Eight Million Ways to Die

Chapter 32

Around ten-thirty that night I walked in and out of Poogan's Pub on West Seventy-second Street. A light rain had begun falling an hour or so earlier. Most of the people on the street were carrying umbrellas. I wasn't, but I had a hat, and I paused on the sidewalk to straighten it and adjust its brim.

Across the street I saw a Mercury sedan with its motor riding.

I turned to my left and walked to the Top Knot. I spotted Danny Boy at a table in back but went to the bar anyway and asked for him. I must have spoken loudly because people looked at me. The bartender motioned toward the rear and I went back there and joined him.

He already had company. He was sharing his table with a slender fox-faced girl whose hair was as white as his own, but in her case nature couldn't take the credit. Her eyebrows were severely plucked and her forehead had a shine to it. Danny Boy introduced her as Bryna. "Rhymes with angina," he said, "among other things." She smiled, showing sharp little canine teeth.

I pulled a chair out and sat down heavily. I said, "Danny Boy, you can pass the word. I know all about Kim Dakkinen's boyfriend. I know who killed her and I know why she was killed."

"Matt, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said. "You know why I had so much trouble getting a line on Kim's boyfriend? Because he wasn't an action guy, that's why. Didn't go to clubs, didn't gamble, didn't hang out. Wasn't connected."

"You been drinking, Matt?"

"What are you, the Spanish Inquisition? What do you care if I've been drinking or not?"

"I just wondered. You're talking loud, that's all."

"Well, I'm trying to tell you about Kim," I said. "About her boyfriend. See, he was in the jewelry business. He didn't get rich, he didn't starve. He made a living."

"Bryna," he said, "suppose you powder your nose for a few minutes."

"Oh, let her stay," I told him. "Her nose doesn't look shiny to me."

"Matt-"

"What I'm telling you's no secret, Danny Boy."

"Suit yourself."

"This jeweler," I went on. "The way it looks, he started seeing Kim as a john. But something happened. One way or another, he fell for her."

"These things happen."

"They do indeed. Anyway, he fell in love. Meanwhile, some people got in touch with him. They had some precious stones that never went through Customs and that they had no bill of sale for. Emeralds. Colombian emeralds. Real quality stuff."

"Matt, would you please tell me why in the hell you're telling me all this?"

"It makes an interesting story."

"You're not just telling me, you're telling the whole room. Do you know what you're doing?"

I looked at him.

"Okay," he said, after a moment. "Bryna, pay attention, darling. The crazy man wants to talk about emeralds."

"Kim's boyfriend was going to be the middleman, handling the sale of the emeralds for the men who'd brought them into the country. He did this sort of thing before, made a few dollars for himself. But now he was in love with an expensive lady and he had a reason to want some real money. So he tried a cross."

"How?"

"I don't know. Maybe he switched some stones. Maybe he held out. Maybe he decided to grab the whole bundle and run with it. He must have told Kim something because on the strength of it she told Chance she wanted out. She wasn't going to be turning tricks anymore. If I were going to guess, I'd say he did a switch and went out of the country to unload the good stuff. Kim got herself free of Chance while he was gone, and when he got back it was going to be Happily Ever After time. But he never came back."

"If he never came back, who killed her?"

"The people he crossed. They decoyed her to that room at the Galaxy Downtowner. She probably thought she was going to be meeting him there. She wasn't hooking anymore, she wouldn't have gone to a hotel room to meet a john. In fact she'd never been much on hotel tricks. But suppose she gets a call from somebody who says he's a friend and the boyfriend's afraid to come to her place because he thinks he's being followed, so would she please meet him at the hotel?"

"And she went."

"Sure she went. She got all dressed up, she wore the presents he gave her, the mink jacket and the emerald ring. The jacket wasn't worth a fortune because the guy wasn't rich, he didn't have money to burn, but he could give her a terrific emerald because the emeralds didn't cost him anything. He was in the business, he could take one of those smuggled stones and have it set in a ring for her."

"So she went over and got killed."

"Right."

Danny Boy drank some vodka. "Why? You figure they killed her to get the ring back?"

"No. They killed her to kill her."

"Why?"

"Because they were Colombians," I said, "and that's how they do it. When they have a reason to hit somebody they go for the whole family."

"Jesus."

"Maybe they figure it's a deterrent," I said. "I could see where it might be. The cases make the papers pretty regularly, especially in Miami. A whole family gets waxed because somebody burned somebody else in a coke deal. Colombia's a rich little country. They've got the best coffee, the best marijuana, the best cocaine."

"And the best emeralds?"

"That's right. Kim's jeweler wasn't a married guy. I figured he was, that's why he was so hard to get a line on, but he never married. Maybe he never fell in love until he fell in love with Kim, and maybe that's why he was ready to kick his life over. Anyway, he was a bachelor. No wife, no kids, no living parents. You want to rub out his family, what do you do? You kill his girlfriend."

Bryna's face was as white as her hair now. She didn't like stories where they killed the girlfriend.

"The killing was pretty professional," I went on, "in that the killer was careful about evidence. He covered his tracks pretty well. But something made him do a butcher job instead of a couple of quick bullets from a silenced handgun. Maybe he had a thing about prostitutes, or maybe it was women in general. One way or another, he went and did a number on Kim.

"Then he cleaned up, packed the dirty towels along with the machete, and got out of there. He left the fur jacket and he left the money in the purse but he took her ring."

"Because it was worth so much money?"

"Possibly. There's no hard evidence on the ring, and for all I know it was cut glass and she bought it for herself. But it might have been an emerald, and even if it wasn't the killer might have thought it was. It's one thing to leave a few hundred dollars on a dead body to show you don't rob the dead. It's something else to leave an emerald that might be worth fifty thousand dollars, especially if it's your emerald in the first place."

"I follow you."

"The room clerk at the Galaxy Downtowner was a Colombian, a young kid named Octavio Calderуn. Maybe that was a coincidence. There are a lot of Colombians in town these days. Maybe the killer picked the Galaxy because he knew somebody who worked there. It doesn't matter. Calderуn probably recognized the killer, or at least knew enough about him to keep his mouth shut. When a cop came back to have another talk with him, Calderуn disappeared. Either the killer's friends told him to disappear or Calderуn decided he'd be safer somewhere else. Back home in Cartagena, say, or another rooming house in another part of Queens."

Or maybe he got killed, I thought. That was possible, too. But I didn't think so. When these people killed, they liked to leave the corpses in plain sight.

"There was another whore that got killed."

"Sunny Hendryx," I said. "That was a suicide. Maybe Kim's death triggered that, so maybe the man who killed Kim has some moral responsibility for Sunny's death. But she killed herself."

"I'm talking about the street hustler. The TV."

"Cookie Blue."

"That's the one. Why did she get killed? To throw you off the track? Except you weren't on the track to begin with."

"No."

"Then why? You think the first killing turned the killer nuts? Triggered something in him that made him want to do it again?"

"I think that's part of it," I said. "Nobody would do a second butcher job like that unless he enjoyed the first one. I don't know if he had sex with either of his victims, but the kick he got out of the killings had to be sexual."

"So he just picked up Cookie for the hell of it?"

Bryna blanched again. It was bad enough hearing about someone who got killed for being the wrong person's girl- friend. It was even worse hearing about a girl getting killed at random.

"No," I said, "Cookie was killed for a specific reason. The killer went looking for her and passed up a batch of other streetwalkers until he found her. Cookie was family."

"Family? Whose family?"

"The boyfriend's."

"He had two sweeties, this jeweler? A call girl and a transvestite hustler?"

"Cookie wasn't his sweetie. Cookie was his brother."

"Cookie-"

"Cookie Blue started life as Mark Blaustein. Mark had an older brother named Adrian who went into the jewelry business. Adrian Blaustein had a girlfriend named Kim and some business associates from Colombia."

"So Cookie and Kim were connected."

"They had to be connected. I'm sure they never met each other. I don't think Mark and Adrian had any contact in recent years. That may explain why it took the killer so long to find Cookie. But I knew there had to be some kind of link. I told someone earlier that they were sisters under the skin. That wasn't far off. They were almost sisters-in-law."

He thought about this, then told Bryna to give us a few moments alone. This time I didn't interfere. She left the table and Danny Boy motioned to the waitress. He ordered vodka for himself and asked me what I wanted.

"Nothing right now," I said.

When she brought back the vodka he took a careful little sip and set the glass down. "You've been to the cops," he said.

"No cops."

"Why not?"

"Just didn't get around to it yet."

"You had to come here instead."

"That's right."

"I can keep my mouth shut, Matt, but Bryna the Vagina wouldn't know how. She thinks unexpressed thoughts build up inside your head and explode your skull, and she's not taking any chances. Anyway, you were talking loud enough for half the room to pick up on what you were saying."

"I know that."

"I figured you did. What do you want?"

"I want the killer to know what I know."

"That shouldn't take long."

"I want you to pass it on, Danny Boy. I'm leaving here, I'm walking back to my neighborhood. I'll probably spend a couple of hours in Armstrong's. Then I'll walk around the corner to my room."

"You're gonna get killed, Matt."

"This fucker only kills girls," I said.

"Cookie was only half a girl. Maybe he's working his way up to men."

"Maybe."

"You want him to make a move on you."

"Looks that way, doesn't it?"

"Looks to me as though you're crazy, Matt. I tried to head you off the minute you came over here. Tried to cool you down some."

"I know."

"It's probably too late now. Whether I pass it on or not."

"It was too late before then. I was uptown before I came down here. You know a man named Royal Waldron?"

"Sure, I know Royal."

"He and I talked some. Royal's been known to do a little business with some fellows from Colombia."

"He would," Danny Boy said. "The business he's in."

"So they probably already know. But you could pass it on anyway, just for insurance."

"Insurance," he said. "What's the opposite of life insurance?"

"I don't know."

"Death insurance. They may be waiting outside for you right now, Matt."

"It's possible."

"Why don't you go pick up the phone and call the cops? They could send a car and you go somewhere and make a statement. Let the bastards earn their money."

"I want the killer," I said. "I want him one-on-one."

"You're not Latin. Where'd you get this macho hangup?"

"Just pass the word, Danny Boy."

"Sit down a minute." He leaned forward, dropped his voice. "You don't want to walk out of here without a piece. Just sit here a minute and I'll get you something."

"I don't need a gun."

"No, of course not. Who needs one? You can take his machete away from him and make him eat it. Then break both his legs and leave him in an alley."

"Something like that."

"Will you let me get you a gun?" His eyes searched mine. "You've already got one," he said. "On you, right now. Haven't you?"

"I don't need a gun," I said.

And I didn't. On the way out of the Top Knot I put my hand in my pocket and felt the butt and barrel of the little.32. Who needed it? A little gun like that doesn't have a whole lot of stopping power anyway.

Especially when you can't make yourself squeeze the trigger.

I went outside. It was still raining but no harder than before. I tugged the brim of my hat and took a good look around.

The Mercury sedan was parked on the other side of the street. I recognized it by its crimped fenders. While I was standing there the driver started the engine.

I walked over to Columbus Avenue. While I waited for the light to change I saw that the Mercury had come around in a U-turn and was approaching. The light changed and I walked across the street.

I had the gun in my hand and my hand in my pocket. My index finger was on the trigger. I remembered how the trigger had trembled beneath my finger not too long ago.

I'd been on this same street then.

I walked on downtown. A couple of times I looked over my shoulder. The Mercury stayed a little less than a block behind me all the way.

I never relaxed, but I was especially tense when I got to the block where I'd drawn the gun once before. I couldn't help looking back, expecting to see a car careening toward me. I spun around involuntarily once at the sound of brakes screeching, then realized the sound was a good two blocks away.

Nerves.

I passed the spot where I'd dropped to the pavement and rolled. I checked the place where the bottle had broken. There was still some broken glass there, though I couldn't be sure it was the same broken glass. A lot of bottles get broken every day.

I kept walking all the way to Armstrong's. When I got there I went in and ordered a piece of pecan pie and a cup of coffee. I kept my right hand in my pocket while my eyes scanned the room, checking everybody out. After I was done with the pie I put my hand back in my pocket and drank my coffee left-handed.

After awhile I ordered more coffee.

The telephone rang. Trina answered it, walked over to the bar. There was a heavyset fellow there with dark blonde hair. She said something to him and he went to the phone. He talked for a few minutes, looked around the room, came over to my table. Both of his hands were where I could see them.

He said, "Scudder? My name's George Lightner, I don't think we met." He pulled a chair out and sat in it. "That was Joe just now," he said. "There's no activity out there, nothing at all. They're laying doggo in the Mercury plus he's got two sharpshooters in second-floor windows across the street."

"Good."

"I'm in here, and there's the two fellows at the front table. I figured you made us when you walked in."

"I made them," I said. "I figured you were either a cop or the killer."

"Jesus, what a thought. This is a nice place. You more or less hang out here, huh?"

"Not as much as I used to."

"It's pleasant here. I'd like to come back sometime when I can drink something instead of coffee. They're selling a lot of coffee tonight, what with you and me and the two guys down front."

"It's pretty good coffee."

"Yeah, it's not bad. Better than the shit in the station house." He lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter. "Joe said there's no activity elsewhere either. There's two men staked out downtown with your girlfriend. There's a couple others with the three hookers on the East Side." He grinned. "That's the detail I shoulda drawn. Can't win 'em all, huh?"

"I guess not."

"How long you want to stay here? Joe's guess is that the guy's either set up by now or he's not gonna move tonight. We can cover you every step from here back to the hotel. Of course we can't insure against the possibility of a sniper firing from a rooftop or a high window. We did a rooftop check earlier but there's no guarantee."

"I don't think he'll do it from a distance."

"Then we're in pretty good shape. And you're wearing the bulletproof vest."

"Yes."

"That's a help. Of course it's mesh, it doesn't always stop a blade, but nobody's about to let him get that close to you. We figure if he's out there he'll make a move between here and the doorway of your hotel."

"That's what I figure, too."

"When do you want to run the gauntlet?"

"A few minutes," I said. "I might as well finish this coffee."

"Listen," he said, rising, "what the hell. Enjoy it."

He returned to his spot at the bar. I finished my coffee, got up, went to the lavatory. There I checked my.32 and made sure I had a round under the hammer and three more rounds to back it up. I could have asked Durkin for a couple more cartridges to fill the empty chambers. For that matter, he'd have given me a larger gun with more of a punch to it. But he didn't even know I was carrying the.32 and I hadn't wanted to tell him. The way things were set up, I wasn't going to have to shoot anybody. The killer was supposed to walk right into our arms.

Except it wasn't going to happen that way.

I paid the check, left a tip. It wasn't going to work. I could feel it. The son of a bitch wasn't out there.

I walked out the door. The rain had let up some. I looked at the Mercury and glanced at the buildings across the street, wondering where the police sharpshooters were planted. It didn't matter. They weren't going to have any work to do tonight. Our quarry wasn't taking the bait.

I walked down to Fifty-seventh Street, staying close to the curb just in case he'd managed to find a spot in a dark doorway. I walked slowly and hoped I was right and he wouldn't try to do it from a distance, because a bulletproof vest doesn't always stop a bullet and it doesn't do anything to protect you from a head shot.

But it didn't matter. He wasn't there. Damnit, I knew he wasn't there.

Still, I breathed easier when I walked into my hotel. I may have been disappointed but I was also relieved.

There were three plainclothesmen in the lobby. They identified themselves right away. I stood around with them for a few minutes, and then Durkin came in alone. He went into a huddle with one of them, then came over to me.

"We struck out," he said.

"Looks that way."

"Shit," he said. "We didn't leave many loopholes. Maybe he smelled something but I don't see how. Or maybe he flew home to fucking Bogotб yesterday and we're setting a trap for somebody who's on another continent."

"It's possible."

"You can go get some sleep, anyway. If you're not too wired to unwind. Have a couple of drinks, knock yourself out for eight hours."

"Good idea."

"The guys have had the lobby staked out all night. There've been no visitors, no check-ins. I'm gonna keep a guard down here all night."

"You think it's necessary?"

"I think it can't hurt."

"Whatever you say."

"We gave it our best shot, Matt. It's worth it if we can smoke the fucker out because God knows how we could get anyplace combing the city for emerald smugglers. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't."

"I know."

"We'll catch the cocksucker sooner or later. You know that."

"Sure."

"Well," he said, and shifted his weight awkwardly. "Well, listen. Get some sleep, huh?"

"Sure."

I rode up on the elevator. He wasn't in South America, I thought. I knew damned well he wasn't in South America. He was here in New York and he was going to kill again because he liked it.

Maybe he'd done it before. Maybe Kim was the first time he found out it felt good to him. But he'd liked it enough to do it again the same way, and the next time he wouldn't need an excuse. Just a victim and a hotel room and his trusty machete.

Have a couple of drinks, Durkin had suggested.

I didn't even feel like a drink.

Ten days, I thought. Just go to bed sober and you've got ten days.

I took the gun out of my pocket and put it on the dresser. I was still carrying the ivory bracelet in another pocket and I took it out and set it down next to the gun, still wrapped in paper towels from Kim's kitchen. I got out of my slacks and jacket, hung them in the closet, and took off my shirt. The bulletproof vest was a tricky thing to get out of and a cumbersome thing to wear, and most of the cops I knew hated wearing them. On the other hand, nobody likes getting shot.

I took the thing off and draped it over the dresser next to the gun and bracelet. Bulletproof vests aren't just bulky, they're also warm, and I'd perspired inside this one and my undershirt had dark circles under the arms. I took off the undershirt and my shorts and my socks, and something clicked, some little alarm went off, and I was turning toward the bathroom door when it flew open.

He sailed through it, a big man, olive skinned, wild-eyed. He was as naked as I was and there was a machete in his hand with a gleaming foot-long blade.

I threw the mesh at him. He swung the machete and knocked it aside. I grabbed the gun off the dresser and dove out of his way. The blade arced down, missing me, and his arm rose again and I shot him four times in the chest.