“I’m interested,” he says, “in how a person in your position faces the inevitable.”
“Calmly.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“When I think about it, everybody with a pulse is under a death sentence. Some of us are under more immediate ones. People with terminal illnesses. They’re as innocent as I am, but because some cell went haywire and nobody caught it in time, they’re going to die ahead of schedule. They can beat themselves up, they can say they should have quit smoking, they shouldn’t have put off that annual physical, they should have eaten less and exercised more, but who knows if that would have made any difference? The bottom line is they’re going to die, and it’s not their fault. And so am I, and it’s not my fault.”
“And every day . . .”
“Every day,” he says, “I get a day closer to the end. I told my lawyer not to bother trying for any more stays. I could drag it out for another year or two, if I pushed, but why? All I’ve been doing is marking time, and all it would get me is a little more time to mark.”
“So how do you get through the days, Preston?”
“There aren’t that many. Friday’s the day.”
“Yes.”
“Until then, I get through the hours. Three times a day they bring me something to eat. You’d think I’d have lost my taste for food, but one’s appetite doesn’t seem to have much to do with one’s long-term prospects.
They bring the food and I eat it. They bring a newspaper and I read it.
They’ll bring books if I ask for them. Lately I haven’t felt much like reading.”
“And you have the TV.”
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31
“There’s a channel that has nothing but reruns of cop shows. Homicide, Law & Order, NYPD Blue. For a while I was addicted, I watched them one after another. Then I realized what I was doing.”
“Seeking escape?”
“No, that’s what I’d assumed, but that wasn’t it. I was looking for an answer, a solution.”
“To your own dilemma.”
“Exactly. Surely one of those programs would hold the key. I’d see something, and there’d be that aha! Moment, that instant of revelation that would enable me to save myself and pinpoint the real killer.” He shakes his head. “Listen to me, will you? ‘The real killer.’ I sound like OJ, for Christ’s sake.” He purses his lips, emits a soundless whistle. “Once I knew why I was watching the shows, I couldn’t watch them anymore. Lost my taste for them completely. There’s not much I can watch, actually. Football, during the season, but that’s over until the fall. I’ve seen my last football game.”
“Other sports? Baseball? Basketball?”
“I used to play a little basketball.” His eyes narrow for a moment, as if reaching for a memory, but it eludes him and he lets it go. “I watched the college games. The tournament, the Final Four. When the college season ended I lost interest. I put a pro game on a few days ago but I couldn’t keep my mind on it. And I never could work up an interest in baseball.”
“So you don’t watch much television.”
“No. It passes the time, which is part of its appeal, but it wastes the time, and I don’t have that much time left that I can afford to waste any of it. You asked how I get through the days. There’s nothing to it. I just sit here, and one way or another the hours pass. And the next thing you know it’s Friday, and that’s as far as I have to go.”
“I’d better go,” he says, rising from the white plastic chair. “I’m taking up all your time, and you already said you don’t have that much of it left.”
“I’ve enjoyed this, Arne.”
“Have you?”
“This is the first time I’ve been in the company of anybody who thought I was innocent. I can’t tell you what a difference that makes.”
“Really?”
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Lawrence Block
“Oh, absolutely. There’s been an element of stress in every conversation I’ve had since they cuffed me and read me my rights, because every single person, even the ones who’ve tried to help me, have believed me to be this monster. It was always there, you know? And today for the first time it wasn’t, and I could have an unguarded conversation and relate to another human being. I haven’t talked like this in, well, I couldn’t say how long. Since I was arrested, but maybe longer than that. I’m glad you came, and I’m sorry to see you leave.”
He hesitates, then says, tentatively, “I could come back tomorrow.”
“You could?”
“I don’t have anything I have to do for the next several days. I’ll come back tomorrow, if you’d like, and as often as you want after that.”
“Well, Jesus,” Applewhite says. “Yes, I’d like that. Damn right I’d like that. Come anytime. I’m not going anywhere.”
5
At a meeting over the weekend a woman whom I knew by sight came up to me and said she’d heard I was a private investigator. Was that true?
“Sort of,” I said, and explained that I was semiretired, and didn’t have a license, which meant I lacked any official standing.
“But you could investigate someone,” she said.
“Anyone in particular?”
“I have to think about this,” she said. “Is there a number where I can reach you?”
I gave her a card, one of the new ones with my cell phone number on it, along with the phone in our apartment. I avoided a cell phone as long as I possibly could, until the realization that I was being ridiculous gradually overcame the stubbornness that seems to be an irre-ducible part of me. I still forget to carry it half the time, and don’t always remember to turn it on when I do, but I’d done both Monday morning, and when it rang I even managed to answer it without disconnecting the caller.
“This is Louise,” she said. “You gave me your card. The other night, I asked if you could investigate someone, and—”
“I remember. You had to think about it.”
“I’ve thought all I need to, and I’d like to talk to you. Could we meet somewhere?”
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Lawrence Block
I was having breakfast with TJ, who’d kept a remarkably straight face while I’d fumbled with the phone. “I’m at the Morning Star,” I said.
“Are you really? Because I’m at the Flame.” The Morning Star’s on the northwest corner of Ninth and Fifty-seventh; the Flame’s at the Fifty-eighth Street end of the same block.
They’re both New York–style Greek coffee shops, and neither one’s a candidate for the next edition of Zagat, but they’re not terrible, and God knows they’re handy.
She said, “Will you still be there in fifteen minutes? I want to finish this cup of coffee, and then I want to stand around outside long enough to smoke a cigarette, and then I’ll come to the Morning Star, if you’ll still be there.”
“They haven’t even brought my eggs yet,” I told her. “Take your time.”
“I feel funny about this,” she said. “Here I’m having this romance, and it feels as though it might really go somewhere, and a relationship ought to be based on trust, and how trusting am I if I hire a detective to investigate the guy? It’s like I’m sabotaging the whole process from the get-go.”
Louise was somewhere in her late thirties, medium height and build, with dark brown hair and light brown eyes. She’d had acne in adolescence, and its legacy was a light pitting on her cheeks and pointed chin. She was dressed for the office in a skirt and blouse, and she’d put on some cologne, a floral scent that blended imperfectly with the smell of cigarette smoke.
She’d joined us at our table, a little taken aback to discover that I wasn’t alone. I introduced TJ as my assistant, and that mollified her some. He’s a black man in his twenties—I don’t know his exact age, but then I still don’t know his last name, for all that he’s a virtual member of the family—and this morning he was dressed for comfort in baggy bleached denim shorts and a black T-shirt with the sleeves and neckband cut off. He didn’t look much like my assistant, or anybody else’s, except perhaps a dope dealer’s. I could tell she’d be more com-All the Flowers Are Dying