Time to Murder and Create Read online

Page 11

 

  I was toweling dry when the phone rang. I didnt want to pick it up. I knew what I was going to hear.

  "That was just a warning, Scudder. "

  "Bullshit. You were trying. Youre just not good enough. "

  "When we try, we dont miss. "

  I told him to fuck off and hung up. I picked it up a few seconds later and told Isaiah no calls before nine, at which time I wanted a wake-up call.

  Then I got into bed to see whether I could sleep.

  I slept better than Id expected. I woke up only twice during the night, and both times it was the same dream, and it would have bored a Freudian psychiatrist to tears. It was a very literal dream, no symbols to it at all. Pure reenactment, from the moment I left Armstrongs to the moment the car closed on me, except that in the dream the driver had the necessary skill and balls to go all the way, and just as I knew he was going to put me between the rock and the hard place, I woke up, with my hands in fists and my heart hammering.

  I guess its a protective mechanism, dreaming like that. Your unconscious mind takes the things you cant handle and plays with them while you sleep until some of the sharp corners are worn off. I dont know how much good those dreams did, but when I awoke for the third and last time a half-hour before I was supposed to get my wake-up call, I felt a little better about things. It seemed to me that I had a lot to feel good about. Someone had tried for me, and thats what I had been looking to provoke all along. And someone had missed, and that was also as I wanted it.

  I thought about the phone call. It had not been the Marlboro man. I was reasonably certain of that. The voice Id heard was older, probably around my own age, and it had had the flavor of New York streets in its tones.

  So there looked to be at least two of them in on it. That didnt tell me much, but it was something else to know, another fact to file and forget. Had there been more than one person in the car? I tried to remember what I had seen in the brief glimpse Id had while the car was bearing down on me. I hadnt seen much, not with the headlights pitched right at my eyes. And by the time Id turned for a look at the departing car, it was already a good distance past me and moving fast. And Id been more intent on catching the plate number than counting heads.

  I went downstairs for breakfast, but couldnt manage more than a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. I bought a pack of cigarettes out of the machine and smoked three of them with my coffee. They were the first Id had in almost two months, and I couldnt have gotten a better hit if Id punched them right into a vein. They made me dizzy but in a nice way. After Id finished the three, I left the pack on the table and went outside.

  I went down to Centre Street and found my way to the Auto Squad room. A pink-cheeked kid who looked to be fresh out of John Jay asked if he could help me. There were half a dozen cops in the room, and I didnt recognize any of them. I asked if Ray Landauer was around.

  "Retired a few months ago," he said. To one of the others he called, "Hey, Jerry, when did Ray retire anyway?"

  "Musta been October. "

  He turned to me. "Ray retired in October," he said. "Can I help you?"

  "It was personal," I said.

  "I can find his address if you want to give me a minute. "

  I told him it wasnt important. It surprised me that Ray had packed it in. He didnt seem old enough to retire. But he was older than me, come to think of it, and I had had fifteen years on the force and had been off it for more than five, so that made me retirement age myself.

  Maybe the kid would have given me a peek at the hot-car sheet. But I would have had to tell him who I was and go through a lot of bullshit that wouldnt be necessary with someone I knew. So I left the building and started walking toward the subway. When an empty cab came along, I changed my mind and grabbed it. I told the driver I wanted the Sixth Precinct.

  He didnt know where it was. A few years ago, if you wanted to drive a cab you had to be able to name the nearest hospital or police station or firehouse from any point in the city. I dont know when they dropped the test, but now all you have to do is be alive.

  I told him it was on West Tenth, and he got there without too much trouble. I found Eddie Koehler in his office. He was reading something in the News, and it wasnt making him happy.

  "Fucking Special Prosecutor," he said. "Whats a guy like this accomplish except aggravate people?"

  "He gets his name in the papers a lot. "

  "Yeah. Figure he wants to be governor?"

  I thought of Huysendahl. "Everybody wants to be governor. "

  "Thats the fucking truth. Why do you figure that is?"

  "Youre asking the wrong person, Eddie. I cant figure out why anybody wants to be anything. "

  His cool eyes appraised me. "Shit, you always wanted to be a cop. "

  "Since I was a kid. I never wanted to be anything else, as far back as I can remember. "

  "I was the same way. Always wanted to carry a badge. I wonder why. Sometimes I think it was how we were brought up, the cop on the corner, everybody respecting him. And the movies we saw as a kid. The cops were the good guys. "

  "I dont know. They always shot Cagney in the last reel. "

  "Yeah, but the fucker had it coming. Youd watch and youd be crazy about Cagney but you wanted him to buy the farm at the end. He couldnt fucking get away with it. Sit down, Matt. I dont see you much lately. You want some coffee?"

  I shook my head but I sat down. He took a dead cigar from his ashtray and put a match to it. I took two tens and a five from my wallet and put them on his desk.

  "I just earned a hat?"

  "You will in a minute. "

  "Just so the Special Prosecutor dont get wind of it. "

  "You dont have anything to worry about, do you?"

  "Who knows? You get a maniac like that and everybodys got something to worry about. " He folded the bills and put them in his shirt pocket. "What can I do for you?"

  I got out the slip of paper Id written on before going to bed. "Ive got part of a license number," I said.

  "Dont you know anybody at Twenty-sixth Street?"

  That was where the Motor Vehicle people had their offices. I said, "I do, but its a Jersey plate. Im guessing the car was stolen and that you can turn it up on the G. T. A. sheet. The three letters are either LKJ or LJK. I only got a piece of the three numbers. Theres a nine and a four, possibly a nine and two fours, but I dont even know the order. "

  "That should be plenty, if its on the sheet. All this towing, sometimes people dont report thefts. They just assume we towed it, and they dont go down to the pound if they dont happen to have the fifty bucks, and then it turns out it was stolen. Or by then the thief dumped it and we did tow it away, and they wind up paying for a tow, but not from where they parked it. Hang on, Ill get the sheet. "

  He left his cigar in the ashtray, and it was out again by the time he got back. "Grand Theft Auto," he said. "Give me those letters again. "

  "LKJ or LJK. "

  "Uh-huh. You got a make and model on it?"

  "Nineteen forty-nine Kaiser-Frazer. "

  "Huh?"

  "Late-model sedan, dark. Thats about as much as I got. They all look about the same. "

  "Yeah. Nothing on the main sheet. Lets see what came in last night. Oh, hello, LJK nine one four. "

  "That sounds like it. "

  "Seventy-two Impala two-door, dark green. "

  "I didnt count the doors, but thats got to be it. "

  "Belongs to a Mrs. William Raiken from Upper Montclair. She a friend of yours?"

  "I dont think so. When did she report it?"

  "Lets see. Two in the morning, it says here. "

  I had left Armstrongs around twelve thirty, so Mrs. Raiken hadnt missed her car right away. They could have put it back and she never would have known it was gone.

  "Where did it come from, Eddie?"

  "Upper Montclair, I suppose. "

  "I mean where did she have it parked when they swiped it?"

/>   "Oh. " He had closed the list; now he flipped it open to the last page. "Broadway and a Hundred Fourteenth. Hey, that leads to an interesting question. "

  It damn well did, but how did he know that? I asked him what question it led to.

  "What was Mrs. Raiken doing on Upper Broadway at two in the morning? And did Mr. Raiken know about it?"

  "Youve got a dirty mind. "

  "I shoulda been a Special Prosecutor. Whats Mrs. Raiken got to do with your missing husband?"

  I looked blank, then remembered the case Id invented to explain my interest in Spinners corpse. "Oh," I said. "Nothing. I wound up telling his wife to forget it. I got a couple days work out of it. "

  "Uh-huh. Who took the car and what did they do with it last night?"

  "Destroyed public property. "

  "Huh?"

  "They knocked over a parking meter on Ninth Avenue, then got the hell away in a hurry. "

  "And you just happened to be there, and so you just happened to catch the license number, and naturally you figured the car was stolen but you wanted to check because youre a public-spirited citizen. "

  "Thats close. "

  "Its crap. Sit down, Matt. What are you into that I oughta know about?"

  "Nothing. "

  "How does a stolen car tie into Spinner Jablon?"

  "Spinner? Oh, the guy they took out of the river. No connection. "

  "Because you were just looking for this womans husband. " I saw my slip then, but waited to see if hed caught it, and he had. "It was his girlfriend looking for him last time I heard it. Youre being awful cute with me, Matt. "

  I didnt say anything. He picked his cigar out of the ashtray and studied it, then leaned over and dropped it in his wastebasket. He straightened up and looked at me, then away, then at me again.

  "What are you holding out?

  "Nothing you have to know. "

  "How do you get tied into Spinner Jablon?"

  "Its not important. "

  "And whats with the car?"

  "Thats not important either. " I straightened up. "Spinner got dropped in the East River, and the car sheared off a parking meter on Ninth between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth. And the car was stolen uptown, so none of this has been going on in the Sixth Precinct. Theres nothing youve got to know, Eddie. "

  "Who killed Spinner?"

  "I dont know. "

  "Is that straight?"

  "Of course its straight. "

  "Are you playing tag with somebody?"

  "Not exactly. "

  "Jesus Christ, Matt. "

  I wanted to get out of there. I wasnt holding out anything he had a claim on, and I really couldnt give him or anybody else what I had. But I was playing a lone hand and ducking his questions, and I could hardly expect him to like it.

  "Whos your client, Matt?"

  Spinner was my client, but I could see no profit in saying so. "I dont have one," I said.

  "Then whats your angle?"

  "Im not sure I have an angle, either. "

  "I hear things to the effect that Spinner was in the dollars lately. "