Lawrence Block - Time to Murder and Create

We had used each other a few times over the months to keep the lonelies away. We liked each other in and out of bed, and both of us had the vital security of knowing it could never lead to anything.

“Matt?”

“I couldn’t do you much good tonight, kid.”

“You could keep me from getting mugged on the way home.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, Mr. Detective, but you don’t know what I mean.” She touched my cheek with her forefinger. “I wouldn’t let you near me tonight anyway. You need a shave.” Her face softened into a smile. “I was offering a little coffee and company,” she said. “I think you could use it.”

“Maybe I could.”

“Plain old coffee and company.”

“All right.”

“Not tea and sympathy, nothing like that.”

“Just coffee and company.”

“Uh-huh. Now tell me it’s the best offer you’ve had all day.”

“It is,” I said. “But that’s not saying a hell of a lot.”

She made good coffee, and she managed to come up with a pint of Harper’s to flavor it with. By the time I was done talking, the pint had gone from mostly full to mostly empty.

I told her most of it. I left out anything that would make Ethridge or Huysendahl identifiable, and I didn’t spell out Henry Prager’s smarmy little secret. I didn’t mention his name, either, although she figured to dope it out for herself if she bothered to read the morning papers.

When I was finished she sat there for a few minutes, head tilted to one side, eyes half lidded, smoke drifting upward from her cigarette. At length she said she didn’t see how I could have done things differently.

“Because suppose you managed to let him know that you weren’t a blackmailer, Matt. Suppose you got a little more evidence together and went to him. You would have exposed him, wouldn’t you?”

“One way or another.”

“He killed himself because he was afraid of exposure, and that was while he thought you were a blackmailer. If he knew you were going to hand him over to the cops, wouldn’t he have done the same thing?”

“He might not have had the chance.”

“Well, maybe he was better off having the chance. Nobody forced him to take it, it was his decision.”

I thought it over. “There’s still something wrong.”

“What?”

“I don’t exactly know. Something doesn’t fit together the way it should.”

“You just have to have something to feel guilty about.” I guess the line hit home enough to show in my face, because she blanched. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Matt, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I was just, you know, being cute.”

“Many a true word is et cetera.” I stood up. “It’ll look better in the morning. Things generally do.”

“Don’t leave.”

“I had the coffee and company, and thanks for both. Now I’d better get on home.”

She was shaking her head. “Stay over.”

“I told you before, Trina—”

“I know you did. I don’t particularly want to fuck either, as a matter of fact. But I really don’t want to sleep alone.”

“I don’t know if I can sleep.”

“Then hold me until I fall asleep. Please, baby?”

We went to bed together and held each other. Maybe the bourbon finally got around to working, or maybe I was more exhausted than I’d realized, but I fell asleep like that, holding her.

I woke up with my head throbbing and a liverish taste in the back of my throat. A note on her pillow advised me to help myself to breakfast. The only breakfast I could face was in the bottle of Harper’s, and I helped myself to it, and, along with a couple of aspirins from her medicine cabinet and a cup of lousy coffee from the deli downstairs, it took some of the edge off the way I felt.

The weather was good and the air pollution lighter than usual. You could actually see the sky. I headed back to the hotel, picking up a paper on the way. It was almost noon. I don’t usually get that much sleep.

I would have to call them, Beverly Ethridge and Theodore Huysendahl. I had to let them know that they were off the hook, that in fact they’d never actually been on it in the first place. I wondered what their reactions would be. Probably a combination of relief and some indignation about having been gulled. Well, that would be their problem. I had enough of my own.

I’d have to see them in person, obviously. I couldn’t manage it over the phone. I didn’t look forward to it, but did look forward to having it behind me. Two brief phone calls and two brief meetings and I would never have to see either of them again.

I stopped at the desk. There was no mail for me, but there was a phone message. Miss Stacy Prager had called. There was a number where I was to call her as soon as possible. It was the number I had dialed from the Lion’s Head.

In my room I checked through the Times . Prager was on the obit page under a two-column headline. Just his obituary, with the statement that he had died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. It was apparent, all right. I was not mentioned in the article. I’d thought that was how his daughter might have gotten my name. Then I looked at the message slip again. She had called around nine the night before, and the first edition of the Times wouldn’t have hit the street before eleven or twelve.

So that meant she’d learned my name from the police. Or that she had heard it earlier, from her father.

I picked up the phone, then put it down again. I did not much want to talk to Stacy Prager. I couldn’t imagine that there was anything I wanted to hear from her, and I knew there was nothing I wanted to say to her. The fact that her father was a murderer was not something she would learn from me, nor would anyone else. Spinner Jablon had had the revenge he’d purchased from me. So far as the rest of the world was concerned, his case could remain in the Open file forever. The police didn’t care who had killed him, and I didn’t feel obliged to tell them.

I picked up the phone again and called Beverly Ethridge. The line was busy. I broke the connection and tried Huysendahl’s office. He was out to lunch. I waited a few minutes and tried the Ethridge number again, and it was still busy. I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes, and the phone rang.

“Mr. Scudder? My name is Stacy Prager.” A young and earnest voice. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in. After I called last night I wound up taking the train so I could be with my mother.”

“I just got your message a few minutes ago.”

“I see. Well, would it be possible for me to talk with you? I’m at Grand Central, I could come to your hotel or meet you wherever you say.”

“I’m not sure how I could help you.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “Maybe you can’t. I don’t know. But you were the last person to see my father alive, and I—”

“I didn’t even see him yesterday, Miss Prager. I was waiting to see him at the time it happened.”

“Yes, that’s right. But the thing is… listen, I’d really like to meet with you, if that’s all right.”

“If there’s anything I could help you with over the telephone—”

“Couldn’t I meet you?”

I asked her if she knew where my hotel was. She said she did, and that she could be there in ten or twenty minutes and she would phone me from the lobby. I hung up and wondered how she had known how to reach me. I’m not in the telephone book. And I wondered if she’d known about Spinner Jablon, and if she’d known about me. If the Marlboro man was her boyfriend, and if she’d been in on the planning…

If so, it was logical to believe that she’d hold me responsible for her father’s death. I couldn’t even argue the point — I felt responsible myself. But I couldn’t really believe she’d have a cute little gun in her handbag. I’d ragged Heaney about watching television. I don’t watch all that much television myself.