"And it came soon enough. Ray was reading him his rights before the bodies were cold."
"I'm not sure of that. Before Colby Riddle's body was cold, maybe, but I have a feeling Georgi Blinsky's body was somewhere around room temperature long before Mapes started tossing lead around the room. That Russian was the coldest man I ever saw."
"He looked good in black, though. What else did you do in Johnson's apartment?"
"I found Barbara's class ring from Bennett High."
"And gave it to her?"
"Just the other night. I have to say she was impressed."
"I bet she was. Maxine?" She pointed at our glasses, and got a nod of assent from Maxine. "Reinforcements are coming, Bern. I've got some more questions."
"Shoot."
"Colby Riddle. When did you start to think he had something to do with it?"
"Well, I always wondered," I said. "He never called me about a book before. It's rare that I get a phone call from someone who's just looking for a reading copy, andThe Secret Agent 's in print in trade paperback, so anybody hunting for it could just drop into the nearest general bookstore, or get online and pick it up from Amazon. But Colby was always an odd bird to begin with, and we were up to our eyeballs in coincidences anyway, so I didn't dwell on it. I didn't really tie him in until I let myself into Mapes's office."
"You went there to check out his appointment book, and pick a time that would work for the showdown."
"And while I was there, I had a look at his files. I was looking for Kukarov, not really expecting to find anything, not under that name. And I didn't, of course. But then I looked up a few other people, and the only one I found was Colby. And he'd been there for just the reason I'd said. He had a growth removed from his cheek two years earlier."
"That could have been a coincidence too, couldn't it?"
"I suppose so, but I figured he was tied in."
"Yeah, I guess not even coincidence has arms that long. Hey, thanks, Max. Bern, we're not gonna die of thirst after all."
I took a sip of my drink just to make sure.
" Bern? Summarize what happened, will you? Not with William Johnson, I get all that. But the rest of it, with the photographs and the people getting killed and all."
I thought about it. "Well," I said, "there are a couple of versions. There's what I laid out, which is how the cops have the case written up. And there's what Ray knows is really true. And then there's what's even truer, that Ray doesn't know about. And then of course there are the things I did to make it happen."
"Uh-huh."
"So which would you like to hear?"
She grinned. "All of 'em, Bern."
"The Lyles got the photographs pretty much the way it came out in Mapes's living room. Marisol told her cousin Karlis, and he made a fake appointment with Mapes and swiped the book when no one was looking. He got it to his father, who in turn got it to Arnold Lyle."
"Okay."
"Lyle talked to more people than he should have, and made arrangements to sell the book to Georgi Blinsky."
"Principles of Organic Chemistry, you mean. That book."
"Right, Volume Two. The book Mapes taped the photos in. First, though, Lyle removed the Kukarov photos from the book, but he liked Mapes's system, so he taped them into another book, one belonging to the owner of the apartment he'd sublet, and stuck it back in the bookcase."
"And that wasQB VII."
"Uh-huh. Now the way I told the story, Ray found the book in a careful search of the apartment after the murder, but the photos were already missing."
"Ray couldn't find a black cat on a white sofa, Bern."
"This is the official story, remember? Ray found the book, but the photos were gone."
"Who took them?"
"Good question. First, though, the home invasion and the murder. Michael Quattrone's men were responsible for the home invasion part, as he more or less admitted, albeit hypothetically. The cops can't make a case against him and won't try, but they know his guys did it. And the doorman's death was accidental. It was homicide, that's what you call it when someone's killed in the commission of a felony, but nobody meant for it to happen."
"That must make the doorman feel a lot better."
"Quattrone wound up withPrinciples of Organic Chemistry, which by now contained Mapes's mug shots of everybody but Kukarov. His main goal was to destroy the ones of Whitey Mullane, his friend and mentor, and my guess is he'll trash the others as well, if he hasn't already. They'd be worth something to a blackmailer, but that's not his line of work, and anyway he doesn't know who the people are."
"And after his men left?"
"Blinsky and his crew got there, too late to pick up the book, or to recover the twenty grand they'd already paid the Lyles. So they shot them, which I suspect they were planning to do all along, book or no book. I don't think Georgi Blinsky was a very nice man."
"Then I won't feel too bad that he got killed. What about the photos of Kukarov?"
"What about them?"
"Well, I know what happened to them. They were in the Leon Uris book waiting for you to find them. I know that because you told me, and Ray knows it because he was there. But what do the cops think happened to them?"
"They think they disappeared."
"Just like that? Poof?"
"No one's too clear on the details. Maybe when they took the tape off his mouth Lyle told Blinsky where the photos were."
"And Blinsky took them. And put the book back where he found it?"
"Does that seem unlikely? How about this-Lyle taped the Kukarov photos inQB VII, then thought better of it and cut them out again. He put them somewhere else, and gave them to Blinsky, hoping it would lead the man in black to spare his life."
"That's a little better, but-"
"Carolyn, it didn't happen, so what difference does it makehow it didn't happen? Somebody got the photos, and whoever it was he doesn't have them now, so what do the cops care?"
"I just wondered, that's all. But I see what you mean."
"Now what comes next? Colby Riddle, I guess, and Valdi Berzins. Well, you know how the story goes there. Mapes called Colby, who agreed to help out, probably for a substantial consideration."
"Money, in other words."
"What could be more considerate? Colby got me to set a book aside for him, then told Berzins to go in and ask for it. Meanwhile, a car full of Russians was waiting for Berzins to come out of my store."
"How'd they know to wait for him there?"
"They knew about me from the newspaper article," I said, "or they knew about Berzins and tailed him to the bookstore. He was waiting around on the sidewalk while I had lunch at your place, so that would have given them time to get into position. Both explanations play out about the same, so you can take your pick."
"Okay."
"Then Berzins came in, picked up the book, overpaid or under-paid for it, as you prefer, and went out to meet his death."
"In a hail of flying bullets," she said. "A Russian shot him, right?"
"Right."
"And then jumped out and picked up the book."
"Right."
"So how did it get in Mapes's den?"
"Well, that's hard to say for sure," I said, "because all the people involved are dead."
"Not Mapes."
"He's refusing to answer questions. And nobody much cares, because he killed two men in front of a roomful of witnesses, including three cops and two members of the New York bar."
"And a paralegal," she said, "and someone who works behind a New York bar, and a lot of others besides. But they must have some explanation."
"The Russians," I said. "I'll tell you, they make even better villains now than they did during the Cold War. They shot Berzins, and they wound up with the book, and they already had the photos. They taped the photos intoThe Secret Agent, and sold the package to Mapes."
"If they already had the photos, why shoot Berzins?"