Lawrence Block: Time to Murder and Create

We worked out details, the weekly phone call, the bland message if I wasn’t in. I ordered another drink. Spinner still had plenty of milk left.

I asked him why he had picked me.

“Well, you were always straight with me, Matt. You been off the force how long? A couple of years?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, you quit. I’m not good on the details. You killed some kid or something?”

“Yeah. Line of duty, a bullet took a bad hop.”

“Catch a lot of static from on top?”

I looked at my coffee and thought about it. A summer night, the heat almost visible in the air, the air conditioning working overtime in the Spectacle, a bar in Washington Heights where a cop got his drinks on the house. I was off duty, except you never really are, and two kids picked that night to hold up the place. They shot the bartender dead on their way out. I chased them into the street, killed one of them, splintered the other one’s thigh bone.

But one shot was off and took a richochet that bounced it right into the eye of a seven-year-old girl named Estrellita Rivera. Right in the eye, and through soft tissue and on into the brain.

“That was out of line,” the Spinner said. “I shouldn’ta brought it up.”

“No, that’s all right. I didn’t get any static. I got a commendation, as a matter of fact. There was a hearing, and I was completely exonerated.”

“And then you quit the force.”

“I sort of lost my taste for the work. And for other things. A house on the Island. A wife. My sons.”

“I guess it happens,” he said.

“I guess it does.”

“So what you’re doing, you’re sort of a private cop, huh?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have a license. Sometimes I do favors for people and they pay me for it.”

“Well, getting back to our little business. ” Spin. “You’d be doing me a favor is what you’d be doing.”

“If you think so.”

He picked up the dollar in mid-spin, looked at it, set it down on the blue-and-white checkered tablecloth.

I said, “You don’t want to get killed, Spinner.”

“Fuck, no.”

“Can’t you get out from under?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s don’t talk about that part of it, huh?”

“Whatever you say.”

“ ’Cause if somebody wants to kill you, what the fuck can you do about it? Nothin’.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You’ll handle this for me, Matt?”

“I’ll hang on to your envelope. I’m not saying what I’ll do if I have to open it, because I don’t know what’s in it.”

“If it happens, then you’ll know.”

“No guarantees I’ll do it, whatever it is.”

He took a long look at me, reading something in my face that I didn’t know was there. “You’ll do it,” he said.

“Maybe.”

“You’ll do it. And if you don’t I won’t know about it, so what the fuck. Listen, what do you want in front?”

“I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to do.”

“I mean for keeping the envelope. How much do you want?”

I never know how to set fees. I thought for a moment. I said, “That’s a nice suit you’re wearing.”

“Huh? Thanks.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Phil Kronfeld’s. Over on Broadway?”

“I know where it is.”

“You really like it?”

“It looks good on you. What did it set you back?”

“Three twenty.”

“Then that’s my fee.”

“You want the fuckin’ suit?”

“I want three hundred and twenty dollars.”

“ Oh .” He tossed his head, amused. “You had me goin’ there for a minute. I couldn’t understand what the fuck you’d want with the suit.”

“I don’t think it would fit.”

“I guess not. Three twenty? Yeah, I guess that’s as good a number as any.” He got out a fat alligator wallet and counted out six fifties and a twenty. “Three — two — oh,” he said, handing them to me. “If this drags on and on and you want more, you let me know. Good enough?”

“Good enough. Suppose I have to get in touch with you, Spinner?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Okay.”

“Like, you won’t have to, and if I wanted to give you an address I couldn’t anyway.”

“Okay.”

He opened the attaché and passed me a nine-by-twelve manila envelope sealed on both ends with heavy-duty tape. I took it from him and put it on the bench beside me. He gave the silver dollar a spin, picked it up, put it in his pocket, and beckoned to Trina for the check. I let him have it. He paid it and left a two-dollar tip.

“What’s so funny, Matt?”

“Just that I never saw you grab a check before. And I’ve seen you pick up other people’s tips.”

“Well, things change.”

“I guess they do.”

“I didn’t do that often, dragging down somebody’s tips. You do lots of things when you’re hungry.”

“Sure.”

He got to his feet, hesitated, put out his hand. I shook it. He turned to go, and I said, “Spinner?”

“What?”

“You said the kind of lawyers you know would open the envelope as soon as you left the office.”

“You bet your ass they would.”

“How come you don’t think I will?”

He looked at me as though the question was a stupid one. “You’re honest,” he said.

“Oh, Christ. You know I used to take. I let you buy your way out of a collar or two, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah, but you were always square with me. There’s honest and there’s honest. You’re not gonna open that envelope until you have to.”

I knew he was right. I just didn’t know how he knew it. “Take care of yourself,” I said.

“Yeah, you too.”

“Watch yourself crossing the street.”

“Huh?”

“Watch out for buses.”

He laughed a little, but I don’t think he thought it was funny.

Later that day, I stopped off at a church and stuffed thirty-two dollars into the poor box. I sat in a rear pew and thought about the Spinner. He’d given me easy money. All I had to do to earn it was nothing at all.

Back in my room, I rolled up the rug and put Spinner’s envelope beneath it, centering it under the bed. The maid runs the vacuum cleaner occasionally but never moves the furniture around. I put the rug back in place and promptly forgot about the envelope, and every Friday a call or a message would assure me that Spinner was alive and the envelope could stay right where it was.

For the next three days I read the papers twice a day and waited for a phone call. Monday night I picked up the early edition of the Times on the way to my room. Under the heading of “Metropolitan Briefs” there’s always a batch of crime items tagged “From the Police Blotter,” and the last one was the one I was looking for. An unidentified male, white, height approximately five six, weight approximately one forty, age approximately forty-five, had been fished out of the East River with a crushed skull.

It sounded right. I’d have put his age a few years higher and his weight a few pounds lower, but otherwise it sounded very right. I couldn’t know that it was Spinner. I couldn’t even know that the man, whoever he was, had been murdered. The skull damage could have been done after he went into the water. And there was nothing in the item to indicate how long he’d been in the water. If it was more than ten days or so, it wasn’t Spinner; I’d heard from him the Friday before.

I looked at my watch. It wasn’t too late to call someone, but it was far too late to call someone and seem casual about it. And it was too early to open his envelope. I didn’t want to do that until I was very certain he was dead.

I had a couple more drinks than usual, because sleep was a long time coming. In the morning I woke up with a headache and a bad taste in my mouth. I used aspirin and mouthwash and went down to the Red Flame for breakfast. I picked up a later Times , but there was nothing further on the floater. They had the same item as the earlier edition.