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“Jesus,” she said.
“Not to worry.”
“I could just picture a lightbulb forming over his head. Like in the comic strips. Are you sure he didn’t recognize you?”
“Positive. Otherwise he’d have come over to the car for a closer look.”
“And what would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Run the light, probably.”
“Jesus.”
I felt the subject deserved changing. “I thought of bringing you a present,” I said. “A fur jacket, really smart-looking.”
“I don’t like fur.”
“This was a good one. It had an Arvin Ta
“Is that good?”
“He’s as good as furriers get. I don’t know much about furs but I know labels. This was pretty. I think it was Canada lynx. What’s the matter?”
“That’s a kind of a cat, Bernie. Don’t tell me how pretty it was. A lynx is like a bobcat. Wearing a lynx coat would be like having lampshades made of human skin. Whether or not they’re attractive is beside the point.”
Another siren oogah-oogahed in the distance. An ambulance, from the sound of it. They’ve got ambulances these days that sound like Gestapo cars in war movies.
That last thought blended with Carolyn’s lampshade image and made me ready for another change of subject. “The wig was there,” I said hurriedly. “The orange one that she wore to the bookstore. So it wasn’t just that my brain was addled from the drug. That was her buying Virgil’s Eclogues.”
“She must have been afraid someone would recognize her.”
I nodded. “She could have worn the wig so I wouldn’t recognize her at a later meeting, but that doesn’t really make much sense. I suppose she was afraid Whelkin would spot her. They must have known each other because he sent me over to her apartment, but I wish I had something more concrete to tie them together.”
“Like what?”
“Pictures, for instance. I was hoping for a batch of telltale snapshots. People with a closetful of whips and chains tend to be keen Polaroid photographers. I didn’t turn up a one.”
“If there were any pictures, the killer could have taken them.”
“Possible.”
“Or maybe there weren’t any to begin with. If she was only with one person at a time there wouldn’t be anybody to take the pictures. Did you find a camera?”
“Nary a camera.”
“Then there probably weren’t any pictures.”
“Probably not.”
I turned into Fourteenth Street, headed west. Carolyn was looking at me oddly. I braked for a red light and turned to see her studying me, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“You know something I don’t,” she said.
“I know how to pick locks. That’s all.”
“Something else.”
“It’s just your imagination.”
“I don’t think so. You were uptight before and now you’re all loose and breezy.”
“It’s just self-confidence and a feeling of well-being,” I told her. “Don’t worry. It’ll pass.”
There was a legal parking place around the corner from her apartment, legal until 7 A.M., at any rate. I stuck the Pontiac into it and grabbed up the suitcase.
The cats met us at the door. “Good boys,” Carolyn said, reaching down to pat heads. “Anybody call? Did you take messages like I taught you? Bernie, if it’s not time for a drink, then the liquor ads have been misleading us for years. You game?”
“Sure.”
“Scotch? Rocks? Soda?”
“Yes, yes, and no.”
I unpacked my suitcase while she made the drinks, then made myself sit down and relax long enough to swallow a couple of ounces of Scotch. I waited for it to loosen some of my coiled springs, but before that could happen I was on my feet again.
Carolyn raised her eyebrows at me.
“The car,” I said.
“What about it?”
“I want to put it back where I found it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“That car’s been very useful to me, Carolyn. I want to return the favor.”
I paused at the door, reached back under my jacket. There was a book wedged beneath the waistband of my slacks. I drew it free and set it on a table. Carolyn looked at it and at me again.
“Something to read while I’m gone,” I said.
“What is it?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s not Virgil’s Eclogues.”
CHAPTER Thirteen
I felt good about taking the car back. You don’t spit on your luck, I told myself. I thought of stories of ballplayers refusing to change their socks while the team was on a wi
I headed uptown on Tenth Avenue, left hand on the wheel, right hand on the seat beside me, fingers drumming idly. Somewhere in the Forties I snuck a peek at the gas gauge. I had a little less than half a tank left and I felt a need to do something nice for the car’s owner, so I cut over to Eleventh Avenue and found an open station at the corner of Fifty-first Street. I had them fill the tank and check the oil while they were at it. The oil was down a quart and I had them take care of that, too.
My parking space was waiting for me on Seventy-fourth Street, but Max and his owner were nowhere to be seen. I uncoupled my jumper wire, locked up the car, and trotted back to West End Avenue to catch a southbound cab. It was still drizzling lightly but I didn’t have to wait long before a cab pulled up. And it was a Checker, with room for me to stretch my legs and relax.
Things were starting to go right. I could feel it.
Out of habit, I left the cab a few blocks from Arbor Court and walked the rest of the way. I rang, and Carolyn buzzed me through the front door and met me at the door to her apartment. She put her hands on her hips and looked up at me. “You’re full of surprises,” she said.
“It’s part of my charm.”
“Uh-huh. To tell you the truth, poetry never did too much for me. I had a lover early on who thought she was Edna St. Vincent Millay and that sort of cooled me on the whole subject. Where’d you find the book?”
“The Porlock apartment.”
“No shit, Bern. Here I thought you checked it out of the Jefferson Market library. Where in the apartment? Out in plain sight?”
“Uh-uh. In a shoe box on a shelf in the closet.”
“It must have come as a surprise.”
“I’ll say. I was expecting a pair of Capezios, and look what I found.”
“The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow . I didn’t really read much of it. I skimmed the first three or four pages and I didn’t figure it was going to get better.”
“You were right.”
“How’d you know it would be there, Bern?”
I went over to the kitchen area and made us a couple of drinks. I gave one to Carolyn and accompanied it with the admission that I hadn’t known the book would be there, that I hadn’t even had any particular hope of finding it. “When you don’t know what you’re looking for,” I said, “you have a great advantage, because you don’t know what you’ll find.”
“Just so you know it when you see it. I’m begi
“He didn’t. He’d have taken it with him.”
“Porlock stashed it?”
“Must have. She drugged me, frisked me, grabbed the book, tucked it away in the closet, and got it hidden just in time to let her killer in the front door. She must have been alone in the apartment with me or he’d have seen her hide the book. She let him in and he killed her and left the gun in my hand and went out.”
“Without the book.”
“Right.”
“Why would he kill her without getting the book?”
“Maybe he didn’t have anything to do with the book. Maybe he had some other reason to want her dead.”
“And he just happened to walk in at that particular time, and he decided to frame you because you happened to be there.”
“I haven’t got it all worked out yet, Carolyn.”