Lawrence Block: A Ticket To The Boneyard

"He was there the other night. In the empty lot."

"Was he? I think back on it and it might as well have happened in a dream. I never quite got to see him. He was behind me almost all the time. The one time I took a swing at him I couldn't really see what I was doing. It was dark as a coal mine in there, all I saw was a shape. Then I was facedown in the dirt, and then I was unconscious, and then I was all by myself. I suppose I should be grateful for the aches and bruises. They were proof the whole thing really happened. Every time I pissed blood I knew I hadn't made it all up."

He nodded, and ran his right forefinger over a scar on the back of his left hand. "Sometimes pain's a great comfort," he said.

"I went to take him down and bring him in," I said. "In a funny way I have a better shot than the cops do. I'm a private citizen, so none of the Supreme Court rulings get in my way. I don't need probable cause to search his dwelling, and I can enter the premises illegally without disqualifying any evidence I turn up. I don't have to read him his rights. If I get a confession out of him, they can't disallow it on the grounds that he didn't get to consult an attorney. I can record anything he says without getting a court order first, and I don't even have to tell him I'm doing it."

The waitress brought me more coffee. I said, "I want him in cuffs and leg irons, Mick. I want to see him sent away and know he won't be coming out again. And I think you're right. I think I have to bring him in myself."

"You may not be able to. You may have to use the gun."

"I'll use it if I have to."

"I'd use it first chance. I'd shoot him in the back."

Maybe I would, too. I couldn't really say what I'd do, or when I might get to do it. Chasing after him was like pursuing mist once the sun came up. So far all I had was an address and an apartment number, and I didn't even know if he really lived there.

When I was a working cop there had been restaurants where I didn't get a check. The owners liked having us around, and I guess they thought our presence was worth the occasional free meal. Evidently some establishments feel similarly about career criminals, because there was no check for us at the diner. We each left five dollars for the waitress, and Mick stopped at the counter to pick up a couple of containers of coffee.

The Cadillac had a ticket on the windshield. He folded it and tucked it in a pocket without comment. The sky was growing light, the morning still and fresh around us. He drove up along the river and over the George Washington Bridge to the Jersey side, then headed north on the Palisades Parkway, pulling off at an overlook high above the Hudson. He parked with the big car's nose against the guardrail and we sat and watched the dawn come up over the city. I don't think either of us had said more than a dozen words since we left the diner, and we didn't speak now.

After a while he got our coffees out of the paper sack and handed one to me. He reached across me to open the glove compartment and removed a half-pint silver flask. He uncapped it and added an ounce or two of whiskey to his coffee. I must have reacted visibly because he turned and raised his brows at me.

"I used to drink coffee that way," I said.

"With twelve-year-old Irish?"

"With any kind of whiskey. Bourbon, mostly."

He capped the flask, took a long pull of the sweetened coffee. "Sometimes," he said, "I wish to God you'd take a drink."

"So you've said."

"But do you know something? If you reached for the flask right now I'd break your arm."

"You just don't want me drinking up your whiskey."

"I don't want you drinking any man's whiskey. And I couldn't tell you why. Have you been up here before?"

"Not in years. And never at this hour."

"It's the best time. In a little while we'll go to mass."

"Oh?"

"The eight o'clock at St. Bernard's. The butchers' mass. You went with me once before. What's so funny?"

"I spend half my life in church basements, and you're the only person I know who goes to church."

"Your sober friends don't go?"

"I suppose some of them must, but if so I haven't heard them talk about it. What do you want to drag me to mass for, Mick? I'm not even a Catholic."

"Weren't you raised one?"

I shook my head. "I was brought up sort of half-assed Protestant.

Nobody in the family went regularly."

"Ah. Well, what difference does it make? You don't have to be a fucking Catholic to go to the fucking mass, do you?"

"I don't know."

"I don't go for God. I don't go for the fucking church. I go because my father went every morning of his life." He took a short pull straight from the flask. "God, that's good. It's too good to put in coffee. I don't know why the old man went and I don't know why I go. Sometimes it's where I want to be after a long night, and it's a good night we've just had. Come to mass with me."

"All right."

He drove back into town and left the car on West Fourteenth in front of Twomey's funeral parlor. The eight o'clock mass was held in a small chapel off the main sanctuary at St. Bernard's. There were less than two dozen people in attendance, perhaps half of them dressed like Mick in white butcher's aprons. When the mass ended they would go to work in the meat markets just south and west of the old church.

I took my cues from the others, standing or sitting or kneeling when they did. When they handed out the communion wafers I stayed where I was. So did Mick, along with three or four of the others.

Back at the car he said, "Where now? Your hotel?"

I nodded. "I ought to get some sleep."

"Wouldn't you sleep better in a place unknown to him? I've an apartment you could use."

"Maybe later," I said. "I'm safe enough for now. He's saving me for last."

20

In front of the Northwestern he shifted the car into park but left the engine running. He said, "You've got the gun."

"In my pocket."

"If you need more shells—"

"If I need more shells I'm in deep trouble."

"Well, if there's anything you need."

"Thanks, Mick."

"Sometimes I wish you drank," he said, "and then I'm glad you don't." He looked at me. "Why is that?"

"I don't know, but I think I understand. Sometimes I wish you didn't drink, and sometimes I'm glad you do."

"I never have nights like this with anybody else."

"Neither do I."

"The mass was all right, wasn't it?"

"It was fine."

He fixed his eyes on me. "Do you ever pray?" he demanded.

"Sometimes I talk to myself. Inside my head, I mean."

"I know what you mean."

"Maybe that's praying. I don't know. Maybe I do it in the hope that something is listening."

"Ah."

"I heard a new prayer the other day. A fellow said it was the most useful one he knew. 'Thank you for everything just as it is.' "

His eyes narrowed and he mouthed the words silently. Then his lips curled into a slow smile. "Oh, that's grand," he said. "Wherever did you hear that one?"

"At a meeting."

"That's the sort of thing you hear at those meetings, is it?" He chuckled, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something else. Then he straightened up in his seat. "Well, I won't keep you," he said. "You'll want to get some sleep."

In my room I shucked off my topcoat and hung it up, then drew the gun out of my jacket pocket. I swung the cylinder out, dumped the shells into the palm of my hand. They were hollow points, designed to expand upon impact. That made them do more damage than standard rounds, but it also lessened the likelihood of a dangerous ricochet, because the slug would shatter into fragments upon impact with a solid surface instead of ricocheting intact.

If I'd had hollow points in my gun some years ago I might not have caused the death of that child in Washington Heights, and who could say what a difference that might have made in all our lives? There was a time when I could drink away hours on end running that one through my mind.