Lawrence Block - A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

"I don't know why the coffee's so bad," he said. "I really don't. We used to have this machine, you know, coin-operated, and you can never get a halfway decent cup of coffee out of one of them. But we chipped in and bought one of these electric drip pots, and we use premium coffee, and it comes out tasting like this. I think there must be some law of nature, you're in a station house, the coffee has to taste like shit."

It didn't taste that bad to me. He said, "If we ever clear this one, you know how it'll happen."

"A snitch."

"A snitch hears something and passes it on, or one of the geniuses steps on his cock and we pick him up for something heavy, and he tries to do himself some good by ratting out his partner. And Thurman, assuming we're right and it was his game."

"Or even if it wasn't."

"What do you mean?"

I said, " 'She was alive and kicking when we left there, man. We put the pork to her but I swear she liked that part of it, an' we sure didn't wrap no stockings around her neck. Musta been her husband, decided to get hisself an instant divorce.' "

"Jesus, that's just how they'd say it."

"I know. That's what they'd say if Thurman was a hundred percent innocent. 'Wasn't me killed her, she was alive when I left.' And it could even be true."

"Huh?"

"Say it was a crime of opportunity. The Thurmans come home, walk in on a robbery in progress. The skells rob them and beat him up and rape her because they're animals, so why not act like it? Then they leave, and Thurman gets a hand free, and his wife's unconscious and he thinks she's dead-"

"But she's not dead, but it gives him an idea-"

"- and her panty hose is right there on the bed next to her, and next thing you know it's around her neck and this time she really is dead."

He thought about it. "Sure," he said. "Could be. The medical examiner set the time of death at around one o'clock, which squares with Thurman's story, but if he did her right after they left and then stalled a while, the time he was supposed to be unconscious and then struggling to free himself, well, that would all fit."

"Right."

"And nobody could implicate him. They could say she was alive when they left, but that's something they'd say anyway." He finished his coffee and threw the Styrofoam cup at the wastebasket. "Fuck this," he said. "You can go around and around. I think he did it. Whether he planned it or it fell in his lap, I think he did it. All that money."

"She inherited better than half a million, according to the brother."

He nodded. "Plus the insurance."

"He didn't say anything about insurance."

"It's possible nobody told him. They took out policies payable to each other shortly after they were married. Hundred-thousand-dollar straight life, double indemnity for accidental death."

"Well, that sweetens it a little," I said. "Raises the ante by two hundred kay."

He shook his head.

"Am I figuring wrong?"

"Uh-huh. She got pregnant in September. Soon as they found out, he got in touch with his insurance agent and raised the amount of their coverage. A baby coming, increased responsibilities. Makes sense, right?"

"What did he raise it to?"

"A million on his own life. After all, he's the breadwinner, his income's gonna be tough to replace. Still, her role's important, so he boosted her coverage to a half mil."

"So her death-"

"Meant an even million in insurance, because they still had the double-indemnity clause, plus all of her property that he'll inherit. Round it off, call it a total of a million and a half."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

"Jesus Christ."

"Yeah, right. He's got means and motive and opportunity, and he's a heartless little fuck if I ever saw one, and I couldn't find a shred of evidence to show that he's guilty of a single fucking thing." He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked up at me. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Do you use the dental floss?"

"Huh?"

"Aspirin and dental floss, you said that's all you've got in your medicine chest. Do you ever use it?"

"Oh," I said. "When I remember. My dentist nagged me into buying it."

"Same here, but I never use it."

"Neither do I, really. The good news is we'll never run out."

"That's it," he said. "We got a fucking lifetime supply."

That evening I met Elaine Mardell in front of a theater onForty-second Street west ofNinth Avenue. She was wearing tight jeans and square-toed boots and a black leather motorcycle jacket with zippered pockets. I told her she looked great.

"I don't know," she said. "I was trying for off-Broadway, but I think I may have achieved off-off-Broadway."

We had good seats down front, but the theater was too small to have any bad seats. I don't remember the title of the play, but it was about homelessness, and the playwright was against it. One of the actors, Harley Ziegler, was a regular at Keep It Simple, an AA group that meets evenings atSt. Paul the Apostle, just a couple of blocks from my hotel. In the play Harley was a wino who lived in a cardboard packing case. He gave a convincing performance, and why not? A few years ago he'd been playing the role in real life.

We went backstage afterward to congratulate Harley and ran into half a dozen other people I knew from meetings. They invited us to join them for coffee. Instead we walked ten blocks up Ninth to Paris Green, a restaurant we both liked. I had the swordfish steak and Elaine ordered linguini al pesto.

"I don't know about you," I said. "It seems to me you wear a lot of leather for a heterosexual vegetarian."

"It's one of those wacky little inconsistencies wherein lies the secret of my charm."

"I was wondering about that."

"Now you know."

"Now I know. There was a woman killed half a block from here a few months ago. She and her husband interrupted burglars in their downstairs neighbors' apartment and she wound up raped and murdered."

"I remember the case."

"Well, it's my case now. Her brother hired me yesterday, he thinks the husband did it. The couple whose apartment it was, the downstairs neighbors, he's this Jewish lawyer, retired, lots of dough, and she didn't have any furs stolen. You know why?"

"She was wearing them all at once."

"Uh-uh. She's an animal-rights activist."

"Oh yeah? Good for her."

"I suppose. I wonder if she wears leather shoes."

"Probably. Who cares?" She leaned forward. "Look," she said, "you could refuse to eat bread because yeast give their lives to make it. You could pass up antibiotics because what right do we have to murder germs? So she wears leather but she doesn't wear fur. So what?"

"Well-"

"Besides," she said, "leather's neat and fur's tacky."

"Well, that settles it."

"Good. Did the husband do it?"

"I don't know. I walked past the building earlier today. I can point it out to you later, it's on our way if I walk you home. Maybe you'll pick up some vibrations, solve the case just by walking past the murder site."

"But you didn't."

"No. He had a million and a half reasons to kill her."

"A million and a half-"

"Dollars," I supplied. "Between insurance and her own holdings." I told her about the Thurmans and what I'd learned from Joe Durkin and Lyman Warriner. "I'm not sure what I can do that the police haven't already done," I said. "Just poke around, I guess. Knock on doors, talk to people. Be nice if I could find out he's been having an affair, but of course that was the first thing Durkin looked for and he couldn't turn up a thing."

"Maybe he's got a boyfriend."

"That would fit with my client's theory, but gay people have a tendency to think the whole world is gay."