Lawrence Block - After the First Death

I kept on going, expecting to be shot yet never even considering the possibility of giving myself up. It was not bravery. It just did not occur to me. I kept going, and I dropped from the bottom of the fire escape and hit the garbage can, and it skidded crazily out from under me. I landed badly, one leg doubled up under me, pain flickering in colored lights. Another pair of shots, and not for warning this time. One hit the garbage can. I ran. There was more shooting, a steady barrage of it, as I ran across to the window I had kicked in earlier. None of the bullets came particularly close. It was dark, and they had to shoot almost vertically, and I suppose that helped. I dove through the window, squeezed past the furnace, raced for the stairs. The door of the super’s apartment burst open in front of me and a huge Negro with a cloth cap and no shirt stepped out, blocking my way. I said, “Turk!” but of course it wasn’t Turk, it wasn’t anyone I had ever known.

I ran straight into him. We bounced off each other, and I made a fist and threw one enormous punch at him. If he had dodged it I am sure I would have fallen down. But he was as surprised as I, and my fist found what must have been precisely the right spot on his chin. His eyes went absolutely blank and he began falling in slow motion. I ran on, to the stairs, up the stairs, down the hall, out the door.

Running, running. I knew that I ought to stop, that I had to walk normally and melt away into the shadows, but my brain couldn’t convey this message to my legs. If the police had circled the block they would have seen me, and that would have been that. But luck held. After three blocks I managed at last to turn off the running and drop into a darkened doorway. My heart was hammering and no matter how deeply I breathed I couldn’t suck in enough air. I thought I was having a heart attack. I held onto the side of the building, and that didn’t work, and I sat down on the stairs and went on gulping air and trying to catch my breath.

It would have been very easy to black out then. I felt it coming on, waves of dark nausea and exhaustion, working at once upon stomach and head. It was drowning me. I fought it, and clenched my teeth and took deep breaths, and I stayed on top of it, until finally everything came back to what passes for normal.

Then, when I was once again steady, I began to hear the gunshots again, to feel bullets slapping at the pavement on either side of me. I had been too busy at the time to be properly terrified. Now, after the fact, I started to shake as if palsied. I couldn’t stop trembling.

Stupid, stupid. Of course the apartment was empty. Naturally the police would come and take everything away. And, even if they hadn’t, my landlord would surely empty the apartment prefatory to renting it to someone else. He would hardly hold it for me. Though the rent was paid through the first of the month, he had every right to expect that I would not be back.

I walked a couple of blocks, heading uptown and west. I managed to get past a good number of bars, and when I finally entered one it was less for want of a drink than to use the men’s room. I was a mess, one hand cut, the other slightly bruised, my clothes dirty from the fall. I washed my hands and face and brushed off my slacks as well as I could. I was still something of a mess, but now at least I looked presentable enough to return to my hotel without raising eyebrows.

But the shaking wouldn’t quit. So on the way out I stopped at the bar, telling myself I was going to have a drink because I damn well needed a drink, and telling myself also that one drink was absolutely all I was going to have.

I took a shot of bar rye, took it neat with water back, and gagged on it but kept it down. And drank the water chaser, and had another glass of water after that, and walked out knowing that I did not need a second drink, and that, thank God, I did not want a second drink.

The one drink helped. It took the edge off and stopped the shaking. I walked the rest of the way to Union Square and took the subway back to my hotel.

The hotel room got to me. I couldn’t sit still. I took a shower and cleaned the rest of the grime from my clothes. I almost forgot the dye and washed my hair. A little water did get on it, but no harm was done.

Then I sat around the room, and tried to look at the television set. I caught the eleven o’clock news. I didn’t get much of a play this time, just that I was still being sought They hadn’t received anything on the debacle at my apartment building-perhaps the police actually thought it was a burglar and not me at all. And if Morton Pillion had told the police that I’d spoken to him, they had decided to keep it a secret for the time being.

I turned off the set and started pacing the room. I had to get started, and the night had to be the best time for it. There were people I had to talk to. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, but I didn’t want to sit still either. I got dressed again and went out.

I called Doug MacEwan from a pay phone. He answered, and I rang off without saying anything.

He lived with his wife and son in one of the new buildings in Washington Heights. I walked across town and took a subway up to his place. I was getting over the nervousness of being among people now. After the shower, when I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror, I looked less like me than ever before. It wasn’t just the gray hair. My face looked older. In just a few days I had lived some new lines and creases into it. Ones that wouldn’t wash off.

I didn’t want to ring MacEwan’s bell. I didn’t want to give him the chance to call the police while I rode the elevator to his floor. So I waited into the shadows until a woman was opening the door, and then I moved after her, holding my hotel key in my hand. I must have looked as though I belonged, because she held the door for me. We took the elevator together, and told each other what a nice evening it was, and how we hoped it would stay warm and clear for the rest of the week. She got off at the fifth floor. I rode on up to the sixteenth, and knocked on Doug’s door.

He answered it in pajamas and a bathrobe. Evidently I looked enough unlike myself to put him off balance for a second or two. Then he did a take and stepped nervously backward, and I followed him inside and closed the door.

He said, “Oh, Christ.”

“I need help, Doug.”

“Yes, I’ll bet you do. Jesus, you look awful. Did you go gray overnight or what?”

“It’s dyed.”

“I thought you’d be out of town by now. Or caught I looked all over that corner for you last night, I had the money, and I couldn’t find you. What the hell happened?”

So evidently he had kept our date. I felt momentarily bad for not trusting him.

“There were cops around,” I said. “I got rattled, I ran.”

“You want the dough? I’ll-”

“It’s not important. Not right this minute.” I took a breath. “We have to talk. What I said last night was serious. I didn’t kill the girl. And that means I didn’t kill the first one, either. Somebody’s framing me, Doug. I’ve got to find out who.”

“The police-”

“The police won’t look any farther than me. I’ve got to come up with something more than what I know myself. Once I do that, then I’ll go for the police on a dead run. Until then I’ve got to do it on my own.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Information. There are things I have to know. Somebody did it to me, then somebody must have had a reason. I can only think of two reasons so far. There might be more, but I can only think of two of them. The job and Gwen.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“They were the only two things I had that somebody might want to take away from me. My job and my wife. What do you know about Gwen s new husband?”