Lawrence Block - Hope to Die

"Well, that's very nice of you," she said. "And after I just about accused you of trying to drum up some high-priced business!" But she'd had audiences with several private detectives, she said, and one told her to go home, that she was wasting her time, and the others wanted substantial advances before they would undertake to do a thing.

"Two men asked for two thousand dollars, and one wanted twenty-five hundred," she said. "And there was another man who asked for two or three thousand, I can't remember which, and I said that was much too high, and he said, well, how about a thousand? And I hemmed and hawed, and he said if I gave him five hundred he could get started. And it came to me that he wanted whatever I could give him, and he probably wouldn't do a thing once he had the money in his hand."

I told her she was probably right. She apologized again, unnecessarily, and asked if I thought she should stay in New York. She was supposed to fly home in the morning but she supposed she could stick around for a few more days.

I told her there was no need. I gave her one of my cards and made sure I had her address and phone number written down correctly. And I walked her back to her hotel, even though she told me not to bother. I waited until she had collected her key from the desk and boarded the elevator, then went outside and looked for a taxi.

When I walked in the door, Elaine told me Ira Wentworth had called twice. He wouldn't say what it was about, just that I should call him as soon as I got in.

I tried his number and a nasal-voiced male said, "Squad room, this is Acker." I gave my name and said I was returning Detective Wentworth's call.

"He's not in," Acker said, "but I know he wants to talk to you. Will you be staying put for the next ten minutes?"

"I'm not going anywhere. He's got the number, but let me give it to you again."

He repeated it back to me and rang off, and I realized I'd missed my chance to ask the number of the precinct. I picked up the phone and had my finger on the redial button but didn't push it.

I had a feeling I knew which precinct it was.

I put the phone down while I checked my notebook, picked it up again, and tried a number I'd tried before, with no success. It rang once, twice, and then somebody answered but didn't speak.

I said, "Ira Wentworth?"

The voice I'd heard once before, on my machine, said, "Who the hell is this?"

Half an hour later the doorman called upstairs to announce a Mr. Wentworth. I said to send him up, and was waiting in the hall when he got off the elevator. He was in his late thirties, tall and broad-shouldered, with a square jaw and a high forehead. His dark hair was combed straight back.

He said his name and I said mine, and we shook hands. "I made a couple of phone calls," he said. "You were on the job yourself."

"That was a while ago."

"You had a gold shield."

I suppose that accounted for the handshake. You can't shake hands over the phone, but even if you could I think he'd have passed it up. He'd been wary earlier, thrown off-stride by my having called him on Lia Parkman's cell phone. He'd picked it up once they'd established there were no fingerprints but hers to be found on it, and he'd been carrying it around ever since.

That was how he'd called me. The phone logged recent calls, and all he'd had to do was find the last call she'd made and open the mouthpiece to redial it. He'd called me without knowing who I was. Thus his original message, requesting I call back without identifying me by name.

Then I'd called back and left my name, and he'd called again, twice, and left messages, and I called him, and Charlie Acker had managed to reach him, and he was all set to call me when the phone in his pocket rang. And it was me, asking for him by name, and confusing the hell out of him for a minute there.

Over the phone, he hadn't even been willing to confirm that she was dead. But I already knew that. I knew the minute I heard his voice instead of hers, and I may have known when I placed the call.

"This is a nice building," he said. "I've never been inside, but I've admired it many times from the street. You been here long?"

"A couple of years. I've lived in the neighborhood a lot longer."

"Nice," he said. "Walk to the park, walk to the theaters. Very convenient." He admired the apartment, too, as I led him through it to the kitchen. Elaine was in the bedroom with the door closed, but she'd made a pot of coffee first, and I poured us each a cup and sat down with him at the kitchen table.

He tried the coffee and said it was outstanding, and I asked him about Lia Parkman, and he said, yes, she was dead. Her body had been discovered shortly after five that afternoon by one of her roommates. She lived in student housing on Claremont Avenue, shared a unit with three other students, and two of them were home at the time, and one of them knocked on the closed bathroom door, got no response, and walked in to find her in the bathtub, drowned, dead.

"Cause of death's drowning," he said. "Water in the lungs confirms that, pending final results from the medical examiner. Open pint bottle of Georgi vodka on the dresser next to the cell phone. Her prints on the bottle, nobody else's. Initial impression, she had a drink or two, went to take a bath, passed out and drowned."

"I can't believe that's what happened."

"Well," he said, "neither can I, but probably for reasons that are different from yours. First off, there's marks on her neck suggesting she might have been choked. That's also pending word from the ME's office, but it gets your attention. Then there's the vodka. Just a couple of ounces gone, and you don't figure that's enough to make a healthy young woman pass out. Granted, different people react differently, and if the water in the tub's real hot it could be a contributing factor, but it's unlikely. Of course she could have had a couple of pops before she got home, or pills of some sort, and the last slug of vodka made the difference. Once again, we'll know more when we get the autopsy results."

"Was she much of a drinker?"

He nodded approvingly. "That's where I was going next. According to the roommates, she hardly drank at all. Maybe a glass of white wine at a party, but the idea of her bringing a bottle back to her room, they couldn't see it. And then there's the prints on the bottle."

"Her prints, you said."

"Just her prints. What was the clerk in the liquor store doing, wearing gloves? Plus the prints are from her right hand, and she's right-handed."

"So?"

"Bottle's got a twist-off cap. You're going to open a bottle, how do you do it?"

I moved my hands in the air, working it out for myself. It had been a long time since I uncapped a pint of liquor, but I suppose any bottle would qualify, even salad dressing. "I think I'd hold the bottle in my left hand," I said, "and turn the cap with my right."

"If you're right-handed," Wentworth said, "that's how you'd do it."

"Any prints on the cap?"

"None." He picked up his coffee cup, but it was empty. He didn't ask for more, but I got the carafe and filled both our cups, and he grinned. "I'll regret it," he said, "drinking a second cup this late at night, but the hell with it. Some sins are worth the punishment. You grind the beans yourself?" I said we did, and he said it made a difference. Then he said, "There's another thing, made a little alarm bell go off for me. Her clothes."

"Her clothes?"

"Toilet lid's down and her clothes are folded and stacked on top of it, neat as a pin. She came in, ran a tub, got undressed, and hopped in."

"So?"

"Where's her towel? They share the bathroom, the four of them, so they each have their own towels and keep them in their rooms. There's a hand towel there for everybody's use, but it's too small to use after a bath. How come she forgot her towel?"