Upstairs, I tossed everything but the phone bill and two message slips, both informing me that "Ken Curry" had called, once at 2:30, and again at 3:45. I didn't call him right away. I was exhausted.
The day had taken it out of me. I hadn't done that much physically, hadn't spent eight hours hefting sacks of cement, but all those conversations with all those people had taken their toll. You have to concentrate hard, and the process is especially demanding when you're running a story of your own. Unless you're a
pathological liar, a fiction is more arduous to utter than the truth; that's the principle on which the lie detector is based, and my own experience tends to bear it out. A full day of lying and role-playing takes it out of you, especially if you're on your feet for most of it.
I took a shower and touched up my shave, then put the TV news on and listened to fifteen minutes of it with my feet up and my eyes closed.
Around five-thirty I called Kenan Khoury and told him I'd made some progress, although I didn't have anything specific to report. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do.
"Not just yet," I said. "I'll be going back to Atlantic Avenue tomorrow to see if the picture fills in a little more. When I'm done there I'll come to your place. Will you be there?"
"Sure," he said. "I got no place to go."
I SET the alarm and closed my eyes again, and the clock snatched me out of a dream at half past six. I put on a suit and tie and went over to Elaine's. She poured coffee for me and Perrier for herself, and then we caught a cab uptown to the Asia Society, where they had recently opened an exhibit that centered on the Taj Mahal, and thus tied right in with the course she was taking at Hunter. After we'd walked through the three exhibit rooms and made the appropriate noises we followed the crowd into another room, where we sat in folding chairs and listened to a soloist perform on the sitar. I have no idea whether he was any good or not. I don't know how you could tell, or how he himself would know if his instrument was out of tune.
Afterward there was a wine-and-cheese reception. "This need not detain us long," Elaine murmured, and after a few minutes of smiling and mumbling we were on the street.
"You loved every minute of it," she said.
"It was all right."
"Oh boy," she said. "The things a man will put himself through in the hope of getting laid."
"Come on," I said. "It wasn't that bad. It's the same music they play at Indian restaurants."
"But there you don't have to listen to it."
"Who listened?"
We went to an Italian restaurant, and over espresso I told her about Kenan Khoury and what had happened to his wife. When I was finished she sat for a moment looking down at the tablecloth in front of her as if there were something written on it. Then she raised her eyes slowly to meet mine. She is a resourceful woman, and a durable one, but just then she looked touchingly vulnerable.
"Dear God," she said.
"The things people do."
"There's just no end, is there? No bottom to it." She took a sip of water. "The cruelty of it, the utter sadism. Why would anyone— well, why ask why?"
"I figure it has to be pleasure," I said. "They must have gotten off on it, not just on the killing but on rubbing his nose in it, jerking him around, telling him she'll be in the car, she'll be home when he gets there, then finally letting him find her in pieces in the trunk of the Ford.
They wouldn't have to be sadists to kill her. They could see it as safer that way than to leave a witness who could identify them. But there was no practical advantage in twisting the knife the way they did. They went to a lot of trouble dismembering the body. I'm sorry, this is great table talk, isn't it?"
"That's nothing compared to what a great pre-bedtime story it makes."
"Puts you right in the mood, huh?"
"Nothing like it to get the juices flowing. No, really, I don't mind it. I mean I mind, of course I mind, but I'm not squeamish. It's gross, cutting somebody up, but that's really the least of it, isn't it? The real shock is that there's that kind of evil in the world and it can come from out of nowhere and zap you for no good
reason at all. That's what's awful, and it's just as bad on an empty stomach as on a full one."
WE went back to her apartment and she put on a Cedar Walton solo piano album that we both liked, and we sat together on the couch, not saying much. When the record ended she turned it over, and halfway through Side Two we went into the bedroom and made love with a curious intensity. Afterward neither of us spoke for a long time, until she said, "I'll tell you, kiddo. If we keep on like this, one of these days we're gonna get good at it."
"You think so, huh?"
"It wouldn't surprise me. Matt? Stay over tonight."
I kissed her. "I was planning to."
"Mmmm. Good plan. I don't want to be alone."
Neither did I.
Chapter 4
I stayed for breakfast, and by the time I got out to Atlantic Avenue it was almost eleven. I spent five hours there, most if it on the street and in shops but some of it in a branch library and on the phone. A little after four I walked a couple of blocks and caught a bus to Bay Ridge.
When I'd seen him last he'd been rumpled and unshaven, but now Kenan Khoury looked cool and composed in gray gabardine slacks and a muted plaid shirt. I followed him into the kitchen and he told me his brother had gone to work in Manhattan that morning. "Petey said he'd stay here, he didn't care about work, but how many times are we gonna have the same conversation? I made him take the Toyota so he's got that to get back and forth. How about you, Matt? You getting anywhere?"
I said, "Two men about my size took your wife off the street in front of The Arabian Gourmet and hustled her into a dark blue panel truck or van. A similar truck, probably the same one, was tailing her when she left D'Agostino's. The truck had lettering on the doors, white lettering according to one witness.
TV Sales & Service, with the company name composed of indeterminate initials. B & L, H & M, different people saw different things. Two people remembered an address in Queens and one specifically recalled it as Long Island City."
"Is there such a firm?"
"The description's vague enough so that there are a dozen or more firms that would fit. A couple of initials, TV repair, a Queens address. I called six or eight outfits and couldn't come up with anybody who runs dark blue trucks or who had a vehicle stolen recently. I didn't expect to."
"Why not?"
"I don't think the truck was stolen. My guess is that they had your house staked out Thursday morning hoping your wife would go out by herself. When she did they followed her. It probably wasn't the first time they tailed her, waiting for an opportunity to make their play. They wouldn't want to steal a truck each time and ride around all day in something that's liable to show up any hour on the hot-car sheet."
"You think it was their truck?"
"Most likely. I think they painted a phony company name and address on the doors, and once they completed the snatch they painted the old name out and a new name in. By now I wouldn't be surprised if the whole body's repainted some color other than blue."
"What about the license plate?"
"It had probably been switched for the occasion, but it hardly matters because nobody got the plate number. One witness thought the three of them had just knocked over the food market, that they were robbers, but all he wanted to do was get inside the store and make sure everybody was all right. Another man thought something funny was going on and he did take a look at the plate, but all he remembered was that it had a nine in it."
"That's helpful."
"Very. The men were dressed alike, dark pants and matching work shirts, matching blue windbreakers.
They looked to be in uniform, and, between that and the commercial vehicle they were driving, they appeared legitimate. I learned years ago that you can walk in almost anywhere if you're carrying a clipboard because it looks as though you're doing your job.