call.”
“To Monica, inviting himself over. But if I remember what Elaine said, he already had a date planned for Monday with Monica.”
“ ‘Sorry, honey, but I’m running a little late. Be over soon’s I can.’ ”
“He was a sharp dresser, according to Monica. Did David Thompson look like he fit Monica’s definition of a sharp dresser?”
“Was jeans an’ a polo shirt, wasn’t it?”
“Personally,” I said, “I can’t quite see our guy showing up on Jane Street with flowers and a bottle of Strega.” I pictured him coming out of Louise’s building. “He lit a cigarette,” I remembered. “That was one thing she established online, before she met the guy. That he was a smoker, because if he wasn’t she didn’t want any part of him.”
“So?”
“Monica was an ex-smoker, and she hated to be in the same room with a lit cigarette. She had that heightened sensitivity people seem to develop when they’ve been away from tobacco for a few years. If he was a heavy smoker—”
“We don’t know about the heavy part. Maybe he just made sure to light one up when he was around Louise, to keep her happy.”
“And the minute he walks out of her building, he lights up another for show?”
All the Flowers Are Dying
155
“See what you mean. Who you callin’?”
“A cop,” I said. Sussman had given us his card, and I was punching the number into my cell phone. When I got him on the line I identified myself and said I had just one question. Was there any indication that anyone might have smoked a cigarette in Monica Driscoll’s apartment?
“Why?”
I couldn’t blame him. That would have been my response if our roles were reversed. Still, I’d have been happier if he hadn’t asked.
“I’ve been looking into something for a friend,” I said. “She’s got no connection to Monica, nothing in common, except that there’s a mystery man in her life. I haven’t had much luck finding out anything about him, in fact he’s been damned elusive, and—”
“And you thought maybe they were one and the same.”
“No,” I said, “I thought and continue to think that they’re not, but if I can make one phone call and rule it out altogether—”
“I get you. I take it you know for a fact whether or not this second guy smokes.”
“I know for a fact that he does.”
“And Ms. Driscoll didn’t?”
“And had strong feelings on the subject.” He said he’d get back to me and rang off. TJ asked about Elaine. I said she’d been out the door that morning before I’d made it to the kitchen, that it was one of her gym days. I said I figured it was a good sign that she went, because I was pretty sure she hadn’t felt like it.
Something like that, he said, that was the secret to it. You had to do it all the time, not just on the days you felt like it. I told him staying sober was like that.
“Last night,” he said, “she’d be sad an’ cry from time to time, and then it’d pass, you know, and her mind’d be on the card game. You know how to play pinochle?”
“No.”
“Well, she could teach you. She can teach a game real good. It’s an okay game. All you got in the world is two people an’ a deck of cards, you could get by with it. Course it’d have to be a pinochle deck, so 156
Lawrence Block
you’d need two decks of cards to make it. You take two decks, an’ you don’t use from deuce through eight, just nine on up to ace.”
“I’m really glad you’re telling me all this.”
“Yeah, well, it be just the two of us an’ we ain’t even got a deck of cards, and we’s waiting for the damn phone to ring. But I guess you don’t need to hear all this shit about pinochle.”
“No, it’s all right.”
“Thing is, even when she was fine, playing cards and joking, it was there, you know? This deep-down sadness, kind that runs clear to the bone.”
Sussman said, “You’d think it would be a simple question to answer.
This age of science we live in, where you can multiply your date of birth by the change in your pocket and feed the result into a computer, and it tells you what you ate for breakfast. Did anybody smoke a cigarette in the apartment where the murder took place? What’s so tricky about that?”
“I gather it wasn’t that simple.”
“First of all,” he said, “the son of a bitch was a neatnik. I believe I told you he vacuumed, in addition to wiping every surface but the ceiling. So there wouldn’t be any cigarette butts lying around, or any ashes in the ashtrays. Something I didn’t notice at the time, but I can tell you now, is there weren’t any ashtrays in the place, period. So it’s pretty clear she wasn’t a smoker, and didn’t have regular company that smoked.”
