Lawrence Block - A Walk Among the Tombstones

”Is he still living?”

”No, he died three years ago. He was diabetic, and over the years it weakened his heart. When I’m down on myself I tell myself he died of a broken heart because of how his sons turned out. He was hoping for an architect and a doctor and instead he got a drunk and a dope dealer. But that’s not what killed him. His diet killed him. He was diabetic and he was fifty pounds overweight. Me and Petey could have turned out to be Jonas Salk and Frank Lloyd Wright and it wouldn’t have done him any good.”

Around six Kenan made the first of a series of phone calls after the two of us had worked out an approach. He dialed a number, waited for a tone, then punched in his own number and hung up. ”Now we wait,” he said, but we didn’t have to wait very long. In less than five minutes the phone rang.

He said, ”Hey, Phil, how’s it going? Great. Here’s the deal. I don’t know if you ever met my wife. The thing is, we had this kidnap threat, I had to send her out of the country. I don’t know what it’s about but I think it has to do with the business, you follow me? So what I’m doing, I’ve got a guy checking it out for me, like a professional. And I wanted, you know, to pass the word, because the sense I got is these people are serious about this and my impression is they’re stone killers. Right. Yeah, that’s the thing, man, we sit here and we’re easy marks, we got plenty of cash and we can’t holler for the law, and that makes us the perfect target for home invasions and every goddam thing… Right. So all I’m saying is be careful, you know, and keep an eye and an ear open. And pass the word around, you know, to whoever you think ought to hear it. And if any shit comes down, man, call me, you understand? Right.”

He hung up and turned to me. ”I don’t know,” he said. ”I think all I did was convince him I’m getting paranoid in my old age. ’Why’d you send her out of the country, man? Why not just buy a dog, hire a bodyguard?’ Because she’s dead, you dumb fuck, but I didn’t want to tell him that. If the word gets around it’s got to mean problems. Shit.”

”What’s the matter?”

”What do I tell Francine’s family? Every time the phone rings I’m afraid it’s one of her cousins. Her parents are separated and her mother moved back to Jordan, but her father’s still in the old neighborhood and she’s got relatives all over Brooklyn. What do I tell them?”

”I don’t know.”

”I’ll have to fill them in sooner or later. Time being, I’ll say she went on a cruise, something like that. You know what they’ll figure?”

”Marital problems.”

”That’s it. We’re just back from Negril, so why’s she going on a cruise? Must be trouble between the Khourys. Well, they can think whatever they want. Truth of the matter is we never had a cross word, we never had a bad day. Jesus.” He picked up the phone, punched in a number, keyed in his own number at the tone. He hung up and drummed the tabletop impatiently, and when the phone rang he picked it up and said, ”Hey, man, how’s it going? Oh, yeah? No shit. Hey, here’s the deal…”

I went to the eight-thirty meeting at St. Paul’s. On the way over it had crossed my mind that I might run into Pete Khoury there, but he didn’t show up. Afterward I helped fold chairs, then joined a group of people for coffee at the Flame. I didn’t stay there long, though, because by eleven I was at Poogan’s Pub on West Seventy-second Street, one of the two places where Danny Boy Bell could generally be found between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. The rest of the time you couldn’t count on finding him anywhere.

His other place is a jazz club called Mother Goose on Amsterdam. Poogan’s was closer, so I tried it first. Danny Boy was at his usual table in back, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned black man with a pointed chin and a button nose. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses with mirrored lenses and a powder-blue suit with more in the shoulders than God or Gold’s Gym could have put there. A little cocoa-brown straw hat perched on top of his head, adorned with a flamingo-pink hatband.

I had a Coke at the bar and waited while he finished his business with Danny Boy. After five minutes or so he uncoiled himself from his chair, clapped Danny Boy on the shoulder, laughed heartily, and headed for the street. I turned around to get my change from the bar, and when I turned back again his place had been taken by a balding white man with a brushy mustache and a belly straining at his shirtfront. I hadn’t recognized the first fellow, other then generically, but I knew this man. His name was Selig Wolf and he owned a couple of parking lots and took bets on sporting events. I had arrested him once ages ago on an assault charge, but the complainant had decided not to press it.

When Wolf left I took my second Coke with me and sat down. ”Busy evening,” I said.

”I know,” Danny Boy said. ”Pick a number and wait, it’s getting as bad as Zabar’s. It’s good to see you, Matthew. I saw you before but I had to suffer through the hour of the Wolf. You must know Selig.”

”Sure, but I didn’t know the other fellow. He’s head of fundraising for the United Negro College Fund, right?”

”A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” he said solemnly. ”To think you would waste yours judging by appearances. The gentleman was wearing a sartorial classic, Matthew, known as the zoot suit. That’s a zoot suit, you know, with a drape shape and a reet pleat. My father had one in his closet, a souvenir of his flaming youth. Every now and then he would take it out and threaten to wear it, and my mother would roll her eyes.”

”Good for her.”

”His name is Nicholson James,” Danny Boy said. ”It should have been James Nicholson, but the names were reversed on some official document early on and he decided it had more style that way. You might say it goes with his retro fashion statement. Mr. James is a pimp.”

”Go figure. I never would have guessed.”

Danny Boy poured himself some vodka. His own fashion statement was one of quiet elegance, a tailored dark suit and tie, a boldly patterned red-and-black vest. He is a very short, slightly built albino African-American — it would be way off the mark to call him black, since he’s anything but. He spends his nights in saloons, and he’s partial to dim lighting and low noise levels. He’s as rigid as Dracula about not venturing out in daylight, and rarely answers the phone or the door during those hours. Every night, though, he’s in Poogan’s or Mother Goose, listening to people and telling them things.

”Elaine’s not with you,” he said.

”Not tonight.”

”Give her my love.”

”I will,” I said. ”I brought you something, Danny Boy.”

”Oh?”

I palmed him a pair of hundreds. He looked at the money without flashing it, then glanced at me with his eyebrows elevated.

”I have a prosperous client,” I said. ”He wants me to take cabs.”

”Did you want me to call you one?”

”No, but I thought I ought to spread a little of his dough around. All you have to spread is the word.”

”What word is that?”

I ran through the official story without mentioning Kenan Khoury’s name. Danny Boy listened, frowning occasionally in concentration. When I finished he took out a cigarette, looked at it for a moment, then put it back in the pack.

”A question arises,” he said.

”Go.”

”Your client’s wife is out of the country, and presumably safe from those who would harm her. So he assumes they’ll direct their attention at someone else.”

”Right.”

”Well, why should he care? I love the idea of a public-spirited dope dealer, like all those marijuana growers in Oregon who make huge anonymous cash donations to Earth First and the eco-saboteurs. Well, when I was growing up I liked Robin Hood, as far as that goes. But what difference does it make to your man if the bad guys snatch somebody else’s sweetie? They get the ransom and that just leaves one of his competitors in a negative cash-flow situation, that’s all. Or they screw up and that’s the end of them. As long as his own wife’s out of the picture—”