Текст книги "Death Trick "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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I said, "I'll bring him in, and then you and the DA go easy on him until I locate the guilty party. Just don't rush it."

The lumps and openings on his face rearranged themselves randomly. A feeble smile. "There seems to be this opinion rampant in certain quarters that Billy Blount is nothing worse than a wayward lad who could stand a good talking to. Get sent to his room with no supper."

"The DA?"

"My own opinion is that he's a fucking screwball who stabbed a man to death. I've got evidence, and it's going to court. If, after he's found guilty, somebody wants to toodle Blount on out to Attica in a limousine with a full bar, I won't object. Just so the little creep gets locked away from society for the rest of his natural life. That's my opinion. That's my intention."

"Your evidence is circumstantial. Why do you call him a screwball?"

"He's taken a human life. Even the life of a queer has worth in God's eyes. See? I'm a liberal."

"I hope you'll come and speak at the next Gay Alliance meeting. You can increase the number of your already-countless gay friends. What evidence have you got that Jay Tarbell won't have a jury guffawing over? Blount was seen leaving Trucky's with Kleckner a few hours before it happened. That's it. Anything could have happened in that time."

"We've got this." He opened a drawer and held up a reel of tape. '"He's dead—I think Steve is dead.' It's Blount's voice."

"Who identified it?"

"The Blounts, Mister and missus."

"Swell, good for them. So many people don't want to get involved these days."

"And when we have Blount, we'll get a voice print and nail it down."

"The newspapers say you have the weapon. Were there prints?"

"There were."

"Blount's?"

He frowned, looked at his reel of tape.

"Ah. So. Whose were they?"

"We don't know." He put the tape back in the drawer, slammed it shut. "They're not on record."

"Diabolical devil, that Blount. He wore somebody else's hands that night."

"What the fuck. He held the knife in a towel, in a handkerchief. Who knows."

"That sounds awkward. Maybe he brought his mittens along."

"Screw you, faggot. Whoops—pardon if I got you hot."

Oi. "And the doorknob. When you got your picture in the paper, you were pointing at Kleckner's doorknob. A meaningless photogenic gesture, right?"

He laughed.

"You've got no case," I said. "And sooner or later you're going to have to admit it. Better now than when Jay Tarbell goes to work on you in Judge Feeney's courtroom. Also, there's the matter of another psycho out there who could kill again. Why wait?"

He sat for a moment looking thoughtful and a little bewildered. Then: "Tarbell won't be a problem. Not much, anyway. He's already been talking to the DA about a deal. That's not Jay's style, and I don't get it. Though if Jay assumes his client's guilty, who am I to argue?"

The fine hand of the deranged Blounts again. I said, "What sort of deal?"

"Put him in a psycho ward instead of the slammer. I get the impression Feeney's in on it. My guess is, they've already got some country club all picked out. Personally, I won't go for it. Not that my opinion's been asked."

An idea came to me that froze my innards. I didn't say it out loud. Bowman might not have disapproved.

I said, "It'll be useful to get Billy Blount's perceptions of these events. That's what I'm after."

"We agree on something."

"You've paid a call on Blount's friend Huey Brownlee. I take it you're aware somebody came through his window Saturday morning and went after him with a knife."

"I saw the report. A burglary attempt."

"It was the second knifing of a gay male in a week's time. There could be a connection."

"Sure, and there could be a connection between Watergate and the French and Indian wars. Relax, Strachey. Those people in that neighborhood slice each other up at the drop of a welfare check. I know. I've seen it. This was some junkie after your fag pal's twelve-hundred-dollar sound system. Believe me."

"You're quite the keen social observer, Sergeant."

"Thank you."

"You've also been to see Margarita Mayes."

"The lez."

"You found her roommate's name on Blount's phone book."

"Her girl friend. Did we leave that phone book behind in Blount's apartment? How slovenly."

"And an eighth of an ounce of grass in the fridge."

"Blount's refrigerator was boring. His homicidal proclivities are not. Who let you into that apartment?"

I fed him his line. "The lock fairy."

"That figures."

"Is Chris Porterfield in Mexico?"

He looked at me. "I can't tell you that."

"I'll tell you what I know," I lied. "Well trade."

He said, "You go first."

"All right. The morning of the killing, Blount borrowed money from someone for plane fare."

"How much?"

"A good bit."

"Who from?"

"I'll hold that for a while."

"Don't. You'll be committing a felony."

I said, "Maybe Chris Porterfield."

"Unh-unh."

"You don't know that."

He looked at me sullenly, regrouping the topography on the front of his head again. "At the time of the crime, you might as well know, Christine Porterfield was in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She entered Mexico on September twenty-sixth." He held up a telex printout. "I received this Friday at two o'clock. It took my federal colleagues three days—three days—to establish that simple fact."

"And she's still there?"

"Now you tell me something, you know so goddamn much about this. Which airport did Blount use? Not Albany. We checked that. Where'd he fly out of?"

"La Guardia."

"What time?"

"Around nine."

"A.M.?"

"a.m. The same day. Is Porterfield still in Mexico?" "She departed Cuernavaca October second." "Three days after the murder." "Correct. She flew back to Albany by way of JFK." "She's here now?" "No."

"Where then?"

"First this. How did Blount get to La Guardia? Not by bus. Not by train. How?"

I said, "He was driven."

"Who by? The person who lent him the money?"

"Yes."

"Aiding a fugitive, abetting a felony, accessory to murder. I may have to lock you up, Strachey." He reached for his phone.

"Idle threats. Anyway, with me loose I'll continue to add to your non-too-encyclopedic knowledge of this case. And in one week I'll have Kleckner's killer." This was a bit fanciful. "Well, maybe two."

He put the receiver down. "Add to my knowledge right now, Strachey. I think I can stand you for another ten minutes. Well, maybe five."

"If I'm not mistaken, it's your turn. Where is Chris Porterfield?"

He said, "I don't know."

"You know that her roommate lied about Chris's still being in Mexico. Why don't you bring her down here and work her over with a rubber hose?"

He looked at me stonily. "I may yet. That's not a bad idea."

"But you won't really have to, because you know that...." I cocked my head and waited.

"Because," he said, "I happen to know that on October fourth, two days after she returned to Albany from Mexico, Chris Porterfield flew to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and rented a Hertz car for a thirty-day period, the car to be returned at Cheyenne airport, and that the car has not yet been turned back in. So, Strachey, you are now in possession of privileged official information. It's your turn."

"Ask away."

"Who lent Blount the money and took him to La Guardia?"

I knew I'd come to regret this. I said, "Alfred Douglas. Sometimes known as Bowsie. Or Al."

"Who's he?"

"A hustler. Hangs out at the Greyhound station. I don't know where he lives, but your undercover guys could ask around down there at two or three in the morning."

He wrote the name down. "A hustler who owns a car?"

"He borrowed it from an uncle."

"Uncle?"

"A client. Trick."

"How much did he lend Blount?"

"Two hundred forty dollars."

"Jesus, I'min the wrong line of work."

"I doubt it. Your Cheyenne colleagues are on the lookout. for the Hertz car, I take it."

"They are. What else do you know?"

"You've got it all."

"You're lying."

I stood up, clenched my teeth like Bogart, and said, "All right, copper, I've had about all the abuse I'm going to take from you!"

He looked up at me with his plate of potatoes and said, "No, you haven't."

9

Back at the office i phoned Margarita mayes at here 'N' There 'n' Everywhere Travel and told her that the Cheyenne, Wyoming, police were looking for Chris Porterfield. She thanked me and said she would relay this useful information.

Next I called a New York Telephone Company employee I'd met a few years earlier at the Terminal bar who'd helped me out from time to time. He called back half an hour later with a list of long-distance calls made over the past month from Chris Porterfield and Margarita Mayes's home phone and from Here 'n' There 'n' Everywhere Travel. The lists were long, but nowhere was there included a call to Cheyenne, Wyoming. The closest was a call from the travel agency to a number in St. Louis, which didn't look useful, though I'd check it out. My friend at the phone company mentioned in passing that a Sergeant Bowman of the Albany Police Department had requested the same information a week earlier.

At noon I walked up Central and had a leisurely lunch at Elmo's. I paid cash, and Elmo said, "Have a nice day."

Under a hard, bright autumn sky, I headed over toward the

park and arrived at the Blounts' on State Street just after one. The maid let me in, and I waited on the much-talked-about sofa while the Blounts went over their lines offstage.

At one-ten they rolled down the foyer stairway and into the salon like a couple of presenters on the Academy Awards show, Stuart Blount with his elegant long arm, Jane Blount with her ashtray.

"We didn't expect to see you so soon," Blount said, "but we're absolutely delighted."

"Absolutely," Jane Blount said. "Would you care for some tea? Something stronger?"

I said no thank you, and we all sat down, the Blounts looking almost cheerfully expectant.

"I haven't found Billy," I told them, "but I've got some ideas. For now I've got more questions than answers."

Their disappointment showed, and Jane Blount lit a Silva Thin. "How much longer do you think it will be?" she asked. "We're all really terribly anxious to have this business taken care of. Believe me, it's taken its toll on both of us."

"Jane, I'm sure Mr. Strachey is moving ahead on this as rapidly as anyone possibly can," Blount said, giving me a man-to-man, don't-mind-her, women-will-be-women look. "What more can we tell you, Mr. Strachey? What else would you like to know about our son that might assist you?"

I said, "Did Billy once spend some time in a mental institution?"

They froze. They looked at each other. They looked at me. "Why do you ask?" Blount said. "That was nearly ten years ago. What bearing does that have on the present situation?"

"That is a private family matter," Jane Blount said. "It is, I'm afraid, strictly between Stuart and me." She blew smoke up to the ceiling vent. "I'm sure you can appreciate how difficult such an unpleasant state of affairs can be for a family like ours."

I did not tell them what I suspected. I said, "Any past mental illness of Billy's might not be entirely irrelevant to the, ah, present, ah, problematical situation." After this was over I'd need deprogramming. "The thing is, if Billy has a history of sudden, unexpected, violent behavior—"

They picked up the bait. "No, no, that wasn't it," Blount rushed to assure me. "Not at all. You mustn't get the wrong idea."

"As we explained on Friday," Jane Blount said in a voice I supposed she had honed over the years on the maid, "Billy was not a violent boy. He was contentious and impossible at times, of course. But invariably he kept his temper. Billy got that from Stuart's side of the family, I suppose. We Hardemans are more—passionate by nature. Though of course not excessively demonstrative."

Stuart Blount winked at me.

I said, "What was the nature of Billy's illness? Once I know I can relax about it and drop the subject."

"Mr. Strachey," Jane Blount said, her passionate nature asserting itself, "I be-lieve we hired you simply to—"

"No, no—Jane, Jane. Let me put Mr. Strachey's mind at ease. There'll be no harm in that that I can see." She sighed heavily and stubbed out her cigarette. "Billy's problem," Blount said, "was a problem of—social adjustment. He was in no way a menace to society. Only to himself. Just—himself."

He looked at me evenly, waiting. He knew that I knew. Jane Blount glowered at the chandelier.

"And was the social-adjustment problem ironed out?" I asked.

Blount said icily, "I think you know the answer to that, Mr. Strachey. Now then. What can we tell you that will help you locate our son and bring him back to us? That's what we're here for, isn't it?"

I said, "Who is Chris Porterfield?"

They both looked at the walls and thought about this. "The name sounds familiar," Blount said. "But—I can't place it."

"Is he a friend of Billy's?" Jane Blount asked.

I said yes, that was what I'd heard. "An old friend," I said.

"Perhaps from Billy's Elwell School days," Blount said.

"No, Stuart. I would very much doubt that. Billy has never kept in touch with his schoolmates. Understandable as that may be in Billy's case, it is a pity, in a way. Those ties can be so important in later life."

"Or from Albany State-SUNY," Blount said.

"For what that would be worth." She lit another cigarette.

Blount said, "Is this Chris someone Billy might have gone to for help?"

I told them yes, and that I was making progress in locating Chris Porterfield. Then I said: "I spoke with Sergeant Bowman, the police detective. He tells me you two identified Billy's voice on the tape of the phone call notifying the police of the killing."

She squirmed inwardly, but he let it show. "What would have been the point of lying?" Blount said. "Someone else who knew Billy would have identified him at some point in time in the course of events. And, in point of fact, the only significance of the tape is that it demonstrates that Billy reported a crime."

Father Recommends Son For Citizenship Award. "You're sure it's Billy's voice?"

"We are certain," Jane Blount snapped. "We know the voice of our son. Now what else do you want from us?"

"Another five hundred dollars," I said. "I expect to have to do some traveling."

They gave me the check and all but shoved me out the door.

I walked across State Street and into the park. The weather was warming up again—fickle October—and I lay down on the grass under the high white sky. The ground was damp and cold. I got up and sat on a bench. I wanted a cigarette. I'd quit soon after I met Timmy, when it had suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to live for a long, long time. I just chucked them out one night, and Timmy had put up with my cruelty for the week it took to get unhooked. Now I wanted one, for the calming narcotic-effect they'd always had on me. I guessed what I was feeling was the Blount Effect. I thought, half a joint would be nice. And I knew who'd have one—the man I was planning to call on next.

I walked back to Central and down to my bank and bought five hundred dollars' worth of traveler's checks with the money the Blounts had just used to purchase my speedy departure. I made my way back up to Lexington then and rattled Frank Zimka's front door. After a time it opened.

He looked at me and blinked himself awake. "Oh. Hi. C'mon in." He was shirtless and barefooted in stained red bikini

briefs. His old man's face was unshaven and looked unfocused from the inside out

In his state of relative undress, the contrast between Zimka's ravaged face and his slim, smooth swimmer's body was even more striking. And the clinging briefs made clear how he'd been able to stay in business as a prostitute. I'd seen them cruising the park in their Buicks and Chryslers, the men who must have been Zimka's Johns—middle-aged, closeted, probably married with grown children; sad, desperate men locked into choices they'd made back in the days when, for some men, there didn't seem to be any. And less interested in a pretty face than in what Frank Zimka had to offer—Zimka, the meat man. Though why Billy Blount? What did Zimka have that could interest him? That I couldn't figure out.

Down in the depths of his apartment, Zimka said, "Smoke?" He dragged on a half-gone joint.

"Maybe I'll just take some along. A bag?"

He got a bag from the refrigerator, and I dropped it into my jacket pocket and on into the lining. I supposed he accepted traveler's checks, if not Master Charge, but I had ten dollars cash and gave him that.

I said, "No whites today? For you, I mean. Not that you're not better off without them."

"It's early," he said. "Sit down. I've got something."

While Zimka went into his bedroom, I sat on the couch and read two panels of the sci-fi comic book open on the end table. Zimka came back and handed me a dirty envelope sealed with Scotch tape. "Billy" was written across the front. The "i" was dotted with a little heart.

"You won't lose this, will you?"

"I won't." I shoved the envelope down with the grass.

"Did you find Billy yet?"

"No. But I'm close. I think."

He sat on the plastic chair and brought his knee up for a hug. The head of his cock peeked out one leg of his briefs and he absently tucked it back in.

"Where do you think Billy is?" he said. "God, I miss him."

"He's out West."

"In Hollywood?"

"Not that far west. I'm not sure. I'll know soon. Frank, I want you to clear something up for me."

"You do? What?"

"Describe the car you used to drive Billy to La Guardia."

"Describe it?"

"The make, the color."

He squeezed his eyes shut as if to rummage around inside his head for some usable brain cells. Finally he opened his eyes and said, "It's a green car. An Impala, I think. Impala—isn't that a car?"

"It is."

"Why do you want to know that? Did somebody see us? I mean, I don't want to get somebody in trouble—the guy I borrowed the car from."

"I don't think that'll be a problem. Do you know anyone who owns a new gold-colored Olds Toronado?"

He shut his eyes again. After a moment they opened, blinking. "I'm sorry, but I really don't think so. I might have been in one once. It's hard to say. I've been in a lot of cars."

It seemed possible he simply did not remember that the Olds was an Olds, or even that it was a motorized vehicle. Sorting out the particulars of his nights couldn't have been easy for him.

I said, "The night of the killing. Where did you spend it?"

He fidgeted. "Here," he said. "In there." He gestured toward the bedroom. "I told you that before, didn't I? I thought I did. Who's been asking about me?"

"Were you alone?"

"No. Who is it who wants to know about that?"

"For now, I do. Were you here around one?"

"I said I was here all that night. A guy—somebody had called around eleven-thirty, and came over at twelve—I think. Yeah, that's what happened. I remember because somebody else had just left when this guy called. He was a priest, the first guy, and he always left before twelve. In for a quick pop, then back to the rectory. I was kind of wiped out after him, but the second guy was somebody who's always been pretty nice to me, so when he called I said, sure, what the fuck, c'mon over. I smoked some while I waited, and then he came, this friendly old

fucked-up guy, and he stayed till—about two, I guess. Then I fell asleep till Billy showed up at six. It was one of those nights."

I said, "You were seen sitting in a gold-colored Olds in the parking lot at Trucky's around one. How did that happen?"

His head jerked back and he gave me a mean look. "Hey, what is this? Is somebody trying to fuck me over or what? Who said that? Somebody has me mixed up with somebody else. Whoever said that about me—that's wrong." He muttered something else under his breath and reached for a Kent.

I said, "What's the friendly old fucked-up guy's name? Maybe he can help put my mind at ease. This will stay between the three of us. Or maybe you could get us together."

He lit the cigarette and ingested its nutrients. "No-o-o-o way." He exhaled. "Forget that."

"Look," I said, "you know me a little by now. Am I discreet, or am I discreet?"

He shook his head. "Nnn-nnn. That's a no-no. Why don't you tell me something? Who was it who says he saw me at Trucky's? A cop?" He gave me a look of deep, wounded bitterness which, since Billy Blount's departure, seemed to be Zimka's one remaining nondrug-induced emotion.

I said, "No. Someone who knows you. Someone whose car was parked next to the Olds. He looked right at you and spoke, and you looked back. Remember, now? A friend of Billy's?"

He frowned at his cigarette and slowly shook his head. Then, as if he were about to remember something, he squeezed his eyes shut and said, "Well, maybe I—no. It must have been another night I was out there. Or maybe I was stoned. I don't think so, though. It's hard to remember. My mind does weird things sometimes."

"Do you know Mike Truckman?"

"Sure. Why? Who wants to know? Everybody knows Mike."

"Is Mike one of your Johns?"

"Look, I said certain things are confidential."

"Did you meet Mike that night?"

"Goddamnit-to-shit, I told you I was with these two other guys! Now, who is it that's telling these lies about me? Did Mike say that?"

"No. Give me the names of the priest and the fucked-up old guy, and then maybe we can clear this up, and I'll drop it."

"No. Oh, no. I can't do that. Hey—shit—am I going to get in trouble?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, God. That's all I need. Cops. I'm so fucked up. So fucking fucked up."

He selected a pill from the eight whites lying openly on the end table and placed it on his tongue.

1O

Frank zimka was such a blur of a human being that it was hard to form an opinion about the veracity of any statement he made. He could have been telling the truth, or lying, or, most likely, some of each. Or his brain could have been so addled by drugs, or by his grief over himself, that he no longer knew for sure what was true in his life and what wasn't, and cared about which was which only intermittently. I'd run into that before.

I went back to the office and phoned Mark Deslonde at Sears Automotive Center. I asked him if he was certain it was Zimka he'd seen in Trucky's parking lot that night, and he said almost certain—at least it had never occurred to him that the man he greeted in the Olds Toronado had not been Zimka.

I asked Deslonde not to mention any of this to anyone, and he said he wouldn't. He said if Timmy and I went out Wednesday night, maybe he'd see us. He told me he'd be with Phil, and as he said it, I could see him doing his angled-grin-and-head thing. I said, yes, I hoped we'd run into him, which was the truth, and hung up.

I called my service and was told a Chris had phoned me and said she would call back. She had left no number. I told the service I'd be at home, then drove over to Morton. I stuffed the bag of grass into the Major Gray's chutney jar in the refrigera-

tor and slipped the letter from Frank Zimka to Billy Blount into the jacket of Thelma Houston's "I'm Here Again" alongside Blount's letter from his parents. I thought about steaming that one open, but decided to wait and see if it came to that.

After half an hour of sit-ups, push-ups, and jogging in place, I set the phone on the bathroom floor and showered. While I shaved I spotted another gray hair in my mustache. I lectured myself on the special rewards of going gentle into that good night, left the gray hair, and got into my jeans and sport shirt. Then I had second thoughts, went back to the mirror, and ripped the little fucker out. There was just the one, which would have looked damned silly all by itself, an affectation.

At six Timmy let himself in with his own key. He had French bread and salad makings and suggested I "do a quiche." I laughed and opened the freezer door. I caught sight of a Mama Cadenza's frozen lasagna embedded in the Arctic wastes of my freezer compartment, found a screwdriver, and pried the aluminum tray full of hard orange stuff out of its cardboard container, which was stuck in there for good.

While we waited for the lasagna to heat up, Timmy listened to the Haydn Quartet in G Major in the stereo headset and I watched Dick Block eye his cue cards suspiciously and recite the little snatches of Albany news written on them. The Kleckner murder was not mentioned, but two sentences were devoted to the Saturday-night raid by Bergenfield police on the Rat's Nest, "a controversial bar patronized predominantly by members of the gay community."

We ate the orange and yellow food and waited for Chris Porterfield to call. She did not. At eight Calvin Markham and a SUNY friend stopped in, and we played hearts until around ten, when they left for a quick foray to the Terminal before heading home. Timmy decided to stay over, and we got out the Scrabble. At a quarter to twelve, with the score nearly tied, he went out with "pomelo," a kind of grapefruit, so he said. I looked it up. "A kind of grapefruit."

We went to bed. I'd always loved the sight of Timmy's milk-white skin under the blueish glow of the streetlight outside my front window, and I was sitting there running my fingers over all the different parts of him as he lay uncovered beside me when at exactly five before midnight the phone rang.

"Hello. Don Strachey."

"This is Christine Porterfield. I'd like to know who you are and exactly what your game is." A strong, confident voice.

I said, "I'm a private detective hired by Billy Blount's parents to get him out of this thing. Their idea of what getting him out of this means may be different from mine, or yours, or Billy's. I'm interested in hearing Billy's and I'd like to talk to him. I have this idea you could help me with that."

"Mr. Strachey, what if I told you that Billy doesn't need any help. That he's safe, and happy, and he's starting to make a new life for himself. You know that Billy and I understand each other—we're very close, and you've found that out. So why don't you just take my word for it that he's all right, and tell the Blounts not to worry. Will you do that?"

"I'm glad he's okay," I said, "because I keep hearing nice things about him, and I don't think he deserves any more grief. But it can't last, and I think you know that. Billy's too young to spend his life looking over his shoulder. The police have already traced you to Cheyenne, and if you're with him, it's only a matter of time before you stumble. That will be disastrous for both of you."

A hesitation. Then: "Look—thank you for telling Margarita about the Cheyenne police. We appreciated that. But we're not really in Cheyenne, and we're with people who know how to help us—how to help Billy. They're not amateurs at this, and they know what they're doing. Actually, I'm coming to Albany in a week or so—Billy is getting the support he needs from other people here. Maybe we can get together and I can reassure you. Though I'm afraid there really isn't much more I'll be able to tell you. I'm sorry."

"There's another thing," I said. "And I hope you'll give this a lot of thought. Billy did not commit a murder—we both believe that." In fact, I wasn't a hundred percent certain of this, but I was nearly there. "But someone did kill Steve Kleckner," I said, "and the odds are that he's still in Albany. If he took a life once, he could do it again. He may, in fact, be the man who attacked a friend of Billy's Saturday morning and wounded him. Only Billy knows exactly what happened the night of the Kleckner murder, and he has a responsibility to someone– maybe someone he knows—to help identify the killer before he

kills again. If I could just talk with Billy about that night—for now that's all I'll ask."

Silence. Then: "Just a minute. Can you hold on for just one minute?" She sounded irritated, frustrated.

"I'll wait."

The receiver was set down with a clunk. I could hear a TV set on near the phone somewhere. The PBS Paul Robeson special ended, and Monty Python came on. That'd be Pacific Time, or Mountain. I'd check. Two minutes went by.

She came back. "I'm very sorry—I do understand what you're saying, but—I just can't help you, Mr. Strachey. You said a friend of Billy's has been wounded. Could you tell me who that was?"

"Huey Brownlee. The attack might or might not have had anything to do with the Kleckner killing, but if the attacker is the same man, I've got to talk with Billy fast to figure out what that connection might be. See what I'm saying? Anyway, tell Billy that Brownlee wasn't badly hurt. He's okay."

"Oh, thank God for that. You see—well, the fact is, Billy did not actually see who stabbed Steven Kleckner, and he has no idea who could have done it. So how could he possibly help you? Please-try to understand—"

"You mean Billy wasn't there at the time? He'd gone out, or what?"

"He was—taking a shower."

"Taking a shower."

"Billy is quite fastidious in some ways."

That made sense. I wondered if he also carried an ashtray around with him.

I said, "And no one else was there when he—went into the bathroom?"

"No."

"Nor when he came out?"

"No. He says he thought he was going crazy. He couldn't understand how it had happened. The other man, Steven, had fallen asleep, and when Billy came out of the shower, at first he thought the man was still asleep. And then he saw the blood all over the man. He felt the man's pulse, even though he said he could see that the poor man was dead. Then Billy panicked and ran away. He did notify the police, but he knew everyone would

think he had done it, and Billy was absolutely terrified of being put in prison. Billy does not like to be locked up unjustly. It happened to him once before."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry. Would you mind telling me where and when that happened?"

A pause. "Why do you want to know that?"

"Just checking all the angles," I lied. "Maybe Billy made an enemy there—some real psycho who'd track him down later and set him up as a murder suspect."

This sounded flaky, but it was the best I could come up with on no notice. In fact another much more logical notion was beginning to shape itself.

She said, "Mr. Strachey, I don't want to tell you how to run your business, but that sounds a bit off the wall to me. This happened ten years ago. I know about it because I was there. And believe me, Billy's only enemies were the lunatics in charge of the place. From what Margarita told me about you, I'd expect you to understand that."