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    The Sins of the Fathers
    The Sins of the Fathers
    The Sins of the Fathers
    Ebook199 pages3 hours

    The Sins of the Fathers

    By Lawrence Block

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The pretty young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer—a minister's son—hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's father has come to Matthew Scudder for answers, sending the unlicensed private investigator in search of terrible truths about a life that was lived and lost in a sordid world of perversion and pleasures.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061797583
    The Sins of the Fathers
    Author

    Lawrence Block

    LAWRENCE BLOCK has been writing crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century. He has published more than 100 books, and no end of short stories. LB is best known for his series characters, including Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, and Keller. LB has also published under pseudonyms including Jill Emerson, John Warren Wells, Lesley Evans, and Anne Campbell Clarke. His monthly instructional column ran in WRITER'S DIGEST for 14 years and led to a series of books for writers. He has also written television and film screenplays. Several of LB's books have been filmed, including A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES. LB is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards, Japanese Maltese Falcon award, Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association, been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has been awarded the Société 813 trophy.

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    Reviews for The Sins of the Fathers

    4/5

    48 ratings31 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Sins of the Fathers introduces the series character of Matthew Scudder, a former New York City police officer. He's left the force and is now working as a private detective. Scudder fits right into the detective genre, wrestling with chronic alcoholism and leaving no stone unturned as he pursues the answers to his questions. This series is considered among mystery's most popular private eye novels.

      Scudder is hired by the stepfather of Wendy Hanniford, a woman who has died under strange circumstances. He doesn't want Matt to solve it, because the apparent killer has already been arrested and subsequently hung himself in his jail cell. They were estranged and the father wants to know how Wendy got to the point where she was murdered by her roommate.

      This book was originally written in 1976, so some of the details seem a little funny, like Matt Scudder carrying dimes to use at the payphone. I though Scudder was an interesting character, a tough ex-cop who pays a tithe to one of the local churches. His unconventional methods of investigation set him apart from most of the other private detective novels I've read. I really liked the ending which was unexpected. I love noir mysteries and I loved the pulp fiction style of this series. I'm definitely going to read the next book, In the Midst of Death.
    • 3/5
      Matthew Scudder, private investigator has been asked by the father of a murder victim to find out the truth about his daughter and the man that was living with her and supposedly killed her. What Matthew found out was not exactly what the father had in mind. It wasn't the usual type of murder mystery but it kept you turning the pages to see what he found out next. It was an early book in the series and I have found that the later books have more action but overall, it was a good read.
    • 5/5
      Another chip off the old Block. I love 'em.
    • 4/5
      Good twists in the story, and great characterization of Matthew Scudder.
    • 4/5
      A pretty young girl is butchered in her Greenwich Village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister's son, is found dead in his jail cell and as far as the NYPD is concerned the case is closed.Matt Scudder, an ex-cop who now does 'favours for friends' is persuaded to look into the case by the dead girl's father. Suddenly he's up to his neck in sleaze and corruption, phoney religious cults and murderous lust. In New York's underbelly the children have no choice but to pay the price for their parents' most unspeakable sins. (I think the blurb is a bit over the top - didn't really find a phoney religious cult..)
    • 5/5
      In “A Diet of Treacle” Lawrence Block detailed the depths to which young adults fleeing to the city in the early sixties had reached. That books showed a world of drugs, prostitution, depravity, and bloody apartments. A decade later, Block introduced the world to the character of Matthew Scudder in “The Sins of the Fathers” and, in many ways, revisited the idea of what happened to kids who left college and sank into the netherworld of New York City in the early seventies. In particular, this is the story of a young lady who became a call girl and was found hacked apart with a razor and her male roommate was found wandering in front of the apartment building, half-crazed and covered with blood. He hanged himself in the tombs within a few days. The legal establishment considered the case closed at that point. But, when the girl’s father asks Scudder to poke around and find out who his daughter was and what her life had been about, Scudder unravels things about these two kids he never would have suspected.

      You can pick up the Scudder novels in just about any order and be intrigued. For the most part, they are each independent books. Each one is a terrific detective novel. If you think these novels are going to be about a hardboiled detective with a fedora and a sexy secretary taking dictation, you will be quite surprised. Although derived from the hardboiled tradition, the Scudder books are different. Scudder is an old-fashioned detective who puts together little bits and pieces and figures things out by dogged work.

      Scudder, if you did not know, is a former police officer. One night, off duty in a bar (where else would he be), he sees two guys hold up the joint and take out the bartender. Pursuing them outside, Scudder took them out, but a stray bullet from his gun ricocheted into the skull of a seven-year-old girl, ending her life. The shooting was found justified, but Scudder lost the desire for police work, the desire for his married life, and holed up in Hell’s Kitchen, doing favors for people in return for a few bucks. It is a dark period of his life and he literally tries to drown his troubles in booze.

      This book is an amazing introduction to the Scudder series and is absolutely a powerful story. Although, as noted earlier, you can hints about this book in some of the earlier Block books about the beats and the hippies, Block’s writing truly blossoms when he writes about Scudder. These books have a depth to them that few modern-day mysteries do. Five stars, indeed.
    • 4/5
      (Audiobook.) There a few authors who can always be relied on to write interesting and entertaining stories. Lawrence Block is one of those. I’ve read many across all of his different series and they never fail to be enjoyable. Some are humorous like the “Burglar” series, others more serious character studies, like Scudder.Sins of the Fathers is the first Matthew Scudder. Scudder is approached by a man whose daughter has been killed. Her ostensible boyfriend, the killer, has been caught and committed suicide, but the father (nice pun in the title as Scudder has lost his faith with the police department) wants to know why. As Scudder notes, the door has been opened and now he wants to look inside the room. It seems the daughter had left home a few years earlier and had been living as a prostitute.Scudder, as his fans, will know, is not your usual P.I. A former cop, he now just looks into things for people. He doesn’t file reports, have expense accounts, or any of the usual trapping of the P.I. But he’s very good at asking questions. But that also provides him more latitude and incentive to dig a little harder than a cop might. Of course, nothing is at it first appears and things get complicated. Heart-pounding action it does not have, just good writing and interesting characters.The book was first published in 1976 and the stereotypic descriptions some of the gay characters is typical of that period. The diatribe of the cab driver against the Zionists controlling and hiking gas prices looks even more ridiculous now than it was then given today’s plummeting costs. Certainly not a criticism, just an observation.Block is at his best and Alan Sklar does the book credit. The way he reads the dialogue between Scudder and the killer’s father, a sanctimonious minister is priceless. A fine novel.
    • 5/5
      Excellent study of the depths of the human soul! Recommended!
    • 4/5
      I'm finally getting around to reading the first book in the Matthew Scudder series. What a great way to start. A definite psychological mystery. I will admit that I probably would not have rated this one as high if I had read it first. It didn't give very much insight into Matthew's character (which is what I love most about this series). Since I was reading this story with hindsight, I feel I had an advantage.
    • 4/5
      The Sins of the Fathers is my first Lawrence Block novel, but it won't be the last. The central character, Matthew Scudder, is a rather dark character. There seems to be quite a story in how he got that way and I'm hoping to find some of that in the remaining books of the series. The characters are made very real and the story is very good. It moves along fast and leads to the clever detective putting all the pieces together--and more. I recommend the book to mystery lovers.
    • 5/5
      A good hard narrative that doesn't let up as soon as it starts. Be prepared for a fast read! Fans of Ian Flemming's James Bond series (one of the best, IMO) will see plenty to like in the bourbon and whiskey loving Scudder. Even the moral lines are just as blurred leading to both characters waxing philosophical at times (and, of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that!). Scudder isn't a secret agent, but he certainly entertains as one- all in the hard and majestic concrete jungle that is- my home- New York City.
    • 4/5
      Matt Scudder is a definite son-of-a-bitch, when he needs to be. He lives in a dark, twisted world where cops are dirty because... well... because that's the way it is. When he was a cop he believed that, if someone gave you money, you took it. Only a sap wouldn't. In this novel, when he was feeling sh*tty, he acted like a mark until someone tried to mug him, just so he could beat the guy down. And then he robbed the mugger, for good measure.

      Not much actually happens in this one. It's a straight forward investigation. He's hired... well, no. He's not a private investigator, he doesn't have a license. What he does is, he does favours for people and they give him "thank you" gifts. Like a high-priced call girl. So in this story, he "does a favour" for a man, tracking down the information to be able to provide this man with an explanation, a description, of what his wayward daughter had been like, before she was murdered. A snapshot of her life and what led up to her death. In the process, he does that and more. In the process, he ends up finding out that some whores actually do have hearts of gold. And some other people are just plain sh*t.

      Scudder lives in a dark, dirty, nasty world. And it's not that world that makes him interesting. In fact, I don't think that world is what makes any hard-boiled detective fiction worth reading. It's the lens we see it through. Our tour guide. Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Nick Charles, Matt Scudder... it's these men who give us a unique perspective on those dark corners of big city life.

      I enjoy Scudder's perspective. By logical extension, I enjoy Lawrence Block's perspective.

      Good book. Well worth the read.
    • 5/5
      This is the book that taught me how to fool people. Without this book, none of my own work would have twists.
    • 3/5
      A good book -- very dark though. Written in 1976, it seems even more dated than that. It has 60's sensibilities written all over it. The main character, Matt Scudder, wasn't terribly likable but that didn't keep me from enjoying the book.
    • 5/5
      A pretty young woman is found in a pool of blood; she’s been slashed repeatedly with a sharp instrument. Her male roommate is found on the street nearby, covered in her blood, exposing himself and babbling incoherently. Arrested for her murder, he hangs himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's father has come to Matthew Scudder, an ex-cop and unlicensed private investigator, hoping for answers; he’s been somewhat estranged from his daughter and he wants to know how she came to be in this setting. Scudder begins looking into her background, and finds much more than he expected.

      Wow. I’ve been a fan of Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr series (Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, et al) for quite some time, but had not read any of the Matt Scudder series until now. This series is darker than the “Burglar” books. Block is a master of suspense, and he writes a tight novel. There is nary a word out of place or an extraneous phrase.

      What I really loved about the book was Scudder himself. He’s contemplative and relatively quiet, not given to macho acts of aggression (though he’s not above teaching a lesson or two to a bad guy). I like the way he deals with other people – respectful, even when he’s applying pressure. He has a strong sense of right and wrong, and while he feels comfortable rendering judgment, he recognizes the slippery slope he’s on when he takes matters into his own hands.

      I’ll definitely be reading more of this series. I want to get to know Matthew Scudder better.
    • 3/5
      I've listened to another in this series, so it was nice to listen to the first one. No real surprises. Typical Block, very understated. Scudder is likable if a rather aimless character. The mystery was OK, a little obvious, but not bad at all. The way Scudder solved it was perfect.

      I have the next book in the series, but I'm reading another mystery in paperback & don't like having 2 books of the same genre going at the same time. Too easy to get confused. Besides, I'm not in any rush. Scudder is a good way to pass the time, but I can't work up a lot of excitement for most of Block's books.
    • 4/5
      Fast moving and lean, this reads quickly -- I finished it in a day. I know Matthew Scudder has a series of novels, and I'm interested to continue with him. Scudder is dark, that much I had known previous to reading the book, but the bringing out of his darkness within the novel is done wonderfully, had me reading passages aloud to my wife, a grin on my face.

      I was expecting something more formulaic, and it could be that I don't know the genre well enough, but this seemed fresh to me. I loved the religious aspect to the character and felt that Block treated it respectively and not as a shill for any pet theories of theism or atheism.
    • 4/5
      This is the second Matt Scudder book I’ve read and I really like this character. Retired from the police he agrees to look into the murder of a prostitute in Greenwich Village for her father. The police have arrested her gay roommate, case closed for them, and then he kills himself in his jail cell after confessing to murdering her. But the facts don’t add up and Matt starts friends, neighbors, relatives and acquaintances till he figures out exactly what happened to them.
    • 3/5
      read a couple of years ago.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. I love this series.
    • 4/5
      First line:~He was a big man, about my height with a little more flesh on his heavy frame~I have read all of the Matt Scudder crime / detective fiction novels by Lawrence Block, some of them many years ago, and decided recently that it was time I revisited him. I really like exceptionally flawed characters who are really good at their job (like Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone) and Scudder is pretty flawed. I am now in a 12 Step Program and I remembered that Scudder is an alcoholic from the beginning and eventually gets into AA and recovers so I was really interested to see how that is played out with these re-reads. A former cop, having caused an accidental death with a clean shot that ricocheted off a building, he has left the force unable to live with the fact that it could happen again. His personal life is basically ‘in the toilet’. No job, he has left his wife and two sons, no real friends, no real relationships.He is not a PI. No licence. And, yet, people find him and ask him for help and give him 'gifts' as thank-yous. And he is damn good at what he does.This book, the first Scudder, is not the best. As with many series, the stories get stronger as time goes on. But it is a great introduction to Scudder and his basic good character. I enjoyed it very much and moved on to Scudder # 2.3.5 stars
    • 3/5
      I remembered loving Matt Scudder, and found that I still do. The mystery itself isn't too complex, but the characters are. The setting is very evocative of the seventies, and the resolution is strong and feels absolutely right. I think I might re-read the whole series.
    • 4/5
      A great start to an even greater series. This is the book that first introduced Lawrence Block's most famous creation, Matthew Scudder, to the world.Matthew Scudder used to be a police detective, a good one by most accounts, the kind of "honest" cop who wasn't above putting a little cash in his pocket if the occasion presented itself but never went chasing after it with his hand held out. Then he was involved in an off duty shooting that resulted in the accidental death of a small child. That was the beginning of the end of his days as a cop. He left the life he was living behind - along with a wife and kids out on Long Island - and took up residence in a shabby residential hotel in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City.Scudder's New York is a place that's gradually rotting around the edges like so much overripe fruit... it still has its good parts but it's probably just a matter of time before it all goes bad. He's an unlicensed investigator who works when he wants (or when he has to) and the rest of the time he mostly does a lot of maintenance drinking. Matt is neither sinking nor swimming, he's just kind of treading water along the undercurrents of the city.In this particular story a grieving father asks Scudder to look into the facts surrounding the recent murder of his estranged daughter. Not to solve the murder. Everyone knows who killed her and the guilty party has obliged them all by committing suicide in his cell. What the young woman's father wants is for Matt Scudder to investigate his daughter's life, to find out who she was, how she ended up living the way she had been living, if there was a reason why things happened in the way that they did. This is an all too familiar question for Scudder - a theme that reoccurs throughout the series - what is it that puts someone in a particular place at a certain time? Is it fate, destiny, or just plain dumb luck?In the process of his investigation he will uncover unexpected things - long forgotten secrets and unpleasant truths. Somewhere around the halfway point the astute mystery reader will get a general notion of where the story is headed but not likely the exact nature of it. It's a somber story, nobody really wins and quite a few lose. There's not a lot of wiz bang action - it's introspective - the story is constant but not frenzied. It doesn't have all the answers and it makes no apologies. But in the end there is a certain amount of accountability.Matthew Scudder isn't the standard hard boiled figure. He doesn't often crack wise - although he does get in the occasional one liner and the dialogue is ALWAYS spot on - he's not a meathead or a thug, he can handle himself but he never gives off the impression of being invincible or a caricature. He's not a religious man but he spends time in churches - they're a good place to think.Despite almost every possible reason on Earth for him to come across as a despicable, pathetic human being Matthew Scudder is a strangely sympathetic character. A hard luck, world weary student of the human condition, an introspective guy who wonders about things like fate and the fragility of human life. When he takes on a case he often becomes consumed with it (perhaps, at least in the earliest novels, because it gives him a greater purpose in his otherwise self indulgent life) refusing to stop even when it goes against his better judgment to continue.Originally published in 1976, The Sins of The Fathers holds up pretty well because, with a few exceptions, it avoids trendy phrases and sticks with a straight ahead story telling style (I do have to admit the first time he put a dime in a payphone it made me chuckle slightly). There's foul language, sexual situations and violence. There's some dark stuff in it, but none of it is unusually shocking by the standards of today.
    • 3/5
      "The Sins of the Fathers" by Lawrence Block was a very fast read. A very strict minister, young adults searching for their own identity and a former cop turned detective complete the major characters in the story. Although this is an older book and the money that changed hands was not realistic for today's market, the rest of the story was fairly current. The plot was straightforward and I guessed most of the ending early in the book as it was fairly predictable. I still enjoyed this book.
    • 4/5
      Read it in French: Les péchés des pèresIt is "typical" Block - which means it's concise and to the point and a little dark and the main character is flawed and just a smidge to the left of legal, but also immensely likable even when he is not being at all likable. It was written in the 70s and yet Block writes about homosexuals and prostitutes without adding any hint of judgment against either group - this is uncommon today, let alone in the 70s when any such "deviance" was the sensational fodder these trashy detective novels were based on. Block doesn't waste his writing efforts to moralize for us or preach to us, and I LOVE that about his writing.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book (although Wikipedia poo-pooed it a little). The ending was not much of a mystery, but the build-up is worthy of some sort of moral tragedy.
    • 5/5
      The First book of my favorite series in crime/PI fiction. I'd recommend reading this series in publication order. I'm currently rereading these books and they really have held up well over time. Knowing where Matt Scudder ends up makes these reads even more enjoyable the second time around.
    • 4/5
      This novel is of the kind that your eyes hit the page and before you know, it, you sit up blinking, having devoured the book in one setting. The style is clean and flows well enough to do that. I also admit I have a weakness for books set in my home town of New York City, so that was another plus for me. Yet I didn't leave the novel wanting to read more of Block or his protagonist/narrator Matthew Scudder for several reasons. Some of those reasons are idiosyncratic, I know. I hold it against Scudder for instance, that he uses a prostitute for sex. Prostitution comes into the plot in other ways as well, and the attitude towards it is a bit too breezy for my comfort. I also don't like the picture of graft in the New York City Police as not just a way of life, but that not participating in it, even if you turn a blind eye towards others, would hurt your career and the trust of your peers. Maybe this is accurate--or was in 1976 when this was published. But it's yet another aspect of the hard-boiled detective tradition--along with the touch of vigilantism--that makes this subgenre unattractive to me. Then there's the Freudian psychology in the motivations I find cliched and hard to buy. Finally, if you read this looking for a surprising twist--well, I guessed the murderer as soon at the first interview.
    • 5/5
      have read many books by Lawrence Block, and I keep coming back to the Matt Scudder series. This is book one of the series that consists of 16 books total by now.I had read this book a long time ago, but wanted to reacquaint myself with this series again. I certainly was not disappointed. Matt Scudder is not a private detective; rather he does favors for people. He is a former NYPD detective who had to leave the job for personal reasons.The favor he does this time is for the stepfather of a young woman who has been brutally murdered. The case has been solved already, but the stepfather wants more answers than have been provided.Although it isn't hard to figure out what has happened to this young woman, Matt does find more answers. It's the journey of enjoying Matt discover these answers that's so interesting.I'll definitely be reading the next book in this series soon. If you haven't read any Matt Scudder before, I would certainly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      First person. Down and outish PI investigates murder of 20 something college drop out prostitute and her suicided gay minister's son "murderer". Graft between cops is casually mentioned as well as "gay underground" of NYC. Probably bold in the 70's not so much in 07. Reminded me of an updated Breakfast at Tiffany's. Author pins the murder to the caricatured minister, throwing scripture in his face in the finale. Story could have gone in any direction. Characters were consistent though shallow. Prefer the more modern realism of George Pelecanos.

    Book preview

    The Sins of the Fathers - Lawrence Block

    Chapter 1

    He was a big man, about my height with a little more flesh on his heavy frame. His eyebrows, arched and prominent, were still black. The hair on his head was iron gray, combed straight back, giving his massive head a leonine appearance. He had been wearing glasses but had placed them on the oak table between us. His dark brown eyes kept searching my face for secret messages. If he found any, his eyes didn’t reflect them. His features were sharply chiseled—a hawk-bill nose, a full mouth, a craggy jawline—but the full effect of his face was as a blank stone tablet waiting for someone to scratch commandments on it.

    He said, I don’t know very much about you, Scudder.

    I knew a little about him. His name was Cale Hanniford. He was around fifty-five years old. He lived upstate in Utica where he had a wholesale drug business and some real estate holdings. He had last year’s Cadillac parked outside at the curb. He had a wife waiting for him in his room at the Carlyle.

    He had a daughter in a cold steel drawer at the city mortuary.

    There’s not much to know, I said. I used to be a cop.

    An excellent one, according to Lieutenant Koehler.

    I shrugged.

    And now you’re a private detective.

    No.

    I thought—

    Private detectives are licensed. They tap telephones and follow people. They fill out forms, they keep records, all of that. I don’t do those things. Sometimes I do favors for people. They give me gifts.

    I see.

    I took a sip of coffee. I was drinking coffee spiked with bourbon. Hanniford had a Dewar’s and water in front of him but wasn’t taking much interest in it. We were in Armstrong’s, a good sound saloon with dark wood walls and a stamped tin ceiling. It was two in the afternoon on the second Tuesday in January, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. A couple of nurses from Roosevelt Hospital were nursing beers at the far end of the bar, and a kid with a tentative beard was eating a hamburger at one of the window tables.

    He said, It’s difficult for me to explain what I want you to do for me, Scudder.

    I’m not sure that there’s anything I can do for you. Your daughter is dead. I can’t change that. The boy who killed her was picked up on the spot. From what I read in the papers, it couldn’t be more open-and-shut if they had the homicide on film. His face darkened; he was seeing that film now, the knife slashing. I went on quickly. They picked him up and booked him and slapped him in the Tombs. That was Thursday? He nodded. And Saturday morning they found him hanging in his cell. Case closed.

    Is that your view? That the case is closed?

    From a law enforcement standpoint.

    That’s not what I meant. Of course the police have to see it that way. They apprehended the killer, and he’s beyond punishment. He leaned forward. But there are things I have to know.

    Like what?

    I want to know why she was killed. I want to know who she was. I’ve had no real contact with Wendy in the past three years. Christ, I didn’t even know for certain that she was living in New York. His eyes slipped away from mine. They say she didn’t have a job. No apparent source of income. I saw the building she lived in. I wanted to go up to her apartment, but I couldn’t. Her rent was almost four hundred dollars a month. What does that suggest to you?

    That some man was paying her rent.

    She shared that apartment with the Vanderpoel boy. The boy who killed her. He worked for an antiques importer. He earned something in the neighborhood of a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. If a man were keeping her as his mistress, he wouldn’t let her have Vanderpoel as a roommate, would he? He drew a breath. I guess it must be fairly obvious that she was a prostitute. The police didn’t tell me that in so many words. They were tactful. The newspapers were somewhat less tactful.

    They usually are. And the case was the kind the newspapers like to play with. The girl was attractive, the murder took place in the Village, and there was a nice core of sex to it. And they had picked up Richard Vanderpoel running in the streets with her blood all over him. No city editor worth a damn would let that one slide past him.

    He said, Scudder? Do you see why the case isn’t closed for me?

    I guess I do. I made myself look deep into his dark eyes. The murder was a door starting to open for you. Now you have to know what’s inside the room.

    Then you do understand.

    I did, and wished I didn’t. I had not wanted the job. I work as infrequently as I can. I had no present need to work. I don’t need much money. My room rent is cheap, my day-to-day expenses low enough. Besides, I had no reason to dislike this man. I have always felt more comfortable taking money from men I dislike.

    Lieutenant Koehler didn’t understand what I wanted. I’m sure he only gave me your name as a polite way of getting rid of me. That wasn’t all there was to it, but I let it pass. But I really need to know these things. Who was she? Who did Wendy turn into? And why would anyone want to kill her?

    Why did anyone want to kill anybody? The act of murder is performed four or five times a day in New York. One hot week last summer the count ran to fifty-three. People kill their friends, their relatives, their lovers. A man on Long Island demonstrated karate to his older children by chopping his two-year-old daughter to death. Why did people do these things?

    Cain said he wasn’t Abel’s keeper. Are those the only choices, keeper or killer?

    Will you work for me, Scudder? He managed a small smile. I’ll rephrase that. Will you do me a favor? And it would be a favor.

    I wonder if that’s true.

    How do you mean?

    That open door. There might be things in that room you won’t want to look at.

    I know that.

    And that’s why you have to.

    That’s right.

    I finished my coffee. I put the cup down and took a deep breath. Yeah, I said, I’ll give it a shot.

    He settled into his chair, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. It was his first since he’d walked in. Some people reach for a cigarette when they’re tense, others when the tension passes. He was looser now, and looked as though he felt he had accomplished something.

    I had a new cup of coffee in front of me and a couple of pages filled in my notebook. Hanniford was still working on the same drink. He had told me a lot of things I would never need to know about his daughter. But any of the things he said might turn out to matter, and there was no way to guess which it might be. I had learned long ago to listen to everything a man had to say.

    So I learned that Wendy was an only child, that she had done well in high school, that she had been popular with her classmates but had not dated much. I was getting a picture of a girl, not sharply defined, but a picture that would eventually have to find a way of blending with one of a slashed-up whore in a Village apartment.

    The picture started to blur when she went away to college in Indiana. That was evidently when they began to lose her. She majored in English, minored in government. A couple of months before she was due to graduate she packed a suitcase and disappeared.

    The school got in touch with us. I was very worried, she had never done anything like this before. I didn’t know what to do. Then we had a postcard. She was in New York, she had a job, there were some things she had to work out. We had another card several months after that from Miami. I didn’t know whether she had moved there or was vacationing.

    And then nothing until the telephone rang and they learned she was dead. She was seventeen when she finished high school, twenty-one when she dropped out of college, twenty-four when Richard Vanderpoel cut her up. That was as old as she was ever going to get.

    He began telling me things I would learn over again in more detail from Koehler. Names, addresses, dates, times. I let him talk. Something bothered me, and I let it sort itself out in my mind.

    He said, The boy who killed her. Richard Vanderpoel. He was younger than she was. He was only twenty. He frowned at a memory. When I heard what happened, what he had done, I wanted to kill that boy. I wanted to put him to death with my hands. His hands tightened into fists at the recollection, then opened slowly. But after he committed suicide, I don’t know, something changed inside me. It struck me that he was a victim, too. His father is a minister.

    Yes, I know.

    A church in Brooklyn somewhere. I had an impulse. I wanted to talk to the man. I don’t know what I thought I might want to say to him. Whatever it was, after a moment’s reflection I realized I could never have that conversation. And yet—

    You want to know the boy. In order to know your daughter.

    He nodded.

    I said, Do you know what an Identikit portrait is, Mr. Hanniford? You’ve probably seen them in newspaper stories. When the police have an eyewitness, they use this kit of transparent overlays to piece together a composite picture of a suspect. ‘Is this nose like this? Or is this one more like it? Bigger? Wider? How about the ears? Which set of ears comes the closest?’ And so on until the features add up to a face.

    Yes, I’ve seen how that works.

    Then you’ve probably also seen actual photographs of the suspect side by side with the Identikit portraits. They never seem to resemble one another, especially to the untrained eye. But there is a factual resemblance, and a trained officer can often make very good use of it. Do you see what I’m getting at? You want photographs of your daughter and the boy who killed her. I’m not equipped to offer you that. No one is. I can dig up enough facts and impressions to make composite Identikit portraits for you, but the result may not be all that close to what you really want.

    I understand.

    You want me to go ahead?

    Yes. Definitely.

    I’m probably more expensive than one of the big agencies. They’d work for you either per diem or on an hourly basis. Plus expenses. I take a certain amount of money and pay my own expenses out of it. I don’t like keeping records. I also don’t like writing reports, or checking in periodically when there’s nothing to say for the sake of keeping a client contented.

    How much money do you want?

    I never know how to set prices. How do you put a value on your time when its only value is personal? And when your life has been deliberately restructured to minimize involvement in the lives of others, how much do you charge the man who forces you to involve yourself?

    I want two thousand dollars from you now. I don’t know how long this will take or when you’ll decide you’ve seen enough of the dark room. I may ask you for more money somewhere along the way, or after it’s over. Of course you always have the option of not paying me.

    He smiled suddenly. You’re a very unorthodox businessman.

    I suppose so.

    I’ve never had occasion to hire a detective, so I don’t really know how this is usually done. Do you mind a check?

    I told him a check was fine, and while he was writing it out, I figured out what had been bothering me earlier. I said, You never hired detectives after Wendy disappeared from college?

    No. He looked up. It wasn’t that long before we received the first of the two postcards. I’d considered hiring detectives, of course, but once we knew she was all right I dropped the idea.

    But you still didn’t know where she was, or how she was living.

    No. He lowered his eyes. That’s part of it, of course. Why I’m busy now, locking up the empty stable. His eyes returned to mine, and there was something in them that I wanted to turn from, and couldn’t. I have to know how much to blame myself.

    Did he really think he would ever have the answer to that one? Oh, he might find himself an answer, but it would not be the right answer. There is never a right answer to that inescapable question.

    He finished writing the check and passed it to me. He had left space blank where my name belonged. He told me he thought I might like it made out to Cash. I said payable to me was fine, and he uncapped his pen again and wrote Matthew Scudder on the right line. I folded it and put it in my wallet.

    I said, Mr. Hanniford, there’s something you left out. You don’t think it’s important, but it might be, and you think it might be.

    How do you know that?

    Instinct, I suppose. I spent a lot of years watching people decide how close they cared to come to the truth. There’s nothing you have to tell me, but—

    Oh, it’s extraneous, Scudder. I left it out because I didn’t think it fit in, but—Oh, the hell with it. Wendy’s not my biological daughter.

    She was adopted?

    I adopted her. My wife is Wendy’s mother. Wendy’s father was killed before Wendy was born, he was a Marine, he died in the landing at Inchon. He looked away again. I married Wendy’s mother three years after that. From the beginning I loved her as much as any real father could have. When I found out that I was . . . unable to father children myself, I was even more grateful for her existence. Well? Is it important?

    I don’t know, I said. Probably not. But of course it was important to me. It told me something more about Hanniford’s load of guilt.

    Scudder? You’re not married, are you?

    Divorced.

    Any children?

    I nodded. He started to say something, and didn’t. I began wanting him

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