In the Midst of Death

"No."



"I'm certain he stole me blind and I don't even care. I only kept the place open to accommodate my trade. Not out of the goodness of my heart, but because I don't want these girls to find out there are other establishments in the city that sell liquor. So as long as I covered my overhead I was blissfully happy. And then I wound up showing a slight profit, which was nothing but gravy." He winked, then scuttled the length of the bar to replenish some drinks and collect some money. Then he returned and posed once again with his chin cupped in his two hands.



He said, "Bet I know what you're up to."



"Bet you don't."



"For a drink? You're on. Let me see now- its initials wouldn't just happen to be J. B. by any chance, would it? And I don't mean the Jim Beam you're drinking. J. B. and his good friend P. C.?" His eyebrows ascended dramatically. "Heavens, why is your poor jaw plummeting halfway to the dusty floor, Matthew? Isn't that what drew you to this den of ubiquity in the first place?"



I shook my head.



"Really?"



"I just happened to be in the neighborhood."



"That's quite remarkable."



"I know he was living just a few blocks from here, but why does that tie him to this place, Kenny? There are dozens of bars as close to his apartment on Barrow. Were you just guessing that I was on his case, or did you hear something?"



"I don't know if you'd call it a guess. More an assumption. He used to drink here."



"Broadfield?"



"The very same. Not all that often, but every once in a while. No, he's not gay, Matthew. Or if he is, I don't know it, and I don't think he does, either. He's certainly given no evidence of it here, and God knows he wouldn't have had any trouble finding someone who would have been thrilled to take him home. He's absolutely gorgeous."



"Not your type though, is he?"



"Not my type at all. I like dirty little boys myself. As you well know."



"As I well know."



"As everybody well knows, sweetheart." Someone tapped a glass on the bar for service. "Oh, keep it in your pants, Mary," Kenny told him, in a mock British accent. "I'm just having a spot of chat with a gent from the Yard." To me he said, "Speaking of Limey accents, he brought her here, you know. Or didn't you know? Well, you do now. Another drink? You already owe me for two doubles- the one you drank and the one you lost in the bet. Let's make it three." He poured a generous double, set the bottle down. "So naturally I guessed why you were here. This is not, after all, your normal watering hole. And they had been here both separately and together, and now she's dead and he's in the hotel with the bars on the windows, and the conclusion seemed inescapable. M. S. wants to know about J. B. and P. C."



"The last part is certainly true."



"Then ask questions of me."



"He came here first by himself?"



"For the longest time he came here only by himself. He was by no means a frequent visitor at first. I'd say he first showed up perhaps a year and a half ago. I would see him a couple of times a month, and always alone. Of course I didn't know anything about him at the time. He looked like law, but at the same time he didn't. Do you know what I mean? Maybe it was his clothes. No offense, but he dressed terribly well."



"Why should I be offended?" He shrugged and moved off to tend to business. While he was gone I tried to figure out why Broadfield would patronize Sinthia's. The only way it made much sense was that there had been times when he wanted to get out of his apartment but didn't want to run into anybody he knew. A gay bar would have suited his needs perfectly.



When Kenny came back I said, "You mentioned he showed up here with Portia Carr. When?"



"I can't be positive. He could have brought her here during the summer and I wouldn't have known about it. The first time I saw them together was- three weeks ago? It's hard for me to fix events temporally when I had no idea at the time that they would turn out to be important."



"Was it before or after you knew who he was?"



"Ah, clever, clever! It was after I knew who he was, so three weeks is probably about right because I became familiar with his name when he first made contact with that investigator, and then I saw his photo in the newspaper, and then he turned up with the Amazon."



"How many times were they here together?"



"At least twice. Maybe three times. That was all within the space of a week. May I replenish that drink for you?" I shook my head. "Then I didn't see the two of them again, but I did see her."



"Alone?"



"Briefly. She came in, sat at a table, ordered a drink."



"When was this?"



"What's today, Friday? This would have been Tuesday night."



"And she was killed Wednesday night."



"Well, don't look at me, lover. I didn't do it."



"I'll take your word for it." I remembered the dimes I had dropped into various phones Tuesday night, calling Portia Carr's number and getting her answering machine. And she had been here then.



"Why did she come here, Kenny?"



"To meet someone."



"Broadfield?"



"That's what I assumed, but the man who ultimately met her was a far cry indeed from Broadfield. It was hard to believe they were both members of the same species."



"And he was the one she was waiting for?"



"Oh, absolutely. He walked in looking for her, and she had been looking up every time the door opened." He scratched his head for a moment. "I don't know if she knew him or not. By sight, I mean. I have a vague feeling that she didn't, but I'm just guessing. This wasn't long ago, Matt, but I didn't really pay too much attention."



"How long were they together?"



"They were together here for perhaps half an hour. Maybe a little longer than that. Then they left together, so they may have spent hours on end in one another's company. They didn't see fit to take me into their confidence."



"And you don't know who the guy was."



"Never saw him before or since."



"What did he look like, Kenny?"



"Well, he didn't look like much, I'll tell you that. But you want a description rather than a critique, I would suppose. Let me just think." He closed his eyes, drummed his fingers on the bartop. Without opening his eyes he said, "A small person, Matt. Short, slender. Hollow cheeks. A great deal of forehead and an appalling absence of chin. Wore a rather tentative beard to conceal the lack of chin. No mustache. Heavy horn-rimmed glasses, so I didn't see his eyes and couldn't really swear that he had any, although I would guess that he did, as most people generally do. A left one and a right one, conventionally, although now and then- is something wrong?"



"Nothing's wrong, Ken."



"Do you know him?"



"Yeah. I know him."



I left Kenny's shortly after that. Then there's a stretch of time I don't remember clearly. I probably hit a bar or two. Eventually I found myself in the vestibule of Jerry Broadfield's building on Barrow Street.



I don't know what led me there or why I thought I ought to be there. But it must have made some sort of sense to me at the time.



A strip of celluloid popped the inner lock, and did the same job on the door to his apartment. Once inside his apartment, I locked the door and went around turning on lights, making myself at home. I found the bottle of bourbon and poured myself a drink, got a beer from the refrigerator for a chaser. I sat sipping bourbon and chasing it with beer. After a little while I turned on the radio and found a station that played unobtrusive music.



After some more bourbon and some more beer I took off my suit and hung it neatly in his closet. I got out of the rest of my clothes and found a pair of his pajamas in the bureau drawer. I put them on. I had to turn up the trouser bottoms because they were a little long on me. Aside from that they weren't a bad fit. A little loose, but not a bad fit.



Sometime just before I went to bed I picked up the telephone and dialed a number. I hadn't dialed it in a few days, but I still remembered it.



A deep voice with an English accent. "Seven-two-five-five. I am sorry, but no one is at home at the moment. If you will leave your name and number at the sound of the tone, your call will be returned as soon as possible. Thank you."



A gradual process, death. Someone had stabbed her to death forty-eight hours ago in this very apartment, but her voice still answered her telephone.



I called two more times just to hear her voice. I didn't leave any messages. Then I had another can of beer and the rest of the bourbon and crawled into his bed and slept.



Chapter 12



I woke up confused and disoriented, chasing the traces of a formless dream. For a moment I stood beside his bed in his pajamas and did not know where I was. Then memory flooded back, fully and completely. I took a quick shower, dried off, put my own clothes back on again. I had a can of beer for breakfast and got out of there, walking out into bright sunlight and feeling like a thief in the night.



I wanted to get moving right away. But I made myself have a big breakfast of eggs and bacon and toast and coffee at Jimmy Day's on Sheridan Square and drank a lot of coffee with it and then took the subway uptown.



There was a message waiting for me at my hotel, along with a lot of junk mail that went straight into the wastebasket. The message was from Seldon Wolk, who wanted me to call him at my convenience. I decided it was as convenient as it would ever be, and I called him from the hotel lobby.



His secretary put me through right away. He said, "I saw my client this morning, Mr. Scudder. He wrote out something for me to read to you. May I?"



"Go ahead."



" 'Matt- Don't know anything about Manch in connection with Portia. Is he a mayoral assistant? She had a few politicians in her book but wouldn't tell me who. I am not holding out on you anymore. I held out about Fuhrmann and our plans because I didn't see how it mattered and I like to keep things to myself. Forget all that. Thing to concentrate on is two cops who arrested me. How did they know to come to my apartment? Who tipped them? Work that angle.' "



"That's all?"



"That's it, Mr. Scudder. I feel like a messenger service, relaying questions and answers without understanding them. They might as well be in code. I trust the message makes some sense to you?"



"Some. How did Broadfield seem to you? Is he in good spirits?"



"Oh, very much so. Quite confident he'll be acquitted. I think his optimism is justified." And he had a lot to say about various legal maneuvers that would keep Broadfield out of jail, or get his conviction reversed on appeal. I didn't bother listening, and when he slowed down a little I thanked him and said good-bye.



I stopped at the Red Flame for coffee and thought about Broadfield's message. His suggestion was all wrong, and after thinking about it for a while I realized why.



He was thinking like a cop. That was understandable- he had spent years learning to think like a cop, and it was hard to reorient yourself immediately. I still thought like a cop a lot of the time myself, and I'd had a few years to unlearn old habits. From a cop's point of view, it made very good sense to tackle the problem the way Broadfield wanted to. You stayed with hard data and you worked backward, tracking down every possible avenue of approach until you found out who had called in the homicide report. The odds were that the caller was also the murderer. If not, he'd probably seen something.