Walk Among the Tombstones: A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel

  He looked as though he spent too much time on airplanes, too much time indoors, too much time drinking too much coffee in back rooms and kitchens. He was unshaven, and his hair was shaggy and needed cutting. He’d lost weight and muscle tone since I’d seen him last, and his handsome face was drawn, with dark circles under the dark eyes. He was wearing light-colored linen slacks and a bronze silk shirt and loafers with no socks, the sort of outfit in which his usual look was one of quiet elegance. But today he looked rumpled and the least bit seedy.

  “Say the cops get ’em,” he said. “Then what happens?”

  “It depends what kind of a case they’re able to make. Ideally you’ll get a lot of solid physical evidence linking them to one or more of the murders. In the absence of that, you might see one of the criminals testify against the others in return for the opportunity to plead to a lesser charge.”

  “Rat ’em out, in other words.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why let one of ’em cop a plea? The girl’s a witness, isn’t she?”

  “Only to the crime she was a victim of, and that’s a lesser charge than murder. Rape and forcible sodomy are class B felonies, calling for an indeterminate sentence of six to twenty-five years. If you can charge them with Murder Two they’re looking at a life sentence.”

  “What about cutting her breast off?”

  “All that amounts to is first-degree assault, and that’s a lesser charge than rape and sodomy. I think the max on it is fifteen years.”

  “That seems off to me,” he said. “I’d have to say it’s worse than murder, what they did to her. One person kills another person, well, maybe he couldn’t help it, maybe he had cause. But to hurt a person like that for the fun of it—what kind of people act like that?”

  “Sick ones or evil ones, take your pick.”

  “You know what’s making me crazy is thinking what they did to Francey.” He was on his feet, pacing, and he crossed the room and looked out the window. With his back to me he said, “I try not to think about it. I try to tell myself they killed her right away, she fought and they hit her to quiet her and hit her too hard and she died. Just like that, wham, gone.” He turned around and his shoulders sagged. “What the fuck’s the difference? Whatever they put her through, it’s over now. She’s done hurting. She’s gone, she’s ashes. Whatever’s not ashes is with God, if that’s how it works. Or at peace, or born again into a bird or a flower or who knows what. Or just gone. I don’t know how it works, what happens to you after you die. Nobody does.”

  “No.”

  “You hear this shit, near-death experiences, going through a tunnel and meeting Jesus or your favorite uncle and seeing a picture of your whole life. Maybe it happens that way. I don’t know. Maybe that only works with near-death experiences. Maybe real death is different. Who knows?”

  “I don’t.”

  “No, and who fucking cares? We’ll worry about it when it happens to us. What’s the most they can get for rape? You said twenty-five years?”

  “According to the statute, yes.”

  “And sodomy, you said. What’s that amount to legally, anal?”

  “Anal or oral.”

  He frowned. “I gotta stop this. Everything we talk about I immediately translate in terms of Francine and I can’t do that, I just make myself nuts. You can get twenty-five years for fucking a woman in the ass and a max of fifteen for hacking her tits off. There’s something wrong there.”

  “It’ll be tough changing the law.”

  “No, I’m just looking for a way to make it the system’s fault, that’s all. Twenty-five years isn’t enough, anyway. Life’s not enough. They’re animals, they should be fucking dead.”

  “The law can’t do that.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s all right. All the law has to do is find them. After that anything can happen. If they go to prison, well, it’s not that hard to get at somebody in prison. There’s a lot of guys in the joint don’t mind turning a buck. Or say they beat it in court or they make bail awaiting trial, they’re out in the open and easy to get at.” He shook his head. “Listen to me, will you? Like I’m the Godfather sitting back and ordering hits. Who knows what’s gonna happen? Maybe I’ll lose some of this heat by then, maybe twenty-five years in a cell’s gonna sound like enough by then. Who knows?”

  I said, “We could get lucky and find them before the police do.”

  “How? By walking around Sunset Park not knowing who you’re looking for?”

  “And by using some of what the police come up with. One thing they’ll do is send everything they have to the FBI office that draws up profiles of serial killers. Maybe our witness will fill in some of the holes in her memory and I’ll have a picture to work with, or at least a decent physical description.”

  “So you want to stay with it.”

  “Definitely.”

  He considered this, nodded. “Tell me again what I owe you.”

  “I gave the girl a thousand. The lawyer’s not charging her anything. The computer technicians who tapped the phone-company records got fifteen hundred, and the room we used cost a hundred and sixty, plus fifty dollars’ deposit on the phone, which I didn’t try to recover. Call it twenty-seven hundred even.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve had other expenses, but it seemed reasonable to pay them out of my end. These were unusual expenses, and I didn’t want to delay action until I could get your okay. If anything seems out of line, I’m prepared to discuss it.”

  “What’s there to discuss?”

  “I get the feeling something’s bothering you.”

  He sighed heavily. “You do, huh? The first conversation we had when I got in the other day, seems to me you said something about asking my brother.”

  “That’s right. He didn’t have it, so I raised it myself. Why?”

  “He didn’t have it or he said wait until you got an okay from me?”

  “He didn’t have it. In fact he specifically said he was sure you would cover the expense, but that he didn’t have any cash to speak of.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Absolutely. Why? What’s the problem?”

  “He didn’t say he could let you have some of my dough? Nothing like that?”

  “No. As a matter of fact—”

  “Yeah? As a matter of fact what?”

  “He said you undoubtedly had money around the house, but that he didn’t have access to that. He said something ironic to the effect that you wouldn’t give a junkie the combination to your safe, not even if he was your brother.”

  “He said that, huh?”

  “I don’t know that he meant you personally,” I said. “The sense of it was that nobody in his right mind would give that information to a drug addict because he couldn’t be trusted.”

  “So he was speaking generally.”

  “That’s how it seemed to me.”

  “It could have been personal,” he said. “And he would have been correct. I wouldn’t trust him with that kind of money. My big brother, I’d probably trust him with my life, but cash running into six figures? No, I wouldn’t do it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He said, “I talked to Petey the other day. He was supposed to come out here. He never showed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Something else. Day I left he ran me out to the airport. I gave him five thousand dollars. Case he’s got any emergencies. So when you asked him for twenty-seven hundred—”

  “Less than that. I spoke to him Saturday afternoon and that was before I needed the thousand for the Cassidy girl. I don’t know what figure I mentioned. Fifteen hundred or two thousand, most likely.”

  He shook his head. “Can you make sense out of this? Because I can’t. You call him Saturday and he says I’m not coming back until Monday, but go ahead and lay out the money and you’ll get it back from me. That’s what he says?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now why would he do that? I
can see him not wanting to part with any of my dough if he thinks I might be opposed to it. And rather than turn you down and look like a hard case he’ll just say he doesn’t have it to give. But he’s essentially okaying the expense at the same time that he’s hanging on to the dough. Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you give the impression that you had plenty of cash?”

  “No.”

  “Because I could see him figuring if you got it then you can lay it out. But otherwise . . . Matt, I don’t like to say it but I got a bad feeling about this.”

  “So do I.”

  “I think he’s using.”

  “It sounds like it.”

  “He’s keeping his distance, he says he’ll be over and he doesn’t show up, I call him and he’s not there. What does that sound like?”

  “I haven’t seen him at a meeting in a week and a half. Now we don’t always go to the same meetings but—”

  “But you expect to run into him now and then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I give him five grand in case something comes up, and the minute something comes up he says he doesn’t have it. What did he spend it on? Or if he’s lying, what’s he saving it for? Two questions and one answer, way it looks to me. Jay-You-En-Kay. What else?”

  “There could be another explanation.”

  “I’m willing to hear it.” He picked up a phone, dialed a number, and stood there holding himself in check while the phone rang. It must have rung ten times before he gave up. “No answer, but it means nothing. When he used to hole up with a bottle he would go days without answering his phone. I asked him once why he didn’t at least take it off the hook. Then I’d know he was there, he said. He’s a devious bastard, my brother.”

  “It’s the disease.”

  “The habit, you mean.”

  “We generally call it a disease. I guess it amounts to the same thing.”

  “He kicked junk, you know. He was hooked bad and he quit it, but then he got into the booze.”

  “So he said.”

  “How long was he sober? Over a year.”

  “A year and a half.”

  “You’d think if you could do it that long you could do it forever.”

  “A day is the most anybody can do it.”

  “Yeah,” he said impatiently. “A day at a time. I know all that, I heard all the slogans. When he was first getting sober Petey was here all the time. Francey and I would sit with him and give him coffee and listen to him run off at the mouth. Everything he heard at a meeting he came back and filled our ears with it, but we didn’t mind because he was starting to put his life back together again. Then one day he told me how he couldn’t hang out with me so much anymore because it could undercut his sobriety. Now he’s somewhere with a bag of dope and a bottle of whiskey and what the hell happened to his sobriety?”

  “You don’t know that, Kenan.”

  He turned on me. “What else, for Christ’s sake? What’s he doing with five grand, buying lottery tickets? I never should have given him that much money. It’s too much temptation. Whatever happens to him, it’s my fault.”

  “No,” I said. “If you gave him a cigar box full of heroin and said ‘Watch this for me until I get back,’ then it’d be your fault. That’s more temptation than anybody should have to handle. But he’s been clean and dry for a year and a half and he knows how to be responsible for his own sobriety. If the money made him nervous he could put it in the bank, or ask somebody in the program to hold it for him. Maybe he went out and maybe he didn’t, we don’t know yet, but whatever he did you didn’t make him do it.”

  “I made it easy.”

  “It’s never hard. I don’t know what a bag of dope costs these days, but you can still get a drink for a couple of dollars, and one’s all it takes.”

  “One wouldn’t hold you for very long, though. Still, five thousand dollars ought to keep him going for a hell of a run. What can you spend on liquor, twenty dollars a day if you drink it at home? Two, three times that if you buy it over the bar? Heroin’s a more expensive proposition, but even so it’s hard to put more than a couple hundred dollars a day in your arm, and it’d take him a while to build his habit back up. Even if he makes a pig of himself, it ought to take him a month to shoot up five grand.”

  “He didn’t use a needle.”

  “He told you that, huh?”

  “It’s not true?”

  He shook his head. “He told people that, and there was a period when all he did was snort, but he was a needle junkie for a while there. The lie made the habit sound less serious. Plus he was afraid if women knew he used to shoot dope they’d be afraid to go to bed with him. Not that he’s been knocking them over like dominoes lately, but you don’t want to make it harder on yourself. He figured they’d assume he shared needles and be afraid he was HIV-positive.”

  “But he didn’t share needles?”

  “Says he didn’t. And he got tested, and he doesn’t have the virus.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, I was just thinking. Maybe he did share needles, maybe he never went for the HIV test. He could lie about that, too.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Do you use a needle? Or do you just snort?”

  “I’m not a junkie.”

  “Peter told me you snort a bag of dope about once a month.”

  “When was this? On the phone Saturday?”

  “A week before. We went to a meeting, then had a meal and hung out together.”

  “And he told you that, huh?”

  “He said he was here at your house a few days before that and you were high. He said he called you on it and you denied it.”

  He lowered his eyes for a moment, lowered his voice, too, when he spoke. “Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “He did call me on it, and I did deny it. I thought he bought it.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “No, I guess not. It bothered me to lie about it. It didn’t bother me that I did up the dope. I wouldn’t do it in front of him and I wouldn’t have done it just then if I’d known he was coming over, but it don’t hurt anybody, least of all me, if I do up a bag of dope once in a blue moon.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “He said once a month? To tell you the truth, I doubt if it’s that much. My guess would be seven, eight, ten times a year. It’s never been more than that. I shouldn’t have lied to him. I should have said, ‘Yeah, I been feeling like shit, so I got off, and so what?’ Because I can do it a few times a year and it never comes to more than that, and if he has one little taste he’s got the whole habit back and they’re stealing his shoes when he nods out in the subway. That happened to him, he woke up on the D train in his socks.”

  “It’s happened to a lot of people.”

  “Including you?”

  “No, but it could have.”

  “You’re an alcoholic, right? I had a drink before you came over here. If you asked me I’d say so, I wouldn’t lie about it. Why did I lie about it to my brother?”

  “He’s your brother.”

  “Yeah, that’s part of it. Oh, shit, man. I’m worried about him.”

  “Nothing you can do at this point.”

  “No, what am I gonna do, drive through the streets looking for him? We’ll go together. You look out one side of the car for the fuckers who killed my wife and I’ll look out the other side for my brother. How’s that for a plan?” He made a face. “In the meantime I owe you money. What did we say, twenty-seven hundred?” He had a roll of hundreds in his pocket and counted out twenty-seven of them, which pretty much depleted the roll. He handed the money to me and I found a place to put it. He said, “What now?”

  “I’ll stay with it,” I said. “Some of what I try will depend on where the police investigation leads, but—”

  “No,” he cut in, “that’s not what I mean. What do you do now? You got a date for dinner, you got something doing in the
city, what?”

  “Oh.” I had to think. “I’ll probably go back to my room. I’ve been on my feet all day, I want to take a shower and change my clothes.”

  “You plan to walk back? Or will you take the subway?”

  “Well, I won’t walk.”

  “Suppose I drive you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  He shrugged. “I have to do something,” he said.

  IN the car he asked me the location of the famous laundromat and said he wanted to have a look at it. We drove there and he parked the Buick across the street from it and killed the engine. “So we’re on a stakeout,” he said. “That’s what it’s called, right? Or is that only on TV?”

  “A stakeout generally goes on for hours,” I said. “So I hope we’re not on one at the moment.”

  “No, I just wanted to sit here for a minute. I wonder how many times I drove past this place. It never once occurred to me to stop and make a phone call. Matt, you’re sure these guys are the same ones who killed the two women and cut the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because this was for profit and the others were strictly, uh, what’s the word? Pleasure? Recreation?”

  “I know. But the similarities are too specific and too striking. It has to be the same men.”

  “Why me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean why me?”

  “Because a drug dealer makes an ideal target, lots of cash and a reason to steer clear of the police. We discussed that before. And one of the men had a thing about drugs. He kept asking Pam if she knew any dealers, if she took drugs. He was evidently obsessed with the subject.”

  “That’s why a drug dealer. That’s not why me.” He leaned forward, propped his arms on the steering wheel. “Who even knows I’m a dealer? I haven’t been arrested, haven’t had my name in the papers. My phone’s not tapped and my house isn’t bugged. I’m positive my neighbors don’t have a clue how I make my money. The DEA investigated me a year and a half ago and they dropped the whole thing because they weren’t getting anyplace. The NYPD I don’t even think they know I’m alive. You’re some degenerate, likes to kill women, wants to get rich knocking off a drug dealer, how do you even know of my existence? That’s what I want to know. Why me?”