Lawrence Block - After the First Death

“Where can I get in touch with you?”

“No place. I’ve been sleeping in alleyways.”

“Is that safe?”

“No. I’ll find a hotel now. Maybe across the river in Jersey, I don’t know. I won’t be staying in any one place very long, I don’t suppose. Safer to keep moving.”

“Suppose something comes up?”

“Put a notice in the Times. The personal column. One of the standard ones. My wife having left my bed and board, I will no longer be responsible for her debts. There’s half a dozen of those every morning, nobody ever reads them, so it’ll be subtle enough. And if I see it, I’ll call you.”

“I wouldn’t want to use my own name. Kay would be furious-”

“Oh, Christ, of course not. Make up a name. Oh, Peter Porter, how’s that? My wife Petunia having left my bed and board- that’ll do it.”

“Peter Porter and his wife Petunia.”

“Perfect. Easy for both of us to remember.”

“Uh-huh.”

We very awkwardly shook hands. He opened the door for me and waited with me for the elevator. It came, and we shook hands again, a little less awkwardly, and he went back to his apartment while I rode down to the lobby.

Peter Porter and his wife Petunia. Simpler to tell him the hotel where I was staying. But I still didn’t trust him, or anyone else.

ON THE SUBWAY RIDE BACK DOWNTOWN I TRIED TO THINK OF something clever to do with what was left of the night. Nothing suggested itself. The night gave me far greater freedom of movement, but one could neither drop in on people nor telephone them at that hour, so that I was left with the freedom to go anywhere and no place to go.

So I went back to my hotel and made more lists. Russell J. Stone. There had to be a way to find out something about him, but how? I would sleep on it. Warren Hayden-he did look out of the picture, it appearing highly unlikely that he would fly in from Peru, cut little Robin’s throat, and then resume his search for the lost city of the Incas, or whatever men sought in the Peruvian wilderness. His actual presence in Peru would need confirmation, and I would find a way to check it out but meanwhile he looked safe.

Pete Landis. He remained on the list with nothing I had learned to confirm him or clear him as the killer. Doug didn’t know him, so there had been no point in bringing up his name.

Don Fischer. I saw his name on the list from before and couldn’t imagine what it was doing there. I had bought an insurance policy from him. What did that have to do with murder? I closed my eyes and saw a pleasant-faced young man with thick glasses and thick eyebrows that had grown together to form one continuous ridge of brow. Gwen’s lover? My enemy? Inconceivable on both counts.

I solemnly crossed off Don Fischer’s name. And began to laugh, because the only suspect-if such a term were advised in my investigations-the only suspect thus far eliminated was a man of whom I had not consciously thought at all since first writing down his name.

Penn’s progress. At this happy rate, I could spend all my days writing down the names of strangers and all my nights crossing them off again, knitting a Penelope’s shawl of suspicion rather than the more purposeful tapestry of Madame DeFarge.

I put my lists away. They bored me. I turned on the television set, and watched several movies which differed each from the other by the number of times the word late appeared in their general titles. In the middle of one of these I turned off the set and got out of my clothes and went to bed.

“Mrs. Stone?”

“Yes.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Stone. I’m Curt Amory of Industrial Research Corp. I’ve a few questions in regard to a survey we’re preparing, and if you’ll give me a minute or two of your time I’ll be able to send you a free gift for your troubles. Could you tell me, for a starter, approximately how many hours a week you and your family watch television?”

“Oh, well, we watch about an hour a night, I suppose, but then I watch now and then in the day time-”

I didn’t much listen. I asked a few more routine questions, a handkerchief stretched over the mouthpiece of the telephone-I had read that this changes one’s voice, though I honestly don’t know why it should.

Then, “Now some statistics, Mrs. Stone. How large is your family?”

“Three of us. Myself, my husband, and our son.”

I hadn’t known about the child.

“Are you native Californians?”

“No. I moved here about four years ago.”

“And Mr. Stone?”

“Moved here ten years ago from Chicago.”

“And his occupation?”

“He’s purchasing director for Interpublic Chemical.”

I went on, picking up a few more facts to help me trace Russell Stone. As the interview progressed there was more and more space before Gwen’s answers, as if she wondered why Industrial Research Corp. was interested in such a mixed bag of trivia. Then the operator cut. in to announce that my three minutes were up, and at that point my once-wife tipped.

“Who is this?”

“Thanks very much for your cooperation,” I said smoothly, “and you’ll be receiving your free gift in the mail, Mrs. Stone-”

“Alex? Is that you? Alex, what’s going on?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Who is this? Alex? I don’t-”

I replaced the receiver and left the booth.

In an irrational way, I was pleased that Gwen had at last recognized my voice. After all, I had been married to the woman for quite some time. And even then, while we were married, I had occasionally found myself thinking of her as rather like those huge new glass and steel apartment buildings. One could live in one of those apartments for fifty years, and the day one finally moved out the apartment would shake itself utterly free of every trace of one’s occupancy; it would be as though one had never been there at all.

So it often seemed with Gwen. I was sure I had made no impression upon her, that in the process of divorcing me she went through the rooms and corridors of her mind, wiping away any traces I might have left therein, tidying up carefully and readying the rooms for the next occupant. I found it startling, for example, that Russell Stone had been able to gift her with a child; if ever a woman were constitutionally designed to be barren, that woman was Gwen.

Perhaps they had adopted the child. I found myself wanting to believe as much.

I stopped at a Cobb’s Corner and had a cup of coffee at the counter. The telephone conversation played again through my mind and I smiled at the inanity of it. A survey indeed. Market research has had an extraordinary effect upon the American public. The average citizen is so well accustomed to answering any number of idiot questions about himself that he has become quite incapable of telling strangers to mind their own damned business. Virtually anyone will reveal virtually anything about himself once he is convinced that the questions are purposeless, designed only to facilitate the waste of corporate time and money.

Would Gwen mention the call to Stone? I thought it over and decided that she probably would not. I couldn’t believe she had any knowledge of the frame, and thus would not know that he had to be protected-assuming, that is, that he was guilty. Thus what she would have to say, in effect, was something like this: I had a long distance call today, I think it was from Alex, but he pretended to be a market research surveyor and I told him any number of things about us before I guessed that it was him.

Gwen has never enjoyed looking like a fool. Few people do. She would forget the conversation, or convince herself that it was not me after all, or some such. She would not mention it to Stone, and he would not know that I was measuring him for an electric chair. Good.