A Walk Among the Tombstones

Page 31

"He's keeping his distance, he says he'll be over and he doesn't show up, I call him and he's not there. What does that sound like?"
"I haven't seen him at a meeting in a week and a half. Now we don't always go to the same meetings but-"
"But you expect to run into him now and then."
"Yes."
"I give him five grand in case something comes up, and the minute something comes up he says he doesn't have it. What did he spend it on? Or if he's lying, what's he saving it for? Two questions and one answer, way it looks to me. Jay-You-En-Kay. What else?"
"There could be another explanation."
"I'm willing to hear it." He picked up a phone, dialed a number, and stood there holding himself in check while the phone rang. It must have rung ten times before he gave up. "No answer, but it means nothing. When he used to hole up with a bottle he would go days without answering his phone. I asked him once why he didn't at least take it off the hook. Then I'd know he was there, he said. He's a devious bastard, my brother."
"It's the disease."
"The habit, you mean."
"We generally call it a disease. I guess it amounts to the same thing."
"He kicked junk, you know. He was hooked bad and he quit it, but then he got into the booze."
"So he said."
"How long was he sober? Over a year."
"A year and a half."
"You'd think if you could do it that long you could do it forever."
"A day is the most anybody can do it."
"Yeah," he said impatiently. "A day at a time. I know all that, I heard all the slogans. When he was first getting sober Petey was here all the time. Francey and I would sit with him and give him coffee and listen to him run off at the mouth. Everything he heard at a meeting he came back and filled our ears with it, but we didn't mind because he was starting to put his life back together again. Then one day he told me how he couldn't hang out with me so much anymore because it could undercut his sobriety. Now he's somewhere with a bag of dope and a bottle of whiskey and what the hell happened to his sobriety?"
"You don't know that, Kenan."
He turned on me. "What else, for Christ's sake? What's he doing with five grand, buying lottery tickets? I never should have given him that much money. It's too much temptation. Whatever happens to him, it's my fault."
"No," I said. "If you gave him a cigar box full of heroin and said 'Watch this for me until I get back,' then it'd be your fault. That's more temptation than anybody should have to handle. But he's been clean and dry for a year and a half and he knows how to be responsible for his own sobriety. If the money made him nervous he could put it in the bank, or ask somebody in the program to hold it for him. Maybe he went out and maybe he didn't, we don't know yet, but whatever he did you didn't make him do it."
"I made it easy."
"It's never hard. I don't know what a bag of dope costs these days, but you can still get a drink for a couple of dollars, and one's all it takes."
"One wouldn't hold you for very long, though. Still, five thousand dollars ought to keep him going for a hell of a run. What can you spend on liquor, twenty dollars a day if you drink it at home? Two, three times that if you buy it over the bar? Heroin's a more expensive proposition, but even so it's hard to put more than a couple hundred dollars a day in your arm, and it'd take him a while to build his habit back up. Even if he makes a pig of himself, it ought to take him a month to shoot up five grand."
"He didn't use a needle."
"He told you that, huh?"
"It's not true?"
He shook his head. "He told people that, and there was a period when all he did was snort, but he was a needle junkie for a while there. The lie made the habit sound less serious. Plus he was afraid if women knew he used to shoot dope they'd be afraid to go to bed with him. Not that he's been knocking them over like dominoes lately, but you don't want to make it harder on yourself. He figured they'd assume he shared needles and be afraid he was HIV-positive."
"But he didn't share needles?"
"Says he didn't. And he got tested, and he doesn't have the virus."
"What's the matter?"
"Well, I was just thinking. Maybe he did share needles, maybe he never went for the HIV test. He could lie about that, too."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Do you use a needle? Or do you just snort?"
"I'm not a junkie."
"Peter told me you snort a bag of dope about once a month."
"When was this? On the phone Saturday?"
"A week before. We went to a meeting, then had a meal and hung out together."
"And he told you that, huh?"
"He said he was here at your house a few days before that and you were high. He said he called you on it and you denied it."
He lowered his eyes for a moment, lowered his voice, too, when he spoke. "Yeah, it's true," he said. "He did call me on it, and I did deny it. I thought he bought it."
"He didn't."
"No, I guess not. It bothered me to lie about it. It didn't bother me that I did up the dope. I wouldn't do it in front of him and I wouldn't have done it just then if I'd known he was coming over, but it don't hurt anybody, least of all me, if I do up a bag of dope once in a blue moon."
"Whatever you say."
"He said once a month? To tell you the truth, I doubt if it's that much. My guess would be seven, eight, ten times a year. It's never been more than that. I shouldn't have lied to him. I should have said, 'Yeah, I been feeling like shit, so I got off, and so what?' Because I can do it a few times a year and it never comes to more than that, and if he has one little taste he's got the whole habit back and they're stealing his shoes when he nods out in the subway. That happened to him, he woke up on the D train in his socks."
"It's happened to a lot of people."
"Including you?"
"No, but it could have."
"You're an alcoholic, right? I had a drink before you came over here. If you asked me I'd say so, I wouldn't lie about it. Why did I lie about it to my brother?"
"He's your brother."
"Yeah, that's part of it. Oh, shit, man. I'm worried about him."
"Nothing you can do at this point."
"No, what am I gonna do, drive through the streets looking for him? We'll go together. You look out one side of the car for the fuckers who killed my wife and I'll look out the other side for my brother. How's that for a plan?" He made a face. "In the meantime I owe you money. What did we say, twenty-seven hundred?" He had a roll of hundreds in his pocket and counted out twenty-seven of them, which pretty much depleted the roll. He handed the money to me and I found a place to put it. He said, "What now?"
"I'll stay with it," I said. "Some of what I try will depend on where the police investigation leads, but-"
"No," he cut in, "that's not what I mean. What do you do now? You got a date for dinner, you got something doing in the city, what?"
"Oh." I had to think. "I'll probably go back to my room. I've been on my feet all day, I want to take a shower and change my clothes."
"You plan to walk back? Or will you take the subway?"
"Well, I won't walk."
"Suppose I drive you."
"You don't have to do that."
He shrugged. "I have to do something," he said.
IN the car he asked me the location of the famous laundromat and said he wanted to have a look at it. We drove there and he parked the Buick across the street from it and killed the engine. "So we're on a stakeout," he said. "That's what it's called, right? Or is that only on TV?"
"A stakeout generally goes on for hours," I said. "So I hope we're not on one at the moment."
"No, I just wanted to sit here for a minute. I wonder how many times I drove past this place. It never once occurred to me to stop and make a phone call. Matt, you're sure these guys are the same ones who killed the two women and cut the girl?"
"Yes."
"Because this was for profit and the others were strictly, uh, what's the word? Pleasure? Recreation?"
"I know. But the similarities are too specific and too striking. It has to be the same men."
"Why me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean why me?"
"Because a drug dealer makes an ideal target, lots of cash and a reason to steer clear of the police. We discussed that before. And one of the men had a thing about drugs. He kept asking Pam if she knew any dealers, if she took drugs. He was evidently obsessed with the subject."
"That's why a drug dealer. That's not why me." He leaned forward, propped his arms on the steering wheel. "Who even knows I'm a dealer? I haven't been arrested, haven't had my name in the papers. My phone's not tapped and my house isn't bugged. I'm positive my neighbors don't have a clue how I make my money. The DEA investigated me a year and a half ago and they dropped the whole thing because they weren't getting anyplace. The NYPD I don't even think they know I'm alive. You're some degenerate, likes to kill women, wants to get rich knocking off a drug dealer, how do you even know of my existence? That's what I want to know. Why me?"
"I see what you mean."
"I started off thinking I'm the target. You know, that the whole thing begins with someone looking to hurt me and take me off. But that's not true, according to you. It starts with crazies who are getting off on rape and murder. Then they decide to make it pay, and then they decide to go after a drug dealer, and then I'm elected. So I can't get anywhere backtracking people I know professionally, somebody who maybe thinks I screwed him in a transaction and he sees a good way of getting even. I'm not saying there aren't any crazy people dealing in the product, but-"
"No, I follow you. And you're right. You're the target incidentally. They're looking for a dope dealer and you're one they know of."
"But how?" He hesitated. "There was a thought I had."
"Let's hear it."
"Well, I don't think it makes much sense. But I gather my brother tells his story at meetings, right? He sits up in front and tells everybody what he did and where it got him. And I assume he mentions how his brother makes his living. Am I right?"
"Well, I knew Pete had a brother who dealt drugs, but I didn't know your name or where you lived. I didn't even know Pete's last name."
"If you asked him he would have told you. And how hard would it be to get the rest? 'I think I know your brother. He live in Bushwick?' 'No, Bay Ridge.' 'Oh, yeah? What street?' I don't know. I guess it's farfetched."
"It seems it to me," I said. "I grant you you'll find all kinds at an AA meeting, and there's nothing to stop a serial killer from walking in the doors. God knows a lot of the famous ones were alcoholic, and always under the influence when they did their killing. But I don't know of any of them that ever got sober in the program."
"But it's possible?"
"I suppose so. Most things are. Still, if our friends live here in Sunset Park and Peter went to Manhattan meetings-"