Snow looked at her, then back at Dill. “Who the hell’s she?” he said.
“She’s my witness for when I shoot you in the knee, Harold. But if you answer our questions, maybe I won’t have to.”
“Can I smoke?” Snow said.
“No,” Dill said. “When did you put the tape recorder up in the attic?”
“About six months ago.” Snow sulked. “Why can’t I smoke?”
“Because,” Dill said. “Why’d you put the recorder up there?”
“I got paid to, that’s why.”
“Who paid you, Harold?”
“Some guy.”
“I’ll bet some guy’s got a name.”
“I can’t tell you his name,” Snow said. “He’s a… a client.”
“Harold,” Anna Maude Singe said softly.
He looked at her. “What?”
“You’re not a lawyer, Harold, or a doctor, or a priest, or even a private detective, so there’s no rule of confidentiality involved here. You don’t have clients, Harold. All you’ve got are slippery customers, and if you don’t tell us who some guy is, Mr. Dill is going to shoot you in the knee. Right, Mr. Dill?”
“Absolutely,” Dill said.
Snow looked at Dill, then at Singe again, and then once more at Dill. He ran his tongue over his upper lip as if trying to lick away the sweat. His forehead was also covered with it. He used the sleeve of his soaked blue T-shirt to wipe it away. After that, he dried his hands on the legs of his chino pants. Finally, he lowered his gaze until his eyes rested on the ragged hole the.38 bullet had made in the ottoman. He spoke to the ottoman in a low, almost inaudible voice. “His name’s Corcoran. Clay Corcoran.” He looked up at Dill. “He used to be gone on your sister and he’s gonna tear my fuckin’ head off when he finds out I told you.”
Dill shook his head. “He won’t tear your head off, Harold.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Sure I know him. But he won’t tear your head off because somebody shot him. Around noon. Today.”
Snow’s surprise was obviously real. His mouth sagged open and his eyes widened. Disbelief was written across his face. He finally managed to say, “Shot him?” and there was nothing but doubt in his voice.
“Shot him dead, Harold,” Anna Maude Singe said. “In the cemetery.”
“Tell us, Harold,” Dill said almost gently. “Start way back there at the beginning and tell us all about you and my sister and Clay Corcoran.”
“Can I smoke?”
“Of course you can.”
Snow fished a package of Vantage menthols out of his pants pocket and lit the cigarette with a paper match. He blew the smoke out and looked at Dill. “You sure he’s dead?” he said.
“He’s dead, Harold. I saw him die.”
Snow’s yellowish-brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You killed him?”
Dill only smiled and said, “From the beginning, Harold.”
Snow looked around for an ashtray. Anna Maude Singe found one and gave it to him. He didn’t thank her. Instead, he flicked some ash into the tray and said, “We moved in right after your sister bought the place — the place over on Thirty-second and Texas. We didn’t see much of her, me and Cindy. Then one night Corcoran came around when she wasn’t there and started raising hell up on the second floor landing.”
“When my sister wasn’t there, right?”
“Yeah. Right. He’d been there once before raising hell, but your sister’d been home that time. This time she wasn’t. Neither was Cindy. Just me. So I went up to see what the trouble was. He was drunk and talkative and he said he and your sister’d split and now she was shacking up with somebody else. He didn’t say who the other guy was but I already knew. Well, what the hell, it smelled like an easy dollar or two, so I made him a proposition. I told him I could run a spike mike up through the floor and get everything your sister and the other guy said on tape. Corcoran wanted to know who the fuck I was. I told him my name and how I was into electronics. He wanted to know how much it would cost. I told him and he said we had a deal. I told him we didn’t have no deal until I saw some money. He said come by his office the next day and we’d settle everything. So that’s what I did. I went by his office. Turns out he’s a private detective. I remember when he played football, but I didn’t know he was any private detective.”
“He had an office,” Dill said. “Where?”
“The Cordell Building, know it?”
Dill nodded.
“He was sober though when you saw him in his office,” Singe said.
“Stone sober, lady. And all business. He told me exactly what he wanted. He wanted the spike up through the bedroom floor and he wanted a tap on her phone, too. And he wanted it voice-activated. Well, that was gonna cost and I told him so and how much. He pulled out a roll and paid me in hundreds — no receipt, no questions, no nothing. So that’s what I did.”
“How often did Corcoran pick up the tapes?” Dill asked.
“Once a week,” Snow said and ground his cigarette out in the ashtray.
“What was on the tapes?” Dill said.
Snow stared at Dill for a moment, and Dill thought he saw the apprehension and fear leave Snow’s eyes. They were replaced with something that Dill finally identified as greed. He believes that somehow he’s going to make a few bucks out of this after all, Dill thought.
“You wanta know what was on the tapes, huh?” Snow said. “Well, the sound of fucking was on the tapes, I guess, but I don’t really know because I didn’t listen to them. I’ve done a lotta this kind of work and when I first got into it, I used to listen to the tapes, but after a while, you don’t because it’s just the same old crap.”
“So you didn’t listen to them?” Singe said.
“No.”
“Not even once.”
“I listened to a little bit of the first one to check the quality, but after that I just dropped ’em in an envelope.”
“Then what?” Dill said.
“Well, then Corcoran calls and says he wants to see me. And once again, he’s all business. I mean it was like doing business with IBM or somebody. He says your sister’s got another place where she spends a lotta time and he wants that wired, too. Well, he meant this place here. So I drove by and took a look and I didn’t like the setup, so I went back and told him so. You wanta know what he said? He said, How much? That’s all. How much? Well, I had a problem here. He wanted both the bedroom and the phone. Now I could do that okay and feed it all up into the attic there. But how was I gonna get the tapes? I mean, I could break in here once and install my gear, but I couldn’t bust in every week just to pick up the tapes, could I?”
“So what’d you do, Harold?” Dill said.
“Bursts,” Snow said.
“Bursts.”
“Yeah. I rigged up a sender, something like a CB?”
Dill nodded.
“I used this voice-activated low-ips tape, right? I mean, you can get hours on that stuff. So every two or three days I’d drive by in the van, park, and send the radio up there in the attic a signal. It’d rewind the tape and shoot it back to me in a burst — maybe two, three, four seconds. Never more’n five. I’d record it on my stuff in the back of the van, then rerecord it at normal speed and give it to Corcoran.”
“And it worked?” Dill said.
“Sure it worked.”
“Sounds expensive.”
“It was.”
“How expensive, Harold?” Anna Maude Singe asked.
Instead of answering, Snow again tugged the package of Vantage menthols out of his pants pocket and lit one. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said as he waved out the match and dropped it into the ashtray. “All this oughta be worth a little something to you guys.”
Dill sighed, bent forward, and cracked Snow across the right knee with the barrel of the revolver. Snow wailed, dropped his cigarette, and grabbed the struck knee with both hands. Dill bent down, picked up the cigarette, and stuck it between Snow’s lips. “Don’t be dumb, Harold,” Dill said. “You’re not real smart, but you’re not dumb either. How much did Corcoran pay you?”