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“I guess,” she said.
“Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“I suppose so. You really think it’s still there? The blue box?”
“If it was there in the first place it’s there now. I think I know who turned my apartment inside out. I think it was a couple of people from Michael Debus’s office.” Probably the two men I’d seen going into my building two nights ago, I thought. While I’d stood on the corner looking up at my lighted windows they’d been busy turning order into chaos. “He’s a D.A. in Brooklyn or Queens and he was co
“Flaxford was blackmailing him, too?”
“I don’t think so, I think he was Debus’s fixer. Carter Sandoval was making things hot for Debus, and Flaxford was putting pressure on Mrs. Sandoval to call her husband off. Debus must have been worried that something incriminating was left on the premises. But he probably didn’t know it was in a blue box or anything like that, just that Flaxford had it and he couldn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. At any rate, he sent over a pair of oafs to toss my place. If he did that, then he didn’t get the box himself. And that means no one did.”
“What about the killer?”
“Huh?”
“Flaxford had a visitor at his apartment that night. Someone he knew. Probably someone else he was blackmailing. Who knows how many people he had his hooks into? And he could have kept all the evidence in that box of his.”
“Keep talking.”
She shrugged. “So he met with his victim and the victim demanded to see the evidence and Flaxford showed it to him, and then the victim killed Flaxford, smashed his head in, and scooped up the box and ran like a thief.”
“Like a murderer, too.”
“Exactly. Seconds later you went in-it’s a miracle you and the killer didn’t bump into each other in the hallway, actually-and meanwhile someone heard the struggle and called the police, and while you were riffling desk drawers they came through the door and there you were.”
“There I was,” I agreed.
“This Debus would still think the box was either at Flaxford’s apartment or at your place. Because he wouldn’t know about X.”
“About who?”
“X. The killer.” I looked at her. “Well, that’s how they always say it on television.”
“I hate seeing my whole life reduced to an algebraic equation.”
“Well, call him whatever you want. Just because Debus thinks you have the box doesn’t mean a third person couldn’t have it, so if you don’t find it in the apartment it may be because it isn’t there in the first place.”
I felt slightly angry, the way people must have felt a few centuries back when Galileo started making waves. I said, “The box is in Flaxford’s apartment.” And the earth is flat, you bitch, and heavy objects fall faster than light ones, and quit raining on my parade, damn you.
“It’s possible, Bernie, but-”
“The killer may have panicked and ran out of the apartment without the box. Maybe Flaxford never showed him the box in the first place.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe the blue box has been in Flaxford’s safe deposit box all along. Safe in the bowels of some midtown bank.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe Michael Debus killed Flaxford. He got the box and then Darla Sandoval and Wesley Brill ransacked my apartment.”
“You don’t think-”
“No, I don’t. Maybe Brill killed Flaxford because he couldn’t remember his lines. He gave the box to Carter Sandoval to keep his coin collection in. That’s not what I think, either. I’ll tell you what I think. I think the blue box is in Flaxford’s place.”
“Because you want it to be there.”
“That’s right, because I want it to be there. Because I’m a fucking intuitive genius who plays his hunches.”
“Which is largely responsible for the fantastic success you’ve made of your life.”
We were by this point managing the neat trick of screaming at each other without raising our voices. In a portion of my mind-the portion that wasn’t screaming-I wondered just what we were really mad about. I knew that on my part there was at least a little sexual agitation involved. Darla Sandoval had started fires that had not yet been properly extinguished.
Ultimately the fighting died down as pointlessly as it had started. We looked at each other and it was over. “I’ll make coffee,” she offered. “Unless you’d rather have a drink.”
“Not when I’m working.”
“But you’ll have keys, won’t you? And you’ll be with an authorized representative of the law.”
“It’s still burglary as far as I’m concerned.”
“So just coffee for you. Fair enough. He’s picking you up at her place? Are you going uptown dressed like that?”
“Don’t you think I’ll be warm enough? Sorry. I don’t know if I’ll change or not. Frankly I’m getting sick of putting this uniform on and taking it off. But with my luck somebody’ll stop me en route uptown and expect me to shoot it out with a holdup man.”
“Or investigate a burglary.”
“Or that. And without the cap the uniform looks incomplete. I guess I’ll change.”
“After you take your uniform off,” she said, “would you have to put your other clothes on right away?”
“Huh?”
She turned toward me, gave me a slow smile.
“Oh,” I said, and began undoing buttons.
Chapter Fifteen
I beat the cops to Darla’s place, but not by more than a few minutes. I had barely finished changing into my basic blue when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to admit Ray and Loren. Ray looked sour, Loren uncertain. Ray came in first, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “He’s been driving me nuts, Bernie,” he said. “You want to tell him why he can’t come along with us?”
I looked at Loren, who in turn looked at my scotch-grain loafers, not because he disapproved of them but because they were where he wanted to point his eyes. “I just think I should go, too,” he said. “Suppose something happens. Then what?”
“Nothing’s go
“I brought a book.”
“So you sit on the couch there and read your book. It’s a nice comfortable couch. I sat on it earlier myself. You usually pick up this kind of dough reading a book?”
Loren breathed in and out, in and out. “Suppose something happens. Suppose this Gemini here pulls something and you and I are on opposite ends of town, Ray. Then what?”
“Flaxford’s apartment’s on the East Side,” I pointed out. “Just like this one.”
No one responded to this. Loren began describing things that could go wrong, from traffic wrecks to sudden civil defense alerts. Ray replied that having three cops along, two legitimate and one not, was more awkward than having one real one and one ringer.
“I don’t like this,” Loren said. “I’m not nuts about it, if you want to know the truth.”
“If you came along, you and Bernie’d only have one gun between the two of you. And one badge and so on. Just one hat, for Chrissakes.”
“That’s another thing. I’m going to be sitting here without my badge, without my gun. Jesus, I don’t know, Ray.”
“You’ll be sittin’ behind a locked door in an empty apartment, Loren. What in the hell do you need a gun for? You scared of cockroaches?”
“No roaches,” I said. “This is a class building.”
“There you go,” Ray said. “No roaches.”
“Who cares about roaches?”
“I thought maybe you did.”
“I just don’t know, Ray.”
“Just sit down, you asshole. Give Bernie your stuff. Bernie, maybe a drink would help him unwind, you know?”
“Sure.”
“You got any booze around?”
I went into the kitchen for the Scotch. I brought the bottle and a glass and some ice. “I better not,” Loren said. “I’m on duty.”