And then I saw that it was fear, that I was afraid.

  "I dont even know what Im afraid of. I have a feeling if I let myself go Ill find out Im afraid of every goddamned thing in the world. Im afraid to be in a relationship and Im afraid to be out of it. Im afraid Ill wake up one of these days and look in the mirror and see an old man staring back at me. That Ill die alone in that room some day and nobodyll find me until the smell starts coming through the walls.

  "So I got dressed and came over here because I dont want to drink and I dont want to feel like this, and after all these years I still dont know why it helps to run off at the mouth like this, but it does. Thank you. "

  I figured I probably sounded like an emotional basket case, but you learn not to give a rats ass what you sound like, and I didnt. It was particularly easy to spew it all in that room because I didnt know anybody there other than Peter Khoury, and if he only had a day he probably couldnt track complete sentences yet, let alone remember them five minutes later.

  And maybe I didnt sound that bad after all. At the end we stood and said the Serenity Prayer, and afterward a man two rows in front of me came up to me and asked for my phone number. I gave him one of my cards. "Im out a lot," I said, "but you can leave a message. "

  We chatted for a minute, and then I went looking for Peter Khoury, but he was gone. I didnt know if hed left before the meeting ended or ducked out immediately after, but either way he was gone.

  I had a hunch he didnt want to see me, and I could understand that. I remembered the difficulties Id had at the beginning, putting a few days together, then drinking, then starting all over again. He had the added disadvantage of having been sober for a stretch, and the humiliation of having lost what hed had. With all of that going for him, it would probably take a while before he could work his way up to low self-esteem.

  In the meantime he was sober. He only had a day, but in a sense thats all youve ever got.

  * * *

  SATURDAY afternoon I took a break from TV sports and called a telephone operator. I told her Id lost the card telling me how to engage and disengage Call Forwarding. I envisioned her checking the records, determining that Id never signed up for the service, and calling 911 to order the hotel ringed by squad cars. "Put that phone down, Scudder, and come out with your hands up!"

  Before I could even finish the thought she had cued a recording, and a computer-generated voice was explaining what I had to do. I couldnt write it all down as fast as it came at me, so I had to call a second time and repeat the procedure.

  Just before I left the house to go over to Elaines, I followed the directions, arranging things so that any calls to my phone would be automatically transferred to her line. Or at least that was the theory. I didnt have a great deal of faith in the process.

  Shed bought tickets to a play at the Manhattan Theatre Club, a murky and moody play by a Yugoslavian playwright. I had the feeling that some of it was lost in translation, but what came over the footlights still retained a lot of brooding intensity. It took me through dark passages in the self without troubling to turn the lights on.

  The experience was even more of an ordeal than it might otherwise have been because they staged it without an intermission. That got us out of there by a quarter of ten, which was not a moment too soon, but it put us through the wringer in the process. The actors took their curtain calls, the house lights came up, and we shuffled out of there like zombies.

  "Strong medicine," I said.

  "Or strong poison. Im sorry, Ive been picking a lot of winners lately, havent I? That movie that you hated and now this. "

  "I didnt hate this," I said. "I just feel as though I went ten rounds with it, and I got hit in the face a lot. "

  "What do you figure the message was?"

  "It probably comes through best in Serbo-Croatian. The message? I dont know. That the worlds a rotten place, I guess. "

  "You dont need to go to a play for that," she said. "You can just read the paper. "

  "Ah," I said. "Maybe its different in Yugoslavia. "

  We had dinner near the theater, and the mood of the play cloaked us. Halfway through I said, "I want to say something. I want to apologize for the other night. "

  "Thats over, honey. "

  "I dont know if it is. Ive been in a strange mood lately. Some of it has to be this case. We had a couple breaks, I felt as though I was making progress, and now everythings stuck again and I feel stuck myself. But I dont want it to affect us. Youre important to me, our relationship is important to me. "

  "To me, too. "

  We talked a little and things seemed to lighten up, although the plays mood was not easily set aside. Then we went back to her place and she checked her messages while I used the bathroom. When I came out she had a curious expression on her face.

  She said, "Whos Walter?"

  "Walter. "

  "Just calling to say hello, nothing important, wanted to let you know he was alive, and hell probably give you a call later. "

  "Oh," I said. "Fellow I met at a meeting the night before last. Hes fairly newly sober. "

  "And you gave him this number?"

  "No," I said. "Why would I do that?"

  "Thats what I was wondering. "

  "Oh," I said, as it dawned on me. "Well, I guess it works. "

  "You guess what works?"

  "Call Forwarding. I told you the Kongs gave me Call Forwarding when they were playing games with the phone company. I put it on this afternoon. "

  "So your calls would come here. "

  "Thats right. I didnt have a lot of faith that it would work, but evidently it does. Whats the matter?"

  "Nothing. "

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course. Do you want to hear the message? I can play it back again. "

  "Not if thats all it said. "

  "Its all right to erase it, then?"

  "Go ahead. "

  She did, then said, "I wonder what he thought when he dialed your number and there was an answering machine with a womans voice. "

  "Well, he evidently didnt think he had the wrong number, or he wouldnt have left a message. "

  "I wonder who he thinks I am. "

  "A mysterious woman with a sexy voice. "

  "He probably thinks were living together. Unless he knows you live alone. "

  "All he knows about me is Im sober and crazy. "

  "Why crazy?"

  "Because I was dumping a lot of garbage at the meeting I met him at. For all he knows Im a priest and youre the housekeeper at the rectory. "

  "Thats a game we havent tried. Priest and housekeeper. Bless me, Father, for I have been a very naughty girl and I probably need a good spanking. "

  "I wouldnt be surprised. "

  She grinned, and I reached for her, and the phone picked that moment to ring. "You answer it," she said. "Its probably Walter. "

  I picked up the phone and a man with a deep voice asked to speak to Miss Mardell. I handed her the receiver without a word and walked into the other room. I stood at the window and looked at the lights on the other side of the East River. After a couple of minutes she came and stood beside me. She didnt allude to the call, nor did I. Then ten minutes later the phone rang again and she answered it and it was for me. It was Walter, just using the phone a lot the way they encourage newcomers to do. I didnt stay on with him long, and when I got off I said, "Im sorry. It was a bad idea. "r />
  "Well, youre here a lot. People ought to be able to reach you. " A few minutes later she said, "Take it off the hook. Nobody has to reach either of us tonight. "

  IN the morning I dropped in on Joe Durkin and wound up going out for lunch with him and two friends of his from the Major Crimes Squad. I went back to my hotel and stopped at the desk for my messages, but there werent any. I went upstairs and picked up a book, and at twenty after three the phone rang.

  Elaine said, "You forgot to take off Call Forwarding. "

  "Oh, for Christs sake," I said. "No wonder there werent any messages. I just got home, I was out all morning, it slipped my mind completely. I was going to come straight home and fix it and I forgot. It must have been driving you crazy all day. "

  "No, but-"

  "But how did you get through? Wouldnt it just bounce your call back and give you a busy signal if you called here?"

  "It did the first time I tried. I called the desk downstairs and they patched the call through. "

  "Oh. "

  "Evidently it doesnt forward calls through the switchboard downstairs. "

  "Evidently not. "

  "TJ called earlier. But thats not important. Matt, Kenan Khoury just called. You have to call him right away. He said its really urgent. "

  "He did?"

  "He said life or death, and probably death. I dont know what that means, but he sounded serious. "

  I called right away, and Kenan said, "Matt, thank God. Dont go nowhere, I got my brother on the other line. Youre at home, right? Okay, stay on the line, Ill be with you in a second. " There was a click, and then a minute or so later there was another click and he was back. "Hes on his way," he said. "Hes coming over to your hotel, hell be right out in front. "

  "Whats the matter with him?"

  "With Petey? Nothing, hes fine. Hes gonna bring you out to Brighton Beach. Nobodys got time to dick around with the subway today. "

  "Whats in Brighton Beach?"

  "A whole lot of Russians," he said. "How do I put this? One of em just called to say hes going through business difficulties similar to what I went through. "

  That could only mean one thing, but I wanted to make sure.

  "His wife?"

  "Worse. I gotta go, Ill meet you there. "

  Chapter 18

  Late in September Elaine and I had spent an idyllic afternoon in Brighton Beach. We rode the Q train to the end of the line and walked along Brighton Beach Avenue, browsing in the produce markets, window-shopping, then exploring the side streets with their modest frame houses and a network of back streets, little walks and alleys and paths and ways. The bulk of the population consisted of Russian Jews, many of them very recent arrivals, and the neighborhood had felt extremely foreign while remaining quintessentially New York. We ate at a Georgian restaurant, then walked on the boardwalk clear to Coney Island, watching people hardier than ourselves bobbing in the ocean. Then we spent an hour at the Aquarium, and then we went home.

  If we had passed Yuri Landau in the street that day I dont suppose wed have looked at him twice. He would have looked at home there, as he must have once looked in the streets of Kiev or Odessa. He was a big man, broad in the chest, with a face that might have served as the model for an idealized worker in one of those murals from the days of Socialist Realism. A broad forehead, high cheekbones, sharply angled facial planes, and a prominent jaw. His hair was a medium brown, and lank; he was given to tossing his head to get his hair out of his face.