The Devil Knows You’re Dead

Chapter 12

I went back to my hotel and turned off Call Forwarding. There must be a way to do that from a distance, but I’ve never been able to manage it. I never would have had Call Forwarding in the first place, but it had been a gift from a couple of computer hackers who’d invaded the phone-company computer system on my behalf. While they were in there, they’d arranged for me to get Call Forwarding without having to pay the monthly service charge. They also gave me free long-distance service by routing my long-distance calls through Sprint without telling Sprint’s billing system about it. (When I raised ethical objections, they asked me if defrauding the phone company was really going to trouble my conscience. So far I’m forced to admit that it hasn’t.)

I caught a noon meeting at the Y on West Sixty-third. The speaker was celebrating his ninety days, which is the minimum amount of sober time you have to have before you can lead a meeting. He was pleased as unspiked punch to be sober, and his qualification was giddily buoyant. During the break the woman sitting beside me said, “I was like that. Then when I fell off my pink cloud it shook the earth.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m happy, joyous, and free,” she said. “What else?”

Afterward I bought coffee and a sandwich at a deli and picnicked on a bench in Central Park, breathing some of that Canadian air Elaine had spoken so highly of. I could think of things to do but they could wait, and probably ought to; most of them centered on Glenn Holtzmann, and it made sense to put them on Hold until I’d learned what his wife had to tell me.

I spent a couple of hours in the park. I walked up to the zoo and watched the bears. At the expanse called Strawberry Fields, I thought of John Lennon and figured out how old he would be, if a bullet hadn’t assured that he’d stay forty forever. If you could see the world from God’s perspective, I’d heard someone say once, you would realize that every life lasts precisely as long as it ought to, and that everything happens as it should. But I can’t see the world, or anything else, from God’s perspective. When I try, all I get for my troubles is a stiff neck.

Of course there are those who’d say I’ve had that all my life.

There were messages at the desk from Jan and TJ. I called him first and beeped him. When five minutes passed without a call back, I rang Jan’s number. I got her machine and said I was returning her call, and that she could call me anytime.

I turned on CNN and was paying precious little attention to it when the phone rang and it was TJ, apologetic for taking so long to answer his beeper. “Couldn’t find a phone,” he said, “ ’cept there be somebody on it. Whole stretch of Eighth Avenue, the phones is gone, Dawn.”

“They’re all out of order?”

“Out of order? They out of state, Nate. What dudes’ll do, ‘stead of breakin’ ’em open, they’ll wrap a chain around ’em an’ attach it to their car bumper, pull off an’ rip the whole box off the wall. You figure they go through all that just for the quarters, or can they get something for the phones?”

“I don’t know who would buy them,” I said. “Unless they can work out a way to sell them back to the phone company.”

“Slow way to get rich, Mitch. Hey, what I called to tell you. Could be I findin’ somethin’ out. What I heard on the street, somebody saw what happened.”

“You found a witness?”

“I didn’t find nobody yet. I don’t even know her name. All’s I know is the name of somebody who knows her. But I think I be gettin’ somewhere.”

“The witness is a woman?”

“More like what we was talkin’ about last night. A chick with a dick, ’cept you told me a different word. Transsexual?”

“That’s right.”

“I keep hangin’ around you, I gone be educated. This here chick with a dick, I think I most likely be able to find her. Might take a while, is all.”

“Just be careful.”

“You mean like safe sex?”

“Jesus,” I said. “I mean don’t do anything that’ll get you shot.”

“Hey, no prob’, Bob. That’s why it might take time, ’cause I bein’ careful. An’ these transwhatchacalls ain’t too swift. ‘Tween the drugs and the hormones, they inclined to be on the vague side. Tell you, though. I don’t think George did it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Ain’t he our client? And don’t we be the good guys?”

“I guess you’re right, Dwight.”

“You learnin’,” he said. “You comin’ along fine.”

Elaine called, to tell me about her day and ask about mine. We agreed that it had been a beautiful day, and that the autumn was the best time of the year. “There was something I wanted to ask you,” she said, “but of course I can’t think of it now. I hate it when that happens.”

“I know.”

“And it happens more and more. Somebody told me about an herb you can take that’s supposed to help your memory, but do you think for one minute I can remember what the hell it is?”

“If you could—”

“—I wouldn’t need it. I know, I thought of that. Well, it’ll come to me. You’re seeing Lisa tonight, aren’t you? Call me afterward if you feel like it.”

“If I think of it. And if it’s not too late.”

“Or even if it is,” she said. “You know what? I love you.”

“And I love you.”

Jan called again while I was taking some shirts to the laundry around the corner. I was gone less than ten minutes and walked right past the desk without checking for messages; but the clerk spotted me entering the elevator and rang my room with the message. I called her right back, and once again I got her goddamn machine.

“We seem to be playing tag,” I said. “I’m going out in a few minutes, and I’ve got a business appointment this evening. I’ll keep trying you.”

It was exactly nine o’clock when I gave my name to the lobby attendant and told him Mrs. Holtzmann was expecting me. His expression turned wary when he heard her name. I sensed that she’d had her share of visitors since her husband’s death, the bulk of them unexpected and unwelcome.

He used the intercom and cupped the mouthpiece in his hands, pitching his voice too low for me to hear him. Her reply allowed him to relax. He wasn’t going to be called upon to throw me out or summon the police, and his gratitude was visible. “You go right on up,” he said.

She was standing in the doorway of her apartment when I got off the elevator, looking prettier than I remembered her, and older, too, as if recent events had sculpted character into her face. She still looked young, but now it wasn’t so difficult to credit her with the thirty-two years the news articles had mentioned. (She was thirty-two and he was thirty-eight, I found myself thinking. And George Sadecki was forty-four. And John Lennon was still forty.)

“I’m glad you could come,” she said. “I don’t remember what to call you. Is it Matt or Matthew?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“I called you Mr. Scudder on the phone this morning. I couldn’t remember what I called you the night we all had dinner. Elaine calls you Matt. So I guess I will. Won’t you come in? Won’t you come in, Matt?”

I followed her into the living room, where two couches stood at a right angle to one another. She seated herself on one and gestured toward the other. I sat down. Both couches were placed to take full advantage of the western view, and I looked out through the window at the last vestiges of the sunset, a pink and purple stain at the edge of the darkening sky.

“Those high-rises across the way are in Weehawken,” she said. “If you think this is something, imagine the view they’ve got. They can see the whole Manhattan skyline from there. But then when they go downstairs and out the door, they’re in New Jersey.”

“Poor devils.”

“Maybe they’re not so bad off, living there. From the day I came to New York I assumed Manhattan was the only place to be. I grew up in White Bear Lake. That’s in Minnesota, and I know it sounds as though you’d have nothing but moose and Eskimos for neighbors, but it’s actually more or less a suburb of the Twin Cities. Well, I got off the Northwest flight with an MFA from the University of Minnesota and I don’t know what else. A sketch pad, I suppose, and the phone number of a friend of a friend. I spent the night at the Chelsea Hotel, and the next day I had a share in an apartment on Tenth Street east of Tompkins Square Park. If there’s a better definition of culture shock, I don’t know what it is.”

“But you adjusted.”

“Oh, yes. I didn’t stay long in Alphabet City because it just didn’t feel safe to me. Nothing ever happened to me, but I kept hearing about people on the block who’d been mugged or raped or stabbed, and as soon as I could I moved to Madison Street. That’s on the Lower East Side.”

“I know where it is. It’s not exactly Sutton Place either.”

“No, it’s a slum. Anywhere else in America it would all be torn down, but it wasn’t as drug-infested as East Tenth Street and I felt safer there. My first place was a share, but then I got an apartment of my own, three little rabbit-warren rooms in a tenement where the hallways smelled of mice and urine and marijuana smoke. And nothing ever happened, nobody ever bothered me on the street or in the building, nobody ever forced the door or came in off the fire escape. Not once. And then I met a man who swept me off my feet and took me away from all that and moved me into this incredible place, everything’s new, nothing smells, there’s an attendant in the lobby twenty-four hours a day.

“And here I am,” she said, her voice rising. “Here I am, sitting on a new sofa with my feet on a new oriental rug, everything’s new, and I’m looking out my window and I can see for miles. And I’m here in this safe place, this clean safe place, and I’ve got a dead baby and a dead husband, and how did that happen? Would you mind explaining that to me? How did it happen?”

I didn’t say anything. I don’t suppose she expected an answer. I watched her face while she worked to get control of herself. It was a perfect oval, the features regular and even. She was dressed neatly, wearing a dove-gray cardigan over a matching crew-neck sweater and a pleated navy skirt. Her shoes were black and plain, with one-inch heels. The overall effect was of a grown-up parochial-school girl, but what had been prettiness six months ago now verged on beauty.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I had myself under control.”

“You do.”

“Can I get you something to drink? We’ve got scotch and vodka, and I don’t know what else. Oh, and there’s beer in the refrigerator. And I’ve got to stop saying ‘we.’ What can I get you, Matt?”

“Nothing just now, thanks.”

“Coffee? There’s some made, and I think that’s what I’m going to have. I’m afraid it’s not decaf, if that matters.”

“Actually, I prefer regular.”

“So do I, but Glenn could only drink decaf at night. We went to a restaurant a few months ago and the waiter actually asked if we wanted decaf or non-decaf. Can you imagine?”

“I don’t think I’ve heard that one before.”

“I hope I never hear it again. How do you take your coffee? Your non-decaf coffee?”

I told her and she went into the kitchen to get it. When she came back I was at the window looking down at Hell’s Kitchen or Clinton, as you prefer. I could see DeWitt Clinton Park and wondered if TJ was down there.

She said, “You can’t quite see it from here. The corner of that building’s in the way.” She was at my shoulder, pointing. “I went over there the day after it happened, or maybe it was the day after that. I don’t remember. Just to see for myself. I don’t know what I expected. It’s just a street corner.”

“I know.”

“Have you been?”

“Yes.”

“I put your coffee on the table. Tell me if it’s all right.” I sat down and tasted it. It was good, and I told her so. “Good coffee’s a weakness of mine,” she said, “and decaf never tastes right to me. I don’t know why.” She sat down and drank some of her own coffee. “This is going to be hard to get used to,” she said. “Being a widow. I was just getting used to the idea of being a wife.”

“How long were you married?”

“It was a year in May, so that’s what, seventeen months? Not quite a year and a half.”

“When did you move in here?”

“The day we got back from the honeymoon. When we met Glenn had a studio apartment in Yorkville and of course I was still on Madison Street. After the wedding we flew to Bermuda for a week, and when we came back there was a limousine waiting for us at the airport. We came right here and I thought the driver got the address wrong, I thought we were going to live at Glenn’s place until we found something larger. The next thing I knew Glenn was carrying me over the threshold. He said if I didn’t like it we could move. If I didn’t like it!”

“Quite a surprise.”

“He was full of surprises.”

“Oh?”

She started to say something, then caught herself. “I should be businesslike,” she said. “But I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do. I’ve never hired a detective before.”

“I already have a client, Lisa.”

“Oh? Did he hire you?”

“Did who hire me?”

“Glenn.”

“No,” I said. “Why would he have hired me?”

“I don’t know.”

I plunged in. “A man named Thomas Sadecki hired me,” I said. “His brother was arrested for Glenn’s murder.”

“And he hired you—”

“To explore the possibility that his brother didn’t do it. You should understand that I’m not trying to get Sadecki off if he’s guilty. But there’s a slim chance that he’s innocent, in which case your husband’s real killer is walking around free.”

“Yes, of course.” She thought about it. “You’re trying to find someone in Glenn’s life with a reason to kill him.”

“That’s one possibility. The other is that he was shot down by a stranger, but that the killer was someone other than George Sadecki. Eleventh Avenue is different at night than it is by day. They stop selling cars and brake jobs and switch over to drugs and sex. That kind of activity puts a lot of wrong people on the street, and it could have been one of them who ran into Glenn.”

“Or it could have been someone he knew.”

“Yes, that’s possible, too. I met Glenn for the first time in April, and of course I did see him a couple of times after that around the neighborhood. But I didn’t really know him.”

“Neither did I.”

“Oh?”

“I told you he swept me off my feet. That was no exaggeration. We met at his office, I think that came up in conversation the night we all got together—”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He made a real play for me, courted me as I’d never been courted before. He gave me a real rush. I talked with him every day. If we didn’t go out, he would call me on the phone. I’d had boyfriends before, I’d had men who were interested in me, but nothing like this.

“And at the same time he didn’t pressure me sexually. We went together for a month before we went to bed, and during that time we probably saw each other an average of three or four times a week. Well, AIDS and all, people don’t automatically go to bed on the third or fourth date anymore, but do they wait a month?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’d have worried about it, but I had the sense that he was in charge and he knew what he was doing. I always had that feeling. And one night we had dinner in his neighborhood and he took me back to his apartment. ‘You’ll stay over,’ he said. And I thought, okay, great. And we went to bed. And two days later he proposed marriage. ‘We’ll get married,’ he said. Okay, great.”

“Very romantic.”

“God, yes. How could I help being in love with him? And even if I weren’t, to tell you the truth I think I would have married him anyway. He was bright, he was rich, he was handsome, and he was crazy about me. If I married him I could have babies, and I could quit struggling to make a living and concentrate on the kind of art I really wanted to do. No more Madison Street, no more chasing around town on the subway, showing my book to art directors who were more interested in my figure than my work, except for the ones who weren’t interested in women at all. If I’d met someone like Glenn a few years earlier he would have scared the daylights out of me, the way he took charge of everything, but I’d had enough years of coping with things on my own. This is a tough town.”

“That’s the truth.”

“I was ready to let somebody else take the helm. And it never felt as though he was pushing me around. With the honeymoon, he chose the destination and made all the arrangements. But he picked a place he knew I would like. And with this apartment, he knew I liked the neighborhood and he knew I loved the idea of being way up high and looking out over the city.

“It was all ready, too. He had it all furnished. Anything I didn’t like could go right back to the store, he said. He hadn’t wanted to bring me home to an empty apartment, but he wanted to make sure it was to my liking, so I should feel free to change anything I wasn’t crazy about. There was one rug I didn’t care for, and we took it right back to Einstein Moomjy and got that one instead, and there was really nothing the matter with the original rug but I felt as though I ought to make some little change, as though he expected me to. Do you know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“He was a wonderful husband,” she said. “Thoughtful, considerate. When I lost the baby he was really there for me. It was a hard time for me and I didn’t really have anyone but Glenn. I never made close friends in New York. I was friendly with a few people in Alphabet City and I lost touch with them when I moved to Madison Street, and the same thing happened with my Madison Street friends when I got married and moved here. It’s the way I am. I’m friendly and I get along with people, but I don’t really connect with them, not in any lasting way.

“That meant I spent a lot of time alone, because Glenn had to work late some nights, and he sometimes had business appointments evenings and weekends. I took classes — that’s how I met Elaine — and of course I had my drawing and painting. And I would take myself to the movies, or on a Wednesday afternoon I might go to a matinee. And there are always concerts. With Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center so close, it’s not hard to find something to do. And I never minded spending time by myself. Can I get you more coffee?”

“Not right now.”

“Since the murder,” she said, “I find I keep turning on the television set. I never watched when I was home by myself. Now I seem to watch it all the time. But I suppose I’ll get over that.”

“Right now it’s company,” I said.

“I think that’s exactly what it is. I started watching it for the news. I had this need to see every newscast because there might be something having to do with Glenn’s death, some new development in the case. Then once they’d arrested that man — I’m sorry, I have a block, I can never remember his name.”

“George Sadecki.”

“Of course. Once they arrested him, I didn’t care about the news, but I still wanted to hear voices in the house. That’s what the television is, human voices. I think I’m going to stop turning it on. If I need voices I can always talk to myself, can’t I?”

“I don’t see why not.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them and resumed speaking her voice sounded tired, strained. “I’ve come to realize that I didn’t know my husband at all,” she said. “Isn’t that curious? I thought I knew him, or at least I didn’t give any thought to the fact that I didn’t know him. And then he was killed, and now I can see that I never knew him at all.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Sometime last month,” she said, “he in a very offhand way brought up the possibility of his death. If anything ever happened to him, he said, I wouldn’t have to worry about losing the apartment. Because there was mortgage insurance. If he should happen to die, the mortgage would automatically be paid off in full.”

“And you haven’t been able to find the policy?”

“There is no policy.”

“People sometimes lie about having insurance coverage,” I told her. “It seems innocent enough to them because they don’t expect to die. He probably just wanted to set your mind to rest. And are you absolutely certain there’s no policy? It might be worthwhile to check with the lender.”

“There’s no policy,” she said. “There’s no lender.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s no mortgage,” she said. “I own the apartment free and clear. There was never a mortgage. Glenn bought it outright for cash.”

“Maybe that’s what he was saying, that there was no lien against the property.”

“No, he was very specific. He explained exactly what the policy was and how it worked. It was reducing term insurance, with the amount of coverage decreasing each year as the mortgage was amortized. It was all very clear, and it was all a complete fabrication. He did have insurance coverage, as a matter of fact, a group policy at work and a whole-life policy he took out on his own, both with me as sole beneficiary. But he didn’t have any reducing term insurance, and there was never any mortgage.”

“I gather he handled the family finances.”

“Of course. If I had been paying the bills each month—”

“You would have noticed there was no mortgage payment to make.”

“He took care of everything,” she said. She started to say something else, then stopped and got to her feet. She went over to the window. It was fully dark now, and you could see stars. You can’t always see them over New York, even on clear nights, because of the pollution. But they sparkled now, thanks to the clean Canadian air.

She said, “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“I wonder if I can trust you.” She turned around and fastened those big blue eyes on me. They looked trusting enough. There was precious little calculation in their gaze. “I wish I could hire you,” she said. “But you’ve already got a client.”

“Do you think your interests are opposed to his?”

“I don’t know what my interests are.”

I waited for more. When she didn’t say anything I asked her how her husband had been able to buy the apartment for cash.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He had money he’d inherited on the death of his parents, that’s how he’d been able to afford the down payment. He said.”

“Maybe there was enough family money so that he didn’t need a mortgage.”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe he was secretive about it because he didn’t want to let you know that you were married to a wealthy man. Some rich people are like that, afraid they’ll be loved for their money alone. And if there was a great discrepancy between your net worth and his—”

“Mine was about a dollar ninety-eight.”

“Well, that might explain it.”

“Then where’s the money?” she demanded. “If he was rich, shouldn’t there be bank accounts, CDs, stocks and bonds? I can’t find any of that. There are the insurance policies, I told you about them, and there’s a few thousand dollars in a checking account, and that’s it.”

“There may be other resources you aren’t aware of yet. He could have had a safe-deposit box you don’t know about, or brokerage accounts, or any number of things. If no money turns up in the next few months I’ll grant it’s a strange situation, but it’ll take that long to tell what’s out there.”

“Some money did turn up,” she said.

“Oh?”

She took a deep breath, let it out, and made her decision. She went into another room and came back a moment later with a metal strongbox about the size of a shoe box.

“I found this in the closet,” she said, “just a couple of days ago. I was thinking that I ought to go through his things and give his clothes to the Goodwill. And I found this on the top shelf. I didn’t know the combination and I was going to try to break it open with a hammer and screwdriver, and then I realized it was just a three-number dial so there could only be a thousand combinations, and if I started with three zeroes and ran the numbers in turn up to nine ninety-nine, well, how long could it take? And what else did I have to do? Then when I hit the number I started to cry, because it was five-one-one, and that’s our anniversary, May eleventh, five-eleven. I looked at the dial and I started to cry, and I was still crying as I lifted the lid.”

“What did you find?”

For answer she worked the dial and opened the box and showed it to me half-filled with banded stacks of bills. The ones I could see were all hundreds.

“I was expecting stock certificates and personal papers,” she said. “But after all that buildup you must have known what I was going to show you.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What else could it have been?”

Dozens of things, I thought. A secret diary. A drug stash, for sale or for personal use. Pornography. A gun. Audio tapes. Company secrets. Love letters, old or new. Heirloom jewelry. Anything.

“I figured it was probably money,” I said.

“I counted it,” she said. “There’s close to three hundred thousand dollars here.”

“And nothing to indicate where it came from.”

“No.”

“I don’t suppose it’s what’s left of his inheritance.”

“I don’t know if there was any inheritance. For all I know his parents are still alive. Matt, I’m frightened.”

“Has anybody tried to throw a scare into you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Any strange phone calls?”

“Just reporters, and not many of those this past week. Who else would call?”

“Somebody who wants his money back.”

“You think Glenn stole this?”

“I don’t know how he got it,” I said, “or where it came from, or how long he’s had it. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to keep it around the house.”

“That occurred to me, but I’m not sure where I can put it, either.”

“Don’t you have a safe-deposit box?”

“No, because I never had anything valuable enough to keep in one.”

“You do now.”

“But is it a good idea? If there’s an IRS investigation—”

“You’re right. Wherever this came from, it’s a pretty sure bet he didn’t pay taxes on it. If they run an audit they’ll get a court order to open any boxes in either of your names.”

“Do you have a box? If you were to hold it for me—”

I shook my head. A few minutes ago she was unsure whether or not to trust me with the information. Now she wanted to hand me the money. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said. “Do you have a lawyer?”

“Not really. There was a guy on East Broadway I used once when I had a hassle with my old landlord, but I don’t really know anything about him.”

“Well, there’s somebody I can recommend. He’s across the Brooklyn Bridge, but I think he’s worth the trip. I can give you his number, or if you want I could call him for you.”

“Would you?”

“First thing tomorrow. He’ll give you good advice, and he can probably keep the money in his safe. It’ll be more secure there than in your closet, and I think attorney-client privilege would apply. I’ll have to ask him about that.”

“And until then—”

“Until then it can stay in the closet. It’s been safe there so far, and I’m not going to tell anyone it’s there.”

“I’ll be glad when it’s out of here,” she said. “I’ve been nervous ever since I found it.”

“I’d be nervous myself,” I said. “It’s a lot of money. But I don’t think you should give it to the Goodwill.”