The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [32]
“Glad you like it.”
“I don’t know if I’d order it again, but at least now I know what it’s like.”
“That’s something.”
“I seen you around. Matt Scudder. Used to be a cop, private eye now, blah blah blah. Right?”
“Close enough.”
“My name’s Floyd. I never liked it but I’m stuck with it, right? I could change but who’m I kidding? Right?”
“If you say so.”
“If I don’t somebody else will. Floyd Karp, that’s the full name. I didn’t tell you my last name, did I? That’s it, Floyd Karp.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, okay, okay.” He pursed his lips, blew out air in a silent whistle. “What do we do now, Matt? Huh? That’s what I want to know.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Floyd.”
“Oh, you know what I’m getting at, driving at, getting at. You know, don’t you?”
By this time I suppose I did.
“I killed that old lady. Took her life, stabbed her with my knife.” He flashed the saddest smile. “Steee-rangled her with her skeeee-arf. Hoist her with her own whatchacallit, petard. What’s a petard, Matt?”
“I don’t know, Floyd. Why’d you kill her?”
He looked at me, he looked at his coffee, he looked at me again.
He said, “Had to.”
“Why?”
“Same as the bourbon and coffee. Had to see. Had to taste it and find out what it was like.” His eyes met mine. His were very large, hollow, empty. I fancied I could see right through them to the blackness at the back of his skull. “I couldn’t get my mind away from murder,” he said. His voice was more sober now, the mocking playful quality gone from it. “I tried. I just couldn’t do it. It was on my mind all the time and I was afraid of what I might do. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t think, I just saw blood and death all the time. I was afraid to close my eyes for fear of what I might see. I would just stay up, days it seemed, and then I’d be tired enough to pass out the minute I closed my eyes. I stopped eating. I used to be fairly heavy and the weight just fell off of me.”
“When did all this happen, Floyd?”
“I don’t know. All winter. And I thought if I went and did it once I would know if I was a man or a monster or what. And I got this knife, and I went out a couple nights but lost my nerve, and then one night — I don’t want to talk about that part of it now.”
“All right.”
“I almost couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t not do it, and then I was doing it and it went on forever. It was horrible.”
“Why didn’t you stop?”
“I don’t know. I think I was afraid to stop. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? I just don’t know. It was all crazy, insane, like being in a movie and being in the audience at the same time. Watching myself.”
“No one saw you do it?”
“No. I threw the knife down a sewer. I went home. I put all my clothes in the incinerator, the ones I was wearing. I kept throwing up. All that night I would throw up even when my stomach was empty. Dry heaves, Department of Dry Heaves. And then I guess I fell asleep, I don’t know when or how but I did, and the next day I woke up and thought I dreamed it. But of course I didn’t.”
“No.”
“And what I did think was that it was over. I did it and I knew I’d never want to do it again. It was something crazy that happened and I could forget about it. And I thought that was what happened.”
“That you managed to forget about it?”
A nod. “But I guess I didn’t. And now everybody’s talking about her. Mary Alice Redfield, I killed her without knowing her name. Nobody knew her name and now everybody knows it and it’s all back in my mind. And I heard you were looking for me, and I guess, I guess …” He frowned, chasing a thought around in his mind like a dog trying to capture his tail. Then he gave it up and looked at me. “So here I am,” he said. “So here I am.”
“Yes.”
“Now what happens?”
“I think you’d better tell the police about it, Floyd.”
“Why?”
“I suppose for the