Ed McBain - Goldilocks

“Hello?” Susan said.

“Yes, Susan, what is it?”

“Are you still angry?” she asked.

“No, just in a hurry.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Susan, I really can’t talk right now. We’ll discuss it when I get home, okay?”

“You haven’t forgotten tonight, have you?”

“What’s tonight?”

“The gallery opening, and then dinner at—”

“Yes, right. It’s here on my calendar. Susan, I’ve got to say good-bye now.”

“All right, we’ll talk when you get home.”

“Fine.”

“Do you have any idea what time that’ll be?”

“Susan, I just got here this minute, I haven’t even—”

“All right, darling, go ahead,” she said.

“We’ll talk later,” I said.

“Yes, good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” I said and put down the receiver and collected my clothes again. I was carrying them across the corridor when Frank stepped out of his office next door.

There are people who say that Frank and I look alike. I cannot see any resemblance. I’m six feet two inches tall and weigh a hundred and ninety pounds. Frank’s a half-inch under six feet, and he weighs a hundred and seventy, which he watches like a hawk. We both have dark hair and brown eyes, but Frank’s face is rounder than mine. Frank says there are only two types of faces in the world — pig faces and fox faces. He classifies himself as a pig face and me as a fox face. There is nothing derogatory about either label; they are only intended to be descriptive. Frank first told me about his designation system last October. Ever since, I’ve been unable to look at anyone without automatically categorizing him as either pig or fox.

“Why’s Jamie coming here?” he said at once.

“I asked him to. He was lying about that poker game, Frank. He was winning when he left.”

“Who says?”

“Mark Goldman was in the same game.”

“Then why’d Jamie say he was losing?”

“That’s what I want to ask him. That’s why he’s coming here.”

Jamie came into the office fifteen minutes later. He looked well rested, well scrubbed, and cleanly shaved. He was wearing a white linen leisure suit, dark blue sports shirt open at the throat. Frank took his hand and expressed sincere condolences. I asked Jamie if he wanted a drink, and he looked at his watch, and then shook his head. I looked at Frank. Frank nodded.

“Jamie,” I said, “we’re your lawyers, and we’ve got to ask you the same questions the police are going to ask. And we need the answers before they get them.”

“Okay,” Jamie said. There was the same puzzled tone in his voice that had been there earlier on the telephone.

“I’ll give it to you straight,” I said. “I’m not trying to trick you into anything, I’m asking only for the truth. A man named Mark Goldman was in that poker game with you last night. You’d met him before, I’d introduced you one day when we were having lunch at Marina Blue. I guess you’d forgotten him, you didn’t seem to recognize him last night. Man with a mustache, about your height...”

“What about him?” Jamie said.

“I played tennis with him this morning. He told me you were winning when you left the game. Is that true?”

“No, I was losing,” Jamie said.

“How much were you losing?” Frank asked.

“Thirty, forty dollars.”

“So you decided to go home.”

“Yes.”

“But instead you went to The Innside Out for a drink. How come?”

“I was feeling low. About losing.”

“About losing,” Frank repeated.

“Yes.”

“Jamie,” I said, “Detective Ehrenberg is going to talk to all the players who were in that game last night. That’s why he took their names from you. He’ll eventually get to Mark Goldman, even though he was one of the players whose names you didn’t know. Mark’s going to tell him exactly what he told me. You were winning when you quit. You were tired. You were going home to sleep. Now unless you can prove you were at The Innside Out, Ehrenberg’s going to think you did go home. He’s going to think you got there a lot earlier than a quarter to one, when you called me. He’s going to think you were maybe there in time to murder Maureen and the kids. Now Jamie...”

“I didn’t murder them.”

“Did you go directly home from that poker game?”

“No. I told you where I went. I went to The Innside Out.”

“Jamie, we’re talking about first-degree murder here,” Frank said. “We’re talking about the death penalty.”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“ Were you winning when you left the game?”

“What difference does it make?”

“If you were winning, the other players’ll tell that to the police. And the police’ll wonder why you later said you were losing. So which was it, Jamie? Were you winning, or were—”

“I was winning.”

“All right. Then why’d you leave the game?”

“I was tired. It was just what I said. I wanted to go home to sleep.”

“But instead you went to The Innside Out.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“Was it a woman?” Frank asked.

“No.”

“ Was it?” he insisted.

“Oh, Jesus,” Jamie said, and buried his face in his hands.

“Tell us,” I said.

He began talking.

The clock on the wall of Frank’s office seemed to stop abruptly; there was only the present, there was only Jamie’s story. It was the story I might have told Susan last night had Jamie’s phone call not shattered the moment. As he spoke now, I became all of us. I was Jamie himself, confessing not to a brutal knife murder, no, but to murder nonetheless — the inexorable suffocation of his second marriage. I was Susan listening to the confession I did not make last night, but which Jamie now made for me. And finally, I was the victim Maureen, unable to escape the blade that came at me relentlessly in this fatal blood-spattered cage.

It was a philanderer’s nightmare.

They had arranged to meet at eleven P.M. By a quarter to eleven, he was winning close to sixty dollars. He’d been betting recklessly for the past half-hour, hoping to bring his winnings down to a respectable amount that would enable him to quit without censure. But each foolish risk paid off — he drew to inside straights and filled them, he saved an ace kicker and caught the case ace, he raised with a pair of deuces and the strong hand opposite him abruptly folded. He could not seem to lose — in bed with her later he would whisper that he was lucky in cards, did that mean he was unlucky in love? He did not yet know that this was to be the unluckiest night of his life.

The poker game was his Sunday night alibi. On Wednesday afternoons, his office was closed to patients, and he went to meet her then as well. Maureen accepted his lies without question. But as he left the game on Sunday night, one of the losing players said, “Who are you rushing off to, Jamie? A girlfriend?” He’d thought the game safe until that moment. He said, “Sure, sure, a girlfriend,” and waved good night — but the gratuitous comment bothered him. He was an old hand at infidelity. He’d been cheating on his first wife for half a dozen years before he met Maureen, and then he saw her regularly for another two years before asking for a divorce. He knew that men were worse than women when it came to gossip, and was terrified that his early departure would set them to talking about him. But he’d already left the game, he’d already taken the gamble. He could only hope to win it the way he’d won all the other reckless bets he’d made that night.