Death Notes

money?’
    ‘Wouldn’t be the truth if she said anyway.’
    Malone had a point. Maybe I shouldn’t have interrupted them. She could have been trying to get the cash she owed me.
    ‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I’m here because I’m curious about your loan to Match. You said you loaned him twenty thousand dollars.’
    He hesitated, unconsciously biting his lip, frowning at me like I was setting him up for some kind of trap.
    ‘Look, Mr Malone. I need your help. And if you’re innocent, you need mine. Your situation with Match left you with some pretty incriminating motives. If you help me find Match’s killer, you’ll be cleared. Otherwise...’
    For somebody who looked like he only owned half a brain, Malone was quick.
    ‘It was twenty K. All right? What’s the big deal?’ he said. He absently picked up a pencil, made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and pumped the pencil back and forth through it. Ten guesses what was on Romeo’s mind. The dog’s chain rattled outside through the open door. I tried not to think about any of it.
    ‘When did he borrow it?’ I asked.
    ‘About six months ago.’
    ‘Did he say why he needed it?’
    ‘Somethin’ about buyin’ himself a new career.’
    ‘What did he mean?’
    ‘Nothing. I didn’t believe that crap for a minute. I can read between the lines, see? He was settin’ up for a blow binge. Old Match told people he kicked, but I’m not so sure he didn’t need that edge junk gives you to write those songs.’
    ‘His dealer quit supplying him. He told me Match quit heroin. Are you saying he didn’t?’
    Malone shrugged. ‘What else is Match gonna need twenty K for?’
    But DuPont hadn’t seen the money.
    ‘Who would he buy drugs from if he didn’t want his regular dealer to know about it?’
    ‘Fella in the band.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The old fart.’
    Cheese Herman.
    I asked Malone a couple more questions, turned down his offer to take me out for a drink, and made a mental note not to come back at night again without a T-bone or a poodle in heat.
    Some days I don’t like the PI business. Today was turning out to be one of them.
     

40
     
    T he Corner Pocket was dark, except for big islands of light from the bare bulbs hanging above each of the six pool tables. Smoke turned the room gray, like the fog outside, and made the men’s faces all seem pale, almost other-worldly. Everybody looked solemn and talked in a near whisper, like you would in a church.
    The place was drab, colorless except for the shamrock-green felt on the tables and the particolored balls zipping around, bouncing off the sides and dropping out of sight after each loud clack. There was a makeshift bar in the back and a neon clock over the counter where the man took your money.
    Nobody noticed me when I walked in - all eyes were intent on the tables where the action was - so I wandered through until I found Cheese Herman, perched on a bench in the shadows.
    His entire aspect was morose: drooping eyes, sagging shoulders, a chewed-up stogie hanging from his downturned mouth and thin, narrow white hands hanging uselessly at his sides. He could’ve been dead except for his wily eyes taking in every movement at the table nearest him from behind a pair of thick, black-framed glasses.
    He glanced over when I sat down beside him. He nodded, then watched a guy at the table sink the six and seven with a bank shot. The guy was using a custom-made cue and so was his opponent. They were good, solid and showy.
    I sat through the whole game without saying a word, then, after the bank shot guy won and while everybody settled their bets, I reminded Cheese that we’d met.
    ‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘I was tellin’ the truth last night when I said I wasn’t lookin’.’
    ‘I believe you. I’ve got a question about something else.’ He reached for the cue propped against the bench next to him, pulled a small cube of blue chalk out of his windbreaker pocket, and started chalking the cue. If I’d aroused his curiosity, he wasn’t showing it.
    ‘I’m up next,’ he said, then left me on the bench while he broke a new game with the guy who’d just won.
    Cheese was something to watch. His clothes were shabby, his face was covered with white stubble from a three-day beard, and his hands shook with an alarming palsy before and after - never during - each shot. His opponent was young, looked successful and self-assured, but Cheese trounced him soundly in under twenty minutes. I