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“I don’t think so. That would be logical, wouldn’t it? Then of course he would have known I was a burglar. But I can’t think of any area of my life in or out of prison that he fits into. Maybe I’ve seen him on subways, passed him in the street. That sort of thing.”
“Maybe.” She frowned. “He set you up. Either he killed Flaxford himself or he knows who did.”
“I don’t think he killed anybody.”
“But he must know who did.”
“Probably.”
“So if we could just find him. I know you don’t know his name, but did he give you a fake name at least?”
“No. Why?”
“We could try paging him at that bar. I forget the name.”
“Pandora’s. Why page him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you could tell him you had the blue leather box.”
“What blue leather box?”
“The one you went to-oh.”
“There isn’t any blue leather box.”
“Of course not,” she said. “There never was one in the first place, was there? The blue leather box was nothing but a red herring.” She wrinkled up her forehead in concentration. “But then why did he arrange to meet you at Pandora’s?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure he didn’t bother to show up.”
“Then why arrange it?”
“Beats me. Unless he pla
“So you’d be afraid to double-cross him, I suppose.”
“But why would I cross him in the first place? There’s something fu
“You don’t remember him from jail. Do you think he’s ever been arrested?”
“Probably. It sort of comes with the territory. However good you are, sooner or later you step in the wrong place. I told you about my last arrest, didn’t I?”
“When the bell was out of order.”
“Right, and I wound up tossing an apartment while the tenants were home. And I had to pick a man with a gun and an air of righteous indignation, and then when I told him how we ought to be able to be reasonable about this and pulled out my walking money, he turned out to be the head of some civic group. I’d have had about as much chance of bribing a rabbi with a ham sandwich. They didn’t just throw the book at me, they threw the whole library.”
“Poor Bernie,” she said, and put her hand on mine. Our hands took a few minutes to get acquainted. Our eyes met, then slipped away to leave us with our private thoughts.
And mine turned, not for the first time, to prison. If I gave myself up they’d undoubtedly let me cop a plea to Murder Two, maybe even some degree of manslaughter. I’d most likely be on the street in three or four years with good time and parole and all that. I’d never served that much time before, but my last stretch had been substantial enough, eighteen months, and if you can do eighteen months you can do four years. Either way you straighten up and square your shoulders and do your bit one day at a time.
Of course I was older now and I’d be crowding forty by the time I got out. But they say it’s easier to do time when you’re older because the months and the years seem to pass more rapidly.
No women inside. No soft cool hands, no taut rounded bottoms. (There are men inside with taut rounded bottoms, if you happen to like that sort of thing. I don’t happen to like that sort of thing.)
“Bernie? I could go to the police.”
“And turn me in? It might make sense if there was a reward, but-”
“What are you talking about? Why would I turn you in? Are you crazy?”
“A little. Why else would you go to the cops?”
“Don’t they have books full of pictures of criminals? I could tell them I was taken by a con man and get them to show me pictures.”
“And then what?”
“Well, maybe I’d recognize him.”
“You’ve never seen him, Ruth.”
“I feel as though I have from your description.”
“A mug shot would just show his face. Not his profile.”
“Oh.”
“That’s why they call it a mug shot.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think it’s a viable approach.”
“I guess not, Bernie.”
I turned her hand over, stroked the palm and the pads of her fingers. She moved her body a little closer to mine. We sat like that for a few minutes while I got myself all prepared to put my arm around her, and just as I was about to make my move she stood up.
“I just wish we could do something,” she said. “If we knew the name of the man who roped you in we would at least have a place to start.”
“Or if we knew why somebody wanted to kill Flaxford. Somebody had a reason to want him dead. A motive. If we knew more about him we might know what to look for.”
“Don’t the police-”
“The police already know who killed him. There won’t ever be any investigation, Ruth, because as far as they’re concerned I’m guilty and the case is closed. All they have to do is get their hands on me. That’s why the frame works so perfectly. It may be that there’s only one person in the world with a motive for killing Flaxford, but no one will ever know about it because Flaxford’s murder is all wrapped up and tied with a ribbon and the card has my name on it.”
“I could go to the library tomorrow. I’ll check The New York Times Index. Maybe they ran something on him years ago and I can read all about it in the microfilm room.”
I shook my head. “If there was anything juicy they’d have dug it up and run it in his obit.”
“There might be something that would make some kind of co
“I suppose so.”
She walked half a dozen steps in one direction, then retraced them, then turned and began the process anew. It was a reasonably good Caged Lion impression. “I can’t just sit around,” she said. “I get stir crazy.”
“You’d hate prison.”
“God! How do people stand it?”
“A day at a time,” I said. “I’d take you out for a night on the town, Ruth, but-”
“No, you have to stay here,” she said. “I realize that.” She picked up one of the papers, turned pages. “Maybe there’s something on television,” she said, and it turned out that there was a Warner Brothers gangster thing on WPIX. The whole crew was in it-Robinson, Lorre, Greenstreet, and a ton of great old character actors whose names I’ve never bothered to learn but whose faces I’d never forget. She sat on the couch next to me and we watched the whole thing, and eventually I did manage to put an arm around her and we sort of cuddled, doing a little low-level necking during the commercials.
When the last villain got his and they rolled the final credits she said, “See? The bad guys always lose in the end. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Life,” I a
“Well, it ain’t no De Mille epic either, boss. Things’ll work out, Bernie.”
“Maybe.”
The eleven o’clock news came on and we watched it until they got to the part we were interested in. There were no new developments in the Flaxford murder, and the report they gave was just an abbreviated version of what we’d seen a few hours earlier. When they cut to an item about a drug bust in Hunts Point Ruth went over to the set and turned it off.
“I guess I’ll go now,” she said.
“Go?”
“Home.”
“Where’s that?”
“ Bank Street. Not far from here.”
“You could stick around,” I suggested. “There’s probably something watchable on the tube.”