Out on the Cutting Edge

"Not in the third grade."

He laughed. "No, it was a little later than that. Thing is, the old man died while I was up in Green Haven, and when I got out I didn't have a place to stay, so I moved in with my ma. I wasn't home much, it was just a place to keep my clothes and stuff, but then when she got sick I started staying there with her, and after she died I kept the place. Three little rooms up on the fourth floor, but, you know, it's rent-controlled, Matt. $122.75 a month. A hotel you'd be willing to step into, in this town, shit, you'd pay that for one night."

And, amazingly enough, the neighborhood itself was on its way up. Hell's Kitchen had been a tough, hard-bitten neighborhood for a hundred years, and now the realtors had people calling it Clinton and turning tenement flats into condos and getting six-figure prices for them. I could never figure out where the poor people went, or where the rich people came from.

He said, "Beautiful night, isn't it? Of course before we know it we'll be griping that it's too cold. One day you're dying of the heat and the next minute you're wondering where the summer went. Always the way, huh?"

"That's what they say."

He was in his late thirties, five-eight or -nine and slender, with pale skin and washed-out blue eyes. His hair was light brown and he was losing it, and the receding hairline combined with an overbite to give him a slightly rabbity appearance.

If I hadn't known he'd done time I would probably have guessed as much, although I couldn't tell you why beyond saying that he looked like a crook. A combination, perhaps, of bravado and furtiveness, an attitude that manifested physically in the set of the shoulders and the shiftiness of the eyes. I wouldn't say that it stood out all over him, but the first time I noticed him at a meeting I had the thought that here was a guy who'd been dirty, a guy who had most likely gone away for it.

He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. He selected one for himself and scratched a match to light it, cupping his hands against the wind. He blew out smoke, then held the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it. "I ought to quit these little fuckers," he said. "Sober up and die of cancer, where's the percentage in that?"

"How long are you sober now, Eddie?"

"Coming up on seven months."

"That's great."

"I been coming around the program for close to a year, but it took me a while to put down the drink."

"I didn't catch on right away, either."

"No? Well, I slipped around for a month or two. And then I thought I could still smoke dope, because what the hell, marijuana wasn't my problem, alcohol was my problem. But I guess what I heard at the meetings finally soaked in, and I put down the grass, too, and now I've been completely clean and dry for close to seven months."

"That's terrific."

"I guess."

"As far as the cigarettes are concerned, they say it's not a good idea to try to do too many things at once."

"I know it. I figure when I make my year is time enough to quit these things." He sucked hard on the cigarette and the end glowed red. "This is where I get off. You sure you don't want to get some coffee?"

"No, but I'll walk over to Ninth with you."

We walked the long block crosstown and then stood on the corner talking for a few minutes. I don't remember much of what we talked about. On the corner he said, "When he introduced you he said your home group was Keep It Simple. That's the group meets over at St. Paul the Apostle?"

I nodded. "The official name is Keep It Simple, but everybody just calls it St. Paul 's."

"You go there pretty regular?"

"More often than not."

"Maybe I'll see you there. Uh, you got a phone or something, Matt?"

"Sure. I'm at a hotel, the Northwestern. You just call the desk and they'll put you through to me."

"Who do I ask for?"

I looked at him for a second, then laughed. I had a small stack of wallet-size photos in my breast pocket, each stamped on the back with my name and phone number. I took one out and handed it to him. He said, " 'Matthew Scudder.' That's you, huh?" He turned the card over. "That's not you, though."

"You recognize her?"

He shook his head. "Who is she?"

"A girl I'm trying to find."

"I don't blame you. Find two while you're at it, I'll take one of 'em off your hands. What is it, a job you're working?"

"That's right."

"Pretty girl. Young, or at least she was when this was taken. What is she, about twenty-one?"

"Twenty-four now. The picture's a year or two old."

"Twenty-four's pretty young," he said. He turned the card again. "Matthew Scudder. It's funny how you'll know the most personal things about somebody but you won't know their name. Their last name, I mean. Mine's Dunphy, but maybe you already knew that."

"No."

"I'd give you my phone if I had one. They cut it off for nonpayment a year and a half ago. One of these days I'll have to get it straightened out. It's been good talking to you, Matt. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow night at St. Paul 's."

"I'll most likely be there."

"I'll make a point of getting there. You take care now."

"You too, Eddie."

He waited for the light, trotted across the avenue. Halfway across he turned and gave me a smile. "I hope you find that girl," he said.

I didn't find her that night, or any other girl, either. I walked the rest of the way to Fifty-seventh Street and stopped at the desk. There were no messages but Jacob volunteered that I'd had three calls spaced half an hour apart. "Could be it was the same person each time," he said. "He didn't leave no message."

I went up to my room, sat down and opened a book. I read a few pages and the phone rang.

I picked it up and a man said, "This Scudder?" I said it was. He said, "How much is the reward?"

"What reward?"

"Aren't you the man looking to find that girl?"

I could have hung up, but instead I said, "What girl?"

"Her picture's on one side and your name's on the other. Don't you be looking for her?"

"Do you know where she is?"

"Answer my question first," he said. "What's the reward?"

"There might be a small reward."

"How small is small?"

"Not enough to get rich on."

"Say a number."

"Maybe a couple of hundred dollars."

"Five hundred dollars?"

The price didn't really matter. He didn't have anything to sell me. "All right," I agreed. "Five hundred."

"Shit. That's not much."

"I know."

There was a pause. Then he said, briskly, "All right. Here's what you do. You know the corner of Broadway and Fifty-third Street, the uptown corner on the side towards Eighth Avenue. Meet me there in a half hour. And have the money with you. If you don't bring the bread, don't bother coming."

"I can't get the money at this hour."

"Ain't you got one of those all-night bank cards? Shit. All right, how much you got on you? You can give me some now and the rest tomorrow, but you don't want to stand around, man, because the chick might not be in the same place tomorrow, you dig what I'm saying?"

"More than you know."

"Say what?"

"What's her name?"

"How's that?"

"What's the chick's name?"

"You the one looking for her. Don't you know her damn name?"

"You don't, do you?"

He thought about it. "I know the name she using now," he said. It's the stupidest ones that turn crafty. "That's probably not the name you know."

"What name's she using?"

"Uh-huh. That's part of what you be buying with your five hundred dollars."

What I'd be buying would be a forearm across the windpipe, possibly a knife between the ribs. The ones who have something for you never start out asking about a reward, and they don't want to meet you on streetcorners. I felt tired enough to hang up on him, but he'd just call back again.

I said, "Shut up for a minute. My client's not authorizing any reward until the girl's recovered. You haven't got anything to sell and there's no way you're going to hustle a buck out of me. I don't want to meet you on a streetcorner, but if I did I wouldn't bring money with me. I'd bring a gun and a set of cuffs and a backup, and then I'd take you somewhere and work on you until I was sure you didn't know anything. Then I'd work on you some more because I'd be pissed at you for wasting my time. Is that what you want? You want to meet me on the corner?"

"Motherfucker-"

"No," I said, "you got that wrong. You're the motherfucker."

I hung up on him. "Asshole," I said aloud, to him or to myself, I'm not sure which. Then I took a shower and went to bed.

The girl's name was Paula Hoeldtke and I didn't really expect to find her. I'd tried to tell her father as much but it's hard to tell people what they aren't prepared to hear.

Warren Hoeldtke had a big square jaw and an open face and a lot of wiry carrot-colored hair that was going gray. He had a Subaru dealership in Muncie, Indiana, and I could picture him starring in his own television commercials, pointing at the cars, facing into the camera, telling people they'll get the best possible deal at Hoeldtke Subaru.

Paula was the fourth of the Hoeldtkes' six children. She'd gone to college at Ball State, right in Muncie. "David Letterman went there," Hoeldtke told me. "You probably knew that. Of course that was before Paula's time."

She had majored in theater arts, and immediately after graduation she had come to New York. "You can't make a career in the theater in Muncie," he told me. "Or anywhere in the state, for that matter. You have to go to New York or California. But I don't know, even if it wasn't that she had the bug to be an actress, I think she would have left. She had that urge to get off on her own. Her two older sisters, they both of them married boys from out of town, and in both cases the husbands decided to move to Muncie. And her older brother, my son Gordon, he's in the car business with me. And there's a boy and a girl still in school, so who knows for sure what they're going to do, but my guess is they'll stay close. But Paula, she had that wanderlust. I was just glad she stuck around long enough to finish college."

In New York she took acting classes, waited tables, lived in the West Fifties, and went on auditions. She had been in a showcase presentation of Another Part of Town at a storefront theater on Second Avenue and had taken part in a staged reading of Very Good Friends in the West Village. He had copies of the playbills and showed them to me, pointing out her name and the little capsule biographies that ran under the heading of "Who's Who in the Cast."

"She didn't get paid for this," he said. "You don't, you know, when you're starting out. It's so you can perform and people can see you- agents, casting people, directors. You hear all these salaries, this one getting five million dollars for a picture, but for most of them it's little or nothing for years."