Lawrence Block - A Stab in the Dark

She read:

"Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other."

"London's daughter," I said.

"As in the city of London. But that must be what made me think of it. Deep with the first dead lies Charles London's daughter."

"Read it again."

She did.

"Except there's a door there somewhere if I could just find the handle to it. It wasn't some nut that killed her. It was someone with a reason, someone she knew. Someone who purposely made it look like Pinell's handiwork. And the killer's still around. He didn't die or drop out of sight. He's still around. I don't have any grounds to believe that but it's a feeling I can't shake."

"You think it's Doug?"

"If I don't, I'm the only one who doesn't. Even his wife thinks he did it. She may not know that's what she thinks, but why else is she scared of what I'll find?"

"But you think it's somebody else?"

"I think an awful lot of lives changed radically after her death. Maybe her dying had something to do with those changes. With some of them, anyway."

"Doug's obviously. Whether he killed her or not."

"Maybe it affected other lives, too."

"Like a stone in a pond? The ripple effect?"

"Maybe. I don't know just what happened or how. I told you, it's a matter of a hunch, a feeling. Nothing concrete that I can point at."

"Your cop instincts, is that it?"

I laughed. She asked what was funny. I said, "It's not so funny. I've had all day to wonder about the validity of my cop instincts."

"How do you mean?"

And so I wound up telling her more than I'd planned. About everything from Anita's phone call to a kid with a gravity knife. Two nights ago I'd found out what a good listener she was, and she was no worse at it this time around.

When I was done she said, "I don't know why you're down on yourself. You could have been killed."

"If it was really a mugging attempt."

"What were you supposed to do, wait until he stuck a knife into you? And why was he carrying a knife in the first place? I don't know what a gravity knife is, but it doesn't sound like something you carry around in case you need to cut a piece of string."

"He could have been carrying it for protection."

"And the roll of money? It sounds to me as though he's one of those closet cases who pick up gay men and rob them, and sometimes beat them up or kill them while they're at it to prove how straight they are. And you're worrying because you gave a kid like that a bloody lip?"

I shook my head. "I'm worrying because my judgment wasn't sound."

"Because you were drunk."

"And didn't even know it."

"Was your judgment off the night you shot the two holdup men? The night that Puerto Rican girl got killed?"

"You're a pretty sharp lady, aren't you?"

"A fucking genius."

"That's the question, I guess. And the answer is no, it wasn't. I hadn't had much to drink and I wasn't feeling it. But—"

"But you got echoes just the same."

"Right."

"And didn't want to look straight at them, any more than Karen Ettinger wants to look straight at the fact that she thinks her husband might have murdered his first wife."

"A very sharp lady."

"They don't come any sharper. Feel better now?"

"Uh-huh."

"Talking helps. But you kept it so far inside you didn't even know it was there." She yawned. "Being a sharp lady is tiring work."

"I can believe it."

"Want to go to bed?"

"Sure."

But I didn't stay the night. I thought I might, but I was still awake when her breathing changed to indicate that she was sleeping. I lay first on one side and then on the other, and it was clear I wasn't ready to sleep. I got out of bed and padded quietly into the other room.

I dressed, then stood at the window and looked out at Lispenard Street. There was plenty of Scotch left but I didn't want to drink any of it.

I let myself out. A block away on Canal Street I managed to flag a cab. I got uptown in time to catch the last half-hour or so at Armstrong's, but I said the hell with it and went straight to my room.

I got to sleep eventually.

I had a night of dreams and shallow sleep. The dog, Bandy, turned up in one of the dreams. He wasn't really dead. His death had been faked as part of some elaborate scam. He told me all this, told me too that he'd always been able to talk but had been afraid to disclose this talent. "If I'd only known," I marveled, "what conversations we could have had!"

I awoke refreshed and clearheaded and fiercely hungry. I had bacon and eggs and home fries at the Red Flame and read the News . They'd caught the First Avenue Slasher, or at the least had arrested someone they said was the Slasher. A photograph of the suspect bore a startling resemblance to the police artist's sketch that had run earlier. That doesn't happen too often.

I was on my second cup of coffee when Vinnie slid into the booth across from me. "Woman in the lobby," he said.

"For me?"

He nodded. "Young, not bad-looking. Nice clothes, nice hair. Gave me a couple of bucks to point you out when you came in. I don't even know if you're comin' back, so I figured I'd take a chance, look here and there and see if I could find you. I got Eddie coverin' the desk for me.

You comin' back to the hotel?"

"I hadn't planned to."

"What you could do, see, you could look her over and gimme a sign to point you out or not point you out. I'd just as soon earn the couple of bucks, but I'm not gonna go and retire on it, you know what I mean? If you want to duck this dame—"

"You can point me out," I said. "Whoever she is."

He went back to the desk. I finished my coffee and the paper and took my time returning to the hotel. When I walked in Vinnie nodded significantly toward the wing chair over by the cigarette machine, but he needn't have bothered. I'd have spotted her without help. She looked utterly out of place, a well-groomed, well-coiffed, color-coordinated suburban princess who'd found her way to the wrong part of Fifty-seventh Street. A few blocks east she might have been having an adventure, making the rounds of the art galleries, looking for a print that would go well with the mushroom-toned drapes in the family room.

I let Vinnie earn his money, strolled past her, stood waiting for the elevator. Its doors were just opening when she spoke my name.

I said, "Hello, Mrs. Ettinger."

"How—"

"Saw your picture on your husband's desk. And I probably would have recognized your voice, although I've only heard it over the phone." The blonde hair was a little longer than in the picture in Douglas Ettinger's photo cube, and the voice in person was less nasal, but there was no mistaking her. "I heard your voice a couple of times. Once when I called you, once when you called me, and again when I called you back."

"I thought that was you," she said. "It frightened me when the phone rang and you didn't say anything."

"I just wanted to make sure I'd recognized the voice."

"I called you since then. I called twice yesterday."

"I didn't get any messages."

"I didn't leave any. I don't know what I'd have said if I reached you. Is there someplace more private where we can talk?"

I took her out for coffee, not to the Red Flame but to another similar place down the block. On the way out Vinnie tipped me a wink and a sly smile. I wonder how much money she'd given him.

Less, I'm sure, than she was prepared to give me. We were no sooner settled with our coffee than she put her purse on the table and gave it a significant tap.

"I have an envelope in here," she announced. "There's five thousand dollars in it."