Lawrence Block - After the First Death

“Then what do we do? Call the police?”

“Exactly.”

She thought this over, then began to nod slowly. “Sure,” she said. “I never thought of that, isn’t that funny? Cops, we spent so much time staying away from them, I never even thought of going to them. Not until we had it all wrapped up with a bow on it.”

“But we do.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I guess we do.”

But I didn’t call them myself, or wander on down to the nearest precinct house to turn myself in. There had been too much running and hiding of late, too much of disguises and lurking in shadows, too much of being the hunted man. Instead I used Jackie’s phone to call Warden Pillion.

“I solved it,” I told him. “I know who killed the girl I can even prove it.”

“You’re positive, Alex?”

“Yes. I want to surrender to the police, but I want them prepared to listen to me and to put out a pickup order for the killer right away. Can you arrange it?”

“That shouldn’t be difficult.”

I gave him the address of Jackie’s place and some of the details. After I hung up we checked her stash of drugs and made sure the capsules of heroin and the hypodermic needle were not where the police would be likely to stumble upon them. Jackie said it wouldn’t be any problem, that homicide cops didn’t bother shaking down junkies. I didn’t want to take any chances.

And then we sat around and waited. I felt as I have often felt when I have had too little food and too much coffee, excitement bubbling nervously within me, my stomach shaky, my body fidgety, incapable of remaining long in one position. I paced the floor and waited, and then we heard squad cars coming, their sirens wide open, and then the cars pulled up in front and someone rang Jackie’s bell.

She went downstairs to let them in. She led them upstairs, and they came in with guns drawn, and I surrendered with a smile. The soldier suit surprised them somewhat. But they were distinctly hostile at first. I had been a fugitive for a long time, and as far as they were concerned I was just a murderer with a far-out story. They took me to the station house and Jackie came along.

There they put Jackie in one room and led me off to another, and a group of detectives clustered around and kept asking me questions. I answered everything, and I explained just how I knew that Turk Williams was the killer, and how he had done it and how they could prove it. About halfway through they put out arrest orders for Williams and Schapiro and sent someone to question the roundfaced fence who’d had my watch. Around that time I knew they were ready to believe me, and from that point on we all relaxed. They still didn’t like me. As far as they were concerned I should have given myself up Sunday morning and let them take it from there.

“Playing detective like this,” one of them said, “all you make is trouble.”

“And if I turned myself in right away?”

“We’d have found Williams.”

“Sure you would. You had me cold, you wouldn’t have looked any further.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Well,” I said, “I like it the way it turned out I played it your way the first time. Evangeline Grant And I stood trial and got a life sentence. They’ll reverse that when you bring in Williams. Just find out who hired him. That’s all.”

“We never pegged him as a hired killer-”

“No, and I can’t see it that way either. But someone put pressure on him, someone with a reason.”

“Any ideas who?”

I thought it over until my head ached. I shook my head. No ideas, none at all.

They fed me, then sat me down again and had me dictate a formal statement In the course of this a uniformed cop came in and announced that they had picked up Phillie. “He’ll talk,” the cop said. “He knows better than to hold out. But somebody sure beat the hell out of him. The doctor’s looking at him now.” He flashed me a look of the sort that generally gets described as grudging admiration. “But I don’t guess he’s about to press charges.”

I went on with my statement. And I finished it, and they brought Jackie in, and we were all of us sitting around over cups of coffee, when another policeman burst in with news about Turk Williams.

They had surprised him at his Harlem apartment. He said, “Now what’s the difficulty, gentlemen? You know the place is always clean and pure.” And they said, “A girl named Robin, Turkey. Murder.”

And the Turkey went for his gun.

He shot one cop in the arm. Nothing very serious. And they shot him once in the chest and twice in the stomach, and at the moment he was in St Luke’s Hospital with doctors working on him. They didn’t expect him to live.

JACKIE AND I RODE TO THE HOSPITAL IN THE BACK SEAT OF A squad car. “He’s got to stay alive,” I kept saying, over and over. “He’s got to talk.”

“You’re off the hook anyway, Penn. You’re clear.”

“I’ve got to know who hired him.”

“We’ll probably find out. Pick up some of the suspects, sweat ’em a little bit. Amateurs talk.”

“But where’s the proof? The first murder was years ago.”

“There may be a link. If there is, well find it.”

“He has to talk,” I said.

I sat in a waiting room at the hospital and chain-smoked like an expectant father. Jackie kept telling me not to worry, that everything was going to be all right I worried anyway.

People kept coming in with bulletins. Several times he just about died, and each time the doctors performed some medical miracle and kept him alive. Then around two-thirty one of the detectives came in and sat down across from us. “He’s conscious,” he said.

“And?”

“He talked. They generally do once they know they’re dying. He admits killing the girl.” The detective looked suddenly exhausted. “He, uh, wants to talk to you,” he told me. “Don’t go if you don’t want to, it’s not necessary, but-”

I got to my feet Jackie’s hand was tugging at my arm. “Don’t” she said.

“He wants to talk to me.”

“So? He’s crazy, Alex. He might-”

“What? He’s ninety per cent dead. I want to hear what he has to say.”

She let go of my arm. I walked down a corridor and into a room, and there was a bed in it and Turk was on the bed. A bottle was dripping something into his arm. His eyes were closed when I walked in, and I looked at him for a few moments unobserved. His skin was gray, already lifeless.

He opened his eyes, saw me. And smiled. “Fountain,” he said. “My man, my man. The Turkey is dying.”

“Easy-”

“No harm, man, I don’t feel a thing. They got me so shot up with morph and demerol and what-all. I’m just so free and easy. I never knew why all those junkies did it, man, and now I think I do.”

“Turk I-”

“No, let me talk. There’s not much time. Oh, baby, why did you have to be there? That’s all I want to know. Like you’re my man, like you got me out of slam and I owed you, you know? Why did you have to be there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, with that hooker, man. That Robin. You know, I got a call, where she was, the hotel and the room, and I went down there and who’s with her but my man Fountain.” He managed a smile. “You should a come in with me, man. No chasing ’em around Times Square. Would a had your pick of nice uptown tail. Anything you wanted, price no object.”

“You killed the girl to frame me-”

“ Frame you?” He sighed heavily. “Baby, I cut that junkie bitch to cut her, dig? I used to sell to that sweet man of hers, that Danny. And then I found out he was dragging down on me, he was stealing and then he was hustling the smack on his own, cutting into my own customers. That little bitch put him up to it. Junkie dreams, you dig?” He started to laugh, but I guess the motion was painful and he stopped. “Junkie dreams. They all think they can sell, and feed themselves on the profits, and they can never stand the hassle, you know. But I couldn’t allow that, see. Word gets around and everybody tries, and before you know it a man’s sales drop and he gets his whole territory cut out from under him. Can’t allow that. So I had to waste Danny-”