Lawrence Block - A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

I put the paper down and the phone rang again. I picked it up and a voice said, "Is this where it's at?"

It took me a moment. Then I said, "TJ?"

"Where it's at, Matt. Everybody want to know who's this dude, hangin' loose on the Deuce, passin' out cards an' askin' everybody where's TJ. I was at the movies, man, watchin' this kung fu shit. You know how to do that shit?"

"No."

"That is some wild shit, man. Like to learn me some of that sometime."

I gave him my address and asked him if he could come up. "I don't know," he said. "What kind of hotel? One of them big fancy ones?"

"Not fancy at all. They won't give you a hard time downstairs. If they do, just tell them to call me on the house phone."

"I guess that be all right."

I hung up, and it rang again almost immediately. It was Maggie Hillstrom, the woman from Testament House. She had shown my sketches to kids and staff members at both Old Testament House and New Testament House. No one could identify the younger boy or the man, although some of the kids had said that either or both of them looked familiar.

"But I don't know how much stock to place in that," she said. "More to the point, we were able to identify the older boy. He never actually lived here but he did stay overnight on several occasions."

"Did you manage to come up with a name for him?"

"Happy," she said. "That's what he called himself. It seems ironic, doesn't it, and in a shabby way. I don't know if that was a long-standing nickname or if he acquired it here on the street. The consensus is that he was from the South or Southwest. A staff member seems to recall that he said he was from Texas, but a boy who knew him is just as certain he came from North Carolina. Of course he may have said different things to different people."

He was a hustler, she said. He went with men for money and took drugs when he could afford them. No one could recall having seen him within the past year.

"They are forever disappearing," she said. "It's normal not to see them for a few days, and then suddenly you'll realize you haven't seen someone for a week or two weeks or a month. And sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't, and you never know if the next place they went to was better or worse for them." She sighed. "One boy told me he thought Happy had most likely gone home. And, in a manner of speaking, perhaps he has."

THE next call was from the desk, announcing TJ's arrival. I told them to send him on up and met him at the elevator. I took him to my room and he moved around it like a dancer, checking it out. "Hey, this is cool," he said. "See the Trade Center from here, can't you? An' you got your own bathroom. Must be nice."

As far as I could tell he was wearing the same outfit I'd seen him in before. The denim jacket that had looked too warm for the summer now appeared unequal to the winter's cold. His high-top sneakers looked new, and he had added a royal-blue watch cap.

I handed him the sketches. He glanced at the top one and looked up at me, his eyes wary. He said, "You want to draw my picture? Why you laughin'?"

"I'm sure you'd make a fine model," I said, "but I'm no artist."

"You didn't draw these here?" He looked at each in turn, examined the signature. "Raymond something. What do you say, Ray? What's happenin'?"

"Do you recognize any of them?"

He said he didn't, and I ran it down for him. "The older boy's name is Happy," I said. "I think he's dead."

"You think they both be dead. Don't you?"

"I'm afraid so."

"What you want to know about them?"

"Their names. Where they're from."

"You already know his name, you said. Happy, you said."

"I figure his name is Happy like your name is TJ."

He gave me a look. "You say TJ," he said, "everybody gone know who you be referrin' to." He looked at the sketch again. "You sayin' Happy's his street name."

"That's right."

"If that's his name on the street, that the only name the street gone know. Who give you that name, Testament House?"

I nodded. "They said he didn't live there but he stayed there a couple of nights."

"Yeah, well, they be good people, but not everybody can handle the rules an' shit, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"Did you ever stay there, TJ?"

"Shit, why'd I do that? I don't need no place like that. I got a place where I live, man."

"Where?"

"Never mind where. Long as I can find it, that's all that matters." He shuffled through the sketches. Casually he said, "I seen this man."

"Where?"

"I dunno. On the Deuce, but don't be askin' me where or when." He sat down on the edge of the bed, yanked his cap off, turned it over in his hands. He said, "What you want from me, man?"

I took a twenty from my wallet and held it out to him. He didn't move to take it, and his eyes repeated his question. What did I want from him?

I said, "You know the Deuce and the bus terminal and the kids on the street. You could go places I don't know about and talk to people who wouldn't talk to me."

"Tha's a lot for twenty dollars." He grinned. "Other time I seen you, you gimme fi' dollars and I didn't do nothin'."

"You haven't done anything this time either," I said.

"Could take a lot of time, though. Jivin' with the people, goin' here an' there." I started to take back the twenty and his hand moved to snatch it from me. "Don't be doin' that," he said. "I didn't say no, did I? Just tuggin' you 'round some is all." He looked around the room. "But I don't guess you's rich, huh?"

I had to laugh. "No," I said. "Not quite."

CHANCE called. He had asked a few people in the fight crowd, and some had recalled an apparent father and son at ringside Thursday. No one remembered having seen the pair before, in Maspeth or elsewhere. I said the man would probably not have had the boy along on other occasions, and he said it was the two of them that people remembered. "So it's not like the people I talked to recognized him," he said. "Are you going back out there tomorrow night?"

"I don't know."

"Or you could watch it on television. You might see him if he's in the first row again."

We didn't stay on the phone long because I wanted to keep the line open. I hung up and waited, and Danny Boy Bell was the next to call. "I'll be having dinner at Poogan's," he said. "Why don't you join me? You know how I hate to eat alone."

"You've got something?"

"Nothing remarkable," he said, "but you have to eat dinner sometime, don't you? Eight o'clock."

I hung up and checked the time. It was five o'clock. I turned on the TV and watched the opening of the news and turned it off when I realized I wasn't paying attention. I picked up the phone and dialed Thurman's number. When the machine picked up I didn't say anything but I didn't hang up, either. I sat there with the line open for thirty seconds or so before I finally broke the connection.

I picked up The Newgate Calendar and the phone rang almost immediately. I grabbed it and said hello and it was Jim Faber.

"Oh, hi," I said.

"You sound disappointed."

"I've been waiting on a call all afternoon," I said.

"Well, I won't keep you," he said. "It's not important. Will you be going to St. Paul 's tonight?"

"I don't think so. I have to meet somebody at eight on Seventy-second Street and I don't know how long that'll last. Anyway, I went last night."

"That's funny, I looked for you and didn't see you there."

"I was downtown, I went to Perry Street."

"Oh, did you? That's where I wound up Sunday night. The perfect choice, you can say anything there and nobody gives a rat's ass. I said terrible things about Bev and felt a hundred percent better for it. Was Helen there last night? Did she tell you about the holdup?"

"What holdup?"

" At Perry Street. Look, you're expecting a call, I don't want to keep you."