Lawrence Block: A Long Line of Dead Men

The injured party had driven a UPS truck before the accident and hadn't worked since. I found out that he never left his house much before two in the afternoon, so I arranged my own schedule accordingly, putting in a few hours in the library each morning, then catching the F train to the Parsons Boulevard stop. I generally managed to be nursing a Coke in McAnn's Hillside Tavern when our man paused at the door, shifted both clear plastic canes to his left hand, drew the door open with his right, then hobbled in with a cane in each hand.

"Hey, Charlie," the bartender told him each and every time. "You know somethin'? I think you're walkin' better."

I would slip out for a while and find people to talk to, and before I headed for home I would stop back at McAnn's for another Coke. After a couple of days of this I told Wally I was pretty certain Charlie wasn't working anywhere, on or off the books.

"Shit," he said. "You think he's legit?"

"No, I think the limp's bogus. Let me put in another day or two."

The following Monday I showed up around noon at Reliable's offices in the Flatiron Building. "I had a hunch," I told Wally. "Saturday night I took Elaine to Jackson Heights for curry, and afterward we went looking for Charlie."

"You took her to McAnn's Hillside? That must have been a rare treat for her."

"Charlie wasn't there," I said, "but the bartender thought he might be at Wallbanger's. 'A bunch of 'em went over there,' he said. 'They got that Velcro shit.' "

"What Velcro shit?"

"The kind where they've got a patch of it on the wall, and you attach some to yourself, and you take a running leap at the wall. The object is to wind up sticking to the wall, generally upside down."

"Jesus Christ," he said. "Why, for God's sake?"

"That's not the question you're supposed to ask."

"It's not?" He thought about it, and his face lit up. He looked like a kid confronting a gaily wrapped birthday present. "Oh, boy," he said. "This is the son of a bitch never takes a step without both canes, right? Did he do it, Matt? Did he wrap up in fucking Velcro an' take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut? Tell me he did it."

"He came in second."

"Come on."

"They were egging him on," I said. " 'C'mon, Charlie boy, you gotta try it!' He kept telling them to be serious, he couldn't even walk, how could he go stick himself on the wall. Finally somebody brought over a glass with four or five ounces of clear liquor in it. Vodka, I suppose, or maybe Aquavit. They told him it was holy water straight from Lourdes. 'Drink it down and you're cured, Charlie. Miracle time.' He said, well, maybe, as long as we all understood it was just a temporary cure. A five-minute cure, like Cinderella, and then we're all pumpkins again."

"Pumpkins, for chrissake."

"He's a tall, skinny guy," I said, "with a potbelly from the beer. According to the paperwork he's thirty-eight, but looking at him you'd say early thirties. The way the thing works, you run up, hit the mark, and take off. On his approach he looked as though he could have been a hurdler in high school, the way he moved those long legs. He only missed winning by two or three inches, and they tried to talk him into taking another turn, but he wouldn't have any part of it. 'Are you kidding, man? I'm a cripple. Now, listen, all of you. Nobody ever saw this, right? It never happened.' "

"Ah, Matty, you're beautiful. You actually saw this, right? And what about Elaine? Can she give a deposition, or testify in court if it comes to that?"

I dropped an envelope on his desk.

"What the hell is this?" He opened it. "I don't believe this."

"I'd have been here earlier," I said, "but I stopped at the one-hour photo place first. The light wasn't great, and it was no time to start popping flashbulbs, so it's no prizewinner. But-"

"I call it a prizewinner," Wally said. "If I'm the judge, I give it First Fucking Prize, and while you're at it you can throw in the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. That's him, by Christ. Upside down, and stuck to the wall like he's fucking pinned there. Well, scratch one lawsuit. What a stupid son of a bitch."

"He figured he was safe. He knew everybody in the joint except me and Elaine, and he'd gotten used to seeing me at McAnn's."

"I still can't believe you got a picture. I'm surprised you even had a camera along, never mind you got a chance to use it." He held the photo to the light. "This isn't so bad," he said. "When I take pictures of my grandkids I have the light positioned just right, I pose 'em, and the shots don't come out any better than this. The kids always manage to move just as I'm clicking the shutter."

"You should try Velcro."

"Now you're talking. Glue the little bastards to the wall." He dropped the photo on his desk. "Well, that's one in the eye for Phony Tony. He can call his client, tell him to see if he can get his job back at UPS, because his days as a professional invalid are over. Good job, Matt."

"I think I should get a bonus."

He thought about it. "You know," he said, "you fucking well ought to. That's up to the client, but I can certainly recommend it. This isn't just a case of digging up some eyewitness, some neighbor lady with a resentment who's willing to swear she saw him walk down to the corner without the canes. This is the kind of thing where all you really have to do is show Tony Cerutti what you've got and he drops the case like a hot rock."

"Imagine what Cerutti would pay for the picture."

"Now let's not even get into that," he said. "What did you have in mind?"

"That's up to the client," I said. "He can figure out what it's worth. But along with it I want a letter to me personally expressing appreciation for the work that I did."

He nodded. "Yeah, that won't be any problem. And it's a good thing to have in the files when you get your own ticket, isn't it? In fact it's more important than the money."

"Probably," I said. "But that doesn't mean I don't want the money."

"Well, why shouldn't you have it all? The commendation, the bonus, and the satisfaction of nailing the bastard."

"He's not a bad guy."

"Who, Charlie?"

"He probably really did hurt himself when the chair collapsed under him. And when he told his drinking buddies about it they all told him he should sue, and somebody steered him to Cerutti. Cerutti sent him to his pet doctors for evaluations and hydrotherapy, and taught him never to go out without crutches, or at least a couple of canes. Of course he's had to give up his job, but it's a worthwhile investment if it gets him a big settlement. But at this point he's been out of work for two months, and he's getting a gut on him because his only exercise is walking funny to McAnn's and back, and now he's not getting a settlement after all, and who knows if UPS'll even take him back?"

"You sound like you feel sorry for him."

"Well, I just finished knocking him on his ass," I said. "I can afford a little sympathy."

I told Wally I wanted something else, not from the client but from him. I wanted credit reports from TRW on fourteen men. I'd pay for them, I said, but I wanted them at cost. He assured me that would be no problem, and I gave him the list of survivors.

He said, "Ray Gruliow? I think his credit's pretty good. And Avery Davis could write out a check and buy the building we're in, if it's the same Avery Davis, and it must be if he lives at 888 Fifth. In fact I think he did own the Flatiron for a while, didn't he? No, wait a minute, that was the one who went off the terrace two years ago. What the hell was his name?"

"Harmon Ruttenstein."

"That's the guy. Talk about everything to live for, but you never know, do you?"

"I guess not."

Three, possibly four, of the club members had killed themselves. Nedrick Bayliss had shot himself to death while on a business trip to Atlanta. Hal Gabriel hanged himself in his apartment on West End Avenue. Fred Karp, working late at the office, went out a window. Ian Heller jumped or fell from a crowded subway platform.