I SAID GOODBYE, ROLLED on my stomach, and replaced the bedside phone in its cradle. From the kitchen came the smell of frying bacon. I threw back the covers, got out of bed, and took my robe from a chair. Ann’s clothing was draped neatly on a companion chair.
“I’m putting the eggs on, Frank,” Ann called. “How many do you want?”
“Three.”
I found my slippers, sketchily combed my hair, and shuffled into the kitchen. I felt curiously disembodied, as if I were recovering from an illness. I knew that feeling of disconnected reality; I recognized it as my body’s reaction to tension and fear. And I realized that each year my body needed a longer time in which to restore itself. And my spirit, too. Especially my spirit. We’d come to my apartment last night, both of us exhausted, not speaking. I’d been obsessed with a shower—a long, hot shower. I’d stripped down, put my scorched, reeking clothes into a plastic refuse bag, and tied it tight. While I’d showered, Ann had taken the plastic bag into the garage, depositing it beside the garbage pails. Emerging from the shower, I’d found her in the bathrobe she kept in my closet. We’d gone immediately to bed, walking hand in hand into the bedroom—gravely, silently.
“Who was on the phone?” She gestured me to a seat at the table.
“Pete.”
Her lips curved in a small, private smile. “Sometimes the two of you remind me of little boys playing cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians, or something.”
I snorted, sampling the coffee.
“You do,” she insisted, sitting across the table and reaching for her napkin. “Really. You have all kinds of little games going, the two of you. And you don’t even realize it.”
“Games like let’s fry Frank in burning oil, you mean.”
Her gamin’s smile persisted, even though her eyes momentarily darkened, shadowed by last night’s terror. “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said. “The way you said that, I mean. So—so laconically. It’s your role. And you play it beautifully, darling. You’re the ever-so-serious hero in the white Stetson. And Pete is the—” She hesitated, frowning as she sipped her juice. “He’s the dusty, lovable old saddle bum, I guess. And of course he gets all the good lines—and the laughs, too. And there are the villains, of course. The bad guys. And you all plan out how the game’s going to go, just the way little boys do. You even squabble over who’s going to get to be the hero this time, and who’s not. Which confirms my opinion that—” She paused, eyes drifting away. I knew that mannerism. She was pursuing some new, wayward thought, hers alone.
“Which confirms my opinion,” she repeated, “that a big reason for war is simply the fact that men are really just grown-up little boys playing with real bullets instead of toy caps. They—you—just can’t leave guns alone. If little boys don’t have guns, they use sticks and pretend.”
As I salted and peppered my eggs, I thought about it. Before I could reply, she said in a low voice, “What I’m really doing, you know, is playing games myself—trying to be cheerful and gay, when actually”—she bit her lip—“actually, I—I can still see that—that leather mask, and that sword.” She shuddered, then sharply shook her head, impatient with herself. For a moment we ate in silence, letting the shadow settle. Finally she asked, “What did Pete want?”
“Oh”—I sipped my coffee—“he just wanted to tell me how it all turned out, last night.” I began to butter a slice of rye toast.
“Well?” she demanded.
Now it was my turn. “Let’s change the subject. The less you talk about it, the sooner you get ov—”
“Listen, Lieutenant. I’ll—I’ll do something drastic to you the next time you try to seduce me.”
I began nibbling the second piece of toast. “I don’t really believe in seduction. At age forty-three, I’ve finally figured out that women are just smarter than men. Cooler. They—”
“Frank—” She sat with both hands flat on the table, glaring at me with dangerous eyes.
I sipped a little coffee, then said, “There really isn’t much to tell. Pete—the boy homicide lieutenant—simply picked up Mrs. King and put her in one room and Zeda in another, and proceeded to tell each one that the other was blaming him for the two murders.” I airily waved the toast. “It’s really quite simple. Especially if you’ve done it for fifteen or twenty years.”
“Did they confess?”
I shrugged. “Not really. And, anyhow, they’ll both probably get off. But we have a pretty good idea what happened.”
“Well?”
I smiled covertly. “Well, it seems that, in order to support Arnold Clark—the black guy—in a suitable style, Mrs. King started embezzling from her company. But a few months ago the company was almost sold. The deal didn’t go through, but she got scared. Because if it had been sold, there’d’ve been an audit. And she felt that once the owners started thinking about selling, they’d stay with the idea. So she started to think about how nice it would be if her husband died—and she got the insurance. She apparently mentioned it to Zeda—although she of course says that Zeda mentioned it to her. Anyhow—” I drained the last of the coffee, and looked expectantly at the coffeepot on the stove.
“Keep talking.” She picked up my cup.
“Anyhow, both Zeda and Marjorie King needed money, badly. Desperately. So Zeda agreed to ‘do something’ about Thomas King, in exchange for half the insurance money. He began following Thomas King, studying his habits. He also studied Mrs. King’s habits. And then Zeda made a mistake. He decided to frame Arnold Clark for the King murder. He programmed Leonard—your friend the headsman—to steal Clark’s knife, smear it with King’s blood, and leave the knife at the scene of the crime. Which Leonard did, very effectively. He even dressed up in blackface.”
“Excuse me, but do you mean that Zeda actually controlled Leonard? Like Svengali?”
“Back east, Leonard caused a girl’s death. Zeda found out and held it over Leonard’s head. For now, that’s all we know. Anyhow, Leonard simply followed Thomas King around until he found the right opportunity, and he did the job. He carried a gun and his own knife, apparently. He knocked King out and stabbed him with the knife he carried. Then he carefully planted Clark’s knife at the scene. Pete thinks Zeda drove the car and pulled the strings—and he’s probably right. Then the next day Zeda called to tip us off—before someone disturbed the evidence.”
“What about that hippie? The murdered boy?”
“Winship. He apparently stumbled on the scene, and got himself killed.” I sugared my second cup of coffee.
“Did Zeda actually admit all this? Everything?”
“No. Most of what I’ve said is pure speculation. Most of it, in fact, comes from Mrs. King, who is still ticked off at Zeda for trying to frame Clark. Zeda, meanwhile, pretends to think that Leonard managed the murder, with Mrs. King’s help. Which is easy to pretend, since Leonard’s dead.” I paused, then added, “Zeda’s a hell of a rifle shot. I’ve got to give him that. It turns out he was a sniper in the Marines.”
In a small, wan voice she said, “He might have saved my life.”
I shrugged.
“It’s incredible,” she was saying. “Unbelievable. It’s so—so bizarre.”
“Yes.”
She pressed the point. “To think that two people could plot a murder in cold blood. And then one of them gets a—a sorcerer’s apprentice to do the killing. Not just one killing, but two—the same night. And then the sorcerer kills his apprentice.” She shuddered. “All last night, I saw that sword slicing through the window of the car.” Then, waywardly, her lips curved in a familiar pixy smile. “What are you going to tell your insurance company?”
My smile answered hers. “Cops have their own insurance set up. No ordinary insurance company will handle us.”
“I can believe it,” she answered. Then: “Why do you think they’ll both get off?”
I shrugged. “This case is a potential gold mine of publicity. Even if they can’t afford it, they’ll have the very best lawyers. Wait and see.”
We ate in silence for a moment. Then she asked, “How did you find out about Zeda?”
“We were suspicious of Mrs. King and had her followed. When she realized that Zeda had framed her boyfriend, she blew her cool and drove over to Zeda’s house. That was Zeda’s mistake—he didn’t really think it would bother her that Clark had been framed. It probably never occurred to Zeda.”
“The fatal flaw,” she mused.
“What?”
“Zeda lacks the capacity for love. So he couldn’t imagine her really loving Arnold Clark. It was a fatal flaw.”
I snorted. “That depends on your definition of love. Personally, I’d call Mrs. King’s feeling for Clark an obsession.”
She stood up, rounded the table, and stood close beside me. I felt her fingers in my hair; I felt the warmth of her flank against my shoulder. She bent down to whisper in my ear, “What’s wrong with being obsessed, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing, I guess. Not if you’ve got the weekend off.” Still seated, I turned to her. As she arched her body, kissing the top of my head, I circled her hips with both arms, drawing her close.