Lawrence Block - A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

"That's all right," I said. "Somebody held up Perry Street? What could they get? They don't even have coffee there anymore."

"Well, it wasn't a brilliantly conceived crime. It was their Friday night step meeting a week or two ago. A fellow named Bruce was speaking. I don't know if you know him and it's not important. Anyway, he gave his qualification for twenty minutes, and then some wacko stood up and announced that he had come to that meeting a year earlier and put forty dollars in the basket by mistake, and he had a gun in his pocket, and if he didn't get his forty dollars back he was going to start blowing people away."

"Jesus."

"Wait, here's the good part. Bruce told him, 'I'm sorry, you're out of order, we can't interrupt the meeting for something like that. You'll have to wait until the break at a quarter of nine.' The guy starts to say something and Bruce bangs the gavel on that sort of podium they have there and tells him to sit down and calls on somebody else, and the meeting goes on."

"And the nut just sits there?"

"I guess he figured he had no choice. Rules are rules, right? Then another fellow, a guy named Harry, went over to him and asked him if he wanted some coffee or some cigarettes, and the nut allowed as to how coffee would be nice. 'I'll just slip out and get you some,' Harry whispered, and he slipped out and around the corner to the police station, I think there's one fairly close-"

"The Sixth Precinct's just a couple blocks away on West Tenth."

"Then that's where he went, and he came back with a couple of New York 's Finest, and they bundled up the lunatic and took him away. 'Wait a minute,' he said. 'Where's my forty dollars? Where's my coffee?' Only at Perry Street."

"Oh, that could happen anywhere, don't you think?"

"I'm not so sure of that. I can think of an Upper East Side meeting where they would have taken up a collection for the sonofabitch and then tried to see if they could find him an apartment. Well, I won't keep you, I know you're expecting a call. But I had to pass that on."

"Thanks for sharing," I said.

JUST sitting still can drive you crazy. But I didn't want to go anywhere. I knew he was going to call and I didn't want to miss it.

The phone rang at six-thirty. I grabbed it and said hello and there was no answer. I said hello again and waited. I could tell the line was open. I said hello a third time and the connection was broken.

I picked up my book and put it down again, and then I looked in my notebook and dialed Lyman Warriner in Cambridge. "I know I told you I wouldn't be filing any progress reports," I said, "but I wanted to let you know that there's been some progress. I have a pretty good idea at this point of what happened."

"He's guilty, isn't he?"

"I don't think there's any question of that," I said. "Not in my mind and not in his."

"In his?"

"Something's working on him, guilt or fear or both. He called here a minute ago. He didn't say a word. He's scared to talk but he's also scared not to talk and that's why he called. I'm positive he'll call again."

"You sound as though you expect him to confess."

"I think he wants to. At the same time I'm sure he's afraid to. I'm not sure why I called you, Lyman. I probably should have waited until everything's resolved."

"No, I'm glad you called."

"I have a feeling once things start to move they're going to move fast." I hesitated. "Your sister's murder is only part of it."

"Really."

"That's how it looks at this stage. I'll let you know when I have something more concrete. But in the meantime I wanted to keep you in the picture."

THERE was another call at seven. I picked it up and said hello and there was a click right away as he hung up. I called back right away, dialing the number of the phone at his apartment. It rang four times and his machine picked up. I hung up.

At seven-thirty he called again. I said hello and when there was no reply I said, "I know who you are. You can go ahead and talk, it's all right."

Silence.

"I have to go out now," I said. "I'll be back here at ten o'clock. Call me at ten."

I could hear him breathing.

"Ten o'clock," I said, and broke the connection. I waited for ten minutes on the off chance that he'd call back right away and be ready to spill it, but no, that was it for now. I grabbed my coat and went to keep my dinner date with Danny Boy.

"Five Borough Cable," Danny Boy said. "A good idea, based on the premise that New Yorkers might go for sports programming with a little more local interest than celebrity bass fishing and Australian rules football. But they had a slow start and they made a very common mistake. They were undercapitalized.

"Just about a year ago they solved that problem by selling a substantial share to a pair of brothers with a last name I can't pronounce, but which I've been assured is Iranian. That's all anyone knows about them, aside from the fact that they live in Los Angeles, and are represented by an attorney in that city.

"For Five Borough, it's business as usual. They're not making money but they're not getting killed, and the new investors are willing to lose money for a few years. In fact they might be willing to lose money forever."

"I see."

"Do you? Interestingly enough, the new investors seem content to play a very passive role. You'd think they might make changes in the company's management, but they kept all the old people on and didn't bring in anybody new. Except that there's someone now who's around a lot. He doesn't work for Five Borough, he doesn't draw a salary, but if you look at the company you'll always see him out of the corner of your eye."

"Who is he?"

"Now that," he said, "is an interesting question. His name is Bergen Stettner, which sounds German, or at least Teutonic, but I don't think that's the name he was born with. He lives with his wife in an apartment on a high floor in that hotel of Trump's on Central Park South. Keeps an office in the Graybar Building on Lexington. He deals in foreign currencies, and he also buys and sells precious metals. What does this begin to suggest to you?"

"That he's a laundryman."

"And that Five Borough is functioning as some sort of laundry. How or why or for whom or to what extent are questions I wouldn't presume to answer." He poured himself some vodka. "So I don't know if this does you any good at all, Matthew. I couldn't find out anything at all about young Richard Thurman. If he hired some street scum to tie him up and savage his wife, either he picked a remarkably closemouthed pair or their fee included passage to New Zealand, because the word on the street is no word at all."

"That figures."

"Does it?" He knocked back the Stoly. "I hope the news about Five Borough isn't completely useless to you. I didn't want to say anything over the phone. That's never something I like to do, and your calls go through the hotel switchboard, don't they? Isn't that a nuisance?"

"I can dial out direct," I said. "And they take messages."

"I'm sure they do, although I don't like to leave them if I can help it. I'd offer to find out more about Stettner, but I might have a hard time doing that. He keeps a low profile. What have you got there?"

"I think it's his picture," I said, and unfolded the sketch. Danny Boy looked at it, then at me.

"You already knew about him," he said.

"No."

"You just happened to have his pencil portrait tucked in your jacket pocket. It's signed, for God's sake. Who, pray tell, is Raymond Galindez?"

"The next Norman Rockwell. Is that Stettner?"

"I don't know, Matthew. I never set eyes on the man."

"Well, I'm ahead of you there. I had a good look at him. I just didn't happen to know who I was looking at." I folded the sketch and put it away. "Keep this to yourself for now," I said, "but if things break right, he's going to go away for a long long time."