“I said the same thing, and so did Danny Boy. He sends regards, I’m supposed to tell you.”
“Does he, then. And how is the young fellow?”
“He’s fine, but I don’t know about the ‘young fellow’ part. He’s our age.”
“Is he indeed? I guess he would have to be, wouldn’t he? It’s his size makes me think him younger than he is. Ah, Jaysus, man, we’re all of us getting old.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I complain about all my customers, these lawyers and stockbrokers who want to come in here and drink with the devil, but ’tis their custom that supports me. I’m making my living from this place, can you believe it? This and the few little businesses I own. I have to walk outside and spit in the street once a week so I won’t forget what it’s like to break a law. By God, I’m a toothless old lion, and it’s a nerve I have to resent the keeper who slips food through the bars of my cage.”
“Bread soaked in milk,” I said, “so you can handle it.”
“And yourself, waiting for the police to do what once you’d have tried to do on your own.”
“They have the resources.”
“Of course they do.”
“I don‘t even know who he is. I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him.”
“You’ll keep herself safe and sound. That’s all you need to do.” He touched a forefinger to Ray’s sketch. “I could swear he’s been in here.
Or is there an actor he looks like?”
“There’s probably a dozen.”
“You could look at him and never see him. Your eyes could glide right over him, for there’s nothing there to hold you. But I’ll now remember him if I see him. That poor woman. Did you say he gave her a hard death?”
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“It couldn’t have been an easy one. He tortured her.”
“There’s never a call for that,” he said. “Isn’t there enough suffering in the world without making a point of creating more of it? I’d kill him in an instant, should God give me the chance, but I’d not make him suffer. I’d just kill him and be done with it.”
25
I took the long way home from Grogan’s, up Tenth Avenue to Fifty-eighth Street, east two long blocks to Eighth Avenue, then back to Fifty-seventh Street, where I stayed on the north side and made my way to the corner of Ninth. I guess I was looking for him, looking for someone who might be lurking in my neighborhood and keeping an eye on the entrance to our building. I saw a drunk peeing in a doorway, I saw a man with an aluminum walker making his painfully slow way to the Chaldean deli, I saw a man and woman I recognized having an argument I’d watched them have a dozen times before. I saw any number of my fellow citizens, waiting for buses, descending into subway tunnels, getting in or out of taxis, or going someplace on foot, some of them taking their time, others in a New York hurry. But I didn’t see the one man I was looking for, and in due course it struck me that I might be behaving in a manner likely to call attention to myself, not a good idea when I was carrying three unregistered handguns and enough ammo to start a gang war. I quit while I was ahead and went upstairs.
Elaine was dozing lightly in the big armchair. TJ was doing something with her computer. I gave him one of the nines and a loaded clip, and he checked it out as if he’d done this before. He asked if I wanted him to stay over. He could sleep on the couch, he suggested. I sent him home, roused Elaine enough to put her back to sleep in our bed, and went and stood by the south window myself.
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The Towers were still absent, even as more gaps seemed to be forming in my own personal skyline. I went on looking for a while, and when nothing changed I went to bed.
TJ called while we were having breakfast. Did we need him? Because he thought he might go out for a while. I told him to go, and he reminded me that he’d be carrying his cell phone. If we needed him, all we had to do was call him.
After a second cup of coffee I put the two guns on the kitchen table, the nine and the .38. Elaine picked them up in turn, held them gingerly in her hand, and announced she liked the nine better. It wasn’t as heavy, she said, and she liked the way it fit her hand. I told her I’d picked out the revolver for her, and why I thought it might suit her better. She said that was okay, but seemed disappointed.
Her disappointment abated as she became more familiar with the thing. I taught her to load it and unload it, had her aim it and dry-fire it. I’d learned to shoot one-handed, that was the way they taught you back when I joined the department, but nowadays everybody holds a gun in two hands. I think it started around the time Chris Evert taught the world there was nothing sissy about a two-handed backhand, though I can’t see the connection. I don’t know that a second hand improves your aim, but it does lessen the effect of recoil, and that alone was reason enough to teach her to use both hands.
The thing to remember, I told her, was to keep firing. Recoil would probably elevate the muzzle, so she’d have to take aim again, and pull the trigger again, and keep it up until the gun was empty. If she hit him the first time and dropped him, if he fell down and lay there dead, that was no reason to stop. If he’s face up, shoot him in the chest. If he’s face down, shoot him in the back. And then shoot him in the head.
And then cut his head off, I thought, and put it on a stick, and we’ll carry it all through the town.
TJ called around ten, to make sure we were okay. He might be a while, he said. I told him everything was fine. He called again an hour later to say he was on his way, and was there anything we needed? I told him 202
Lawrence Block
to pick up a couple of newspapers, and he brought the Times and the Post when he showed up a little before noon.
“I know it ain’t high priority,” he said, “but I didn’t know what else to do. So I decided to check out David
