Lawrence Block - After the First Death

“He died of an overdose.”

“Funny kind of an OD. That was strychnine, man. I laid two bags of it on him, figured he and Robin would get off together. And don’t you know he had to hog both bags himself?” He shook his head. “You just can’t trust a junkie, man. He figured to share with his woman, right? But he took it all himself, and I had to go and loll her on my own.”

My hands and feet were numb, as though my blood had simply stopped running. I wanted to go away.

“So I had the word out, you know, and I got this call and went to the hotel, and all I had to do was say who I was and she opened the door for me. She thought Danny OD’d, same as you. Never suspected I had any reason to burn her. And I knew she would have a trick with her, but I figured if I had to kill somebody extra it wouldn’t be no never mind. But it was you, man! I mean, I owed you, and last thing I wanted to do was to put a knife in you.”

He stopped abruptly and his eyes went glassy. I thought it was the end. Don’t the yet, I thought. More, more. Tell me all of it make some sense out of it.

“Man, this dying is too much. Feels so funny-”

“Turk-”

“I cut her, see, and I never thought you would open your eyes. So then I got out of there. I had her damn blood all over me and I had to go wash myself clean. Then I was going to get out and go home, but I remembered how you got in trouble the first time, see, and I thought I better do something or you be up against it. I was almost out of the hotel and then I went back upstairs to the room. I was going to haul you out of there and put you someplace else so you wouldn’t ever know anything about it. But the door was locked, see, so I knew you was awake-”

“There was a thief in the room. He locked it.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Now it fits. I figured you was awake and you’d get out of there on your own, see? So I cut out fast. And here I owed you to begin with, and then the next day I discover it’s worse than ever, you didn’t get up and you didn’t get out and the police are after you. Man, I went out looking for you. And when you called I wanted to give you money, give you my car, anything, just get you out of the country and let everything get cool again. I hate owing anything to anybody. I was born owing nothing to nobody and I wanted to go out the same way, and here I’m going out and still owing you. Ain’t that too much?”

“Turk-”

“I knew if they caught you it’d all be up for you, and instead it turns around and it’s all up for me. Just too much.”

“Turk, the first girl-”

“And me owing you, and all.”

“Evangeline Grant-”

“Now if I’d of drug you out of the room right away, or if I waited another couple minutes wiping my hands and that thief was gone by then, why, you never would a been in it Both of us, we’d never be in it.”

I said, “Evangeline Grant Turk. The first girl. Five years ago. Who… who killed her?”

“And I’m owing you. And never no more chance to make it straight with you, either.” He shuddered. “That hurts as bad as dying. Cause all I wanted was a chance to make it straight with us.”

“It’s straight Turk.”

I hadn’t thought he’d be able to hear me, but I guess he did. He did his best to smile, and he said something I couldn’t make out and then he settled back in his bed and died.

They were silent in the waiting room. Jackie, the cops. I walked over to them, and some of them looked at me and others carefully looked away.

“He’s dead,” I announced, but no one seemed to care.

“He told me everything.”

“Well, it clears you completely, Mr. Penn, and-”

“What about the other girl?”

“That was years ago, and-”

“Evangeline Grant-what about her?”

“We don’t-”

“Who killed her?”

I stood listening to the echo of my own words in the sterile silent room. Why do we ask such questions? A cop got to his feet. He came over to me, and he laid an infinitely gentle hand upon my shoulder and he spoke very softly, very softly indeed.

He said, “I’m afraid you did, Mr. Penn.”

A LOT HAPPENED AFTER THAT BUT I DO NOT REMEMBER IT VERY well I moved through it as a ship through fog. There was some police business, and some forms to fill out, and a horde of newspapermen, and flashbulbs popping in my face. That sort of thing. And eventually it stopped and I escaped, and found a bar and had a drink, and then everything slipped away and the days and nights went by. I don’t know how many of them there were. Somewhere along the line I got to my bank and took out a lot of cash, so I didn’t have to worry about money. I just stayed drunk and the days went by. If I went too long between drinks I thought about things that I did not want to think about, and that was bad, so I stayed drunk.

Until one day or night I looked up from a drink and saw her face. I knew that I recognized her but I could not remember at first just who she was. I couldn’t remember.

She said, “Oh, baby, you’ve been hard to find. You’ve been so hard to find.”

Then I knew who she was. “Jackie,” I said. “You’re Jackie.”

“You better come home with me, Alex.”

“Can’t go home,” I said. “Can’t.”

“Come on, Alex.”

“I’m a dangerous man. Killed a girl. Might hurt you, Jackie.”

“You come with me, baby.”

I picked up my glass and spilled most of my drink on myself. She was holding my arm, trying to draw me out of that place. The other drinkers were regarding us with appropriate interest.

“Let’s go, baby.”

“Gotta keep drinking.”

“We’ll pick up a bottle. There’s a liquor store down the street, we’ll take a bottle home with us.”

“Cause I gotta keep drinking.”

“Sure, baby. Come with me, now.”

She got me out of there. She picked up a bottle of Scotch at a nearby liquor store and stopped a cab and helped me into it. On the way to her place the motion got to me, and the driver stopped the car so that I could get out long enough to be sick. Then we went to her place, and I was sick again, and she opened the bottle for me and I drank enough of it and passed out.

I went on drinking for about a week. She made sure I took in food along with the liquor, and she had a doctor come by from time to time to give me vitamin shots. During all this time I was something less than a person. Each night she went out to hustle, first waiting until I passed out then locking me in with a bottle handy in case I woke up before she returned.

Until finally I woke up one morning and didn’t want a drink, and knew that I would not want a drink again for a long time. I was sick for that day and most of the next day, but I was done with the drinking, and by the following night I was feeling better again.

“What we do to ourselves,” she said. “Jesus, the things we do to ourselves.”

“You saved me, Jackie.”

“You would of come out of it by yourself sooner or later. I was just afraid you might get in trouble.”

“I’ve never been on that kind of a binge before. It lasted a long time.”

“It’s over now.”

“I hope to God it’s over.”

“It is, Alex. You had to get it out of your system, and it’s out now, and it’s over.”

“Jackie, I killed that girl.”

“I know.”

“For a while I tried to tell myself the first one could still be a frame, but I know better. I couldn’t sell it to myself, not after Williams confessed. I killed Evangeline Grant.”

“I know. I knew it before you did.”

“You-”

“As soon as I knew it was the Turkey,” she said. “I knew Robin had dealings with him, and I thought about Danny, and I knew it had to be something like that. Either that she worked some kind of a cross on him, or that she sold him out to the cops, set him up for an arrest, something like that. It had to be.”