Lawrence Block - The Devil Knows You’re Dead

“I wonder why that is.”

“I don’t know. Why would he want to talk to me about writing a book? His company publishes large-print editions. And he’s not an editor, he’s a lawyer.”

“He could know people at other houses,” she suggested. “And couldn’t he have a book-packaging operation going on the side?”

“He’s got something going.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that he’s got a hidden agenda. He wants something, and he doesn’t let you know what it is. I’ll tell you something, I don’t believe he wants me to write a book. Because if that was what he really wanted he would have proposed something else.”

“So what do you figure he wants?”

“I don’t know.”

“Be easy to find out,” she said. “Have lunch with him.”

“I could,” I said. “I could also live without knowing.”

I didn’t see him again until the first week in August. It was the middle of the afternoon and I was at a window table at the Morning Star, eating a piece of pie and drinking a cup of coffee and reading a copy of Newsday that someone had left on an adjacent table. A shadow fell on the page and I looked up, and there was Holtzmann on the other side of the glass. He had his tie loosened and his collar open and his suit jacket over his arm. He smiled, pointed at himself and at the entrance. I figured this meant he was about to join me, and I was right.

He said, “Good to see you, Matt. Mind if I sit? Or were you expecting someone?”

I pointed to the chair opposite mine and he took it. The waitress came over with a menu and he waved it off and said he’d just have coffee. He told me he’d been hoping I’d call, that he’d looked forward to our getting together for lunch. “I guess you’ve been busy,” he said.

“Pretty busy.”

“I can imagine.”

“And,” I said, “I don’t honestly think I’d be interested in doing a book. Even if I had one to write, I think I’d be happier leaving it unwritten.”

“Say no more,” he said. “I can respect that. Still, who says you have to have a book in the works in order for us to have lunch? We could probably find other things to talk about.”

“Well, when my work schedule thins out a little—”

“Sure.” The coffee came and he frowned at it and wiped his brow with his napkin. “I don’t know why I ordered coffee,” he said. “Iced tea would have made more sense in this heat. Still, it’s cool enough in here, isn’t it? Thank God for air-conditioning.”

“Amen to that.”

“Do you know that we keep our public places cooler in the summer than in the winter? If this place was the same temperature in January that it is right now we’d complain to the management. And people wonder why we’ve got an energy crisis.” He grinned engagingly. “See? We can find plenty of things to talk about. The weather. The energy crisis. Quirks in the American national character. Be a cinch for us to get through a lunch hour.”

“Unless we use up all our topics ahead of time.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that. How’s Elaine, by the way? Lisa hasn’t seen her since school let out.”

“She’s fine.”

“Is she taking any courses over the summer? Lisa wanted to, but she decided her pregnancy might get in the way.”

I said that Elaine would probably enroll for something or other in the fall, but that she’d decided to keep the summer open so that we could take long weekends.

“Lisa was talking about calling her,” he said, “but I don’t think she got around to it.” He stirred his coffee. Abruptly he said, “She lost the baby. I guess you wouldn’t have heard.”

“Jesus, no. I’m sorry, Glenn.”

“Thanks.”

“When did it—”

“I don’t know, ten days ago, something like that. She was just into her seventh month. Bright side, it could have been worse. They told us the baby was malformed, it couldn’t have lived, but suppose she carried it to term, even had a live delivery? Would have been twice the heartache, the way I figure it.”

“I see what you mean.”

“She was the one who wanted a kid,” he said. “I got along this long without any, I more or less figured I could go the distance. But it was important to her, so I figured why not. The doctor says we can try again.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know if I want to. Not right away, anyhow. It’s funny, I didn’t mean to tell you all this. Shows what a good detective you are, you get people talking even without trying. I’ll let you get back to your paper.” He stood up, pushed two dollars across the table at me. “For the coffee,” he said.

“That’s too much.”

“So leave a big tip,” he said. “And call me when you get the chance. We’ll have that lunch.”

When I recounted the conversation to Elaine, her immediate response was to call Lisa. She made the call, got the answering machine, and rang off without leaving a message.

“It occurred to me,” she explained, “that she can deal with her grief just fine without my help. All she and I ever had in common was the class, and it ended two months ago. I feel for her, I really do, but why do I have to get involved?”

“You don’t.”

“That’s what I decided. Maybe I’m actually getting something out of Al-Anon. I’d probably get even more if I went more than once every three or four weeks.”

“It’s a shame you don’t like the meetings.”

“All that whining. They make me want to vomit. Other than that they’re great. What about you? Do you like Glenn any better now that he shared his grief with you?”

“You’d have to,” I said. “But I still don’t want to have lunch with him.”

“Oh, you won’t have any choice,” she said. “He’ll keep grinding away at you until you wake up one day and realize he’s your new best friend. You’ll see.”

But that’s not what happened. Instead six or seven weeks passed during which I never caught a glimpse of Glenn Holtzmann, or gave him a passing thought. And then somebody with a gun changed everything, and from that point on Glenn was on my mind more than he’d ever been in life.

Within the hour, I knew as much as Lisa Holtzmann did.

Elaine and I had gone out to dinner after an early movie. We got back to her place in time for all but the first five minutes of L.A. Law. “I hate to say this,” she said when it was over, “and I know it’s not politically correct, but I’ve had it up to here with Benny. He’s so relentlessly dim.”

“What do you want from him?” I said. “He’s retarded.”

“You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to say he has a learning disability.”

“Okay.”

“But I don’t care,” she said. “You could find a higher IQ growing in a petri dish. I wish he would smarten up or ship out. But then I feel that way about most of the people I meet. What do you want to do now? Is there a ball game on?”

“Let’s watch the news.”

And we did, half watching, half listening. I paid a little more attention when the perky anchorwoman began talking about a Midtown shooting, because I still respond to local crime news like an old Dalmatian to the ringing of the fire bell. When she mentioned the site of the shooting Elaine said, “That’s your neighborhood.” The next thing I knew she was reading the victim’s name off the teleprompter. Glenn Holtzmann, thirty-eight, of West Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan.

They went to a commercial and I triggered the remote and turned off the set. Elaine said, “I don’t suppose there’s more than one Glenn Holtzmann on West Fifty-seventh Street.”

“No.”

“That poor girl. The last time I saw her she had a husband and a baby on the way, and now what has she got? Should I call her? No, of course not. I didn’t call her when she lost the baby and I shouldn’t call her now. Or should I? Is there anything we can do?”