Scudder - Eight Million Ways To Die Part 69

'Not many out last night,' he said. 'I guess they feel safer in daylight.'

'You were here last night?'

'Just driving around. He picked up Cookie around here, then drove out Queens Boulevard. Or did he take the expressway? I don't guess it matters.'

'No.'

We took Queens Boulevard. 'Want to thank you for coming to the funeral,' he said.

'I wanted to come.'

'Fine-looking woman with you.'

'Thank you.'

'Jan, you say her name was?'

'That's right.'

'You go with her or - '

'We're friends.'

'Uh-huh.' He braked for a light. 'Ruby didn't come.'

'I know.'

'What I told you was a bunch of s.h.i.+t. I didn't want to contradict what I told the others. Ruby split, she packed up and went.'

'When did this happen?'

'Sometime yesterday, I guess. Last night I had a message on my service. I was running around all yesterday, trying to get this funeral organized. I thought it went okay, didn't you?'

'It was a nice service.'

'That's what I thought. Anyway, there's a message to call Ruby and a 415 area code. That's San Francisco. I thought, huh? And I called, and she said she had decided to move on. I thought it was some kind of a joke, you know? Then I went over there and checked her apartment, and all her things were gone. Her clothes. She left the furniture. That makes three empty apartments I got, man. Big housing shortage, n.o.body can find a place to live, and I'm sitting on three empty apartments. Something, huh?'

'You sure it was her you spoke to?'

'Positive.'

'And she was in San Francisco?'

'Had to be. Or Berkeley or Oakland or some such place. I dialed the number, area code and all. She had to be out there to have that kind of number, didn't she?'

'Did she say why she left?'

'Said it was time to move on. Doing her inscrutable oriental number.'

'You think she was afraid of getting killed?'

'Powhattan Motel,' he said, pointing. 'That's the place, isn't it?'

'That's the place.'

'And you were out here to find the body.'

'It had already been found. But I was out here before they moved it.'

'Must have been some sight.'

'It wasn't pretty.'

'That Cookie worked alone. No pimp.'

'That's what the police said.'

'Well, she coulda had a pimp that they didn't know about. But I talked to some people. She worked alone, and if she ever knew Duffy Green, n.o.body ever heard tell of it.' He turned right at the corner. 'We'll head back to my house, okay?'

'All right.'

'I'll make us some coffee. You liked that coffee I fixed last time, didn't you?'

'It was good.'

'Well, I'll fix us some more.'

His block in Greenpoint was almost as quiet by day as it had been by night. The garage door ascended at the touch of a b.u.t.ton. He lowered it with a second touch of the b.u.t.ton and we got out of the car and walked on into the house. 'I want to work out some,' he said. 'Do a little lifting. You like to work out with weights?'

'I haven't in years.'

'Want to go through the motions?'

'I think I'll pa.s.s.'

My name is Matt and I pa.s.s.

'Be a minute,' he said.

He went into a room, came out wearing a pair of scarlet gym shorts and carrying a hooded terry-cloth robe. We went to the room he'd fitted out as a gym, and for fifteen or twenty minutes he worked out with loose weights and on the Universal machine. His skin became glossy with perspiration as he worked and his heavy muscles rippled beneath it.

'Now I want ten minutes in the sauna,' he said. 'You didn't earn the sauna by pumping the iron, but we could grant a special dispensation in your case.'

'No thanks.'

'Want to wait downstairs then? Be more comfortable.'

I waited while he took a sauna and shower. I studied some of his African sculpture, thumbed through a couple of magazines. He emerged in due course wearing light blue jeans and a navy pullover and rope sandals. He asked if I was ready for coffee. I told him I'd been ready for half an hour.