'Beck's. What's the difference?'
'What did you drink in your dream?'
'I don't remember.'
'What did it taste like?'
'I don't remember the taste. I wasn't aware of it.'
'That's a hell of a note. If you're going to drink in your dreams, at least you ought to be able to taste it and enjoy it. You want to get together for lunch?'
'I can't. I've got some things I have to do.'
'Maybe I'll see you tonight, then.'
'Maybe.'
I hung up, irritated. I felt as though I was being treated like a child, and my response was to turn childishly irritable. What difference did it make what kind of beer I drank in my dream?
Andreotti wasn't on duty when I got over to the precinct house. He was downtown, testifying before a grand jury. The guy he'd been partnered with, Bill Bellamy, couldn't understand what I wanted with the medical examiner's report.
'You were there,' he said. 'It's open and shut. Time of death was sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, that's according to the preliminary report from the man on the scene. All evidence on the scene supports a finding of accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation.
Everything— the pornography, the position of the body, the nudity, everything. We see these all the time, Scudder.'
'I know.'
'Then you probably know it's the best-kept secret in America, because what paper's going to print that the deceased died jerking off with a rope around his neck? And it's not just kids. We had one last year, this was a married guy and his wife found him. Decent people, beautiful apartment on West End Avenue.
Married fifteen years! Poor woman didn't understand, couldn't understand. She couldn't even believe that he masturbated, let alone that he liked to strangle hisself while he did it.'
'I understand how it works.'
'Then what's your interest? You got some kind of an insurance angle, your client can't collect if you get a suicide verdict?'
'I haven't got a client. And I doubt he had any insurance.'
'Because I remember we had an insurance investigator come up in connection with the gentleman from West End Avenue. He had a whole lot of coverage, too. Might have been as much as a million dollars.'
'And they didn't want to pay it?'
'They were going to have to pay something. Suicide'll only nullify a policy for a certain amount of time after it's taken out, to prevent you from signing up when you've already decided to kill yourself. This case, he'd had the policy long enough so suicide didn't cancel it. So what was the hook?' He frowned, then brightened. 'Oh, right. He had that double indemnity clause where they pay you twice as much for accidental death. I have to say I never saw the logic to that. I mean, dead is dead.
What's the difference if you have a heart attack or wreck your car? Your wife's got the same living expenses, your kid's college is gonna cost the same. I never understood it.'
'The insurer didn't want to accept a claim of accidental death?'
'You got it. Said a man puts a rope around his neck and hangs hisself, that's suicide. The wife got herself a good lawyer and they had to pay the whole amount. Man had the intention of hanging hisself, but he did not have the intention of killing hisself, and that made it an accident and not a suicide.' He smiled, liking the justice of it, then remembered the matter at hand. 'But you're not here about insurance.'
'No, and I'm pretty sure he didn't have any. He was a friend of mine.'
'Interesting friend for you to have. Turns out he had a sheet on him longer than his dick.'
'Mostly small-time, wasn't it?'
'According to what he got collared for. Far as what he got away with, how could you say? Maybe he kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and went scot-free.'
'I think it was a little before his time. I have a fair idea of the kind of life he used to lead, although I don't know the details. But for the past year he's been staying sober.'
'You're saying he was an alcoholic.'
'A sober one.'
'And?'
'I want to know if he died sober.'
'What difference does it make?'
'It's hard to explain.'
'I got an uncle used to be a terrible alcoholic. He quit drinking and now he's a different person.'
'It works that way sometimes.'
