“So that’s how it started, Ed. Silly, isn’t it? Affairs aren’t supposed to start with a pelvic examination.”
“They can end with one,” I suggested.
He didn’t laugh. “I guess I was just in the right mood for it, if you know what I mean. I was in a rut. The girls are growing up, Kaye has her women’s groups, my practice is so safe and secure that it’s duller than dishwater. I’ve got a good life and a good marriage and that’s that. So I decided I was missing something. Why do men climb mountains? Because they’re there. That’s the way I heard it.”
“And that’s why you climbed Sheila Kane?”
“Just about.” He lit another cigarette while I knocked the dottle out of my pipe. “I was a different person when I was with her, Ed. I was young and fresh and alive. I wasn’t the old man in a rut. Hell, she had me pegged as some sort of romantic figure. I took her to a matinee or two on Broadway. I gave her books to read and records to listen to. This made me a God.”
He drew on the cigarette. “It’s nice, being a God. Your sister sees me as I am. That’s the way a marriage has to be — firm understanding, genuine acceptance, all of that. But... oh, the hell with it. I’m a damned fool, Ed.”
“You went with her for three months. Then what happened?”
He looked at me.
“Did she start angling for marriage?”
“Oh,” he said. “No, nothing like that. I was coldblooded about it, Ed. I made up my mind that one word from her about marriage would mean it was time to walk out on her. You’ve got to understand that — I never stopped loving Kaye, never thought about a divorce. But Sheila was the perfect paramour, happy to sit in the shade and be there when I wanted her. It was almost terrifying, having that kind of hold over a person.”
I nodded. “And now she’s dead.”
“Now she’s dead.” He made the word sound colder than dry ice.
“And you won’t call the police.”
“Ed...”
“Anonymously,” I suggested. “So they can look for the killer.”
He was shaking his head so hard I thought he’d lose it. “I paid her rent,” he said. “I gave her checks; I spent plenty of time up at her apartment. Her neighbors would remember me and her landlord would recognize my name.”
He was sweating now. He wiped sweat from his forehead with one hand. His eyes were angry and frightened at once.
“So the police will find me, Ed. They’ll find me and they’ll drag me in. And then they’ll be sure I did it. That I killed her, that I found a gun somewhere and got rid of it somewhere. Isn’t that what they’ll say?”
“Probably.”
“And Kaye will find out,” he finished. “And you know what that will do to her.”
I knew damn well what it would do to her. The marriage that seemed like a rut to Jack was Kaye’s whole life. She lived in a sweet little world where the sun was always shining, where charge accounts bloomed on every bush, where the worst peril was going down two doubled in an afternoon bridge session. Where her husband loved her, and loved her faithfully, and where God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.
“What do I do, Ed?”
“Let’s turn that one around. What am I supposed to do for you, Jack?”
“Help me.”
“How?”
He avoided my eyes. “Suppose I were a client,” he said. “Suppose I came to you and—”
“I’d throw you out on your ear. Or call the cops. Or both.”
“But I’m not a client. I’m you’re brother-in-law.”
He went on talking but I wasn’t listening any more. Hell, if he was a client I had no problems. I turned him in and avoided being an accessory after the fact to murder. Because if I didn’t know him, if he weren’t my brother-in-law, I would have to figure him for the killer. He didn’t have a gun? A hundred dollars buys you an unregistered gun in half the pawnshops in New York. On every street corner there’s a sewer to toss it into when you’re done with it. So he didn’t have much of a case at all. A good prosecutor would tie him in Gordian knots.
“She can’t be found at the apartment,” I said slowly. “Or they’ll connect the two of you. That’s how it boils down.”
He blinked, then nodded.
“Which means they can’t identify her at all,” I went on. “If they do, they trace her to the apartment. Then they trace her to you, all of which makes things difficult. Was she from New York?”
He shook his head.
“Know many people in town?”
“Hardly anybody. But...”
“Go on.”
“I was just going to say that I wasn’t with her all the time. She could have had some other interests. We didn’t talk much about the time we spent apart.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know, Ed. I think she was trying to get into the theater. She never had a part, never talked about it. But I got the idea somewhere. She might know... might have known some theater people.”
I said it was possible. “Still, the police would have a tough time making a positive identification. Not if she didn’t wind up in her own apartment. Her fingerprints probably aren’t on file anywhere. If she were found, say, in Central Park, she’d go as an unidentified victim. They might never find out her name, let alone yours. At any rate it would give you time to stall. Your checks would clear the bank and the landlord would forget your name.”
“And the real killer—”
“Would go scot free,” I finished for him. “Not necessarily. In the first place, you’re the real killer. No, hold on — I know you didn’t do it. But the police would stop looking once they hit you. They’d have enough circumstantial evidence to get an indictment without looking any farther. Meanwhile, the killer would cover his tracks.”
I paused for breath. “This way they won’t have you on hand as a convenient dummy. They’ll have to start from scratch and they just might come up with the real killer.”
He brightened visibly.
“That’s not all. I’ll know things they won’t know. I’ll be able to run my own check on Sheila Kane. Maybe somebody had a damn good reason to shoot a hole in her head. I can look around, see what I can find out.”
“Do you think—”
“I don’t think much of anything, to tell you the truth. I don’t want your marriage to fall in. I don’t want Kaye to get hurt and I don’t want to see you tried for murder. So it looks as though I’ll have to move a body for you.”
He got up from the chair and started to pace the floor. I watched him ball one hand into a fist and smack it into the palm of the other hand. He was still a collection of loose nerves but they were starting to tighten up again.
I looked at him and tried to hate him. He married my sister and cheated on her and that ought to be cause for hatred. It didn’t work out that way. You can’t coin an ersatz double standard and apply it to brothers-in-law.
He fell on his face for a pretty blonde; hell, I’d taken a few falls for the same type of thing myself. He was married and I wasn’t, but the state of matrimony doesn’t alter body chemistry. He was a guy in a jam and I had to help him.
“Can I do anything, Ed?”
I shook my head. “I’ll do it alone,” I told him. “Not now. Later this evening when it’s dark and the streets are empty. It’s chancey but I’ll take the chance. I’ll need a key, if you’ve got one handy.”
He fished in a pocket and came up with a set of keys. I took them from him and set them on the coffee table.
“Go on home,” I said. “Try to relax.”
He nodded but I don’t think he heard me. “The hard part comes later,” he said. “When I realize that she’s really dead. Now she’s part of a mess that I’ve gotten myself into. But in a few hours she’ll turn back into a person. A person I knew well and cared a great deal about. And then it’s going to be tough. I’ll think about you picking her body up like a sack of flour and dumping her in the park and... I’m sorry. I’m going on and on like a damned fool.”