Thompson.”
“How?”
“Well, he be waitin’ on that check you said you’d send him, right? So I went up to Amsterdam Avenue an’ hung out there. Be good if there was a place right across the street where you could have something to eat and watch through the window, but there wasn’t, so I just stood up against a building.”
“That must have gotten old in a hurry,” Elaine said.
“Legs was feeling it,” he admitted. “I got to wishing there was a way for me to sit down, but you sit yourself down in the middle of the sidewalk and people apt to look at you.”
“It’s no way to avoid attention,” I agreed.
“And if you sitting down, you might miss what’s happening on the other side of the street, ’specially a wide street like Amsterdam. So what I did, I crossed the street and I sat down on the sidewalk right next to the place with the mailboxes.”
“To avoid calling attention to yourself.” He grinned. “I’s wearing this,” he said, taking off a peaked cap of pieced denim, “in case the sun was to get in my eyes. And ’cause a hat be a good disguise. You put it on, you take it off, you changing your
’pearance. Older dude taught me that.”
“I didn’t know you were paying attention.”
“Man, I always listen to the voice of experience. How else I gone learn? What I did, I put the cap on the ground in front of me, dropped all my loose change in it, an’ sat with one leg sort of folded back under me. Anybody look at me, they think I be a cripple.”
“And if they saw you trot across the street and set up?”
“Then they think I’s a fake cripple. Man, you think a beggar’s got an easy gig, but it ain’t so. People just pass you by, don’t even want to look at you.”
“Day trading’s probably a better deal,” Elaine said.
“ ’Cept with begging, you not likely to end the day with less than you All the Flowers Are Dying
203
started with. Now and then, somebody stop an’ give you something.
Had one dude put in a dollar an’ take change.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Just took a quarter,” he said. “ ’Pologized to me, said he needed it for a parking meter. Leaves me seventy-five cents ahead, so why he be
’pologizing? People are strange sometimes.” Elaine said, “See? Look what you learned this morning.”
“Already knew that. What I learned is you just wait in the right place, you get what you lookin’ for.”
“He turned up?”
He nodded. “Came for his mail. Walked in lookin’ hopeful an’ came out lookin’ disgusted. Guess he still waitin’ on that check. And he ain’t the guy in that drawing, case there was any question. He’s the dude came out of Louise’s building, the one lost us around the block.”
“Did you have any luck following him?”
“Didn’t even try. He drove up in a big old Chevy Caprice, pulled up by the hydrant, was in and out in a couple of minutes. Hopped back in the car and drove off. I got the plate number. That do us any good?” Joe Durkin said, “Didn’t I tell you? I’m a private citizen, I put in my last day for the City of New York. I’m officially retired.”
“I’ll bet they haven’t got the word yet at the DMV.”
“I’d be breaking the law,” he said. “Impersonating a police officer.”
“Gee, I didn’t think of that.”
“Yeah, I bet. Why can’t you do it yourself? You’ve been breaking laws right and left for years.”
“You know the procedure. It’s changed in the past thirty years.”
“Thirty years,” he said. “Jesus, I guess it has. Did they even have license plates thirty years ago?”
“They did, but they kept falling off the horses.”
“Off the horses’ asses, you mean. And speaking of horses’ asses, I thought you were the next thing to retired yourself.”
“Something came up.”
“As the bishop said to the actress. Give me the fucking plate number, I’ll see what I can do.”
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Lawrence Block
It didn’t take him long. He called back fifteen minutes later and said, “Next time we have dinner, it’s on you. And it won’t be any cheap joint like the one I took you to, either. Write this down: David Joel Thompson, 118 Manhattan Avenue, Apartment 4-C for Charlie. Zip is 10025. Phone number—”
“They have a phone number listed?”
“They could probably tell you his favorite color, if you knew how to ask for it.” He gave me Thompson’s phone number and his date of birth, which made him forty-one. “And a Sagittarius,” he added, “in case Elaine wants to try
