Everybody Dies (Matthew Scudder)

“You didn’t move them at all?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t have to touch them to know they were beyond help. I’ve seen enough dead men to know one on sight.”

  “Or even in the dark.”

  “The smell was less a few hours ago.”

  “Is that when you found them?”

  “I didn’t note the time. It was early evening, with the sky still bright. I’d say it was between seven and eight.”

  “And this is exactly what you found? You didn’t add anything or take anything away?”

  “I did not.”

  “The door was lowered when you got here?”

  “Lowered and locked.”

  “The cardboard carton in the corner—”

  “Just some tools in it that it’s useful to keep here. A pry bar for opening crates, a hammer and nails. There was an electric drill, but I guess they took that. They took everything else.”

  “What was there for them to take?”

  “Whiskey. Enough to fill a small truck.”

  I knelt down for a closer look at the man I recognized. I moved his arm, lined up the wound in the hand with the wound in the torso. “One bullet,” I said, “or at least it looks that way. I’ve seen that before. It seems to be instinctive, holding up a hand to ward off a bullet.”

  “And have you ever known it to work?”

  “Only when Superman does it. He was beaten up, did you notice that? Around the face. Pistol-whipped, probably.”

  “Ah, Jesus,” he said. “He was just a lad, you know. You must have met him at the bar.”

  “I never got his name.”

  “Barry McCartney. He would be telling you he was no relation to Paul. He’d not have bothered saying that at home in Belfast. There’s no lack of McCartneys in County Antrim.”

  I looked at the hands of the other dead man. They were unmarked. Either he hadn’t tried catching bullets with them or he’d tried and missed.

  He looked to have been beaten around the face and head as well, but it was hard to be sure. The bullet to the forehead had distorted his features, and that was enough to explain the discoloration.

  To me, at any rate, if not to someone who knew what he was looking at. I’d been to my share of crime scenes, but I wasn’t a medical examiner, I wasn’t a forensic pathologist. I didn’t really know what to look for or what to make of what I saw. I could pore over the bodies all night and not pick up a fraction of what an expert eye could tell at a glance.

  “John Kenny,” Mick said, without my having to ask. “Did you ever meet him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “From Strabane, in the County Tyrone. He lived in Woodside, in a rooming house full of North-of-Ireland boys. His mother died a year ago. Saves having to tell her.” He cleared his throat. “He flew home, buried her, and came back here. And died in a room full of whiskey.”

  “I don’t smell it on them.”

  “The room was full of whiskey, not the lad himself.”

  “But I smelled whiskey when I walked in the door,” I said, “and I smell it now, but not on them.”

  “Ah,” he said, and I looked where he was pointing. Broken glass covered a few square feet of the concrete floor at the base of the wall. Five or six feet above the heap of shards the wall was stained, with the stain trailing down the wall to the floor.

  I went over and had a look at it. “They were stealing your whiskey,” I said, “and they broke a bottle.”

  “They did.”

  “But it didn’t just slip out of their hands and break on impact,” I said. “Somebody deliberately smashed the bottle against the wall. A full bottle, too.” I poked around in the debris, found the piece of glass with the label on it. “George Dickel,” I said. “I thought I smelled bourbon.”

  “You still have the nose for it.”

  “McCartney and . . . Kenny, is it?”

  “John Kenny.”

  “I gather they both worked for you.”

  “They did.”

  “And it was your business that brought them here?”

  “It was. Last night I told them to drive out here sometime today and pick up half a dozen cases, scotch and bourbon and I don’t remember what else. I told them and they wrote it down. John had a station wagon, a big old Ford consumed with rust. Plenty of room in it for a few cases of whiskey. Barry would give him a hand. They’d be coming during the day, so they wouldn’t need a key to the padlock. I had extra keys to this unit, and I gave them one.”

  “They knew how to get here?”

  “They’d been here before, when we unloaded the truck the whiskey came in. They weren’t part of the taking of the truck, but they helped in the unloading. And they were here another time or two over the months.”

  “So they came to pick up some whiskey. And they were to deliver it where?”

  “To the bar. When they didn’t show up I called around looking for them. I couldn’t find hide nor hair, so I got in my own car and came out here myself.”

  “You were worried about them?”

  “I’d no cause for worry. The errand I sent them on was of no great urgency. They might have put it off for a time.”

  “But you were worried all the same, weren’t you?”

  “I was,” he admitted. “I had a feeling.”

  “I see.”

  “My mother always said I had the second sight. I don’t know if it’s so, but sometimes I’ll have a feeling. And we needed whiskey at the bar, and I’d nothing else to do, so why not run out and have a look?”

  “And this is how you found them?”

  “It is. I added nothing and took nothing away.”

  “What happened to the station wagon?”

  “I’ve no idea, beyond that it was nowhere to be seen. I’d say whoever killed them drove off in it.”

  “But there was more whiskey than would fit in a station wagon,” I said. “That would do for the half dozen cases, but to clear out the whole room—”

  “You’d need a panel truck.”

  “Or a couple of station wagons, each making several trips. But they’d want to get it all in one trip. They wouldn’t want to come back to a room with dead men in it. They had a truck, and one of them drove away in it and the other drove off in Kenny’s station wagon.”

  “You couldn’t sell the thing,” he said. “Not even for parts. Take away the rust and there’d be nothing holding it together.”

  “Maybe they needed the space. Maybe the truck or van they brought wouldn’t take the whole load, and they had to stuff the extra cases into the station wagon.”

  “And had one bottle left over,” he said, “and smashed it against the wall.”

  “It’s hard to make sense out of that, isn’t it? It’s not as though the bottle just dropped. Somebody heaved it against the wall.”

  “If there was a scuffle—”

  “But there’s no sign of one. The killers got the drop on your boys and pistol-whipped them and shot them. That part seems clear, and it’s hard to fit a broken bottle into that scenario.” I bent down, stood up. “The bottle was opened,” I said. “Here’s the neck, and the cap’s off and the seal’s broken.” I closed my eyes, trying to reconstruct the scene. “Kenny and McCartney are in here. They’ve loaded the cases and they’re having a drink before they head out. The bad guys come in with guns in their hand. ‘Calm down, have a drink,’ Kenny says, or McCartney. He hands over the bottle, and the gunman takes it away from him and heaves it against the wall.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, unless you got knocked off by Carry Nation and the Anti-Saloon League.”

  “All this talk of whiskey,” he said, and dug out his flask and took a short drink. “They wouldn’t have found an opened bottle, man. All the cases were sealed. They’d have had to open a case if they wanted a drink, and they wouldn’t have done it.”

  I returned to the bodies. There was a little flake of glass floating on top of the blood that had gushed from John Kenny’s thr
oat. “The bottle was broken after the men were killed,” I said. “They killed them, then broke open a case and had a couple of drinks while they loaded the whiskey. And smashed the bottle. Why?”

  “Mayhaps they didn’t care for the taste of it.”

  “In some localities it’s a violation to drive around with an opened bottle of liquor. But somehow I don’t think that would have worried them. It’s a gesture of contempt, isn’t it? Smashing a bottle against the wall. Or maybe it’s like tossing your glass in the fireplace after you drink a toast. Whatever the reason, it was a stupid thing to do.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because glass takes fingerprints beautifully, and there’s a good chance one of those chunks of glass has a usable print on it. And God only knows what else a lab technician might find here.” I turned to him. “You were careful not to disturb the integrity of the crime scene, but it’s largely wasted if I’m the only one to see it. I haven’t got the training or the resources to do a good job. But I don’t suppose you want to call this in to the cops.”

  “I do not.”

  “No, I didn’t think so. What happens next? Are you planning to move the bodies?”

  “Well, now,” he said. “I can’t leave them here, can I?”

  We laid the two bodies in the single grave we’d dug. We’d shrouded each in a pair of black plastic Hefty bags before loading them in the trunk, and we left the bags on when we transferred them to the grave.

  “There ought to be a prayer over them,” Mick said, standing awkwardly at the side of the grave. “Would you ever have a prayer you could say?”

  I couldn’t think of anything appropriate. I remained silent, as did Andy. Mick said, “John Kenny and Barry McCartney. Ah, you were good boys, and may God grant you glory. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.” He made the sign of the cross over the grave, then dropped his hands and shook his head. “You’d think I could think of a fucking prayer. They ought to have a priest, but that’s the least of it. They ought to have a proper funeral. Ah, Jesus, they ought to have thirty more years of life, as far as that goes, and it’s too fucking bad what they ought to have because this is all they’re after getting, a hole in the ground and three men shaking their heads over it. The poor bastards, let’s bury ’em and be done with it.”

  It took a lot less time to fill in the hole than it had taken to dig it. Still, it took awhile. We had only the one shovel and took turns with it, as we’d taken turns before. When we’d finished there was earth left over. Mick shoveled it into a wheelbarrow from the toolshed and dumped it fifty yards away, deep in the orchard. He brought the barrow back, returned it to the toolshed along with the shovel, and came back for another look at the grave.

  He said, “Spot it a mile away, wouldn’t you? Well, there’ll be no one back here but O’Gara, and it won’t be the first one he’s seen. He’s a good man, O’Gara. Knows when to turn a blind eye.”

  The light was still on in the farmhouse kitchen. I rinsed out the thermos and left it in the strainer, and Mick put back the unopened cans of ale and topped up his flask from the Jameson bottle. Then we all got back in the Cadillac and headed for home.

  It was still dark when we left the farm, and there was less traffic than there’d been before, and no bodies in the trunk to hold us to the posted speed limit. Still, Andy didn’t exceed it by more than five miles an hour. After a while I closed my eyes. I didn’t drift off, but thought my own thoughts in the stillness. When I opened my eyes we were on the George Washington Bridge and the eastern sky was beginning to brighten.

  So I’d had a white night, my first in a while. Sometimes Mick and I would sit up all night at Grogan’s, with the door locked and all the lights off but the shaded bulb over our table, sharing stories and silence until the sun came up. Now and then we rounded off the night with the eight o’clock Mass at St. Bernard’s, the Butchers’ Mass, where Mick was just one of a whole crew of men in bloodstained white aprons.

  As we came off the bridge and onto the West Side Drive, he said, “We’re in good time for it, you know. Mass at St Bernard’s.”

  “You read my mind,” I said. “But I’m tired. I think I’ll pass.”

  “I’m tired myself, but I feel the need for it this morning. They should have had a priest.”

  “Kenny and McCartney.”

  “The same. The one’s family is all in Belfast. All they need to know is there was trouble and he died, the poor lad. John Kenny’s mother died, but he had a sister as well, didn’t he, Andy?”

  “Two sisters,” Andy said. “One’s married and the other’s a nun.”

  “Married to Our Lord,” Mick said. It wasn’t always clear to me where reverence left off and irony began. I’m not sure it was clear to him, either.

  Andy let us out at Grogan’s. Mick told him to drop the Cadillac at the garage. “I’ll take a taxi to St. Bernard’s,” he said. “Or I might walk. I’ve time enough.”

  Burke had closed the place hours ago. Mick opened the steel accordion gates and unlocked the door. Inside, the lights were off, the chairs perched on top of the tables, so they’d be out of the way when the floor was mopped.

  We went into the back room he uses for an office. He spun the dial of the huge old Mosler safe and drew out a sheaf of bills. “I want to hire you,” he announced.

  “You want to hire me?”

  “As a detective. It’s what you do, isn’t it? Someone hires you and you undertake an investigation.”

  “It’s what I do,” I agreed.

  “I want to know who did this.”

  I’d been thinking about it. “It could have been spur of the moment,” I said. “Somebody with an adjoining cubicle sees two guys standing around and all that booze there for the taking. What did you say it ran to?”

  “Fifty or sixty cases.”

  “Well, what’s that worth? Twelve bottles to a case, and how much a bottle? Say ten dollars? Is that about right?”

  Amusement showed in his eyes. “They’ve raised the price of the creature since the day you stopped drinking it.”

  “I’m surprised they’re still in business.”

  “It’s hard for them without your custom, but they manage. Say two hundred dollars a case.”

  I did the math. “Ten thousand dollars,” I said, “in round numbers. That’s enough to make it worth stealing.”

  “Indeed it is. Why do you think we stole it in the first place? Though we didn’t feel the need to kill anyone.”

  “If it wasn’t somebody who just happened to be there,” I went on, “then either somebody followed McCartney and Kenny or else they had the place staked out and waited for somebody to come and open up. But what sense does that make?”

  There was an opened bottle of whiskey on his desk. He uncapped it, looked around for a glass, then took a short drink straight from the bottle.

  “I need to know,” he said.

  “And you want me to find out for you.”

  “I do. It’s your line of work, and I’d be entirely useless at it myself.”

  “So it would be up to me to learn what happened, and who was responsible.”

  “It would.”

  “And then I would turn the information over to you.”

  “What are you getting at, man?”

  “Well, I’d be delivering a death sentence, wouldn’t I?”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Unless you’re planning on bringing the police into it.”

  “No,” he said. “No, I wouldn’t regard it as a police matter.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  He put a hand on the bottle but left it where it stood. He said, “You saw what they did to those two lads. Not just the bullets but a beating as well. It’s no more than justice for them to pay for it.”

  “Rough justice, when you mete it out yourself.”

  “And isn’t most justice rough justice?”

  I wondered if I be
lieved that. I said, “My problem’s not in the action you take. My problem’s being a part of it.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I can understand that.”

  “What you do is up to you,” I said, “and I’d be hard put to recommend an alternative. You can’t go to the cops, and it’s late in life for you to start turning the other cheek.”

  “It would go against the grain,” he allowed.

  “And sometimes a person can’t turn the other cheek,” I said, “or walk away and leave it to the cops. I’ve been there myself.”

  “I know you have.”

  “And I’m not sure I chose the right course, but I seem to have been able to live with it. So I can’t tell you not to pick up a gun, not when I might do the same thing myself in your position. But it’s your position, not mine, and I don’t want to be the one who points the gun for you.”

  He thought that over, nodded slowly. “I can see the sense in that,” he said.

  “Your friendship is important to me,” I said, “and I’d bend what principles I have for the sake of it. But I don’t think this situation calls for it.”

  His hand found the bottle again, and this time he drank from it. He said, “Something you said, that it might have been men acting on impulse. Lads with a storage bin of their own, seeing a chance for a fast dollar.”

  “It’s certainly a possibility.”

  “Suppose you were to look into that side of it,” he said evenly. “Suppose you did what you do, asked your questions and made your notes, and learned enough to rule that possibility in or out.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He went over to the wall and leaned against it, looking at one of the hand-colored steel engravings mounted there. He has two groups of them, three scenes of County Mayo in Ireland, where his mother was born, and three others showing his father’s birthplace in the south of France. I don’t know which ancestral home he was looking at now, and I doubt he was seeing it.

  Without turning around he said, “I believe I have an enemy.”

  “An enemy?”

  “The same. And I don’t know who he is or what he wants.”

  “And you think this was his doing.”

  “I do. I believe he followed those boys to the storage shed, or got there first and lay in wait for them. I believe the whiskey he stole was the least of it. I believe he was more intent on shedding blood than in stealing ten thousand dollars’ worth of stolen whiskey.”