A Dance at the Slaughter House Read online

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  Chapter 4

  That evening I met Elaine Mardell in front of a theater on Forty-second Street west of Ninth 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 dont 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 dont 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 at St. 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 hed 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 dont know about you," I said. "It seems to me you wear a lot of leather for a heterosexual vegetarian. "

  "Its 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, its my case now. Her brother hired me yesterday, he thinks the husband did it. The couple whose apartment it was, the downstairs neighbors, hes this Jewish lawyer, retired, lots of dough, and she didnt have any furs stolen. You know why?"

  "She was wearing them all at once. "

  "Uh-uh. Shes 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 doesnt wear fur. So what?"

  "Well-"

  "Besides," she said, "leathers neat and furs tacky. "

  "Well, that settles it. "

  "Good. Did the husband do it?"

  "I dont know. I walked past the building earlier today. I can point it out to you later, its on our way if I walk you home. Maybe youll pick up some vibrations, solve the case just by walking past the murder site. "

  "But you didnt. "

  "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 Id learned from Joe Durkin and Lyman Warriner. "Im not sure what I can do that the police havent already done," I said. "Just poke around, I guess. Knock on doors, talk to people. Be nice if I could find out hes been having an affair, but of course that was the first thing Durkin looked for and he couldnt turn up a thing. "

  "Maybe hes got a boyfriend. "

  "That would fit with my clients 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 shouldnt say that because I dont actually think Ive ever been there. Whats in Maspeth?" I told her and she said, "I dont like boxing much. Its not a moral issue, I dont care if two grown men want to stand around and hit each other, but Id just as soon change the channel. Anyway, Ive got a class tomorrow night. "

  "What is it this semester?"

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

  In the fall shed studied urban architecture, and Id gone with her a couple of times to look at buildings.

  "Youll be missing the architecture of Maspeth," I said. "Although I havent really got a good reason to go myself, to tell you the truth. I dont 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 Im just looking for an excuse to go to the fights. If the New Maspeth Arena had squash matches instead of boxing Id probably stay home. "

  "You dont like squash?"

  "I like Orange Squash okay. Ive never actually seen squash played, so what do I know? Maybe Id like it. "

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

  "Ill let you know if I run into him in Maspeth. "

  "Well, you never know. Its a small world. Did you say the Thurmans lived just a block from here?"

  "Half a block. "

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

  "Maybe. Lets ask him. "

  "You ask," she said. "I cant seem to get the verbs right. "

  * * *

  AFTER wed 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 orioles 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. "

  "Im not surprised," she said.

  I asked about Richard and Amanda Thurman. They came in occasionally, he said, sometimes with another couple, sometimes just the two of them. "Hed have a vodka mart before dinner," he said. "Shed have a glass of wine. Sometimes hed come in by himself and have a quick beer at the bar. I dont remember the brand. Bud Light, Coors Light. Something light. "

  "Has he been in since the murder?"

  "Only once that I saw him. A week, two weeks ago, he and another fellow came in and had dinner one night. Thats the only time Ive seen him since it happened. He lives very near here, you know. "

  "I know. "

  "Just halfway down the block. " He leaned over the bar, dropped his voice. "Whats the story? Is there a suspicion of foul play?"

  "Thered have to be, dont you think? The woman was raped and strangled. "

  "You know what I mean. Did he do it?"

  "What do you think? Does he look like a killer to you?"

  "Ive been in New York too long," he said. "Everybody looks like a killer to me. "

  * * *

  ON our way out Elaine said, "You know who might like to go to the fights tomorrow? Mick Ballou. "

  "He might at that. You want to stop at Grogans for a minute?"

  "Sure," she said. "I like Mick. "

  He was there, and glad to see us, and enthusiastic at the idea of driving out to Maspeth to watch grown men stand around hitting each other. We didnt stay long at Grogans, and when we left I flagged a cab, so we didnt walk past the building where Amanda Thurman had died, to her husbands horror or with his complicity.

  I stayed the night at Elaines apartment, and I spent the next day starting to poke into the corners of Richard Thurmans life. I was back at my hotel in time to watch the five oclock news on CNN. Then I took a shower and got dressed, and when I went downstairs Micks silver Cadillac was parked out front next to a fire hydrant.

  "Maspeth," he said. I asked him if he knew how to get there. "I do," he said. "There was a man who had a factory out there, a Romanian Jew he was. He had a dozen women working for him, putti
ng together bits of metal and plastic, making staple removers. "

  "Whats that?"

  "Say youve stapled some papers together and you want to take them apart. You take one of his things and it nips the staple and draws it right out. He had some women assembling the creatures and others packing them a dozen to a box and shipping them all over the country. " He sighed. "He was a gambler, though, and he borrowed money and couldnt pay it back. "

  "What happened?"

  "Ah, thats a long story," he said. "Ill have to tell it to you one of these days. "

  NOW, five hours later, we were heading back to Manhattan on the Queensboro Bridge. He hadnt said anything more about the factory owner in Maspeth. Instead, I was telling him about the Cable TV executive.

  He said, "The things people do to each other. "

  He had done his share. One of the things hed done, according to neighborhood legend, was kill a man named Farrelly and carry his head around in a bowling bag, lugging it in and out of a dozen Hells Kitchen saloons. Some people said he never opened the bag, just told everybody what it contained, but there were others who swore theyd been there to see him haul out the head by the hair, saying, "Will you look at poor Paddy Farrelly? And isnt he the ugliest bastard you ever saw?"

  In the newspapers they say hes known as the Butcher Boy, but its only the newspapers that call him that, just as no one but a ring announcer ever called Eldon Rasheed the Bulldog. The Farrelly story probably has something to do with the sobriquet, but so does the bloodstained butchers apron Mick likes to wear.

  The apron belonged to his father. The senior Ballou had come over from France and worked cutting up carcasses in the wholesale meat markets on West Fourteenth Street. Micks mother was Irish, and he got his speech from her and his looks from the old man.

  He is a big man, tall and heavily built, with a massive monolithic quality to him that suggests a prehistoric monument, a stone head from Easter Island. His own head is like a boulder, the skin scarred by acne and violence, the cheeks starting to show the broken capillaries that years of drinking will earn you. His eyes are a startling green.

  He is a hard drinker, a career criminal, and a man with blood on his hands as well as his apron, and there are people, he and I among them, who wonder at our friendship. I would be hard put to explain it, but neither could I easily explain my relationship with Elaine. It may be that all friendships are ultimately inexplicable, although some of them are harder to figure than others.

  MICK invited me back to Grogans for coffee or a Coke but I begged off. He admitted he was tired himself. "But one night next week well make a night of it," he said. "And at closing time well lock the doors and sit in the dark telling old stories. "

  "That sounds good to me. "

  "And go to mass in the morning. "

  "I dont know about that part of it," I said. "But the rest sounds good. "

  He dropped me in front of the Northwestern and I stopped at the desk on my way upstairs. There werent any messages. I went on up and went to bed.