Lawrence Block - A Ticket To The Boneyard

The bad news was that they hadn't turned up a single print of Motley's anywhere in the Cleary apartment. The good news, if you wanted to call it that, was the lack of prints at strategic spots on the frame and sill of the window she went out of, which tended to indicate that someone had either taken care not to leave prints or had wiped them away after the body cleared the window. You couldn't call it evidence, people don't leave a print every time they touch a surface, but it helped confirm for us something we already knew. That Toni Cleary hadn't killed herself. That she had help.

All I could think of to do was what I'd already been doing. Talking to people. Knocking on doors. Showing his sketch around, and passing out copies of it, along with cards from my diminishing supply.

That made me think of Jim Faber, who'd printed them as a gift to me. Call your sponsor — that's what you heard all the time in meetings. Don't drink, go to meetings, read the Big Book, call your sponsor. I wasn't drinking and I'd been going to meetings. I couldn't think what the Big Book might have to say about playing hide-and-seek with a vengeful psychopath, nor did I figure Jim was an authority on the subject. I called him anyway.

"Maybe there's nothing you can do," he said.

"That's a helpful thought."

"I don't know if it's helpful or not. It's probably not very encouraging."

"Not very, no."

"But maybe it is. Maybe it's just a way of acknowledging that you're already taking all the appropriate actions. Finding a man who doesn't want to be found in a city the size of New York must be like finding the proverbial needle in the equally proverbial haystack."

"Something like that."

"Of course, if you could involve the police—"

"I've been trying. There's a limit to what they can do at this stage."

"So it sounds as though you're doing everything you can, and beating yourself up because you can't do more. And worrying because the whole thing's out of your control."

"Well, it is."

"Of course it is. We can't control how things turn out. You know that. All we can do is take the action and turn over the results."

"Just take your best shot and walk away from it."

"That's right."

I thought about it. "If my best shot's not good enough, other people get it in the neck."

"I get it. You can't let go of the controls because the stakes are too high."

"Well—"

"You remember the Third Step?" I did, of course, but he felt compelled to quote it anyway. " 'Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.' You can turn over the small stuff, but when it's nitty-gritty time you have to take control of it yourself."

"I get the point."

"You want to get a handle on the Third Step? Here's a two-point program for you. A — just turn over the small stuff. B — it's all small stuff."

"Thanks," I said.

"You all right, Matt? You're not going to drink, are you?"

"No. I'm not going to drink."

"Then you're all right."

"Yeah, I'm terrific," I said. "You know, someday I'm going to call you and you're going to tell me what I want to hear."

"Entirely possible. But the day that happens is the day you better get yourself another sponsor."

I checked the desk around six and there was a message to call Joe Durkin. He'd left for the day but I had his home number. "I just thought you'd want to know," he said. "I talked to the assistant medical examiner and he said forget it. He said it was hard to tell where one of them started and the other left off. He said, 'Tell your friend to go up to the top of the Empire State Building and throw down a grapefruit. Then tell him to go on down to the sidewalk and try to figure out what part of Florida it came from.' "

"Well, we tried," I said. "That's the important thing."

I hung up, thinking that Jim would have been proud of me. My attitude was improving by leaps and bounds, and any minute now I'd be a prime candidate for canonization.

Of course it didn't change anything. We still had nothing, and were going nowhere.

I went to a meeting that night.

My feet, creatures of habit, started heading for St. Paul's shortly after eight. I got to within a block of the big old church and something stopped me.

I wondered whom I'd be endangering by showing up there.

The thought sent a chill through me, as though someone had drawn a piece of chalk squeaking across the Great Blackboard in the Sky. My aunt Peg, God rest her, would have said that a goose just walked over my grave.

I felt like a leper, a Typhoid Mary, carrying a virus that could turn the innocent into homicide victims. For the first time since I'd walked in the door, it was unsafe for me to go to a meeting of my home group. Not unsafe for me, but unsafe for others.

I told myself it didn't make sense, but I couldn't shake the feeling. I turned and retreated to the corner of Fifty-eighth and Ninth and tried to think straight. It was Tuesday. Who else had a meeting on Tuesday night?

I caught a cab and got out at Cabrini Hospital, on East Twentieth. The meeting was in a conference room on the third floor. The speaker had a full head of wavy gray hair and an engaging smile. He was a former advertising account executive and he had been married six times. He had sired a total of fourteen children with his various wives, and he had not filed an income-tax return since 1973.

"Things got a little out of hand," he said.

Now he was a sporting-goods salesman in a discount retail store on Park Avenue South, and he lived alone. "All my life I was afraid of being alone," he said, "and now I've discovered that I like it."

Good for you, I thought.

There was no one I knew at the meeting, although there were a few familiar faces in the room. I didn't raise my hand during the discussion and I ducked out before the closing prayer, slipping away without saying a word to anybody.

It was cold out. I walked a few blocks, then caught a bus.

Jacob was on duty, and he told me I'd had some phone calls. I glanced at my box. There was nothing in it.

"She didn't leave a message."

"It was a woman?"

"Believe so. Same one each time, asked for you, said she would call back. Seems like she calls every fifteen, twenty minutes."

I went upstairs and called Elaine, but it hadn't been her. We talked for a few minutes. Then I hung up and the phone rang.

The voice was a rich contralto. Without preamble she said, "I'm taking a big chance."

"How?"

"If he knew about this," she said, "I'd be dead. He's a killer."

"Who is?"

"You ought to know. Your name is Scudder, isn't it? Aren't you the man's been showing his picture all over the street?"

"I'm the man."

There was a stretch of silence. I could tell she hadn't hung up, but I wondered if she might have set the phone down and walked away. Then, her voice little more than a whisper, she said, "I can't talk now. Stay where you are. I'll call back in ten minutes."

It was more like fifteen. This time she said, "I'm scared, man. He'd kill me in a hot second."

"Then why call me?"

" 'Cause he might kill me anyway."

"Just tell me where I can find him. It won't get back to you."

"Yeah?" She considered this. "You got to meet me," she said.

"All right."

"We got to talk, you know? Before I tell you anything."

"All right. Pick a time and a place."

"Shit. What time is it now? Close to eleven. Meet me at midnight. Can you do that?"

"Where?"

"You know the Lower East Side?"

"I can find my way around."

"Meet me at — shit, I'm crazy to do this." I waited her out. "Place called the Garden Grill. That's on Ridge Street just below Stanton. You know where that is?"

"I'll find it."

"It's on the right-hand side of the street if you're going downtown. And there's steps leading down from the street. If you're not looking for it you could miss it."