The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [49]
“I believe it,” I said. “Anyway, I wouldn’t lose a whole lot of sleep over the client getting screwed a little.”
“You just don’t like the work.”
“I’m afraid not.”
He shrugged. “I don’t blame you. It’s chickenshit. But Jesus, Matt, most P.I. work is chickenshit. Was it that different in the department? Or on any police force? Most of what we did was chickenshit.”
“And paperwork.”
“And paperwork, you’re absolutely right. Do some chickenshit and then write it up. And make copies.”
“I can put up with a certain amount of chickenshit,” I said. “But I honestly don’t have the heart for what we did today. I felt like a bully.”
“Listen, I’d rather be kicking in doors, taking down bad guys. That what you want?”
“Not really.”
“Be Batman, tooling around Gotham City, righting wrongs. Do the whole thing not even carrying a gun. You know what they didn’t have in the movie?”
“I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Robin, they didn’t have Robin. Robin the Boy Wonder. He’s not in the comic book anymore, either. Somebody told me they took a poll, had their readers call a nine-hundred number and vote, should they keep Robin or should they kill him. Like in ancient Rome, those fights, what do you call them?”
“Gladiators.”
“Right. Thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and Robin got thumbs-down, so they killed him. Can you believe that?”
“I can believe anything.”
“Yeah, you and me both. I always thought they were fags.” I looked at him. “Batman and Robin, I mean. His ward, for Christ’s sake. Playing dress-up, flying around, costumes, I figured it’s gotta be some kind of fag S-and-M thing. Isn’t that what you figured?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Well, I never stayed up nights over it myself, but what else would it be? Anyway, he’s dead now, Robin is. Died of AIDS, I suppose, but the family’s denying it, like What’shisname. You know who I mean.”
I didn’t, but I nodded.
“You gotta make a living, you know. Gotta turn a buck, whether it’s hassling Africans or squatting out there on a blanket your own self, selling tapes and scarves. Fi’ dollah, ten dollah.” He looked at me. “No good, huh?”
“I don’t think so, Wally.”
“Don’t want to be one of Batman’s helpers. Well, you can’t do what you can’t do. What the fuck do I know about it, anyway? You don’t drink. I don’t have a problem with it, myself. But if I couldn’t put my feet up at the end of the day, have a few pops, who knows? Maybe I couldn’t do it either. Matt, you’re a good man. If you change your mind — ”
“I know. Thanks, Wally.”
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t mention it. We gotta look out for each other, you know what I mean? Here in Gotham City.”
“People come here to die, Mr. Scudder. They check out of hospitals, give up their apartments, and come to Caritas. Because they know we’ll keep them comfortable here. And they know we’ll let them die.”
Carl Orcott was long and lean, with a long sharp nose and a matching chin. Some gray showed in his fair hair and his strawberry-blond mustache. His facial skin was stretched tight over his skull, and there were hollows in his cheeks. He might have been naturally spare of flesh, or worn down by the demands of his job. Because he was a gay man in the last decade of a terrible century, another possibility suggested itself. That he was HIV-positive. That his immune system was compromised. That the virus that would one day kill him was already within him, waiting.
“Since an easy death is our whole reason for being,” he was saying, “it seems a bit much to complain when it occurs. Death is not the enemy here. Death is a friend. Our people are in very bad shape by the time they come to us. You don’t run to a hospice when you get the initial results from a blood test, or when the first purple K-S lesions show up. First you try everything, including denial, and everything works for a while, and finally nothing works, not the AZT, not the pentamidine, not the Louise Hay tapes, not the crystal healing. Not even the denial. When you’re ready for it to be over, you come here and we see you out.