The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [65]
“You have to go in?”
I nodded. “It’s about time we had a break in this one,” I said. “I don’t expect to get much sleep tonight, and I’ve got a court appearance tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll get you a clean shirt. Sit down. You’ve got time to finish your drink, don’t you?”
I always had time for that.
Years ago, this was. Nixon was president, a couple of years into his first term. I was a detective with the NYPD, attached to the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village. I had a house on Long Island with two cars in the garage, a Ford wagon for Anita and a beat-up Plymouth Valiant for me.
Traffic was light on the LIE, and I didn’t pay much attention to the speed limit. I didn’t know many cops who did. Nobody ever ticketed a brother officer. I made good time, and it must have been somewhere around a quarter to ten when I left the car at a bus stop on First Avenue. I had a card on the dashboard that would keep me safe from tickets and tow trucks.
The best thing about enforcing the laws is that you don’t have to pay a lot of attention to them yourself.
Her doorman rang upstairs to announce me, and she met me at the door with a drink. I don’t remember what she was wearing, but I’m sure she looked good in it. She always did.
She said, “I would never call you at home. But it’s business.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Maybe both. I got a call from a client. A Madison Avenue guy, maybe an agency vice-president. Suits from Tripler’s, season tickets for the Rangers, house in Connecticut.”
“And?”
“And didn’t I say something about knowing a cop? Because he and some friends were having a friendly card game and something happened to one of them.”
“Something happened? Something happens to a friend of yours, you take him to a hospital. Or was it too late for that?”
“He didn’t say, but that’s what I heard. It sounds to me as though somebody had an accident and they need somebody to make it disappear.”
“And you thought of me.”
“Well,” she said.
She’d thought of me before, in a similar connection. Another client of hers, a Wall Street warrior, had had a heart attack in her bed one afternoon. Most men will tell you that’s how they want to go, and perhaps it’s as good a way as any, but it’s not all that convenient for the people who have to clean up after them, especially when the bed in question belongs to some working girl.
When the equivalent happens in the heroin trade, it’s good PR. One junkie checks out with an overdose and the first thing all his buddies want to know is where did he get the stuff and how can they cop some themselves. Because, hey, it must be good, right? A hooker, on the other hand, has less to gain from being listed as cause of death. And I suppose she felt a professional responsibility, if you want to call it that, to spare the guy and his family embarrassment. So I made him disappear, and left him fully dressed in an alley down in the financial district. I called it in anonymously and went back to her apartment to claim my reward.
“I’ve got the address,” she said now. “Do you want to have a look? Or should 1 tell them I couldn’t reach you?”
I kissed her, and we clung to each other for a long moment. When I came up for air I said, “It’d be a lie.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Telling them you couldn’t reach me. You can always reach me.”
“You’re a sweetie.”
“You better give me that address,” I said.
I retrieved my car from the bus stop and left it in another one a dozen or so blocks uptown. The address I was looking for was a brownstone in the East Sixties. A shop with handbags and briefcases in the window occupied the storefront, flanked by a travel agent and a men’s clothier. There were four doorbells in the vestibule, and I rang the third one and heard the intercom activated, but didn’t hear anyone say anything. I was reaching to ring a second time when the buzzer sounded. I pushed the door open and walked up three flights of carpeted stairs.
Out of habit, I stood to the side when I knocked. I didn’t really expect a bullet, and what