Lawrence Block - Hope to Die

Still, standing across the street from the Hollander brownstone, I could understand the satisfaction of living in it. It was a fine architectural specimen, of a piece with the houses on either side. The location was hard to beat, with the park a block and a half away and a choice of two subway stops almost as close. You couldn't see it from the street, but there was sure to be a garden in back. You could keep a grill there and barbecue, or just sit outside on a nice day with a book and a pitcher of iced tea.

It had been twelve days since the murder, and just a week since they'd found the two dead men on Coney Island Avenue. The case had finally disappeared from the papers, if not from the collective consciousness of the neighborhood. I couldn't see any yellow Crime Scene tape on the front entrance, or any official seal on the door.

I crossed the street and mounted the steps for a better look. T J, tagging along, asked what we were doing.

"Snooping," I said.

The drapes were drawn, and the front door was windowless except for a frosted fanlight above the lintel. I put my ear to the door, and T J asked me if I could hear the ocean. I couldn't, or anything else. I stepped back and gave the doorbell a poke. I hadn't expected a response, and didn't get one.

"Nobody home," T J said.

I looked at the lock. I could have used more light, but if there was evidence of tampering I couldn't see it. No gouging around the jamb, no fresh scratches on the face of the cylinder. Of course the cylinder itself might have been replaced since the incident. If you were going to occupy the premises, or even if you weren't, changing the locks would be the first order of business.

The ground-floor antique shop was closed, the gates drawn and locked. A card in the door announced the shop's hours, Monday to Friday, noon to six, or by appointment. A decal warned that the premises were protected by an alarm system, and threatened an armed response.

"If we was burglars," T J said, "that'd have us shaking in our boots. 'Armed response.' Not just cops, but cops with guns."

"It's a comforting thought for a lot of people."

"A cop with a gun?" He shook his head. "They best hope they never meet one. You want to break in upstairs? Keypad's in the coat closet, and the password's ten-seventeen."

"Maybe another time."

"You just scared of that armed response."

"That's it."

"If we going to Brooklyn, tell you right now I ain't walking."

"Why would we go to Brooklyn?"

"Coney Island Avenue," he said. "See where the cops kicked the door in."

"I don't think so," I said. "I want to go home. We can take the subway."

"We this close," he said, "we might as well walk."

Elaine fixed a light supper, pasta and a green salad, and I watched the fight on HBO. Afterward I took a hot bath before I went to bed, but I was still a little stiff and sore the next day from all that walking. We left the house around two and walked up to Lincoln Center, where we had tickets for an afternoon concert of chamber music at Alice Tully Hall. There was a string quartet, with a clarinetist joining them for one selection.

They played Mozart and Haydn and Schubert, and it certainly didn't sound like jazz, but there's something about chamber music, and especially string quartets, that puts me in mind of a jazz combo. The intimacy of it, I suppose, and the way the instruments feed off one another. And it feels improvisational, even when you know they're playing notes written down a couple of centuries ago.

We stopped for Thai food after and got home in time for her to watch Masterpiece Theatre. It was Part Three, and she'd missed Parts One and Two, but it didn't matter; she'll watch anything on television where the performers have English accents. I was in the kitchen, fixing her a cup of tea, when the doorman rang up on the intercom to announce a Mr. T. J. Santamaria.

I brought her the tea and told her we had a guest coming up. She said, "Santamaria? Eddie was on the door when we came in. I guess Raul must have relieved him at eight."

We've never managed to learn what T J's last name is (or his first name, come to think of it), but it's a safe bet it's not Santamaria. Somewhere along the way one of the guys working the door insisted on a last name before he would call up and announce him, so he became T. J. Smith. He used that name some of the time, switching now and then to Jones or Brown, or Mr. Smith's partner, T. J. Wesson. ("He sort of an oily dude," he explained.) If the doorman du jour had a discernible ethnic identity, he'd pick a handle to fit, and on occasion he'd been announced as T. J. O'Hanrahan, T. J. Goldberg ("Whoopi's kid brother"), and, as now, T. J. Santamaria. For a few months we'd had a guy from St. Kitts with perfect posture and a piss-elegant manner, and T J'd delighted in making the poor bastard announce him as T. J. Spade.

He came in carrying a file folder with a stack of paper half an inch thick. "Printed out everything that made the papers," he said, "plus some wild-ass shit off an Internet site. Funny how the Times missed out on the connection between the Hollanders and the death of Sharon Tate."

"That sounds reasonable," I said. "Charles Manson had as much to do with the death of the Hollanders as their daughter Kristin did, which is as much as anybody did outside of those two losers out in Brooklyn." He held out the folder and I took it, saying, "What's the point? There's nothing here for us. We spent an hour or so yesterday taking a load off your girlfriend's mind."

"Not my girlfriend."

"Just a friend. I stand corrected." I hefted the file folder. "Why do I need to look at all this?"

"Why did we need to look at the house where it all went down?"

"Curiosity," I said.

"Killed the cat," he said. He pointed at the folder. "Kill a few more," he said, and headed for the elevator.

Monday morning I called Joe Durkin and asked him if he'd like to do me a favor. "It's the real reason I come to work every morning," he said. "What I do for the city is beside the point."

I told him what I wanted.

He said, "Why, for God's sake? What are you, turning into a writer? You plan on writing it up for one of the True Detective magazines?"

"I hadn't thought of that, but it would be a good cover sometime."

"Guys would expect to see clips. Seriously, Matt, what's your interest? And don't tell me you've got a client."

"How could I? They lifted my license."

"Way I heard it, you surrendered it voluntarily. And what difference would that make? You worked years without one."

"That was my point, as I recall."

"One of them," he said, and something hung for a moment in the air between us. He asked who hired me and I said I honestly didn't have a client. He said, "The daughter? How much closure does she need, for Christ's sake? The bastards who did it are dead. What's she need with you nosing around?"

"I haven't even met the daughter," I said, "and I don't have a client. My interest is personal."

"You're a public-spirited citizen and you want to see justice done."

"I gather it's already been done," I said. "Did I mention that Elaine and I were at dinner with the Hollanders the night they were killed?"

"It seems to me you did. You were at separate tables together, the way I remember it. You know, there was an elderly gentleman beaten to death on the G train just last month, and G's my father's middle initial, but I never felt the need to get together with the guy who headed up the investigation. Of course it might have been different if I had a client."

"If I had a client, any kind of a client," I said, "I'd have work to do, and I'd be too busy to waste my time bothering with a case that's already been closed."

"That's reason enough to wish you had your license back," he said. "You're serious, aren't you? Lemme make a phone call, see what I can do."