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“Or the killer did.”
“You never heard a gunshot?”
“I was really out cold. And maybe he used a silencer, but if he did he took it along with him. He also took the book, plus the five hundred dollars the Sikh gave me.” I shrugged. “I figured all along that was too much to charge for a reprint copy of Soldiers Three. Well, easy come, easy go.”
“That’s what they say. Maybe the Sikh killed her.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Maybe they were working together and he double-crossed her at the end.” She shrugged elaborately. “I don’t know, Bern. I’m just spi
“I suppose so. He did lead me straight to her apartment. But-”
“But what?”
“But why wouldn’t he just buy the book?”
“Maybe he couldn’t afford it. But you’re right that would have been the easiest thing for him to do. He already paid you some of it in advance, didn’t he? How much did he still owe you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Bernie?”
I sighed. “Just yesterday,” I said, “I told a shoplifter he was too dumb to steal. He’s not the only one.”
“You didn’t-”
“I didn’t get any of the money in advance.”
“Oh.”
I shrugged, sighed, drank. “He was a member of the Martingale Club,” I said. “Had a sort of English accent. Dressed very tweedy.”
“So?”
“So his front snowed me, that’s all. He finessed the whole topic of advance payment. I don’t know how, but I walked into that house with nothing in my pocket but my hands. Jesus, Carolyn, I even dipped into my own funds for gasoline and bridge tolls. I’m begi
“Whelkin co
I thought it over. “No,” I said.
“No?”
“I don’t think so. Why use her at all? He could slip me a mickey as easily as she could. And there’s something else. That last telephone conversation I had with him, when he set up the meeting at her apartment. He sounded out of synch. I thought at the time he’d been drinking.”
“So?”
“I bet they drugged him.”
“The way they drugged you?”
“Not quite. Not the same drug, or the poor bastard wouldn’t have been able to talk at all. I wonder what she gave me. It must have been powerful stuff. It had me hallucinating.”
“Like acid?”
“I never had any acid.”
“Neither did I.”
“And this wasn’t that kind of hallucination, with animals materializing on the walls and things like that. My perceptions just got distorted there before I blacked out. The music was getting loud and soft alternately, for example. And her face seemed to melt when I stared at it, but that was just before I went under.”
“And you said something about her hair.”
“Right, it kept turning orange. She had really short hair, dark brown, and I kept flashing that she had a head full of bright orange curls. Then I would blink and she’d have short dark hair again. Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“What is it, Bernie?”
“I know where I saw her before. And she did have curly orange hair. It must have been a wig.”
“The dark hair?”
The orange hair. She came to the shop and she must have been wearing an orange wig. I’m positive it was the same woman. Squared shoulders, blocky figure, a kind of a stern square-jawed face-I’m positive it was her. She must have come to the shop three or four times.”
“With Rudyard Whelkin?”
“No. He only came there once. Then we had lunch in the Martingale Club that same day, and I met him once more at the club for drinks and we talked several times over the phone. She came to the shop-well, I don’t know when I first noticed her, but it must have been within the past week. Then yesterday she bought a book from me. Virgil’s Eclogues, the Heritage Club edition. It was her. No question about it.”
“What was she doing?”
“Looking things over, I suppose. Same reason I went out to Forest Hills with a clipboard. Reco
“What for?”
“Midnight news.”
“It’s that time already? Sure, put it on.”
I moved a cat and switched on the radio. I sat down and the cat returned to my lap and resumed purring. The news broadcast was a repeat of the eleven o’clock summary, except that the Albanian had surrendered without harming any of his hostages. He’d evidently gone bananas when he learned that his common-law wife had another common-law husband, which made them common-law husbands-in-law, or something. Madeleine Porlock was still dead and the police were still looking for one Bernard Rhodenbarr.
I moved the cat again, switched off the news, and sat down again. Carolyn asked me how it felt to be wanted by the police. I told her it felt terrible.
“How’d they know it was you, Bernie? Fingerprints?”
“Or the wallet.”
“What wallet?”
“My wallet. Whoever frisked me got it-Madeleine Porlock or her killer. The book, the five hundred bucks, and the wallet. Maybe somebody stashed it where the cops would be sure to find it.”
“Weren’t you supposed to be unconscious when they arrived?”
“Maybe the wallet was a form of insurance. Or maybe the killer took the wallet on the chance I had something incriminating in it, like the card Whelkin gave me or some notes to myself.” I shrugged. “I suppose the wallet could be anywhere right now. I suppose I should be all worked up about stopping my Master Charge card before someone charges a ton of airline tickets to my account. Somehow that’s way down on my list of priorities.”
“I can understand that.” She put her chin in her hand again and leaned forward to fasten her blue eyes on me. “What’s at the top of the list, Bernie?”
“Huh?”
“The priority list. What are you going to do?”
“Beats me.”
“How about another drink while you think about it?”
I shook my head. “I think I’ve had enough.”
“I had enough two or three drinks ago but I’m not going to let a little thing like that stop me.” She got the bottle and helped herself. “You can just know when you’ve had enough and then stop?”
“Sure.”
“That’s remarkable,” she said. She sipped her brandy, looked at me over the brim of the glass. “Did you know there was anybody else in the apartment? Besides the Porlock woman?”
“No. But I never got past the living room until she was dead. I thought it was just the two of us and we were waiting for Whelkin.”
“The killer could have been in the other room.”
“It’s possible.”
“Or she was alone, and she drugged you and took the book and the money and the wallet, and then she was on her way out the door and in came a man with a gun.”
“Right.”
“Who? The Sikh? Whelkin?”
“I du
“Why on earth would she wear a wig? I mean, she wasn’t anybody you knew to begin with, right? So why would she want to disguise herself?”
“Beats me.”
“How about the Sikh? Was that a disguise? Maybe the Sikh was Rudyard Whelkin.”
“He had a beard and a turban.”
“The beard could have been a fake. And a turban is something you can put on and then take off.”
“The Sikh was enormous. Six-four easy, maybe more.”
“You never heard of elevator shoes?”
“Whelkin wasn’t the Sikh,” I said. “Trust me.”
“All I do is trust you. But back to the other question. How do you get out of the mess you’re in? Can you go to the cops?”
“That’s the one thing I can’t do. They’ll book me for Murder One. I could try pleading to a lesser charge, or gamble that my lawyer could find a way to addle the jury, but the odds are I’d spend the next ten or twenty years with free room and board. I don’t really want to do that.”
“I can understand that. Jesus. Can’t you-”
“Can’t I what?”
“Tell them what you told me? Scratch that question, huh? Just blame it on the brandy. Because why on earth would they believe you? Nobody’d believe a story like yours except a dyke who shaves dogs. Bernie, there’s got to be a way out, but what the hell is it?”