Matthew Scudder #16 - All the Flowers Are Dying by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Classics, Hard-Boiled
ISBN: 9781409124948
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2005-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

I took another cab, and got one with loud Arab music on the radio. I told the driver to turn it down. He looked at me, and I guess he saw something on my face that kept him from arguing. He turned it down and off, and we rode home in a welcome if stony silence.

The pinochle game was still in progress when I walked in the door. I asked who was winning, and Elaine made a face and pointed across the table. “He swears he never played the game before,” she said, “and it hurts me to think such a sweet young man could lie like a rug.”

“Never did,” he said.

“Then how come you could sit there and beat my brains out?”

“You just a good teacher, is all.”

“That must be it.” She gathered the cards. “Go home. You’re an angel for keeping me company, even if you didn’t have the decency to let me win. Wait a minute. Are you hungry? Do you want a cookie?”

He shook his head.

“You sure? I baked them myself, using the name ‘Mrs. Fields.’ ”

He shook his head again, and she gave him a hug and let him go. She put the cards away and went to the window again, the one that no longer had a view of the towers. She sighed and turned from it to me and said, “I’ve been thinking. She had other friends besides me. No one else was as close, but there were other women she’d meet for lunch, or talk to on the phone.”

“There’d have to be.”

“She might have let something slip about this guy. I mean, she told me he drinks Scotch and has a mustache. She might have said something else to somebody else.”

“And if you gather the somethings together, a picture might emerge.”

“Well, don’t you think it’s possible?”

“I know it’s possible,” I said, “and so will Sussman. They’ll go through her address or her Rolodex, whatever she had, and they’ll check out every listing. He might be in there, as far as that goes. Just because she wouldn’t say his name doesn’t mean he didn’t give her one. If he also gave her a number, it’ll be in her book.”

“You think they’ll get him that way?”

I didn’t, but I said it was possible.

“All right, here’s another thing I was thinking. She might have gone back to her shrink. She stopped therapy years ago, but she’s been back a few times for a couple of sessions here and a couple of sessions there. And I remember having the feeling recently that she might have gone back. I don’t know what triggered it, but it was a feeling I got.”

“And she might have said something about the guy to the therapist?”

“Well, you know, if she can’t feel free to say anything to anybody else…”

“That’s a point.”

“But would the shrink say anything? Isn’t everything you tell your shrink privileged?”

I said it was, but that there was a gray area here. When the patient was dead and the

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