“This is Louise,” she said. “You gave me your card. The other night, I asked if you could investigate someone, and—”
“I remember. You had to think about it.”
“I’ve thought all I need to, and I’d like to talk to you. Could we meet somewhere?”
34
Lawrence Block
I was having breakfast with TJ, who’d kept a remarkably straight face while I’d fumbled with the phone. “I’m at the Morning Star,” I said.
“Are you really? Because I’m at the Flame.” The Morning Star’s on the northwest corner of Ninth and Fifty- seventh; the Flame’s at the Fifty-eighth Street end of the same block.
They’re both New York–style Greek coffee shops, and neither one’s a candidate for the next edition of Zagat, but they’re not terrible, and God knows they’re handy.
She said, “Will you still be there in fifteen minutes? I want to finish this cup of coffee, and then I want to stand around outside long enough to smoke a cigarette, and then I’ll come to the Morning Star, if you’ll still be there.”
“They haven’t even brought my eggs yet,” I told her. “Take your time.”
“I feel funny about this,” she said. “Here I’m having this romance, and it feels as though it might really go somewhere, and a relationship ought to be based on trust, and how trusting am I if I hire a detective to investigate the guy? It’s like I’m sabotaging the whole process from the get-go.”
Louise was somewhere in her late thirties, medium height and build, with dark brown hair and light brown eyes. She’d had acne in adolescence, and its legacy was a light pitting on her cheeks and pointed chin. She was dressed for the office in a skirt and blouse, and she’d put on some cologne, a floral scent that blended imperfectly with the smell of cigarette smoke.
She’d joined us at our table, a little taken aback to discover that I wasn’t alone. I introduced TJ as my assistant, and that mollified her some. He’s a black man in his twenties—I don’t know his exact age, but then I still don’t know his last name, for all that he’s a virtual member of the family—and this morning he was dressed for comfort in baggy bleached denim shorts and a black T-shirt with the sleeves and neckband cut off. He didn’t look much like my assistant, or anybody else’s, except perhaps a dope dealer’s. I could tell she’d be more com-All the Flowers Are Dying
35
fortable if it were just the two of us, but I’d only have to fill TJ in afterward, and I figured she could get over it, and she did.
I said, “Trust is at the basis of most enduring relationships.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself, but—”
“It’s also a key component of most scams and con games. They couldn’t work without it. You might have an easier time trusting this guy if you can establish that there’s no abiding reason not to trust him.”
“And that’s the other thing I keep telling myself,” she said. “It seems tacky, but I can’t get past the fact that I don’t really know a thing about him. It’s not like my parents and his parents are friends, or I met him at a church social.”
“How did you meet?”
“On the Internet.”
“One of the dating services?”
She nodded, and gave its name. “I don’t know how the hell else peo -
ple are supposed to hook up in this city,” she said. “I work all day. In fact I’m supposed to be at my desk in twenty minutes, but Tinkerbell’s not gonna die if I’m ten minutes late. I spend my days at the office and my nights at AA meetings. My last relationship was with somebody I knew from the program. That gets you past the small talk, but then when things don’t work out one of you has to start going to different meetings.” She glanced at my left hand. “You’re married, right? Is she in the program?”
“No.”
“How’d you meet, if you don’t mind my asking?” We met in an after-hours gin joint, at Danny Boy Bell’s table. She was a young call girl then, and I was a cop with a wife and two kids. But that was a lot more than she needed to know, and what I said was that Elaine and I had known each other years ago, that we’d met up again after having lost contact, and that this time it had worked out for us.
“That’s romantic,” she said.
“I suppose it is.”
“Well, the men in my past, I hope to God they stay there. My boyfriend in high school was cute, but he never got over it when I 36
Lawrence Block
threw up in the middle of . . . well, never mind. Jesus, I wish you could smoke in here. If you can have a cup of coffee you ought to be able to have a cigarette with it. Our tightass mayor should go fuck himself.
Can you believe he wants to ban smoking outside, too? Like it’s not bad enough you have to go out in the street for a smoke? I mean, who does he think he is?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, which was just as well, as I didn’t have one handy. “I should get to the point, Matt. I met this guy on the Internet, and we had a lot of exchanges, first by e-mail and then with Instant Messaging. You know what that is, right? Sort of an online conversation?”
I nodded. TJ and Elaine IM back and forth regularly, like a couple of kids with two cans and a wire. He lives
