Lawrence Block - A Walk Among the Tombstones

Amusingly enough, Pam herself had gotten a telephone call from a woman at the Queens unit, suggesting that she might find it worth her while to contact this Miss Mardell and see what it was all about. At the time she’d had no idea we were trying this particular approach, so she’d been very uncertain with the woman on the phone, but then we all had a good laugh when she mentioned it to me and found out who this movie producer really was.

As of this afternoon, Monday, I couldn’t see any justification for withholding information from the police, since our so doing would unquestionably hamper their investigation of the two homicides, and since I had no useful course to pursue on my own. I had managed to sell this argument to Pam, who was still more than a little wary of being interrogated again by police officers, but who was more sanguine about it when I told her she could have a lawyer looking after her interests.

And so they were on their way to see Kelly, and I was done chasing lust murderers, and that was that.

“I think it’ll play,” I told Elaine. “I think it covers everything, all the activities I’ve engaged in since the first call I got, except for anything that has to do with Khoury. I don’t see how anything Pam might tell them could lead them toward the investigation I conducted on Atlantic Avenue or the computer games I watched the Kongs play last night. Pam doesn’t know about any of that so she couldn’t spill it even if she wanted to, she never heard the names of Francine or Kenan Khoury. Come to think of it, I’m not sure she knows why I got into the case in the first place. I think all she knows is her cover story.”

“Maybe she believes it.”

“She probably will by the time she’s done telling it. Kap-lan thought it sounded fine.”

“Did you tell him the real story?”

“No, there was no reason to do that. He knows what he’s got is incomplete, but he can be comfortable with it. The important thing is that he’ll keep the cops from ganging up on her and paying more attention to my role in the case than to who did it.”

“Would they do that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what they’d do. There’s a team of serial killers who’ve been doing their little number for over a year now and the NYPD doesn’t even know they exist. It’s going to put a lot of people’s noses out of joint to have a private detective come up with what everybody else missed.”

“So they’ll kill the messenger.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Actually the cops didn’t miss anything obvious. It’s very easy to miss serial murder, especially when different precincts and boroughs get different cases and the unifying elements are the kind that don’t make it into newspaper stories. But they could still hold it against Pam for showing them up, especially given that she’s a hooker and that she didn’t mention that little tidbit first time around.”

“Is she going to mention is now?”

“She’s going to mention now that she used to make ends meet by occasionally prostituting herself. We know they’ve got a sheet on her, she was booked a couple of times for prostitution and loitering with intent. They didn’t find that out when they investigated her case because she was the victim, so there was no compelling need to determine whether she had a record.”

“But you think they should have checked.”

“Well, it was pretty sloppy,” I said. “Hookers are targets for this all the time because they’re so accessible. They could have checked. It should have been automatic.”

“But she’s going to tell them she stopped hooking after she got home from the hospital. That she was afraid to go back to it.”

I nodded. She had quit for a while, scared to death at the thought of getting into a car with a stranger, but old habits die hard and she’d gone back to it. At first she limited herself to car dates, not wanting to risk disappointing or disgusting a man by taking off her shirt, but she’d found that most men didn’t mind her deformity that much. Some found it an interesting peculiarity, while a small minority were extremely excited by it, and became regular clients.

But nobody had to know any of that. So she would be telling them that she had had a couple of jobs waitressing, working off the books in the neighborhood, and that she was being more or less kept by the anonymous benefactor who had referred her to me.

“And what about you?” Elaine wanted to know. “Aren’t you going to have to see Kelly and give him a statement?”

“I suppose so, but there’s no rush. I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see if he needs anything formal from me. He may not. I don’t have anything for him, really, because I didn’t uncover any evidence. I just spotted some invisible links between three existing cases.”

“So for you ze war is over, mein Kapitän ?”

“Looks that way.”

“I’ll bet you’re exhausted. Do you want to go in the other room and lie down?”

“I’d rather stay up so that I can get back on my normal schedule.”

“Makes sense. Are you hungry? Oh my God, you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast, have you? Sit there, I’ll fix us something.”

We had a tossed salad and a big bowl of butterfly pasta with oil and garlic. We ate at the kitchen table, and afterward she made tea for herself and coffee for me and we went into the living room and sat together on the couch. At one point she said something uncharacteristically coarse; when I laughed she asked me what was so funny.

I said, “I love it when you talk street.”

“You think it’s a pose, huh? You think I’m some sheltered hothouse blossom, don’t you?”

“No, I think you’re the rose of Spanish Harlem.”

“I wonder if I could have made it on the street,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m glad I never had to find out. I’ll tell you one thing, though. When this is all over Little Miss Street Smarts is going to come in out of the cold. She can just bundle up her remaining tit and get the hell off the pavement.”

“Are you planning on adopting her?”

“No, and we’re damn well not going to be roommates and do each other’s hair, either. But I can get her a place in a decent house or show her how to build a book and work out of her apartment. If she’s smart you know what she’ll do? Run a couple of ads in Screw letting the tit fanciers out there know they can now get one for the price of two. You’re laughing again, was that street talk?”

“No, it was just funny.”

“Then you’re allowed to laugh. I don’t know, maybe I should just butt out and let her live her life. But I liked her.”

“So did I.”

“I think she deserves better than the street.”

“Everybody does,” I said. “She may come out of this all right. If they get the guys and there’s a trial, she could have her allotted fifteen minutes of fame. And she’s got a lawyer who’ll make sure that nobody gets her story without paying her for it.”

“Maybe there’ll be a TV movie.”

“I wouldn’t rule it out, although I don’t think we can count on Debra Winger playing our friend.”

“No, probably not. Oh, I got it. Are you with me on this? What you do, you get an actress to play her who’s a postmastectomy patient in real life. I mean, are we talking high concept here or what? You see what a statement we’d be making?” She winked. “That’s my show-biz persona. I bet you like my street act better.”

“I’d call it a toss-up.”

“Fair enough. Matt? Does it bother you to work on a case like this and then hand it over to the police?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Why should it? I couldn’t justify keeping it to myself. The NYPD has resources and manpower I don’t have. I’d taken it as far as I could, that end of it, anyway. I’ll still follow up the lead I got last night and see what I can turn up in Sunset Park.”