Lawrence Block - A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

"See what you can find out," I heard myself say. "I'll cover the meter."

AT three I presented myself at Midtown North and took off my jacket and shirt. A police officer named Westerberg wired me for sound. "You've worn one of these before," Durkin said. "With that landlady, one the papers called the Angel of Death."

"That's right."

"So you know how it works. You shouldn't have any trouble with Thurman. If he wants you to go to bed with him just make sure you keep your shirt on."

"He won't want me to. He doesn't like homosexuals."

"Right, nothing queer about Richard. You want a vest? I think you ought to wear one."

"On top of the wire?"

"It's Kevlar, it shouldn't interfere with the pickup. The only thing it's supposed to stop is a bullet."

"There won't be any bullets, Joe. Nobody's used a gun in this so far. The vest won't stop a blade."

"Sometimes it will."

"Or a pair of panty hose around the neck."

"I guess," he said. "I just don't like the idea of sending you in without backup."

"You're not sending me in. I'm not under your command. I'm a private citizen wearing a wire out of a sense of civic responsibility. I'm cooperating with you, but you're not responsible for my safety."

"I'll remember to tell them that at the hearing after you wind up in a body bag."

"That's not going to happen," I said.

"Say Thurman woke up this morning and realized he talked too much, and now you're the loose end he has to get rid of."

I shook my head. "I'm his ace in the hole," I said. "I'm his backup, I'm the man who can make sure Stettner won't take a chance on killing him. Hell, he hired me, Joe. He's not going to kill me."

"He hired you?"

"Last night. He gave me a retainer, insisted I take it."

"What did he give you?"

"A hundred dollars. A nice crisp hundred-dollar bill."

"Hey, every little bit helps."

"I didn't keep it."

"What do you mean, you didn't keep it? You gave it back to him, how's he gonna trust you?"

"I didn't give it back to him. I got rid of it."

"Why? Money's money. It doesn't know where it came from."

"Maybe not."

"Money knows no owner. Basic principle of law. How'd you get rid of it?"

"Walking home," I said. "We walked as far as Ninth Avenue and Fifty-second Street and then he went one way and I went the other. The first guy who staggered out of a doorway looking for a handout, I wadded up Thurman's money and stuck it in his cup. They all have cups now, Styrofoam coffee cups that they hold out at you."

"That's so people won't have to touch them. You gave some bum on the street a hundred-dollar bill? How's he gonna spend it? Who's gonna change it for him?"

"Well," I said, "that's not my problem, is it?"

I walked over to where Richard Thurman lived and stood in a doorway across from his building. I got there ten minutes early for our four o'clock appointment and I spent the time watching the sidewalk traffic. I couldn't tell whether or not there was a light on in his apartment. His building was on the uptown side of the block and the windows on the upper floors caught the sunlight and reflected it back at me.

I waited until four, and then I waited another two minutes or so before I crossed the street and entered the vestibule next door to Radicchio's entrance. I pressed the button for Thurman and waited to be buzzed in. Nothing happened. I rang again and waited and again nothing happened. I went next door and checked the restaurant bar. He wasn't there. I went back to my station across the street, and after ten more minutes I walked to the corner and found a working pay phone. I called his apartment and the machine answered, and at the tone I said, "Richard, are you there? Pick up the phone if you are." He didn't pick up.

I called my hotel to see if there had been any calls. There hadn't. I got Five Borough's number from Information and got a secretary who would tell me only that he was not in the office. She didn't know where he was or when he was expected back.

I went back to Thurman's building and rang the bell of the travel agent on the second floor. The buzzer sounded immediately and I walked up a flight, waiting for someone to come out on the landing and challenge me. No one did. I went on up the stairs. The Gottschalks' door had been secured since the break-in, with the doorframe reinforced and the locks replaced. I climbed another flight to the fifth floor and listened at Thurman's door. I couldn't hear anything. I rang the bell and heard it sound within the apartment. I knocked on the door anyway. There was no response.

I tried the door and it didn't budge. There were three locks, although there was no way to tell how many of them were engaged. Two had pickproof Medeco cylinders, and all were secured by escutcheon plates. An angle iron installed at the juncture of door and frame rendered the door secure against jimmying.

I stopped at the two second-floor offices, the travel agent and the ticket broker, and asked if they'd seen Richard Thurman that day, if by any chance he'd left any sort of message with them. They hadn't and he hadn't. I asked the same question in Radicchio's and got the same answer. I went back to my post across the street, and at five o'clock I called the Northwestern again and learned that I hadn't had any calls, from Thurman or from anyone else. I hung up and spent another quarter to call Durkin.

"He never showed," I said.

"Shit. What is he, an hour late?"

"He hasn't tried to call me, either."

"The cocksucker's probably on his way to Brazil."

"No, that doesn't figure," I said. "He's probably stuck in traffic or hung up with some client or sports promoter or sponsor."

"Or giving Mrs. Stettner a farewell hump."

"An hour's nothing. Remember, he hired me. I'm working for him, so I suppose he can stand me up or run late without worrying that I'm going to throw a fit. I know where he's going to be this evening. I was supposed to go out to Maspeth with him for the boxing telecast. I'll give him another hour or so and if he still doesn't show I'll look for him at the arena."

"You'll keep on wearing the wire."

"Sure. It won't start recording until I turn it on and I haven't done that yet."

He thought it over. "I guess that's okay," he said.

"Except there's one thing."

"What's that?"

"I was wondering if you could send somebody over to open his apartment."

"Now?"

"Why not? I don't think he's going to show in the next hour. If he does I'll cut him off downstairs, drag him someplace for a drink."

"What do you expect to find?"

"I don't know."

After a short silence he said, "No, I couldn't get a court order. What am I gonna tell a judge? He had an appointment with a guy and he didn't show so I wanta kick his door in? Besides, time it took to get a court order you'd be out in Maspeth."

"Suppose you forget to get a court order."

"No way. Worst thing in the world. Say we find something, it's fruit of the poisoned tree. Could be a signed confession plus an eight-by-ten glossy of him strangling her and we couldn't do shit with it. It's not admissible because we got it through an unauthorized search and seizure." He sighed. "Now if you were to go in on your own and I didn't know about it-"

"I haven't got the skills. He's got pickproof cylinders. I could spend a week and not get in the door."

"Then forget it. It's his confession's gonna hang the bunch of them, not any evidence sitting in his apartment."

I said what I'd been thinking about. "Suppose he's in there."

"Dead, you mean. Well, dead's dead, you know? If he's dead now he'll be just as dead tomorrow, and if you still haven't heard from him by then I'll have enough grounds to hunt up a judge and get in legally. Matt, if he's already dead he can't say anything to you that he can't say tomorrow." When I was silent he said, "Tell me straight out. You were standing in front of his door. Did you get the sense that he was dead on the other side of it?"