“This is crazy,” Loren said.
“Let him talk.” Ray’s voice was neutral. “So far you’re just spinnin’ your wheels, Bernie.”
“All right. I got into the apartment and went right to work. I never left the living room and did nothing but go through the desk because that was where the box was supposed to be. My informant didn’t know the box was disguised as a book. I was still playing around with the desk when you arrived. We had our conversation, made our financial arrangements, and we were all set to leave when Loren got a call of nature.”
“So?”
“So according to his story, he went to the bathroom, used the toilet, then made a wrong turn on his way back and walked to the bedroom by mistake. There he discovered Flaxford’s corpse. So he turned and rushed all the way back to the living room where we were waiting for him, finally sounded the alarm far and wide, turned a little green around the gills and flopped over in a faint.”
“Well, we both saw him do that, Bernie. And then you sandbagged me and took off like a bat outta hell.”
I shrugged off that last charge. “Loren saw Flaxford right off the bat,” I said, “speaking of bats. He had to. That’s a short hallway. If you walk toward the bathroom from the living room you can see those chalkmarks on the bedroom carpet before you reach the bathroom door. Of course there were no chalkmarks at the time. But there was a body there, sprawled out on the bed, and that was interesting enough so that Loren passed right by the john and checked out the bedroom.”
“And?”
“He was in there for a few minutes. Then the body-Flaxford, that is-came to life. I don’t know whether Loren originally thought he was dead or unconscious, but either way the man was suddenly alive and awake and staring at him, and Loren reacted automatically. He swung his trusty nightstick and cracked Flaxford over the head.”
“Crazy,” Loren said. His voice was trembling but that might have been rage and indignation as easily as guilt. “He’s out of his mind. Why would I do anything like that?”
“For money.”
“What money?”
“The money you were filling your pockets with when Flaxford blinked his baby blues at you. There was money all over his lap and all over the floor when you found him.” To Ray I said, “Look, Flaxford was a fixer, a bagman, a guy with a lot of angles going for himself. He may have bank accounts and safe deposit boxes and secret stashes but he also would have had cash on hand. Every operator like that does, whether his operations are legal or not. Look, I’m just a small-time burglar myself but I was able to put my hands on ten grand tonight.” I saw no point in adding that only half of it had been mine.
“Now the one thing that never turned up in Flaxford’s apartment was money. Not in his drawer or closets, not in any wall safe, not in that fantastic desk. With all the searches that place got, including the search I gave it tonight, the one thing that never turned up was cash.”
“So you’re saying that because there was no cash Loren here must have taken it?”
“It’s crazy,” Loren said.
“It’s not crazy,” I said. “Whatever knocked Flaxford unconscious, it got him suddenly. A fall, a stroke, whatever-all of a sudden he was unconscious. It’s my guess he had a recent visitor bringing him a payoff that he was supposed to transfer from one person to another. The payoff was big enough to make him delay his trip to the theater. He got the cash, his visitor left, and he took it to his bedroom to count it before he passed out. Loren walked in and found this unconscious man in a room full of hundred-dollar bills.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Am I? My apartment got ransacked, Ray. Every drawer turned upside down, every book shaken open, the most complete search you can imagine. There’s nothing in the blue box that could inspire that kind of a search. But somebody knew Flaxford had a lot of money on him when he was killed, and the person who would have made that assumption was the person who gave him the money. I think it was probably Michael Debus or someone associated with him. Either the money was being channeled to Debus or Debus was spreading it through Flaxford to head off an investigation into his office. But that explains why Flaxford’s visitor couldn’t have killed him, in addition to the business with the locks. That person-say Debus for convenience-left Flaxford alive and left the money with him. And the sum was large enough so that Debus wasn’t willing to write it off after Flaxford was killed. It was even large enough so that Loren thought it was worth killing for.”
“Ray, he’s crazy. This man is crazy.”
“I don’t know, Loren,” Ray said.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I don’t know. You always liked money.”
“You sound like you’re starting to believe this fairy story.”
“You always took what was handed to you, Loren. As green as you were I was a little surprised. Usually it’ll take a while before a guy learns to stick his hand out. Then he sees how it’s part of the system and he gets hardnosed in various ways, and little by little he develops an appetite. But you, Loren, you were hungry right outta the box. You were hungry without ever gettin’ hip. You’re still mopin’ around with your moon in fuckin’ Capricorn or whatever it is and you’re the hungriest sonofabitch I ever saw.”
“Ray, you know I’d never kill anybody.”
“I’m not sure what I know.”
“Ray, with a nightstick? Come on.”
I was glad he’d brought that up. I swung Loren’s nightstick and slapped it ringingly against my palm. “Nice club,” I said. “Smooth and shiny. A person would swear you never hit anybody with it, Loren.”
“I never did.”
“No, you never did. Or bumped it into anything or dropped it on the pavement or scraped it against a brick wall. Or even wore it until a couple of days ago.” I pointed it at him in a shamelessly theatrical gesture. “It’s new, isn’t it, Loren? Brand new. Positively virginal. Because you had to replace your old one. It wasn’t brand new and it had been knocked around a lot because you liked to play with it and you tended to drop it a lot. The surface was chipped and there were a few cracks in it. And you knew Flaxford’s blood could have soaked into the cracks-blood or skin fragments or something-and you have to know what a crime lab can do with something like that and that all the scrubbing in the world isn’t always enough to get rid of the evidence. You got rid of the whole nightstick.”
Loren opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. Ray took the stick out of my hand and examined it. “It does look pretty cherry,” he said.
“Ray, for God’s sake.”
“Very fuckin’ new, Loren. This ain’t the club you been carryin’ around. When’d you get this one?”
“Oh, maybe a week, two weeks ago.”
“Before the Flaxford murder, huh?”
“Of course before the burglary. Ray-”
“What was the matter with the old one?”
“I don’t know. I just liked the heft of this one better. Ray-”
“You throw the old one away, Loren?”
“I probably got it around somewheres.”
“You figure you could come up with it if you had to?”
“I guess so. Oh, come to think of it, I think I maybe left it out in the backyard. Of course one of the neighbors’ kids might have run off with it but there’s still a chance it’s there.”
The two of them looked at each other. I might as well not have been in the room. They held each other’s gaze for a long time before Loren averted his eyes and examined his shoes. They were black oxfords, incidentally, polished to a high sheen and far more suitable for a uniformed patrolman than scotch-grain loafers.
Ray said, “The toilet. He went to the bathroom and we heard him flush the toilet and then just a few seconds later he was back in the living room. How’d he have time to do everything you said?”
“He flushed the toilet on the way back, Ray. He walked right past the bathroom originally and he just stopped on the way back to flush the toilet.”