A Walk Among the Tombstones

* * *

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."