A Dance at the Slaughter House (Matthew Scudder #9) 4

"That he's a laundryman."

"And that Five Borough is functioning as some sort of laundry. How or why or for whom or to what extent are questions I wouldn't presume to answer." He poured himself some vodka. "So I don't know if this does you any good at all, Matthew. I couldn't find out anything at all about young Richard Thurman. If he hired some street scum to tie him up and savage his wife, either he picked a remarkably closemouthed pair or their fee included passage to New Zealand, because the word on the street is no word at all."

"That figures."

"Does it?" He knocked back the Stoly. "I hope the news about Five Borough isn't completely useless to you. I didn't want to say anything over the phone. That's never something I like to do, and your calls go through the hotel switchboard, don't they? Isn't that a nuisance?"

"I can dial out direct," I said. "And they take messages."

"I'm sure they do, although I don't like to leave them if I can help it. I'd offer to find out more about Stettner, but I might have a hard time doing that. He keeps a low profile. What have you got there?"

"I think it's his picture," I said, and unfolded the sketch. Danny Boy looked at it, then at me.

"You already knew about him," he said.

"No."

"You just happened to have his pencil portrait tucked in your jacket pocket. It's signed, for God's sake. Who, pray tell, is Raymond Galindez?"

"The next Norman Rockwell. Is that Stettner?"

"I don't know, Matthew. I never set eyes on the man."

"Well, I'm ahead of you there. I had a good look at him. I just didn't happen to know who I was looking at." I folded the sketch and put it away. "Keep this to yourself for now," I said, "but if things break right, he's going to go away for a long long time."

"For running a laundry?"

"No," I said. "That's what he does for a living. What's going to put him away is what he does for a hobby."

MY walk home took me past St. Paul's. It was nine-thirty when I got there, and I stopped in for the last half hour of the meeting. I got a cup of coffee and dropped into a chair in the back row. I noticed Will Haberman a few rows in front of me and imagined bringing him up to date. In that version of The Dirty Dozen you lent me, Will, we've so far learned that the part of Rubber Man was played by Bergen Stettner. A young fellow with no previous acting experience played the male ingenue. He was using the stage name of Happy. We're not sure yet about Leather Woman, but there's a possibility her name is Chelsea.

That was the name Thurman had dropped last night. "Who, Chelsea? Just a tramp, my friend. Take my word for it." I was willing enough to take his word, but I was less and less persuaded that the girl who'd strutted around the ring with the numbered cards was the masked woman in leather.

I couldn't pay any real attention to the meeting. The discussion went on around me while my mind spun off in circles of its own. I'd come down into the church basement not for what I might hear but just to be in a safe place for a few minutes.

I ducked out early and got back to my room with two minutes to spare. Ten o'clock came and went, and at five minutes after the hour the phone rang and I grabbed it. "Scudder," I said.

"You know who this is?"

"Yes."

"Don't say my name. Just say where you know me from."

"Paris Green," I said. "Among other places."

"Yeah, right. I didn't know how much you were drinking last night, how much you'd remember."

"I have a pretty good memory."

"So do I, and I'll tell you something, there's times I wish I didn't. You're a detective."

"That's right."

"Is that straight? I couldn't find you in the book."

"I'm not listed."

"You work for some agency. You showed me a card but I didn't get the name."

"I just free-lance for them. Mostly I'm on my own."

"So I could hire you directly."

"Yes," I said. "You could do that."

There was a pause while he thought it over. "The thing is," he said, "I think I'm in trouble."

"I can see where you'd think that."

"What do you know about me, Scudder?"

"What everybody knows."

"Last night you didn't recognize my name."

"That was then."

"And this is now, huh? Look, I think we ought to talk."

"I think so, too."

"Where, though? That's the question. Not Paris Green."

"How about your place?"

"No. No, I don't think that's a good idea. Someplace public, but not where somebody might recognize me. All the places that come to my mind are out, because they're the places I go all the time."

"I know a place," I said.

HE said, "You know this is perfect, and I never would have thought of a place like this. This is what you'd call your basic Irish neighborhood tavern, isn't it?"

"You could."

"Just a few blocks from where I live and I never knew it existed, but then I could walk past it every day and never notice it, never pay any attention, you know? Different worlds. Here you got your decent working-class people, honest as the day is long, real salt-of-the-earth types. And look, you got your tin ceiling, tile floor, dart board on the wall. This is perfect."

We were in Grogan's, of course, and I wondered if anyone had ever described its owner as the salt of the earth, or honest as the day was long. Still, it seemed to suit our purpose. It was quiet and nearly empty, and no one who knew Thurman was likely to put in an appearance.

I asked him what he wanted to drink. He said he guessed a beer would be good, and I went to the bar for a bottle of Harp and a glass of Coke. "You missed the big fellow," Burke told me. "He was in an hour ago, said you kept him up all night."

I went back to the table and Thurman noticed my Coke. "That's not what you were drinking last night," he said.

"You were drinking stingers."

"Don't remind me. The thing is, I'm not that much of a drinker ordinarily. A martini before dinner, and maybe a couple of beers. Last night I was hitting it. Matter of fact, I'm not sure how much I said to you. Or how much you know."

"I know more than I did last night."

"And you knew more then than you let on."

"Maybe you'd better just tell me what's bothering you."

He thought about it, then nodded shortly. He patted his pockets and found the sketch I'd given him the night before. He unfolded it and looked from it to me. He asked if I knew who it was.

"Why don't you tell me?"

"His name is Bergen Stettner."

Good, I thought.

"I'm afraid he's going to kill me."

"Why? Has he ever killed anyone before?"

"God," he said. "I don't know where to start."

HE said, "I never met anyone like Bergen before. He started to come around after the buy-in and we hit it off right away. I thought he was fantastic. Very strong, very sure of himself, and when you're with him it's very easy to believe that the ordinary rules don't apply. The first time I met him he took me back to his apartment. We drank champagne on the terrace with all of Central Park spread out below us like our private backyard.

"The next time I was over there I met his wife. Olga. Beautiful woman, and there was so much sexual energy around her it was dizzying. He went to the bathroom and she sat down next to me and put her hand in my lap and started stroking me through my pants. 'I want to suck your cock,' she said. 'I want you to fuck me in the ass. I want to sit on your face.' I couldn't believe what was happening. I was sure he'd walk in and catch us like that, but by the time he came back she was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, talking about one of the paintings.

"The next day he kept telling me how much Olga liked me, how she said they should see more of me. A few days later we went out to dinner with them, my wife and I. It was awkward, because there was this whole thing going on between me and Olga. At the end of the evening Bergen kissed Amanda's hand, very Continental, but with a self-mocking quality to it at the same time. And Olga gave me her hand to kiss, and it smelled of, well, it smelled of pussy. She must have touched herself. And I looked up at her, you know, and there was this expression on her face, it got to me as much as the smell did.

"Of course he knew everything that was going on, they planned it together, I know all that now. The next time I was over at their apartment he said he had something to show me, it wasn't something I'd be likely to see on cable but he thought it would interest me. He put on a videocassette, and it was porno, an amateur video. Two men sharing a woman. Halfway through Olga came in and sat down next to me. I hadn't even known she was in the apartment, I'd thought Bergen and I were there alone.

"When the cassette ended Bergen took it off and put on another one. This one featured two women, one black and one white. The black woman was a slave. It took me a minute to realize that the white woman was Olga. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

"After it ended I looked around and Bergen had left the room. Olga and I tore our clothes off and got on the couch. At some point I realized Bergen was in the room, watching us. Then we all got up and went into the bedroom together."

ALONG with the sex Stettner fed him a steady diet of philosophy. Rules were for those who lacked the imagination to break them. Superior men and women made their own rules, or lived with none at all. He quoted Nietzsche often, and Olga put a New Age gloss on the old German. There were truly no victims when you claimed your power, because their fate was just a manifestation of their own desire for subjugation. They created their destiny even as you created yours.

One day Stettner called him at the office. "Stop what you're doing," he said. "Go downstairs, wait on the corner, I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes." Stettner took him for a long drive, telling him only that he had a gift for him. He parked in an unfamiliar neighborhood and led Thurman down a flight of stairs into a basement chamber. There he beheld a naked woman manacled to a metal frame, her mouth stopped with a gag. "She's yours," Stettner told him. "Do whatever you want with her."

He had sex with the woman. It would have been discourteous to refuse, like turning down a drink or a meal or any other offer of hospitality. Besides, the woman's utter helplessness was fiercely exciting to him. When he had finished having intercourse with her Stettner asked him if there was anything else he wanted to do to the woman. He said there wasn't.

They left the building and got back into Stettner's car. The older man told him to wait a minute, that there was something he had forgotten to do. He was back shortly and began driving. He asked Thurman if he'd ever been a woman's first lover. Thurman said that he had.

"But not your wife."

No, Thurman acknowledged. Amanda had not been a virgin when they met.

"Well, I have given you a gift," Stettner said. "You have already been a woman's first lover, and now you have been this one's last. That girl you were just with, no one will ever have her again, no one but the worms. Do you know what I did when I went back? I killed her for you. I took the gag out of her mouth, and I said, 'Goodbye, darling,' and I cut her throat."