Lawrence Block - A Ticket To The Boneyard

"You had a story to tell. Is there anybody else who's heard the whole of it?"

"No."

"You came here to tell it. You wanted to tell it here and you wanted to tell it to me. Why?"

"I don't know."

"It had nothing to do with the gun. What if I'd had no gun for you?" His eyes, cool and green as his mother's homeland, took my measure. "We'd be here just the same," he said. "Saying these words."

"Why did you let me have the gun?"

"Why not? It was doing me no good locked in the safe. I have other guns I can lay my hands on, if I feel the sudden need to shoot somebody. Why not give it to you?"

"Suppose you hadn't had one. You know what you'd have done? You'd have called around and gone out and found one."

"Why would I do that?"

"I don't know," I said, "but it's what you would have done. I don't know why."

He sat there thinking about it. I went to the men's room and stood at a urinal full of cigarette butts. My urine had a slight pink cast to it, but it was a lot less alarming than it had been lately. My kidney seemed to be mending.

On the way back I went behind the bar and helped myself to a glass of club soda. When I got back to the table Ballou was on his feet. "Come on," he said. "Grab your coat, we'll get some air."

He kept his car in a twenty-four-hour lot on Eleventh Avenue. It was a big silver Cadillac with tinted glass all around. The attendant treated it and its owner with respect.

The city was still, the streets next to empty. We cruised across town, turned right at Second Avenue. As we crossed Thirty-fourth Street he said, "You ought to look at the house he's staying in. As much as you paid for the address, you'll want to know it's not an empty lot."

"That's not a bad idea. The last empty lot I went into didn't turn out so well for me."

He parked in a bus stop and I checked my notebook and walked around the corner to the address Brian had given me. The building was a six-story tenement, its ground floor now occupied by a tailor. A sign, hand-lettered, promised reasonable alterations and fast service. I went into the vestibule and checked the names. There were four apartments to a floor, and the tenant in 4-C was Lepcourt.

"The right name's on the bell," I told Mick. "That doesn't mean Motley's living here, but if my guy was making up a story at least he wove a little truth into it."

"Ring the bell," Mick said. "See if he's home."

"No, I don't want to do that. Watch the street, would you? I want to look around."

He stood at the street door while I got the lobby door open, slipping the lock with a credit card. I walked the length of a narrow hallway, past the staircase, and between the doors of the two rear apartments. One-C was the right rear apartment. All the way at the back was a fire door leading to the rear courtyard. I pressed the panic bar and pushed it open, then wedged a toothpick into the locking mechanism to avoid locking myself out.

My presence in the courtyard alarmed a couple of rats and sent them scuttling for cover. I made my way to the back of the tiny area and counted windows to determine which was 4-C. My view was imperfect, largely obscured by the fire escape, but I would have been able to tell if there was a light on in the Lepcourt apartment. There wasn't. Not in the room with the rear window, anyway.

If you moved one of the garbage cans and stood on it you could reach the fire escape and either lower the ladder or swing up onto the metal stairs. I actually considered this for a moment before ruling it out as too much risk with too little point. I went back into the building, leaving my toothpick in the lock in case I felt the need to get into the building from the back at some later time. I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and looked at the keyhole, and under the door. No light showed through. I put my ear to the door and couldn't hear anything.

I put a hand in my pocket and touched the little Smith, working it with my fingers like a worry stone while I tried to figure out what to do next. He was either in there or he wasn't. If I knew he was home I could force the door and try to take him by surprise. If I knew the apartment was empty I could try to gain entrance by stealth. I couldn't do either unless I knew if he was there, and I couldn't find that out without running the risk of alerting him. And that was too great a risk. My one edge at this point was that he didn't know I had his address. It wasn't much of an advantage, but I couldn't afford to give it away.

When I got downstairs the entryway was empty. Ballou was outside, leaning against a streetlamp, his butcher's apron a vivid white. We went to his car and he said he was hungry and that he knew a place I'd like. "And they'll pour you a drink without checking the clock first," he said. "That's if they know you."

"I ought to get to sleep," I said.

"You're not even tired."

He was right. I wasn't. I don't know how he knew it, because I must have looked tired, but the whole evening had somehow energized me. He drove downtown and west and parked at a fire hydrant in front of an old-fashioned diner across from the river a few blocks south of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. A white-haired waitress brought us menus. He ordered steak and eggs, the steak rare, the eggs over easy. They had Philadelphia-style scrapple on the menu, and I ordered that with scrambled eggs. And coffee, I said.

"Did you want the special coffee?"

I asked what it was. She looked uncomfortable, and Ballou told her I'd have plain black coffee, but that he'd like the special coffee. At that point I caught on, and I wasn't surprised when the special coffee turned out to be straight scotch served in a coffee mug.

He said, "You can give the police his address."

"I could. I don't know what they'd do with it. I tried to press charges against him and Durkin wouldn't even listen to me."

"There's more," he said. "You have to do this alone."

"Do I?"

"I think you do. It's between the two of you, and that's how it has to be settled."

"That's how it feels to me, too," I admitted. "But it doesn't make sense. It's not as though he's a worthy foe and I have to meet him as an equal. He's a murderous psychopathic son of a bitch and I'd love it if he got hit by a bus crossing the street."

"I'd buy the driver a drink."

"I'd buy him a new bus. But I can't wait for a bus to get him, and there's as much chance of that as the cops bagging him. I got a call earlier from the police lieutenant in Ohio. He did some work on his own, found a motel clerk who ID'd Motley. But nothing like that is going to make a difference in this case. I have to face him myself and I wish I knew why."

"Your business with him is personal."

"Is it? I'm not even in a rage. I was before, God knows, but I used it all up on that big stupid kid in the park. It ran away from me, Mick. I could have killed him."

"Small loss."

"A big loss to me if I went away for it. Anyway, my rage went away somewhere after that. I must be carrying a lot of anger, but I swear to God I can't feel it. I must hate the bastard, but I don't feel that, either. I just feel—"

"What?"

"Driven."

"Ah."

"He's my problem and I have to solve him. Maybe it's because I set him up twelve years ago. I didn't play according to the rules, and everything that's happened since has to be charged to my account. Or maybe it's simpler than that. It's personal to him, and maybe there's no way to avoid buying into his perception of it. Either way, I have to do something about him. He's the boulder in front of my door. If I don't shove him out of the way I'll never leave the house again." I drank the rest of my coffee. The grounds were like sludge on the bottom of the cup. "Except he's an invisible boulder," I said. "I've got a sketch of him based on a pair of twelve-year-old memories. I never get to see him. I keep looking over my shoulder and he's never quite there."