I nodded. “I’d have been breaking the law, but it wouldn’t be the first law I ever broke or the first homicide I overlooked. God never appointed me to go around the world righting wrongs. I’m not a priest, but anything he said to me would have been under the seal of the confessional as far as I was concerned. I told him I’d keep his confidence and I would have.”
“Will you keep mine?” She moved closer to me, and her hands fastened first on my wrists, then moved to my forearms. “Matt,” she said, “I invited you in here the first day to find out how much you knew. But I didn’t have to take you to bed to manage that. I went to bed with you because I wanted to.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t count on falling in love with you,” she said, “but it happened. I feel foolish saying it now because you’ll twist it, but it happens to be the truth. I don’t know if you’re in love with me. I think you were starting to be, and I think that’s why you’re angry with me now. But there’s been something real and strong between us from the beginning, and I feel it now, and I know you do, too. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know what I feel.”
“I think you do. And you’re a good influence on me, you’ve already got me making real coffee. Matt, why don’t you give us a chance?”
“How can I do that?”
“It’s the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is forget everything we said tonight. Matt, you just told me you weren’t put on the planet to right all wrongs. You’d have let it go if Eddie had told you about it. Why can’t you do as much for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?” She leaned a little closer, and I could smell the scotch on her breath, and remember how her mouth tasted. She said, “Matt, I’m not going to kill anybody else. That’s over forever, I swear it is. And there’s no real proof I ever killed anyone, is there? A couple of people had a non-lethal dose of a common drug in their systems. Nobody can prove I gave it to them. Nobody can even prove I had it in my possession.”
“I copied the label the other day. I’ve got the number of the prescription, the issuing pharmacy, the date of issue, the physician’s name—”
“The doctor will tell you I have trouble getting to sleep. I bought the chloral for my own consumption. Matt, there’s no real physical evidence. And I’m a respectable citizen, I’m a property owner, I can afford good lawyers. How good a case could they make against me when all they have is circumstantial evidence?”
“That’s a good question.”
“And why should we go through all of that?” She laid a hand on my cheek, stroked along the grain of my beard. “Matt, darling, we’re both tense, it’s all crazy, it’s a crazy day. Why don’t we go to bed? Right now, the two of us, why don’t we take off our clothes and go to bed and see how we feel afterward. How does that sound to you?”
“Tell me how you killed him, Willa.”
“I swear he never felt a thing, he never knew what was happening. I went up to his room to talk with him. He let me in. I gave him a cup of tea and put the drops in it. Then I came back downstairs, and when I went up again later he was sleeping like a lamb.”
“And what did you do?”
“What you said. It was clever of you to figure it out. You’re a good detective.”
“How’d you manage it?”
“He was already stripped. All he was wearing was the T-shirt. I got the clothesline hooked up, and then I sat him up and fixed the noose around his neck. He never woke up. I just pulled up on the clothesline and let his own body weight shut off his oxygen. That’s all.”
“And Mrs. Grod?”
“It was the way you figured it. I got her to take the chloral and I unlocked her window gates. I didn’t kill her. Eddie did that. He made it look like a struggle, too, and he locked the doors from inside and went back downstairs on the fire escape. Matt, they were all tired of life, the ones I killed. I just gave them a hand in the direction they were already heading.”
“The merciful angel of death.”
“Matt?”
I took her hands from my shoulders, stepped back. Her eyes widened, and I could see her trying to gauge which way I was leaning. I took a full breath and let it out and took off my suit jacket and hung it over the back of the chair.
“Ah, my darling,” she said.
I took off my tie and strung it over the jacket. I unbuttoned my shirt, tugged it out of the waistband of my slacks. She smiled and moved to embrace me. I lifted a hand to hold her off.
“Matt—”
I drew my undershirt up over my head and off. She couldn’t miss the wire. She saw it right away, wrapped around my middle, taped to my skin, but it took a minute or two for the implications to sink in.
Then she got it, and her shoulders sagged with the knowledge and her face collapsed. One hand reached out, gripping the table to keep her from falling.
While she was pouring herself more scotch, I got back into my clothes.
19
I brought her in. It was a nice collar for Joe Durkin, with an assist for Bellamy and Andreotti. Willa didn’t stay inside long. The equity in her buildings allowed her to make bond, and she’s out on bail now pending disposition of her case.
I don’t think it’ll come to trial. The newspaper coverage was heavy, and neither her good looks nor her radical past got in the way of the story. The recording I made of our conversation should prove to be admissible evidence, although her lawyer will do what he can to hold it back, but aside from that there’s not a wealth of physical evidence, so the betting right now is that her lawyer will want to plea-bargain the case and the Manhattan DA’s office will be agreeable. She’ll probably have to go away for a year or two. Most people would very likely say she’ll be getting off too easy, but then most people haven’t spent very much time in prison.
I had taken a few things from Eddie’s apartment — books, mostly, and his wallet. I brought all his AA literature along to St. Paul’s one night, and added the pamphlets to the stack on the free table. I gave his copies of the Big Book and the Twelve & Twelve to a newcomer named Ray, whom I haven’t laid eyes on since. I don’t know if he’s going to other meetings, or if he’s staying sober, but I don’t suppose the books drove him to drink.
I kept his mother’s Bible. I have one of my own, the King James version, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a Catholic Bible to keep it company. I still like the King James better, but I don’t open either of them all that often.
I spent more than seventy-two dollars’ worth of mental energy trying to decide what to do with the forty bucks in the Bible and the thirty-two dollars in his wallet. Ultimately I appointed myself his executor and hired myself retroactively to solve his murder, and paid myself seventy-two dollars for my services on his behalf. I dropped the empty wallet in a trash basket, where it no doubt proved a major disappointment for some sharp-eyed scavenger.
Eddie was buried out of Twomey & Sons funeral parlor, on Fourteenth Street next to St. Ber-nard’s. Mickey Ballou arranged for the service and footed the bill for it. “At least he’ll have a priest reading over him and a decent burial in a proper cemetery,” he said, “though you and I’ll probably be the only ones there for him.” But I mentioned the event at a meeting, and as it turned out there were about two dozen of us who came to see him off.
Ballou was astonished, and drew me aside. “I thought it’d just be you and me,” he said. “If I’d known there’d be all this turnout I’d have laid on something after, a couple of bottles and some food. Do you suppose we could ask them all to come back to Grogan’s for a few jars?”
“These people won’t want to do that,” I said.