CHAPTER
Sixteen
By the time we got back to Darla Sandoval’s little love nest, Loren Kramer was a nervous wreck. I let us in with my key and when we came through the door Loren was behind it. Since we hadn’t thought he might have chosen that spot for himself, we inadvertently hit him with the door. When he groaned Ray yanked the door forward and stared unhappily at his partner. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “I thought I told you to stay on the couch.”
“I didn’t know it was you, Ray.”
“Hiding behind doors. Jesus.”
“I got nervous, that’s all. You were gone a long time and I started worrying about it.”
“Well, Bernie here had to look for a box that wasn’t there. It was sort of fun to watch him. He took a desk apart and everything. Then the box he was looking for turned up on a bookshelf. That’s it right there. It was pretendin’ to be a book.”
“The Purloined Letter,” Loren said.
“Huh?”
“Edgar Allan Poe,” I said. “A short story. But that’s not exactly right, Loren. Now if you were to hide a book on a bookshelf, that would be like the story. Except this was a box that was disguised as a book.”
“It sounds like pretty much the same thing to me,” Loren said. He sounded sulky about it.
While we puzzled over all of this, Ray went to the kitchen and made himself a drink. He came back, took a large swallow of it, and suggested that it was time to open the box.
“And time I had my gun back,” Loren said. “And my stick and my badge and my cuffs and my cap, the whole works. Nothing against you, Bernie, but it bothers me seeing them on someone who’s not really a cop.”
“That’s understandable, Loren.”
“Plus I don’t feel dressed without them. The gun, we even have to carry them off-duty, you know. When you think of all the holdups foiled by off-duty patrolmen you understand the reason behind the regulation.”
What I mostly thought of was all the off-duty cops who tended to shoot one another in the course of serious discussions of the relative merits of the Knicks and the Nets, but I decided not to raise this point. I didn’t think it would go over too well.
“The box,” Ray said.
“Couldn’t I get my stuff back and then he opens the box?”
“Jesus,” Ray said.
I hefted the box in my hands. “Surprisingly enough,” I said, “this box isn’t all that important.”
Ray stared at me. “It was worth ten thousand dollars to you, Bernie. That sounds pretty important. And it’s supposed to get you off a murder charge, though I’ll be damned if I see how it’s gonna do that. For the sake of argument I’ll buy that you didn’t kill Flaxford. But I don’t see you comin’ up with a dime’s worth of proof in that direction, let alone ten grand’s worth.”
“It must look that way,” I admitted.
“Unless the proof’s in the box.”
“The box was a personal matter,” I said. “Call it a favor for a friend. The important thing was for me to get into the apartment, Ray. I didn’t even realize it at the time, in fact I actually thought that the box was the important thing, but just being in the apartment told me what I wanted to know.”
“I don’t get it,” Loren said. He looked as though he expected a trick, as though when I opened the blue box I’d be likely to extract a white rabbit. “What did you find in the apartment, Bernie?”
“For openers, the door wasn’t locked completely. The deadbolt wasn’t on.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Ray said. “I told you some cop just shut the door and didn’t bother locking it. What’s it matter?”
“It doesn’t. What does matter is that the deadbolt was locked when I let myself into Flaxford’s apartment the other night. If it had just been the spring lock I’d have opened it faster, but that’s a good Rabson lock and I had to work the cylinder around for one and a half turns. It didn’t take me too long because I happen to be outstanding in my chosen field—”
“Jesus, what we gotta listen to.”
“—but I had to turn the bolt first, then go on to knock off the spring lock. Which I did.”
“So?”
“So either the murderer happened to take a key with him on his way out of the apartment and then happened to take the time to use the key to lock Flaxford’s corpse inside, or else Flaxford engaged that deadbolt himself by turning the knob from the inside. And I somehow can’t see the murderer having the key in the first place or bothering to use it if he did.”
I had their attention now but they didn’t know quite what to make of it. Slowly Ray said, “You’re sayin’ Flaxford locked hisself in, right?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Jesus, Bernie, all you’re puttin’ is your own neck in the noose. If he locked hisself in and the door’s locked when you get there, then the bastard was alive when you let yourself in.”
“That’s absolutely right.”
“Then you killed him.”
“Wrong.” I slapped Loren’s stick against the palm of my hand. “See, I have an advantage here,” I went on. “I happen to know for a fact that I didn’t kill Flaxford. So knowing he was alive when I got there means something different to me. It means I know who killed him.”
“Who?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I pointed with the nightstick. “Loren killed him. Who else?”
I watched Loren’s right hand. Interestingly enough, it went to where his gun would have been if I hadn’t been wearing it at the time. He dropped his hand to his side and saw me looking at him and blushed.
“You’re out of your mind,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“If that’s not typical for Gemini I don’t know what is. Just try on any kind of a wild lie and see how it goes over. Ray, I think we better take him in. This time put cuffs on him, will you? He already escaped from us once.”
Ray was silent for a moment. Then to me he said, “Are you just snowballing this one, Bernie? Puttin’ it together as you go along?”
“No, I think it’s fairly solid, Ray.”
“You want to run it by me once just for curiosity?”
“Ray, you’re not going to listen to this maniac—”
“Shut up,” Ray Kirschmann said. And to me he added, “Go ahead, Bernie, you got me interested. Go through it once for me.”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s pretty simple, actually. J. Francis Flaxford was supposed to go to the opening of a play that night. It was all set. That’s why I picked that particular time to hit his apartment. I had inside information and my source knew for a fact he’d be out.
“Well, he was all set to go. He was in his dressing gown, ready to get dressed, and then he had an accident. I don’t know if it was a stroke or a fainting spell or a minor heart attack or an accidental fall or what, but the upshot of it is he wound up passed out on his bed wearing his robe. Somewhere along the line he probably knocked the lamp off the bedside table or bumped into something and maybe that was the noise that prompted some neighbor to call the cops. It doesn’t matter. The significant thing is that he was unconscious in his bedroom with the door locked from inside when I entered the apartment.”
“This is crazy,” Loren said.
“Let him talk.” Ray’s voice was neutral. “So far you’re just spinnin’ your wheels, Bernie.”
“All right. I got into the apartment and went right to work. I never left the living room and did nothing but go through the desk because that was where the box was supposed to be. My informant didn’t know the box was disguised as a book. I was still playing around with the desk when you arrived. We had our conversation, made our financial arrangements, and we were all set to leave when Loren got a call of nature.”
“So?”
“So according to his story, he went to the bathroom, used the toilet, then made a wrong turn on his way back and walked to the bedroom by mistake. There he discovered Flaxford’s corpse. So he turned and rushed all the way back to the living room where we were waiting for him, finally sounded the alarm far and wide, turned a little green around the gills and flopped over in a faint.”
“Well, we both saw him do that, Bernie. And then you sandbagged me and took off like a bat outta hell.”
I shrugged off that last charge. “Loren saw Flaxford right off the bat,” I said, “speaking of bats. He had to. That’s a short hallway. If you walk toward the bathroom from the living room you can see those chalkmarks on the bedroom carpet before you reach the bathroom door. Of course there were no chalkmarks at the time. But there was a body there, sprawled out on the bed, and that was interesting enough so that Loren passed right by the john and checked out the bedroom.”
“And?”
“He was in there for a few minutes. Then the body—Flaxford, that is—came to life. I don’t know whether Loren originally thought he was dead or unconscious, but either way the man was suddenly alive and awake and staring at him, and Loren reacted automatically. He swung his trusty nightstick and cracked Flaxford over the head.”
“Crazy,” Loren said. His voice was trembling but that might have been rage and indignation as easily as guilt. “He’s out of his mind. Why would I do anything like that?”
“For money.”
“What money?”
“The money you were filling your pockets with when Flaxford blinked his baby blues at you. There was money all over his lap and all over the floor when you found him.” To Ray I said, “Look, Flaxford was a fixer, a bagman, a guy with a lot of angles going for himself. He may have bank accounts and safe deposit boxes and secret stashes but he also would have had cash on hand. Every operator like that does, whether his operations are legal or not. Look, I’m just a small-time burglar myself but I was able to put my hands on ten grand tonight.” I saw no point in adding that only half of it had been mine.
“Now the one thing that never turned up in Flaxford’s apartment was money. Not in his drawer or closets, not in any wall safe, not in that fantastic desk. With all the searches that place got, including the search I gave it tonight, the one thing that never turned up was cash.”
“So you’re saying that because there was no cash Loren here must have taken it?”
“It’s crazy,” Loren said.
“It’s not crazy,” I said. “Whatever knocked Flaxford unconscious, it got him suddenly. A fall, a stroke, whatever—all of a sudden he was unconscious. It’s my guess he had a recent visitor bringing him a payoff that he was supposed to transfer from one person to another. The payoff was big enough to make him delay his trip to the theater. He got the cash, his visitor left, and he took it to his bedroom to count it before he passed out. Loren walked in and found this unconscious man in a room full of hundred-dollar bills.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Am I? My apartment got ransacked, Ray. Every drawer turned upside down, every book shaken open, the most complete search you can imagine. There’s nothing in the blue box that could inspire that kind of a search. But somebody knew Flaxford had a lot of money on him when he was killed, and the person who would have made that assumption was the person who gave him the money. I think it was probably Michael Debus or someone associated with him. Either the money was being channeled to Debus or Debus was spreading it through Flaxford to head off an investigation into his office. But that explains why Flaxford’s visitor couldn’t have killed him, in addition to the business with the locks. That person—say Debus for convenience—left Flaxford alive and left the money with him. And the sum was large enough so that Debus wasn’t willing to write it off after Flaxford was killed. It was even large enough so that Loren thought it was worth killing for.”
“Ray, he’s crazy. This man is crazy.”
“I don’t know, Loren,” Ray said.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I don’t know. You always liked money.”
“You sound like you’re starting to believe this fairy story.”
“You always took what was handed to you, Loren. As green as you were I was a little surprised. Usually it’ll take a while before a guy learns to stick his hand out. Then he sees how it’s part of the system and he gets hardnosed in various ways, and little by little he develops an appetite. But you, Loren, you were hungry right outta the box. You were hungry without ever gettin’ hip. You’re still mopin’ around with your moon in f*ckin’ Capricorn or whatever it is and you’re the hungriest sonofabitch I ever saw.”
“Ray, you know I’d never kill anybody.”
“I’m not sure what I know.”
“Ray, with a nightstick? Come on.”
I was glad he’d brought that up. I swung Loren’s nightstick and slapped it ringingly against my palm. “Nice club,” I said. “Smooth and shiny. A person would swear you never hit anybody with it, Loren.”
“I never did.”
“No, you never did. Or bumped it into anything or dropped it on the pavement or scraped it against a brick wall. Or even wore it until a couple of days ago.” I pointed it at him in a shamelessly theatrical gesture. “It’s new, isn’t it, Loren? Brand new. Positively virginal. Because you had to replace your old one. It wasn’t brand new and it had been knocked around a lot because you liked to play with it and you tended to drop it a lot. The surface was chipped and there were a few cracks in it. And you knew Flaxford’s blood could have soaked into the cracks—blood or skin fragments or something—and you have to know what a crime lab can do with something like that and that all the scrubbing in the world isn’t always enough to get rid of the evidence. You got rid of the whole nightstick.”
Loren opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. Ray took the stick out of my hand and examined it. “It does look pretty cherry,” he said.
“Ray, for God’s sake.”
“Very f*ckin’ new, Loren. This ain’t the club you been carryin’ around. When’d you get this one?”
“Oh, maybe a week, two weeks ago.”
“Before the Flaxford murder, huh?”
“Of course before the burglary. Ray—”
“What was the matter with the old one?”
“I don’t know. I just liked the heft of this one better. Ray—”
“You throw the old one away, Loren?”
“I probably got it around somewheres.”
“You figure you could come up with it if you had to?”
“I guess so. Oh, come to think of it, I think I maybe left it out in the backyard. Of course one of the neighbors’ kids might have run off with it but there’s still a chance it’s there.”
The two of them looked at each other. I might as well not have been in the room. They held each other’s gaze for a long time before Loren averted his eyes and examined his shoes. They were black oxfords, incidentally, polished to a high sheen and far more suitable for a uniformed patrolman than scotch-grain loafers.
Ray said, “The toilet. He went to the bathroom and we heard him flush the toilet and then just a few seconds later he was back in the living room. How’d he have time to do everything you said?”
“He flushed the toilet on the way back, Ray. He walked right past the bathroom originally and he just stopped on the way back to flush the toilet.”
“As a cover?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, I guess that would fit. What about the ashtray? Flaxford got killed with an ashtray.”
“From the living room.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You remember when I asked about the ashtray? There was one in the living room on the table next to where I was sitting. It wasn’t there tonight and I thought at first that it was the mate to the murder weapon, one of a pair, and the lab crew took both of them for some reason. But there was only the one ashtray. It was in the living room when I entered the apartment and by the time the lab crew got there it was in the bedroom.”
“How’d it get there? He took it?”
“Sure. He came back to the living room and did his fainting act. It seemed strange the way that happened. It was the damnedest delayed reaction ever, if you think about it. Of course if he never saw a corpse before—”
“He’s seen a few.”
“Well, maybe this was the first one he was ever responsible for. So he probably did feel a little weak in the knees, but he managed to get all the way back to where we were and then flop on the rug. It wasn’t a real faint. A minute later I was out the door, and then when you got yourself together you ran right out after me, didn’t you?”
“So?”
“He was still on the rug when you took off. As soon as you cleared the door your buddy here grabbed the glass ashtray off the table and went back to the bedroom with it. Then he parted Flaxford’s hair with it. Maybe he’d only stunned him with the nightstick. Maybe Flaxford was already dead but Loren wanted to supply a convenient murder weapon. I think he was probably still alive, but a couple of swipes with a heavy hunk of glass would finish the job. Then he could recover consciousness and rush out and join you on the street. He’d have the rest of the money picked up by then and he’d be home free, leaving me with a murder rap hanging around my neck.”
I don’t know exactly when Ray Kirschmann knew I was telling the truth, but somewhere in the course of that speech the last of his doubts vanished. Because I heard him unsnap his own holster so that he’d be able to get to his gun if he needed it. The gesture was not lost on Loren, who looked as though he was about to take a step forward, then changed his mind and sat down on the couch.
Ray said, “How much money, Loren?” And when Loren didn’t answer he asked me.
“He’ll tell you sooner or later. My guess is it’s better than twenty thou and probably double that. It would have to be quite a bit to account for the way Debus is pressing to recover it. Of course Loren wouldn’t have known just what it added up to until he got home and counted it, but he could see right away that there was enough there to kill for.”
There was a long silence. Then Loren said, “I thought he was already dead.”
We looked at him.
“He was sprawled out like a corpse. I thought for sure this guy killed him. I don’t know what I thought. I started picking up the money. It was automatic. I don’t know what came over me. Then he opened his eyes and started to get up and—see, all along I thought he was dead, and then he opened his eyes.”
“And then you went back with the ashtray just to make sure, huh?”
“Oh, God,” Loren said.
“How much did it finally come to, partner? Twenty grand? Forty?”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty thousand American dollars.” Ray whistled softly. “No wonder you weren’t crazy about our deal tonight. Why take chances for ten grand when you already had fifty salted away, especially when you’d have to split the ten in half and the fifty was yours free and clear.”
“Half’s yours, Ray. You think I would hold out?”
“Oh, you’re real cute, Loren.”
“I was just waiting until I could find a way to explain it to you. I wouldn’t hold out on you.”
“Of course not.”
“Twenty-five thousand tax-free dollars is your end of it, Ray. Jesus, here we have the murderer standing right next to you. It’s open and shut and all he is is a f*cking burglar, Ray. See how sweet it is?”
“Oh, I get it. You think we should hang it all on Bernie here.” Ray scratched his chin. “Thing is, what happens when he tells his story? They’d lean on you and do some checking and you’d crack wide open, Loren.”
“He could get shot trying to escape. Ray, he escaped once, right? He’s a dangerous man. Listen to me, Ray. Think about twenty-five thousand dollars. Or maybe you should get more than half. Is that it? Ray, listen to me—”
Ray hit him. He used his open hand and slapped Loren across the face. Loren put his hand to his cheek and stood there looking properly stunned while the slap went on echoing in the silent apartment.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Ray said after a moment. “You have the right to—oh, f*ck this noise. Bernie, if the question ever comes up recall that I read this cocksucker his rights.”
“No question about it.”
“Because I want this to be airtight. I never liked the little shit but you’d think he’d know the difference between clean and dirty, between taking money and killing for it. You know what I’d like? I’d like something hard, some piece of evidence that would nail his ass to the wall. Like his nightstick with Flaxford’s blood on it, but it’s a sure bet that already went down the incinerator.”
“You’ll find the money. With blood on some of it.”
“Unless he stashed it.” He glared at Loren. “But I suppose he’ll tell me where it is.”
“He doesn’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think he actually picked up fifty thousand dollars. I think he picked up forty-nine thousand nine hundred.”
“You lost me, Bernie.”
I held out the blue box. “Now I didn’t open this box yet,” I said, “because I don’t know the combination. But I could probably pick the lock, and when I do I have a feeling I know what we’ll find inside. I think we’ll find a hundred-dollar bill and I think there’ll be a bloodstain on the bill and I even think there’ll be a fingerprint on the bloodstain. Now it could conceivably be Flaxford’s fingerprint if he did some bleeding before Loren got to him. Maybe he cut himself on the lamp as he knocked it over. But I have a hunch it’ll be Loren’s fingerprint, and it certainly ought to be a good piece of evidence, don’t you think?”
Ray gave me a long look. “That’s what you think you’ll find in the box.”
“Call it a hunch.”
“So why not open the box and see for ourselves?” And when I’d done so he said, “Beautiful, Just beautiful. When’d you set this up, anyway? Oh, sure, the time you went to the toilet. You faked flushing it same as Loren did. That’s cute. And the bill was there all the time? The lab boys missed it? Amazing.”
“It must have been in the blue box all along.”
“Uh-huh. I don’t suppose I’ll ever learn what was really in the blue box, and I don’t really suppose I give a shit. I like what’s in there now. That’s a beautiful print, all right, and I’ll bet it does turn up to be yours, Loren, and I’ll also bet that blood turns out to be the right type.” He sighed heavily. “Loren,” he said, “I think you’re in a lot of trouble.”