Роберт Стивенсон: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 3, March 1990

Hernandez chuckled. “I’d like to tell you we did some real heavy duty detective work, but it didn’t go down that way. Our computer did most of the work. John Schroeder turned out to be an industrial spy. He’d been working the San Diego — L.A. area for about four years and had decided it was time to move on — too many people in the business knew him. He’d been establishing a new identity as John Sheridan in New York for about six months, which is why his bank accounts here came up empty. He was transferring money to his new accounts back east. But he had made this deal with Moreno to steal a computer chip for a toy.”

“I told them about the fat kid just before you got here,” I interrupted.

“Good,” Hernandez said. “That makes it easier. Anyway, the fat kid’s chip was supposed to be his last job before he moved on. But he got greedy. He decided to duplicate it and sell it to a couple of other guys he’d done business with before, only when he opened the chip, he destroyed it. He realized he was going to have to leave town sooner than he’d thought.”

“Did Moreno find out about the other guys Schroeder had sold the chip to?” Alicia asked.

Hernandez shrugged. “Maybe. But I doubt it. Those guys don’t talk to each other. The way we figured it, Moreno was on a tight production deadline. He had to get the chip in a hurry to get the toys done for the Christmas sales season, so he was bugging Schroeder to deliver, and Schroeder was probably putting him off. Moreno not only owns La Marqueta, the maquiladora, but he’s a principal in Anderson Toys in L.A., so he was also involved in the Trojan Horse knockoff last year. It was a big coup for him to get the chip and to have his factory be the one to produce it. He would have made millions. I talked to a friend of mine on the force down there and found out that his factory was all geared up to produce something but they couldn’t show my friend anything it was based on. They even had their promo pieces done.

“Moreno isn’t talking, but I think he panicked when he found out Schroeder’s phone had been disconnected and went up to his office to confront him.”

“Why didn’t Schroeder just give him the chip, even though it didn’t work?” Bowie asked. “It would have bought him some time.”

“Who knows?” Hernandez said. “I think Schroeder figured Moreno needed him alive until he had the chip, so he tried to put him off again. Moreno was probably thinking that Schroeder didn’t plan on delivering the chip at all, so why not ice him, ditch the body somewhere it wouldn’t be found for a while, and search Schroeder’s home and office at his leisure.”

“It never made sense to me,” Alicia said, “that Schroeder would disconnect his phone. A-dead giveaway that he was planning on splitting.”

“I have this sister-in-law who doesn’t believe in making long distance phone calls,” Hernandez said. “She says they cost too much. She doesn’t save money any other way, but you can’t convince her to use the phone. It was probably some idiosyncrasy like that. He didn’t think it through.”

“Like the old guy who doesn’t believe in using banks,” I added.

We ate quietly, thinking about what Hernandez had told us. When we were about done, I said, “When was Schroeder killed?”

“The morning you found the body. Probably early. I would say before nine, when people arrived for work, since nobody heard the altercation or the shot. And Moreno had had time to tear up the office before you arrived.”

“So he was the one who knocked me down when I got there?” I asked.

“Yeah. It would seem so,” Hernandez said.

“I guess I was lucky. He must have still had the gun on him. He could just as easily have shot me.”

Hernandez shrugged. “He didn’t have any reason to. He must have known you couldn’t see him, coming in from the bright sunlight like that, so it was a safe bet not to make things any worse by attracting attention as he left.”

“How does the car fit in?” Alicia asked. “Was the old one really stolen?”

“I don’t know,” Hernandez said. “Moreno didn’t have any reason to steal it — he wasn’t suspicious yet — and Schroeder had no reason to switch cars, unless there was something else going on that we don’t know about. The old car hasn’t turned up yet. Aside from the inconvenience of not having wheels for a couple of days, it worked out okay for Schroeder. Getting a new car wasn’t a bad idea. Moreno wouldn’t recognize it, for one thing, and second, it would be a freebie. He’d be long gone by the time you figured out you’d been scammed and sent someone to repo the car. All he’d have to do once he got to New York was buy a junked Corliss, change over the VIN numbers, and register the new car under the serial number of the junker. Nobody’d be the wiser. It happens all the time.”

“But we decided to pull the car two days after he bought it,” Alicia said.

“Yeah. I think he was planning on being gone by then, but it didn’t work out that way,” Hernandez said. “He made a big deposit Tuesday afternoon to his New York account, so it looks like he stuck around to pick up some money from one of his other customers. That and not having a car for a few days slowed down his plans to leave town.”

“What’s going to happen to Moreno now?” Alicia asked.

“We found the gun he killed Schroeder with,” Hernandez smiled. “He’s a done deal for hard time.”

“You seem pretty confident of that,” I said.

Hernandez smiled mischievously. “Last I heard, he was having a hard time finding a lawyer willing to take the case.

Nobody wants a loser.”

We talked for a while longer, then walked to our cars together. I felt a lot better now, and on the way home, I thought about Alicia. Maybe I could go on to Plan B now — a date with her without Bowie as a chaperone. I decided I’d call her tomorrow and see if she’d go for it.

When I got home, the phone was ringing. I went through the list of people who could possibly be calling me at this time of night, and almost decided not to answer it. On the off chance that it might be Alicia, I picked up the receiver and heard a wheezy voice on the other end of the line. It was no doubt Hernandez’ revenge.

“My mom says I can drive now,” the fat kid said. He sounded excited. “Will you teach me?”

There’s that time between day and night when it’s neither. In some parts of the world the time between is so short you can’t see it. Still, it must be there. It can’t be day and night at the same time, any more than there can be life and death at the same time. In between the two is a flutter of both or neither. I’m not sure which.

Lord, I miss Eleanor. I didn’t know a man could love a woman he’d been married to for twenty years as if it was their honeymoon. Even now, three years gone, it hurts just to think about her.

I tapped out my pipe. The entry was dated August, 1952, three years after my grandmother had been murdered by a drunken derelict. The old diary had been a surprise. It was hard to imagine grizzled old Grandpa writing down such thoughts. He wasn’t a man to say much.

I was tired. I had been up since four A.M., when the hospital had called to tell me Grandpa had collapsed at the local tavern. It had taken them hours to find my number. I had driven most of the morning, hoping to see Grandpa before he died, and although I made it, it hadn’t mattered much. He was no longer fully conscious. He didn’t know me. I stayed at the hospital till mid-afternoon when exhaustion sent me to rest at his old farmhouse.