Lawrence Block - A Long Line of Dead Men

"What did he look like?"

"White."

"Tall, short, fat, thin, young, old-"

"Just white. But don't forget-"

"It was four years ago and she was a kid, right. You think I'd get anywhere putting her together with Ray Galindez?"

"So Elaine'll have another picture to hang up in the shop? I can see her gettin' into it, but what comes out might be more imaginin' than rememberin'. She'd swear he had tits an' a tail if it'd get her on New York One."

"I probably ought to talk to her."

"Like you a cop? Or like you workin' for Miss Mikawa also?"

"I'll be an assistant news director," I said. "How's that?"

He considered, then nodded. "I'll go get my polo shirt and my khakis," he said. "An' my penny loafers. I meant to bring 'em anyway so's I can leave ' em at Elaine's." He eyed my clothing. "Maybe you could dress up a little yourself," he said, "so we don't start no rumors about New York One's on the skids."

I put on a blue blazer, and New York One's sartorial reputation stayed unsullied. We rode uptown on the A train and spent forty minutes finding Sombrita Pardo and another half hour getting her story between bites of sausage pizza at a pizza parlor adjacent to the candy store in front of which she'd been standing four years earlier. She was a little dumpling with glossy black hair, olive skin, Indio features, and surprising light brown eyes. Her name meant Little Shadow, she said, which was kind of silly and she used to hate it, but now she was beginning to like it because it was like different.

Her story didn't change. The man who got out of the metered cab was white, and that was as much of a physical description as she could provide. And he'd emerged from the front passenger seat, and she'd had the feeling that he was going to run an errand and return to the cab, but he walked around the corner and disappeared. And then she had to go home, and she forgot about it, and the next day she heard that there was all this commotion, police cars and everything, and it turned out the driver was dead. He'd been shot, or so they said, but couldn't he have just had a heart attack or something? And maybe the friend had gone for help, and-

And just forgot to come back?

Well, she said, maybe, you know, he OD'd, the driver, that is, and the friend decided he didn't want to get involved, so he, like, 911'd it in and went home. Except she knew they found bullets in him, or at least that's what she heard, but you heard lots of things, and how did you know what to believe?

How indeed?

Fifteen or twenty minutes in TJ excused himself to go to the john, at which point Little Shadow grew at once older and younger. She straightened up in her seat and said, "Be honest with me? I'm not gonna be on TV, am I?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Are you cops? You could be a cop, but no way Mr. T. J. Smith's a police officer. 'Course, I never thought he was Melissa Mikawa's assistant, either."

"You didn't?"

"He's too young and too street for that. You got to go to college to get a job like that, don't you? He never went to college."

As I said, older than her years. Then I asked her why, if she saw through his act, she'd been so cooperative. "Well, he's real cute," she said, and giggled, and looked about twelve years old.

"I'm an insurance investigator," I said. "Mr. Smith's a trainee. No need to let him know that you, uh, saw through his act."

"Oh, I wouldn't," she said, and sucked the last of her Coke through her straw. "Insurance? I hope I didn't get anybody in trouble."

"Certainly not."

"Or keep someone from getting their money."

"It's really just a matter of getting the paperwork straightened out," I said, "and maybe saving the company a few tax dollars."

"Oh, well," she said. "That's good, isn't it?"

We got on the A train and split up at Columbus Circle. TJ was on his way to the shop to show Elaine how he looked in his Young Man of Promise costume. I walked over to Midtown North to look for Durkin. I caught him at his desk, eating a sandwich and drinking bottled iced tea.

"Thomas Cloonan," I said. "Playwright, part-time cabdriver, shot and killed four years ago, Audubon Avenue and 174th Street, guy they tagged for it never went to trial-"

"Jesus," he said. "What am I, the central figure in a granny-dumping? You figure me for no short-term memory at all?"

"I just wanted to refresh your memory."

"It hasn't had time to get stale. We just talked about the son of a bitch the other day."

"What did Cloonan do to become a son of a bitch?"

"Not Cloonan, for chrissake. The shooter." His eyes narrowed in concentration. "Mims," he said. "How's that for memory, considering it's a case I got no reason to give a shit about?"

"You want to try for the first name?"

"Obadiah."

"Try Eldoniah."

"Well, fuck, I came close enough. What about him?"

"The guy who shot Cloonan was white."

I gave him what I had. It wasn't his case- it wasn't anybody's case at this stage- but he was too much of a cop not to take an interest, sifting data, proposing and discarding theories.

"Front-seat passenger," he said. "Who rides up front?"

"In Australia," I said, "when you get a cab, you automatically sit in front next to the driver."

"Because the rear springs are shot?"

"Because there's no class system, and you're all mates. Getting in back would be a snub."

"Yeah? What's the chances you got an Australian shooting cabbies and robbing them?"

"Well, it makes a refreshing change from Norwegians."

"All that aside, implication's the shooter's a friend of the driver, right?"

"Known to him, anyway."

"Front-seat passenger, meter's not running, no entry on the log sheet. He had a pickup in Midtown, long haul up to Columbia Presbyterian. How's the shooter know he's gonna be there?"

" 'Tommy, next fare you get anywhere near the neighborhood, drop by the Emerald Grill, I got something to talk about with you.' "

He thought about it. "I don't know. That's about as hard to swallow as the Crocodile Dundee theory."

"Or it's Cloonan's idea. He's in the neighborhood, so he decides to look up his friend."

"Who latches on to the opportunity to kill him." He took a swig of iced tea. "Raspberry-flavored," he said. "All of a sudden there's, I don't know, a dozen, fifteen different flavors of iced tea. I used to think, why do we fill up the shelves with so many different choices? How are we gonna keep up with the fucking Russians if we're dicking around with flavored tea while they're building tanks and going to the moon? So their whole system fell apart and we're working on ten more flavors and doing fine. Which shows what I know about anything." He took another drink and said, "How reliable's your witness?"

"On a ten scale," I said, "somewhere between zero and one."

"What I figured. Shooter gave Cloonan two in the back of the head. How do you manage that, you're sitting next to the guy?"

" 'Hey, Tom, what's that out the window?' "

"He turns to look, bang bang. Yeah, I suppose. I'd have to see the lab report. Why would he do that, though? So it would look like the shot came from the rear seat?"

"Or just so Cloonan wouldn't see it coming."

"Makes sense. Try this. Shooter's in the back, cab pulls to the curb, shooter puts a pair in Cloonan. Then he gets out, and then he gets back in, next to the driver this time, and grabs the wallet and the coin changer, whatever else he's after. Then he gets out a second time, and that's when Carmen Miranda gets a look at him."

"It could be."

"Or try this on. Same opening, two shots from the backseat, and the shooter slips out from the rear on the street side, so nobody talking trash in front of the candy store ever gets a look at him. Maybe he's from the same town in Norway as Obadiah, pardon me, Eldoniah, or maybe he's Hispanic like the neighborhood, and either way he walks around the corner and disappears."