“I didn’t even have a gun,” I said.
“Guns can be ditched.”
“How about a motive?”
“You were tailing Kezar and Meyer for some reason.”
So Irving Kezar had spotted me. I relaxed.
“You had me worried,” I said, “but it’s okay now. Even I’m not dumb enough to kill one of two men I’m tailing.”
“Who knows?” Gazzo said. “Three ways in and out of that building. Maybe you saw something? Clear yourself now.”
“All I saw was Kezar come out before the shots, and Mrs. Kezar come to Six-C after I got up there.”
“You’re sure Kezar came out before the shots?”
I nodded. Gazzo sat back, lit two cigarettes, held one for me to reach out and take. Reflex. He wasn’t afraid of me, but you don’t put your hands into a cell for anything.
“Looks like two killers,” Gazzo said. “Sid Meyer was shot three times. Once up close with a small seven-sixty-five millimeter, twice with a big forty-five-automatic. Slugs still in him, and we found the forty-five on the stairs one floor below. No prints.”
“Dropped in an escape, and no prints? Gloves?”
“Like pros,” Gazzo agreed. “Meyer opened the door, so he knew them. The chain was on, so he was nervous. They kicked in the door, maybe grappled. We found a black thread under one of Meyer’s fingernails. Nothing else. They shot him out that window, probably heard you coming. Ran down the stairs and out.”
“Who was Sid Meyer?”
“A hustler who ran a small trucking company in New Jersey. One fraud conviction, no recent trouble. Irving Kezar’s brother-in-law. Kezar is a lawyer in Manhattan. Not much criminal work. The D.A. doesn’t know him. Do you, Dan?”
I shook my head. “He just turned up in a case.”
“What case?”
There it was. It had to come, and I never lie to the police. I need them too much. But there are exceptions to every rule. I liked Diana Wood. Call me a fool.
“Just a wife tail,” I said.
“Some names, Dan.”
“Captain,” I said. “Look. I’ve got some clean, ordinary people on this case. No real connection to Meyer at all.”
“No, Dan,” Gazzo said. “I judge the connection, not you.”
“I have to judge, too. My license means something.”
“Not much,” Gazzo said.
We faced each other through the bars. There was no way I could win the round unless he let me. He nodded to the turnkey to unlock my cell. He knows his power, he can wait.
He took me to an interrogation room. Irving Kezar and his wife were there. Kezar jumped up, his paunch quivering.
“He told who hired him to kill Sid?”
“Fortune didn’t kill Meyer,” Gazzo said. He sat on a table. “Maybe pros. What was Meyer doing to make enemies, get shot?”
Kezar shook his head. “Who knows? A lot of deals.”
“You were his brother-in-law.”
“Not his partner. We didn’t do business.”
“You’ve both made your statements about tonight?”
Kezar shrugged. “Sid met me at Le Cerf Agile, we came home. Family talk. I had business, Sid waited for Jenny.”
Gazzo turned to the wife. “Mrs. Kezar?”
“Sid never told her anything, Captain,” Kezar said.
Jenny Kezar sat on the edge of a chair like some old refugee waiting rigid for a visa. Her pale eyes were dull, and her face had never been pretty, but close now I saw that she wasn’t as old as I’d thought in the apartment. Nowhere near sixty. Taller than Kezar, her heavy body was shapeless in the cheap blue coat, but her legs were still good, and her hands were clear and smooth. Maybe in her late forties, the hands her last vanity.
“I was at a movie,” she said as if Sid Meyer’s death was somehow her fault. “I met Irving on the avenue, he told me Sid was waitin’. I went up and found him.” She looked at us. “My only brother. Four girls and Sid. He was the baby.”
“Any guesses who killed him, Mrs. Kezar?” Gazzo asked.
“Always in trouble,” Jenny Kezar said. “I told him. I said, your big schemes’ll ruin you. Spoiled, the only boy. My old man was a fur cutter, but Sid was gonna be a scholar. Rabbi, even.”
Her tears began in midsentence. Slow tears on her worn face. She didn’t sob or wring her hands, just let the tears roll in sorrow. And more than sorrow, a misery, as if she cried for more than a dead brother.
“The cow,” Irving Kezar said in disgust. “She’s no use now, Captain. I guess someone Sid screwed just caught up to him.”
“Your apartment,” Gazzo said. “Maybe they thought he was you.”
“Me? I don’t have an enemy in the world, Captain. Do I look scared?” Kezar didn’t look scared. “You say Fortune didn’t kill Sid. But maybe he fingered him. The name of his client might tell you something.”
“It doesn’t,” Gazzo said, covered for me.
Kezar didn’t give up easily. “It might mean more to me.”
“Sign your statements,” Gazzo said. “Then you can go.”
Alone with me, Gazzo’s face said that he hoped the name of my client wouldn’t tell anything about Meyer’s murder. I hoped so, too. His eyes were moody.
“No way Kezar could have doubled back and killed Meyer,” Gazzo said. “No time, and across town when we called him.”
“What about Mrs. Kezar? Anyone see her in the lobby?”
“No, and no one saw her at the movie she was at, or on the avenue, except Kezar. But we tore up the apartment, and there’s no second gun in it. No other gun around the building.”
“Any trace on the gun you found?”
“Not yet.”
I got up. “Can I go home?”
He nodded. I went to the door. Gazzo spoke behind me:
“Dan? Maybe you fingered Meyer without knowing it. Clean, ordinary people don’t hire detectives much. Think about it.”
I nodded as I left. I’d already thought about it.
The light snow still fell as the taxi dropped me at Morgan Crafts. The shop was dark in the night, but there was light above in Mia Morgan’s apartment. As I looked up, I became aware of someone in the shadows of a shop two doors down. Someone hiding.
Or was he? When I looked closer, he was walking toward me. A rolling walk, and a topcoat much too light for snow.
“Still working, Mr. Fortune?” John Albano said.
His dark, vigorous face under the white hair seemed to enjoy the snow. He wore an open shirt this time, and no gloves.
“Calling on Mrs. Morgan?” I asked.
He was a smiling man, sardonic, as if the world amused him.
“A walk,” he said. “I live around the corner. I like the cold. I’ve worked in too many hot places. Jungles and swamps.”
“Africa?” I said. “South America? Southeast Asia?”
“All of those,” Albano said. “You didn’t take my advice.”
“Sorry. You know a Sid Meyer, Mr. Albano?”
“Meyer, more than one. But no Sid.” He looked up at Mia Morgan’s windows. “You’re bringing Mia news?”
“Some,” I said.
His smile was thinner, speculative, as if he expected to see something in my face. Something specific. A definite sign.
“Well,” he said, “be careful, Mr. Fortune.”
He walked away, an old man without fat. I went up to Mia Morgan’s apartment. She was alone. I sat in my coat. She smoked. Her purple lounging pajamas were sleek and thirty, her delicate olive face and long black hair still twenty-two.
“Well,” she said, “you have a report for me?”
“Captain Stern’s pretty violent about you.”
She scowled, petulant. “He doesn’t own me.”
“Who does? Not Mr. Morgan.”
“No one owns me. Did you find the woman?”
“Diana Wood,” I said, and gave my report-what there was. Mia Morgan was listening for more when I’d finished. She wasn’t interested in Harold Wood, Lawrence Dunlap, or Kezar. I hadn’t mentioned Sid Meyer or the black car. I wanted her to ask, reveal herself. She didn’t.
“Go on another week.” She got up, dismissing me.
I got up. “Sid Meyer was murdered tonight.”
She stared. “Someone connected to Diana Wood?”
“Someone who tried to see you the day you hired me.”