"You were a cop," she said. "Didn't he tell me that?"
"He could have."
"And now you're a detective?"
"In a way."
"Just so you're not a robber. Be something if I got myself stabbed by a burglar tonight, wouldn't it? He's with me and she gets killed, and then he's with her and I get killed. Except I don't guess he's with her right about now, is he. She's in the ground by now."
Her apartment was small but comfortable. The furniture had clean lines, the pop art prints on the brick wall were framed simply in aluminum frames. From her window you could see the green copper roof of the Parc Vendome on the far corner.
"If a burglar came in here," she said, "I'd stand a better chance than she did."
"Because you've got me to protect you?"
"Mmmm," she said. "Mah hero."
We kissed then. I tipped up her chin and kissed her, and we moved into an easy clinch. I breathed in her perfume, felt her softness. We clung together for a moment or two, then withdrew and reached as if in synchronization for our drinks.
"Even if I was alone," she said, picking up the conversation as readily as she'd picked up the drink. "I could protect myself."
"You're a karate black belt."
"I'm a beaded belt, honey, to match my purse. No, I could protect myself with this here, just give me a minute and I'll show you."
A pair of modern matte-black step tables flanked the sofa. She leaned across me to grope for something in the drawer of the one on my side. She was sprawled facedown across my lap. An inch of golden skin showed between the tops of the yellow pedal pushers and the bottom of her green blouse. I put my hand on her behind.
"Now quit that, Matthew! I'll forget what I'm looking for."
"That's all right."
"No it's not. Here. See?"
She sat up, a gun in her hand. It was the same matte-black finish as the table. It was a revolver, and looked to be a.32. A small gun, all black, with a one-inch barrel.
"Maybe you should put that away," I said.
"I know how to behave around guns," she said. "I grew up in a house full of guns. Rifles, shotguns, handguns. My pa and both my brothers hunted. Quail, pheasants. Some ducks. I know about guns."
"Is that one loaded?"
"Wouldn't be much good if it wasn't, would it? Can't point at a burglar and say bang. He loaded it 'fore he gave it to me."
"Tommy gave it to you?"
"Uh-huh." She held the gun at arm's length, sighted across the room at an imaginary burglar. "Bang," she said. "He didn't leave me any shells, just the loaded gun. So if I was to shoot a burglar I'd have to ask him for more bullets the next day."
"Why'd he give it to you?"
"Not to go duck hunting." She laughed. "For protection," she said. "I said how I got nervous sometimes, a girl living alone in this city, and one time he brought me this here. He said he bought it for her, to have it for protection, but she wouldn't have any part of it, wouldn't even take it in her hand." She broke off and giggled.
"What's so funny?"
"Oh, that's what they all say. 'My wife won't even take it in her hand.' I got a dirty mind, Matthew."
"Nothing wrong with that."
"I told you bourbon was low-down. Brings out the beast in a person. You could kiss me."
"You could put the gun away."
"You got something against kissing a woman with a gun in her hand?" She rolled to her left, put the gun in the drawer and closed it. "I keep it in the bedside table," she explained, "so it'll be handy if I need it in a hurry. This here makes up into a bed."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't huh? Want me to prove it to you?"
"Maybe you'd better."
AND so we did what grownups do when they find themselves alone together. The sofa opened up into an adequate bed and we lay upon it with the lights out and the room lit by a couple of candles in straw-wrapped wine bottles. Music played on an FM station. She had a sweet body, an eager mouth, perfect skin. She made a lot of enthusiastic noises and more than a few skillful moves, and afterward she cried some.
Then we talked and had a little more of the bourbon, and before long she dropped off to sleep. I covered her with the top sheet and a cotton blanket. I could have slept myself, but instead I put on my clothes and sent myself home. Because who in her right mind'd want Matt Scudder around by the dawn's early light?
On my way home I stopped at the little Syrian deli and had the clerk loosen the caps on two bottles of Molson Ale. I went up to my room and sat with my feet up on the windowsill and drank from one of the bottles.
I thought about Tillary. Where was he now? In the house where she died? Staying with friends or relatives?
I thought of him in the bars or Carolyn's bed while a burglar was killing his wife, and I wondered what he thought about that. Or if he thought about it.
And my own thoughts turned suddenly to Anita, out there in Syosset with the boys. I had a moment of fear for her, seeing her menaced, drawing back in terror from some unseen danger. I recognized the fear as irrational, and I was able after a moment to know it for what it was, something I'd brought home with me, something that clung to me now along with Carolyn Cheatham's scent. I was carrying around Tommy Tillary's guilt by proxy.
Well, the hell with that. I didn't need his guilt. I had plenty of my own.
Chapter 6
The weekend was quiet. I talked to my sons, but they didn't come in. Saturday afternoon I earned a hundred dollars by accompanying one of the partners in the antique shop down the block from Armstrong's. We cabbed together to East Seventy-fourth Street, where we collected clothing and other possessions from his ex-lover's apartment. The lover was thirty or forty pounds overweight, bitter and bitchy.
"I don't believe this, Gerald," he said. "Did you actually bring a bodyguard or is this my summer replacement? Either way I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll work it out," Gerald told him.
In the cab back to the West Side Gerald said, "I really loved that cunt, Matthew, and I will be goddamned if I can figure out why. Thank you for this, Matthew. I could have hired a schlepper for five dollars an hour, but your presence was all the difference in the world. Did you see how ready he was to remember that the Handel lamp was his? The fucking hell it was his. When I met him he didn't know from Handel, not the lamps or the composer, either. All he knew was to hondle. You know that word, hondle? It means to haggle over a price, like if I were to try to pay you fifty dollars now instead of the hundred we agreed on. I'm just joking, dear. I have no problem with paying you the hundred, I think you were worth every penny of it."
SUNDAY night Bobby Ruslander found me in Armstrong's. Skip was looking for me, he said. He was at Miss Kitty's, and if I got a minute why didn't I drop over? I had time then, and Bobby walked over there with me.
It was a little cooler; the worst of the heat wave had broken Saturday, and there had been some rain to cool the streets down a little. A fire truck raced past us as we waited for the light to change. When the siren died down, Bobby said, "Crazy business."
"Oh?"
"He'll tell you about it."
As we crossed the street he said, "I never see him like this, you know what I mean? He's always supercool, Arthur is."
"Nobody else calls him Arthur."
"Nobody ever did. Back when we're kids, nobody calls him Arthur. It was like going against type, you know? Everybody calls him Skip, I'm his best friend, I call him by his formal name."
When we got there Skip tossed Bobby a bar towel and asked him to take over for him. "He's a lousy bartender," he announced, "but he doesn't steal much."
"That's what you think," Bobby said.
We went in back and Skip closed the door. There were a couple of old desks, two swivel chairs and a straight-backed chair, a coatrack, a file cabinet, and a big old Mosler safe that was taller than I was. "That's where the books shoulda been," he said, pointing at the safe. "Except we're too smart for that, me and John. There's an audit, that's the first place they're gonna look, right? So all that's in there is a thousand in cash and some papers and shit, the lease on this place, the partnership agreement, his divorce papers, shit like that. Terrific. We saved that crap and let somebody walk off with the store."
He lit a cigarette. "Safe was here when we took the place," he said. "Left over from when the joint was a hardware store, and it cost more to move than it was worth, so we inherited it. Massive fucker, isn't it? You could put a body in there if you had one around. That way nobody'd steal it. He called, the fucker who stole the books."
"Oh?"
He nodded. "It's a ransom pitch. 'I got something of yours and you can have it back.' "
"He name a price?"
"No. Said he'll be in touch."
"You recognize the voice?"
"Uh-uh. Sounded phony."
"How do you mean?"
"Like it wasn't his real voice I was hearing. Anyway, I didn't recognize it." He clasped his hands, extended his arms to crack his knuckles. "I'm supposed to sit around until I hear from him."
"When did you get the call?"
"Couple hours ago. I was working, he called me here. Good start to the evening, I'll tell you."
"At least he's coming to you instead of sending the stuff straight to the IRS."
"Yeah, I thought of that. This way we get the chance to do something. If he went and dropped a dime on us, all we could do is bend over and take it."
"Did you talk to your partner?"
"Not yet. I called his house, he wasn't in."
"So you sit tight."
"Yeah. That's a switch. What the hell have I been doing, hanging loose?" There was a water tumbler on his desk, a third full with a brownish liquid. He took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it into the glass. "Disgusting," he said. "I never want to see you do that, Matt. You don't smoke, do you?"
"Once in a great while."
"Yeah? You have one now and then and don't get hooked? I know a guy takes heroin that way. You know him, too, for that matter. But these little fuckers"- he tapped the pack- "I think they're more addictive than smack. You want one now?"
"No thanks."
He stood up. "The only things I don't get addicted to," he said, "are the ones I didn't like that much in the first place. Hey, thanks for coming by. There's nothing to do but wait, but I figured I wanted to keep you in the picture, let you know what's going on."
"That's fine," I said, "but I want you to know you don't owe me anything for it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean don't go paying my bar tab for this."
"Are you sore?"
"No."
"It was just something I felt like doing."
"I appreciate it, but it wasn't necessary."
"Yeah, I guess." He shrugged. "When you're skimming you get to be very free with cash. You spend it on things that don't show. The hell with it. I can stand you a drink, though, can't I? In my own joint?"
