Eight Million Ways to Die (Matthew Scudder #5)

They tell you not to let yourself get too hungry. I hadn't had anything to eat since that hot dog in the park. I thought of food and my stomach turned at the notion.

I walked back to my hotel. It seemed as though every place I passed was a bar or a liquor store. I went up to my room and stayed there.

I got to the meeting a couple of minutes early. Half a dozen people said hello to me by name. I got some coffee and sat down.

The speaker told an abbreviated drinking story and spent most of the time telling of all the things that had happened to him since he got sober four years ago. His marriage had broken up, his youngest son had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, he'd gone through a period of extended unemployment and several bad bouts of clinical depression.

"But I didn't drink," he said. "When I first came here you people told me there's nothing so bad that a drink won't make it worse. You told me the way to work this program is not drink even if my ass falls off. I'll tell you, sometimes I think I stay sober on sheer fucking stubbornness. That's okay. I figure whatever works is fine with me."

I wanted to leave at the break. Instead I got a cup of coffee and took a couple of Fig Newtons. I could hear Kim telling me that she had an awful sweet tooth. "But I never gain an ounce. Aren't I lucky?"

I ate the cookies. It was like chewing straw but I chewed them and washed them down.

During the discussion one woman got into a long riff about her relationship. She was a pain in the ass, she said the same thing every night. I tuned out.

I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic. A woman I know got killed last night. She hired me to keep her from getting killed and I wound up assuring her that she was safe and she believed me. And her killer conned me and I believed him, and she's dead now, and there's nothing I can do about it. And it eats at me and I don't know what to do about that, and there's a bar on every corner and a liquor store on every block, and drinking won't bring her back to life but neither will staying sober, and why the hell do I have to go through this? Why?

I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic and we sit around in these goddamned rooms and say the same damned things all the time and meanwhile out there all the animals are killing each other. We say Don't drink and go to meetings and we say The important thing is you're sober and we say Easy does it and we say One day at a time and while we natter on like brainwashed zombies the world is coming to an end.

I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic and I need help.

When they got to me I said, "My name is Matt. Thanks for your qualification. I enjoyed it. I think I'll just listen tonight."

I left right after the prayer. I didn't go to Cobb's Corner and I didn't go to Armstrong's, either. Instead I walked to my hotel and past it and halfway around the block to Joey Farrell's on Fifty-eighth Street.

They didn't have much of a crowd. There was a Tony Bennett record on the jukebox. The bartender was nobody I knew.

I looked at the back bar. The first bourbon that caught my eye was Early Times. I ordered a straight shot with water back. The bartender poured it and set it on the bar in front of me.

I picked it up and looked at it. I wonder what I expected to see.

I drank it down.

Chapter 7

It was no big deal. I didn't even feel the drink at first, and then what I experienced was a vague headache and the suggestion of nausea.

Well, my system wasn't used to it. I'd been away from it for a week. When was the last time I'd gone a full week without a drink?

I couldn't remember. Maybe fifteen years, I thought. Maybe twenty, maybe more.

I stood there, a forearm on the bar, one foot on the bottom rung of the bar stool beside me, and I tried to determine just what it was that I felt. I decided that something didn't hurt quite so much as it had a few minutes ago. On the other hand, I felt a curious sense of loss. But of what?

"Another?"

I started to nod, then caught myself and shook my head. "Not right now," I said. "You want to let me have some dimes? I have to make a couple of calls."

He changed a dollar for me and pointed me toward the pay phone. I closed myself into the booth and took out my notebook and pen and started making calls. I spent a few dimes learning who was in charge of the Dakkinen case and a couple more reaching him, but finally I was plugged into the squad room at Midtown North. I asked to speak to Detective Durkin and a voice said, "Just a minute," and "Joe? For you," and after a pause another voice said, "This is Joe Durkin."

I said, "Durkin, my name is Scudder. I'd like to know if you've made an arrest in the Dakkinen murder."

"I didn't get that name," he said.

"It's Matthew Scudder, and I'm not trying to get information out of you, I'm trying to give it. If you haven't arrested the pimp yet I may be able to give you a lead."

After a pause he said, "We haven't made any arrests."

"She had a pimp."

"We know that."

"Do you have his name?"

"Look, Mr. Scudder-"

"Her pimp's name is Chance. That may be a first or last name or it may be an alias. There's no yellow sheet on him, not under that name."

"How would you know about a yellow sheet?"

"I'm an ex-cop. Look, Durkin, I've got a lot of information and all I want to do is give it to you. Suppose I just talk for a few minutes and then you can ask anything you want."

"All right."

I told him what I knew about Chance. I gave him a full physical description, added a description of his car and supplied the license number. I said he had a minimum of four girls on his string and that one of them was a Ms. Sonya Hendryx, possibly known as Sunny, and I described her. "Friday night he dropped Hendryx at 444 Central Park West. It's possible she lives there but more likely that she was going to attend a victory party for a prizefighter named Kid Bascomb. Chance has some sort of interest in Bascomb and it's probable that someone in that building was throwing a party for him."

He started to interrupt but I kept going. I said, "Friday night Chance learned that the Dakkinen girl wanted to end their relationship. Saturday afternoon he visited her on East Thirty-eighth Street and told her he had no objection. He told her to vacate the apartment by the end of the month. It was his apartment, he rented it and installed her in it."

"Just a minute," Durkin said, and I heard papers rustle. "The tenant of record is a Mr. David Goldman. That's also the name Dakkinen's phone's listed in."

"Have you been able to trace David Goldman?"

"Not yet."

"My guess is you won't, or else Goldman'll turn out to be a lawyer or accountant Chance uses to front for him. I'll tell you this much, Chance doesn't look like any David Goldman I ever met."

"You said he was black."

"That's right."

"You met him."

"That's right. Now he doesn't have a particular hangout, but there are several places he frequents." I ran down the list. "I wasn't able to learn where he lives. I gather he keeps that a secret."

"No problem," Durkin said. "We'll use the reverse directory. You gave us his phone number, remember? We'll look it up and get the address that way."

"I think the number's his answering service."

"Well, they'll have a number for him."

"Maybe."

"You sound doubtful."

"I think he likes to keep himself hard to find," I said.

"How'd you happen to find him? What's your connection to all of this, Scudder?"

I felt like hanging up. I'd given them what I had and I didn't feel like answering questions. But I was a lot easier to find than Chance, and if I hung up on Durkin he could have me picked up in no time.

I said, "I met him Friday night. Miss Dakkinen asked me to intercede for her."

"Intercede how?"

"By telling him she wanted to get off the hook. She was scared to tell him herself."

"So you told him for her."

"That's right."

"What, are you a pimp yourself, Scudder? She go from his stable to yours?"

My grip tightened on the receiver. I said, "No, that's not my line, Durkin. Why? Is your mother looking for a new connection?"

"What in-"

"Just watch your fucking mouth, that's all. I'm handing you things on a plate and I never had to call you at all."

He didn't say anything.

I said, "Kim Dakkinen was a friend of a friend. If you want to know about me there used to be a cop named Guzik who knew me. Is he still at Midtown North?"

"You're a friend of Guzik's?"

"We never liked each other much but he can tell you I'm straight. I told Chance she wanted out and he said it was fine with him. He saw her the next day and told her the same thing. Then last night somebody killed her. You still have the time of death figured as midnight?"

"Yeah, but that's approximate. It was twelve hours later that they found her. And the condition of the corpse, you know, the ME probably wanted to move on to something else."

"Bad."

"The one I feel sorry for is that poor little chambermaid. She's from Ecuador, I think she's an illegal, barely speaks a word of English, and she had to walk in on that." He snorted. "You want to look at the body, give us a positive make? You'll see something'll stick in your memory."

"Don't you have an identification?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "We got fingerprints. She was arrested once a few years back in Long Island City. Loitering with intent, fifteen days suspended. No arrests since then."

"She worked in a house after that," I said. "And then Chance put her in the apartment on Thirty-eighth Street."

"A real New York odyssey. What else have you got, Scudder? And how do I get hold of you if I need you?"

I didn't have anything else. I gave him my address and phone. We said a few more polite things to each other and I hung up and the phone rang. I owed forty-five cents for going over the three minutes my dime had bought me. I broke another dollar at the bar, put the money in the slot, and returned to the bar to order another drink. Early Times, straight up, water back.

This one tasted better. And after it hit bottom I felt something loosen up inside me.

At the meetings they tell you it's the first drink that gets you drunk. You have one and it triggers an irresistible compulsion and without meaning it you have another and another and you wind up drunk again. Well, maybe I wasn't an alcoholic because that wasn't what was happening. I'd had two drinks and I felt a whole lot better than I did before I'd had them and I certainly didn't feel any need to drink anymore.

I gave myself a chance, though. I stood there for a few minutes and thought about having a third drink.

No. No, I really didn't want it. I was fine the way I was.

I left a buck on the bar, scooped the rest of my change, and headed for home. I walked past Armstrong's and didn't feel like stopping in. I certainly didn't have the urge to stop for a drink.

The early News would be out by now. Did I want to walk down to the corner for it?

No, the hell with it.

I stopped at the desk. No messages. Jacob was on duty, riding a gentle codeine buzz, filling in the squares of a crossword puzzle.