Lawrence Block - The Devil Knows You’re Dead

“At su casa. ”

“Yeah, chez moi. I’ve got some reading and paperwork to do, but it won’t take me forever. You know what? Pick up a movie on the way over.”

“Anything special?”

“No, surprise me. Nothing with monsters, that’s all I ask.”

“We get enough of those in real life.”

“You said it. What time should I expect you?”

“I could catch an early meeting and get over there around eight. How does that sound?”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “it sounds terrific.”

We spent a quiet evening at home. We had curry, delivered by an Indian restaurant that had just recently opened on First Avenue. According to Elaine, there was a key advantage to eating Indian food at home.

“In every Indian restaurant I have ever been to,” she said, “there is one waiter whose last bath was in the Ganges, and when he comes near your table you could die.”

I tried Lisa Holtzmann after dinner and rang off without a word when her machine answered. Elaine spent twenty minutes on paperwork and then popped a cassette in the VCR. I’d picked up The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , with Lee Marvin playing the titular villain and John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart playing themselves.

Elaine said, “When I was a kid my parents would watch old movies on the late show. ‘My God, look how young Franchot Tone is!’ Or Janet Gaynor, or George Arliss, or whoever they were watching. It used to drive me crazy. And now I’m doing it. Throughout the whole movie all I could think of was how young Lee Marvin was.”

“I know.”

“But I didn’t come out and say it until the picture had ended. I think I showed commendable restraint.”

The phone rang and she answered it. “Oh, hi,” she said. “How’s it going? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

I tried not to hang on the words, even as the usual faint wave of jealousy rolled over me. Elaine still got calls now and then from former clients, and felt it was simpler to spend ten seconds announcing her retirement than go to the trouble of changing her number. I understood, but all the same I’d have preferred them to call when I was somewhere else.

“Just a minute,” she said. “He’s right here.”

I took the phone and TJ said, “Man, I been to your hotel room. That room is small with just you in it. You shouldn’t be bringin’ a nice lady there.”

“That was no nice lady,” I said. “That was Elaine.”

“Think I don’t know that? Oh, now I get it. You ain’t at your hotel.”

“I knew you’d figure it out.”

“You at her house. You got the whatchacall on. Call Forwarding.”

“Good thinking.”

“If you had a beeper,” he said, “you wouldn’t need stuff like that, confuse people when somebody else answers your phone. Why I called, I been hangin’ out with the Captain.”

“Captain Flanders.”

“That’s my man. Hey, the park changes some when the sun goes down, the park and the street both. Got a whole bunch of folks buyin’ and sellin’.”

“You’ve got that in the daytime,” I said, “but then they’re mostly buying and selling Hondas.”

“Different shit now,” he said. “Lotta crack. You see the empty vials on the ground. Just about anything you want, there be somebody here sell it to you. Lot of girls, too, an’ some of ’em lookin’ real fine. ’cept they ain’t girls. You know what they call ’em?”

“Transsexuals.”

“ ‘Chicks with dicks’ is what you hear people say. Say the other word again.” I did, and he repeated it after me. “Transsexuals. I know there’s people call ’em sex changes, but that’s after they has the operation. Up until then they chicks with dicks. You happen to know if they born that way?”

“I’m fairly sure they’re born with dicks.”

“Gimme a break, Jake. You know what I mean.”

The transsexuals I’d known all said they’d been that way as far back as they could remember. “I guess they’re born that way,” I said.

“How do they get the titties? It don’t hardly come natural. What do they get, hormone shots? Implants?”

“Both, I think.”

“An’ then they hustlin’, savin’ up for the big operation. What they all want, get the operation so you can’t tell ’em from a real woman, ’cept they standin’ six-two and got big hands an’ feet, which might give somebody a clue.”

“Not all of them want the surgery.”

“You mean they want to have it both ways? Why’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

A pause, and then he said, “Just tryin’ to feature myself walkin’ down the street with titties bouncin’ under my shirt. Weird.”

“I guess.”

“Get a headache thinkin’ about it. You recollect what I told you first time I met you? When you was walkin’ on the Deuce an’ I couldn’t get you to say what you was lookin’ for?”

“I remember.”

“I told you everybody got a jones. You can take that to the bank, Frank. Truest thing I ever said.”

I said, “I wonder if Glenn Holtzmann had a jones.”

“Nothin’ to wonder. If he had a pulse he had a jones. Maybe we get lucky, find out what it was.”

Elaine had caught enough key words to be interested, and I filled her in on the rest. “TJ’s wonderful,” she said. “One minute he’s utterly hip slick and cool, and then his innocence peeks through. At that age the whole notion of transsexuals has to be disturbing.”

“But not unfamiliar, not where he hangs out.”

“I guess. I just hope he doesn’t turn up with tits one of these days. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

“I don’t think TJ is, either.”

“Good. You figure Glenn Holtzmann had a jones?”

“TJ says everybody does. That reminds me.” I looked at my watch and decided it wasn’t too late to call Holtzmann’s widow, especially since she wasn’t likely to be home. Nor was she. This time, though, I didn’t listen dutifully to her late husband’s voice. As soon as the machine picked up, I broke the connection.

I said, “Something took him to Eleventh Avenue. He could have been stretching his legs, but why stretch them in that direction? It could have been coincidence, or he could have been looking for something that Eleventh Avenue had to offer.”

“He didn’t strike me as the crackhead type.”

“No, but he wouldn’t be the first yuppie who ever did lines of coke.”

“Do people like him buy it on the street?”

“Not usually, no. Maybe he had a sex jones, maybe he was looking for love in all the wrong places.”

“With a wife like that at home?”

“ ‘A neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land.’ But what’s that got to do with it?”

“Not much,” she said. “Most men have wives at home, and they can’t all be bowwows. Maybe he just got the urge for something different.”

“Maybe he was partial to tall girls with big hands and feet.”

“And dicks. He was taking a big chance, picking up a streetwalker.”

“No kidding.”

“No, besides the usual. Remember the view from their apartment? If she’d been at the window she could have seen him on the corner. She might even have witnessed the shooting.”

“Assuming the angles were right and the view wasn’t obstructed. I doubt you could make much out at that distance, anyway.”

“I guess not. You think she’ll keep the apartment?”

“I have no idea.”

“Would you like to live there? Not that particular apartment, necessarily, but something like it?”

“Way up in the sky, you mean?”

“Way up in the sky with a drop-dead view. If and when we get around to moving in together — but maybe you don’t feel like talking about it now.”