Eight Million Ways To Die

"Why? Ninety percent of what I do is a waste of time. You were right, it was worth checking. If this had been a big case, front-page stuff, top brass putting pressure on, you can believe I'd have thought of it myself and we'd be checking every hotel in the five boroughs. How about you?"

"What about me?"

"You getting anywhere with Dakkinen?"

I had to think. "No," I said, finally.

"It's aggravating. I went over the file again and you know what got stuck in my throat? That desk clerk."

"The one I talked to?"

"That was a manager, assistant manager, something like that. No, the one who checked the killer in.

Now here's a guy comes in, prints his name instead of writing it, and pays cash. Those are two unusual things for a person to do, right? I mean, who pays cash in front for a hotel nowadays? I don't mean in a hot-pillow joint, I mean a decent hotel where you're going to spend sixty or eighty dollars for a room.

Everything's plastic nowadays, credit cards, that's the whole business. But this guy paid cash and the desk clerk doesn't remember shit about him."

"Did you check him out?"

He nodded. "I went and talked to him last night. Well, he's this South American kid, up from one of those countries. He was in a fog when I talked to him. He was probably in a fog when the killer checked in. He probably lives his life in a fog. I don't know where his fog comes from, whether he smokes it or snorts it or what he does, but I think he probably comes by it honestly. You know the percentage of this city that's stoned all the time?"

"I know what you mean."

"You see 'em at lunch hour. Office workers, midtown, Wall Street, I don't care what neighborhood you're talking about. They buy the fucking joints in the street and spend their lunch hour smoking 'em in the park. How does anybody get any work done?"

"I don't know."

"And there's all these pillheads. Like this woman who killed herself. Taking all those pills all the time, and she wasn't even breaking the law. Drugs." He sighed, shook his head, smoothed his dark hair.

"Well, what I'm gonna have is a brandy," he said, "if you think your client can afford it."

I got over to St. Paul's in time for the last ten minutes of the meeting. I had coffee and a cookie and barely listened to what was being said. I didn't even have to say my name, and I ducked out during the prayer.

I went back to the hotel. There were no messages. I'd had a couple of calls, the desk man told me, but nobody'd left a name. I went upstairs and tried to sort out how I felt about Sunny's suicide, but all I seemed to feel so far was numb. It was tempting to beat myself up with the thought that I might have learned something if I hadn't saved her interrogation for last, might even have said or done something to forestall her suicide, but I couldn't get much mileage out of that one. I'd talked to her on the phone. She could have said something and she hadn't. And suicide, after all, was something she'd tried at least twice in the past, and very likely a time or two of which there'd been no record.

Try something long enough, sooner or later you get it right.

In the morning I had a light breakfast and went over to the bank, where I deposited some cash and bought a money order. I went to the post office and mailed it to Anita. I hadn't given a whole lot of thought to my son's orthodontia and now I could forget it altogether.

I walked on to St. Paul's and lit a candle for Sonya Hendryx. I sat in a pew, giving myself a few minutes to remember Sunny. There wasn't much to remember. We'd barely met. I couldn't even recall very clearly what she looked like because her image in death pushed my dim memory of the living Sunny to the side.

It occurred to me that I owed the church money. Ten percent of Chance's fee came to $250, and they were further entitled to a tithe of the three hundred bucks and change I'd taken off the kid who'd tried mugging me. I didn't have an exact count but $350 struck me as a fair estimate, so I could give them $285 and call it even.

But I'd put most of my money in the bank. I had a few hundred dollars in my wallet but if I gave the church $285 I'd be strapped for walk-around money. I weighed the nuisance of another trip to the bank, and then the fundamental insanity of my little game struck me like a kidney punch.

What was I doing anyway? Why did I figure I owed anybody money? And who did I owe it to? Not the church, I didn't belong to any church. I gave my tithes to whatever house of worship came along at the right time.

To whom, then, was I in debt? To God?

Where was the sense in that? And what was the nature of this debt?

How did I owe it? Was I repaying borrowed funds? Or had I invented some sort of bribe scheme, some celestial protection racket?

I'd never had trouble rationalizing it before. It was just a custom, a minor eccentricity. I didn't file a tax return so I paid a tithe instead.

I'd never really let myself ask myself why.