Lawrence Block - A Stab in the Dark

"Raking up the past and disturbing the present? Maybe that's a good definition of my role. When did you decide to call me off?"

"That's not important."

"Ettinger got to you, didn't he? It must have been yesterday.

Saturday's a busy day at the store, they sell a lot of tennis rackets. He probably called you last night, didn't he?" When he hesitated I said, "Go ahead. Tell me it's not important."

"It's not. More to the point, it's not your business, Mr. Scudder."

"I got a wake-up call around one thirty last night from the second Mrs. Ettinger. Did she give you a call about the same time?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"She's got a distinctive voice. I heard it the day before when I called Ettinger at home and she told me he was at the Hicksville store. She called last night to tell me to let the dead stay buried. That seems to be what you want, too."

"Yes," he said. "That's what I want."

I picked a paperweight from the top of his desk. An inch-long brass label identified it as a piece of petrified wood from the Arizona desert.

"I can understand what Karen Ettinger's afraid of. Her husband might turn out to be the killer, and that would really turn her world upside down. You'd think a woman in her position would want to know one way or the other. How comfortable could she be from here on in, living with a man she half-suspects of killing his first wife? But people are funny that way. They can push things out of their minds. Whatever happened was years ago and in Brooklyn. And the wench is dead, right? People move and their lives change, so there's nothing for her to worry about, is there?"

He didn't say anything. His paperweight had a piece of black felt on its bottom to keep it from scratching his desk. I replaced it, felt-side down.

I said, "You wouldn't be worried about Ettinger's world, or his wife's world. What's it to you if they get hassled a little? Unless Ettinger had a way to put pressure on you, but I don't think that's it. I don't think you'd be all that easy to push around."

"Mr. Scudder—"

"It's something else, but what? Not money, not a physical threat. Oh, hell, I know what it is."

He avoided my eyes.

"Her reputation. You're afraid of what I'll find in the grave with her. Ettinger must have told you she was having an affair. He told me she wasn't, but I don't think he's that deeply committed to the truth. As a matter of fact, it does look as though she was seeing a man. Maybe more than one man. That may go against the grain of your sense of propriety, but it doesn't weigh too much against the fact that she was murdered. She may have been killed by a lover. She may have been killed by her husband. There are all sorts of possibilities but you don't want to look at any of them because in the course of it the world might find out that your daughter wasn't a virgin."

For a moment I thought he was going to lose his temper. Then something went out of his eyes. "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave now," he said. "I have some calls to make and I have an appointment scheduled in fifteen minutes."

"I guess Mondays are busy in insurance. Like Saturdays in sporting goods."

"I'm sorry that you're embittered. Perhaps later you'll appreciate my position, but—"

"Oh, I appreciate your position," I said. "Your daughter was killed for no reason by a madman and you adjusted to that reality. Then you had a new reality to adjust to, and that turned out to mean coming to grips with the possibility that someone had a reason to kill her, and that it might be a good reason." I shook my head, impatient with myself for talking too much. "I came here to pick up a picture of your daughter," I said. "I don't suppose you happened to bring it."

"Why would you want it?"

"Didn't I tell you the other day?"

"But you're off the case now," he said. He might have been explaining something to a slow child. "I don't expect a refund, but I want you to discontinue your investigation."

"You want to fire me."

"If you'd prefer to put it that way."

"But you never hired me in the first place. So how can you fire me?"

"Mr. Scudder—"

"When you open up a can of worms you can't just decide to stuff the worms back in the can. There are a lot of things set in motion and I want to see where they lead. I'm not going to stop now."

He had an odd look on his face, as though he was a little bit afraid of me. Maybe I'd raised my voice, or looked somehow menacing.

"Relax," I told him. "I won't be disturbing the dead. The dead are beyond disturbance. You had a right to ask me to drop the case and I've got the right to tell you to go to hell. I'm a private citizen pursuing an unofficial investigation. I could do it more efficiently if I had your help, but I can get along without it."

"I wish you'd let it go."

"And I wish you'd back me up. And wishes aren't horses, not for either of us. I'm sorry this isn't turning out the way you wanted it to. I tried to tell you that might be the case. I guess you didn't want to listen."

On the way down, the elevator stopped at almost every floor. I went out to the street. It was still overcast, and colder than I remembered it. I walked a block and a half until I found a bar. I had a quick double bourbon and left. A few blocks further along I stopped at another bar and had another drink.

I found a subway, headed for the uptown platform, then changed my mind and waited for a train bound for Brooklyn. I got out at Jay Street and walked up one street and down another and wound up in Boerum Hill. I stopped at a Pentecostal church on Schermerhorn. The bulletin board was full of notices in Spanish. I sat there for a few minutes, hoping things would sort themselves out in my mind, but it didn't work. I found my thoughts bouncing back and forth among dead things — a dead dog, a dead marriage, a dead woman in her kitchen, a dead trail.

A balding man wearing a sleeveless sweater over a maroon shirt asked me something in Spanish. I suppose he wanted to know if he could help me. I got up and left.

I walked around some more. A curious thing, I thought, was that I felt somehow more committed to the pursuit of Barbara Ettinger's killer than I had before her father fired me. It was still as hopeless a quest as it had ever been, doubly hopeless now that I wouldn't even have the cooperation of my client. And yet I seemed to believe what I had said to him about forces having been set in motion. The dead were indeed beyond disturbance, but I had set about disturbing the living and sensed that it would lead somewhere.

I thought of poor old Bandersnatch, always game to chase a stick or go for a walk. He'd bring one of his toys to you to signal his eagerness to play. If you just stood there he'd drop it at your feet, but if you tried to take it away from him he'd set his jaw and hang on grimly.

Maybe I'd learned it from him.

I went to the building on Wyckoff Street. I rang Donald Gilman and Rolfe Waggoner's bell. They weren't in. Neither was Judy Fairborn. I walked on past the building where Jan had lived with — what was his name? Edward. Eddie.

I stopped at a bar and had a drink. Just a straight shot of bourbon, not a double. Just a little something, maintenance drinking against the chill in the air.

I decided I was going to see Louis Pinell. For one thing, I'd ask him if he used a different icepick each time he killed. The autopsies hadn't indicated anything one way or the other. Perhaps forensic medicine isn't that highly developed yet.

I wondered where he got the icepicks. An icepick struck me as a damned old-fashioned instrument. What would you ever use it for outside of murder? People didn't have iceboxes any more, didn't have blocks of ice brought by the iceman. They filled trays with water to make ice cubes, or had a gadget in their refrigerator that produced the cubes automatically.