Walk Among the Tombstones: A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel Page 3

  “Maybe the doctor told them no heavy lifting.”

  “Maybe. We’re supposed to go to the corner of Ocean Avenue and Farragut Road.”

  “That’s in Flatbush, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Sure, Farragut Road, that’s a couple of blocks from Brooklyn College. What’s there?”

  “A phone booth.” When they had the money divided up and packed in a pair of garbage bags, Kenan handed Peter a gun, a 9-mm automatic. “Take it,” he insisted. “We don’t want to walk into this unarmed.”

  “We don’t want to walk into it at all. What good’s a gun gonna do me?”

  “I don’t know. Take it anyway.”

  On the way out the door Peter grabbed his brother’s arm. “You forgot to set the alarm,” he said.

  “So? They got Francey and we’re carrying the money. What’s left to steal?”

  “You got the alarm, you might as well set it. It can’t be any less useful than the goddamn guns.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, and ducked into the house. When he emerged he said, “State-of-the-art security system. You can’t break into my house, can’t tap my phones, can’t bug the premises. All you can do is snatch my wife and make me run around the city with trash bags full of hundred-dollar bills.”

  “What’s the best way, babe? I was thinking Bay Ridge Parkway and then Kings Highway to Ocean.”

  “Yeah, I guess. There’s a dozen ways you could go, but that’s as good as any. You want to drive, Petey?”

  “You want me to?”

  “Yeah, why don’t you? I’d probably rear-end a cop car, the way I am now. Or run over a nun.”

  THEY were supposed to be at the Farragut Road pay phone at eight-thirty. They got there three minutes early, according to Peter’s watch. He stayed in the car while Kenan went over to the phone and stood there waiting for it to ring. Earlier, Peter had wedged the gun under his belt in the small of his back. He’d been conscious of the pressure of it while he was driving, and now he took it out and held it in his lap.

  The phone rang and Kenan answered it. Eight-thirty, Peter’s watch said. Were they doing this by the clock or were they eyeballing the whole operation, somebody sitting in a window in one of the buildings across the street, watching it all happen?

  Kenan trotted back to the car, leaned against it. “Veterans Avenue,” he said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s somewhere between Flatlands and Mill Basin, that area. He gave me directions, Farragut to Flatbush and Flatbush to Avenue N and that runs you right into Veterans Avenue.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “Another pay phone at the corner of Veterans and East Sixty-sixth Street.”

  “Why the running around, do you have any idea?”

  “Make us crazy. Make sure we don’t have a backup. I don’t know, Petey. Maybe they’re just trying to break our balls.”

  “It’s working.” Kenan went around to the passenger side, got in. Peter said, “Farragut to Flatbush, Flatbush to N. That’d be a right on Flatbush and then I guess a left turn on N?”

  “Right. I mean yes, right on Flatbush and left on N.”

  “How much time have we got?”

  “They didn’t say. I don’t think they said a time. They said to hurry.”

  “I guess we won’t stop for coffee.”

  “No,” Kenan said. “I guess not.”

  * * *

  THE drill was the same at the corner of Veterans and Sixty-sixth. Peter waited in the car. Kenan went to the phone, and it rang almost immediately.

  The kidnapper said, “Very good. That didn’t take long.”

  “Now what?”

  “Where’s the money?”

  “In the backseat. In two Hefty bags, just like you said.”

  “Good. Now I want you and your brother to walk up Sixty-sixth Street to Avenue M.”

  “You want us to walk there?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the money?”

  “No, leave the money right where it is.”

  “In the backseat of the car.”

  “Yes. And leave the car unlocked.”

  “We leave the money in an unlocked car and walk a block—”

  “Two blocks, actually.”

  “And then what?”

  “Wait on the corner of Avenue M for five minutes. Then get in your car and go home.”

  “What about my wife?”

  “Your wife is fine.”

  “How do I—”

  “She’ll be in the car waiting for you.”

  “She better be.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Look, there’s one thing bothers me, that’s leaving the money unattended in an unlocked car. What I’m worried, somebody grabbing it before you get to it.”

  “Not to worry,” the man said. “This is a good neighborhood.”

  THEY left the car unlocked, left the money in it, walked one short block and one long block to Avenue M. They waited five minutes by Peter’s watch. Then they headed back toward the Buick.

  I don’t think I ever described them, did I? They looked like brothers, Kenan and Peter. Kenan stood five-ten, which made him a scant inch taller than his brother. They were both built like rangy middleweights, although Peter was beginning to thicken just the least bit at the waist. Both had olive skin tones and straight dark hair, parted on the left and combed back neatly. At thirty-three, Kenan was starting to develop a slightly higher forehead as his hairline receded. Peter, two years older, still had all his hair.

  They were handsome men, with long straight noses and dark eyes set deep under prominent brows. Peter had a mustache, neatly trimmed. Kenan was cleanshaven.

  If you were going by appearances, and if you were up against the two of them, you would take Kenan out first. Or try to, anyway. There was something about him that suggested he was the more dangerous of the two, that his responses would be more sudden and more certain.

  That’s how they looked, then, walking rapidly but not too rapidly back to the corner where Kenan’s car was parked. It was still there, and still unlocked. The bags of money were no longer in the backseat. Francine Khoury wasn’t there, either.

  Kenan said, “Fuck this shit, man.”

  “The trunk?”

  He opened the glove box, triggered the trunk release. He went around and lifted the lid. There was nothing in the trunk but the spare tire and the jack. He had just closed the trunk lid when the pay phone rang a dozen yards away.

  He ran to it, grabbed it.

  “Go home,” the man said. “She’ll probably get there before you do.”

  * * *

  I WENT to my usual evening meeting around the corner from my hotel at St. Paul the Apostle, but I left on the break. I returned to my room and called Elaine and told her about the conversation with Mick.

  “I think you should go,” she said. “I think that’s a great idea.”

  “Suppose we both go.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Matt. It would mean missing classes.”

  She was taking a course Thursday evenings at Hunter, in fact she’d just got back from it when I called. “Indian Art and Architecture Under the Moghuls.” “We’d just go for a week or ten days,” I said. “You’d miss one class.”

  “One class isn’t such a big deal.”

  “Exactly, so—”

  “So I guess what it comes down to is I don’t really want to go. I’d be a fifth wheel, wouldn’t I? I have this picture in my mind of you and Mick rocketing around the countryside and teaching the Irish how to raise hell.”

  “That’s some picture.”

  “But what I mean is it’d be a sort of boy’s night out, wouldn’t it, and who needs a girl along? Seriously, I don’t particularly want to go, and I know you’re restless and I think it would do you a world of good. You’ve never been anywhere in Europe?”

  “Never.”

  “How long has Mick been gone? A month?
”

  “Just about.”

  “I think you should go.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

  SHE wasn’t there.

  Nowhere in the house. Kenan went compulsively from room to room, knowing it was senseless, knowing she couldn’t have gotten past the alarm system without either setting it off or disarming it. When he ran out of rooms he went back to the kitchen, where Peter was making coffee.

  He said, “Petey, this really sucks.”

  “I know it, babe.”

  “You’re making coffee? I don’t think I want any. Bother you if I have a drink?”

  “Bother me if I have a drink. Not if you do.”

  “I just thought—never mind. I don’t even want one.”

  “That’s where we differ, babe.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He spun around. “Why the fuck are they jerking me around like this, Petey? They say she’s gonna be in the car and then she’s not. They say she’ll be here and she isn’t. What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Maybe they got stuck in traffic.”

  “Man, what happens now? We fucking sit here and wait? I don’t even know what we’re waiting for. They got the money and we got what? Fucked is what we got. I don’t know who they are or where they are. I don’t know zip, and—Petey, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think she’s dead,” he said.

  Peter was silent.

  “Because why wouldn’t they, the fucks? She could identify them. Safer to kill her than to give her back. Kill her, bury her, and that’s the end of it. Case closed. That’s what I would do, I was them.”

  “No you wouldn’t.”

  “I said if I was them. I’m not, I wouldn’t kidnap some woman in the first place, innocent gentle lady who never did anybody any harm, never had an unkind thought—”

  “Easy, babe.”

  They would fall silent and then the conversation would begin again, because what else was there to do? After half an hour of this the phone rang and Kenan jumped for it.

  “Mr. Khoury.”

  “Where is she?”

  “My apologies. There was a slight change in plans.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Just around the corner from you, oh, uh, Seventy-ninth Street, I believe it’s the south side of the street, three or four houses from the corner—”

  “What?”

  “There’s a car parked illegally at a fire hydrant. A gray Ford Tempo. Your wife is in it.”

  “She’s in the car?”

  “In the trunk.”

  “You put her in the trunk?”

  “There’s plenty of air. But it’s cold out tonight so you’ll want to get her out of there as soon as possible.”

  “Is there a key? How do I—”

  “The lock’s broken. You won’t need a key.”

  Running down the street and around the corner, he said to Peter, “What did he mean, the lock’s broken? If the trunk’s not locked why can’t she just crawl out? What’s he talking about?”

  “I don’t know, babe.”

  “Maybe she’s tied up. Tape, handcuffs, something so she can’t move.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Pete—”

  The car was where it was supposed to be, a battered Tempo several years old, its windshield starred and the passenger door deeply dented. The trunk lock was missing altogether. Kenan flung the lid open.

  No one in there. Just packages, bundles of some sort. Bundles of various sizes wrapped in black plastic and secured with freezer tape.

  “No,” Kenan said.

  He stood there, saying “No, no, no.” After a moment Peter took one of the parcels from the trunk, got a jackknife from his pocket, and cut away the tape. He unwound the length of black plastic—it was not unlike the Hefty bags in which the money had been delivered—and drew out a human foot, severed a couple of inches above the ankle. Three toenails showed circles of red polish. The other two toes were missing.

  Kenan put his head back and howled like a dog.

  Chapter 2

  That was Thursday. Monday I got back from lunch and there was a message for me at the desk. Call Peter Curry, it said, and there was a number and the 718 area code, which meant Brooklyn or Queens. I didn’t think I knew a Peter Curry in Brooklyn or Queens, or anywhere else for that matter, but it’s not unheard-of for me to get calls from people I don’t know. I went up to my room and called the number on the slip, and when a man answered I said, “Mr. Curry?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name’s Matthew Scudder, I got a message to call you.”

  “You got a message to call me?”

  “That’s right. It says here you called at twelve-fifteen.”

  “What was the name again?” I gave it to him again, and he said, “Oh, wait a minute, you’re the detective, right? My brother called you, my brother Peter.”

  “It says Peter Curry.”

  “Hold on.”

  I held on, and after a moment another voice, close to the first but a note deeper, a little bit softer, said, “Matt, this is Pete.”

  “Pete,” I said. “Do I know you, Pete?”

  “Yeah, we know each other, but you wouldn’t necessarily know my name. I’m pretty regular at St. Paul’s, I led a meeting there, oh, five or six weeks ago.”

  “Peter Curry,” I said.

  “It’s Khoury,” he said. “I’m of Lebanese descent, lemme see how to describe myself. I’m sober about a year and a half, I’m in a rooming house way west on Fifty-fifth Street, I’ve been working as a messenger and delivery boy but my field is film editing, only I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back into it—”

  “Lot of drugs in your story.”

  “That’s right, but it was alcohol really stuck it to me at the end. You’ve got me placed?”

  “Uh-huh. I was there the night you spoke. I just never knew your last name.”

  “Well, that’s the program for you.”

  “What can I do for you, Pete?”

  “I’d like it if you could come out and talk with me and my brother. You’re a detective and I think that’s what we need.”

  “Could you give me some idea what it’s about?”

  “Well—”

  “Not over the phone?”

  “Probably better not to, Matt. It’s detective work and it’s important, and we’ll pay whatever you say.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know that I’m open to work right now, Pete. As a matter of fact I’ve got a trip planned, I’ll be going overseas the end of the week.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Ireland.”

  “That sounds great,” he said. “But look, Matt, couldn’t you just come out here and let us lay it out for you? You listen, and if you decide you can’t do anything for us, no hard feelings and we’ll pay for your time and your cab out and back.” In the background the brother said something I couldn’t make out, and Pete said, “I’ll tell him. Matt, Kenan says we could drive in and pick you up, but we’d have to come back here and I think it’s quicker if you just jump in a taxi.”

  It struck me I was hearing a lot about cabs from somebody who was working as a messenger and delivery boy, and then his brother’s name rang a bell. I said, “You have more than one brother, Pete?”

  “Just the one.”

  “I think you mentioned him in your qualification, something about his occupation.”

  A pause. Then, “Matt, I’m just asking you to come out and listen.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Do you know Brooklyn?”

  “I’d have to be dead.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Nothing, I was just thinking out loud. A famous short story, ‘Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.’ I used to know parts of the borough reasonably well. Where are you in Brooklyn?”

  “Bay Ridge. Colonial Road.”

  “That’s easy.”

  He gave me the addr
ess and I wrote it down.

  THE R train, also known as the Broadway local of the BMT, runs all the way from 179th Street in Jamaica to within a few blocks of the Verrazano Bridge at the southwest corner of Brooklyn. I caught it at Fifty-seventh and Seventh and got off two stops from the end of the line.

  There are those who hold that once you leave Manhattan you’re out of the city. They’re wrong, you’re just in another part of the city, but there’s no question that the difference is palpable. You could spot it with your eyes closed. The energy level is different, the air doesn’t hum with the same urgent intensity.

  I walked a block on Fourth Avenue, past a Chinese restaurant and a Korean greengrocer and an OTB parlor and a couple of Irish bars, then cut over to Colonial Road and found Kenan Khoury’s house. It was one of a group of detached single-family homes, solid square structures that looked to have been built sometime between the wars. A tiny lawn, a half-flight of wooden steps leading to the front entrance. I climbed them and rang the bell.

  Pete let me in and led me into the kitchen. He introduced me to his brother, who stood to shake hands, then motioned for me to take a chair. He stayed on his feet, walked over to the stove, then turned to look at me.

  “Appreciate your coming,” he said. “You mind a couple of questions, Mr. Scudder? Before we get started?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Something to drink first? Not a drink drink, I know you know Petey from AA, but there’s coffee made or I can offer you a soft drink. The coffee’s Lebanese style, which is the same general idea as Turkish coffee or Armenian coffee, very thick and strong. Or there’s a jar of instant Yuban if you’d rather have that.”

  “The Lebanese coffee sounds good.”

  It tasted good, too. I took a sip and he said, “You’re a detective, is that right?”

  “Unlicensed.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “That I have no official standing. I do per diem work for one of the big agencies occasionally, and on those occasions I’m operating on their license, but otherwise what I do is private and unofficial.”

  “And you used to be a cop.”

  “That’s right. Some years ago.”

  “Uh-huh. Uniform or plainclothes or what?”