Time to Murder and Create

Chapter 10

I didn’t have time to think it over. I guess my reflexes were good. At least they were good enough. I was off balance from spinning around when the woman screamed, but I didn’t stop to get my balance. I just threw myself to the right. I landed on a shoulder and rolled up against the building.

It was barely enough. If a driver has the nerve, he can leave you no room at all. All he has to do is bounce his car off the side of the building. That can be rough on the car and rough on the building, but it’s roughest of all on the person caught between the two. I thought he might do that, and then when he yanked the wheel at the last minute I thought he might do it accidentally, fishtailing the car’s rear end and swatting me like a fly.

He didn’t miss by much. I felt a rush of air as the car hurtled past me. Then I rolled over and watched him cut back off the sidewalk and onto the avenue. He snapped off a parking meter on his way, bounced when he hit the asphalt, then put the pedal on the floor and hit the corner just as the light turned red. He sailed right through the light, but then, so do half the cars in New York. I don’t remember the last time I saw a cop ticket anybody for a moving violation. They just don’t have the time.

“These crazy, crazy drivers!”

It was the old woman, standing beside me now, making tsk sounds.

“They just drink their whiskey,” she said, “and they smoke their reefers, and then they go out for a joy ride. You could have been killed.”

“Yes.”

“And after all that, he didn’t even stop to see if you were all right.”

“He wasn’t very considerate.”

“People are not considerate any more.”

I got to my feet and brushed myself off. I was shaking, and badly rattled. She said, “Mister, if you could spare. ” and then her eyes clouded slightly and she frowned at some private puzzlement. “No,” she said. “You just gave me money, didn’t you? I’m very sorry. It’s difficult to remember.”

I reached for my wallet. “Now this is a ten-dollar bill,” I said, pressing it into her hand. “You make sure you remember, all right? Make sure you get the right amount of change when you spend it. Do you understand?”

“Oh, dear,” she said.

“Now you’d better go home and get some sleep. All right?”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Ten dollars. A ten-dollar bill. Oh, God bless you, sir.”

“He just did,” I said.

Isaiah was behind the desk when I got back to the hotel. He’s a light-skinned West Indian with bright blue eyes and kinky rust-colored hair. He has large dark freckles on his cheeks and on the backs of his hands. He likes the midnight-to-eight shift because it’s quiet and he can sit behind the desk working double-acrostics, toking periodically from a bottle of cough syrup with codeine in it.

He does the puzzles with a nylon-tipped pen. I asked him once if it wasn’t more difficult that way. “Otherwise there is no pride in it, Mr. Scudder,” he’d said.

What he said now was that I’d had no calls. I went upstairs and walked down the hall to my room. I checked to see if there was any light coming from under the door, and there wasn’t, and I decided that that didn’t prove anything. Then I looked for scratch marks around the lock, and there weren’t any, and I decided that that didn’t prove anything either, because you could pick those hotel locks with dental floss. Then I opened the door and found there was nothing in the room but the furniture, which stood to reason, and I turned on the light and closed and locked the door and held my hands at arm’s length and watched the fingers tremble.

I made myself a stiff drink and then I made myself drink it. For a moment or two my stomach picked up the shakes from my hands and I didn’t think the whiskey was going to stay down, but it did. I wrote some letters and numbers on a piece of paper and put it in my wallet. I got out of my clothes and stood under the shower to wash off a coating of sweat. The worst sort of sweat, composed of equal parts of exertion and animal fear.

I was toweling dry when the phone rang. I didn’t want to pick it up. I knew what I was going to hear.

“That was just a warning, Scudder.”

“Bullshit. You were trying. You’re just not good enough.”

“When we try, we don’t miss.”

I told him to fuck off and hung up. I picked it up a few seconds later and told Isaiah no calls before nine, at which time I wanted a wake-up call.

Then I got into bed to see whether I could sleep.

I slept better than I’d expected. I woke up only twice during the night, and both times it was the same dream, and it would have bored a Freudian psychiatrist to tears. It was a very literal dream, no symbols to it at all. Pure reenactment, from the moment I left Armstrong’s to the moment the car closed on me, except that in the dream the driver had the necessary skill and balls to go all the way, and just as I knew he was going to put me between the rock and the hard place, I woke up, with my hands in fists and my heart hammering.

I guess it’s a protective mechanism, dreaming like that. Your unconscious mind takes the things you can’t handle and plays with them while you sleep until some of the sharp corners are worn off. I don’t know how much good those dreams did, but when I awoke for the third and last time a half-hour before I was supposed to get my wake-up call, I felt a little better about things. It seemed to me that I had a lot to feel good about. Someone had tried for me, and that’s what I had been looking to provoke all along. And someone had missed, and that was also as I wanted it.

I thought about the phone call. It had not been the Marlboro man. I was reasonably certain of that. The voice I’d heard was older, probably around my own age, and it had had the flavor of New York streets in its tones.

So there looked to be at least two of them in on it. That didn’t tell me much, but it was something else to know, another fact to file and forget. Had there been more than one person in the car? I tried to remember what I had seen in the brief glimpse I’d had while the car was bearing down on me. I hadn’t seen much, not with the headlights pitched right at my eyes. And by the time I’d turned for a look at the departing car, it was already a good distance past me and moving fast. And I’d been more intent on catching the plate number than counting heads.

I went downstairs for breakfast, but couldn’t manage more than a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. I bought a pack of cigarettes out of the machine and smoked three of them with my coffee. They were the first I’d had in almost two months, and I couldn’t have gotten a better hit if I’d punched them right into a vein. They made me dizzy but in a nice way. After I’d finished the three, I left the pack on the table and went outside.

I went down to Centre Street and found my way to the Auto Squad room. A pink-cheeked kid who looked to be fresh out of John Jay asked if he could help me. There were half a dozen cops in the room, and I didn’t recognize any of them. I asked if Ray Landauer was around.

“Retired a few months ago,” he said. To one of the others he called, “Hey, Jerry, when did Ray retire anyway?”

“Musta been October.”

He turned to me. “Ray retired in October,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“It was personal,” I said.

“I can find his address if you want to give me a minute.”

I told him it wasn’t important. It surprised me that Ray had packed it in. He didn’t seem old enough to retire. But he was older than me, come to think of it, and I had had fifteen years on the force and had been off it for more than five, so that made me retirement age myself.

Maybe the kid would have given me a peek at the hot-car sheet. But I would have had to tell him who I was and go through a lot of bullshit that wouldn’t be necessary with someone I knew. So I left the building and started walking toward the subway. When an empty cab came along, I changed my mind and grabbed it. I told the driver I wanted the Sixth Precinct.

He didn’t know where it was. A few years ago, if you wanted to drive a cab you had to be able to name the nearest hospital or police station or firehouse from any point in the city. I don’t know when they dropped the test, but now all you have to do is be alive.

I told him it was on West Tenth, and he got there without too much trouble. I found Eddie Koehler in his office. He was reading something in the News, and it wasn’t making him happy.

“Fucking Special Prosecutor,” he said. “What’s a guy like this accomplish except aggravate people?”

“He gets his name in the papers a lot.”

“Yeah. Figure he wants to be governor?”

I thought of Huysendahl. “Everybody wants to be governor.”

“That’s the fucking truth. Why do you figure that is?”

“You’re asking the wrong person, Eddie. I can’t figure out why anybody wants to be anything.”

His cool eyes appraised me. “Shit, you always wanted to be a cop.”

“Since I was a kid. I never wanted to be anything else, as far back as I can remember.”

“I was the same way. Always wanted to carry a badge. I wonder why. Sometimes I think it was how we were brought up, the cop on the corner, everybody respecting him. And the movies we saw as a kid. The cops were the good guys.”

“I don’t know. They always shot Cagney in the last reel.”

“Yeah, but the fucker had it coming. You’d watch and you’d be crazy about Cagney but you wanted him to buy the farm at the end. He couldn’t fucking get away with it. Sit down, Matt. I don’t see you much lately. You want some coffee?”

I shook my head but I sat down. He took a dead cigar from his ashtray and put a match to it. I took two tens and a five from my wallet and put them on his desk.

“I just earned a hat?”

“You will in a minute.”

“Just so the Special Prosecutor don’t get wind of it.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about, do you?”

“Who knows? You get a maniac like that and everybody’s got something to worry about.” He folded the bills and put them in his shirt pocket. “What can I do for you?”

I got out the slip of paper I’d written on before going to bed. “I’ve got part of a license number,” I said.

“Don’t you know anybody at Twenty-sixth Street?”

That was where the Motor Vehicle people had their offices. I said, “I do, but it’s a Jersey plate. I’m guessing the car was stolen and that you can turn it up on the G.T.A. sheet. The three letters are either LKJ or LJK. I only got a piece of the three numbers. There’s a nine and a four, possibly a nine and two fours, but I don’t even know the order.”

“That should be plenty, if it’s on the sheet. All this towing, sometimes people don’t report thefts. They just assume we towed it, and they don’t go down to the pound if they don’t happen to have the fifty bucks, and then it turns out it was stolen. Or by then the thief dumped it and we did tow it away, and they wind up paying for a tow, but not from where they parked it. Hang on, I’ll get the sheet.”

He left his cigar in the ashtray, and it was out again by the time he got back. “Grand Theft Auto,” he said. “Give me those letters again.”

“LKJ or LJK.”

“Uh-huh. You got a make and model on it?”

“Nineteen forty-nine Kaiser-Frazer.”

“Huh?”

“Late-model sedan, dark. That’s about as much as I got. They all look about the same.”

“Yeah. Nothing on the main sheet. Let’s see what came in last night. Oh, hello, LJK nine one four.”

“That sounds like it.”

“Seventy-two Impala two-door, dark green.”

“I didn’t count the doors, but that’s got to be it.”

“Belongs to a Mrs. William Raiken from Upper Montclair. She a friend of yours?”

“I don’t think so. When did she report it?”

“Let’s see. Two in the morning, it says here.”

I had left Armstrong’s around twelve thirty, so Mrs. Raiken hadn’t missed her car right away. They could have put it back and she never would have known it was gone.

“Where did it come from, Eddie?”

“Upper Montclair, I suppose.”

“I mean where did she have it parked when they swiped it?”

“Oh.” He had closed the list; now he flipped it open to the last page. “Broadway and a Hundred Fourteenth. Hey, that leads to an interesting question.”

It damn well did, but how did he know that? I asked him what question it led to.

“What was Mrs. Raiken doing on Upper Broadway at two in the morning? And did Mr. Raiken know about it?”

“You’ve got a dirty mind.”

“I shoulda been a Special Prosecutor. What’s Mrs. Raiken got to do with your missing husband?”

I looked blank, then remembered the case I’d invented to explain my interest in Spinner’s corpse. “Oh,” I said. “Nothing. I wound up telling his wife to forget it. I got a couple days’ work out of it.”

“Uh-huh. Who took the car and what did they do with it last night?”

“Destroyed public property.”

“Huh?”

“They knocked over a parking meter on Ninth Avenue, then got the hell away in a hurry.”

“And you just happened to be there, and so you just happened to catch the license number, and naturally you figured the car was stolen but you wanted to check because you’re a public-spirited citizen.”

“That’s close.”

“It’s crap. Sit down, Matt. What are you into that I oughta know about?”

“Nothing.”

“How does a stolen car tie into Spinner Jablon?”

“Spinner? Oh, the guy they took out of the river. No connection.”

“Because you were just looking for this woman’s husband.” I saw my slip then, but waited to see if he’d caught it, and he had. “It was his girlfriend looking for him last time I heard it. You’re being awful cute with me, Matt.”

I didn’t say anything. He picked his cigar out of the ashtray and studied it, then leaned over and dropped it in his wastebasket. He straightened up and looked at me, then away, then at me again.

“What are you holding out?

“Nothing you have to know.”

“How do you get tied into Spinner Jablon?”

“It’s not important.”

“And what’s with the car?”

“That’s not important either.” I straightened up. “Spinner got dropped in the East River, and the car sheared off a parking meter on Ninth between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth. And the car was stolen uptown, so none of this has been going on in the Sixth Precinct. There’s nothing you’ve got to know, Eddie.”

“Who killed Spinner?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that straight?”

“Of course it’s straight.”

“Are you playing tag with somebody?”

“Not exactly.”

“Jesus Christ, Matt.”

I wanted to get out of there. I wasn’t holding out anything he had a claim on, and I really couldn’t give him or anybody else what I had. But I was playing a lone hand and ducking his questions, and I could hardly expect him to like it.

“Who’s your client, Matt?”

Spinner was my client, but I could see no profit in saying so. “I don’t have one,” I said.

“Then what’s your angle?”

“I’m not sure I have an angle, either.”

“I hear things to the effect that Spinner was in the dollars lately.”

“He was well dressed the last time I saw him.”

“That so?”

“His suit set him back three hundred and twenty dollars. He happened to mention it.”

He looked at me until I averted my own gaze. In a low voice he said, “Matt, you don’t want people driving cars at you. It’s unhealthy. You sure you don’t want to lay it all out for me?”

“As soon as it’s time, Eddie.”

“And you’re sure it’s not time yet?”

I took my time answering. I remembered the feel of that car rolling at me, remembered what actually happened, and then remembered how I dreamed it, with the driver taking the big car all the way to the wall.

“I’m sure,” I said.

At the Lion’s Head I had a hamburger and some bourbon and coffee. I was a little surprised that the car had been stolen so far uptown. They could have picked it up early on and parked it in my neighborhood, or the Marlboro man could have made a phone call between the time I left Polly’s and the time he found his way into Armstrong’s. Which would mean there were at least two people in the thing, which I had already decided on the basis of the voice I’d heard over the telephone. Or he could have—

No, it was pointless. There were too many possible scenarios I could write for myself, and none of them was going to get me anywhere but confused.

I signaled for another cup of coffee and another shot, mixed them together, and worked on it. The tail end of my conversation with Eddie had gotten in the way. There was something I had learned from him, but the problem was that I didn’t know that I knew it. He had said something that had rung a very muted bell, and I couldn’t get it to ring again.

I got a dollar’s worth of change and went over to the phone. Jersey Information gave me William Raiken’s number in Upper Montclair. I called it and told Mrs. Raiken I was from the Auto Theft Squad, and she said was surprised we had recovered her car so soon and did I happen to know if it was at all damaged.

I said, “I’m afraid we haven’t recovered your car yet, Mrs. Raiken.”

“Oh.”

“I just wanted to get some details. Your car was parked at Broadway and One Hundred Fourteenth Street?”

“That’s right. On One Hundred Fourteenth, not on Broadway.”

“I see. Now, our records indicate that you reported the theft at approximately two a.m. Was that immediately after you noticed the car was missing.

“Yes. Well, just about. I went to where I parked the car and it wasn’t there, of course, and my first thought was it was towed away. I was parked legally, but sometimes there are signs you don’t see, different regulations, but anyway they don’t do any towing that far uptown, do they?”

“Not above Eighty-sixth Street.”

“That’s what I thought, although I always manage to find a legal space. Then I thought maybe I’d made a mistake and I actually left the car on a Hundred Thirteenth, so I went and checked, but of course it wasn’t there either, so then I called my husband to have him pick me up, and he said to report the theft, so that was when I called you. Maybe there was fifteen or twenty minutes between when I missed the car and when I actually placed the call.”

“I see.” I was sorry now that I’d asked. “And when did you park the car, Mrs. Raiken?”

“Let me see. I had the two classes, an eight o’clock short-story workshop and a ten o’clock course in Renaissance history, but I was a little early, so I guess I parked a little after seven. Is that important?”

“Well, it won’t aid in recovering the vehicle, Mrs. Raiken, but we try to develop data to pinpoint the times when various crimes are likely to occur.”

“That’s interesting,” she said. “What good does that do?”

I had always wondered that myself. I told her it was part of the overall crime picture, which is what I generally had been told when I’d asked similar questions. I thanked her and assured her that her car would probably be recovered shortly, and she thanked me, and we said good-bye to each other and I went back to the bar.

I tried to determine what I’d learned from her and decided I’d learned nothing. My mind wandered, and I found myself wondering just what Mrs. Raiken had been doing on the Upper West Side in the middle of the night. She hadn’t been with her husband, and her last class must have let out around eleven. Maybe she’d just had a few beers at the West End or one of the other bars around Columbia. Quite a few beers, maybe, which would explain why she’d walked around the block looking for her car. Not that it mattered if she’d had enough beer to float a battleship, because Mrs. Raiken didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with Spinner Jablon or anybody else, and whether or not she had anything to do with Mr. Raiken was their business and none of my own, and—

Columbia.

Columbia is at One Hundred Sixteenth and Broadway, so that’s where she would have been taking courses. And someone else was studying at Columbia, taking graduate courses in psychology and planning to work with retarded children.

I checked the phone book. No Prager, Stacy, because single women know better than to put their first names in telephone books. But there was a Prager, S., on West One Hundred Twelfth between Broadway and Riverside.

I went back and finished my coffee. I left a bill on the bar. At the doorway I changed my mind, looked up Prager, S., again, and made a note of the address and phone number. On the chance that S. stood for Seymour or anything other than Stacy, I dropped a dime in the slot and dialed the number. I let it ring seven times, then hung up and retrieved my dime. There were two other dimes with it.

Some days you get lucky.