Even the Wicked

He laughed. "And piss on them, huh? But you get what I mean, don't you? They're saying, 'I dare you.'

Saying, 'Go ahead, kill somebody, make my day.' I call that irresponsible."

"If you say so."

"Why, you patronizing son of a bitch. Are you too much of a big shot now to have conversation with me?"

I resisted the impulse to hang up. "Of course not," I said soothingly. "I think you're probably right saying what you said, but it's no longer something I'm involved in, not even peripherally. And I'm going nuts enough without it."

"Oh, yeah? Over what?"

"Another case that's not really any business of mine, but I seem to have taken it on. There's a man I'm just about certain committed murder, and I'm damned if I can figure out why."

"Gotta be love or money," he said. "Unless he's a public-spirited son of a bitch like my guy."

"It's money, but I can't make it make sense. Suppose you're insured and I'm the beneficiary. I gain if you die."

"Why don't we make it the other way around?"

"Just let me—"

"No, really," he said, his voice rising as he got into it. "I know this is hypothetical, but why do I have to be the schmuck? Make it that I win if you die."

"Fine. You gain if I die. So I jump out the window, and—"

"Why do a crazy thing like that?"

"And you shoot me on the way down. Why?"

"You jump out the window and I shoot you on the way down."

"Right. Why?"

"Target practice? Is this some trick, you were wearing a parachute, some shit like that?"

"Jesus," I said. "No, it's not a trick question. It's an analogy."

"Well, excuuuuse me. I shoot you on the way down?"

"Uh-huh."

"And kill you."

"Right."

"But you would have died anyhow when you landed. Because this is an analogy and not a trick question, so please tell me it's not a first-floor window you just jumped out of."

"No, it's a high floor."

"And no parachute."

"No parachute."

"Well, shit," he said. "I don't get the money if it's suicide. How's that for simple?"

"Doesn't apply."

"Doesn't apply? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Suicide wouldn't invalidate the policy," I said. "Anyway, when I jump out the window it's not suicide."

"No, it's an act of Christian charity. It's a response to overwhelming public demand. Why isn't it suicide when you jump out the window? You're not a bird or a plane, let alone Superman."

"The analogy was imperfect," I allowed. "Let's just say I'm falling from a great height."

"What did you do, lose your balance?"

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"Ha! Tell me about it. So it's an accident, is that what you're saying?… Where'd you go? Hey, Earth to Matt. Are you there?"

"I'm here."

"Well, you had me wondering. It's an accident, right?"

"Right," I said. "It's an accident."

21

I stayed put over the weekend. I went to a couple of meetings, and Saturday afternoon Elaine and I took the #7 train out to Flushing and walked around the new Chinatown. She complained that it wasn't like Manhattan's Chinatown at all, feeling neither quaint nor sinister but disturbingly suburban. We wound up eating at a Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant, and after two bites she put down her chopsticks and said,

"I take back everything I said."

"Not bad, huh?"

"Heaven," she said.

Sunday I had dinner with Jim Faber for the first time in quite a few weeks, and that meant another Chinese meal, but in our own part of town, not way out in Queens. We talked about a lot of different things, including Marty McGraw's column in that morning's News, in which he'd essentially accused Will

#2 of jerking us all around.

"I can't understand it," I said. "I talked to him a couple of days ago and he was pissed off at the Post for running a story suggesting that this Will is all hat and no cattle. And now he—"

"All hat and no cattle?"

"All talk and no action."

"I know what it means. I'm just surprised to hear it coming out of your New York mouth."

"I've been on the phone with a lot of Texans lately," I said. "Maybe some of it rubbed off. The point is he called them irresponsible for writing Will off, and now he's deliberately goading him himself, telling the guy to shit or get off the pot."

"Maybe the police put him up to it."

"Maybe."

"But you don't think so."

"I think they'd be more inclined to let sleeping dogs lie. That's more their style than using Marty as a cafs-paw."

"Cats and dogs," he said. "Sounds like rain. McGraw's a drunk, isn't he? Didn't you tell me that?"

"I don't want to take his inventory."

"Oh, go ahead and take his inventory. 'We are not saints,'

remember?"

"Then I suppose he's a drunk."

"And you're surprised he's not perfectly consistent? Maybe he doesn't remember objecting to the story in the Post. Maybe he doesn't even remember reading it."

* * *

Monday I got on the phone right after breakfast and made half a dozen calls, some of them lengthy. I called from the apartment, not from my hotel room across the street, which meant I'd be charged for the calls. That allowed me to feel virtuous and stupid instead of shady and clever.