The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Private Investigators, Mystery & Detective, New York (N.Y.), Hard-Boiled, General, Fiction, New York, Large type books, New York (State), Short Stories, Scudder; Matt (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780786231096
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 2001-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

THERE was a cab at the hack stand down the block and the driver was untroubled by our destination of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. “That’s Manhattan,” I said, and he assured me it was not a problem. Lisa wondered why I had specified the borough; did Brooklyn have a Tenth Avenue and a Fifty-seventh Street? Indeed it did, I said, and they intersected near where Sunset Park and Bay Ridge abutted one another. She said she didn’t know Brooklyn at all, that she’d been to Williamsburg where some artists she knew had lofts, but we weren’t anywhere near there now, were we? No, I said, we weren’t.

What conversation there was stayed at that level until we had reached our destination and gone on up to her apartment. “I’m going to have a drink,” she announced. “I got out of the habit while I was pregnant, but there’s no reason not to, is there? I think I’ll have a scotch. What about you?”

“A little of that coffee, if there’s any left.”

“You don’t drink?”

“I used to.”

She took this in, started to say something, and changed her mind. She went into the kitchen and came back with coffee for me and what looked like a very weak scotch and soda for herself. We each picked a couch to sit on and went over what had taken place at the law office on Court Street. Drew hadn’t wanted to take cash, I explained, because that was a good way for a lawyer to get in trouble. Several defense attorneys had run into problems when they accepted cash fees from drug dealers. The government had tried to impound the fees on the grounds that they were the proceeds of illegal traffic in narcotics, and had sometimes been able to pull this off even when the original case against the defendant wound up being dismissed.

“Was Glenn trafficking in drugs?”

“Who knows?” I said. “At this point no one can say what the hell he was doing, but the money is pretty likely to be dirty one way or another. At the very least it’s untaxed income. And it’s about to become untaxed income all over again, because Drew can’t very easily enter it in his books and deposit it in his bank account without leaving it an open question as to where it came from. He has to keep it off the books.”

“I thought people preferred income off the books.”

“Not always. In this case the money he’ll save in taxes is offset by the fact that he’s going to be breaking the law. More to the point, two people will know he’s broken the law.”

“And the two people are—”

“You and I. He doesn’t think we’re likely to turn him in or he wouldn’t have taken the cash, but he bought himself a little insurance by making sure I took five thousand dollars myself in his presence. Now my hands aren’t any cleaner than his. Incidentally, I’ll give that money back to you if you want.”

“Why?”

“It’s a lot of money.

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