A Long Line of Dead Men

"Jesus, why do I tolerate you? What I was starting to say, I figure you know somebody from AA who's got guilty knowledge of some crimes, including the four homicides we've been talking about. I wouldn't want to think you're gonna sit on something that ought to be brought out and looked at. Whoever did the gay fellow, Uhl, is probably dead himself by now, and Cloonan's file's closed for the time being, but the boys in the One-oh would love to catch a break in the Shipton case, and Watson, Jesus, the body's barely cold, that's still an active investigation. If you know anything, it should get channeled to the right people."

"I don't."

"There's probably a way to keep your client out of it, at least in the early stages."

"I realize that."

He looked at me. "Your client didn't do all four guys himself, did he?"

"No."

"You answered that one awfully quickly."

"Well, I knew you were going to ask it. And the answer didn't require a whole lot of thought."

"I guess not. Matt-"

I had to give him something. Without planning to, I said, "They knew each other."

"They? Meaning your client and who? Wait a minute. The vics knew each other?"

"That's right."

"What did they all do, wipe out some Vietnamese village together and some slope's looking to get even?"

"They were part of a group."

"A group? What kind of a group?"

"Like a fraternity," I said. "They got together once in a while to have dinner and compare notes."

" 'Bet my note's bigger than your note.' Let's see, you got a commodities broker, a famous artist, a cabdriver, and a faggot. That's a hell of a fraternity. Wait a minute, was this a gay thing?"

"No."

"You sure of that? Shipton and his wife ran in a kind of a kinky crowd. Wouldn't surprise me to hear he swung from both sides of the plate."

"It wouldn't surprise me to hear it about anybody," I said, "but this wasn't about sex. I can't go into details without clearing it with my client, but there's nothing out of the ordinary about the group. The only thing unusual is that four of them have been murdered."

"How big's the group?"

"Around thirty."

"Thirty men and four of 'em murdered, Jesus, that's high even for New York." His eyes narrowed. "Same killer?"

"No reason to think that."

"Yeah, but you think it yourself, don't you? You asked if a single killer could've done the Shiptons."

"Never forget a thing, do you?"

"Not if I can help it. You got a suspect? A motive? Anything?"

"Nothing."

"I won't say level with me, Matt, but don't hold out the moon and the stars on me, will you?"

"I'm not holding out anything concrete."

"Yeah, and what the hell does that mean? What's the opposite of concrete?"

"Asphalt," I suggested. "Plaster of Paris."

"Twelve years between Uhl and Watson," he said, "you're talking about a killer who likes to take his time. The other twenty-six guys, time he gets around to them they'll be too old to care. You know what he's like, this guy? He's prostate cancer. By the time he kills you you're already dead of something else."

10

There was a message from Wally Donn at the hotel desk. "I'll be here for the next hour," he said when I called. "I've got those credit reports for you, and something else you'll like."

First I called TJ on his beeper. He must have been close to a phone; he called me back in well under five minutes. "Who wants TJ?" he demanded.

"No one with any sense," I said. "How come you have to ask? If you don't recognize my voice, you still ought to know the number by now."

" 'Course I do, Boo. 'Who wants TJ' just be a trademark. Part of my rap, like."

"Well, I can see where a fellow like you would need a trademark," I said. "Something to set you apart from the faceless masses."

"If we was on one of them video phones," he said, "you could see me rollin' my eyes."

"I'm sorry to miss that. You want to meet me? I might have some work."

"Say where and when." I named a coffee shop on Twenty-third Street half a block from the Flatiron Building. "Let's shoot for a quarter to twelve," I said, "but I might be a few minutes late."

"Not me," he said. "We meetin' in a restaurant, I'm gonna be there on time."

* * *

"The client," Wally said, "turned out to be a cheap fuck."

"Not unheard of."

"Christ, no. The world is full of cheap fucks. How it went, I told him what a job you did, how you ought to be down for a bonus. I said we as an agency didn't expect anything over and above our standard fees, which we don't, but that when a guy working per diem comes through like you did he ought to see something extra for his troubles.

"So he asked me what was reasonable. You know what went through my mind? The old expression, a picture is worth a thousand words. So okay, figure a buck a word, and I said a thousand dollars struck me as a reasonable amount. Which it did."

"Thanks, Wally."

"Well, it wasn't coming out of my pocket, so I could afford the gesture. And what's a thousand dollars to this fuck anyway, five hours of his lawyer's time? If that. So here's his check. Five hundred dollars."

"Did he say he thought a thousand was too high?"