When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

Page 27

"Maybe a pith helmet. But in thith neighborhood," he said, "Thome of the girlth would make dirty crackth."
I had my notebook out. "A license number," I said. "I thought maybe you could check it for me."
"You mean call Motor Vehicles?"
"First check the hot-car sheet."
"What's it, a hit-and-run? Your client wants to know who hit him, maybe take quiet cash instead of press charges?"
"You've got a great imagination."
"You got a license number and I should check the hot cars before anything else? Shit. What's the number?"
I read it out to him. He jotted it down and pushed away from his desk. "Be a minute," he said.
While he was gone I looked at my ear drawings. Ears really do look different. The thing is you have to train yourself to notice them.
He wasn't gone long. He came back and dropped into his swivel chair. "Not on the sheet," he said.
"Could you check the registration with Motor Vehicles?"
"I could, but I don't have to. They don't always get on the sheet so quick. So I called in, and it's hot, all right, it'll be listed on the next sheet. It was phoned in last night, stolen late afternoon or early evening."
"It figured," I said.
" 'Seventy-three Mercury, right? Sedan, dark blue?"
"That's right."
"That what you wanted?"
"Where was it stolen from?"
"Somewhere in Brooklyn. Ocean Parkway, the high numbers, it must be pretty far out."
"Makes sense."
"It does?" he said. "Why?"
I shook my head. "It's nothing," I said. "I thought the car might be important, but if it's stolen it doesn't lead anywhere." I took out my wallet, drew out a twenty and a five, the traditional price of a hat in police parlance. I put the bills on his desk. He covered them with his hand but did not pick them up.
"Now I got a question," he said.
"Oh?"
"Why?"
"That's private," I said. "I'm working for someone, I can't-"
He was shaking his head. "Why spend twenty-five dollars on something you coulda got for nothing over the telephone? Jesus Christ, Matt, how many years did you carry a shield that you don't remember how to get a listing out of the DMV? You call up, you identify yourself, you know the drill, don't you?"
"I thought it was hot."
"So you want to check hot cars first, you call somebody in the Department. You're a police officer on a stakeout, whatever you want to say, you just spotted a car you think might be hot, and could they check it for you? That saves you running down here and saves you the price of a hat on top of it."
"That's impersonating an officer," I said.
"Oh, really?" He patted the money. "This," he said, "is bribing an officer, you want to get technical. You pick a funny place to draw the line."
The conversation was making me uncomfortable. I had impersonated an officer less than twelve hours ago, getting Carolyn Cheatham's unlisted number from Information. I said, "Maybe I missed the sight of you, Eddie. How's that?"
"Maybe. Maybe your brain's getting rusty."
"That's possible."
"Maybe you should lay off the booze and rejoin the human race. Is that possible?"
I stood up. "Always a pleasure, Eddie." He had more to say, but I didn't have to stay there and listen to it.
There was a church nearby, Saint Veronica's, a red-brick pile on Christopher Street near the river. A derelict had arranged himself on the steps, an empty bottle of Night Train still clutched in his hand. The thought came to me that Eddie had phoned ahead and had the man placed there, a grim example of what could lie in store for me. I didn't know whether to laugh or to shudder.
I climbed the steps and went inside. The church was cavernous and empty. I found a seat and closed my eyes for a minute. I thought about my two clients, Tommy and Skip, and the ineffectual work I was performing for each of them. Tommy didn't need my help and wasn't getting it. As for Skip, perhaps I'd helped make the exchange go smoothly, but I'd made mistakes. For God's sake, I should have had Billie and Bobby taking down license numbers, I shouldn't have left it for Billie to think of on his own.
I was almost glad the car had turned out to be stolen. So that Keegan's clue wouldn't lead anywhere and my lack of foresight would be less significant.
Stupid. Anyway, I'd posted them there, hadn't I? They wouldn't have seen the car, let alone got the number, if they'd been with Kasabian on the other side of the block.
I went and put a dollar in the slot and lit a candle. A woman was kneeling a few yards to my left. When she rose to her full height I saw she was a transsexual. She stood two inches taller than I. Her features were a mix of Latin and Oriental, her shoulders and upper arms were muscular, and her breasts were the size of cantaloupes, straining the polkadot sun halter.
"Well, hello," she said.
"Hello."
"Have you come to light a candle to Saint Veronica? Do you know anything about her?"
"No."
"Neither do I. But I prefer to think of her"- she arranged a strand of hair to fall across her forehead- "as Saint Veronica Lake."
THE N train took me to within a few blocks of the church at Ovington and Eighteenth Avenue. A rather scattered woman in paint-spattered jeans and an army shirt pointed me to the pastor's office. There was no one at the desk, just a pudgy young man with an open freckled face. He had one foot on the arm of a chair and was tuning a guitar.
I asked where the pastor was.
"That's me," he said, straightening up. "How can I help you?"
I said I understood he'd had some minor vandalism in the basement the previous evening. He grinned at me. "Is that what it was? Someone seems to have shot up our light fixture. The damage won't amount to much. Would you like to see where it happened?"
We didn't have to use the stairs I'd gone down last night. We walked down an inside staircase and a hallway, entering the room through the curtained archway our wigged and bearded friends had used to make their departure. The room had been straightened since then, the chairs stacked, the tables folded. Daylight filtered in through the windows.
"That's the fixture, of course," he said, pointing. "There was glass on the floor but it's been swept up. I suppose you've seen the police report."
I didn't say anything, just looked around.
"You are with the police, aren't you?"
He wasn't probing. He simply wanted to be reassured. But something stopped me. Maybe the tail end of my conversation with Eddie Koehler.
"No," I said. "I'm not."
"Oh? Then your interest is-"
"I was here last night."
He looked at me, waiting for me to go on. He was, I thought, a very patient young man. You sensed that he wanted to hear what you had to say, and in your own good time. I suppose that quality would be a useful one for a minister.
I said, "I used to be a cop. I'm a private detective now." That was perhaps technically incorrect, but close enough to the truth. "I was here last night on behalf of a client, seeking to exchange money for some goods of the client's that were being held for ransom."
"I see."
"The other parties, the criminals who had stolen my client's goods in the first place, selected this location for the exchange. They were the ones who did the shooting."
"I see," he said again. "Was anyone… shot? The police looked for bloodstains. I don't know that all wounds bleed."
"No one was shot. There were only two shots fired and they both went into the ceiling."
He sighed. "That's a relief. Well, Mr. Uh-"
"Scudder. Matthew Scudder."
"And I'm Nelson Fuhrmann. I guess we missed introducing ourselves earlier." He ran a hand over a freckled forehead. "I gather the police don't know about any of this."
"No, they don't."
"And you'd rather they didn't."
"It would certainly be simpler if they didn't."
He considered, nodded. "I doubt I'd have occasion to communicate it to them anyway," he said. "I don't suppose they'll come around again, do you? It's no major crime."
"Somebody might follow up. But don't be surprised if you never hear further."
"They'll file a report," he said, "and that will be that." He sighed again. "Well, Mr. Scudder, you must have had a reason to take the chance that I would mention your visit to the police. What is it you're hoping to find out?"
"I'd like to know who they were."
"The villains?" He laughed. "I don't know what else to call them. If I were a policeman I suppose I'd call them perpetrators."
"You could call them sinners."
"Ah, but we're all that, aren't we?" He smiled at me. "You don't know their identity?"
"No. And they wore disguises, wigs and false beards, so I don't even know what they looked like."
"I don't see how I could help you. You don't suppose they're connected with the church, do you?"
"I'm almost certain they're not. But they picked this place, Reverend Fuhrmann, and-"
"Call me Nelson."
"- and it suggests a familiarity with the church, and with this room in particular. Did the cops find any evidence of forced entry?"
"I don't believe so, no."
"Mind if I look at the door?" I examined the lock of the door leading to the outside stairs. If it had been tampered with, I couldn't see it. I asked him what other doors led to the outside, and he took me around and we checked, and none of them bore the scars of illegal entry.
"The police said a door must have been left open," he said.
"That would be a logical guess if this were just a case of vandalism or malicious mischief. A couple of kids happen to find a door left unlocked, go inside, horse around a little. But this was planned and arranged. I don't think our sinners could count on the door being left open. Or is locking up a hit-or-miss business here?"
He shook his head. "No, we always lock up. We have to, even in a decent neighborhood like this one. Two doors were open when the police arrived last night, this one and the one in the rear. We certainly wouldn't have left both doors unlocked."
"If one was open, the other could be unlocked from inside without a key."
"Oh, of course. Still-"
"There must be a lot of keys in circulation, reverend. I'm sure a lot of community groups use the space."
"Oh, absolutely," he said. "We feel it's part of our function to make our space available when we don't require it for our own purposes. And the rent we collect for it is an important part of our income."
"So the basement is often in use at night."
"Oh, it certainly is. Let's see, AA meets in this room every Thursday night, and there's an Al-Anon group that uses the room on Tuesdays, they'll be here tonight, come to think of it. And Fridays, who's here Fridays? This space has been put to no end of uses in the few years I've been here. We had a little theater group doing their rehearsals, we have a monthly cub scout meeting when the whole pack assembles together, we have- well, you can see that there are a lot of different groups with access to the premises."