The Devil Knows You’re Dead

Chapter 11

We spent a quiet evening at home. We had curry, delivered by an Indian restaurant that had just recently opened on First Avenue. According to Elaine, there was a key advantage to eating Indian food at home.

“In every Indian restaurant I have ever been to,” she said, “there is one waiter whose last bath was in the Ganges, and when he comes near your table you could die.”

I tried Lisa Holtzmann after dinner and rang off without a word when her machine answered. Elaine spent twenty minutes on paperwork and then popped a cassette in the VCR. I’d picked up The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, with Lee Marvin playing the titular villain and John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart playing themselves.

Elaine said, “When I was a kid my parents would watch old movies on the late show. ‘My God, look how young Franchot Tone is!’ Or Janet Gaynor, or George Arliss, or whoever they were watching. It used to drive me crazy. And now I’m doing it. Throughout the whole movie all I could think of was how young Lee Marvin was.”

“I know.”

“But I didn’t come out and say it until the picture had ended. I think I showed commendable restraint.”

The phone rang and she answered it. “Oh, hi,” she said. “How’s it going? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

I tried not to hang on the words, even as the usual faint wave of jealousy rolled over me. Elaine still got calls now and then from former clients, and felt it was simpler to spend ten seconds announcing her retirement than go to the trouble of changing her number. I understood, but all the same I’d have preferred them to call when I was somewhere else.

“Just a minute,” she said. “He’s right here.”

I took the phone and TJ said, “Man, I been to your hotel room. That room is small with just you in it. You shouldn’t be bringin’ a nice lady there.”

“That was no nice lady,” I said. “That was Elaine.”

“Think I don’t know that? Oh, now I get it. You ain’t at your hotel.”

“I knew you’d figure it out.”

“You at her house. You got the whatchacall on. Call Forwarding.”

“Good thinking.”

“If you had a beeper,” he said, “you wouldn’t need stuff like that, confuse people when somebody else answers your phone. Why I called, I been hangin’ out with the Captain.”

“Captain Flanders.”

“That’s my man. Hey, the park changes some when the sun goes down, the park and the street both. Got a whole bunch of folks buyin’ and sellin’.”

“You’ve got that in the daytime,” I said, “but then they’re mostly buying and selling Hondas.”

“Different shit now,” he said. “Lotta crack. You see the empty vials on the ground. Just about anything you want, there be somebody here sell it to you. Lot of girls, too, an’ some of ’em lookin’ real fine. ’cept they ain’t girls. You know what they call ’em?”

“Transsexuals.”

“ ‘Chicks with dicks’ is what you hear people say. Say the other word again.” I did, and he repeated it after me. “Transsexuals. I know there’s people call ’em sex changes, but that’s after they has the operation. Up until then they chicks with dicks. You happen to know if they born that way?”

“I’m fairly sure they’re born with dicks.”

“Gimme a break, Jake. You know what I mean.”

The transsexuals I’d known all said they’d been that way as far back as they could remember. “I guess they’re born that way,” I said.

“How do they get the titties? It don’t hardly come natural. What do they get, hormone shots? Implants?”

“Both, I think.”

“An’ then they hustlin’, savin’ up for the big operation. What they all want, get the operation so you can’t tell ’em from a real woman, ’cept they standin’ six-two and got big hands an’ feet, which might give somebody a clue.”

“Not all of them want the surgery.”

“You mean they want to have it both ways? Why’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

A pause, and then he said, “Just tryin’ to feature myself walkin’ down the street with titties bouncin’ under my shirt. Weird.”

“I guess.”

“Get a headache thinkin’ about it. You recollect what I told you first time I met you? When you was walkin’ on the Deuce an’ I couldn’t get you to say what you was lookin’ for?”

“I remember.”

“I told you everybody got a jones. You can take that to the bank, Frank. Truest thing I ever said.”

I said, “I wonder if Glenn Holtzmann had a jones.”

“Nothin’ to wonder. If he had a pulse he had a jones. Maybe we get lucky, find out what it was.”

Elaine had caught enough key words to be interested, and I filled her in on the rest. “TJ’s wonderful,” she said. “One minute he’s utterly hip slick and cool, and then his innocence peeks through. At that age the whole notion of transsexuals has to be disturbing.”

“But not unfamiliar, not where he hangs out.”

“I guess. I just hope he doesn’t turn up with tits one of these days. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

“I don’t think TJ is, either.”

“Good. You figure Glenn Holtzmann had a jones?”

“TJ says everybody does. That reminds me.” I looked at my watch and decided it wasn’t too late to call Holtzmann’s widow, especially since she wasn’t likely to be home. Nor was she. This time, though, I didn’t listen dutifully to her late husband’s voice. As soon as the machine picked up, I broke the connection.

I said, “Something took him to Eleventh Avenue. He could have been stretching his legs, but why stretch them in that direction? It could have been coincidence, or he could have been looking for something that Eleventh Avenue had to offer.”

“He didn’t strike me as the crackhead type.”

“No, but he wouldn’t be the first yuppie who ever did lines of coke.”

“Do people like him buy it on the street?”

“Not usually, no. Maybe he had a sex jones, maybe he was looking for love in all the wrong places.”

“With a wife like that at home?”

“ ‘A neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land.’ But what’s that got to do with it?”

“Not much,” she said. “Most men have wives at home, and they can’t all be bowwows. Maybe he just got the urge for something different.”

“Maybe he was partial to tall girls with big hands and feet.”

“And dicks. He was taking a big chance, picking up a streetwalker.”

“No kidding.”

“No, besides the usual. Remember the view from their apartment? If she’d been at the window she could have seen him on the corner. She might even have witnessed the shooting.”

“Assuming the angles were right and the view wasn’t obstructed. I doubt you could make much out at that distance, anyway.”

“I guess not. You think she’ll keep the apartment?”

“I have no idea.”

“Would you like to live there? Not that particular apartment, necessarily, but something like it?”

“Way up in the sky, you mean?”

“Way up in the sky with a drop-dead view. If and when we get around to moving in together — but maybe you don’t feel like talking about it now.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Well, I love this apartment, but I was thinking we might be better off someplace new. This place has an awful lot of history.”

“All the times we’ve made love here.”

“That’s not what I was thinking of.”

“I know.”

“I’m not in the game anymore, and I’m still living in the same apartment. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Even if we didn’t move in together, I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Would you sell this place?”

“I could. The way the market is now, I’d probably be better off renting it out. The company that manages my other real estate holdings could take care of it.”

“Ms. Rich Bitch.”

“Well, I’m not going to apologize for it. I didn’t steal it and nobody left it to me. I made it the old-fashioned way.”

“I know you did.”

“I fucked for it. So? It’s honest work. It may not be legal but it’s honest. I worked hard and saved my money and invested it wisely. Are those things to be ashamed of?”

“Of course not.”

“I sound defensive, don’t I?”

“A little,” I said, “but so what? Nobody’s perfect. Where would you want to live?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out. I like this neighborhood, but if the apartment’s got a history so does the neighborhood. What about you? You might want to keep your hotel room as an office.”

“Some office.”

“It’s a place to meet clients.”

“I used to meet them in bars,” I said, “and now I meet them in coffee shops.”

“Would you want to give it up?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s so cheap,” she said. “Rent-controlled and all. It might be worth keeping just so that you’d have some private space when you wanted it. Living together might be less threatening if you knew you had a place of your own nearby.”

“What would it be, an escape hatch?”

“Maybe.”

“You’d have one, too, if you rented this place instead of selling it.”

“No,” she said. “Once I’m out of here, that’s it. Fifty-first Street won’t see me again. Even if things don’t work out, even if we find out we can’t, uh, live together, I’m never coming back here. As a matter of fact—”

“Yes?”

“Well, even if we’re not ready to live together, maybe I ought to think about getting out of here. It seems silly to go to the trouble of finding some interim place if we’re going to be looking for an apartment together, but I think it’s time I got the hell out.”

“Why the urgency?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh?”

After a moment she said, “I got a phone call today. One of my old regulars.”

“He didn’t know you’d retired?”

“He knew.”

“Oh?”

“He’s called a few times over the past year. To make sure this retirement hadn’t turned out to be a passing fancy.”

“I see.”

“It’s understandable. Somebody sells her ass for twenty years, then takes it off the market, you don’t assume it’s permanent.”

“I suppose.”

“A few times he called just to chat. So he said. Well, we knew each other for years, and it was a friendly relationship, so you don’t like to tell a guy like that to shit in his hat. But I don’t need chatty conversations with former johns, either, so I always managed to cut it short. No hard feelings, gotta go, ’bye.”

“Good.”

“Today he asked if he could come over. No, I said, you can’t. Just to talk, he said, because he’s going through something difficult and he needs to talk to somebody who really knows him. Which is bullshit, because I don’t. Really know him, I mean. So I said no, you can’t come over, I’m very sorry but that’s the way it is. I’ll pay you, he says. I’ll give you two hundred dollars, just let me come over and talk.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him no. I told him I wasn’t in the therapy business, either, and I told him not to call me anymore. He didn’t just want to talk. You probably figured that much out on your own.”

“Yes.”

“He figured once he got in the door he could get in the bedroom. He figured once I took money I’d do something to earn it. But it wasn’t really about sex, it was about power. He liked the idea of getting me to do something I didn’t want to do.”

“Who is he?”

“What’s the difference?”

“I could have a talk with him.”

“No, Matt. Absolutely not.”

“All right.”

“If I hear further from him, but I don’t think I will, not more than once every couple of months and I can live with that. No, I don’t need to be protected. Not from this particular jerk.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“But I think you should change your number.”

“When I move. New apartment, new phone number.”

“Both at once.”

“Right.”

I thought about it. I said, “Maybe we should start looking for a new place.”

“Or at least think about it. You’d prefer the neighborhood where you are now, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I’m used to it,” I said, “the same way you’re used to Turtle Bay. I’ve got certain restaurants and coffee shops I go to, and of course I’ve got my regular meetings. Mick’s joint is a short walk from me. So are Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and most of the city’s theaters, not that we go all that often, but it’s nice to know they’re there.

“But it’s not the only part of town I like, or even my favorite in a lot of ways. I like the West Village, I like Chelsea, I like Gramercy Park.”

“Or farther downtown. SoHo, Tribeca.”

But those places had a history of their own. “Or a little farther up on the West Side,” I went on. “Say the West Seventies. I’d be an easy walk or a short bus ride from where I am now, so I could keep the hotel room as an office and still go to the same AA meetings. Now that I think about it, though, the possibilities are vast. We could live almost anywhere.”

“Not out of Manhattan, though.”

“No, definitely not.”

“Unless we move to Albuquerque.”

Shortly before Christmas I’d had a windfall; I took a case on a contingency basis and it paid off. When her school’s semester break came around after the first of the year we’d flown out to New Mexico and spent two weeks driving around the northern part of the state, much of it among the Indian pueblos. We’d both responded to the adobe architecture in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

“We could have a whole house there,” I said, “with swirls and minarets and curved walls. And it wouldn’t matter where it was, because we’d have to drive everywhere anyway, and whatever neighborhood we picked would be safer and more comfortable than anywhere in New York.”

“Would you like to do that?”

“No.”

“Thank God,” she said, “because neither would I. The whole country’s full of places that are much nicer than New York and I wouldn’t want to live in any of them. And you’re the same way, aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“It’s good we found each other. And if we start to yearn for the sight of adobe, we can always fly out to Albuquerque for a visit, can’t we?”

“Anytime we want,” I said. “It’s not going anywhere.”

It must have been around midnight when we went to bed. An hour later I gave up on sleep and tiptoed out to the living room. There was a rack full of magazines and a bookcase full of books, and of course there was always the TV, but I was too restless to sit still. I got dressed and stood at the living-room window, looking at the red neon Pepsi-Cola sign across the river. New buildings had eclipsed much of her view since Elaine moved in, but you could still see the Pepsi ad. Would I miss it if we moved? Would she?

Downstairs the doorman nodded wordlessly, then returned his gaze to the middle distance. He was a young fellow, a recent immigrant from somewhere in the Arab world, and he always had a Walkman headset plugged into his ears. I’d assumed he was hooked on Top 40 radio until I found out one night that he listened relentlessly to self-improvement tapes that exhorted him to take charge of his life, boost his money-generating capacity, and lose weight and keep it off.

I walked down First Avenue, past the UN building, clear to Forty-second Street. There I turned right, walked a block, and headed back uptown on Second Avenue. I passed a few saloons, and while they did not call to me I cannot say I was entirely unaware of their appeal. I could have looked for Mick at Grogan’s, but if I found him it meant a late night, and even if we cut it short I’d be clear over on the West Side and not much inclined to come all the way back to East Fifty-first.

Living together would solve that problem. And bring what others in its place?

There’s an all-night coffee shop at the corner of Second and Forty-ninth. I took a seat at the counter and ordered a prune Danish and a glass of milk. Someone had left an early edition of the Times behind, and I started to read it but couldn’t keep my mind on what I was reading. Maybe I needed some self-improvement tapes. Develop the Hidden Powers of Your Mind! Take Charge of Your Life!

I didn’t need to develop any hidden powers. I had enough brain cells left to figure out what was going on.

Jan Keane had come back into my life, even as she was nearing the end of her own. She and I had almost lived together, had indeed been groping in that direction, and then the relationship had instead broken down, and we had lost each other.

And now Elaine and I were in a similar situation, and at a similar stage. I had space in her closet, a drawer in her dresser, and a side of her bed on which I slept several nights a week. Because this stage was transitional, because it was undefined and perhaps indefinable, everything had to be considered and assessed. Should I automatically put on Call Forwarding when I was going to be spending the night on East Fifty-first? Should I apologize fervently when I forgot to disconnect it afterward? Should we have a second line installed?

Or should we move? Should I keep my hotel room? Should we choose my neighborhood, or her neighborhood, or some piece of neutral ground?

Should we discuss it? Should we avoid discussing it?

Ordinarily all of this was tolerable enough, and sometimes even amusing. But Jan was dying, and that somehow cast a yellow shadow over everything.

I was afraid, of course. I was afraid that what had happened to one relationship would happen to another, and that one of these days I would come for my clothes, and leave my keys behind on the kitchen counter. I was afraid the shabby little hotel room I held on to like grim death would be my home for the rest of my life, that I’d be perched on the edge of my narrow bed in my underwear when Grim Death himself came calling. That they’d have to haul me out of there in a body bag.

Afraid things would fall apart, because they always do. Afraid it would all end badly, because it always does. And afraid, perhaps more than anything, that when all was said and done it would all turn out to have been my fault. Because, somewhere down inside, somewhere deep in the blood and bone, I believe it always is.

I drank my milk and went home, and this time the doorman greeted me by name and gave me a big smile. (Remember Names and Faces! Let Your Smile Brighten the World!) When I slipped into the bedroom Elaine stirred but did not awaken. I got into bed and lay alongside her in the darkness, feeling her warmth.

Sleep took me by surprise, and the next thing I knew I was dreaming that I was following a man and trying to catch a glimpse of his face. I tailed him over precarious catwalks and down endless staircases, and at last he turned, and he had a mirror for a face. When I sought a reflection in it, all that was shown to me was pure white light, blinding in its intensity. I wrenched myself awake, reached out to touch Elaine’s arm, and fell back asleep almost instantly.

When I awoke again it was nine o’clock and I was alone in the apartment. There was hot coffee in the kitchen. I had a cup, showered, dressed, and was pouring a second cup when she got back from the health club, announcing that it was a beautiful day outside. “Blue skies,” she said. “Canadian air. We give them acid rain, they give us fresh air and Leonard Cohen. What a deal.”

I called Lisa Holtzmann and hung up as usual when the machine answered. Elaine said, “Gimme. What’s her number?” She dialed it and winced when Holtzmann’s message played. Then she said, “Lisa, this is Elaine Mardell, we had a class together last semester at Hunter. I should have called ages ago, and I’m terribly sorry for what you’ve had to go through. I’m sure you’re busy, but could you call me as soon as you get a chance? It’s sort of important, and — oh, hi, Lisa. Yes, well, I thought you might be monitoring the machine because Matt called you half a dozen times and got the machine each time. He felt funny about leaving a message. Uh-huh. Sure.”

She asked some questions, said some traditionally sympathetic things. Then she said, “Well, why don’t I put Matt on? He’s right here. All right, and you and I’ll get together one of these days. Will you call me? Don’t forget. All right, hold on. Here’s Matt.”

I took the phone and said, “Matthew Scudder, Mrs. Holtzmann. I’m very sorry to disturb you. If this is a bad time to talk—”

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “As a matter of fact—”

“Yes?”

“Actually, I was planning to call you, but I was putting it off. So I’m glad you called.”

“I wonder if I could see you.”

“When?”

“As soon as you’ve got the time available. Today, if that’s possible.”

“I have to meet someone for lunch,” she said. “And then I have appointments all afternoon.”

“How does tomorrow look?”

“I’m supposed to see someone from the insurance company at two tomorrow afternoon, but I don’t know how long that will take. Uh, do you have any free time this evening? Or don’t you like to make appointments after business hours?”

“My work sets its own hours,” I said. “Tonight would be fine, if you’re sure it’s convenient for you.”

“It’s perfectly convenient. Nine o’clock? Or is that too late?”

“It’s fine. I’ll come to your place at nine, unless I hear otherwise. I’ll give you my number in case you have to cancel.” I did, and added that she could call the hotel desk if she misplaced the number. “I’m at the Northwestern,” I said.

“Just down the street. Glenn told me a couple of times how he ran into you in the neighborhood. If you have to cancel, call and leave a message. I haven’t been picking up the phone until I know who it is. The kind of calls I’ve been getting—”

“I can imagine.”

“Can you? I couldn’t. Well. I’ll expect you at nine, Mr. Scudder. And thank you.”

I hung up and Elaine said, “I hope I wasn’t interfering. I just had this image of that poor girl sitting next to the phone, scared to pick it up because it might be another jerk calling from one of the supermarket tabloids. And I figured it wouldn’t be awkward for me to leave a message, and then when I spoke to her I could tell her to get in touch with you.”

“That was good thinking.”

“But maybe I should have asked you first.”

“You did fine. I’m going to be seeing her tonight.”

“Nine o’clock, you said.”

“Uh-huh. She said she’d been planning to call me.”

“She didn’t tell me that. What about, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s one of the things I’ll have to find out.”