“So the dog loves Jerry and can’t trust nobody else. So naturally when Woody is helping you with the trunk, he’s wondering what Pepito sees in you. The time before, when you bumped into Woody on the street, you weren’t exactly the friendliest guy in Manhattan. So he figures the dog smells you and you’re just like Jerry since you been doing his wife—my apologies, Mrs. Ketchum—right, but of course Woody don’t know you smell like Jerry cause you got Jerry’s blood on your hand and your clothes. Hell, you got Jerry himself in that box he helped you carry six flights.” He stopped talking for a moment to squeeze lemon juice on his clams. “The thing is, Mr. Ketchum, I knew it was you since I was watching the joint all day. Jerry goes to work, you come in. Like usual. Jerry comes back home unexpected, but he never comes out. You come out in a hurry. So I figure that’s it, he’s finally caught you with the wife. But no, you come back with a car a couple hours later, and still Jerry’s never left. That’s not like him to miss work, and then down you come later to get Woody to help you put a big box in the back of that Nash. Too heavy for one man to lift. What’s inside, I ask myself.”
Rosen speared a bunch of clams and forked them into his mouth. He did not savor but chewed for sustenance. “Nice car you had for the task, and too bad it was Claire’s brother’s, now the police know where to look for any blood that may have leaked out of the trunk. And then there’s the small matter of the pier at Canarsie. I followed you out there, the whole time wondering what you were going to do with that trunk. You should have gone out farther if you wanted to lose it in the Sound. They’ve got divers in the water as we speak. Only a matter of time before they find it. Right off the end of the pier.” He attacked the clam strips again, having come to the end.
The look in her eyes revealed just how low Phil had sunk. “Couldn’t keep it in your trousers, could you? You and Bunny, both so impetuous. She phoned yesterday, while you were sleeping and muttering in your dreams, by the way. Still wanted to lunch as we’d scheduled, despite the fact that Jerry had gone missing overnight. I asked her if she’d called the police, and no, she hadn’t, so I called them for her. Told them everything Mr. Rosen had told me about his suspicions. She hadn’t even thought to dig the slug out of the wall. The pistol you bought was right there in the night table. Looks like I won’t have to divorce you after all. Not when there’s the electric chair. The perfect murder …”
His coffee cup was empty, and he wished the waiter would return soon.
Rosen swallowed another mouthful of clams. “Bunny has already confessed. I was just off the phone with my buddy at the precinct right before you came in. She told the police everything. How you planned it, bought the gun, and pulled the trigger. She claims she begged you not to do it, but you couldn’t stand waiting any longer.”
Through the picture window, red and blue police lights flashed.
“But it wasn’t me,” Phil said. “It was her. I could never hurt a fly. I came here to save you. She was going to poison you, too. It was Bunny who shot him. Bunny, not me.”
Nobody in the bathroom said a word, and the woman in the black dress reached up for the gun atop the medicine cabinet, trembling as she pointed it toward my heart. I froze, my back to the door, and all the women faced me and pressed forward in the tiny space. “What are you going to do with that gat?”
“You coward,” Bunny said. “You idiot. You never intended to shoot Jerry, and you never were going to divorce her, were you? And I loved you, yet you wouldn’t take the rap for me. It was always about you, just about you. Your lust. Your desires. You, you, you.”
“You-you-you,” the little boy chimed in.
“Shoot him,” Dolly cried from behind Bunny’s left shoulder. On the right stood Adele, equally bloodthirsty, vengeance in her eyes. “Do it,” Jane hissed. “He deserves it,” Alice said. Flo wagged her finger at me, and Marie’s eyes widened in anticipation. I looked to the old man to save me, but he was playing peekaboo with the child on his lap.
“Aren’t you going to help me like before? Knock the gun from her hand? Intervene?”
The women advanced like a pack of zombies.
“Nothing to be done,” he said. “After all, you’ve not done well by any of them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Surely you know they’ve come to have their revenge for what you did to each of them in the past. Abandoned Dolly out of pridefulness. Murdered Jane for a few doubloons. Sent Alice to the gallows, kept Marie a slave, drove Flo to the poorhouse. You let your anger get you killed and left poor Adele brokenhearted, and then you ratted out Bunny. Oh, you are a piece of work. I sort of see their point of view.”
“But you’ve always been on my side.” I addressed the women. “What about last night and the eight women in the bed?”
Bunny pulled the hammer back on the revolver. She was ready to pump me full of lead.
The old man laughed. “You double-backed from the moment you hit your head, Sonny, and let loose a crack in time. There was no night before, only this one. Let me ask you: which is closer to the truth—your infantile fantasies or the words right out of their mouths?”