There was a payphone on the wall and I figured he’d be dialing the police the instant the door closed behind me. My own damn fault. I should never have talked to him, should never have come out for a drink.
“Listen,” I said, leaning close and lowering my voice. “I didn’t kill either of them.”
“I don’t need to—”
“Listen.” He shut up. “I didn’t kill them. You need to know, this is all about Dorrie. The police don’t understand that. I’ve been looking into her death, I made some people angry at me, and things have gone horribly wrong, but I didn’t kill anyone. If you call the police—listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“If you call the police, they’ll put me in jail and I’ll never find out what happened to Dorrie. You’ll never find out. Do you understand?”
“What do you mean you’ve been ‘looking into’ her death?”
“I’m a private investigator,” I said.
“I thought you went to school with her.”
“I did.”
“And you’re trying to find out...what? How she died? I thought they knew how she died.”
“I’m trying to find out why she died,” I said. “There was something bad going on in her life, and I’m going to find out what it was. But only if you don’t turn me in.”
It was pointless. His face had paled and he was having trouble meeting my eyes. I knew he was going to do it.
“Fine,” I said. “Do what you want. But for once in your goddamn life, maybe you could think of your daughter first.”
I walked out.
Through the filthy window, I saw him head straight for the payphone.
Chapter 24
I felt like the last pawn on a chessboard, rooks and knights and bishops closing in on every side. I was inching toward the far side of the board and I wasn’t going to make it.
The return ticket in my pocket was useless now—they’d be watching the train station. You could fly from Philadelphia to New York in theory, but I couldn’t in practice. They’d be looking for me there, too, now that Dorrie’s father had tipped them off.
What was left? As I raced through an intersection on the way back toward the cemetery I thought: I could steal a car. But I couldn’t. I’d lived in Manhattan all my life. I barely knew how to drive a car.
Did I know anyone in Philadelphia who could help me?
I didn’t know anyone in Philadelphia, period.
Except for Doug Harper and his former wife, and they were no friends of mine.
As I passed Greenmount’s front gate I saw the hearse that had brought Dorrie’s coffin at the curb, a Lincoln Town Car with scuffed bumpers and New York plates. The Volvo was behind it. The hearse’s driver, a beefy linebacker type with buzz-cut hair and a chip of beard under his lower lip, was pacing up and down between the two, smoking.
I ran up to the guy. “You heading back to the city?”
“When the lady lets me go.” He had a Russian accent.
“She’s still inside?”
“Paperwork,” he said, and shrugged at the ways of a world that wouldn’t even bury you without getting forms signed in triplicate.
“I need to head back that way myself,” I said, trying to make my voice sound casual. It sounded fake as hell to me. “You mind driving me in?”
“Where’s your car?”
“I came on the train,” I said.
He drew firmly on the butt end of his cigarette, then threw the remnant to the ground, stepped on it. He was trying to figure out why this guy who’d come in on the train wasn’t going back the same way. Or else he was trying to remember where he’d seen my face before.
“I’ll ride in the back. You won’t even know I’m there.”
He scratched at his soul patch.
“Hundred dollar,” he said, and eyed me warily to see whether he’d aimed too high.
I fingered the dwindling supply of bills in my pocket. I needed to save some for later. “I can’t pay you that much,” I said, and he started to shrug again, to turn away, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t pay a hundred—but I’ll give you sixty and this ticket, which you can turn in for another sixty. That’s one-twenty.” I pulled my return ticket out of my pocket, slightly crumpled, along with three twenties. “You’re driving back anyway,” I said. I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, while listening with half an ear for police sirens.
He snatched the money and the ticket out of my hand, inspected the ticket on both sides, as though maybe I was trying to pawn a forgery off on him.
“It’s good for thirty days,” I said. “You just walk up to the counter, hand it to them, and they’ll give you cash for it.” Behind him, through the metal gates of the cemetery, I saw the front door of the main building open. A short woman in a black coat and hat stepped out. Eva Burke. She was talking to a man, hadn’t looked this way yet.
“Come on,” I said. “Make up your mind. You want the money or not?”
Of course he did.
“Get in,” he said.
It took a few minutes for him to settle up with Mrs. Burke. I watched impatiently through the dark glass of the hearse’s curtained rear window as another fistful of cash changed hands. This guy was making out okay for a morning’s work. And I didn’t begrudge him his little windfall. I just wanted him to get on the road.
He walked around to the front and got in. There was a Plexiglas partition between us and it muffled his voice. “You can sit up here if you want.”
“That’s okay,” I called back.
“It’s a long ride.”
It was. But other motorists, and toll booth clerks, and cops, could see the occupants of the front seats. They couldn’t see me back here. “It’s okay,” I said again.
“Want some music?”
“Fine,” I said. “Whatever you want.”
He thumbed the controls for his CD player and a woman’s voice came on, singing in Russian. It was just as well. I wasn’t in any condition to listen to music I could understand.
The back of the hearse was like the rear of a station wagon, only longer, with a metal grab bar on either side and rubber traction strips along the carpeting. It felt like being in the trunk of a car, only with a little more room and a little more light. A little. I threaded one arm under a grab bar to keep from sliding all over when the driver took a curve.
I tried not to think about Dorrie’s trip up from New York in this very car, lying where I was lying now, penned tightly in her coffin. It felt like ages ago, not days, that I’d seen her last, that I’d talked to her and held her. It felt like ages ago that I’d been in Susan’s apartment. Two murders ago. Damn it, the story was on CNN now—it wasn’t just local news anymore. How had this happened?
I thought about asking the driver to drop me somewhere in Jersey, or hell, to turn around and start driving west—anywhere west, anywhere other than back to New York.
But where could I go? With practically no money and the police after me—and a debt I still hadn’t paid. Because Dorrie’s killer was still free. I’d made a promise to her, and I’d made one to myself, and everything I’d gone through would be for nothing if I abandoned it now.
I heard the driver say something in Russian and then a reply in Russian from his dispatcher, butchered by static. What were they talking about? For a terrible instant I was convinced it was me, that the driver knew exactly who I was and was inquiring about whatever bounty the NYPD might have placed on my head. I tried to listen for the syllable “Blake,” but it was hopeless with the music playing and the partition swallowing half of every word.
“Hey, mister,” the driver said. He twisted a knob and the singer’s voice dropped off. “When we get to the city, I drop you on the west side, okay?”