A Dance At The Slaughterhouse Part 9

"You just givin' me this here."

"No strings. If you don't want it-"

I reached for the bill and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, laughing. "Hey now," he said. "You don't be givin' an' takin' back. Didn't your mama teach you better'n that?" He pocketed the bill, c.o.c.ked his head and gave me a look. "I still ain't got you figured out," he said.

"There's nothing to figure," I said. "What's your name?"

"My name? Why you want to know my name?"

"No reason."

"You can call me TJ."

"All right."

" 'All right.' What's your name?"

"You can call me Booker."

"What you say, Booker?" He shook his head. "s.h.i.t, you some-thin', man. Booker. One thing you ain't, you ain't no Booker."

"My name's Matt."

"Matt," he said, trying it out. "Yeah, that's cool. Matt. Matt. An' that's where it's at, Matt."

" 'And that's the truth, Ruth.' "

His eyes lit up. "Hey," he said. "You hip to Spike Lee? You seen that movie?"

"Sure."

"I swear you hard to figure."

"There's nothing to figure."

"You got some kind of a jones. I just can't make out what it is."

"Maybe I haven't got one."

"On this street?" He whistled tonelessly. He had a round face, a b.u.t.ton nose, bright eyes. I wondered if my five dollars would go for a vial of crack. He was a little chubby for a crack head and he didn't have the look they get, but then they don't get it right away.

"On the Deuce," he said, "everybody got a jones. They got a crack jones or a smack jones, a s.e.x jones or a money jones, a speed-it-up or a slow-it-down jones. Man ain't got some kind of a jones, what he be doin' here?"

"And what about you, TJ?"

He laughed. "Oh, I got me a jones jones," he said. "I all the time got to be knowin' what kind of a jones the other dude's got, and that be my jones, an' that's where it's at, Matt."

I spent a few minutes more with TJ, and he was the best five-dollar cure I could have found for the Forty-second Street blues. By the time I headed back uptown I had shaken off the pall that had cloaked me all day. I had a shower and ate a decent dinner and went to a meeting.

The next day the phone rang while I was shaving, and I rode the subway to Brooklyn and got some work from a Court Street lawyer named Drew Kaplan. He had a client who was charged with vehicular homicide in a hit-and-run death.

"He swears he's innocent," Kaplan said, "and I personally happen to think he's full of s.h.i.t, but on the chance that he's actually telling his attorney the truth, we ought to see if there's a witness somewhere who saw somebody else run over the old lady. You want to give it a go?"

I put in a week on it, and then Kaplan told me to let it go, that they'd offered to let his client plead to reckless endangerment and leaving the scene.

"And they'll drop the homicide charge," he said, "and I very strongly advised him to go for it, which he finally agreed to do once he got it into his head that this way he won't be serving any time. They're gonna ask for six months but I know the judge'll agree to probation, so I'll say yes to the deal tomorrow unless you just happened to find the perfect witness since I talked to you last."

"I found somebody just this afternoon."

"A priest," he said. "A priest with twenty-twenty vision who holds the Congressional Medal of Honor."

"Not quite, but a strong solid witness. The thing is, she's positive your guy did it."

"Jesus Christ," he said. "This is somebody the other side doesn't know about?"

"They didn't as of two hours ago."

"Well, let's for G.o.d's sake not tell them now," he said. "I'll close it out tomorrow. Your check, as they say, is in the mail. You're still a guy who doesn't have a license and doesn't submit reports, right?"

"Unless you need something for the record."

"As a matter of fact," he said, "what I need in this case is to not have something for the record, so you won't submit a report and I'll forget this conversation that we never had."

"Fine with me."

"Great. And Matt? Somewhere along the line you ought to think about getting yourself a ticket. I'd give you more work, but there's stuff I can't use you on unless you've got a license."

"I've been thinking about it."

"Well," he said, "if your status changes, let me know."

KAPLAN'S check was generous, and when it came I rented a car and drove up to the Berkshires with Elaine to spend some of it. When we got back Wally at Reliable called and I got two days' work in connection with an insurance claim.

The film I'd seen became part of the past, and my emotional connection to it faded. It had affected me because I had seen it, but in truth it had nothing to do with me or I with it, and as time pa.s.sed and my life got back on its usual course, it became in my mind what it in fact was- i.e., one more outrage in a world that overflowed with them. I read the paper every morning, and every day there were fresh outrages to take the sting out of the old ones.

There were images from the film that still came to my mind now and then, but they no longer held the same charge for me. And I didn't get back to Forty-second Street, and I didn't run into TJ again, and scarcely thought of him. He was an interesting character, but New York is full of characters, they're all over the place.

The year went on. The Mets faded and finished out of the race, and the Yankees were never in it. Two California teams met in the Series, and the most interesting thing that happened during it was the San Francisco earthquake. In November the city got its first black mayor, and the following week Amanda Warriner Thurman was raped and murdered three flights above an Italian restaurant on West Fifty-second Street.

Then I saw a man's hand smooth a boy's light brown hair, and it all came back.

Chapter 7.

I had eaten breakfast and read two newspapers by the time the bank opened. I got the ca.s.sette from my safe-deposit box and called Elaine from a pay phone on the street.

She said, "Hi. How were the fights?"

"Better than I expected. How was your cla.s.s?"

"Great, but there's a ton of stuff I've got to read. And there's one little airhead in the cla.s.s who gets her hand up every time the instructor comes to the end of a sentence. If he doesn't find a way to shut her up I may have to kill her."

I asked if I could come over. "I'd like to use your VCR for about an hour," I said.

"That's fine," she said, "if you come over right away, and if it's really not much more than an hour. And if it's more fun than the last ca.s.sette you brought me."

"I'll be right over," I said.

I hung up and stepped to the curb and caught a cab right away. When I got there she took my coat and said, "Well, how did it go last night? Did you see the killer?" I must have stared, and she said, "Richard Thurman. Wasn't he supposed to be there? Isn't that why you went to Maspeth?"

"I wasn't thinking about him. He was there, yes, but I'm no closer to knowing if he killed her. I think I saw another killer."

"Oh?"

"The man in the rubber suit. I saw a man and I think it was him."

"Was he wearing the same outfit?"

"He was wearing a blue blazer." I told her about the man, and the boy he'd had with him. "So it's the same tape as last time," I said. "I don't think you'll want to watch it again."

"Not for anything. What I think I'll do, I was figuring I might do this anyway, I'll run out and buy books for my cla.s.s. It shouldn't take me more than an hour. You know how to work the VCR, don't you?" I said I did. "And I'll be back in time to get ready for my appointment. I've got somebody coming at eleven-thirty."

"I'll be out of here by then."

I waited until she was out the door, then got the VCR going and fast-forwarded past the Dirty Dozen footage. She let herself back in a few minutes before eleven, almost exactly an hour after she'd left. By then I'd watched the show twice. It ran a half hour, but the second time around I'd worked the Fast Forward b.u.t.ton, getting through it in half the time. I'd rewound the thing and was standing at the window when she came back.

She said, "I just spent a hundred dollars on books. And I couldn't find half of what's on the list."

"Couldn't you get paperbacks?"

"These are paperbacks. I don't know when I'm going to find time to read all of these." She upended the shopping bag on the couch, picked up a book and tossed it back onto the pile. "At least they're in English," she said, "which is a good thing, since I don't happen to read Spanish or Portuguese. But are you really reading something if you read it in translation?"

"If it's a good translation."

"I suppose so, but isn't it like seeing a movie with subt.i.tles? What you're reading just isn't the same as what they're saying. Did you watch that thing?"

"Uh-huh."

"And? Was it him?"

"I think so," I said. "It would be a lot easier to say if he hadn't had that G.o.ddam hood on. He must have been sweltering in a skintight rubber suit and a rubber hood."

"Maybe the open crotch had a cooling effect."

"He looked right to me," I said. "The one gesture, his hand on the boy's hair, that's what finally rang a bell for me, but there were other points of correspondence. The way he held himself, the way he moved, these are things you can't cover up with a costume. The hands looked right. The gesture, stroking the boy's hair, that was just as I remembered it." I frowned. "I think it was the same girl, too."

"What girl? You didn't mention a girl. You mean his partner in crime, the one with the little t.i.ts?"

"I think she was the placard girl. Strutting around the ring between rounds with a sign telling what round was coming up."

"I don't suppose she was wearing her leather drag."

I shook my head. "She was dressed for the beach, showing a lot of leg. I didn't pay much attention to her."

"I'll bet."

"I mean it. There was something faintly familiar about her but I didn't study her face."

"Of course not. You were too busy looking at her a.s.s." She put a hand on my arm. "I'd love to hear more," she said.

"But you're expecting company. I'll clear out. Do you mind if I leave the tape? I don't want to carry it around all day or make a special trip to get rid of it."

"No problem. And I hate to rush you, but-"

I gave her a kiss and left.

WHEN I got out to the street I had the urge to plant myself in a doorway and see who showed up. She hadn't come right out and said that her appointment was with a john, but neither had she said otherwise, and I had been careful not to ask. Nor did I really want to lurk in the shadows trying to spot her lunch date, and speculating just what he would have her do to earn the price of all those translations from the Spanish and Portuguese.

Sometimes it bothered me. Sometimes it didn't, and sometimes I thought that it ought to bother me more or less than it did. Someday, I thought, not for the first time, I would have to get it all sorted out.

In the meantime I walked over to Madison and took a bus thirty blocks uptown. Chance's gallery was one flight up over a shop that sold expensive clothing for children. The window featured a charming scene from Wind in the Willows, with the animals wearing the shop's fashions. Rat wore a moss-green jumper that probably cost as much as a whole shelf full of contemporary Latin American fiction.

The bra.s.s plate downstairs read, L. CHANCE COULTER/AFRICANA. I climbed a flight of carpeted stairs. The gilt-edged black lettering on the door bore the same legend, along with BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. I didn't have an appointment, but maybe I wouldn't need one. I rang, and after a moment the door was opened by Kid Bas...o...b.. He was wearing a three-piece suit, and he smiled broadly when he saw who it was.

"Mr. Scudder!" he said. "It's good to see you. Is Mr. Coulter expecting you?"

"Not unless he has a crystal ball. I took a chance he'd be in."

"He'll be glad to see you. He's on the telephone but come right in, Mr. Scudder, and make yourself comfortable. I'll just tell him you're here."

I made my way around the room, looking at the masks and statues. I didn't know the field, but you didn't need much expertise to sense the quality of the pieces on display. I was standing in front of what the label identified as a Senufo mask from the Ivory Coast when the Kid returned to tell me that Chance would be with me in a minute. "He's on the phone with a gentleman in Antwerp," he said. "I believe that's in Belgium."

"I believe you're right. I didn't know you were working here, Kid."

"Oh, for some time now, Mr. Scudder." Last night in Maspeth I'd told him to call me Matt, but it was a lost cause. "You know I retired from the ring. I wasn't good enough."

"You were d.a.m.ned good."

He grinned. "Well, I met three in a row who was better. Were better. I retired, and then I looked for something to do, and Mr. Chance said to see if I liked working for him. Mr. Coulter, I mean."

It was an easy mistake for him to make. When I first met Chance that one syllable was the only name he had, and it wasn't until he went into the art business that he added an initial in front and a surname after.