must have hurt, don’t you think? But it’s funny, the only pain I remember is post-op, waiting to heal. I almost died, didn’t I?”
“It was touch and go.”
“They had to take out my spleen.”
“They did,” I said, “though anyone who knows you would find that hard to believe.”
“Thanks a lot. He was trying to kill you, too. Me first, but then you.
I think this is the same idea.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I just have a feeling. He may not be too fussy about the order, either. I’m staying inside, I’ve been cooped up here for days, but you get to go out.”
“What’s your point?”
“Well, you have to be careful. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
“If I lost you,” I said, “I really wouldn’t want to go on.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m not saying I’d kill myself. I just wouldn’t want to live anymore.
You reach a certain age and it can get pretty grim, you spend all your time going to other people’s funerals and waiting around for your own.
Your body and your mind both start giving up ground, and the best you can hope for is that they both quit on you at the same time. I can handle all that if I’ve got you keeping me company, but without you, well, I don’t know that there’d be much point. So I realize it’s a pain in the All the Flowers Are Dying
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ass staying inside twenty-four hours a day, but do it anyway, okay? Humor me.”
“Okay,” she said.
A little after noon I got a phone call. It was the woman in the shop on Amsterdam Avenue. Number 1217 had come in again, wanting to pick up his mail, and there was no mail. So she’d thought of something. Tell me your name, she said, and I’ll look and see if any mail for you got in the wrong box.
“So he told me, and his name is David Thompson.” I thanked her, and was careful not to let on that we’d learned as much a couple of days ago. It was useful confirmation, anyway, and told us that David Thompson was not only the name on his driver’s license but also the one under which he was receiving his mail.
All of this made him look increasingly legitimate. On the other hand, he’d been booted out of his apartment for not paying the rent, and if he was living in Kips Bay, what did he need with a mail drop on the Upper West Side?
I had a hunch, and then my phone rang again less than an hour later, and I wasn’t really surprised when it was him.
“This is David Thompson,” he said. “I never did get that check.”
“I know,” I said, “and I’m sorry as hell. You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on here.”
“Oh?”
“Listen,” I said, “I’ve got your check right here in front of me, and what I want to do is hand it to you personally. And while I’m at it I’ve got some more work for you, a bigger project that I’d prefer to discuss with you face-to-face. And I promise you won’t have to wait so long to get paid this time.”
There was a pause, and he said I’d better give him the address again.
The poor bastard didn’t have a clue who he was talking to and didn’t want to let on.
“No, don’t come here,” I said. “This place is a zoo. There’s a coffee shop at Fifty-seventh and Ninth, the northwest corner, the Morning 226
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Star. Say half an hour? And you won’t have trouble picking me out. I’ll be the only guy there in a suit and a tie.” He said he’d see me there. I went to the bedroom to pick out a suit and a tie.
He showed up wearing a suit and tie himself. I guess he’d figured he had to dress for the meeting. He saw me, knew he didn’t recognize me, and scanned the room for another suit.
I said, “David?”
He turned at the sound of my voice and made a good show of recognizing me after all. “I don’t know how I missed you,” he said, and came over to shake hands. His hand was dry, his grip firm. He said something about the weather or the traffic, and I responded appropriately and motioned for him to sit. I already had coffee in front of me, and the waiter was right on the spot for a change. Thompson said he’d have tea, that coffee always made him want a cigarette.
He looked neat and clean. His suit was pressed and his shirt un-wrinkled, and he’d shaved that morning. His hair was a little shaggy, but not unfashionably so, and his mustache was neatly trimmed.
“I’m going to start by apologizing,” I said. “I got you here under false pretenses. There’s a reason I don’t look familiar. We’ve never met. I didn’t give you any work, and I don’t have a check for you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, how could you? My name’s Matthew Scudder, I’m a former police officer. A woman I know met you online. She had a bad experience once, and it led her to adopt a policy of running a check on people she was interested in,
