Lawrence Block - Everybody Dies

"That's not necessarily a bad thing."

"I guess not."

"You know," she said, "it probably wouldn't hurt you to cry."

She may have been right about that, too, but we weren't going to find out. The last time I remember crying was at an early AA meeting, when I spoke up for the first time to identify myself as an alcoholic. The tears that followed took me completely by surprise. My eyes have stayed dry ever since, except for the occasional movie, and I don't think that counts. Those aren't real tears, any more than the fear that grips you at a horror film is genuine fear.

So I couldn't cry and I couldn't make love, and it turned out I couldn't sleep, either. I almost drifted off and then I didn't, and finally I gave up and got out of bed and got dressed. I put the vest on under my shirt, and the holster over it. I zipped the windbreaker just far enough to conceal the gun.

Then I went into the other room and made a phone call.

"A black man," Mick said, looking across the table at me.

"According to the witnesses."

"But you never saw him yourself."

"No, and I didn't get to question the witnesses, either, but I understand they all agreed the shooter was black. Medium height, medium build, twenties or thirties or forties- "

"Narrows it down."

"And he had a beard or a mustache."

"One or the other?"

"Or both," I said. "Or neither, I suppose. He was in and out in less time than it takes to tell about it, and nobody had any reason to look at him before the shooting started, and then all they wanted to do was keep from getting shot themselves."

"But he was black," Mick said. "On that point they're in rare agreement."

"Yes."

"Is it niggers then? And what am I to them, or they to me?" He picked up his glass of whiskey, looked at it, set it down untouched. "The two men who gave you a beating," he said, "or tried to. Were they black?"

"They were both white. The one with the gun sounded like a born New Yorker. I didn't get a good look at the other one, or hear him talk, but he was white."

"And the man who shot your friend…"

"Was black."

"A white man could hire a black assassin," he said thoughtfully. "But would this man bring in someone from outside? Wouldn't he use one of his own?"

"Who is he?"

"I don't know."

"But someone's trying to…"

"Take it all away," he said. "And I don't know who he is, or why it's me he's after."

I didn't really think there'd be anyone staked out at the Parc Vendôme, but I'd just had my horse stolen and I wasn't about to leave the barn door unlocked. I went down to the basement and slipped out of the building by the rear service entrance. On my way to Grogan's I looked over my shoulder a lot. Nobody tailed me, and no one popped up out of the shadows in front of me.

Mick had said he'd make a pot of coffee, and he was at a table when I got there, with a bottle and glass in front of him and a stoneware coffee mug across from him. I scanned the room from the doorway. It was getting on for closing, but there were a fair number of people who didn't want the weekend to end, pairs and singles at the bar, a few couples at the tables. I spotted Andy Buckley and Tom Heaney way in back at the dartboard, Burke behind the bar, and old Eamonn Dougherty on the other side of it. Mick had pointed him out once as a legendary IRA gunman. He was killing men before you were born, he'd said.

There were a couple of other familiar faces, too.

I walked to where Mick was sitting, picked up my coffee mug, and carried it to a table along the wall. His eyes widened at this, but when I motioned for him he joined me, bringing his bottle and glass.

"You didn't care for the other table?"

"Too close to those folks," I said. "I didn't want to listen to their conversation, or for them to be listening to ours."

"I already heard enough of theirs," he said, amusement in his eyes. "It's a serious discussion of their relationship that they're having."

"I thought it might be," I said, and then I told him about my visit to the Lucky Panda, and his eyes hardened and his face turned serious.

And now he said, "I was wrong to get you involved."

"I could have turned you down."

"And would have, had you known what you were getting into. I'd no idea myself I'd be putting you in danger. But you're in it now, man."

"I know it."

"They didn't believe you'd heed their warning. Or didn't care. You embarrassed them, made them look bad. That's more than my two did, for Jesus' sake."

"Kenny and McCartney."

"Executed, the poor lads."

Two tables away, the fellow got up and went to the bar for fresh drinks. The woman looked sidelong at me, the trace of a smile on her lips. Then she lowered her eyes.

"And Peter Rooney," Mick said.

"That's a familiar name. Do I know him?"

"You might have met him here. Let me see, how would you know him? Well, now, he had the tattoo of a ship's anchor on the back of his left hand, just below the wrist."

I nodded. "Long, narrow face, balding in front."

"That's the man."

"He had the look of a sailor, too."

"And what sort of look is that? Ah, never mind. The ferry to Staten Island is all the sailing he ever did. Or will do."

"Why's that?"

He regarded his glass of whiskey He said, "You know I always have some money on the street. The Jews taught me that. It's like bread upon the water, isn't it? You put your money on the street and it comes back to you multiplied. Peter worked for me, at the job sites and the union halls. Making loans, you know, and receiving payments. He did none of the heavy work, you understand, as he was not cut out for it. A strong warning was as far as he'd go. After that I'd have to send someone else. Or go myself, as likely as not."

"What happened to him?"

"They found him stuffed head first into a trash bin in an alley off Eleventh Avenue. He'd been beaten so that his own mother wouldn't know him, were she alive to see him, which thanks be to God she's not. Beaten half to death, and then stabbed dead in the bargain."

"When did this happen?"

"I couldn't say when it happened. It was midmorning he was found, and early this evening by the time I learned of it." He picked up his glass and drank it down like water. "Did I know this friend of yours?"

"I don't think so."

"You never brought him here, then?"

"He stopped going to bars awhile ago."

"Ah, one of that lot. Not the one you were talking about the other night, was he? That went on retreat with the Buddhists?"

"That was him, as a matter of fact."

"Ah, Jesus. It's a curious thing. I've had that conversation in mind, do you know, and I was thinking that's a man I'd like to know. And now I'll never have the chance. Tell me his name again."

"Jim Faber."

"Jim Faber. I'd raise a glass to his memory, but perhaps he wouldn't care for that."

"I don't think he'd mind."

He poured a short drink. "Jim Faber," he said, and drank.

I took a sip of coffee and wondered what the two of them would have made of each other. I wouldn't have expected them to hit it off, but who's to say? Maybe they'd have found some common ground, maybe Jim had sought the same thing sitting in the zendo that Mick looked for at the Butchers' Mass.

Well, we'd never know.

He said, "They'll try for you again, you know."

"I know."

"By dawn they'll know their mistake, if they don't know it now. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. All I've done so far is lie to the cops."

"Do you recall the time I went to Ireland? I was avoiding a subpoena, but 'twould be as good a place to dodge a bullet. You could fly out tomorrow and come back when they sound the all-clear."

"I suppose I could."

"You and herself. I know you've never been there, but has she?"