Лоуренс Блок - Death Pulls a Doublecross [= Cowards Kiss]

“They’re trying to get a briefcase from me. I don’t have it.”

“Who does?”

“I don’t know. Jack, didn’t Sheila ever mention anything about a briefcase? Anything about jewels or criminals?”

“No. Never. Let me think.” I let him think. “Never,” he said flatly. “I told you what she talked about. There was never anything about a briefcase or jewels or crooks.”

I let go of it. “About the apartment,” I said, shifting. “When you found Sheila. Maybe you were mistaken, maybe the apartment was neat and Sheila was naked and your mind did a little dance with itself. You were under a strain, Jack. You might not have seen things the way they were. Hell, you’re a doctor. You know how the human mind can react to shock.”

I listened to heavy breathing. Then: “You think you and I saw the apartment the same way.”

“That’s right.”

He hesitated. “That’s been bothering me,” he said finally. “I almost called you last night. I wanted to tell you about it.”

“Want to tell me now?”

“It’s just a feeling I had.”

“Go on.”

He said: “I was thinking about the murder. The way I found the body. I went over it in my mind and it didn’t seem to mesh together properly. Do you know what I mean? I had a certain distinct memory — a dead girl, Sheila, and a messed-up apartment, and all that. But somewhere in the back of my mind was the idea that it wasn’t that way at all. There was a conflicting picture that hadn’t been there before. A picture of Sheila nude and dead in the middle of a neat apartment. I don’t know if the second picture is real or if it stuck in my mind when you described it to me. It could be either way.”

“I see.”

“I’m not sold on it one way or the other,” he went on. “But if you’ve got a hunch I was seeing things, well, I’ll go along with you. It makes sense to me.”

I said something innocuous. He told me again that he hoped I’d keep him out of it and I said I’d do my best. We spent a few seconds looking around for something to say to each other, then settled on “So long” and ended the conversation. I held onto the receiver and studied it, trying to think clearly. Then I put it down and poured the last of Maddy’s coffee into my cup.

The conversation with Jack hadn’t proved anything one way or the other. He was too busy trying to forget forever the fact that he had managed to commit adultery and get mixed up in a murder. Now all he cared about was staying in the clear and smelling like a rose. Anything he said or did was going to be colored by that desire. He’d go along with any theory I came up with just to keep things simple.

I finished the coffee, washed out my cup and put it away. I found a broom and gave the apartment a quick sweeping. I wrote Maddy a note, then read it over and decided it was painfully cute. I tore it up and wrote her a blander one, put it on the rickety kitchen table and set the brandy bottle on top of it.

At the door I turned to take a last look at the apartment and think pleasant thoughts about the girl who lived in it. Then I went down two flights, passing Madame Sindra and the machine shop, and out onto the street.

The sun was high in the sky and the air was hot. I managed to snag a cab on Eight Avenue. I sat back and gave my home address to the driver, letting him fight the traffic.

A few points bothered me. Both Armin and Bannister knew I went to the girl’s apartment. They sure as hell didn’t pool information between them. Which meant both of them had seen me.

How?

They couldn’t both have kept the apartment under surveillance at the same time. They both knew I went there, but neither one knew I didn’t come out with the briefcase.

Why?

I tossed it around and didn’t get anywhere with it. I lit my pipe while the cab clawed its way through the beginnings of the noon rush hour. My cabby inched his way north on Eighth Avenue, jockeying for position with Puerto Rican boys pushing hand trucks of ladies’ dresses, I sat and smoked.

The city was getting hotter as the day rolled along. Maddy was reading for a good part; I was chasing a briefcase and a killer. A good day.

When we hit Forty-second Street I started wondering about my own apartment. I lost the thought when we passed the Ruskin and Peter Armin came back to mind. I got back to it a few blocks along the line and wondered what sort of a job Cora Johnson had been able to do. And how much of the damage was permanent.

And how well five grand would compensate for it.

My stomach-ache wasn’t bothering me. Ralph and Billy still were, though. I sat there and remembered. And hated them.

I reached into my pocket. The Beretta was still there, small and sleek and deadly. I stroked cool metal and thought about Ralph and Billy.

I climbed stairs to my apartment, lifted a corner of my Welcome mat — which says Go Away, incidentally — and picked up my key. This was one of Cora’s less logical habits; she couldn’t believe I had two keys to my own apartment and always left the damned key precisely where I had left it for her. This always gave me a bad moment. I couldn’t be sure whether she’d been there or not until I opened the door.

I bent over again, scooped up the Times. I straightened up, stuck key in lock, held my breath, and pushed. She had been there.

I thanked her silently. The place looked livable again. Hell, it looked great — each book was back in the bookcase, the rugs were clean, the furniture polished. I closed the door and tossed my newspaper on a chair. There would be time to read it later on. Now it was more fun to look around.

Some of the books were still ruined, of course. A bookmaker could patch up most of them as soon as I had time to run them in. And the chair cushions were still slit open. But Cora had done one beautiful hell of a job. I took a deep breath, feeling very pleased with the world in general and with Cora Johnson in particular.

Only one thing was out of whack. I looked at it and the room started to spin around. I stood there with my mouth wide open and my stupid face hanging out.

There was a tan cowhide briefcase on the coffee table and it had never been there before.

I went to the shelf and poured a little cognac in one of the glasses. I drank it off and turned around.

The briefcase was still there.

One of the slick mags had a feature running a few years back under the title “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” The pitch was quietly mindless — a Mona Lisa frowning on a wall, a man with two left hands, a face without eyebrows. The reader was supposed to puzzle it out, figure out what was wrong.

Hell, it was easy. The briefcase was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be there at all, and there it was.

It should have been funny as hell. By the time I finally managed to sell Armin on the idea that I never had the case to begin with, wham — there it was. For a crazy second or two I wondered if it had been there all along, if Cora had unearthed it for me while she straightened up. That little piece of insanity didn’t last long. Somebody had brought the briefcase there while I was out. Somebody had given me a present.

Why?

I wasn’t going to worry about whys just then. I went to the door, locked it and slid the bolt home. I took the briefcase from the coffee table and sat down in a chair to examine it. I turned it over and over in my hands like a little kid with a Christmas present trying to guess what was inside. I shook it to see if it would rattle. It didn’t.

It was well-made and it was expensive. The leather was top-grain quality, the stitching neat and precise. It looked like an English job, which fit Armin’s little story about Canadian jewel thieves. But since most of the better briefcases sold in the States are English ones, it really didn’t mean too much one way or the other. So there was nothing to do but open the thing. So I opened it.