Lawrence Block - Eight Million Ways to Die

I stayed long enough to make a few notes and managed to get out of there without again opening the front closet. I rode the elevator to the lobby, waved at the doorman and nodded at an entering tenant, an elderly woman with a small short-haired dog on a rhinestone-studded leash. The dog yipped at me, and I wondered for the first time what had become of Kim's little black kitten. I'd seen no traces of the animal, no litter pan in the bathroom. Someone must have taken it.

I caught a cab at the corner. I was paying it off in front of my hotel when I found Kim's key with my pocket change. I hadn't remembered to return it to the doorman, and he hadn't thought to ask me for it.

There was a message for me. Joe Durkin had called and left his number at the precinct. I called and was told he was out but was expected back. I left my name and number.

I went up to my room, feeling winded and tired. I lay down but I couldn't get any rest that way, couldn't turn off the tapes in my head. I went downstairs again, had a cheese sandwich and french fries and coffee. Over a second cup of coffee I took Donna Campion's poem out of my pocket. Something about it was trying to get through to me but I couldn't figure out what. I read it again. I didn't know what the poem meant; assuming that it was intended to have any literal meaning. But it seemed to me that some element of it was winking at me, trying to get my attention, and I was just too brain damaged to catch on.

I went over to St. Paul's. The speaker told a horrible story in a chatty matter-of-fact fashion. Both his parents had died of alcoholism, his father of acute pancreatitis, his mother of suicide committed while drunk. Two brothers and a sister had died of the disease. A third brother was in a state hospital with a wet brain.

"After I was sober a few months," he said, "I started hearing how alcohol kills brain cells, and I got worried about how much brain damage I might have. So I went to my sponsor and told him what was on my mind. 'Well,' he said, 'maybe you've had some brain damage. It's possible. But let me ask you this. Are you able to remember where the meetings are from one day to the next? Can you find your way to them without any trouble?' 'Yeah,' I told him, 'I can manage that all right.' 'Well then,' he said, 'you got all the brain cells you need for the time being.' "

I left on the break.

There was another message from Durkin at the hotel desk. I called right back and he was out again. I left my name and number and went upstairs. I was having another look at Donna's poem when the phone rang.

It was Durkin. He said, "Hey, Matt. I just wanted to say I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression last night."

"About what?"

"Oh, things in general," he said. "Once in a while the whole business gets to me, you know what I mean? I have the need to break out, drink too much, run off at the mouth. I don't make a habit of it but once in awhile I have to do it."

"Sure."

"Most of the time I love the job, but there's things that get to you, things you try not to look at, and every now and then I have to get all that shit out of my system. I hope I didn't get out of line there toward the end."

I assured him that he'd done nothing wrong. I wondered how clearly he recalled the previous evening. He'd been drunk enough to be in a blackout, but not everybody has blackouts. Maybe he was just a little vague, and uncertain how I'd taken his outbursts.

I thought of what Billie's landlady had told him. "Forget it," I said. "It could happen to a bishop."

"Hey, I got to remember that one. It could happen to a bishop. And probably does."

"Probably."

"You getting anywhere with your investigation? Coming up with anything?"

"It's hard to tell."

"I know what you mean. If there's anything I can do for you-"

"Matter of fact, there is."

"Oh?"

"I went over to the Galaxy Downtowner," I said. "Talked to an assistant manager. He showed me the registration card Mr. Jones signed."

"The famous Mr. Jones."

"There was no signature on it. The name was handprinted."

"Figures."

"I asked if I could go through the cards for the past few months and see if there were any other hand-printed signatures, and how they compared to Jones's printing. He couldn't authorize it."

"You should have slipped him a few bucks."

"I tried. He didn't even know what I was getting at. But you could have him pull the printed cards. He wouldn't do it for me because I've got no official standing, but he'd hop to it if a cop made the request."

He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he asked if I thought it was going to lead anywhere.

"It might," I said.

"You think whoever did it stayed at the hotel before? Under some other name?"

"It's possible."

"But not his own name, or he would have signed it in script instead of being cute. So what we'd wind up with, assuming we got very lucky and there was a card to be found and we actually came up with it, what we'd have is another alias for the same son of a bitch, and we wouldn't be any closer'n we are now to knowing who he is."

"There's another thing you could do, while you were at it."

"What's that?"

"Have other hotels in the area check their registrations for, oh, the past six months or a year."

"Check 'em for what? Printed registrations? Come on, Matt. You know the man-hours you're talking about?"

"Not printed registrations. Have them check for guests named Jones. I'm talking about hotels like the Galaxy Downtowner, modern hotels in that price range. Most of them'll be like the Galaxy and have their registrations on computer. They can pull their Jones registrations in five or ten minutes, but not unless someone with a tin shield asks 'em to."

"And then what have you got?"

"You pull the appropriate cards, look for a guest named Jones, probably with the first initial C or the initials CO, and you compare printing and see if you find him anywhere. If you come up with anything you see where it leads. I don't have to tell you what to do with a lead."

He was silent again. "I don't know," he said at length. "It sounds pretty thin."

"Maybe it is."

"I'll tell you what I think it is. I think it's a waste of time."

"It's not a waste of all that much time. And it's not that thin. Joe, you'd do it if the case wasn't already closed in your mind."

"I don't know about that."

"Of course you would. You think it's a hired killer or a lunatic. If it's a hired killer you want to close it out and if it's a lunatic you want to wait until he does it again."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"You went that far last night."

"Last night was last night, for Christ's sake. I already explained about last night."

"It wasn't a hired killer," I said. "And it wasn't a lunatic just picking her out of the blue."

"You sound like you're sure of it."

"Reasonably sure."

"Why?"

"No hired hitman goes crazy that way. What did he hit her, sixty times with a machete?"

"I think it was sixty-six."

"Sixty-six, then."

"And it wasn't necessarily a machete. Something like a machete."

"He had her strip. Then he butchered her like that, he got so much blood on the walls that they had to paint the room. When did you ever hear of a professional hit like that?"

"Who knows what kind of animal a pimp hires? Maybe he tells the guy to make it ugly, do a real job on her, make an example out of her. Who knows what goes through his mind?"

"And then he hires me to look into it."

"I admit it sounds weird, Matt, but-"

"It can't be a crazy, either. It was somebody who went crazy, but it's not a psycho getting his kicks."

"How do you know that?"

"He's too careful. Printing his name when he signed in. Carrying the dirty towels away with him. This is a guy who took the trouble to avoid leaving a shred of physical evidence."