“He come an’ pick it up. Same man as the picture you show me.”
“He came and picked it up.”
“Is his letter. He ask for it, I give it to him. You never say not to do this.”
Nor had I asked her to note the return address. It wasn’t her fault, it was mine, but knowing this somehow failed to make me feel better about the whole thing.
I asked her if she remembered anything about the envelope. It was, 166
Lawrence Block
she said, a long envelope, not the smaller kind that bills come in. And the address was typed or printed, not handwritten.
“An’ he was disappointed,” she volunteered.
“Disappointed?”
“He open it an’ look inside an’ he make a face.” Because there was no check in there, I thought. That’s why he’d turned up, to look for the check he thought I was going to send him, and he got some other letter instead, probably some relentless credit card issuer telling him he’d been preapproved, and he was understand-ably disheartened.
I thanked her, and she said next time she would write down whatever it said on the envelope. In fact she would make a photocopy. I hadn’t noticed a copying machine, but now that she mentioned it I recalled another hand-lettered sign in the window, offering copies at fifteen cents apiece. That would be good, I told her, and I thanked her again and hung up.
“He’ll be back tomorrow or the next day,” I told Elaine, “because he wants the check he thinks I’m going to send him. He’s sounding increasingly legit. Whatever today’s letter was, the name on it was the same one he gave Louise. And he wouldn’t have to know who the myth-ical check was from in order to go pick it up. The business he’s in, there’s probably a long list of companies that take their time paying him. He figures he’ll find out which one it is when he’s got the check in hand. It’s a shame she didn’t note the return address, but she’s not a mind reader.”
“It sounds like that’s the only service they don’t offer there.”
“Just about. He’ll be back tomorrow, but that’s no help. Not unless someone else sends him a letter.”
I made a trip to the dry cleaner’s for her, and picked up sandwiches at the deli on my way back. Neither of us wanted them, but we ate anyway.
Then we were talking again about the view from the window, and how it would seem when towers in one form or another began to rise into our field of vision. I don’t remember how, but that led to Magritte or dissonance or paradox, whatever, and I told her about the startling All the Flowers Are Dying
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dissonance Sussman had forgotten to mention a day ago, the presence of the murder weapon at the crime scene.
She said, “A dagger.”
“Well, some kind of decorative knife. I don’t know that Sussman’s an authority on edged weapons.”
“And he thinks he found it lying around? I’ve been in that apartment a few hundred times and I never saw a dagger there.”
“It may not have been a dagger. It may have been, I don’t know . . .”
“A letter opener.”
“Something like that, sure.”
“I never saw one of those, either.”
“Well, would you notice it if you did? As far as—” She didn’t let me finish. “Call him,” she said.
“Call him?”
“Sussman, Mark Sussman. Call him.”
It took a while, but I finally got through to him. She held out her hand for the phone and I gave it to her.
She said, “This is Elaine Scudder. I’m fine, thank you, but that’s not the point. I’d like you to describe the murder weapon for me. Was it bronze? Well, was it bronze colored? And was it sharp at the tip but not along the edges of the blade? Do you have it in front of you? Well, could you get it? Yes, of course it’s important. If it wasn’t important I wouldn’t ask you to do it, would I? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. Yes, I’ll wait.” I started to say something but she held up a hand and stopped me.
“All right,” she said, “let me describe it to you, okay? And we’ll see if it’s what I think it is. It’s a bronze letter opener or paper knife, ten to twelve inches long. On one side there’s a scene in low relief of two hunting dogs holding a stag at bay. On the other side, you’ll find the name of the sculptor in incused block capitals. The name is DeVreese, that’s spelled D-E-V-R-E-E-S-E. You may need a magnifying glass to make it out.”
She held the phone, listened. Then she said, “Mark? Don’t go anywhere. I saw him, I saw the man who killed her. I sold him the murder weapon. Oh my God. Don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right down.”
20
The letter opener was sealed in a clear plastic evidence bag. Sussman held it out to her, and I could sense her reluctance to touch it, even wrapped in plastic. She took it gingerly in both hands and looked at it, and a tear flowed out of the corner of her eye and down her cheek. I don’t think she noticed it.
“Yes, this is it,” she said. “You see that little nick there? This is the one I had in the shop. It would almost have to be. I don’t know how many of these they made, but this is the only one I’ve ever seen, and I never came across it in any catalogs.” She handed it back. “He came into my shop. He stood there and he talked to me, he paid what I asked and walked off with it in his pocket. And then he killed my friend with it.”
“And this was Tuesday?”
“The day before yesterday. It didn’t take him long to use it, did it?
He bought it from me that afternoon and killed her that night. I think I’m going to be sick.”
Sussman told her there was a bathroom down the hall, while another detective hurried to provide a wastebasket. Somebody else turned up with a glass of water. She decided she wasn’t going to be sick after all, took a sip of the water, and steadied herself with a couple of deep breaths.
Sussman asked if he’d used a credit card.
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She said, “No, dammit. I had to go and offer him a discount if he paid cash. I said I’d knock off the sales tax. I pay the tax anyway, it’s hardly worth breaking the law to save a few dollars, but I save the credit card commission, and it’s a way to give a small discount. If I hadn’t opened my big mouth—”
“He’d have paid cash anyway,” I said. “Or used a fake card. You didn’t screw anything up.”
“Why did I have to sell him the damn thing? Why didn’t I tell him it wasn’t for sale?” No one had an answer for that, but she answered it herself. “I’m being irrational, aren’t I? I just want to rewrite the past, or at least see how it could have been rewritten. Never mind. He came into my shop and picked it out and I sold it to him.”
“How much did you charge him?”
“Two hundred dollars. There’s no book price because it’s not in the book, but he didn’t overpay.”
“Remember the denomination of the bills?”
“Twenties, I think. I think he counted out ten twenties.” Someone speculated that the bills might hold a print. She remembered that she’d given some of the twenties in change later that same day to a customer who’d bought a small china dog for twelve dollars and paid for it with a hundred-dollar bill. And she’d taken a couple of twenties out of the register and spent them shopping. But there might be one of the killer’s twenties in the register, and it might have prints on it, some of which might be his, and—
It sounded like a long shot to me. But someone would have to check it out, because we were down to long shots.
She said, “He gave me the creeps.”
“Now, when you think about it?” Sussman asked. “Or at the time?”
“At the time. There was something about him. At the time I thought he was hitting on me, which I get a certain amount of, any woman does. Sometimes it’s flirting and sometimes it’s more exploratory.”
“Which was this?”
“It was somewhere in the middle, or at least that’s what it felt like, but it was distinctly creepy. It wasn’t anything he did, just the way he looked at me.” A light came into her eyes, and she shuddered. “He 170