Lawrence Block - Scudder 05 - Eight Million Ways to Die In memory of
BILLY DUGAN
CLIFF BOSTONJOHN
BAMBI
MARK THE DWARF
and
RED-HAIRED MAGGIE
Contents
Epigraph
1 I saw her entrance. It would have been hard to miss. She had blonde hair that was close to white,...
2 There was a problem. In order for me to talk to Chance I had to find him, and she couldn't...
3 I got up around ten-thirty, surprisingly well rested after six hours of skimming the surface of sleep.
4 He wasn't hard to recognize. His suit was a dove gray flannel and with it he wore a bright red...
5 I read the paper while I ate breakfast. The housing cop in Corona was still in critical condition...
6 Kim Dakkinen had died in a room on the seventeenth floor of the Galaxy Downtowner, one...
7 It was no big deal. I didn't even feel the drink at first, and then what I experienced was a...
8 I bought the News the next morning. A new atrocity had already driven Kim Dakkinen off...
9 I woke up suddenly, consciousness coming on abruptly and at top volume.
10 He said, "You still think I killed her, don't you?" "What does it matter what I think?"
11 The circular drive in Central Park is almost exactly six miles around.
12 "I didn't know her all that well. I met her a year or so ago at the beauty parlor...
13 When I left Elaine's the sky was growing dark and the streets were thick with rush-hour traffic.
14 He took me around the corner and a block and a half south on Tenth Avenue to a tavern...
15 I walked straight back to my hotel. The liquor stores were closed but the bars were still open.
16 Donna Campion's apartment was on the tenth floor of the white brick building on East...
17 I had taken a cab from Morton Street to Donna's place on East Seventeenth.
18 Saturday was a good day for knocking on doors. It usually is because more people are...
19 Just as I was leaving her building, a cab pulled up in front to discharge a passenger.
20 Danny Boy held his glass of Russian vodka aloft so that he could look at the light shine through it.
21 I didn't cross the street. The kid with the smashed face and broken legs was not the only...
22 She was dead, all right. She lay on her back, nude, one arm flung back over her head and...
23 It wasn't half the hassle it might have been. I didn't know either of the cops who came out...
24 Tuesday was largely devoted to a game of Follow the Fur.
25 I called Durkin from a Dunkin' Donuts on Woodside Avenue .
26 There was a message at the desk to call Danny Boy Bell.
27 "Jesus, I need a shave," Durkin said. He'd just dropped what was left of his cigarette...
28 The body was still there, sprawled full-length on the king-size bed.
29 The telephone woke me. I fought my way out of sleep like an underwater swimmer coming...
30 Around mid-morning I went home to shower and shave and put on my best suit.
31 We left the converted firehouse with me in the back seat and Chance wearing a chauffeur's cap.
32 Around ten-thirty that night I walked in and out of Poogan's Pub on West Seventy-second Street .
33 The LL train starts at Eighth Avenue , crosses Manhattan along Fourteenth Street , and winds up...
34 In my room I put the two pounds of coffee on the dresser, then went and made sure nobody...
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
-- EDGAR ALLAN POE
Chapter 1
I saw her entrance. It would have been hard to miss. She had blonde hair that was close to white, the sort that's called towhead when it belongs to a child. Hers was plaited in heavy braids that she'd wrapped around her head and secured with pins. She had a high smooth forehead and prominent cheekbones and a mouth that was just a little too wide. In her western-style boots she must have run to six feet, most of her length in her legs. She was wearing designer jeans the color of burgundy and a short fur jacket the color of champagne. It had been raining on and off all day, and she wasn't carrying an umbrella or wearing anything on her head. Beads of water glinted like diamonds on her plaited hair.
She stood for a moment in the doorway getting her bearings. It was around three-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, which is about as slow as it gets at Armstrong's. The lunch crowd was long gone and it was too early for the after-work people. In another fifteen minutes a couple of schoolteachers would stop in for a quick one, and then some nurses from Roosevelt Hospital whose shift ended at four, but for the moment there were three or four people at the bar and one couple finishing a carafe of wine at a front table and that was it. Except for me, of course, at my usual table in the rear.
She made me right away, and I caught the blue of her eyes all the way across the room. But she stopped at the bar to make sure before making her way between the tables to where I was sitting.
She said, "Mr. Scudder? I'm Kim Dakkinen. I'm a friend of Elaine Mardell's."
"She called me. Have a seat."
"Thank you."
She sat down opposite me, placed her handbag on the table between us, took out a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter, then paused with the cigarette unlit to ask if it was all right if she smoked. I assured her that it was.
Her voice wasn't what I'd expected. It was quite soft, and the only accent it held was Midwestern. After the boots and the fur and the severe facial planes and the exotic name, I'd been anticipating something more out of a masochist's fantasy: harsh and stern and European. She was younger, too, than I'd have guessed at first glance. No more than twenty-five.
She lit her cigarette and positioned the lighter on top of the cigarette pack. The waitress, Evelyn, had been working days for the past two weeks because she'd landed a small part in an off-Broadway showcase. She always looked on the verge of a yawn. She came to the table while Kim Dakkinen was playing with her lighter. Kim ordered a glass of white wine. Evelyn asked me if I wanted more coffee, and when I said yes Kim said, "Oh, are you having coffee? I think I'd like that instead of wine. Would that be all right?"
When the coffee arrived she added cream and sugar, stirred, sipped, and told me she wasn't much of a drinker, especially early in the day. But she couldn't drink it black the way I did, she'd never been able to drink black coffee, she had to have it sweet and rich, almost like dessert, and she supposed she was just lucky but she'd never had a weight problem, she could eat anything and never gain an ounce, and wasn't that lucky?
I agreed that it was.
Had I known Elaine long? For years, I said. Well, she hadn't really known her that long herself, in fact she hadn't even been inNew York too terribly long, and she didn't know her that well either, but she thought Elaine was awfully nice. Didn't I agree? I agreed. Elaine was very levelheaded, too, very sensible, and that was something, wasn't it? I agreed it was something.
I let her take her time. She had acres of small talk, she smiled and held your eyes with hers when she talked, and she could probably have walked off with the Miss Congeniality award in any beauty contest she didn't win outright, and if it took her awhile to get to the point that was fine with me. I had no place else to go and nothing better to do.
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