Burglars Can't Be Choosers (17 page)

The two of them looked at each other. I might as well not have been in the room. They held each other’s gaze for a long time before Loren averted his eyes and examined his shoes. They were black oxfords, incidentally, polished to a high sheen and far more suitable for a uniformed patrolman than scotch-grain loafers.

Ray said, “The toilet. He went to the bathroom and we heard him flush the toilet and then just a
few seconds later he was back in the living room. How’d he have time to do everything you said?”

“He flushed the toilet on the way back, Ray. He walked right past the bathroom originally and he just stopped on the way back to flush the toilet.”

“As a cover?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, I guess that would fit. What about the ashtray? Flaxford got killed with an ashtray.”

“From the living room.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You remember when I asked about the ashtray? There was one in the living room on the table next to where I was sitting. It wasn’t there tonight and I thought at first that it was the mate to the murder weapon, one of a pair, and the lab crew took both of them for some reason. But there was only the one ashtray. It was in the living room when I entered the apartment and by the time the lab crew got there it was in the bedroom.”

“How’d it get there? He took it?”

“Sure. He came back to the living room and did his fainting act. It seemed strange the way that happened. It was the damnedest delayed reaction ever, if you think about it. Of course if he never saw a corpse before—”

“He’s seen a few.”

“Well, maybe this was the first one he was ever responsible for. So he probably did feel a little
weak in the knees, but he managed to get all the way back to where we were and then flop on the rug. It wasn’t a real faint. A minute later I was out the door, and then when you got yourself together you ran right out after me, didn’t you?”

“So?”

“He was still on the rug when you took off. As soon as you cleared the door your buddy here grabbed the glass ashtray off the table and went back to the bedroom with it. Then he parted Flaxford’s hair with it. Maybe he’d only stunned him with the nightstick. Maybe Flaxford was already dead but Loren wanted to supply a convenient murder weapon. I think he was probably still alive, but a couple of swipes with a heavy hunk of glass would finish the job. Then he could recover consciousness and rush out and join you on the street. He’d have the rest of the money picked up by then and he’d be home free, leaving me with a murder rap hanging around my neck.”

I don’t know exactly when Ray Kirschmann knew I was telling the truth, but somewhere in the course of that speech the last of his doubts vanished. Because I heard him unsnap his own holster so that he’d be able to get to his gun if he needed it. The gesture was not lost on Loren, who looked as though he was about to take a step forward, then changed his mind and sat down on the couch.

Ray said, “How much money, Loren?” And when Loren didn’t answer he asked me.

“He’ll tell you sooner or later. My guess is it’s better than twenty thou and probably double that. It would have to be quite a bit to account for the way Debus is pressing to recover it. Of course Loren wouldn’t have known just what it added up to until he got home and counted it, but he could see right away that there was enough there to kill for.”

There was a long silence. Then Loren said, “I thought he was already dead.”

We looked at him.

“He was sprawled out like a corpse. I thought for sure this guy killed him. I don’t know what I thought. I started picking up the money. It was automatic. I don’t know what came over me. Then he opened his eyes and started to get up and—see, all along I thought he was dead, and then he opened his eyes.”

“And then you went back with the ashtray just to make sure, huh?”

“Oh, God,” Loren said.

“How much did it finally come to, partner? Twenty grand? Forty?”

“Fifty.”

“Fifty thousand American dollars.” Ray whistled softly. “No wonder you weren’t crazy about our deal tonight. Why take chances for ten grand
when you already had fifty salted away, especially when you’d have to split the ten in half and the fifty was yours free and clear.”

“Half’s yours, Ray. You think I would hold out?”

“Oh, you’re real cute, Loren.”

“I was just waiting until I could find a way to explain it to you. I wouldn’t hold out on you.”

“Of course not.”

“Twenty-five thousand tax-free dollars is your end of it, Ray. Jesus, here we have the murderer standing right next to you. It’s open and shut and all he is is a fucking burglar, Ray. See how sweet it is?”

“Oh, I get it. You think we should hang it all on Bernie here.” Ray scratched his chin. “Thing is, what happens when he tells his story? They’d lean on you and do some checking and you’d crack wide open, Loren.”

“He could get shot trying to escape. Ray, he escaped once, right? He’s a dangerous man. Listen to me, Ray. Think about twenty-five thousand dollars. Or maybe you should get more than half. Is that it? Ray, listen to me—”

Ray hit him. He used his open hand and slapped Loren across the face. Loren put his hand to his cheek and stood there looking properly stunned while the slap went on echoing in the silent apartment.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Ray said after a moment. “You have the right to—oh, fuck this noise. Bernie, if the question ever comes up recall that I read this cocksucker his rights.”

“No question about it.”

“Because I want this to be airtight. I never liked the little shit but you’d think he’d know the difference between clean and dirty, between taking money and killing for it. You know what I’d like? I’d like something hard, some piece of evidence that would nail his ass to the wall. Like his nightstick with Flaxford’s blood on it, but it’s a sure bet that already went down the incinerator.”

“You’ll find the money. With blood on some of it.”

“Unless he stashed it.” He glared at Loren. “But I suppose he’ll tell me where it is.”

“He doesn’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think he actually picked up fifty thousand dollars. I think he picked up forty-nine thousand nine hundred.”

“You lost me, Bernie.”

I held out the blue box. “Now I didn’t open this box yet,” I said, “because I don’t know the combination. But I could probably pick the lock, and when I do I have a feeling I know what we’ll find inside. I think we’ll find a hundred-dollar bill and I think there’ll be a bloodstain on the bill and I
even think there’ll be a fingerprint on the bloodstain. Now it could conceivably be Flaxford’s fingerprint if he did some bleeding before Loren got to him. Maybe he cut himself on the lamp as he knocked it over. But I have a hunch it’ll be Loren’s fingerprint, and it certainly ought to be a good piece of evidence, don’t you think?”

Ray gave me a long look. “That’s what you
think
you’ll find in the box.”

“Call it a hunch.”

“So why not open the box and see for ourselves?” And when I’d done so he said, “Beautiful, Just beautiful. When’d you set this up, anyway? Oh, sure, the time you went to the toilet. You faked flushing it same as Loren did. That’s cute. And the bill was there all the time? The lab boys missed it? Amazing.”

“It must have been in the blue box all along.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t suppose I’ll ever learn what was really in the blue box, and I don’t really suppose I give a shit. I like what’s in there now. That’s a beautiful print, all right, and I’ll bet it does turn up to be yours, Loren, and I’ll also bet that blood turns out to be the right type.” He sighed heavily. “Loren,” he said, “I think you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“T
hat’s fantastic,” Ellie said. “Just incredible. You actually solved the murder.”

“That’s what I did, all right.”

“It’s amazing.” She drew up her legs and tucked her feet underneath herself. She was wearing the outfit she’d had on the morning she knocked the plant over, the white painter’s pants and the Western-style denim shirt, and she looked as fetching as ever. “I don’t see how you figured it out, Bernie.”

“Well, I told you how it went. The main thing was realizing that the deadbolt had been locked originally. At the time I assumed that Flaxford had locked it on his way out, but of course he was in the bedroom then. Once I made the connection, there were two possibilities. Either the murderer was someone with a key, or Flaxford had locked it
himself from the inside. And if Flaxford had locked up, then he was alive when I was in the apartment, and if that was the case only one person could have killed him.”

“Loren.”

“Loren. And if Loren killed him it was for money, and money was the one thing that wasn’t turning up. And there just had to be money in the case.”

“And you figured all this out while you were opening the door.”

“I had it pretty much figured out before then. I wanted it to look like it was coming to me while Ray was around so it would be easier for him to follow the reasoning.”

“And then you had the luck to find the hundred-dollar bill on the floor.”

I let that pass. It
was
luck, but I’d been prepared to make my own luck. There was a hundred-dollar bill in my wallet right now, one of the pair Darla and I had split, and there was a little blood on it for decoration, and it would have gone into the blue box if the genuine article hadn’t turned up behind the bed. I’d needed something to take Ray’s mind off what was originally in the box and a piece of bloody currency had looked to have the right sort of dramatic value, something Perry Mason might wave about in a courtroom. Maybe that was why I happened to notice the bill Loren
had actually left behind. Well, this way I could keep my own bill, at least until I found something to spend it on.

Ellie got up and went to the kitchen for more coffee. I stretched out and put my feet up on the coffee table. I was bone-tired and tightly wired all at once. I wanted to lie down and sleep for six or seven days, but the way I felt I might have to stay awake about that long.

It was getting late now, almost one-thirty. Once Ray and Loren had gotten out of Darla’s apartment I called her at home as we’d arranged, ringing twice and hanging up. A few minutes later she rang me back and I reported that I’d found the box and had the tapes and pictures in hand. “You don’t have to worry about negatives,” I said. “They’re Polaroid shots. One thing, whoever took them had a nice sense of composition.”

“You looked at them.”

“I had to know what they were and I didn’t trust myself to identify them by touch.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining,” she said. “I just wondered if you found them interesting.”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“I thought you might. Have you listened to the tapes?”

“No. I’m not going to. I think there should be a certain amount of mystery in our relationship.”

“Oh, are we going to have a relationship?”

“I rather thought we might. Does your fireplace work or is it just for decoration?”

“It works. I’ve never had a relationship in a fireplace.”

“I had something else in mind for it. I’m going to burn the pictures and tapes before I leave. They’re half mine anyway. I spent all my case money getting them back and I want them out of the way as soon as possible.”

“They might make interesting souvenirs.”

“No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. It’s like keeping a loaded gun around the house. The possible benefit is infinitesimal and the downside risk is enormous. I want to destroy them tonight. You can trust me to do it, incidentally. I’m not a potential blackmailer, just in case you were wondering.”

“Oh, I trust you, Bernard.”

“I still have my cop suit. I thought I might leave it here. It would save dragging it back downtown.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“And I still have the handcuffs and the nightstick, strangely enough. The cop they belonged to had to leave in a hurry and he won’t have any further use for them. I’ll leave them here, too.”

“Lovely. If it weren’t so late already—”

“No, it’s too late. And I have some other things to do. But I’ll be in touch, Darla.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “That will be nice.”

I looked up the number of the Cumberland and
called Wesley Brill to tell him that the whole thing was wrapped up and tied with a ribbon. “You’re completely out of it,” I said. “The case is solved, I’m in the clear, and neither you nor Mrs. S. ever got mentioned. In case you were worried.”

“I was,” he admitted. “How’d you pull it off?”

“I got lucky. Look, have you got a minute? Because I’ve got a couple of questions.”

I asked my questions and he answered them. We chatted for a minute or two, agreed we ought to meet for a drink one of these days, albeit at someplace other than Pandora’s, and that was that. I found Rodney Hart’s number in the book, dialed it, heard it ring upwards of fifteen times, then got a cooperative girl at the answering service. She told me where to reach Rod—he was still in St. Louis—but when I got through to his hotel there he hadn’t come in yet. I suppose the play was still on the boards.

I changed back into my own clothes and stowed my cop gear in Darla’s closet. She had some interesting gear of her own there, some of which I’d seen in the Polaroid shots, but I didn’t really have time to inspect it. In the living room I flipped through the photographs and piled all but one of them in the wood-burning fireplace, which I now transformed into a film-burning fireplace. I added the cassettes, which smoldered and stank a bit, stirred the ashes when ashes there were, put on the air conditioner and left.

I took a cab downtown to Bethune Street and had a lot of fun telling the driver how to find it. I looked up at the building. There were no lights on in the fourth-floor apartment. I stood in the vestibule and checked the buzzer at 4-F. No name beside the button. I poked the button and nothing happened, so I opened the downstairs door in my usual fashion and went up three flights.

The locks were easy to pick. I let myself in and didn’t have to spend too much time in there. After ten minutes or so I left, picked the locks shut behind me, and climbed another flight to Rod’s apartment where Ellie was waiting.

And we were both there now, sipping cups of coffee laced with Scotch and working everything out. “You’re completely in the clear,” she said. “Is that right? The cops don’t even want to talk to you?”

“They’ll probably want to talk to me sooner or later,” I said. “A lot depends on what Ray ultimately decides to do. He wants Loren out of that uniform for good and he wants him to do some time in prison, but at the same time he’d probably like to avoid a full-scale investigation and court battle. I figure they’ll probably work out some kind of compromise. Loren’ll plead guilty to some kind of manslaughter charge. If he’s inside for more than a year I’ll be surprised.”

“After he killed a man?”

“Well, it would be hard to prove all that in court, and it would be impossible to do without dragging in errant burglars and bribe-taking cops and corrupt district attorneys and other politicians, so you might say the system has a vested interest in putting a lid on this one. And Loren has fifty thousand silent arguments in his favor.”

“Fifty thousand—oh, the money. What happens to the money now?”

“That’s a good question. It belongs to Michael Debus, I think, but how is he going to come around and claim it? I can’t see anybody letting Loren keep it, and I don’t think Ray’ll be able to grab it all for himself. I wish there was a way I could cut myself in for a piece of it. Not out of greed but just so that I could wind up close to even. This whole business is costing me a fortune, you know. I got a thousand dollars in front and gave it to Ray. Then Debus’s men did a few thousand dollars’ damage to my apartment and its contents, and finally my five grand case money went to Ray so that I could clear myself. It all adds up to a hell of a depressing balance sheet.”

“Can you get part of the fifty thousand?”

“Not a chance. Cops don’t give money to crooks. I’m the one person in the world who won’t get a sniff of the fifty thou. I’ll have to go steal some money in a hurry, though. I’m as broke as I’ve ever been.”

“Oh, Bernie. Look what happened the last time you tried to steal something.”

“That was stealing-to-order. From now on I’m strictly freelance.”

“Oh, you’re incorrigible.”

“That’s the term, all right. Rehabilitation is wasted on me.”

She put down her coffee cup, snuggled up close, nestled her little head on my shoulder. I breathed in her perfume. “What’s really amazing,” she said, “is that the box was empty all along.”

“Except for the hundred-dollar bill inside it.”

“But before you put the bill in the box was empty.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I wonder what happened to the pictures.”

“Maybe there never were any pictures,” I suggested. “Maybe he threatened Mrs. Sandoval but never actually showed her any pictures. Because in order to take photographs there would have had to be a third person there, wouldn’t there? And no extra person ever did turn up in this case.”

“That’s true. But I thought you said he showed the pictures to her.”

“That’s the impression I had, but maybe he just showed her the box and talked so smoothly that she was left with the impression he’d proved there were pictures in the box? That’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“So there probably were never any pictures or tapes in the first place. And if there were, it’s academic because they’re gone now.”

“Gone where?”

“Up in smoke—that would be my guess.”

“That’s amazing.”

“It certainly is.”

“And everything’s all cleared up? That’s the most amazing thing of all. The police don’t want to lock you up anymore?”

“Oh, there are a few charges they could bring,” I said. “But I talked to Ray about that and he’s going to get them quashed without any noise. They could charge me with resisting arrest and unlawful entry, but they’re not really interested in that and they’d probably have trouble making the charges stick. Besides, however they decide to wrap all this up, the last thing they want is my testimony getting in the way.”

“That makes sense.”

“Uh-huh.” I draped an arm around her, curled my fingers around her shoulder. “It all wound up nice and neat,” I said. “I didn’t even have to bring you into it. You’re completely in the clear.”

The silence was devastating. Her whole body went rigid under my hand. I kept that hand on her shoulder and reached into my back pocket for the
book I’d found in Apartment 4-F. I had the page marked and flipped right to it.

I read, “ ‘I was divorced four years ago. Then I was working, not a very involving job, and then I quit, and now I’m on unemployment. I paint a little and I make jewelry and there’s a thing I’ve been doing lately with stained glass. Not what everybody else does but a form I sort of invented myself, these three-dimensional free-form sculptures I’ve been making. The thing is, I don’t know about any of these things, whether I’m good enough or not. I mean, maybe they’re just hobbies. And if that’s all they are, well, the hell with them. Because I don’t want hobbies. I want something to do and I don’t have it yet. Or at least I don’t think I do.’ ”

“Shit,” she said. “Where’d you get the script?”

“In your apartment.”

“Double shit.”

“Just one flight down. Fourth-floor front. Very conveniently located. I dropped in on my way up here. I thought your cats might be hungry but old Esther and Haman were nowhere to be found.”

“Esther and Mordecai.”

“Since you don’t have any cats it seems silly to argue about their names.” I tapped the little paper-bound book.
“Two If By Sea,”
I said. “The very play our mutual friend’s traveling around the country with. And the speech I read comes trippingly
from the lips of a character named Ruth Hightower.”

“Who told you?”

“Wesley Brill told me which play Ruth Hightower’s a character in. But I thought to ask him the question in the first place. When I introduced you to him as Ruth Hightower he thought that was amusing. I suppose he thought it might be coincidental, but you were quick to switch the conversation around and give your real name. And the night before when we hit Peter Alan Martin’s office I was mumbling some doggerel about one if by land and two if by sea and Ruth Hightower on the opposite shore will be, some Paul Revere crap, and you got very edgy. You must have thought I had everything figured out and I was just babbling. Then this morning you decided to tell me your real name.”

“Well, it doesn’t mean anything, does it?” Her eyes met mine. “I just got into a role and it took me a little time to get back to being me.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Oh, it’s not so complicated.”

“Oh, I think it is. You got into a role, all right. And it was easy for you to get into a role because you’re an actress. That should have been obvious to me earlier than it was. Look how neatly you ran down Brill yesterday. You knew just who to call—first Channel 9, then the Academy in Hollywood,
then SAG. I didn’t even know what SAG was, I thought it was something women tend to do after a certain age, and there you were on the phone with them, dropping little bits of shoptalk left and right.

“The thing is, the whole business was lousy with actors and theater buffs from the beginning. Flaxford dabbled as a producer and real estate operator while he made his money in less respectable areas. Rod’s an actor who talked about the great deal he had on an apartment because the landlord has a soft spot for actors. Darla Sandoval’s hobby is theater; that’s how Flaxford got his hooks into her in the first place, and that’s how she found Brill and used him to hire me. And you’re an actress, and that’s how you knew Rod.”