A Long Line of Dead Men

"Ask me, they oughta put warning labels on bathtubs. No, see, there's a possibility of suicide. Woman lost her husband earlier this year, despondent over the loss, so on and so on. We found a bottle of J amp;B on the floor next to the tub. You drink in the tub and pass out, you want to call that suicide? I don't, not without a note, not when you got the children's feelings to consider, losing both parents in less'n six months. 'Sides, who knows what's in somebody else's mind? You have a few drinks, and before you know it you pass out and you drown. Or the drinks hit you hard, especially in a hot tub, and you lose your balance and smack your head and that's what knocks you out. Hey, accidents happen."

"And she died on Monday?"

"That's when they found her. Doc's guess was she was in the water three days by then." No wonder she hadn't answered the phone.

"You know what the weather's been like," he said. "And maybe you know what a body's like after a couple of days in the water. Put 'em both together, do I have to tell you what they spell?"

"Who discovered the body?"

"A neighbor. One of her kids called next door, concerned because he couldn't reach his mother on the phone. The neighbor had a key and let herself in. Hell of a thing to walk in on."

I called Jim Shorter. No answer.

I called Elaine at the shop. I said, "When Shorter called last night did he seem nervous? Did he sound as though he was afraid?"

"No, why?"

"Alan Watson's widow drowned in her bathtub sometime over the weekend. The time of death's hard to pinpoint, but it evidently happened after I went out to Corona and talked to the head of that security firm."

"I'm not sure I see the connection."

"There has to be one," I said. "I think the killer's tying off loose ends. He must be afraid somebody saw something, or knows something. He killed the widow, and the next logical step is the person who was first on the scene, the guard who discovered Watson's body."

"Jim Shorter?"

"His phone doesn't answer."

"He could be anywhere," she said. "Maybe he's at a meeting."

"Or in a bar," I said. "Or in his room with a bottle, not picking up the phone."

"Or having breakfast, or catching the Rothko retrospective at the Whitney, which would be my first choice if I didn't have a business to run. What are you going to do?"

"Look for him. There's something he knows, even if he doesn't know he knows it. I want to find him before it gets him killed."

"Hold on a second," she said. She covered the mouthpiece for a moment, then came back and said, "TJ's here. He wants to know if you want company."

By the time I got dressed and downstairs, he was waiting for me in front of the building. He was wearing his preppy clothes, the effect slightly compromised by the black Raiders cap. "We can lose the cap," he said, "if I's got to look straighter than straight, Nate."

"I didn't say anything about the cap."

"Guess I hearin' things."

"Or reading minds." I stepped to the curb, hailed a cab, told the driver Eighty-second and Second. "Anyway," I went on, "I don't think it matters what anybody wears. We're just wasting our time."

"You don't expect nothing."

"That's right."

"Just brung me along so's you'd have company."

"More or less."

He rolled his eyes. "Then what we doin' in a cab, Tab? Man like you take a taxi, be somethin' goin' down."

"Well," I said, "let's hope you're wrong."

I had him wait in the cab while I climbed a flight of stairs and checked the meeting room at the Eighty-second Street Workshop. That was where I'd brought Jim Friday night, and he'd mentioned going to other meetings there since. There was a meeting going on, and I went in and found a good vantage point beside the coffee urn. When I was sure he wasn't there I went downstairs and got back in the cab. I had the driver go up First Avenue and drop us at the corner of Ninety-fourth.

Our first stop was the Blue Canoe, and if Shorter didn't get drunk and didn't get killed, someday the place might figure in his qualification. "I met this guy there," he could say, "figuring I could con him into buying me a couple of beers, and the next thing I knew I was at an AA meeting. And here I am, and I haven't had a drink since."

He wasn't at the Blue Canoe now, or at any of the other bars or luncheonettes on First Avenue. TJ and I made the rounds together. It would have been convenient if we could have shared the work, but how would he know Shorter if he saw him?

When we'd finished with a four-block stretch of First Avenue, we walked west on Ninety-fourth to Shorter's rooming house. I'd have rung his bell if I knew which one it was. Instead I rang the bell marked SUPER. When it went unanswered we left and walked to Second Avenue, where we wasted some more time checking more bars and restaurants, from Ninety-second to Ninety-sixth and back to where we'd started. I found a phone that worked and called Shorter's number and it didn't answer.

I was starting to get a bad feeling.