“And he was worried about Grabow. Maybe the two of them had met. Maybe Grabow knew about the lawyer’s relationship with Crystal, or maybe the lawyer didn’t know for certain just how much talking Crystal might have done. For one reason or another, Grabow was a threat. And Grabow himself was nervous when I saw him. Maybe he got in touch with the lawyer. Anyway, he had to go, and the lawyer decided he might as well kill Grabow and tighten the frame around me at the same time. He managed somehow to get the artist over to my apartment, killed him with another of those goddamned dental scalpels, and planted a couple of pieces of Crystal’s jewelry there to tie it all together for the police. Now why I would kill Grabow in the first place, and why I would kill him with a dental scalpel in my own apartment, and why I would then leave Crystal’s jewels around, that was all beside the point. It might not make any absolute sense but it would certainly make the police put out a pick-up order on me, and of course that’s what they did.” I drew a breath, looked at each of them in turn, Jillian and Craig and Carson Verrill. “And that’s where we are,” I said, “and that’s why we’re here.”
The silence built up rather nicely. Finally Verrill broke it. He cleared his throat. “You see the problem,” he said. “You’ve developed a convincing case against this nameless attorney. But you don’t know who he is and I gather it’s not going to be terribly easy to track him down. You mentioned a woman, a friend of Crystal Sheldrake’s?”
“Frankie Ackerman.”
“But did you say she killed herself?”
“She died mixing alcohol and Valium. It could have been an accident or it could have been suicide. She’d been brooding about Crystal and something was on her mind. It’s not impossible that she got in touch with the lawyer directly. Maybe he fed her the booze and pills as part of his process of tying off loose ends.”
“That sounds a little farfetched, doesn’t it?”
“A little,” I admitted. “But either way she’s dead.”
“Exactly. And a chance to identify this lawyer seems to have died with her. Now this bartender. Corcoran? Is that his name?”
“Knobby Corcoran.”
“And he has the counterfeit money?”
“He had it the last I saw of it, but that was yesterday evening. I’d guess he still has it and I’d guess he and the money are a long ways from here. After he closed the bar last night he went home and grabbed a suitcase and left town. I don’t think he’ll be back. Either all the killings scared him or he’d been planning all along to cross his mob associates. He was living on tips and leavings and maybe the sight of all that money was too much for him. Remember, it looked like a quarter of a million bucks, even if you could only get twenty cents on the dollar for it. I’ll bet Knobby took a cab to Kennedy and a plane to someplace warm, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of counterfeit twenties turn up in the West Indies between now and next spring.”
Verrill nodded, frowning. “Then you don’t really have anything to work with,” he said slowly. “You don’t have any leads to the identity of this lawyer and you don’t know who he is.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true.”
“Oh?”
“I know who he is.”
“Really?”
“And I’ve even got some proof.”
“Indeed.”
I got up from the desk, opened the frosted glass door, motioned Dennis inside. “This is Dennis,” I announced. “He knew Crystal pretty well and he was a good friend of Frankie Ackerman.”
“She was a hell of a fine woman,” Dennis said.
“Dennis, that’s Jillian Paar. And this is Dr. Craig Sheldrake, and Mr. Carson Verrill.”
“A pleasure,” he said to Jillian. “Pleasure, Doc,” he said to Craig. And he smiled at Verrill.
To me-to all of us-he said, “That’s him.”
“Huh?”
“That’s him,” he said again, pointing now at Carson Verrill. “That’s Crystal’s boyfriend. That’s the Legal Beagle. That’s Johnny, all right.”
Verrill broke the silence. It took him a while to do it, and first he got up from the chair and extended himself to his full height, and when he spoke the words were on the anticlimactic side.
“This is ridiculous,” he said.
What I said wasn’t much better. “Murder,” I said, “is always ridiculous.” I’m not proud of it but that’s what I said.
“Ridiculous, Rhodenbarr. Who is this oaf and where did you find him?”
“His name’s Dennis. He runs a parking garage.”
“I don’t just run it. I happen to own it.”
“He happens to own it,” I said.
“I think he’s been drinking. And I think you’ve taken leave of your senses, Rhodenbarr. First you try to manipulate me into defending you and now you accuse me of murder.”
“It does seem inconsistent,” I allowed. “I guess I don’t want you defending me after all. But I won’t need anybody to defend me. You just have to confess to the two murders and the police’ll probably drop their charges against me.”
“You must be out of your mind.”
“I should be, with the kind of week I’ve had. But I’m not.”
“Out of your mind. In the first place, my name’s not John. Or hasn’t that occurred to you?”
“It was a problem,” I admitted. “When I first expected you I wondered if maybe your name was John Carson Verrill and you dropped the John. No such luck. Carson’s your first name, all right, and your middle name is Woolford. Carson Woolford Verrill, the man with three last names. But you’re the man Frankie Ackerman was talking about. It’s pretty obvious, when you stop to think about it.”
“I don’t follow you, Bernie.” Jillian did look puzzled, all right. “If his name is Carson-”
I said, “‘And now, heeeeeeeere’s Johnny.’ Johnny Who, Jillian?”
“Oh!”
“Right. There’s millions of people named John, it’s hardly a rare enough name to make Frankie go into Ed McMahon’s routine every time she met somebody with the name. But Carson, that’s something else again. That’s not so common as a first name, and maybe it struck Frankie funny.”
“Ridiculous,” Verrill said. “I’m a respectable married man. I love my wife and I’ve always been faithful to her. I was never involved with Crystal.”
“You’re not that respectable,” Jillian said. “You flirt.”
“Nonsense.”
“You’d have made a pass at me last night. You were sort of moving in that direction. But I wasn’t interested and you backed off.”
“That’s absurd.”
“You knew Crystal years ago,” I said. “You knew her when she was married to Craig. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Craig confirmed that it was. “Carson represented me in my divorce,” he said. “Hey, maybe that’s why I got such a reaming in the alimony. Maybe my trusted attorney was already hopping in the sack with my wife and the two of them teamed up to put me through the wringer.” The World’s Greatest Dentist let that thought sink in, and his face took on a new set. Murder was one thing, he seemed to be thinking, but shafting a pal in the alimony department was really rotten. “You sonofabitch,” he said.
“Craig, you can’t believe-”
“I wish I had you in the chair right now. I’d grind your teeth clear to the gum line.”
“Craig-”
“You’ll have free dental care for the next few years, Mr. Verrill,” I said. “Those penitentiary dentists are terrific. You’re in for a treat.”