Lawrence Block - A Stab in the Dark

The refrigerator in Syosset had had an automatic ice maker.

Where did you get an icepick? How much did they cost? I was suddenly full of icepick questions. I walked around, found a five-and-ten, asked a clerk in the housewares department where I'd find an icepick. She shunted me to the hardware department, where another clerk told me they didn't carry icepicks.

"I guess they're out of date," I said.

She didn't bother to answer. I walked around some more, stopped at a storefront that sold hardware and kitchen things. The fellow behind the counter was wearing a camel-hair cardigan and chewing the stub of a cigar. I asked if he carried icepicks and he turned without a word and came back with one stapled to a piece of cardboard.

"Ninety-eight cents," he said. "Is one-oh-six with the tax."

I didn't really want it. I had just wondered at price and availability. I paid for it anyway. Outside I stopped at a wire trash basket and discarded the brown paper bag and the piece of cardboard and examined my purchase. The blade was four or five inches long, the point sharp. The handle was a cylinder of dark wood. I held it alternately in one hand and then the other, dropped it back in my pocket.

I went back into the store. The man who'd sold it to me looked up from his magazine. "I just bought that icepick from you," I said.

"Something wrong with it?"

"It's fine. You sell many of them?"

"Some."

"How many?"

"Don't keep track," he said. "Sell one now and then."

"What do people buy them for?"

He gave me the guarded look you get when people begin to wonder about your sanity. "Whatever they want," he said. "I don't guess they pick their teeth with 'em, but anything else they want."

"You been here long?"

"How's that?"

"You had this store a long time?"

"Long enough."

I nodded, left. I didn't ask him who'd bought an icepick from him nine years ago. If I had, he wouldn't have been the only one doubting my sanity. But if someone had asked him that question right after Barbara Ettinger was killed, if someone had asked him and every other housewares and hardware dealer in that part of Brooklyn, and if they'd shown around the appropriate photographs and asked a few other appropriate questions, maybe they would have come up with Barbara's killer then and there.

No reason to do so. No reason to think it was anything but what it looked like, another score for the Icepick Prowler.

I walked around, my hand gripping the butt end of the icepick in my pocket. Handy little thing. You couldn't slash with it, you could only stab, but it would still do a pretty good job on someone.

Was it legal to carry it? The law classified it not as a deadly weapon but as a dangerous instrument. Deadly weapons are things like loaded guns, switch knives, gravity knives, daggers, billies, blackjacks and brass knuckles, articles with no function but murderous assault. An icepick had other uses, though the man who sold it hadn't managed to tell me any of them.

Still, that didn't mean you could carry it legally. A machete's a dangerous instrument in the eyes of the law, not a deadly weapon, but you're not allowed to carry one through the streets of New York.

I took the thing out of my pocket a couple of times and looked at it. Somewhere along the way I dropped it through a sewer grating.

Had the icepick used on Barbara Ettinger vanished the same way? It was possible. It was even possible that it had been dropped down that very sewer grating. All kinds of things were possible.

The wind was getting worse instead of better. I stopped for another drink.

I lost track of the time. At one point I looked at my watch and it was twenty-five minutes of four. I remembered that I was supposed to meet Lynn London at four o'clock. I didn't see how I could get there on time. Still, she was in Chelsea, it wouldn't take all that long—

Then I caught myself. What was I worrying about? Why break my neck to keep an appointment when she wouldn't be keeping it herself? Because her father would have talked to her, either early that morning or late the night before, and she'd know by now that there'd been a change in the London family policy. Matthew Scudder was no longer representing the best interests of the Londons. He was persisting in his folly for reasons of his own, and perhaps he had the right to do this, but he couldn't count on the cooperation of Charles London or his schoolmarm daughter.

"You say something?"

I looked up, met the warm brown eyes of the bartender. "Just talking to myself," I said.

"Nothin' wrong with that."

I liked his attitude. "Might as well give me another," I said. "And take something for yourself while you're at it."

I called Jan twice from Brooklyn and her line was busy both times. When I got back to Manhattan I called her again from Armstrong's and got another busy signal. I finished a cup of coffee with a shot in it and tried her again and the line was still busy.

I had the operator check the line. She came back and told me the receiver was off the hook. There's a way they can make the phone ring even if you've taken it off the hook, and I thought about identifying myself as a policeman and getting her to do that, but decided to let it go.

I had no right to interrupt the woman. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she had company.

Maybe there was a man there, or a woman. It was no business of mine.

Something settled in my stomach and glowed there like a hot coal. I had another cup of bourbon-flavored coffee to drown it.

The evening hurried on by. I didn't really pay it too much attention. My mind tended to drift.

I had things to think about.

At one point I found myself on the phone, dialing Lynn London's number. No answer. Well, she'd told me she had tickets for a concert. And I couldn't remember why I was calling her, anyway. I'd already decided there was no point. That was why I'd missed my appointment with her.

Not that she'd have shown up herself. Would have left me standing there, feeling stupid.

So I called Jan again. Still busy.

I thought about going over there. Wouldn't take too long by cab. But what was the point? When a woman takes her phone off the hook it's not because she's hoping you'll come knock on her door.

Hell with her.

Back at the bar, somebody was talking about the First Avenue Slasher. I gathered he was still at large. One of the surviving victims had described how the man had attempted to start a conversation with him before showing his weapon and attacking.

I thought about the little article I'd read about muggers asking you the time or directions. Don't talk to strangers, I thought.

"That's the trouble with this place tonight," I said. "Too many strangers."

A couple of people looked at me. From behind the bar, Billie asked me if I was all right.

"I'm fine," I assured him. "Just that it's too crowded tonight. No room to breathe."

"Probably a good night to turn in early."

"You said it."

But I didn't feel like turning in, just like getting the hell out of there. I went around the corner to McGovern's and had a quick one. The place was dead so I didn't hang around. I hit Polly's Cage across the street and left when the jukebox started getting on my nerves.

The air outside was bracing. It struck me that I'd been drinking all day and that it added up to a hell of a lot of booze, but I seemed to be handling it fine. It wasn't affecting me at all. I was wide awake, clear-minded, clear-headed. It'd be hours before I'd be able to sleep.

I circled the block, stopped at a hole in the wall on Eighth Avenue, stopped again at Joey Farrell's. I felt restless and combative and got out of there when the bartender said something that irritated me. I don't remember what it was.

Then I was walking. I was on Ninth Avenue across the street from Armstrong's, walking south, and there was something hanging in the air that was putting me on my guard. Even as I was wondering at the feeling, a young man stepped out of a doorway ten yards ahead of me.