“What’s that, the opposite of a sponsor?”
“They used to call them pigeons,” I said, “and some of the old-timers still do. But the consensus seems to be that the word
“Because a pigeon’s a dirty bird that squawks and flies around and shits on your head.”
“That must be it.”
“No note,” he said again. “Other hand, the door was locked. When Rafael—was that his name?”
“I think so.”
“When he opened up for us, he turned the key twice, first to draw the bolt, then to snick the catch back. So if somebody helped him on his way, they didn’t walk out the door and just pull it shut after them.”
“They’d have had to use a key.”
“Which they could have done, and how would we know? How can we rule it in or out?”
“There was another lock,” I said. “The Fox, the big police lock. Plate in the floor, bar fits into it and braces against the door.”
“Keeps the whole world on the other side of the door,” he said. “If he really wants to avoid being disturbed, why not engage the police lock? Other hand, he doesn’t want to keep people away forever. Just long enough for him to do the deed and be done with it.”
With it and everything else.
He said, “Say he did it, because right now I don’t see anything that says he didn’t. Why would he do it? Aside from he’s an alcoholic and he’s gay, which are both pretty decent reasons, but can you come up with anything more specific?”
“He blamed himself for Jack Ellery’s death.”
“How?”
I furnished a very sketchy explanation of the amends process. “Jack was poking around in the past,” I said, “and as far as I can tell all that got him was a punch in the nose—”
“Yeah, he’d taken some lumps a week or more prior to his death. That was in the medical report. Tell me something. Why is this the first I’m hearing about any of this? Whose idea was it to withhold evidence, yours or Stillman’s?”
“There was no evidence for either of us to withhold. That’s what he hired me for, to look for evidence. And turn it over to you if I found anything.”
“But you came up empty?”
I’d already said more than I’d wanted to. But a couple of people were dead. Maybe one got mugged and the other killed himself, but maybe not.
“Jack had a list of people he’d harmed,” I said. “People to whom he intended to make amends. I went through the list and managed to rule them all out.”
“You cleared them.”
“Yes.”
“The people on his list.” He looked off into the distance. “You know, I’m sure your detective powers are fucking legendary, but why didn’t you bring me the list and let all the resources of the New York Police Department determine whether or not those suspects ought to be cleared?”
“That’s not why I was hired.”
“And you didn’t want to lose a fee.”
“I put in a lot more work than the fee was worth. And if I’d told him to bring it to you, you’d have done one of two things. Either you’d have shined him on and stuck the list in a file—”
“That wouldn’t have happened.”
“It might. Some bum’s AA sponsor, some faggot with an earring, has a list of people the dead guy may have done a bad turn a hundred years ago? Would that keep you up nights?”
“Scudder, you’ve got no fucking idea what keeps me up nights.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But if you took action, what would it be? You’d focus a lot of official attention on people with reasons of their own to stay out of the spotlight.”
“If they’re clean they’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Really? You cheat on your taxes?”
“Huh? Where did that come from?”
“Do you?”
“Of course not. My income’s all from the City of New York, so I couldn’t hide anything if I wanted to. And I file on the short form. It’s all a hundred percent straightforward.”
“So you’d have nothing to worry about in that area.”
“Absolutely not. If you’d like to pick a better example, one that might apply to me—”
“Which is to say that it wouldn’t bother you much if you got a notice from the IRS that they were doing a line audit of your returns for the past three years.”
“They’d have no reason. I just told you—”
