Chapter 23 Chapter Twenty-Three

It caused less than half of the trouble I expected.I didn't know either of the two police officers from the 20th Bureau, but even if I did, things wouldn't go any better.We answered questions on the spot, then followed them back to the West Eighty-second Street precinct to take statements.The medical evidence at the scene doesn't seem to contradict our claims in any way.The cops were quick to point out that Chance should have called the police as soon as he found the body, but they didn't have much trouble with him for his delay.Anyone who stumbles upon a dead body by accident is scared—even if you're a pimp and she's a prostitute, after all, this is New York, a metropolis where everyone cleans up their own house, and it's not that it's too late to report the crime, but that he is willing to report it.

I was pretty relaxed when we got to the precinct.I was a little worried early on because I thought they might be frisking.My coat was a small arsenal, and I had the pistol and two knives I got from the guy in the alley.None of the knives were legal, the gun was in worse condition, God knows where it came from.But we didn't do enough to get frisked, which is nice, we didn't get frisked. "Prostitutes commit suicide all the time," said Joe Durkin. "That's what they do, and besides, this one's been documented. You see the scar on the wrist? The report says it's been years. You probably don't You know, taking poison, she tried it a year ago. One of her girlfriends sent her to St. Clair's Hospital for gastric lavage."

"The note said she hoped she'd served enough this time. Something like that." We were sitting at Stone Tile, a Tenth Avenue steakhouse that attracts John Jay and Midtown North Police officers.before this.I went back to the hotel.After changing my clothes, I found a place to hide the weapons and some money, and then I received a call from him asking me to treat him to a meal. "It just occurred to me that I should knock you out as soon as possible." He said, "You can't wait until all the women in your client are dead, and your money for handling cases is getting less and less."

He ordered a plate of mixed roasts and drank two bottles of Carlsberg.I'll have a steak with coffee.We talked for a while about Sunny's death, but nothing came of it. He said: "If the other blond hair hadn't been killed. You wouldn't even think to look at it. All the medical evidence points to suicide. Bruised and bruised, easy to explain. She was delirious, didn't know what she was doing, fell Then knocked things over. She fell on the floor instead of the bed, exactly the same reason. Of course the bruising is inevitable. Her fingerprints are all where they should be - wine bottle, glass, medicine jar. The handwriting on the note was also found She must have been. If your client is to be believed, she was locked inside when he found her. The door was locked from the inside and chained. Are you sure he wasn't lying?"

"It sounds like the truth to me." "Then she committed suicide, which is even comparable to Dakinen's death two weeks ago. They are friends, and she was very depressed because of the accident happened to her friend. Do you think there is a possibility that she committed suicide?" I shook my head: "This kind of suicide is the most difficult to fake. What can you do? Use a funnel to force the pill down her throat? Use a gun to force her to swallow it?" "You could dissolve it and sneak her in. But they found remnants of sleeping pill capsules in her stomach. So forget about it. Suicide indeed."

I tried to recall New York's annual suicide rate, but couldn't come up with a reasonable estimate.Durkin couldn't help either.It's really not clear how high the ratio is.Is it like all other phenomena, only uptrends? Holding a cup of coffee, he said, "I found two employees of the Star River Hotel, checked all their registration cards since the beginning of this year, and picked out all the ones with printed signatures. None of them can be related to Jones' registration." "What about the other hotels?" "Can't find anything that matches. It's a group of people named Jones. The name is very common, but these people all signed and paid by credit card. They all seem to be genuine. What a waste of time."

"Feel sorry.' "What? Ninety percent of what I do is a waste of time. You're right, it's worth looking into. If it's a big case, it hits the headlines, and someone above puts pressure on you, don't tell me Think of it myself, and we'll check every hotel in the five boroughs of New York. How are you?" "What about me?" "Have you made any progress with the Dakinen case?" I have to think about it. "No." I replied. "It's infuriating. I'll go through the file again, know what's stuck in my throat? The front desk clerk."

"The one I talked about?" — Stick School · E Book Group — "That's the manager, the deputy manager or something. I'm looking for the one who let the murderer check in. Now this guy comes in, with a printed name and no signature, and a cash payment. Both methods are Unusual, isn't it? I mean, who pays cash at a hotel these days? I don't mean cheap chains, I mean hotels where you pay seven or eighty bucks a night. Everything these days Plastic bills, credit cards, whatever. This guy paid in cash, and the front desk clerk didn't even remember the shit."

"Have you checked his details?" He nodded: "I ran to talk to him last night. Hey, he is a young man from which country in South America. When I talked to him, he seemed to be in a fog. When the murderer checked in, he was probably also in a fog. One piece. I think he's been living in the fog all his life. Don't know where he got the fog from, whether he inhaled it through his nostrils or his mouth or something, but I think he earned it honestly. You know we How many people in the city are in the cloud all day?' "I understand what you mean." "You can see them at lunchtime. People in the office, downtown, Wall Street, whatever the borough. They're all on the streets buying drugs, sitting in parks at lunchtime and snorting. How efficient is that?"

"have no idea." "There's a whole bunch of drug addicts, like this woman who committed suicide. It's okay to take drugs hard, and you can't say she broke the law. Drugs." He sighed, shook his head, and smoothed his dark hair, "Well, what I need is brandy ’” he said, “if you think your customers can afford it.” I went to St. Paul's Church.Just in time for the last ten minutes of the party.I had a cup of coffee and a biscuit and didn't listen to what anyone was saying.I didn't even report my name, and I sneaked away during prayer time. I went back to the hotel and there was no message.The front desk told me.I have two phone calls, but neither party wants to leave their name.I went upstairs to my room trying to sort out my feelings about Sunny's suicide.But so far, I've only felt numb.I kept thinking masochistically: If I hadn't made the conversation with her last, I might have found out earlier, or I might have said or done something to make her change her mind.Can't think of a result like this.I talked to her on the answering machine, she could say something, but she didn't.After all, suicide, she had tried at least twice, and probably several times without leaving a record.

You can get it right if you try it long enough. After breakfast, I went to the bank to deposit some money and buy a money order.I went to the post office to wire the money to Anita.I rarely think about my son's orthodontics, and now I can finally forget about it. I went on to St. Paul's and lit a candle for Sunny.Sitting in the pews, I gave myself a few minutes to think about Sunny.There is not much material to recall.We barely have a relationship.I can't even remember what she looks like, The way she died pushed aside my faint memory of a living Sunny. It occurred to me that I owed the church a sum of money.The fee given by Chance divided by ten is two hundred and five, and the more than three hundred yuan I took from the kid who tried to rob me, they should also share one-tenth [I don’t remember the exact number, so two hundred and five should be It is fair), then I will give them two hundred and eighty-five in total, and the two will be settled. But I've put most of my money in the bank.I still have hundreds of dollars in my wallet. If I donate two hundred and eighty-five dollars to the church, I will be stretched.I carefully weighed the feasibility of making another trip to the bank without hesitation.Suddenly, the absurdity of my little trick hit me like a punch to the kidney. What the hell am I doing?Why do you think you owe someone money?And who do I owe?Not a church, I don't belong to any church.I donate a tenth of what I get to the house of worship that comes across at the right time. So, who am I in debt to?God? What is the rationale for doing this?What kind of debt is this?How do I owe it?Am I paying off the loan?Or, is this a little red envelope that I secretly stuffed to God in order to ask for blessing? I have always been able to give myself a reasonable explanation before, this is just my habit, a little quirk.I don't have to pay taxes, so I pay God instead. I never really asked that question to myself. I'm not sure I'll like my answer.I still remember the thought that crossed my mind in that alley off St. Nicholas Avenue: I didn't give a tithe of what I got, so I had to die at the hands of this boy today.In fact, I don't really believe in that, and I don't think the world really works according to that logic.I'm just surprised I've ever had that thought. I took out my wallet and counted two hundred and eighty-five dollars.I sat with my money in my hand, and then I put it all back in my wallet—only one dollar left.I can at least buy a candle and pray. That afternoon, I walked all the way to King's building.The weather was not bad at the time, and I was idle as well.I passed the concierge and walked into her apartment. The first thing I do when I walk in is pour the bottle of Wild Turkey down the sink. I don't know how much truth there is in doing this.There are many other kinds of wine in her place, and I didn't clear them all.But "Wild Turkey" is already symbolic. Whenever I think of the apartment, the image of the wine bottle comes to mind, and with this image is a vivid memory of the color and smell of the wine. After the wine has completely flowed into the sink, I was relieved. Then I went back to the vestibule and examined the fur coat hanging in the cupboard, the label sewn into the lining saying it was dyed lapin.I looked in the classified phone book and called a random fur trader, only to find out that lapin is French. "You can find it in the dictionary." The other party said that it is generally available in American dictionaries.The word is now in English, imported by the fur trade.It means rabbit. As Chance said. On the way home, something sparked my urge to drink.I don't even remember what exactly provoked me, just my reaction: imagining myself with one shoulder on the bar, one foot on the brass railing, bell cup in hand, sawdust on the floor, my His nostrils were filled with the smell of a musty old liquor store. The desire to drink is actually not strong, and I didn't really plan to put it into action, but it reminded me of my promise to Jane.Because I didn't feel that I had to drink, there was really no need to look for her, but I decided to look for her anyway.For a dime, I dialed her number from the booth around the corner near the City General Library. Our conversation has been interrupted by the sound of traffic, so we can only chat briefly.I didn't get a chance to mention Sunny's suicide, or the bottle of Wild Turkey. I read the Post while eating dinner.Sonny's suicide took up a few paragraphs on the Society page that day, and rightfully so.But "The Post" often creates false appearances in order to promote the newspaper.Their selling point to hook readers this time was to emphasize that Sunny shared the same pimp as Kim Duckinen, who had been chopped to pieces at the hotel two weeks earlier.Since they couldn't find a picture of Sunny, they uploaded Kim's picture again. However, the content of the report cannot be as sensational as the headline headlines.All they could say was that she had committed suicide, plus wild speculation that Sunny had killed herself because she knew something about King's murder. The boy whose legs I broke still hasn't been reported.But it goes without saying that the old seasonings of murder and crime are still in the newspapers from cover to cover.I thought about Jim Faber talking about giving up newspapers, but I knew I couldn't do it right now. After dinner, I went to the front desk to get the letter.It's still the usual junk leaflets, plus a message from Chance asking me to contact him.I called his service and he called me back right away asking how the case was going.I'm honestly getting nowhere.He asked me if I was going to stick with it. "Hold on a little longer," I said, "I just want to see if there's a way ahead." He said the police never harassed him.He was busy with Sunny's funeral all day.King's body was returned to his hometown in Wisconsin, but Sunny had no relatives to claim it. He had now arranged to have Sunny's widow removed from the morgue.The memorial service has been decided to take place at Cook's Funeral Home on West Seventy-second Street at two o'clock on Thursday afternoon, he told me. "It was supposed to be done for Kim earlier," he said. "It just never occurred to me. It was mostly for the morale of the girls. They were going crazy, you know." "It's conceivable." - Stick School · E Book Group - "They're all thinking the same thing. Bad things come in threes. They're all worrying about who's next." I ran to the party that night.When people on the stage testified, I suddenly thought: I lost consciousness and wandered around a week ago. God only knows what I did. "My name is Matthew," I said when it was my turn, "I just wanted to hear it tonight, thank you." After the meeting, a guy followed me up the stairs to the street and walked side by side with me.He was about thirty and wore a tweed jacket and a peaked cap.I don't remember seeing this person. He said, "Your name is Matthew, right?"—and I nodded in acknowledgment—"You liked that testimony tonight?" "It's kind of interesting." "Want a more interesting story? Heard a disfigured man north of the city. Broken two legs. Pretty good, man." I shiver.The pistol was in a chest of drawers, rolled up in a pair of socks.Two knives are also thrown in the same oil drawer. He said, "You've got guts, man. That thing's big enough, you know what I mean?" He put his hand over his groin like a baseball player over his cunt, "but then again," he said, "you don't want Get into trouble, right?" "What did you say?" He spread his hands: "What do I know? I'm just a union man, man. I'll deliver a message. That's all. It's one thing to have a chick chopped up in a hotel, but her friend Who it is is another matter. It doesn't matter, understand?" "Who asked you to deliver this message?" He just stared at me. "How do you know you can find me at the venue?" "Follow you in, come out with you," he giggled. "Break that's legs, ain't going too far, man. Too much."