A Long Line of Dead Men (13 page)

"You talkin'," he said. "The Excalibur's parked at the curb, Herb." He took a drink and wiped milk from his upper lip. "Say this Mims- what's his first name? El something."

"Eldoniah."

"Eldoniah. That from the Bible?"

"I don't know."

" 'I swear I don't know how those people come up with those names.' " He's a good mimic, and the line came out in a fairly accurate version of Long Island Lockjaw. In his own voice- or one of his voices, anyway- he said, "You clear Mims for this one killing, he still doin' the same twenty he doin' now."

I told him I wasn't interested in clearing Mims, who was clearly where he belonged. My food came, and while I ate I explained about the club of thirty-one.

He said, "Somebody be killing them."

"It looks that way."

"Who you figure doin' it, one of them or some other dude?"

"No way to tell."

"Have to be somebody with a reason, an' it ought to be more of a reason than killing a cabdriver for his coin bank." He finished his milk, wiped his mouth again. He said, "I been workin' some for Elaine. Mostly mindin' the store."

"She mentioned it."

"Kind of cool to watch people come in and take a look at me. Like they 'spect I'll grab something and go bookin' on out the door, an' then they catch on that I'm in charge."

"There are black people running stores all over the city," I said. "The antique store two doors up the street from Elaine is run by a black woman."

"Yeah, an' there's black receptionists in the big office buildings, and black folks at department-store information desks, all of 'em right out where you can see them. Thing is, they don't be lookin' like they just got in off the Deuce. They dressed for success, Bess."

"Has Elaine said anything?"

He shook his head. "She cool with it. But what I might do is keep some straight clothes on a hanger in her back room."

We talked about that some, and then he said, "I guess I could take a ride uptown, see what the brothers and sisters know about my uncle Eldoniah. Thing is, folks just be talkin' different types of trash. Dude's on the street, all he'll tell you is how bad he is, like he dusted six cops and robbed the Bank of England. Same dude's in prison, it's always for something he didn't do."

"I know," I said. "The prisons are all overcrowded, and none of those guys ever did what they went away for."

"I'll go up to the Bronx, see if anybody knows anything. All this is four years ago, that what you said?"

"It's been almost that long since Cloonan was killed. The murder Mims was tried for came later on, and the trial was postponed a couple of times. He's only been working on his twenty for the past year and a half."

"Makes it a little easier," he said. "Least there's a chance somebody'll remember who he was."

I got the check. While I was leaving the tip he said, "I was just thinking. These dudes in the club? How it's suspicious that half of 'em's dead after thirty years. Is that right, thirty years?"

"More like thirty-two."

"Thirty-two years," he said. "You couldn't start a club like that on the Deuce. Never mind no thirty-two years. 'Fore you knew it, you wouldn't have nobody left to have a meeting with. The ones that wasn't dead themselves, they most likely be locked up for killin' the other ones." He took a black Raiders cap from the back pocket of his shorts, tucked his hair into it, checked his reflection in the mirror. He said, "Group of dudes I knew four, five years ago, half of 'em's dead. Didn't take thirty-two years, neither. Dyin' must be easy, when I think of all the dudes caught on real quick how to do it."

"Try to be a slow learner," I said.

"Oh, I tryin'," he said. "I doin' the best I can."

I treated myself to the afternoon, catching a movie on Twenty-third Street, then walking downtown to the Village. I passed the apartment building that had risen where Cunningham's had once stood, and the brownstone a block away where Carl Uhl had been murdered. I got down to Perry Street in time for the four o'clock meeting and stood in the rear with a cup of coffee from the pastry shop around the corner.

The speaker told what a friend alcohol had been, and how it had turned on him. "Toward the end," he said, "it just didn't work anymore. Nothing worked. Nothing relaxed me, not even seizures."

While I waited for a bus on Hudson Street, a florist's display caught my eye. I had them wrap a dozen Dutch iris, rode the bus to Fifty-fourth, and walked over to Elaine's shop.

"These are beautiful," she said. "What brought this on?"

"They were going to be diamonds," I said, "but the client got cheap about the bonus."

"What bonus?"

"For the picture we took at Wallbanger's."

"Oh, God," she said. "What a crazy evening that was. I wonder how many bars like that there are in the city, with grown men and women sticking themselves to the wall."

"I know one on Washington Street," I told her, "where they stick each other to the wall, but they don't use Velcro."

"What do they use, Krazy Glue?"

"Manacles, leg irons."

"Oh, I think I know the place you mean. But didn't they have to close?"

"They reopened again under another name."

"Is it boys only these days? Or is it still boys and girls?"

"Boys and girls. Why?"

"I don't know," she said. "One isn't obliged to participate, is one?"

"One doesn't even have to walk in the door."

"I mean you can just observe, right?"

"Why you ask, kemo sabe?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm interested."

"Oh?"

"Well, look how much fun we had at the Velcro Derby out in Queens. It might be even more of a hoot to watch people get kinky."

"Maybe."

"It would finally give me a chance to wear that leather outfit that I had no business buying."

"Ah, that's why you want to go," I said. "It's not sex at all, it's to make a fashion statement. You're right, though, it's the perfect costume for the well-dressed dominatrix. But what would I wear?"

"Knowing you, probably your gray glen-plaid suit. As a matter of fact you'd look really hot in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt."

"I don't own a black T-shirt."

"I'll get you one. I'd get you a black tanktop if I thought you'd wear it, but would you?"

"No."

"That's what I thought. Let me put these in water, and then I'll close up and you can walk me home. Unless the flowers were for the apartment?"

"No, I thought they'd look nice here."

"You're right, and I've even got an empty vase the right size. There, don't they look pretty? We'll stop at the Korean and pick up something for a salad, and I'll fix us some pasta and a salad and we'll eat at the kitchen table. How does that sound?"

I said it sounded fine.

After dinner I opened the envelope I'd been carrying around all day and got out the printouts of the TRW reports, along with the letter of commendation Wally had dictated to the client. Elaine went into the other room to watch Jeopardy and I had a look at what just about anybody with a couple of bucks to spend could find out about the financial standing and bill-paying habits of the fourteen living members of the club of thirty-one.

I had gone through most of the stack when Elaine brought me a cup of coffee and the news that none of the three contestants had known that Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of William Henry Harrison.

"Neither did I," I admitted. "What was the category, Guys Named Harrison?"

"Presidents."

"Oh, William Henry Harrison. Tippecanoe?" She nodded. "And Tyler, too. It all comes back to me. He died, didn't he?"

"No shit, Sherlock. He was elected president in 1840, so what do you want from him? What's this?" She took the client's letter from me and read it through. "This is great," she said. "Wally dictated it?"

"So he says."

"It's perfect, don't you think? You should make it a point to get one of these whenever you've got a client who tells you what a great job you did for him."

"I suppose."

"Your enthusiasm is contagious."

"I guess I should have it framed and hang it on my office wall," I said, "if I ever get a real office. And I could tuck a copy in the portfolio I show to prospective clients."

"If you ever put together a portfolio."

"Right."

"But you don't know if you want all that."

The coffee was too hot to drink. I blew on the surface to cool it. I said, "It's about time I got off my ass, don't you think? It's been twenty years since I turned in my gold shield."

"You were bottoming out with your drinking," she said. "Remember?"

"Vividly."

"And then you were getting sober."

"And now I've been dry so long I'm a fire hazard, as I've heard it said, and what the hell have I done with my life?" I tapped the sheaf of credit reports. "Here's a group of guys my age," I said, "and they've got families and careers, they own their own homes, and most of them could retire tomorrow if they wanted to. What have I got to put up against that?"

"Well, for one thing," she said, "you're alive. More than half of those men are dead."

"I'm talking about the living ones. Anyway, nobody's been trying to kill me."

"Oh? I can think of one fellow who really put his mind to it for a while there. If you forget what he looks like, look in the mirror."

"I get the point."

"And," she said, "give yourself a little credit, will you? From the day you left the department you've made a living."

"Some living."

"Were you ever on welfare? Did you ever miss a meal or sleep in the park? Did you break into parked cars and steal radios? I don't remember seeing you on the street with a paper cup, asking for spare change. Did I miss something?"

"I got by," I said.

"You made a living," she said, "doing the work you're best at, and you didn't chase after it, either. You let it come to you."

"The Zen detective," I said.

"And now you're fifty-five years old," she said, "and you think you ought to be more of a man of substance. You got along for twenty years without a PI license, but now you think you need one. Your clients somehow found their way to you when you worked out of your hotel room, but now you think you need an office. Look, if you want those things, that's terrific. You can rent office space in a good building and get stationery and promotional brochures printed and go after the law firms and the corporate clients. If that's what you want, I'll back you up all the way. I'll run the office for you, if you'd like that."

"You've got a shop to take care of."

"I can hire an assistant. Every day I get people asking if I can use help, and some of them are better qualified to run the place than I am. Or I could close the place."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous? It's a hobby, something to keep me from going crazy."

"When I walked over there this afternoon," I said, "I stood in front of the window and I was in awe of what you've done."

"Come on."

"I mean it. You've made something out of nothing. You took an empty storefront and all the artworks you've collected over the years, and you've added things nobody else saw the beauty in until you pointed it out to them."

"My thriftshop masterpieces."

"And Ray's stuff, for God's sake. He was nothing but a cop with a useful skill until you made him realize he was an artist."

"That's exactly what he is."

"And you put it all together," I said. "You've made it work. I don't know how the hell you did it."

"Well, I've been having fun with it," she admitted. "But I don't know if it'll ever make a profit. Fortunately it doesn't have to."

"Because you're a rich lady."

She owns rental properties in Queens, all of it managed for her by a company that does that sort of thing. Every month she gets a check.

She said, "That's part of it, isn't it?"

"What's part of what?"

"I have some money saved," she said. "And you don't."

"Both of those statements are true."

"And we're living in an apartment I paid for."

"Also true."

"Which means you ought to have a more substantial career so we can be on an even footing."

"You figure that's it?'

"I don't know. Is it?"

I thought about it. "It's probably a factor," I said. "But what it does is make me take a good look at myself, and I see a guy who hasn't accomplished a hell of a lot."

"You've got some former clients who would disagree with that, you know. They might not be able to give you an endorsement on a fancy company letterhead, but they amount to a lot more than helping some manufacturer of schlock patio furniture avoid a lawsuit. Look at the difference you've made in people's lives."

"But I haven't done much for my own self, have I." I brandished the stack of credit reports. "I was reading these," I said, "and imagining what the wonderful people at TRW would have to say about me."

"You pay your bills."

"Yes, but-"

"Do you want the license and the office and all the rest of it? It's up to you, honey. It really is."

"Well, it's ridiculous not to have the license," I said. "There have been times when it's cost me work not to have it."

"And the respectable office, and a string of operatives and security personnel under you?"

"I don't know."

"I don't think you want it," she said. "I think you feel you ought to want it, but you don't, and that's what upsets you. But it's your call."

I went back to the stack of credit reports. It was slow going, because I didn't know what I was looking for. My hope was that I would recognize it when I saw it.