A Stab in the Dark (17 page)

We didn't do all that much drinking. She had enough vodka to catch up with me and then we both coasted. She played some records and we sat together on the couch and listened to them, not talking much.

We started making love on the couch and then went into the bedroom to finish the job.

We were good together, better than we'd been Saturday night.

Novelty is a spice, but when the chemistry is good between lovers, familiarity enhances their lovemaking. I got out of myself some, and felt a little of what she felt.

Afterward we went back to the couch and I started talking about the murder of Barbara Ettinger. "She's buried so goddamn deep," I said.

"It's not just the amount of time that's gone by. Nine years is a long time, but there are people who died nine years ago and you could walk through their lives and find everything pretty much as they left it. The same people in the houses next door and everybody leading the same kind of life.

"With Barbara, everybody's gone through a seachange. You closed the day-care center and left your husband and moved here. Your husband took the kids and beat it to California. I was one of the first cops on the scene, and God knows my life turned upside down since then. There were three cops who investigated the case in Sheepshead Bay, or started to. Two of them are dead and one left the force and his wife and lives in a furnished room and stands guard in a department store."

"And Doug Ettinger's remarried and selling sporting goods."

I nodded. "And Lynn London's been married and divorced, and half the neighbors on Wyckoff Street have moved somewhere or other.

It's as though every wind on earth's been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. I know Americans lead mobile lives. I read somewhere that every year twenty percent of the country changes its place of residence.

Even so, it's as though every wind on earth's been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. It's like digging for Troy."

" 'Deep with the first dead.' "

"How's that?"

"I don't know if I remember it right. Just a second." She crossed the room, searched the bookshelves, removed a slim volume and paged through it. "It's Dylan Thomas," she said, "and it's in here somewhere.

Where the hell is it? I'm sure it's in here. Here it is."

She read:

"Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other."

"London's daughter," I said.

"As in the city of London. But that must be what made me think of it. Deep with the first dead lies Charles London's daughter."

"Read it again."

She did.

"Except there's a door there somewhere if I could just find the handle to it. It wasn't some nut that killed her. It was someone with a reason, someone she knew. Someone who purposely made it look like Pinell's handiwork. And the killer's still around. He didn't die or drop out of sight. He's still around. I don't have any grounds to believe that but it's a feeling I can't shake."

"You think it's Doug?"

"If I don't, I'm the only one who doesn't. Even his wife thinks he did it. She may not know that's what she thinks, but why else is she scared of what I'll find?"

"But you think it's somebody else?"

"I think an awful lot of lives changed radically after her death.

Maybe her dying had something to do with those changes. With some of them, anyway."

"Doug's obviously. Whether he killed her or not."

"Maybe it affected other lives, too."

"Like a stone in a pond? The ripple effect?"

"Maybe. I don't know just what happened or how. I told you, it's a matter of a hunch, a feeling.

Nothing concrete that I can point at."

"Your cop instincts, is that it?"

I laughed. She asked what was funny. I said, "It's not so funny. I've had all day to wonder about the validity of my cop instincts."

"How do you mean?"

And so I wound up telling her more than I'd planned. About everything from Anita's phone call to a kid with a gravity knife. Two nights ago I'd found out what a good listener she was, and she was no worse at it this time around.

When I was done she said, "I don't know why you're down on yourself. You could have been killed."

"If it was really a mugging attempt."

"What were you supposed to do, wait until he stuck a knife into you? And why was he carrying a knife in the first place? I don't know what a gravity knife is, but it doesn't sound like something you carry around in case you need to cut a piece of string."

"He could have been carrying it for protection."

"And the roll of money? It sounds to me as though he's one of those closet cases who pick up gay men and rob them, and sometimes beat them up or kill them while they're at it to prove how straight they are. And you're worrying because you gave a kid like that a bloody lip?"

I shook my head. "I'm worrying because my judgment wasn't sound."

"Because you were drunk."

"And didn't even know it."

"Was your judgment off the night you shot the two holdup men?

The night that Puerto Rican girl got killed?"

"You're a pretty sharp lady, aren't you?"

"A fucking genius."

"That's the question, I guess. And the answer is no, it wasn't. I hadn't had much to drink and I wasn't feeling it. But-"

"But you got echoes just the same."

"Right."

"And didn't want to look straight at them, any more than Karen Ettinger wants to look straight at the fact that she thinks her husband might have murdered his first wife."

"A very sharp lady."

"They don't come any sharper. Feel better now?"

"Uh-huh."

"Talking helps. But you kept it so far inside you didn't even know it was there." She yawned. "Being a sharp lady is tiring work."

"I can believe it."

"Want to go to bed?"

"Sure."

BUT I didn't stay the night. I thought I might, but I was still awake when her breathing changed to indicate that she was sleeping. I lay first on one side and then on the other, and it was clear I wasn't ready to sleep. I got out of bed and padded quietly into the other room.

I dressed, then stood at the window and looked out at Lispenard Street. There was plenty of Scotch left but I didn't want to drink any of it.

I let myself out. A block away on Canal Street I managed to flag a cab. I got uptown in time to catch the last half-hour or so at Armstrong's, but I said the hell with it and went straight to my room.

I got to sleep eventually.

I had a night of dreams and shallow sleep. The dog, Bandy, turned up in one of the dreams. He wasn't really dead. His death had been faked as part of some elaborate scam. He told me all this, told me too that he'd always been able to talk but had been afraid to disclose this talent. "If I'd only known," I marveled, "what conversations we could have had!"

I awoke refreshed and clearheaded and fiercely hungry. I had bacon and eggs and home fries at the Red Flame and read the News.

They'd caught the First Avenue Slasher, or at the least had arrested someone they said was the Slasher. A photograph of the suspect bore a startling resemblance to the police artist's sketch that had run earlier.

That doesn't happen too often.

I was on my second cup of coffee when Vinnie slid into the booth across from me. "Woman in the lobby," he said.

"For me?"

He nodded. "Young, not bad-looking. Nice clothes, nice hair. Gave me a couple of bucks to point you out when you came in. I don't even know if you're comin' back, so I figured I'd take a chance, look here and there and see if I could find you. I got Eddie coverin' the desk for me.

You comin' back to the hotel?"

"I hadn't planned to."

"What you could do, see, you could look her over and gimme a sign to point you out or not point you out. I'd just as soon earn the couple of bucks, but I'm not gonna go and retire on it, you know what I mean? If you want to duck this dame-"

"You can point me out," I said. "Whoever she is."

He went back to the desk. I finished my coffee and the paper and took my time returning to the hotel.

When I walked in Vinnie nodded significantly toward the wing chair over by the cigarette machine, but he needn't have bothered. I'd have spotted her without help. She looked utterly out of place, a well-groomed, well-coiffed, color-coordinated suburban princess who'd found her way to the wrong part of Fifty-seventh Street. A few blocks east she might have been having an adventure, making the rounds of the art galleries, looking for a print that would go well with the mushroom-toned drapes in the family room.

I let Vinnie earn his money, strolled past her, stood waiting for the elevator. Its doors were just opening when she spoke my name.

I said, "Hello, Mrs. Ettinger."

"How-"

"Saw your picture on your husband's desk. And I probably would have recognized your voice, although I've only heard it over the phone."

The blonde hair was a little longer than in the picture in Douglas Ettinger's photo cube, and the voice in person was less nasal, but there was no mistaking her.

"I heard your voice a couple of times. Once when I called you, once when you called me, and again when I called you back."

"I thought that was you," she said. "It frightened me when the phone rang and you didn't say anything."

"I just wanted to make sure I'd recognized the voice."

"I called you since then. I called twice yesterday."

"I didn't get any messages."

"I didn't leave any. I don't know what I'd have said if I reached you. Is there someplace more private where we can talk?"

I took her out for coffee, not to the Red Flame but to another similar place down the block. On the way out Vinnie tipped me a wink and a sly smile. I wonder how much money she'd given him.

Less, I'm sure, than she was prepared to give me. We were no sooner settled with our coffee than she put her purse on the table and gave it a significant tap.

"I have an envelope in here," she announced. "There's five thousand dollars in it."

"That's a lot of cash to be carrying in this town."

"Maybe you'd like to carry it for me." She studied my face, and when I failed to react she leaned forward, dropping her voice conspiratorially. "The money's for you, Mr. Scudder. Just do what Mr.

London already asked you to do. Drop the case."

"What are you afraid of, Mrs. Ettinger?"

"I just don't want you poking around in our lives."

"What is it you think I might find there?" Her hand clutched her purse, seeking security in the presumptive power of five thousand dollars. Her nail polish was the color of iron rust. Gently I said,

"Do you think your husband killed his first wife?"

"No!"

"Then what have you got to be afraid of?"

"I don't know."

"When did you meet your husband, Mrs. Ettinger?"

She met my eyes, didn't answer.

"Before his wife was killed?" Her fingers kneaded her handbag.

"He went to college on Long Island.

You're younger than he is, but you could have known him then."

"That was before he even knew her," she said. "Long before they were married. Then we happened to run into each other again after her death."

"And you were afraid I'd find that out?"

"I-"

"You were seeing him before she died, weren't you?"

"You can't prove that."

"Why would I have to prove it? Why would I even want to prove it?"

She opened the purse. Her fingers clumsy with the clasp but she got the bag open and took out a manila bank envelope. "Five thousand dollars," she said.

"Put it away."

"Isn't it enough? It's a lot of money. Isn't five thousand dollars a lot of money for doing nothing?"

"It's too much. You didn't kill her, did you, Mrs. Ettinger?"

"Me?" She had trouble getting a grip on the question. "Me? Of course not."

"But you were glad when she died."

"That's horrible," she said. "Don't say that."

"You were having an affair with him. You wanted to marry him, and then she was killed. How could you help being glad?"

Her eyes were pitched over my shoulder, gazing off into the distance. Her voice was as remote as her gaze. She said, "I didn't know she was pregnant. He said ... he said he hadn't known that either. He told me they weren't sleeping together. Having sex, I mean. Of course they slept together, they shared a bed, but he said they weren't having sex. I believed him."

The waitress was approaching to refill our coffee cups. I held up a hand to ward off the interruption.

Karen Ettinger said, "He said she was carrying another man's child.

Because it couldn't have been his baby."

"Is that what you told Charles London?"

"I never spoke to Mr. London."

"Your husband did, though, didn't he? Is that what he told him? Is that what London was afraid would come out if I stayed on the case?"

Her voice was detached, remote. "He said she was pregnant by another man. A black man. He said the baby would have been black."

"That's what he told London."

"Yes."

"Had he ever told you that?"

"No. I think it was just something he made up to influence Mr.

London." She looked at me, and her eyes showed me a little of the person hidden beneath the careful suburban exterior. "Just like the rest of it was something he made up for my sake. It was probably his baby."