Lawrence Block - Eight Million Ways to Die

"Oh?"

"It looked fixed but the knockout looked real."

He glanced at me, and I saw interest in his gold-flecked eyes for the first time. "What makes you say that?"

"Canelli had an opening twice in the fourth round and he didn't follow it up either time. He's too smart a fighter for that. But he was trying to get through the sixth and he couldn't. At least that's how it looked from my seat."

"You ever box, Scudder?"

"Two fights at the Y when I was twelve or thirteen years old. Balloon gloves, protective headgear, two-minute rounds. I was too low and clumsy for it, I could never manage to land a punch."

"You have an eye for the sport."

"Well, I guess I've seen a lot of fights."

He was silent for a moment. A cab cut us off and he braked smoothly, avoiding a collision. He didn't swear or hit the horn. He said, "Canelli was set to go in the eighth. He was supposed to give the Kid his best fight until then, but not to get out in front or the knockout might not look right. That's why he held back in round four."

"But the Kid didn't know it was set up."

"Of course not. Most of his fights have been straight until tonight, but a fighter like Canelli could be dangerous to him, and why chance a bad mark on his record at this stage? He gains experience fighting Canelli and he gains confidence by beating him." We were on Central Park West now, heading uptown. "The knockout was real. Canelli would have gone in the tank in the eighth, but we hoped the Kid might get us home early, and you saw him do that. What do you think of him?"

"He's a comer."

"I agree."

"Sometimes he telegraphs the right. In the fourth round-"

"Yes," he said. "They've worked with him on that. The problem is that he generally manages to get away with it."

"Well, he wouldn't have gotten by with it tonight. Not if Canelli had been looking to win."

"Yes. Well, perhaps it's as well that he wasn't."

We talked boxing until we got to 104th Street, where Chance turned the car around in a careful U-turn and pulled up next to a fire hydrant. He killed the motor but left the keys. "I'll be right down," he said, "after I've seen Sonya upstairs."

She hadn't said a word since she told me it was nice to meet me. He walked around the car and opened the door for her, and they strolled to the entrance of one of the two large apartment buildings that fronted on that block. I wrote the address in my notebook. In no more than five minutes he was back behind the wheel and we were heading downtown again.

Neither of us spoke for half a dozen blocks. Then he said, "You wanted to talk to me. It doesn't have anything to do with Kid Bascomb, does it?"

"No."

"I didn't really think so. What does it have to do with?"

"Kim Dakkinen."

His eyes were on the road and I couldn't see any change in his expression. He said, "Oh? What about her?"

"She wants out."

"Out? Out of what?"

"The life," I said. "The relationship she has with you. She wants you to agree to… break things off."

We stopped for a light. He didn't say anything. The light changed and we went another block or two and he said, "What's she to you?"

"A friend."

"What does that mean? You're sleeping with her? You want to marry her? Friend's a big word, it covers a lot of ground."

"This time it's a small word. She's a friend, she asked me to do her a favor."

"By talking to me."

"That's right."

"Why couldn't she talk to me herself? I see her frequently, you know. She wouldn't have had to run around the city asking after me. Why, I saw her just last night."

"I know."

"Do you? Why didn't she say anything when she saw me?"

"She's afraid."

"Afraid of me?"

"Afraid you might not want her to leave."

"And so I might beat her? Disfigure her? Stub out cigarettes on her breasts?"

"Something like that."

He fell silent again. The car's ride was hypnotically smooth. He said, "She can go."

"Just like that?"

"How else? I'm not a white slaver, you know." His tone put an ironic stress on the term. "My women stay with me out of their own will, such will as they possess. They're under no duress. You know Nietzsche? 'Women are like dogs, the more you beat them the more they love you.' But I don't beat them, Scudder. It never seems to be necessary. How does Kim come to have you for a friend?"

"We have an acquaintance in common."

He glanced at me. "You were a policeman. A detective, I believe. You left the force several years ago. You killed a child and resigned out of guilt."

That was close enough for me to let it pass. A stray bullet of mine had killed a young girl named Estrellita Rivera, but I don't know that it was guilt over the incident that propelled me out of the police department. What it had done, really, was change the way the world looked to me, so that being a cop was no longer something I wanted to do. Neither was being a husband and a father and living on Long Island, and in due course I was out of work and out of the marriage and living on Fifty-seventh Street and putting in the hours at Armstrong's. The shooting unquestionably set those currents in motion, but I think I was pointed in those directions anyway and would have gotten there sooner or later.

"Now you're a sort of half-assed detective," he went on "She hire you?"

"More or less."

"What's that mean?" He didn't wait for clarification. "Nothing against you, but she wasted her money. Or my money, according to how you look at it. If she wants to end our arrangement all she has to do is tell me so. She doesn't need anyone to do her talking for her. What's she plan to do? I hope she's not going back home."

I didn't say anything.

"I suspect she'll stay in New York. But will she stay in the life? I'm afraid it's the only trade she knows. What else will she do? And where will she live? I provide their apartments, you know, and pay their rent and pick out their clothes. Well, I don't suppose anyone asked Ibsen where Nora would find an apartment. I believe this is where you live, if I'm not mistaken."

I looked out the window. We were in front of my hotel. I hadn't been paying attention.

"I assume you'll be in touch with Kim," he said. "If you want, you can tell her you intimidated me and sent me slinking off into the night."

"Why would I do that?"

"So she'll think she got her money's worth from you."

"She got her money's worth," I said, "and I don't care whether she knows it or not. All I'll tell her is what you've told me."

"Really? While you're at it, you can let her know that I'll be coming to see her. Just to satisfy myself that all of this is really her idea."

"I'll mention it."

"And tell her she has no reason to fear me." He sighed. "They think they're irreplaceable. If she had any notion how easily she can be replaced she'd most likely hang herself. The buses bring them, Scudder. Every hour of every day they stream into Port Authority ready to sell themselves. And every day a whole slew of others decide there must be a better way than waiting tables or punching a cash register. I could open an office, Scudder, and take applications, and there'd be a line halfway around the block."

I opened the door. He said, "I enjoyed this. Especially earlier. You have a good eye for boxing. Please tell that silly blonde whore that nobody's going to kill her."

"I'll do that."

"And if you need to talk to me, just call my service. I'll return your calls now that I know you."

I got out, closed the door. He waited for an opening, made a U-turn, turned again at Eighth Avenue and headed uptown. The U-turn was illegal and he ran the light making his left turn on Eighth, but I don't suppose it worried him much. I couldn't recall the last time I'd seen a cop ticket anyone for a moving violation in the city of New York. Sometimes you'll see five cars go on through after a light turns red. Even the buses do it these days.