After the First Death - Lawrence Block [56]
“You don’t like what we’re pretending, do you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know. That you’re my man.”
“I don’t mind.”
“No?” She searched my eyes, then looked away. “I don’t blame you,” she said.
“I really don’t mind it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I wanted to change the subject “Did Robin have a man?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. If she did, he might know something.”
“She had somebody. Danny, his name was. But he died about, oh, two or three weeks before she did. Two weeks, I think. An OD. That’s an overdose. Heroin.”
“He used it, too?”
“Oh, sure. And Robin had to hustle twice as hard. Two habits, you know. Anybody who says two can live as cheap as one isn’t on stuff.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m getting a little ginchy, like I should go back to the apartment and fix. It’s not time. I think it’s talking about it that’s doing it. Sometimes it’s in the mind, you know? How did we get on this subject?”
“Robin’s man.”
“Yeah. I don’t know. He got a cap that wasn’t cut the way they usually are, or he used two caps to get up higher, or something. He died with a needle in his arm and Robin was there when it happened. Oh, Jesus. I don’t want to talk about it any more.”
“All right.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“You want to go back to the apartment, Jackie?”
“No, I’m all right”
“You sure?”
“I’m all right. It’s my hangup and I know what it’s all about.” She took my arm. “We’ll find your watch,” she said. “I got a feeling.”
And we did, three or four places later, three or four blocks downtown and a block west. In a secondhand shop with a window full of radios and cameras and typewriters, we looked at a few watches, and then Jackie asked me what brand it was that I was especially interested in, and I said Lord Elgin right on cue, and the little old man in shirtsleeves remembered a Lord Elgin in truly perfect shape, a bargain, he could give us an awfully good price on it, and it was my watch he showed me.
He’d changed the band, just as Jackie had said he would. But it was the same watch and I would have known it a block off. “This is it,” I said. And added, “This is just what we’ve been looking for.”
Jackie reached to take it from me, nudging me with her foot. I guessed that this meant I should shut up and follow her lead. She studied the watch, then asked the price.
“Forty-five dollars.”
She thought it over, then set it down on the counter. “Well think it over,” she said. “We’ll be back.”
“Forty dollars,” the man suggested.
“We just want to go outside and talk it over in private.”
“At forty it’s a bargain. I bought it reasonable myself, that’s why I can offer it to you so cheap. You know what these cost new?”
“We just want to talk,” she said, and we got out of there.
We walked to the corner. She said, “You’re sure that’s the one, Alex? Because you have to be sure.”
“I’m positive. I’d know it anywhere.”
“Good. I knew we’d find it sooner or later, I had a feeling. Now we got to figure out how to find out where he got it. Let me think a minute.”
I lit a cigarette. The excitement was beginning to bubble inside me. I wanted to go back to the store and grab the little man by the throat “I’ll shake it out of him,” I said.
“No.”
“He’ll tell us. Why not?”
“No. Wait a minute.”
I waited.
“If it weren’t for the damned uniform you could pretend to be a cop,” she said. “But that’s no good now. What do they call them—Army Police?”
“Military Police. MP’s.”
“Yeah. Could you be something like that? But not after the bit we been working, it wouldn’t go down right Let me think. Do you have about fifty dollars?”
“I think so.”
“Make sure.”
I checked my roll. I had seventy dollars and change. “It won’t leave much,” I said, “but I’ve got it.”
“Good.”
“Why fifty? He said forty.”
“Forty for the watch. Ten more for him to remember where he got it. We got to scare him and bribe him both. C’mon.”
We went back into the store. He seemed surprised to see us. He had already put the watch away. He got it out, and I handed him forty dollars in fives and tens.
“I’ll have to charge you the tax—”
“No tax,” Jackie said.
“Listen, I don’t