A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (13 page)

I said I would.

I had twenty-six names, only eleven with phone numbers. I tried the phone numbers first, because it's so much easier when you can do this sort of thing without walking all over the city. It was frustrating, though, because I couldn't seem to complete a call, and when I did I succeeded only in getting a recording. I got three answering machines, one with a cute message, the others simply repeating the last four digits of the number and inviting me to leave a message. Four times I got the NYNEX computer-generated voice telling me that the number I had reached was no longer in service. On one occasion it supplied a new number; I wrote it down and called it, and nobody answered.

When I finally got a human voice I barely knew how to respond. I looked quickly at my list and said, "Uh, Mr. Accardo? Joseph Accardo?"

"Speaking."

"You're a member of the video-rental club"- what was its name?- "at Broadway and Sixty-first."

"Broadway and Sixty-first," he said. "Which one's that?"

"Next to Martin's."

"Oh, right, sure. What did I do, not bring something back?"

"Oh, no," I said. "I just noticed there's been no activity in your account in months, Mr. Accardo, and I wanted to invite you to come in and check out our selection."

"Oh," he said, surprised. "Well, that's very nice of you. I'll be sure and do that. I got in the habit, going to this place near where I work, but I'll stop by one of these nights."

I hung up the phone and crossed Accardo off the list. I had twenty-five names left and it looked as though I was going to have to do them on foot.

I called it a day around four-thirty, by which time I'd managed to cross off ten more names. It was a slow process, slower than I might have expected. The addresses were all pretty much within walking distance, so I could get around without too much trouble, but that didn't mean I could establish whether or not a particular person still lived at a particular address.

I was back in my hotel room by five. I showered and shaved and sat in front of the TV. At seven I met Elaine at a Moroccan place on Cornelia Street in the Village. We both ordered the couscous. She said, "If the food tastes as good as the room smells, we're in for a treat. What's the best place in the world to get couscous?"

"I don't know. Casablanca?"

" Walla Walla."

"Oh."

"Get it? Couscous, Walla Walla. Or, if you wanted couscous in Germany, you'd go to Baden-Baden."

"I think I get the premise."

"I knew you would, you've got that kind of mind. Where would you get couscous in Samoa?"

" Pago Pago. Excuse me, will you? I'll be back in a minute, I have to make peepee."

The couscous was terrific and the portions were large. While we ate, I told her how I'd spent the day. "It was frustrating," I said, "because I couldn't just check the doorbells to determine whether or not the person I was looking for lived there."

"Not in New York."

"Of course not. A lot of people leave the slot next to their bell blank on general principles. I suppose I should understand that, I'm in a program that places a premium on anonymity, but some people might find it a little strange. Other people have names on the doorbell but the names aren't theirs, because they're living in an illegal sublet and they don't want anybody to find out. So if I'm looking for Bill Williams, say-"

"That's William Williams," she said. "The couscous king of Walla Walla."

"That's the guy. If his name's not on the bell, that doesn't mean he's not there. And if his name is on the bell, that doesn't mean anything either."

"Poor baby. So what do you do, call the super?"

"If there's a resident super, but in most of the smaller buildings there isn't. And the super's no more likely to be home than anybody else. And a superintendent doesn't necessarily know the names of the tenants, as far as that goes. You wind up ringing bells and knocking on doors and talking to people, most of whom don't know much about their neighbors and are very cautious about disclosing what they do know."

"Hard way to make a living."

"Some days it certainly seems that way."

"It's a good thing you love it."

"Do I? I suppose so."

"Of course you do."

"I guess. It's satisfying when you can keep hammering away at something until it starts to make sense. But not everything does." We were on dessert now, some kind of gooey honey cake, too sweet for me to finish. The waitress had brought us Moroccan coffee, which was the same idea as Turkish coffee, very thick and bitter, with powdery grounds filling the bottom third of the cup.

I said, "I put in a good day's work. That's satisfying. But I'm working on the wrong case."

"Can't you work on two things at once?"

"Probably, but nobody's paying me to investigate a snuff film. I'm supposed to be determining whether or not Richard Thurman killed his wife."

"You're working on it."

"Am I? Thursday night I went to the fights, with the excuse that he was producing the telecast. I established several things. I established that he's the kind of guy who will take off his tie and jacket when he's working. And he's spry, he can climb up onto the ring apron and then drop down again without breaking a sweat. I got to watch him give the placard girl a pat on the ass, and-"

"Well, that's something."

"It was something for him. I don't know that it was anything much for me."

"Are you kidding? It says something if he can play grab-ass with a tootsie two months after his wife's death."

"Two and a half months," I said.

"Same difference."

"A tootsie, huh?"

"A tootsie, a floozie, a bimbo. What's wrong with tootsie?"

"Nothing. He wasn't exactly playing grab-ass. He just gave her a pat."

"In front of millions of people."

"They should be so lucky. A couple hundred people."

"Plus the audience at home."

"They were watching a commercial. Anyway, what would it prove? That he's a coldhearted son of a bitch who puts his hands on other women while his wife's body has barely had time to settle in the grave? Or that he doesn't have to put on an act because he's genuinely innocent? You could see it either way."

"Well," she said.

"That was Thursday. Yesterday, relentless fellow that I am, I drank a glass of club soda in the same gin joint with him. It was a little like being at opposite ends of a crowded subway car, but we were both actually in the same room at the same time."

"That's something."

"And last night I had dinner at Radicchio's, on the ground floor of his apartment building."

"How was it?"

"Nothing special. The pasta was pretty good. We'll try it sometime."

"Was he in the restaurant?"

"I don't even think he was in the building. If he was home he was sitting in the dark. You know, I called his apartment this morning. I was making all those other calls so I called him."

"What did he have to say?"

"I got his machine. I didn't leave a message."

"I hope he'll find that as frustrating as I always do."

"One can only hope. You know what I ought to do? I ought to give Lyman Warriner his money back."

"No, don't do that."

"Why not? I can't keep it if I don't do anything to earn it, and I can't seem to think of a way to do that. I read the file the cops built on the case, and they already tried everything I could think of and more."

"Don't return the money," she said. "Honey, he doesn't give a damn about the money. His sister got killed and if he thinks he's doing something about it he'll have a chance to die in peace."

"What am I supposed to do, string him along?"

"If he asks, tell him these things take time. You won't be asking him for more money-"

"God, no."

"- so he'll have no reason to think that you're hustling him. You don't have to keep the money, if you don't feel you've done anything to earn it. Give it away. Give it to AIDS research, give it to God's Love We Deliver, there are plenty of places to give it to."

"I suppose."

"Knowing you," she said, "you'll find a way to earn it."

THERE was a movie she wanted to see at the Waverly but it was Saturday night and there was a long line that neither of us felt like standing in. We walked around for a while, had some cappuccino on Macdougal Street, and listened to a girl folksinger in a no-cover club on Bleecker.

"Long hair and granny glasses," Elaine said. "And a long gingham gown. Who said the sixties were over?"

"All her songs sound the same."

"Well, she only knows three chords."

Outside I asked her if she felt like listening to some jazz. She said, "Sure, where? Sweet Basil? The Vanguard? Pick a place."

"I was thinking maybe Mother Goose."

"Uh-huh."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I like Mother Goose."

"So do you want to go?"

"Sure. Do we get to stay even if Danny Boy's not there?"

DANNY Boy wasn't there, but we hadn't been there long before he showed up. Mother Goose is at Amsterdam and Eighty-first, a jazz club that draws a salt-and-pepper crowd. They keep the lights low, and the drummer uses brushes and never takes a solo. It and Poogan's Pub are the two places where you can find Danny Boy Bell.

Wherever you find him, he tends to stand out. He's an albino Negro, his skin and eyes both extremely sensitive to sunlight, and he has arranged his life so he and the sun are never up at the same time. He is a small man who dresses with flair, favoring dark suits and flamboyant vests. He drinks a lot of Russian vodka, straight up and ice-cold, and he often has a woman with him, usually every bit as flashy as his vest. The one tonight had a mane of strawberry blond hair and absolutely enormous breasts.

The maitre d' led them to the ringside table where he always sits. I didn't think he'd noticed us, but at the end of the set a waiter appeared at our table and said that Mr. Bell hoped we would join him. When we got there Danny Boy said, "Matthew, Elaine, it's so nice to see you both. This is Sascha, isn't she darling?"

Sascha giggled. We made conversation, and after a few minutes Sascha sashayed off to the ladies' room.

"To powder her nose," Danny Boy said. "As it were. The best argument for legalizing drugs is people wouldn't keep running to the lavatory all the time. When they figure out the man-hours cocaine is costing American industry, they really ought to factor in those rest-room trips."

I waited until Sascha's next trip to the ladies' room to bring up Richard Thurman. "I sort of assumed he killed her," Danny Boy said. "She was rich and he wasn't. If only the fellow was a doctor I'd say there was no doubt at all. Why do you suppose doctors are always killing their wives? Do they tend to marry bitches? How would you explain it?"

We kicked it around some. I said maybe they were used to playing God, making life-and-death decisions. Elaine had a more elaborate theory. She said people who went into the healing professions were frequently individuals who were trying to overcome a perception of themselves as hurting people. "They become doctors to prove they're not killers," she said, "and then when they experience stress they revert to what they think of as their basic nature, and they kill."

"That's interesting," Danny Boy said. "Why would they have that perception in the first place?"

"A birth thought," she said. "The mother almost dies when they're born, or experiences a great deal of pain. So the child's thought is I hurt women or I kill women. He tries to compensate for this by becoming a doctor, and later on when push comes to shove-"

"He kills his wife," Danny Boy said. "I like it."

I asked what data she had to support the theory, and she said she didn't have any, but there were lots of studies on the effects of birth thoughts. Danny Boy said he didn't care about data, you could find data to prove anything, but the theory was the first one he'd ever heard that made sense to him, so screw the data. Sascha had returned to the table during the discussion but it went on without interruption, and she didn't seem to be paying any attention.

"About Thurman," Danny Boy said. "I haven't heard anything specific. I haven't listened all that hard. Should I?"

"Be good to keep an ear open."

He poured himself a few ounces of Stoly. At both of his places, Poogan's and Mother Goose, they bring him his vodka in a champagne bucket packed with ice. He looked down into the glass, then drank it down like water.

He said, "He's with a cable channel. A new sports channel."

"Five Borough."

"That's right. There's some talk going around about them."

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing very specific. Something shaky or shady about it, some dubious money backing it. I'll see what else I hear."

A few minutes later Sascha left the table again. When she was out of earshot Elaine leaned forward and said, "I can't stand it. That child has the biggest tits I've ever seen in my life."

"I know."

"Danny Boy, they're bigger than your head."

"I know. She's special, isn't she? But I think I'm going to have to give her up." He poured himself another drink. "I can't afford her," he said. "You wouldn't believe what it costs to keep that little nose happy."

"Enjoy her while you can."

"Oh, I shall," he said. "Like life itself."

BACK in her apartment, Elaine made a pot of coffee and we sat on the couch. She stacked some solo piano recordings on the turntable- Monk, Randy Weston, Cedar Walton. She said, "She was something, wasn't she? Sascha. I don't know where Danny Boy finds them."

"K Mart," I suggested.

"When you see something like that you have to figure silicone, but maybe they're like Topsy, maybe they just growed. What do you think?"