Lawrence Block - After the First Death

I threw myself down upon that small soft body, and her hand clutched me and tucked me home. She worked and strained in sweet agony beneath me. I brought her there. I heard her cry out and felt her quiver, and then I melted at last inside her in unutterable delight.

She came back from the bathroom. I had not moved or opened my eyes. She slipped into bed beside me and said, “I’m not sick, you don’t have to worry.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

“You must of been.”

“No.”

“I had the clap three times. The other, never.” Her voice was flat. “I been everything, I had everything. I wish to hell I was somebody else.”

“I don’t.”

“I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”

“No.”

“In your little soldier suit.”

“No.”

“Hold onto me, Alex, I feel all shaky.”

She was small and soft in my arms. I kissed her. She opened her eyes for a moment, then closed them again and relaxed. I let my own eyes slip shut and discovered how exhausted I was. There was a curtain ready to come down and I wasn’t going to fight it.

She said, “The watch and the wallet. And Robin’s purse.”

“Huh?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I don’t follow you.”

She spoke with an effort, dragging the words up one by one. “The man who killed them. I just had an idea. Tomorrow. First sleep.”

We fell asleep holding each other.

WHEN I AWOKE A LITTLE BEFORE NOON JACKIE BROUGHT ME A cup of coffee and a sweet roll. “I usually eat breakfast around the corner,” she said. “But I figured the less you go out and let people see you, the better. The roll okay?”

“Fine.”

“I bought you some socks and underwear. I hope everything’s the right size. It’s just schlock from Columbus Avenue but at least it’s clean.”

I got dressed. The socks and underwear were the right size. I felt a little foolish putting on my uniform again, but it still seemed a worthwhile disguise. I went into the kitchen and got another cup of coffee and took it into the living room.

We smoked and drank coffee. She had evidently fixed an hour or so before, as well as I could judge. Her movements were slow and studied, but she wasn’t as obviously junked up as she had been the night before. Her face, clean and fresh, looked very vulnerable. She would dart quick looks at me, then turn her attention back to cigarette and coffee.

After a while I said, “Well, I guess I better get going.”

“Who said?”

“Well I-”

She turned away. “Go, if you want to. You don’t have to stay on my account.”

I put out my cigarette and set the empty cup on the coffee table, but I stayed on the couch. I hadn’t seen the script yet and I didn’t know my lines. She was a hooker and I was a John, she was an angel of mercy and I was a man in trouble, she was Jane and I was Tarzan, all those things. I didn’t know my lines.

Without looking at me she said, “You don’t remember what I said last night? About the watch and the wallet and the purse?”

I had forgotten.

“Because that part of it doesn’t add up right,” she said. “I thought if we sort of picked at it we might get somewheres. See what I mean?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, Alex, what I mean is, what happened to your watch and wallet?”

“They must have been stolen.”

“And Robin’s purse?”

“I didn’t know she had one.”

“She always carried a purse. Same as I always do. I make sure I get the money as soon as I’m in the room with the fellow, and I put my coat or something over the purse. You know, on a chair or on the dresser. I know Robin always did the same.”

I closed my eyes, trying to remember. It was getting increasingly harder to bring that particular night back into focus. It seemed to me now that I remembered a purse, that she had taken my money and tucked it into a purse, but I couldn’t be entirely sure.

“Maybe she had a purse. I don’t know.”

“She must of had one, Alex. A lot of the colored girls don’t, they like to leave their bras on and they’ll tuck the bills in there, but most men don’t like that. Leaving the bra on, I mean.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, she had to have a purse. And you had your watch and wallet, didn’t you?”

“I hardly thought about it. I just supposed that they had been stolen somewhere along the line.”

“But you had them when you went with Robin.”

“Did I?”

She spread her small hands. “Well, what else? You paid Robin, didn’t you? You gave her some money?”

“Twenty dollars.”

“You must of given her money if you made love to her. So that means you had the watch and wallet when you went with her.”

“I guess so.” I looked at her, the small intense eyes, the head tilted forward in concentration. “But what difference does it make? If I had them then, I certainly didn’t have them when I woke up the next morning. So-”

“Well, what happened to them?”

“Oh.”

“You see what I mean, Alex?”

“I never even thought of it.”

“Well, see, you were too busy concentrating on who could of done it and then you didn’t stop to think about just what it was that happened. But that was one of the first things I thought of, that the watch and the wallet were gone. And Robin’s purse, too. It wasn’t there when you woke up?”

“If it was, I never saw it”

“Would you of noticed it?”

“I’m not sure. But the watch and the wallet were gone. Unless they were in the purse.”

“You mean if Robin took them?” I nodded. “No,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. “Robin didn’t take diem. Robin never stole.”

“Never?”

“No. Neither do I, I never steal I did once, a long time ago. A man who passed out. We didn’t even make love, he just got on the bed and passed out. And I went through his wallet and took his money. Not his wallet but just the money from it. Almost a hundred dollars. I felt bad about it. I don’t mean I sat around crying, but I felt bad about it.”

She fell silent, her gaze turned inward, fastening upon the memory and the way she had felt. “I never did it again,” she said. “A lot of the girls do, maybe most of them, but I never do, and neither did Robin. I’m pretty sure of that.”

“Then the watch and wallet-”

“Maybe the killer.”

“But why?”

A shrug. “Everybody likes money.”

“Not the man who framed me. I didn’t have much in the wallet, and the watch wasn’t worth a fortune. And whoever set me up for this wouldn’t take chances for a few dollars. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Suppose he hired someone.”

I had briefly considered this possibility, but I had not wanted to dwell on it Because once I allowed it, my elimination process went utterly out the window. The proof that Russell Stone, for example, was not in New York Saturday night-it counted for nothing once I admitted that he could have hired someone to do his killing for him. Still, like it or not, it was quite possible. And it was similarly possible that a hired killer would take the trouble to add a watch and wallet and a whore’s purse to his haul.

“We can forget the purse and the wallet,” she was saying. “Whoever he was, he’d just take the money and ditch the rest. Stick them in a trashcan, probably. That’s no help.”

“What about the watch?”

“That’s our chance.” Her teeth worried her lower lip. “I hope it wasn’t a really cheap watch. Like they sell in drugstores for $10.95.”

“It was worth about a hundred new. Maybe a little more.”

“Well, that’s one for our side. You know the make?”

“Elgin. It said Lord Elgin on the dial.”