A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

'Jesus Christ.'

'Yeah, right. He's got means and motive and opportunity, and he's a heartless little fuck if I ever saw one, and I couldn't find a shred of evidence to show that he's guilty of a single fucking thing.' He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked up at me. 'Can I ask you something?'

'Sure.'

'Do you use the dental floss?'

'Huh?'

'Aspirin and dental floss, you said that's all you've got in your medicine chest. Do you ever use it?'

'Oh,' I said. 'When I remember. My dentist nagged me into buying it.'

'Same here, but I never use it.'

'Neither do I, really. The good news is we'll never run out.'

'That's it,' he said. 'We got a fucking lifetime supply.'

Chapter 4

That evening I met Elaine Mardell in front of a theater onForty-second Street west ofNinth Avenue. She was wearing tight jeans and square-toed boots and a black leather motorcycle jacket with zippered pockets. I told her she looked great.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I was trying for off-Broadway, but I think I may have achieved off-off-Broadway.'

We had good seats down front, but the theater was too small to have any bad seats. I don't remember the title of the play, but it was about homelessness, and the playwright was against it. One of the actors, Harley Ziegler, was a regular at Keep It Simple, an AA group that meets evenings atSt. Paul the Apostle, just a couple of blocks from my hotel. In the play Harley was a wino who lived in a cardboard packing case. He gave a convincing performance, and why not? A few years ago he'd been playing the role in real life.

We went backstage afterward to congratulate Harley and ran into half a dozen other people I knew from meetings. They invited us to join them for coffee. Instead we walked ten blocks up Ninth to Paris Green, a restaurant we both liked. I had the swordfish steak and Elaine ordered linguini al pesto.

'I don't know about you,' I said. 'It seems to me you wear a lot of leather for a heterosexual vegetarian.'

'It's one of those wacky little inconsistencies wherein lies the secret of my charm.'

'I was wondering about that.'

'Now you know.'

'Now I know. There was a woman killed half a block from here a few months ago. She and her husband interrupted burglars in their downstairs neighbors' apartment and she wound up raped and murdered.'

'I remember the case.'

'Well, it's my case now. Her brother hired me yesterday, he thinks the husband did it. The couple whose apartment it was, the downstairs neighbors, he's this Jewish lawyer, retired, lots of dough, and she didn't have any furs stolen. You know why?'

'She was wearing them all at once.'

'Uh-uh. She's an animal-rights activist.'

'Oh yeah? Good for her.'

'I suppose. I wonder if she wears leather shoes.'

'Probably. Who cares?' She leaned forward. 'Look,' she said, 'you could refuse to eat bread because yeast give their lives to make it. You could pass up antibiotics because what right do we have to murder germs? So she wears leather but she doesn't wear fur. So what?'

'Well-'

'Besides,' she said, 'leather's neat and fur's tacky.'

'Well, that settles it.'

'Good. Did the husband do it?'

'I don't know. I walked past the building earlier today. I can point it out to you later, it's on our way if I walk you home. Maybe you'll pick up some vibrations, solve the case just by walking past the murder site.'

'But you didn't.'

'No. He had a million and a half reasons to kill her.'

'A million and a half-'

'Dollars,' I supplied. 'Between insurance and her own holdings.' I told her about the Thurmans and what I'd learned from Joe Durkin and Lyman Warriner. 'I'm not sure what I can do that the police haven't already done,' I said. 'Just poke around, I guess. Knock on doors, talk to people. Be nice if I could find out he's been having an affair, but of course that was the first thing Durkin looked for and he couldn't turn up a thing.'

'Maybe he's got a boyfriend.'

'That would fit with my client's theory, but gay people have a tendency to think the whole world is gay.'

'While you and I know the whole world is morose.'

'Uh-huh. You want to go to Maspeth tomorrow night?'

'Speaking of what? Moroseness?'

'No, I just-'

'Or should it be morosity? Because Maspeth does sound pretty morose, although I shouldn't say that because I don't actually think I've ever been there. What's in Maspeth?' I told her and she said, 'I don't like boxing much. It's not a moral issue, I don't care if two grown men want to stand around and hit each other, but I'd just as soon change the channel. Anyway, I've got a class tomorrow night.'

'What is it this semester?'

'Contemporary Latin American Fiction. All the books I've been telling myself I really ought to read, and now I have to.'

In the fall she'd studied urban architecture, and I'd gone with her a couple of times to look at buildings.

'You'll be missing the architecture of Maspeth,' I said. 'Although I haven't really got a good reason to go myself, to tell you the truth. I don't have to travel that far to get a look at him. He lives right here in the neighborhood and his office is at Forty-eighth and Sixth. I think I'm just looking for an excuse to go to the fights. If the New Maspeth Arena had squash matches instead of boxing I'd probably stay home.'

'You don't like squash?'

'I like Orange Squash okay. I've never actually seen squash played, so what do I know? Maybe I'd like it.'

'Maybe you would. I met a fellow once who's a nationally ranked squash player. A clinical psychologist fromSchenectady, he was in town for a tournament at the New York Athletic Club. I never saw him play, though.'

'I'll let you know if I run into him in Maspeth.'

'Well, you never know. It's a small world. Did you say the Thurmans lived just a block from here?'

'Half a block.'

'Maybe they used to come here. MaybeGary knows them.' She frowned. 'Knew them. Knows him, knew her.'

'Maybe. Let's ask him.'

'You ask,' she said. 'I can't seem to get the verbs right.'

* * *

AFTER we'd settled the tab we went over to the bar. Gary was behind it, a tall lanky man with a droll manner and a beard that hung from his lower jaw like an oriole's nest. He said it was good to see us and asked when I would have some work for him. I told him it was hard to say.

'Once this gentleman entrusted me with a matter of grave importance,' he told Elaine. 'It was an undercover assignment and I acquitted myself well.'

'I'm not surprised,' she said.

I asked about Richard and Amanda Thurman. They came in occasionally, he said, sometimes with another