When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block Page B

had lived, the house where his wife had died. But I wasn't sure of the address. That stretch ofColonial Road was mostly brick apartment houses and I was pretty sure that Tommy's place was a private house. There were a few such houses tucked in between the apartment buildings but I didn't have the number written down and wasn't sure of the cross streets. I told the cabdriver I was looking for the house where the woman was stabbed to death and he didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and seemed generally wary of me, as though I might do something unpredictable at any moment.
    I suppose I was a little drunk. I sobered up on the way back toManhattan. He wasn't that enthusiastic about taking me, but he set a price of ten dollars and I agreed to it and leaned back in my seat. He took the expressway, and en route I saw thetowerofSaint Michael 's and told the driver that it wasn't right, that churches should be open twenty-four hours a day. He didn't sayanything, and I closed my eyes and when I opened them the cab was pulling up in front of my hotel.
    There were a couple of messages for me at the desk. TommyTillary had called twice and wanted me to call him. SkipDevoe had called once.
    It was too late to call Tommy, probably too late for Skip.Late enough, anyway, to call it a night.

Chapter 9
    I rode out toBrooklyn again the next day. I stayed on the train past theSunsetPark stations and got off atBay Ridge Avenue. The subway entrance was right across the street from the funeral parlor MargaretTillary had been buried from. Burial had been inGreen-WoodCemetery, two miles to the north. I turned and looked upFourth Avenue, as if following the route of the funeral cortege with my eyes. Then I walked west onBay Ridge Avenue toward the water.
    AtThird Avenue I looked to my left and saw theVerrazanoBridge off in the distance, spanning the Narrows between Brooklyn andStaten Island. I walked on, through a better neighborhood than the one I'd spent the previous day in, and atColonial Road I turned right and walked until I found theTillary house. I'd looked up the address before leaving my hotel and now found it easily. It may have been one of the houses I'd stared at the night before. The cab ride had since faded some from memory. It was indistinct, as if seen through a veil.
    The house was a huge brick-and-frame affair three stories tall, just across the street from the southeast corner of Owl'sHeadPark. Four-story apartment buildings of red brick flanked the house. It had a broad porch, an aluminum awning, a steeply pitched roof. I mounted the steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. A four-note chime sounded within.
    No one answered. I tried the door and it was locked. The lock didn't look terribly challenging, but I had no reason to force it.
    A driveway ran past the house on its left-hand side. It led past a side door, also locked, to a padlocked garage. The burglars had broken a pane of glass in the side door, and it had been since replaced with a rectangle of cardboard cut from a corrugated carton and secured with metallic tape.
    I crossed the street and sat in the park for a while. Then I moved to where I could observe theTillary house from the other side of the street. I was trying to visualize the burglary. Cruz and Herrera had had a car, and I wondered where they'd parked it. In the driveway, out of sight and close to the door they'd entered through? Or on the street, making a getaway a simpler matter? The garage could have been open then; maybe they stowed the car in it, so no one would see it in the driveway and wonder about it.
    I had a lunch of beans and rice and hot sausage. I got to Saint Michael's bymidafternoon. It was open this time, and I sat for a while in a pew off to the side,then lit a couple of candles. My $150 finally made it to the poor box.
    I did what you do. Mostly, I walked around and knocked on doors and asked questions. I went back to both their residences, Herrera's and Cruz's. I talked to neighbors