“Starting with Claude Anselm.”
“Oh, that one would have been Dad’s alone. Assuming, that is, that it was really part of the series at all, and not just an anonymous mugging, like everybody thought. Dad hated Anselm’s guts. He’d worked with him, knew how he operated. He could have stalked the guy and killed him and left the scene knowing he’d never be suspected. But let’s say I found out about it. Maybe I saw him just after the killing, spotted something that tipped me off. Maybe he was disposing of the weapon. A bloody golf club would be appropriate. So, I’d get him to tell me the truth, and he’d make me agree to stonewall it. Certainly, I’d have had no problem with the morality of the thing. Then Rosey’s brainstorming on it might have inspired us. Dad had done it once. Why couldn’t he do it again, especially with me helping him? Put that line about Anselm’s lousy golf game in the personals the next day. It was no great trick to place a classified ad anonymously in those days. Then after that, we’d make it harder on ourselves, give ourselves a challenge. Sort of predict the murder to the papers before we actually committed it. Maybe I had this desire to show my dad I really was a good actor, that I could put on a fright wig and do a righteous killing and cover my tracks. Hey, this makes such a good story, I almost wish it really had happened this way. So, let’s see, what was the next one?”
“Monique Floret.”
“Ah, yes, that bitch. That woulda been mine alone. I would have altered my appearance so I wouldn’t be recognized, easy for an actor. ‘Even a crappy one,’ I hear my dad saying. Blackface maybe? No, I wouldn’t risk that in Harlem. But add a moustache, comb my hair a different way, dab on a little gray to make me look older. I’d have gone to the Savoy, danced with her to the alternating bands—”
“How’d you know she’d be at the Savoy?”
“Made a date by phone to meet her there, used a phony name, dropped a few famous ones she’d know to make me look like an insider, pretended I could help her career or something, said my wife didn’t understand me. Monique couldn’t resist that stuff. She’d tried to frame my dad one time. Didn’t know that, did you? It would’ve killed my mother, but he got out of it before it boiled over. Then I’d have left the Savoy with her, walked the streets looking for my opportunity, pushed her in front of a train in the subway station.”
“It wouldn’t be crowded enough at that time of night. It sounds risky.”
“Having embarked on this plan, you think we were worried about risky? Anyway, I’d have had a chance later if the platform wasn’t nearly empty. I had to do it that night, you know. The message was already in all the papers, and you don’t pay to advertise a show and then cancel it.”
“How about Esterhazy?”
“That would have been Dad’s. I wasn’t even in town at that time. Esterhazy loved cloak-and-dagger stuff. If Dad had called him and arranged to meet him somewhere secretly, in some cheap and anonymous hotel room, he’d come even in a blizzard, wouldn’t tell anybody about it. I’d learned something about drug actions during my short stint in medical school, and that would come in handy faking a natural death. Telling Dad how to do it could have been my contribution. Dad would have drugged him, carried him out by a back exit, and buried him in the snow before he could wake up. Cause of death: freezing.”
“Quite a job for a man of his age.”
“Seb, you remember how strong my father was, and Esterhazy was the size of a jockey. He could have done it.”
“What about Spurlock?”
“Hmm, yeah, that was a tricky one, wasn’t it? Shot to death, weapon never recovered, cops had to know it was murder. How the hell would we have done that one?”
“You mean you’re stumped?”
“No, no, give me a minute. This is fun, isn’t it? We’d have got together on Spurlock, too. Once again, Dad was in a position to arrange a meeting surreptitiously, maybe in a hotel near the Garment District.”