A Dance at the Slaughter House Read online

Page 17

 

  "Oh. "

  "Werent you? Pissed?"

  "A little bit. I got over it. "

  "It bothers you, doesnt it? That I see clients. "

  "Sometimes it does. Most of the time it doesnt. "

  "Ill probably stop sooner or later," she said. "You can only keep on pitching for so long. Even Tommy John had to pack it in, and he had a bionic arm. " She rolled onto her side to face me, put a hand on my leg. "If you asked me to stop, I probably would. "

  "And then resent me for it. "

  "You think so? Am I that neurotic?" She thought it over. "Yeah," she said, "I probably am. "

  "Anyway, I wouldnt ask you. "

  "No, youd rather have the resentment. " She rolled over and lay on her back, gazing up at the ceiling. After a moment she said, "Id give it up if we got married. "

  There was silence, and then a cascade of descending notes and a surprising atonal chord from the stereo.

  "If you pretend you didnt hear that," Elaine said, "Ill pretend I didnt say it. We never even say the L word and I went and said the M word. "

  "Its a dangerous place," I said, "out there in the middle of the alphabet. "

  "I know. I should learn to stay in the Fs where I belong. I dont want to get married. I like things just the way they are. Cant they just stay that way?"

  "Sure. "

  "I feel sad. Thats crazy, what the hell have I got to feel sad about? All of a sudden Im all weepy. "

  "Thats okay. "

  "Im not going to cry. But hold me for a minute, okay? You big old bear. Just hold me. "

  Chapter 9

  Sunday afternoon I found my film buff.

  His name, according to Phil Fieldings records, was Arnold Leveque, and he lived on Columbus Avenue half a dozen blocks north of the video store. His building was a tenement that had thus far escaped gentrification. Two men sat on the stoop drinking beer out of cans in brown paper bags. One of them had a little girl on his lap. She was drinking orange juice out of a baby bottle.

  None of the doorbells had Leveques name on it. I went out and asked the two men on the stoop if Arnold Leveque lived there. They shrugged and shook their heads. I went inside and couldnt find a bell for the super, so I rang bells on the first floor until someone buzzed me in.

  The hallway smelled of mice and urine. At the far end a door opened and a man stuck his head out. I walked toward him, and he said, "What do you want? Dont come too close now. "

  "Easy," I said.

  "You take it easy," he said. "I got a knife. "

  I held my hands at my sides, showing the palms. I told him I was looking for a man named Arnold Leveque.

  He said, "Oh, yeah? I hope he dont owe you money. "

  "Whys that?"

  " Cause hes dead," he said, and he laughed hard at his joke. He was an old man with wispy white hair and deep eye sockets, and he looked as though hed be joining Leveque before too many months passed. His pants were loose and he held them up with suspenders. His flannel shirt hung on him, too. Either he got his clothes at a thrift shop or hed lost a lot of weight recently.

  Reading my mind, he said, "I been sick, but dont worry. It aint catching. "

  "Im more afraid of the knife. "

  "Ah, Jesus," he said. He showed me a French chefs knife with a wooden handle and a ten-inch carbon-steel blade. "Come on in," he said. "I aint about to cut you, for Christs sake. " He led the way, setting the knife down on a little table near the door.

  His apartment was tiny, two narrow little rooms. The only illumination came from a three-bulb ceiling fixture in the larger room. Two of the bulbs had burned out and the remaining one couldnt have been more than forty watts. He kept the place tidy but it had a smell to it, an odor of age and illness.

  "Arnie Leveque," he said. "Howd you know him?"

  "I didnt. "

  "No?" He yanked a handkerchief out of his back pocket and coughed into it. "Dammit," he said. "The bastards cut me from asshole to appetite but it didnt do no good. I waited too long. See, I was afraid of what theyd find. " He laughed harshly. "Well, I was right, wasnt I?"

  I didnt say anything.

  "He was okay, Leveque. French Canadian, but he musta been born here because he talked like anybody else. "

  "Did he live here a long time?"

  "Whats a long time? I been here forty-two years. Can you believe that? Forty-two years in this shithole. Be forty-three years in September, but I expect to be out of here by then. Moved to smaller quarters. " He laughed again and it turned into a coughing fit and he reached for the handkerchief. He got the cough under control and said, "Smaller quarters, like a box about six feet long, you know what I mean?"

  "I guess it helps to joke about it. "

  "Naw, it dont help," he said. "Nothing helps. I guess Arnie lived here about ten years. Give or take, you know? He kept to his room a lot. Of course the way he was you wouldnt expect him to go tap-dancing down the street. " I must have looked puzzled, because he said, "Oh, I forgot, you didnt know him. He was fat as a pig, Arnie was. " He put his hands out in front of him and drew them apart as he lowered them. "Pear-shaped. Waddled like a duck. He was up on three, too, so he had two flights of stairs to climb if he went anywhere. "

  "How old was he?"

  "I dont know. Forty? Its hard to tell when somebodys fat like that. "

  "What did he do?"

  "For a living? I dont know. Had a job he went to. Then he wasnt going out so much. "

  "I understand he liked movies. "

  "Oh, he sure did. He had one of those things, what the hell do they call it, you watch movies on your TV set. "

  "A VCR. "

  "It woulda come to me in a minute. "

  "What happened to him?"

  "Leveque? Aint you paying attention? He died. "

  "How?"

  "They killed him," he said. "What do you think?"

  IT was a generic they, as it turned out. Arnold Leveque had died on the street, presumably the victim of a mugging. It was getting worse every year, the old man told me, what with people smoking crack and living on the street. They would kill you for subway fare, he said, and think nothing of it.

  I asked when all this had happened, and he said it must have been a year ago. I said that Leveque had still been alive in April- Fieldings records indicated his most recent transaction had been on the nineteenth of that month- and he said he didnt have that good a head for dates anymore.

  He told me how to find the super. "She dont do much," he said. "She collects the rents, thats about all. " When I asked his name he said it was Gus, and when I asked his last name a sly look came over his face. "Just Gus is good enough. Why tell you my name when you aint told me yours?"

  I gave him one of my cards. He held it at arms length and squinted at it, reading my name aloud. He asked if he could keep the card and I said he could.

  "When I meet up with Arnie," he said, "Ill tell him you was looking for him. " And he laughed and laughed.

  GUSs last name was Giesekind. I found that out by checking his mailbox, which shows Im no slouch as a detective. The supers name was Herta Eigen, and I found her two doors up the street where she had a basement apartment. She was a small woman, barely five feet tall, with a Central European accent and a wary, suspicious little face. She flexed her fingers as she talked. They were misshapen by arthritis but moved nimbly enough.

  "The cops came," she said. "Took me downtown somewhere, made me look at him. "

  "To identify him?"

  She nodded. " Thats him, I said. Thats Leveque. They bring me back here and I got to let them into his room. They walked in and I walked in after them. You can go now, Mrs. Eigen. Thats all right, I said. Ill stay. Because some of them are all right but some of them would steal the money off a dead mans eyes. Is that the expression?"

  "Yes. "

  "The pennies off a dead mans eyes. Pennies, not money. " She sighed. "So they finish poking around and I let them out and lock up af
ter them, and I ask what do I do now, will somebody come for his things, and they say theyll be in touch. Which they never were. "

  "You never heard from them?"

  "Nothing. Nobody tells me if his people are coming for his belongings, or what Im supposed to do. When I didnt hear from them I called the precinct. They dont know what Im talking about. I guess so many people get murdered nobody can bother to keep track. " She shrugged. "Me, I got an apartment, I got to rent it, you know? I left the furniture, I brought everything else down here. When nobody came I got rid of it. "

  "You sold the videocassettes. "

  "The movies? I took them over on Broadway, he gave me a few dollars. Was that wrong?"

  "I dont think so. "

  "I wasnt stealing. If he had family I would give it all to them, but he had nobody. He lived here for many years, Mr. Leveque. He was here already when I got this job. "

  "When was that?"

  "Six years ago. Wait a minute, Im wrong, seven years. "

  "Youre just the superintendent?"

  "What else should I be, the queen of England?"

  "I knew a woman who was a landlady but she let on to the tenants that she was only the super. "

  "Oh, sure," she said. "I own the building, thats why I live in the basement. Im a rich woman, I just have this love for living in the ground like a mole. "

  "Who does own the building?"

  "I dont know. " I looked at her and she said, "Sue me, I dont know. Who knows? Theres a management company that hired me. I collect the rent, I give it to them, they do whatever they want with it. The landlord I never met. Does it matter who it is?"

  I couldnt see how. I asked when Arnold Leveque had died.

  "Last spring," she said. "Closer than that I couldnt tell you. "

  * * *

  I went back to my hotel room and turned on the TV. Three different channels had college basketball games. It was too frenzied and I couldnt bear to watch. I found a tennis match on one of the cable channels and it was restful by comparison. I dont know that it would be accurate to say that I watched it, but I did sit in front of the set with my eyes open while they hit the ball back and forth over the net.

  I met Jim for dinner at a Chinese restaurant on Ninth Avenue. We often had Sunday dinner there. The place never filled up and they didnt care how long we sat there or how many times they had to refill our teapot. The foods not bad, and I dont know why they dont do more business.

  He said, "Did you happen to read the Times today? There was an article, an interview with this Catholic priest who writes hot novels. I cant think of his name. "

  "I know who you mean. "

  "He had this telephone poll to back him up, and he said how only ten percent of the married population of this country have ever committed adultery. Nobody cheats, thats his contention, and he can prove it because somebody called a bunch of people on the phone and thats what they told him. "