Scudder - Eight Million Ways To Die Part 24

'Yeah?'

'When he was dying he said, "G.o.d will pardon me. It's His profession." '

'That's not bad.'

'It's probably even better in German. I shtup and you detect and G.o.d pardons.' She lowered her eyes. 'I just hope He does,' she said. 'When it's my turn in the barrel, I hope He's not down in Barbados for the weekend.'

THIRTEEN.

When I left Elaine's the sky was growing dark and the streets were thick with rush-hour traffic. It was raining again, a nagging drizzle that slowed the commuters to a crawl. I looked at the swollen river of cars and wondered if one of them held Elaine's tax lawyer. I thought about him and tried to guess how he might have reacted when the number she gave him turned out to be a fake.

He could find her if he wanted to. He knew her name. The phone company wouldn't give out her unlisted number, but he wouldn't have to be too well connected to find somebody who could pry it out of them for him. Failing that, he could trace her without too much trouble through her hotel. They could tell him her travel agent and somewhere along the line he could pick up her address. I'd been a cop, I automatically thought of this sort of thing, but couldn't anybody make this sort of connection? It didn't seem terribly complicated to me.

Perhaps he'd been hurt when her number proved phony. Perhaps knowing she didn't want to see him would keep him from wanting to see her. But wouldn't his first thought be that the mistake might have been an accident? Then he'd try Information, and might guess that the un.o.btainable number differed from what she'd given him by no more than a transposed couple of digits. So why wouldn't he pursue it?

Maybe he never called her in the first place, never even learned that the number was phony. Maybe he'd discarded her number in the airplane washroom on the way home to his wife and kids.

Maybe he had a few guilt-ridden moments now and then, thinking of the art restorer waiting by her telephone for his call. Maybe he would find himself regretting his haste. No need, after all, to have thrown her number away. He might have been able to fit in a date with her from time to time. No reason she had to learn about the wife and kids. The h.e.l.l, she'd probably be grateful for someone to take her away from her paint tubes and turpentine.

Halfway home I stopped at a deli and had soup and a sandwich and coffee. There was a bizarre story in the Post. Two neighbors in Queens had been arguing for months because of a dog that barked in its owner's absence. The previous night, the owner was walking the dog when the animal relieved itself on a tree in front of the neighbor's house. The neighbor happened to be watching and shot at the dog from an upstairs window with a bow and arrow. The dog's owner ran back into his house and came out with a Walther P-38, a World War II souvenir. The neighbor also ran outside with his bow and arrow, and the dog's owner shot him dead. The neighbor was eighty-one, the dog's owner was sixty-two, and the two men had lived side by side in Little Neck for over twenty years. The dog's age wasn't given, but there was a picture of him in the paper, straining against a leash in the hands of a uniformed police officer.

Midtown North was a few blocks from my hotel. It was still raining in the same halfhearted fashion when I went over there a little after nine that night. I stopped at the front desk and a young fellow with a moustache and blow-dry hair pointed me to the staircase. I went up a flight and found the detective squad room. There were four plainclothes cops sitting at desks, a couple more down at the far end watching something on television. Three young black males in a holding pen paid some attention when I entered, then lost interest when they saw I wasn't their lawyer.

I approached the nearest desk. A balding cop looked up from the report he was typing. I told him I had an appointment with Detective Durkin.

A cop at another desk looked up and caught my eye. 'You must be Scudder,' he said. 'I'm Joe Durkin.'

His handshake was overly firm, almost a test of masculinity. He waved me into a chair and took his own seat, stubbed out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, lit a fresh one, leaned back and looked at me. His eyes were that pale shade of gray that doesn't show you a thing.

He said, 'Still raining out there?'

'Off and on.'

'Miserable weather. You want some coffee?'

'No thanks.'

'What can I do for you?'

I told him I'd like to see whatever he could show me on the Kim Dakkinen killing.

'Why?'

'I told somebody I'd look into it.'

'You told somebody you'd look into it? You mean you got a client?'

'You could say that.'

'Who?'

'I can't tell you that.'

A muscle worked along the side of his jaw. He was around thirty-five and a few pounds overweight, enough to make him look a little older than his years. He hadn't lost any hair yet and it was all dark brown, almost black. He wore it combed flat down on his head. He should have borrowed a blow dryer from the guy downstairs.

He said, 'You can't hold that out. You don't have a license and it wouldn't be privileged information even if you did.'

'I didn't know we were in court.'

'We're not. But you come in here asking a favor - '

I shrugged. 'I can't tell you my client's name. He has an interest in seeing her killer caught. That's all.'

'And he thinks that'll happen faster if he hires you.'

'Evidently.'

'You think so too?'

'What I think is I got a living to make.'

'Jesus,' he said. 'Who doesn't?'

I'd said the right thing. I wasn't a threat now. I was just a guy going through the motions and trying to turn a dollar. He sighed, slapped the top of his desk, got up and crossed the room to a bank of filing cabinets. He was a chunkily built, bandy-legged man with his sleeves rolled up and his collar open, and he walked with the rolling gait of a sailor. He brought back a manila accordion file, dropped into his chair, found a photograph in the files and pitched it onto the desk.

'Here,' he said. 'Feast your eyes.'

It was a five-by-seven black and white glossy of Kim, but if I hadn't known that I don't see how I could have recognized her. I looked at the picture, fought off a wave of nausea, and made myself go on looking at it.

'Really did a job on her,' I said.

'He got her sixty-six times with what the doc thinks was probably a machete or something like it. How'd you like the job of counting? I don't know how they do that work. I swear it's a worse job than the one I got.'

'All that blood.'

'Be grateful you're seeing it in black and white. It was worse in color.'

'I can imagine.'

'He hit arteries. You do that, you get spurting, you get blood all over the room. I never saw so much blood.'

'He must have gotten blood all over himself.'

'No way to avoid it.'

'Then how did he get out of there without anybody noticing?'