Lawrence Block - A Walk Among the Tombstones

”You’re saying we got no chance.”

”No,” I said. ”That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying an investigation has to do something besides work with the clues they left behind. One starting point lies in the fact that they got away with almost half a million dollars. There’s two things they could do, and either one could spotlight them.”

Kenan thought about it. ”Spend it’s one of them,” he said. ”What’s the other?”

”Talk about it. Crooks talk all the time, especially when they’ve got something to brag about, and sometimes they talk to people who’ll happily sell them out. The trick is to get the word out so those people know who the buyer is.”

”You’ve got an idea how to do that?”

”I’ve got a lot of ideas,” I admitted. ”Earlier you wanted to know to what extent I was still a cop. I don’t know, but I still approach this kind of problem the way I did when I carried a badge, turning it this way and that until I can get some kind of grip on it. In a case like this one I can immediately see several different lines of investigation to pursue. There’s every chance in the world that none of them will lead anywhere, but they’re still the approaches that ought to be tried.”

”So you want to give it a shot?”

I looked down at my notebook. I said, ”Well, I have two problems. The first one I think I mentioned to Pete on the phone. I’m supposed to go to Ireland the end of the week.”

”On business?”

”Pleasure. I just made the arrangements this morning.”

”You could cancel.”

”I could.”

”You lose any money canceling, your fee from me’d make that up to you. What’s the other problem?”

”The other problem’s what use you’ll make of whatever I might turn up.”

”Well, you know the answer to that.”

I nodded. ”That’s the problem.”

”Because you can’t make a case against them, prosecute them for kidnapping and homicide. There’s no evidence of any crime committed, there’s just a woman who disappeared.”

”That’s right.”

”So you must know what I want, what the point of all this is. You want me to say it?”

”You might as well.”

”I want those fuckers dead. I want to be there, I want to do it, I want to see them die.” He said this calmly, levelly, in a voice with no emotion in it. ”That’s what I want,” he said. ”Right now I want it so bad I don’t want anything else. I can’t imagine ever wanting anything else. That about what you figured?”

”Just about.”

”People who’d do something like this, take an innocent woman and turn her into cutlets, does it bother you what happens to them?”

I thought about it, but not for very long. ”No,” I said.

”We’ll do what has to be done, me and my brother. You won’t have a part of that.”

”In other words I’d just be sentencing them to death.”

He shook his head. ”They sentenced themselves,” he said. ”By what they did. You’re just helping play out the hand. What do you say?”

I hesitated.

He said, ”You’ve got another problem, don’t you? My profession.”

”It’s a factor,” I said.

”That line about selling crack to schoolchildren. I don’t, uh, set up shop in the schoolyard.”

”I didn’t figure you did.”

”Properly speaking, I’m not a dealer. I’m what they call a trafficker. You understand the distinction?”

”Sure,” I said. ”You’re the big fish that manages to stay out of the nets.”

He laughed. ”I don’t know that I’m big particularly. In certain respects the middle-level distributors are the biggest, do the most volume. I deal in weight, meaning I either bring product in in quantity or I buy it from the person who brings it in and turn it over to someone who sells smaller amounts. My customer probably does more business than I do because he’s buying and selling all the time, where I may only do two or three deals a year.”

”But you make out all right.”

”I make out. It’s hazardous, you’ve got the law to worry about and you’ve got people looking to rip you off. Where the risks are high the rewards are generally high also. And the business is there. People want the product.”

”By product you mean cocaine.”

”Actually I don’t do much with coke. Most of my business is heroin. Some hash, but mostly heroin the past couple of years. Look, I’ll tell you right out, I’m not gonna apologize for it. People take it, they get hooked, they rob their mother’s purse, they break into houses, they OD and die with needles in their arms, they share needles and get AIDS. I know the whole story. There’s people who make guns, people who distill liquor, people who grow tobacco. How many people a year die of liquor and tobacco compared to the number die from drugs?”

”Alcohol and tobacco are legal.”

”What difference does that make?”

”It makes some kind of difference. I’m not sure how much.”

”Maybe. I don’t see it myself. Either case, the product is dirty. It kills people, or it’s the substance they use to kill themselves or each other. One thing in my favor, I don’t advertise what I sell, I don’t have lobbyists in Congress, I don’t hire PR people to tell the public the shit I sell is good for them. The day people stop wanting drugs is the day I find something else to buy and sell, and I won’t whine about it and look for the government to give me a federal subsidy, either.”

Peter said, ”It’s still not lollipops you’re selling, babe.”

”No, it’s not. The product’s dirty. I never said it wasn’t. But what I do I do clean. I don’t screw people, I don’t kill people, I deal fair and I’m careful who I deal with. That’s why I’m alive and that’s why I’m not in jail.”

”Have you ever been?”

”No. I’ve never been arrested. So if that’s a consideration, how it would look, you working for a known dope dealer—”

”That’s not a consideration.”

”Well, from an official standpoint, I’m not a known dealer. I won’t say there’s nobody in the Narcotics Squad or the DEA who knows who I am, but I don’t have a record. I’ve never to my knowledge been the official subject of an investigation. My house isn’t bugged and my phone’s not tapped. I’d know if it was, I told you about that.”

”Yes.”

”Sit still a minute, I want to show you something.” He went into another room and came back with a picture, a five-by-seven color shot in a silver frame. ”That’s at our wedding,” he said. ”That’s two years ago, not quite two years, be two years in May.”

He was in a tuxedo and she was all in white. He was smiling hugely, while she was not smiling, as I think I mentioned earlier. She was beaming, though, and you could see that she was radiant with happiness.

I didn’t know what to say.

”I don’t know what they did to her,” he said. ”That’s one of the things I won’t let myself think about. But they killed her and they butchered her, they made some kind of dirty joke out of her, and I have to do something about it because I’ll die if I don’t. I’d do it all myself if I could. In fact we tried, me and Petey, but we don’t know what to do, we don’t have the knowledge, we don’t know the moves. The questions you asked before, the approach you took, if nothing else it showed me that this is an area where I don’t know what I’m doing. So I want your help and I can pay you whatever I have to, money’s not a problem, I’ve got plenty of money and I’ll spend whatever I have to. And if you say no I’ll either find someone else or try to do it myself because what the hell else am I gonna do?” He reached across the table and took the picture away from me and looked at it. ”Jesus, what a perfect day that was,” he said, ”and all the days since, and then it all turned to shit.” He looked at me. He said, ”Yes, I’m a trafficker, a dope dealer, whatever you want to call it, and yes, it’s my intention to kill these fucks. So that’s all out on the table. What do you say? Are you in or out?”