A Stab in the Dark

Page 20

 

  "I think I saw a picture of him in the paper. "

  "You dont get the full effect from a photograph. Pinells the kind of person you dont notice. You see guys like him delivering lunches, taking tickets in a movie theater. Slight build, furtive manner, and a face that just wont stay in your memory. "

  " The Banality of Evil. "

  "Whats that?"

  She repeated the phrase. "Its the title of an essay about Adolf Eichmann. "

  "I dont know that Pinells evil. Hes crazy. Maybe evils a form of insanity. Anyway, you dont need a psychiatrists report to know hes crazy. Its right there in his eyes. Speaking of eyes, thats another thing I wanted to ask him. "

  "What?"

  "If he stabbed them all in both eyes. He said he did. He did that right away, before he went to work turning their bodies into pincushions. "

  She shuddered. "Why?"

  "That was the other thing I wanted to ask him. Why the eyes? It turned out he had a perfectly logical reason. He did it to avoid detection. "

  "I dont follow you. "

  "He thought a dead persons eyes would retain the last image they perceived before death. If that were the case you could obtain a picture of the murderer by scanning the victims retina. He was just guarding against this possibility by destroying their eyes. "

  "Jesus. "

  "The funny thing is that hes not the first person to have that theory. During the last century some criminologists believed the same thing Pinell hit on. They just figured it was a matter of time before the necessary technology existed for recovering the image from the retina. And who knows that it wont be possible someday? A doctor could give you all sorts of reasons why itll never be physiologically possible, but look at all the things that would have seemed at least as farfetched a hundred years ago. Or even twenty years ago. "

  "So Pinells just a little ahead of his time, is that it?" She got up, carried my empty glass to the bar. She filled it and poured a glass of vodka for herself. "I do believe that calls for a drink. Heres looking at you, kid. Thats as close as I can come to an imitation of Humphrey Bogart. I do better with clay. "

  She sat down and said, "I wasnt going to drink anything today. Well, what the hell. "

  "I want to go fairly light myself. "

  She nodded, her eyes aimed at the glass in her hand. "I was glad when you called, Matthew. I didnt think you were going to. "

  "I tried to get you last night. I kept getting a busy signal. "

  "I had the phone off the hook. "

  "I know. "

  "You had them check it? I just wanted to keep the world away last night. When Im in here with the door locked and the phone off the hook and the shades down, thats when Im really safe. Do you know what I mean?"

  "I think so. "

  "See, I didnt wake up with a clear head Sunday morning. I got drunk Sunday night. And then I got drunk again last night. "

  "Oh. "

  "And then I got up this morning and took a pill to stop the shakes and decided Id stay away from it for a day or two. Just to get off the roller-coaster, you know?"

  "Sure. "

  "And here I am with a glass in my hand. Isnt that a surprise?"

  "You should have said something, Jan. I wouldnt have brought the vodka. "

  "Its no big deal. "

  "I wouldnt have brought the Scotch, either. I had too much to drink last night myself. We could be together tonight without drinking. "

  "You really think so?"

  "Of course. "

  Her large gray eyes looked quite bottomless. She stared sadly at me for a long moment, then brightened. "Well, its too late to test that hypothesis right now, isnt it? Why dont we just make the best of what we have?"

  We didnt do all that much drinking. She had enough vodka to catch up with me and then we both coasted. She played some records and we sat together on the couch and listened to them, not talking much. We started making love on the couch and then went into the bedroom to finish the job.

  We were good together, better than wed been Saturday night. Novelty is a spice, but when the chemistry is good between lovers, familiarity enhances their lovemaking. I got out of myself some, and felt a little of what she felt.

  Afterward we went back to the couch and I started talking about the murder of Barbara Ettinger. "Shes buried so goddamn deep," I said. "Its not just the amount of time thats gone by. Nine years is a long time, but there are people who died nine years ago and you could walk through their lives and find everything pretty much as they left it. The same people in the houses next door and everybody leading the same kind of life.

  "With Barbara, everybodys gone through a seachange. You closed the day-care center and left your husband and moved here. Your husband took the kids and beat it to California. I was one of the first cops on the scene, and God knows my life turned upside down since then. There were three cops who investigated the case in Sheepshead Bay, or started to. Two of them are dead and one left the force and his wife and lives in a furnished room and stands guard in a department store. "

  "And Doug Ettingers remarried and selling sporting goods. "

  I nodded. "And Lynn Londons been married and divorced, and half the neighbors on Wyckoff Street have moved somewhere or other. Its as though every wind on earths been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. I know Americans lead mobile lives. I read somewhere that every year twenty percent of the country changes its place of residence. Even so, its as though every wind on earths been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. Its like digging for Troy. "

  " Deep with the first dead. "

  "Hows that?"

  "I dont know if I remember it right. Just a second. " She crossed the room, searched the bookshelves, removed a slim volume and paged through it. "Its Dylan Thomas," she said, "and its in here somewhere. Where the hell is it? Im sure its in here. Here it is. "

  She read:

  "Deep with the first dead lies Londons daughter,

  Robed in the long friends,

  The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

  Secret by the unmourning water

  Of the riding Thames.

  After the first death, there is no other. "

  "Londons daughter," I said.

  "As in the city of London. But that must be what made me think of it. Deep with the first dead lies Charles Londons daughter. "

  "Read it again. "

  She did.

  "Except theres a door there somewhere if I could just find the handle to it. It wasnt some nut that killed her. It was someone with a reason, someone she knew. Someone who purposely made it look like Pinells handiwork. And the killers still around. He didnt die or drop out of sight. Hes still around. I dont have any grounds to believe that but its a feeling I cant shake. "

  "You think its Doug?"

  "If I dont, Im the only one who doesnt. Even his wife thinks he did it. She may not know thats what she thinks, but why else is she scared of what Ill find?"

  "But you think its somebody else?"

  "I think an awful lot of lives changed radically after her death. Maybe her dying had something to do with those changes. With some of them, anyway. "

  "Dougs obviously. Whether he killed her or not. "

  "Maybe it affected other lives, too. "

  "Like a stone in a pond? The ripple effect?"

  "Maybe. I dont know just what happened or how. I told you, its a matter of a hunch, a feeling. Nothing concrete that I can point at. "

  "Your cop instincts, is that it?"

  I laughed. She asked what was funny. I said, "Its not so funny. Ive had all day to wonder about the validity of my cop instincts. "

  "How do you mean?"

  And so I wound up telling her more than Id planned. About everything from Anitas phone call to a kid with a gravity knife. Two nights ago Id found out what a good listener she was, and she was no worse at it this time around.

  When I was done she said, "I dont know why youre d
own on yourself. You could have been killed. "

  "If it was really a mugging attempt. "

  "What were you supposed to do, wait until he stuck a knife into you? And why was he carrying a knife in the first place? I dont know what a gravity knife is, but it doesnt sound like something you carry around in case you need to cut a piece of string. "

  "He could have been carrying it for protection. "

  "And the roll of money? It sounds to me as though hes one of those closet cases who pick up gay men and rob them, and sometimes beat them up or kill them while theyre at it to prove how straight they are. And youre worrying because you gave a kid like that a bloody lip?"

  I shook my head. "Im worrying because my judgment wasnt sound. "

  "Because you were drunk. "

  "And didnt even know it. "

  "Was your judgment off the night you shot the two holdup men? The night that Puerto Rican girl got killed?"

  "Youre a pretty sharp lady, arent you?"

  "A fucking genius. "

  "Thats the question, I guess. And the answer is no, it wasnt. I hadnt had much to drink and I wasnt feeling it. But-"

  "But you got echoes just the same. "

  "Right. "

  "And didnt want to look straight at them, any more than Karen Ettinger wants to look straight at the fact that she thinks her husband might have murdered his first wife. "

  "A very sharp lady. "

  "They dont come any sharper. Feel better now?"

  "Uh-huh. "

  "Talking helps. But you kept it so far inside you didnt even know it was there. " She yawned. "Being a sharp lady is tiring work. "

  "I can believe it. "

  "Want to go to bed?"

  "Sure. "

  BUT I didnt stay the night. I thought I might, but I was still awake when her breathing changed to indicate that she was sleeping. I lay first on one side and then on the other, and it was clear I wasnt ready to sleep. I got out of bed and padded quietly into the other room.

  I dressed, then stood at the window and looked out at Lispenard Street. There was plenty of Scotch left but I didnt want to drink any of it.

  I let myself out. A block away on Canal Street I managed to flag a cab. I got uptown in time to catch the last half-hour or so at Armstrongs, but I said the hell with it and went straight to my room.

  I got to sleep eventually.

  Chapter 14

  I had a night of dreams and shallow sleep. The dog, Bandy, turned up in one of the dreams. He wasnt really dead. His death had been faked as part of some elaborate scam. He told me all this, told me too that hed always been able to talk but had been afraid to disclose this talent. "If Id only known," I marveled, "what conversations we could have had!"

  I awoke refreshed and clearheaded and fiercely hungry. I had bacon and eggs and home fries at the Red Flame and read the News. Theyd caught the First Avenue Slasher, or at the least had arrested someone they said was the Slasher. A photograph of the suspect bore a startling resemblance to the police artists sketch that had run earlier. That doesnt happen too often.

  I was on my second cup of coffee when Vinnie slid into the booth across from me. "Woman in the lobby," he said.