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“Find the real killer.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. She clapped a hand to her forehead. “Now why didn’t I think of that? Just find the real killer, solve the crime, get the stolen book back, and everything’s copasetic. Just like TV, right? With everything wrapped up in time for the final commercial.”
“And some scenes from next week’s show,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”
We talked for a while longer. Then Carolyn started yawning intermittently and I caught it from her. We agreed that we ought to get some sleep. We weren’t accomplishing anything now and our minds were too tired to work properly.
“You’ll stay here,” she said. “You take the bed.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll take the couch.”
“Don’t you be silly. You’re six feet long and so’s the bed. I’m five feet long and so’s the couch. It’s good the Sikh didn’t drop in because there’s no place to put him.”
“I just thought-”
“Uh-huh. The couch is perfectly comfortable and I sleep on it a lot. I wind up there whenever Randy and I have a medium-level fight.”
“What’s a medium-level fight?”
“The kind where she doesn’t go home to her own apartment.”
“I didn’t know she had one. I thought the two of you lived together.”
“We do, but she’s got a place on Morton Street. Smaller than this, if you can believe it. Thank God she’s got a place of her own, so that she can move right back into it when we split up.”
“Maybe you should stay there tonight, Carolyn.” She started to say something but I pressed onward. “If you’re at her place, then you’re not an accessory after the fact. But if you’re here, then there’s no question but that you’re harboring a fugitive, and-”
“I’ll take my chances, Bernie.”
“Well-”
“Besides, it’s possible Randy didn’t go to Bath Beach. It’s possible she’s home.”
“Couldn’t you stay with her, anyway?”
“Not if someone else is staying with her at the same time.”
“Oh.”
“Uh-huh. We live in a world of infinite possibilities. You get the bed and I get the couch. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I helped her make up the couch. She went into the lavatory and emerged wearing Dr. Denton’s and scowling as if daring me to laugh. I did not laugh.
I washed up at the kitchen sink, turned off the light, stripped down to my underwear and got into bed. For a while nobody said anything.
Then she said, “ Bern?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how much you know about gay women, but you probably know that some of us are bisexual. Primarily gay but occasionally interested in going to bed with a man.”
“Uh, I know.”
“I’m not like that.”
“I didn’t think you were, Carolyn.”
“I’m exclusively gay.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“I figured it went without saying, but it’s been my experience that a lot of things that go without saying, that you’re better off if you say them.”
“I understand.”
More silence.
“Bernie? She took the five hundred dollars and the wallet, right?”
“I had about two hundred dollars in my wallet, too. That was an expensive cup of coffee she gave me, let me tell you.”
“How’d you pay for the cab?”
“Huh?”
“The cab downtown. And how did you buy that stuff at the drugstore so you could pick my lock? What did you use for money?”
“Oh,” I said.
“Do you keep a few extra dollars in your shoe for emergencies?”
“Well, no,” I said. “Not that it doesn’t sound like a good idea, but no, Carolyn.”
“Well?”
“I told you about the fire escape, didn’t I? How I tried the roof and that was no good, so I went down and broke into an apartment on the fourth floor?”
“You told me.”
“Well, uh, since I was there and all. I, uh, took a few minutes to look around. Opened a few drawers.”
“In the fourth-floor apartment?”
“That’s right. There was just small change in a dresser drawer, but one of the kitchen canisters had money in it. You’d be surprised how many people keep cash in the kitchen.”
“And you took it?”
“Sure. I got a little over sixty dollars. Not enough to retire on, but it covered the cab and what I spent at the drugstore.”
“Sixty dollars.”
“More like sixty-five. Plus the bracelet.”
“The bracelet?”
“Couldn’t resist it,” I said. “There was other jewelry that didn’t tempt me at all, but this one bracelet-well, I’ll show you in the morning.”
“You’ll show me in the morning.”
“Sure. Don’t let me forget.”
“Jesus!”
“What’s the matter?”
“You actually committed a burglary.”
“Well, I’m a burglar, Carolyn.”
“That’s what I have to get used to. You’re a burglar. You steal things out of people’s homes. That’s what burglars do. They steal things.”
“As a general rule.”
“You took the money because you needed it. Your own money was gone and you had to get away from the police and the money was there, so you took it.”
“Right.”
“And you took the bracelet because-Why’d you take the bracelet, Bernie?”
“Well-”
“Because it was there. Like Mt. Everest. But it was a bracelet instead of a mountain, and instead of climbing it you stole it.”
“Carolyn-”
“It’s all right, Bernie. Honest it is. I’ll get used to it. You’ll show me the bracelet in the morning?”
“I’ll show you right now if you want.”
“No, the morning’s soon enough, Bernie. Bernie?”
“What?”
“Goodnight, Bernie.”
“Goodnight, Carolyn.”
CHAPTER Ten
It was one of those chatty morning programs that tells you more about weather and traffic than anyone could possibly care to know. There was a massive tie-up on the Major Deegan Expressway, I learned, and a thirty-percent chance of rain.
“Something ominous has happened to weather reports,” I told Carolyn. “Have you noticed how they never tell you what it’s going to do anymore? They just quote you the odds.”
“I know.”
“That way they’re never wrong because they’ve never gone out on a limb. If they say there’s a five-percent chance of snow and we wind up hip-deep in it, all that means is a long shot came in. They’ve transformed the weather into some sort of celestial crap game.”
“There’s another muffin, Bernie.”
“Thanks.” I took it, buttered it. “It’s all tied into the moral decline of the nation,” I said. “Lottery tickets. Off-track betting. Gambling casinos in Atlantic City. Can you tell me what in the hell a thirty-percent chance of rain means? What do I do, carry a third of an umbrella?”
“Here comes the news, Bernie.”
I ate my muffin and sipped my coffee and listened to the news. My reaction to the weather report notwithstanding, I felt pretty good. My sleep had been deep and uninterrupted, and Carolyn’s morning coffee, unadulterated with chicory or knockout drops, had my eyes all the way open.
So I sat wide-eyed and heard how I’d gained access to the house on Sixty-sixth Street via the fire escape, first visiting the fourth-floor apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Bli
When the a
“Pretty,” she said. “What’s it worth?”
“I could probably get a few hundred for it. Art Deco’s the rage these days. But I just took it because I liked the looks of it.”