Eight Million Ways to Die

"How?"



"I don't know. Maybe he switched some stones. Maybe he held out. Maybe he decided to grab the whole bundle and run with it. He must have told Kim something because on the strength of it she told Chance she wanted out. She wasn't going to be turning tricks anymore. If I were going to guess, I'd say he did a switch and went out of the country to unload the good stuff. Kim got herself free of Chance while he was gone, and when he got back it was going to be Happily Ever After time. But he never came back."



"If he never came back, who killed her?"



"The people he crossed. They decoyed her to that room at the Galaxy Downtowner. She probably thought she was going to be meeting him there. She wasn't hooking anymore, she wouldn't have gone to a hotel room to meet a john. In fact she'd never been much on hotel tricks. But suppose she gets a call from somebody who says he's a friend and the boyfriend's afraid to come to her place because he thinks he's being followed, so would she please meet him at the hotel?"



"And she went."



"Sure she went. She got all dressed up, she wore the presents he gave her, the mink jacket and the emerald ring. The jacket wasn't worth a fortune because the guy wasn't rich, he didn't have money to burn, but he could give her a terrific emerald because the emeralds didn't cost him anything. He was in the business, he could take one of those smuggled stones and have it set in a ring for her."



"So she went over and got killed."



"Right."



Danny Boy drank some vodka. "Why? You figure they killed her to get the ring back?"



"No. They killed her to kill her."



"Why?"



"Because they were Colombians," I said, "and that's how they do it. When they have a reason to hit somebody they go for the whole family."



"Jesus."



"Maybe they figure it's a deterrent," I said. "I could see where it might be. The cases make the papers pretty regularly, especially in Miami. A whole family gets waxed because somebody burned somebody else in a coke deal. Colombia's a rich little country. They've got the best coffee, the best marijuana, the best cocaine."



"And the best emeralds?"



"That's right. Kim's jeweler wasn't a married guy. I figured he was, that's why he was so hard to get a line on, but he never married. Maybe he never fell in love until he fell in love with Kim, and maybe that's why he was ready to kick his life over. Anyway, he was a bachelor. No wife, no kids, no living parents. You want to rub out his family, what do you do? You kill his girlfriend."



Bryna's face was as white as her hair now. She didn't like stories where they killed the girlfriend.



"The killing was pretty professional," I went on, "in that the killer was careful about evidence. He covered his tracks pretty well. But something made him do a butcher job instead of a couple of quick bullets from a silenced handgun. Maybe he had a thing about prostitutes, or maybe it was women in general. One way or another, he went and did a number on Kim.



"Then he cleaned up, packed the dirty towels along with the machete, and got out of there. He left the fur jacket and he left the money in the purse but he took her ring."



"Because it was worth so much money?"



"Possibly. There's no hard evidence on the ring, and for all I know it was cut glass and she bought it for herself. But it might have been an emerald, and even if it wasn't the killer might have thought it was. It's one thing to leave a few hundred dollars on a dead body to show you don't rob the dead. It's something else to leave an emerald that might be worth fifty thousand dollars, especially if it's your emerald in the first place."



"I follow you."



"The room clerk at the Galaxy Downtowner was a Colombian, a young kid named Octavio Calderуn. Maybe that was a coincidence. There are a lot of Colombians in town these days. Maybe the killer picked the Galaxy because he knew somebody who worked there. It doesn't matter. Calderуn probably recognized the killer, or at least knew enough about him to keep his mouth shut. When a cop came back to have another talk with him, Calderуn disappeared. Either the killer's friends told him to disappear or Calderуn decided he'd be safer somewhere else. Back home in Cartagena, say, or another rooming house in another part of Queens."



Or maybe he got killed, I thought. That was possible, too. But I didn't think so. When these people killed, they liked to leave the corpses in plain sight.



"There was another whore that got killed."



"Sunny Hendryx," I said. "That was a suicide. Maybe Kim's death triggered that, so maybe the man who killed Kim has some moral responsibility for Sunny's death. But she killed herself."



"I'm talking about the street hustler. The TV."



"Cookie Blue."



"That's the one. Why did she get killed? To throw you off the track? Except you weren't on the track to begin with."



"No."



"Then why? You think the first killing turned the killer nuts? Triggered something in him that made him want to do it again?"



"I think that's part of it," I said. "Nobody would do a second butcher job like that unless he enjoyed the first one. I don't know if he had sex with either of his victims, but the kick he got out of the killings had to be sexual."



"So he just picked up Cookie for the hell of it?"



Bryna blanched again. It was bad enough hearing about someone who got killed for being the wrong person's girl- friend. It was even worse hearing about a girl getting killed at random.



"No," I said, "Cookie was killed for a specific reason. The killer went looking for her and passed up a batch of other streetwalkers until he found her. Cookie was family."



"Family? Whose family?"



"The boyfriend's."



"He had two sweeties, this jeweler? A call girl and a transvestite hustler?"



"Cookie wasn't his sweetie. Cookie was his brother."



"Cookie-"



"Cookie Blue started life as Mark Blaustein. Mark had an older brother named Adrian who went into the jewelry business. Adrian Blaustein had a girlfriend named Kim and some business associates from Colombia."



"So Cookie and Kim were connected."



"They had to be connected. I'm sure they never met each other. I don't think Mark and Adrian had any contact in recent years. That may explain why it took the killer so long to find Cookie. But I knew there had to be some kind of link. I told someone earlier that they were sisters under the skin. That wasn't far off. They were almost sisters-in-law."



He thought about this, then told Bryna to give us a few moments alone. This time I didn't interfere. She left the table and Danny Boy motioned to the waitress. He ordered vodka for himself and asked me what I wanted.



"Nothing right now," I said.



When she brought back the vodka he took a careful little sip and set the glass down. "You've been to the cops," he said.



"No cops."



"Why not?"



"Just didn't get around to it yet."



"You had to come here instead."



"That's right."



"I can keep my mouth shut, Matt, but Bryna the Vagina wouldn't know how. She thinks unexpressed thoughts build up inside your head and explode your skull, and she's not taking any chances. Anyway, you were talking loud enough for half the room to pick up on what you were saying."



"I know that."



"I figured you did. What do you want?"



"I want the killer to know what I know."



"That shouldn't take long."



"I want you to pass it on, Danny Boy. I'm leaving here, I'm walking back to my neighborhood. I'll probably spend a couple of hours in Armstrong's. Then I'll walk around the corner to my room."



"You're gonna get killed, Matt."



"This fucker only kills girls," I said.



"Cookie was only half a girl. Maybe he's working his way up to men."



"Maybe."



"You want him to make a move on you."



"Looks that way, doesn't it?"



"Looks to me as though you're crazy, Matt. I tried to head you off the minute you came over here. Tried to cool you down some."



"I know."



"It's probably too late now. Whether I pass it on or not."



"It was too late before then. I was uptown before I came down here. You know a man named Royal Waldron?"



"Sure, I know Royal."



"He and I talked some. Royal's been known to do a little business with some fellows from Colombia."



"He would," Danny Boy said. "The business he's in."



"So they probably already know. But you could pass it on anyway, just for insurance."



"Insurance," he said. "What's the opposite of life insurance?"



"I don't know."



"Death insurance. They may be waiting outside for you right now, Matt."



"It's possible."



"Why don't you go pick up the phone and call the cops? They could send a car and you go somewhere and make a statement. Let the bastards earn their money."



"I want the killer," I said. "I want him one-on-one."



"You're not Latin. Where'd you get this macho hangup?"



"Just pass the word, Danny Boy."



"Sit down a minute." He leaned forward, dropped his voice. "You don't want to walk out of here without a piece. Just sit here a minute and I'll get you something."



"I don't need a gun."



"No, of course not. Who needs one? You can take his machete away from him and make him eat it. Then break both his legs and leave him in an alley."



"Something like that."



"Will you let me get you a gun?" His eyes searched mine. "You've already got one," he said. "On you, right now. Haven't you?"



"I don't need a gun," I said.



And I didn't. On the way out of the Top Knot I put my hand in my pocket and felt the butt and barrel of the little.32. Who needed it? A little gun like that doesn't have a whole lot of stopping power anyway.



Especially when you can't make yourself squeeze the trigger.



I went outside. It was still raining but no harder than before. I tugged the brim of my hat and took a good look around.



The Mercury sedan was parked on the other side of the street. I recognized it by its crimped fenders. While I was standing there the driver started the engine.



I walked over to Columbus Avenue. While I waited for the light to change I saw that the Mercury had come around in a U-turn and was approaching. The light changed and I walked across the street.



I had the gun in my hand and my hand in my pocket. My index finger was on the trigger. I remembered how the trigger had trembled beneath my finger not too long ago.



I'd been on this same street then.



I walked on downtown. A couple of times I looked over my shoulder. The Mercury stayed a little less than a block behind me all the way.



I never relaxed, but I was especially tense when I got to the block where I'd drawn the gun once before. I couldn't help looking back, expecting to see a car careening toward me. I spun around involuntarily once at the sound of brakes screeching, then realized the sound was a good two blocks away.



Nerves.



I passed the spot where I'd dropped to the pavement and rolled. I checked the place where the bottle had broken. There was still some broken glass there, though I couldn't be sure it was the same broken glass. A lot of bottles get broken every day.