Lawrence Block - The Devil Knows You’re Dead

“I don’t know.”

“I’d have worried about it, but I had the sense that he was in charge and he knew what he was doing. I always had that feeling. And one night we had dinner in his neighborhood and he took me back to his apartment. ‘You’ll stay over,’ he said. And I thought, okay, great. And we went to bed. And two days later he proposed marriage. ‘We’ll get married,’ he said. Okay, great.”

“Very romantic.”

“God, yes. How could I help being in love with him? And even if I weren’t, to tell you the truth I think I would have married him anyway. He was bright, he was rich, he was handsome, and he was crazy about me. If I married him I could have babies, and I could quit struggling to make a living and concentrate on the kind of art I really wanted to do. No more Madison Street, no more chasing around town on the subway, showing my book to art directors who were more interested in my figure than my work, except for the ones who weren’t interested in women at all. If I’d met someone like Glenn a few years earlier he would have scared the daylights out of me, the way he took charge of everything, but I’d had enough years of coping with things on my own. This is a tough town.”

“That’s the truth.”

“I was ready to let somebody else take the helm. And it never felt as though he was pushing me around. With the honeymoon, he chose the destination and made all the arrangements. But he picked a place he knew I would like. And with this apartment, he knew I liked the neighborhood and he knew I loved the idea of being way up high and looking out over the city.

“It was all ready, too. He had it all furnished. Anything I didn’t like could go right back to the store, he said. He hadn’t wanted to bring me home to an empty apartment, but he wanted to make sure it was to my liking, so I should feel free to change anything I wasn’t crazy about. There was one rug I didn’t care for, and we took it right back to Einstein Moomjy and got that one instead, and there was really nothing the matter with the original rug but I felt as though I ought to make some little change, as though he expected me to. Do you know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“He was a wonderful husband,” she said. “Thoughtful, considerate. When I lost the baby he was really there for me. It was a hard time for me and I didn’t really have anyone but Glenn. I never made close friends in New York. I was friendly with a few people in Alphabet City and I lost touch with them when I moved to Madison Street, and the same thing happened with my Madison Street friends when I got married and moved here. It’s the way I am. I’m friendly and I get along with people, but I don’t really connect with them, not in any lasting way.

“That meant I spent a lot of time alone, because Glenn had to work late some nights, and he sometimes had business appointments evenings and weekends. I took classes — that’s how I met Elaine — and of course I had my drawing and painting. And I would take myself to the movies, or on a Wednesday afternoon I might go to a matinee. And there are always concerts. With Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center so close, it’s not hard to find something to do. And I never minded spending time by myself. Can I get you more coffee?”

“Not right now.”

“Since the murder,” she said, “I find I keep turning on the television set. I never watched when I was home by myself. Now I seem to watch it all the time. But I suppose I’ll get over that.”

“Right now it’s company,” I said.

“I think that’s exactly what it is. I started watching it for the news. I had this need to see every newscast because there might be something having to do with Glenn’s death, some new development in the case. Then once they’d arrested that man — I’m sorry, I have a block, I can never remember his name.”

“George Sadecki.”

“Of course. Once they arrested him, I didn’t care about the news, but I still wanted to hear voices in the house. That’s what the television is, human voices. I think I’m going to stop turning it on. If I need voices I can always talk to myself, can’t I?”

“I don’t see why not.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them and resumed speaking her voice sounded tired, strained. “I’ve come to realize that I didn’t know my husband at all,” she said. “Isn’t that curious? I thought I knew him, or at least I didn’t give any thought to the fact that I didn’t know him. And then he was killed, and now I can see that I never knew him at all.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Sometime last month,” she said, “he in a very offhand way brought up the possibility of his death. If anything ever happened to him, he said, I wouldn’t have to worry about losing the apartment. Because there was mortgage insurance. If he should happen to die, the mortgage would automatically be paid off in full.”

“And you haven’t been able to find the policy?”

“There is no policy.”

“People sometimes lie about having insurance coverage,” I told her. “It seems innocent enough to them because they don’t expect to die. He probably just wanted to set your mind to rest. And are you absolutely certain there’s no policy? It might be worthwhile to check with the lender.”

“There’s no policy,” she said. “There’s no lender.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s no mortgage,” she said. “I own the apartment free and clear. There was never a mortgage. Glenn bought it outright for cash.”

“Maybe that’s what he was saying, that there was no lien against the property.”

“No, he was very specific. He explained exactly what the policy was and how it worked. It was reducing term insurance, with the amount of coverage decreasing each year as the mortgage was amortized. It was all very clear, and it was all a complete fabrication. He did have insurance coverage, as a matter of fact, a group policy at work and a whole-life policy he took out on his own, both with me as sole beneficiary. But he didn’t have any reducing term insurance, and there was never any mortgage.”

“I gather he handled the family finances.”

“Of course. If I had been paying the bills each month—”

“You would have noticed there was no mortgage payment to make.”

“He took care of everything,” she said. She started to say something else, then stopped and got to her feet. She went over to the window. It was fully dark now, and you could see stars. You can’t always see them over New York, even on clear nights, because of the pollution. But they sparkled now, thanks to the clean Canadian air.

She said, “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“I wonder if I can trust you.” She turned around and fastened those big blue eyes on me. They looked trusting enough. There was precious little calculation in their gaze. “I wish I could hire you,” she said. “But you’ve already got a client.”

“Do you think your interests are opposed to his?”

“I don’t know what my interests are.”

I waited for more. When she didn’t say anything I asked her how her husband had been able to buy the apartment for cash.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He had money he’d inherited on the death of his parents, that’s how he’d been able to afford the down payment. He said.”

“Maybe there was enough family money so that he didn’t need a mortgage.”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe he was secretive about it because he didn’t want to let you know that you were married to a wealthy man. Some rich people are like that, afraid they’ll be loved for their money alone. And if there was a great discrepancy between your net worth and his—”